I'm sure, sure, sure that she is making some kind of statement here. In fact, I can pretty much imagine what that statement is supposed to be. And I am just as certain that the album's inside will be beyond belief beautiful. But, I hate graffiti, and I refuse to bow to the gods of the age that say that vandalism is a valid form of artstic expression.
What do you think?
By the way, the four-week countdown to this album's release begins TODAY! C'mon October 20!
7 comments:
Showed it to my wife . . . she loved it! Said it looks like a run-down place, but the people there still have love to give, and they appreciate the love you give them.
Message-wise, I'm sure that everything your wife says is true. When I wrote that I had an idea of what Carolyn's "statement" might be, I was thinking along those lines. My thought was that, no matter how gawd-awful people make a place, every place on earth is sacred ground, because God's breath has touched it, and His love was always "here first."
Aesthetically-speaking, I still think it's ugly. Really, really ugly. I guess it's because I hate graffiti so much. You see these immigrant shops downtown -- 1st generation folks just trying to live the American dream -- and punks see fit to cover their storefronts with graffiti under the cowardly cloak of night. And you know how graffiti just brings down a neighborhood. The good people have to put time and money into cleaning up this crap, while the hoodlums either get away with it or get slaps on the wrist. It makes me furious!
Funny enough, I did not hate the graffiti on the Western side of the Berlin Wall. Maybe because it was uplifting and tried to bring beauty to an ugly idea/thing. The stark concrete on the Soviet side was truly depressing.
But what did you think, Mark?
Now that I've had a chance to sit down and take a good look at the cover, here are my thoughts:
The first thing that I noticed about the cover was the cross. That, to me, matches up nicely with the album's title ("Love Was Here First") - "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1).
Next, there's the heart in the window just above the title. (At least I think it's a heart - I only have the small album jpg to go by.) It looks like a child's artwork. And that, to me, says that no matter what shape the building is in now - and it looks to me that it might have been a school, and is in pretty rough shape - it once was "home" to innocence.
Finally, the message itself, scrawled on the wall, turns the very idea of graffiti on its head. Mostly, graffiti is about "me" - look at me, I tagged a building; look at me, I wrote something nasty (an aside, from Professor Tom Lehrer's paraody of the Boy Scouts: "Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell"). look at me, I've done more damage!
Love is not about self - it's about giving one's self to others. Graffiti does not give; those who spraypaint graffiti aren't showing love.
So, I guess in those three ways the album cover speaks to me. I may have more to say when I actually get it - and I, for one, did not pre-order it . . . wah!
That's funny -- I did not even see the cross until you mentioned it. The first thing I noticed were the broken windows.
I'm getting used to the album cover. First impression: ugly. Second impression: interesting. I'll see if it progresses to raw, gritty, peculiar, haunting beauty once I get past seeing just another scene of uban destruction.
I lke to think about what it used to be, rather than what it is. Must be the romantic in me. Everybody and everything has a story - from the most powerful, the most wealthy, the most popular and the most desirable on down.
My friend Dave once told me about a manufacturing plant he serviced as a fire-extinguisher tech. I believe it as a GE plant in Chicago, and he would walk for four HOURS through the place, moving to the various locations where the fire suppression systems and extinguishers were located.
Everywhere he went there were men working at machines, seemingly all of them chomping on cigars - hundreds, even thousands of workers, no doubt. That plant is closed, as so many in the US are, but the stories remain - spouses, children, triumphs and tragedies. Careers ended after decades; lives ended too soon by illness; celebrations when sports teams won their respective trophies; pride in watching their youngsters move through grade school, high school, college.
The place they worked might now look like the building on the cover of Carolyn's album - many buildings out there on the west side do.
One other thing - where there's decay there's also re-birth! And what could be a more Christian concept than that!
Mark-great insite on the album cover.
For me, the first thing I noticed was the cross with Carolyn's name on it. It's almost as if it should say "insert your name here". All of us have our names written on the Cross and we are only on this earth because Love put us here. We are also like this building~run down, broken, and the "graffiti" of the world on us but we can be scrubbed clean and healed, it time, with God's perfect love!
Frankly, I could use a little "urban renewal" :)
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