https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=zD8O8NlPu4U
We’d also, you know, we need to remember that Christ is the perfect example of all of this, right? So his ministry was three years long, but his whole life, you know, as a carpenter, was he like carving crosses and giving them to people? You know, probably not. That would have been a weird time. You know, his whole reality would have been offered up to the Father as a prayer. And because he’s Christ, he does everything perfectly, which means it’s perfectly humble, right? So when people come to me and they say, yeah, I’m thinking about doing this thing or whatever, I’m like, great, do it and do it as well as you possibly can. Because when you do that, they get a well-being prideful about it. If it’s actually done well, it’ll be done in the image of Christ and it’ll be perfectly humble. It’ll be a great offering. And that’s, you know, like Father Chris said, I don’t think there’s necessarily, it’s not a problem. Like Christ doesn’t call us to be bankers or artists or lawyers or housewives. He calls bankers and artists and lawyers and housewives to be disciples. That’s what he calls. So whatever you do, do it as well as you possibly can. It’ll be a good icon. And if it’s bad art, it probably stems from bad theology. Get your theology corrected. So, hello everybody. I am very pleased to be here with Father Christopher, Father James and Father David, also known as the band Luxury. Some of you might have followed their stories. Some of you might not know, but they started a band a long time ago when they were young, a rock band and many events in their lives brought them ultimately to not all of the people in the band, but three who are here with us today to convert to orthodoxy and ultimately to become priests. And there’s a documentary about that called Parallel Love, which is a wonderful documentary. I recommend it to anyone which kind of traces the story. So we’re going to look into a little bit what their story is, you know, the different, they put out an album a few years ago as well. They even did some live shows this summer, which they hadn’t done in a while, and also their future projects. And we’ll also talk about what it means to be an orthodox Christian who is also involved in secular art. And so, fathers, thank you for coming to talk to me. Thank you for having us. And so I’m hoping one of you can maybe just tell our audience this, just the basic story of how it is that I’m talking to three rock and roll priests here. It’s Father Chris’s job. Yeah, it’s Father Chris’s job. I knew I was going to be conscripted for that. Well the three of us, you know, actually met in college back in the early 90s when all of us were very kind of interested in music and playing music. We met at this conservative Christian college desperate to find like-minded musicians, and we wound up starting a band together. We played around kind of the Atlanta, Athens, southeastern scene for a number of years. Eventually we got signed to Tooth and Nail Records after playing a festival up in Illinois. But around that same time, at least Father David and I were also studying church history with a group of friends that led us eventually into discovering the Eastern Orthodox faith. We wound up converting much to Father James chagrin at the time, but eventually Father James and his wife became Orthodox as well. But you know, the band continued during that time. You know, we were touring and playing quite a bit. And then as we started getting older and having children, the live aspect of the band waned. I eventually went off to seminary to pursue the priesthood. And then a number of years later, Father James, Father David did as well. And then got a phone call from Father David about 2013 saying, hey, man, I’m writing some more songs. You guys want to go in the studio? So we did. And then around the same time, a friend of ours, Matt, who’s also in the band, but was a filmmaker, just thought it would be really interesting to do a story and a documentary on the story of the band, the fact that three of us became Orthodox priests. This is the first album and writing and recording since being priest. And the documentary has done very well, much to our surprise. We thought maybe two or three people would be interested in it. But NPR and other places were very interested. So it’s been an interesting last few years as priests trying to navigate being priests, but also playing rock and roll. So you played some live concerts this summer. How was that? Do you wear your cat socks? No, no, no. Father James, maybe you talk about that experience. Yeah, it was. So it was last summer we played. I don’t know what to say about it. We hadn’t played in ages. And I guess the idea had come up that maybe we could try to do some shows and wanting to promote the record a little bit. Even the record record stretched out, trophies stretched out for ages before we actually got it released. And I can’t remember how it all kind of came about. But we ended up being asked to play at a festival in Alabama, Furnace Fest, which is primarily like hardcore punk rock metal kind of thing. And we got asked to play, which was funny. And it was beautiful. Did they reach out to you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think so. Is that correct? I think so. I think the thing that came to us first, we weren’t looking to play. And in the process of doing that, we thought, well, we probably ought to play another show before that to sort of warm up to that and ended up playing a show at the Earl in Atlanta, which is kind of a cool club that we hadn’t played there in many years. So we ended up playing two shows, which was crazy. So we had these rehearsals and. I was pretty nervous about actually getting on stage again, but it ended up being a lot of fun. It was it was enjoyable. It’s a diversion. But we ended up doing that last year. And I mean, not to prove we couldn’t do it anymore. We proved that we still could do something. But we did it. And there it is. It’s on video in places. Oh, it is. Can you find that video? We could find it. No, no, you can’t find the video. It’s well hidden. OK. All right. I would have liked to I would have liked to see that. And Father David, since you’re singing, how was that for you in terms of a concert? Because that different energy. Yeah, it was very different. You know, again, like Father Chris said, we had we hadn’t played together live in that in that setting for almost 20 years. And so it was a very different energy now being a priest and sort of what I felt comfortable doing, what I didn’t feel. I felt very much self-conscious the whole time, which I didn’t feel that earlier, you know, early on. And so might have been a lot of it might have been just around singing live, which is a difficult thing to do and trying to be energetic and all that. But not so much the priest stuff. I didn’t that wasn’t the uncomfortable part. It’s more of just not having done this in so long. So, yeah. And also, I imagine being older and just being more aware of certain things in terms of. Yeah, you still want to be like exciting and interesting and provocative and all that. And there is somewhere in the back of your head the idea of priesthood and your congregation and all of that who weren’t there, thank God. So that would be even stranger, you know, because it’s a different reality. But no, I mean, it’s just, you know, you get older and you want to you want to want to be age appropriate. That kind of thing. It was it was odd. And how would age were the people in the audience? That’s probably was it was it a bunch of 20 year olds, like a bunch of teenagers or was it more kind of adult? It definitely was more people. I mean, we’re all over 50 now. And so it was definitely more of our dad rock crown. But it was loud. We play hard and heavy and loud and it was great. You know, I don’t really want to do it again. But yeah, it was a good experience. I mean, I think that that’s interesting. You’re saying you don’t you don’t want what. Why don’t you want to do it again? It doesn’t do anything for me in particular at this point. Like my own interest is in songwriting and making records, that kind of thing. That’s where I get the most joy and interest out of that. The playing live thing, I suppose if we did it more often, I would I would feel I could make get my way into it a little bit more. But it’s not I don’t have I don’t really have any interest in that. So but I don’t even go to shows anymore. So, you know, I still have a lot of experience, you know, interest in that kind of thing. But it’s still an interesting in the music part. Like, it’s not it’s not disillusioned with the music. I think it’s just the live thing is not the right. Yeah, I mean, the whole the arc of making music and putting out music and then the live part of that, like my interest ends once the record when I’m holding it in my hand, that’s where that’s where I finished my job. And anything beyond that, I don’t have any interest in at all. So, Father James, Father Christopher, what about you in terms of the live experience? Did you have a similar experience? I had a lot more fun than I thought I would. I had the same kind of hesitation. You know, you’re a priest, you know, but like a lot of things, you know, some priests, they go out and they play golf, I guess, or they I don’t know what’s something analogous. They go fishing or hiking or you don’t watch you, though. People don’t watch you. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, this is this is different. But it’s like, I don’t know. I mean, that I enjoyed it a lot. But I’m with my brother. I’m kind of. It’s that’s. You know, it’s fun. I mean, that’s I like to get together with the band. I enjoy that part. And the people want to watch us getting together. I mean, we have a lot of fun. We tell jokes and we sit around. They can just we can do that. We can just have a rehearsal. They could just all watch us sitting there eating a meal and then making jokes and playing for five minutes and then correcting. You know that if we could do that, that would be more fun. But I mean, that’s a concept. Maybe we could. Terrible idea. Terrible idea. It’s time has come. I don’t know. You, Christopher. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed it. And, you know, I’m open to doing it again. But it was certainly there was tension. I mean, just how do we do this? Like, you know, we were performing in front of people. And it’s it’s. But we’re we’re priests and we’re not. I don’t know. It’s just, you know, the tension of all of that. I think at some point I just said, OK, well, I guess just embrace the tension of it. And, you know, just kind of remember who we are. So, you know, I’m not opposed to doing it again. But, you know, it just I realized kind of what Father David said. I mean, it didn’t really do anything for me in terms of like, oh, we got to do this more often. It was just it was fun. It just felt like kind of nostalgia, especially the show in Atlanta. Being able to see a bunch of friends of ours. That’s where we used to play all of the time. So it just felt like a reunion of sorts. And so many of our extended plan down there, you know, many of them have also become Orthodox over the years. Oh, that was just pretty neat to see some of them. And, you know, so I this is something I mean, we’ve had conversations before. I think all maybe I don’t know if I’ve had this conversation with all three of you, for sure. Two of you, for sure. Father Krister and Father David. So even in the things you’re saying, I feel a little uneasy, like there’s an uneasiness. In the way that you express your relationship to to to the music, now to the concert. I don’t know if it’s uneasiness or at least a sense in which you’re not sure how to place your feet. Maybe that’s the best way to understand, like, how do I position myself? And so I know that there’s a lot of people watching this, a lot of people who are in the secular art world, you know, people who do animation, video games that watch my content, you know, people who reach out to me. And a lot and many people feel that that uneasiness, you could say, not sure how it is, do I live these these two lives? And so I was wondering if you if it’s something that you’re, let’s say, exploring on your own, do you see a connection? Is there a connection between your Orthodox faith and the music? Or do you feel like it really is just two lines running next to each other? Well, I mean, I thought I think a lot about that. I think our. The band’s sort of prime prime experience was pre Internet days. So there was a there was an aspect of it where that was very segmented, like this was what you do. You can get up on stage. Nobody really knows anything about you. There’s not it’s a it’s a persona that you sort of adopt. And there’s a kind of comfort in that where you can just simply you can be that thing in that setting. And there’s no, you know, no one’s taking cell phone videos of your playing. You know, there’s nothing that’s suddenly this becomes a permanent sort of reality. Right. And you can kind of create that and take some sort of comfort in creating that persona and entering into it. Nowadays, you know, it’s the only they know who you are, they know your wives names. I know they’ve seen pictures of your kids. They see your Facebook page, your Instagram and all these different things. Like it’s suddenly it’s all just jammed together. And that’s I think where the discomfort comes is how, you know, am I a priest when I’m playing music? Well, people know you’re a priest because they’ve seen your stuff. Or am I a musician when I’m a priest? This that’s the other way for the same sort of tension in church. So I think we live in an age which is way too overexposed with all of our our realities. And so my own discomfort is about how much do I want people to know about me? And the reason I don’t have a sort of YouTube, no offense, a YouTube channel, these different things. Like I just don’t want that much sort of exposure. I don’t I want to be somewhat mysterious still. Right. So that I can keep some for me personally, I can keep some bifurcated realities in my life, I think a little bit. I don’t that make sense or not. But this is a different age we live in. And your musicians nowadays sort of I think they have to have everything out there all the time for everybody. I think that’s. Yeah, I don’t know. So. Hmm. Yeah, I think the flip side of that, I mean, we’ve talked a lot about this kind of amongst the band. And I mean, Father David, you always make that point that, you know, parallel lines don’t intersect. And so this idea of. But, you know, I think there is the sense that we have always struggled as a band, you know, trying to understand how does our Christian faith kind of inform our arts and vice versa. And, you know, we never set out to be a Christian band or have this agenda to win souls or whatever. We were just, you know, trying to create art. But, you know, I think I mentioned this in the movie, this idea like Father Alexander Schmemann talks a little bit about in his book For the Life of the World about this vocation of being a priest of creation who takes the matter of this world and offers it up to God with Thanksgiving and praise. And then it gets returned to us as something life giving. I know for me and my journey into orthodoxy, whilst being in a band at the same time, that was so helpful for me, I think, to just think of art that way. You know, that we’re somehow offering up the matter, just like bread and wine, Eucharistically, we’re offering up the matter of our talent. And hopefully God blesses it and we can create something beautiful and, you know, it reflects our our life and our world view. So I think that’s been helpful, I think, for us as a band to think about it that way also. So, I mean, I would say about that, though, like we wouldn’t do this in the church. Yeah, well, that’s the I think that that’s really where in some ways it becomes fascinating for me or to think about because. And I think that’s probably why people are so fascinated by your story as well, because if you were Protestant pastors, you could probably do it in the church, right? It would be you would be using it as worship music or whatever you could you could do that and you could get away with it, right? You could have the concert in the church and get away with it. But in for sure, everybody knows that you couldn’t do this in church, like you couldn’t use that. It’s not a it’s not a strictly liturgical action in the in the strict sense. But at the same time as music. Right. But at the same time, like in the words of Father Alexander Schmemann that you mentioned, and I think just in general in terms of St. Maximus and the way that we understand Christ’s presence in the world, we have a sense in which liturgical the form of the liturgy or what the liturgy does can be applied at smaller levels. Right. I often talk about how a family meal is somewhat liturgical. It’s not strictly liturgical, but it’s somewhat liturgical because it’s binding together around a common a common thing. You know, there’s a type of dance that happens in a family meal that is ritualized. And I think there’s the same thing with the concert. But I’m trying to I’m trying to see Father Christopher. Like, what is it that it’s expressing? It’s interesting, right? The let’s say what positive thing, even if we think in terms of orthodox mindset, what positive thing does rock and roll manifest? Like, what could it manifest as positive? And this is like a really like this is this is not this is not a trick question. It’s not a I’m really trying to I myself and trying to kind of see this. I have kind of an idea, but I like to hear your thought about it. I mean, I’ll say a few things, but you guys can jump in as well. I just know when I first heard your talk on the the Pentecost for the zombie apocalypse and you you talked about this idea of kind of like a narthex art or kind of remember how you term it. But it’s kind of like it’s not quite in the church, but it’s somehow reflecting something of reality. It’s entering into even kind of the depths of the human experience. And I mean, I’m a bass player, so I mean, my bass player, my bass parts are entering. But when I think of, you know, like Father David and his themes, you know, in his lyrics, I mean, I think there’s there’s definitely a depth there, maybe in the same way that like folk music is an Eastern European countries like these aren’t songs that we would hear in the liturgy. But they’re definitely, you know, reflecting on a lived experience for those producing it. Hmm. I want to hear someone else’s ideas on this. I know, Father David, it’s something that that that racks racks like really kind of rattles in you. So I want to hear what you think. Well, I mean, honestly, it’s never been too much of attention for me. As far as I’ve never I’ve never tried. I never thought that I needed to write songs or lyrics that directly correspond to sort of my life as a Christian as a priest or anything like that. All of my life in the church, my life as a priest, it all has tremendous impact on how I write songs in the sense of, you know, it’s flavored with these ideas of the rhythm, rhythms of the church life and all and the imagery of that and the questions that I ask. But it’s just I never felt compelled to to turn that into something that’s sort of explicit. I mean, I guess there’s not a lot of maybe the I don’t know, maybe the in fact, I probably try to avoid it more than more than anything. I think, you know, recently I wrote a song over the last couple years that actually has the name Jesus in it, which is the first time I’ve ever done that. But it’s somebody had written it in graffiti on a wall, right, that’s sort of the, that’s how I brought it into into that. And that’s that seems natural to me as opposed to the private thing that we do as Christians. The privacy of worship and all that kind of thing. I wouldn’t use that in rock music. Well, that’s it. This is why it’s so fascinating in some ways because because you have a sense of what is truly sacred and holy and highest, you could say. It almost does the opposite as what, like I said, a kind of evangelical would do because the kind of evangelical thinking would be like, yeah, put Jesus in there as much as possible. Just throw him in. And so in some sense, it’s it’s particular because you recognize the value or the certain hierarchy where it’s like, I know what I’m doing is not in the same space as when, you know, I’m consecrating the Eucharist. I’m in the same space. And so I don’t want to confuse that hierarchy by by, let’s say, almost saying, like you said, if I it’s almost I feel in what you’re saying, it’s like if I brought Jesus into my songs all the time, it would come and almost be like blaspheming, like maybe not blaspheming, but it would be like, like demeaning to what the highest part of that is. It’s our songs are not sacred space. Yeah. To do something to bring something into that. Like I said this before in other places, but I don’t typically talk about things that I really love. I keep I keep those things for myself. They’re private, you know, the things musically, the things I really love. I don’t want to talk to other fans of the bands that I like because you can’t possibly love them the way I do kind of thing. So I think in some ways, you know, I’m terrible as far as being evangelical, because I don’t really want to talk about Christ to people. You know, it sounds weird as a priest to say that but I don’t you know I want to leave it at the top is like that you know good example like I don’t want to talk about her to other people. Unless we share it in a communal kind of space, a sacred space, space of the church, or in that setting. In a band it seems like the worst possible idea to bring that into that setting to me. Sure you got comments. Someone else on this question. It’s funny because every time this comes up. I think I’m becoming more convinced like I have answers and I’m like I don’t have any clue how to answer the question or how to untie the knot it’s. And that kind of occurred to me more recently how do you even answer this. It’s, you know, I almost wonder what the question is anymore what do we you know what do we do with it I mean I got guitars on the wall and I still am I got I’m in my cassock so it’s sort of like, I think it’s Father Chris so there’s that tension. Maybe, maybe in some ways as a priest, the rock and roll part of our life is like dinner on the dining room table versus, you know, offering, and this may not be the best way to put it but offering the Eucharist on the Holy Table you know the two are connected. I think it’s called the Thomas Hopco we talked about the connection between, you know, the fellowship meal you share at coffee hour or the common meal after liturgy versus the Eucharist they’re not opposed or connected, but there’s, but there’s a clear, very clear difference, and the things that we might do and say around the meal that we have at the common meal after liturgy. Hopefully will reflect what we’ve done in the Eucharist and won’t contradict it but you know maybe we’ll, you know, we’re not, it won’t be as ritualized it won’t be as it’ll be sacred but sacred as an informed sacred reshaped by the by the by the true thing the real thing and you know that meal. You know, the meal being an image of the greater meal marriage being an image of the true marriage you know whatever it might be in rock and roll is an uneasy. It’s an uneasy fit. This compulsion you know when you, you’ve done it for all these years you know just to keep I mean I’m surrounded by it here I, when I went to seminary it was funny like this first time I ever did this, because I was much worse about taking other people’s gear than I was giving it up around. There’s like this rule that if you leave your gear sitting for so many minutes, you know it’s, it’s mine you know people used to have a movie with that. That’s stealing. Yes, but let’s call it what you know let’s gloss it here in the movie we talked about the dish which was this you know all ages club that we ran. And it’s a great story that I won’t get into but people would leave their gear occasionally, and they wouldn’t go back and get it well it became ours. When I went to seminary, the first time in my life, I gave away gear like I’m like I’m not going to need this anymore I’m going to you know I’m going to seminary I’m gonna be a priest. I saw some regrets about that because I thought, you know that now I probably own more gear than I’ve ever owned in my life you know as a priest, you know you give up these things you think it’s less a part of you but yet you’re, you know, still a part of who you are. But I think for myself I’m more concerned that you know will the stuff or the music, somehow misshape the priesthood, you know, that’s my primary concern like I’ll be a priest and I’ll be a priest who picks up and you know where’s my street clothes to play a show once in a blue moon maybe. But if that if that harms any of this stuff in any way then I need to put that away. So, there’s that that tension of like, you know, is it crossing a line is it doing something else but like I said I’m not, I don’t know if that’s an answer I guess for myself I just keep making music and that’s the best I can do at this point. So maybe that’s the next question in terms of, we won’t name any names but I mean has that happened, have you felt like you’ve received criticism or that people have questioned, you know, the, your, your priesthood or question the fact that your pastors of churches because of this. I’ll say first since I brought it up I’ve not had that actually I’ve been, I kind of feel like people should. So, you know, I mean, I feel the same way. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I’ve, when we, when I became priest, like immediately I let people know because I, because the internet I’m like what guys, you’re going to get to know me, you’re going to go on YouTube, you’re going to see videos. Here’s some of my past history, don’t be shocked by this. And my folks have always been just like they think it’s super cool and I’m kind of like maybe you shouldn’t I don’t know I you know, maybe it’s not bad I don’t know. You get put into a category you become the cool priest. Yeah. You know, yeah. It feels equally as uncomfortable. Totally. Totally. Well, it’s funny I mean my funny story about this is, you know, the movie was hitting all of these art house cinemas around the country. So it was coming to the local cinema here. I was just nervous to talk about it to my parishioners I mean people know about the band and all of that. Finally somebody pulled me aside said father you need to announce that this is coming because I think people would be disappointed if, if they know that it came and you didn’t tell anybody. It was the very first time I’ve ever mentioned the band like from the AMBA or whatever it was like announcements after liturgy and I just said, Well, some of you know that I’m in this band and everybody just started laughing, because you’re like everybody knows that. I never acknowledged it. I said well this movie is coming. Some of you might be interested. And no, the place was sold out and most of the people that were there were my parishioners. You know, so the q amp a afterwards it was just weird. It just felt so awkward but just it’s somehow integrating at the same time. Thank you Father David this is a question for you and in some ways, I mean for all of you. Because in some ways, I can see like the trying to figure out how it connects hoping maybe they connect somehow. But have you seen a difference in, for example the themes, either musically, or in terms of lyrics that as you’ve matured in your own lives in your own priesthood, have you noticed that there has been a change in the type of themes that you’re addressing or, or even just the depth of, of what you feel like you’re able to touch in terms of themes. Yeah, well I mean definitely things have changed. But, like I have a right now I’m working on a just a very short little EP that I hope to release before the end of the year. It’s just home recordings and Father James and Father Chris are going to help me with it. But like one of the titles of one of the songs is my eyes are up here, which is typically referring to, you know, women with her features and you’re looking at her features of her face so I love that phrase and I’m using, I’m converting that into a more something to do with like spiritual versus carnal kind of kind of language, I’m using it in a different way. So, in that sense yeah like I’m still, I like to use provocative themes and ideas, even language. But I’m, I think I’ve all pretty much for the entirety of the band, almost, you know, I’ve been living an orthodox lifestyle so like I’ve always sort of tackled some of these themes in an orthodox with an orthodox sort of mindset so as as I’ve gotten to be, you know, been a priest last, you know, 10 years now. There are definitely things certain things I won’t say, because it’s just, it’s too far, it goes beyond the beyond the pale sort of thing. But I still like to push and provoke so. But yeah, what do you hope that what do you hope that does like what is that. I mean, just, you know, I don’t know I don’t I don’t like I, my, my, my interaction with music is all about. It’s very it’s just personal it’s like, like, first of all, I don’t, and I said this to me, I don’t believe anybody really likes the music that we do, even if they tell me they do like I don’t really believe that first of all, and I don’t care. And that’s where I really like the music, ultimately, I, it’s really about the formation, the creation of something that that that wasn’t there that that is now there, which is why once it’s done, and it goes out into the world, I don’t pay any attention to it. You know, try not to review reviews I don’t really care about playing live and all that kind of thing I just really like what the creation of it and so that’s where all my attention is and if I have any tension it’s during that process of saying well, can I say this is too complicated. One of my solo records I used a, you know, I use the F word or one of my solo records a number of years ago and it was kind of, but it’s very appropriate the usage of it, you know, and it’s, it’s, I like to use language in that way as a provocative kind of thing or these imagery images that are provocative. I don’t know what the end, I don’t know the end goal is with that. I mean, I really don’t know. It’s just, it’s what you do it’s rock and roll right so yeah, yeah. I think that the way that I, the way that I’ve been seeing it or trying to kind of understand what, what rock and roll could be. Because obviously it does. From the very beginning right it’s very associated with sensuality, also emotion and anger, you know, all these things kind of coming together so it is a, it’s a passionate thing it’s a very passionate thing. And, and so I was trying for a while to think about what, like in terms of thinking of the idea of Christ filling all things, the idea of Christ kind of participating in all like what role could it be and I had this image of St. John the foreigner like that’s the image I had. Like there’s something about being in the desert, you know, like I can imagine St. John the foreigner in like, like a heavy metal band. Right, he’s like he’s out in the desert. He’s like screaming, he’s telling people to repent. It’s like it’s more of that kind of get with it folks you know aren’t why why aren’t you seeing this like are you. And I know I got it’s not that that’s not actually the, the, the exact space of your band but this is like the image that I had that I thought that in terms of thinking of this idea of art of the narthex or art of the, of the art of the desert, something like that something about that. Anyway, so that was the only that was the thing that I could that I could kind of see in my, in my mind and the aesthetics of rock and roll seem to fit, even with that to a certain extent. I think for me as the lyricist like I have always used the method of asking the question as my primary way of writing. And maybe that’s the way the prophets would do it. It wasn’t it was more of like look at what you’re doing, you know, look at this reality. And it’s not that try not to give the answer so much and they talked about that the movie a little bit like I’m not trying to hit people over the head with answers, but it’s just more of a look at what’s going on, look at this reality look at what’s happening. And then beyond that the church has the answers that people want to come into the and find the answers. This is where you find it. Maybe our role as musicians is to ask the questions. I think that’s a great formulation, you know, and it’s a it is on some ways a formulation of it’s like you could say something like, as we as we stand in chaos, it’s there we stand outside, we stand outside of the church. Then what is the for what is that? What does that mean? And that’s it. It’s the question like it’s like, what about this Lord like what about this, you know, that’s the that’s the role of, of the outside to a certain extent. So that’s it. I think that you really you hit the nail on the head there. All music, all good music kind of does that right. I mean, whether it’s made by Christians or not. That’s what, you know, protest music was whether involved acoustic guitar or not, you know, it’s all by asking the question, looking at what’s going on. So who who are would you say are your influences in terms of music and in terms of of writing? Me, you start brother. I don’t like anybody. I mean, you know, I like very few things. I was just thinking so I get I’m working on this new project that I really all I listen to anymore these days really is just Nils Fromm. I don’t know, you know, who that is or not, but he’s just a composer. All all instrumental music. And I find that the stuff that I’m writing is just basically trying to duplicate what he does with vocals. Historically, obviously, some of the influence are pretty obvious. I mean, I was a I was a huge Smiths fan back in the day. And I think I think Morrissey lyrically was the most most clever and most interesting. I was also a big House Martins fan. I think Paul Heaton and his writing was very interesting. Outside of music. I always reference TS Eliot. I come back to him all the time, quite often. And you can’t get far in this day and age without referencing Radiohead in some way, either either thematically or sonically. I think the songwriting especially is just super interesting. Those are some of my, you know, lyrically and musically being the songwriter. That’s where I’m kind of coming from. Father Chris and Father James have their other textures they add to that. What about you, Father James, Father Christopher? I was at one time I was really into you too. I think they’re kind of boring now, but I loved them when I was in high school, and that was really that got me into the sound like the sound of things the atmospheric quality of things. And then my brother and Father Chris got to college and Father Chris introduced us to like the DC punk scene so Washington DC had this punk scene and and there was just this energy is vitality to that that was totally different than a lot of the like I was, I was hugely into like the new wave movement and the 80s I love that stuff and, you know, synthesizer and stuff I still love it. I like that kind of stuff. But, but the punk scene particular things bands like Fugazi or I loved a band called Shutter to Think they just were poetically bizarre and they the the lyrics were were impressionistic and made very little sense but it was just really really beautiful in terms of the way the guy wrote and it was very influential on me in terms of guitar playing because the guitar the early records were really it was really scattered and kind of interesting but then like the way the way the singer. The way the singer quit frag saying and just bizarre lyrics were were in a good way, just kind of influence kind of how I thought about writing guitars because, you know, my brother writes, you know, he’s he probably at the time we started I was probably writing. I was writing a lot I guess I was writing a lot of me as a band we were but I was writing a lot of music, still but then he learned how to play the guitar and he plays better than I do. So he started writing stuff but then he uses these weird chords like a seventh what’s a suspend you know what’s a C major seven I don’t know that is I play power chords. So I have to learn I was challenging kind of the way and I still do I think the melody you know that’s kind of influence how I was doing. I mean, I mean, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it It’s just a part of that. Using music as a means for just making change. So, certainly Fugazi and all of those bands. I think musically I just love the energy and the you know, as a bass player, just the almost like jazz influenced a little bit. And then certainly I got into jazz as well, but yeah, Radiohead and certainly I loved U2 and I always loved Adam Clayton’s bass playing and yeah. Which is funny is I don’t sound anything like that. I don’t think. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, I think, I mean, when I listened to your, the early albums, like, I mean, it really did sound like the, like the nineties in its own way. It didn’t mean it had, it had its own sound, but it still had that, you could, that vibe, I don’t know how else to describe it. So what about now, because you’re working on an album now, what is, how do you feel that, how that’s going? How different is it? How similar is it to what you’ve done before? That’s your job, brother. Oh, it’s so hard. It’s so hard nowadays. Like we, you know, we, I don’t know, I wrote a bunch of songs over the last few years and we’ve gotten together a number of times to try to sort of work them out, to see how we, how we would put them, put them together. And it just, it hasn’t, it just didn’t work repeatedly. It just, it ended up sounding just not interesting. And so probably not bad, but just not interesting. And so I kind of went back to the drawing board and just took all the songs and just re-demoed them in a totally different fashion, using a lot of keyboards and arpeggiators and things like that. And I said, okay, let’s just try to record them, like let us do it this way. And it seems like it’s kind of worked a lot better. It’s very much less democratic, less band-like. And Father Chris will tell you as he’s recording his bass mark, I’m standing over him going, no, no, no, don’t do it that way, change that. Ended the drama the same way. I was sitting right in front of his kick drum and I’m like, no, no, that’s a bad feel. Do it this way, you know, not that I play drums or anything like that. Benevolent dictator. Yeah, and my brother putting down guitars like, he’d spend 10 hours working on something. I don’t like that, try something else. So you’re the dictator of this project right now. You’d be coming to the dictators. It’s gonna be good or bad. It’s gonna be sort of my vision for things. And so- We have a hierarchy within the band, right? I think, you know, for me, I’m just not interested in repeating the stuff we’ve done in the past. So I think the new stuff, it’s weird. It’s different from us in the sense of there’s a lot of dancey stuff going on, which is, you know, not a dancey band, but there’s some, it’s just gonna be different, I think, which again, in terms of songwriting, that’s what’s interesting to me, just not repeating the same thing. All right, so, go ahead. I mean, I was gonna say, like, I was kind of bringing it to my last question, which might be in some ways hard, considering the discussion that we’ve had already, but so, like I said, I know there’s a lot of artists that watch my content, a lot of people who are, many of them are post-secular, the best way to explain it, they kind of come out, they’re actually went very much into a secular world, into the secular art world, but then became disillusioned and now, you know, are, let’s say, Christian adjacent or actually going to church or a catechumen somewhere or whatever, you know, people kind of floating around and everybody’s trying to figure out how to do this, right? How to live their lives in a fulfilling way, especially because a lot of them are professional, like they do it as a living, like how to live their artistic lives and also, you know, move towards Christ. And so, do you have something to advise these people? Like, is there something that, what would you say if someone like came to you in your own parish and had those questions, you know? Can I jump in? Is that all right? Yeah. Again, I feel like I want to say this quickly because it’s like, I don’t have, I feel like I don’t have the answer anymore, which is kind of good, but I keep thinking about before I went to seminary, I was a furniture builder and how much when I became Orthodox in the midst of that, like in that period of my life, the furniture was still the furniture, but something had changed. Like I was realizing like how much that can become, you know, I mean, you’re an icon carver, so you understand, an iconographer often knows, you know, that should be an act filled with prayer, but suddenly whatever you’re going to do, whether it’s, you know, building furniture for a living or making art, which in my mind, in a lot of ways, there’s a lot of connection there. I mean, it’s something that has to be filled with prayer. I mean, I don’t know how, everything, our whole life is supposed to be filled with prayer. If you’re an Orthodox Christian and you want to do things, I feel like I’m kind of skirting the question. You want things to be good in terms of your output. You’re a musician. You’re trying to square Orthodoxy in a sense with rock and roll or whatever it might be. I mean, all you can do is offer it, you know, it’s either it’s blessable or it isn’t. And for myself, it’s always been, we said before, it’s been a tension. I didn’t know what to do with it. I still kind of don’t know what to do with it, except for the fact that it’s sort of like, it’s the natural thing to do. You know, I admit, you know, I will be probably a musician and makes on my own, you know, rather mediocre music until I die. It’s a natural output of me, whether it’s something that’s totally eternal or not, I don’t know. The best I can do is say, here it is, and then offer it in a sense with a prayer, praying that it’s something that’s worthy and that God can somehow make use of it. Maybe I read a story, maybe somebody read the book, Scent of Holiness, it just comes to my mind, that in this book, and again, I don’t know how good or bad this is, but in this book, there’s a tale of a monk, and I think it’s, I’ve seen other places, who comes to the monastery and he’s this goofy guy, doesn’t really have anything to offer the monastery, and another monk sees him one night doing like gymnastic tricks in the church. And at the end of it, he falls down before the icon of Christ, and he just says, I’m sorry, Christ, this is all I got, I’m no good at anything else, but I was a clown before I became a monk, and this is what I’ve got to give you, and of course, the other monk is scandalized, and as the story goes, he brings another monk in, and they spy on him doing these gymnastic tricks in the church at night when no one’s there, and they’re there to basically kind of clamp down on him, except for the fact that the end of this one particular evening, he falls down for the icon of Christ, Christ himself appears and wipes the sweat from his brow, and says, thank you for your offering, and the other two monks are shattered by this, like, wow, okay, this is bizarre, but this is what Christ has chosen to do for this. Now, whether this is true or not, I don’t know, but for me, when I hear that story, I think, okay, well, maybe that’s it right there, maybe there’s something to be said for that. Does that help people? I don’t know, but I mean, for myself, there’s that tension, and maybe I’m just, I’m a clown, you know, maybe that’s all I can do is jump around, I don’t know. Again, I don’t think I’ve got the answer, but that’s what comes to me when we talk about these things, for what it’s worth. Is that too weird? I mean, I don’t know. It’s what it is, I mean. I’ve kind of come to the same place that, you know, I don’t know if it’s something to figure out, other than just, you know, kind of embrace the tension of it, and you’re wanting to bring your Christ into every area of your life. And so, you know, we don’t have this dichotomy, or these little like segregated parts of our life, as Orthodox Christians, it’s all one life. And so we just want to offer up all of our life, whether we’re in church, whether we’re at our job, whether we’re in the recording studio, it’s kind of, I think it’s Abba Moses, I can’t remember which Desert Father is, but you know, talks about stay in your cell, and it will teach you everything. And so I think kind of our cell is just whatever we’ve been given. Whatever our obedience is, whether it’s our job, it’s the talents we’ve been given, whether one is a priest, icon carver, you know, and just, I guess, just seek to bring that presence of God into the midst of everything that we do. We’d also, you know, we need to remember that Christ is the perfect example of all of this, right? So his ministry was three years long, but his whole life, you know, as a carpenter, was he like carving crosses and giving them to people? You know, probably not, that would have been a weird time. You know, his whole reality would have been offered up to the Father as a prayer. And because he’s Christ, he does everything perfectly, which means it’s perfectly humble, right? So when people come to me and they say, yeah, I’m thinking about doing this thing, or whatever, I’m like, great, do it, and do it as well as you possibly can. Because when you do that, they get, well, I’ll be prideful about it, no you won’t. If it’s actually done well, it’ll be done in the image of Christ, and it’ll be perfectly humble, it’ll be a great offering. And that’s, you know, like Father Chris said, I don’t think there’s necessarily, it’s not a problem. Like Christ doesn’t call us to be bankers, or artists, or lawyers, or housewives. He calls bankers and artists, and lawyers, and housewives to be disciples, that’s what he calls. So whatever you do, do it as well as you possibly can. It’ll be a good icon. And if it’s bad art, it probably stems from bad theology. Get your theology corrected. I remember at one point, after becoming Orthodox, I’d been Orthodox for a couple of years, and I’ve been in a number of bands, but I, well, a couple of bands. And the other band I was in, Other Than Luxury, which was a band called They Sing As They Slew, we were playing shows, and we were playing shows, a lot of shows on Saturday nights. And I was feeling really conflicted with this. And so I would go to Vespers, and we’d leave there, and we’d go drive, you know, not terribly far away, and play a show. One night I was playing at some, actually nearby place. So I was talking to the priest after, to our priest, Father Jacob, after service. And I just said, ah, I’m like, you know, I gotta go play the show, it’s this dingy little club. And so I just feel so weird about it coming to Vespers. And he said, well, like my brother said, he said, do good, just do it well, play well, you know, offer it well. And that actually really put my mind at ease. In fact, we played really well that night, because I went with sort of a piece, and I didn’t feel like I had to like make this an Orthodox event for the people. I just simply took what I had at Vespers, went and picked up my guitar, and played a show, and tried to offer it to the Lord. And that was, that’s what we did. Holy Spirit was really moving that night. Really. All right, well, Father David, Father James, Father Christopher, thank you so much for your time. And definitely let me know when the next album comes out. I’ll really want to listen to it. And everybody, I think is the documentary, is it streaming somewhere? Where can people find the documentary? Yeah, it’s streaming on, I don’t know, Apple TV, on Amazon. So I’m trying to find it. All right, okay. Yeah, a few other places. All right, it’s called Parallel Loves, right? Yep. Everybody look it up, and then you can on Spotify, check out Luxury. I have them on my playlist. So thanks for your time. Absolutely. Thanks, Jonathan. Appreciate it.