Episode 4 // Invocations

This week's episode explores the theme of invocations and prayers. I find it very easy sometimes to perceive music recordings as prayers, maybe because I grew up within this linguistic universe that so frequently turned to words like 'prayer' in everyday conversation. When I was younger, prayer took on the form of nearly paraphrased recitations that were very devotional in nature, something I felt unsettled not engaging in before I slept. They took on this very specific form every night, divided thematically, and often unintentionally served as a liminal space between waking awareness and sleep. In recent years, prayer has sometimes been, for me, my purest expression of anguish, ecstasy, fatigue, futility, doubt, faith, terror, vexation, sadness, compassion, and many other vague abstractions that do not find adequate corporeal channels otherwise.

I often feel like I am praying when I listen to music as well. In fact, many other 'mundane' activities, like washing dishes or eating food, also sometimes will channel through this sacramental lens inside my mind and become acts of prayer in and of themselves. Anyways, that was just a personal context for this episode. Below is a beautiful prayer by Julian of Norwich, a celebrated Christian mystic, considered a significant influence in Feminist theology, and by some, a proto-universalist.

"In you, Father all-mighty, we have our preservation and our bliss.

In you, Christ, we have our restoring and our saving.

You are our Mother, Brother, and Saviour.

In you, our Lord the Holy Spirit, is marvellous and plenteous grace.

You are our clothing; for love you wrap us and embrace us.

You are our maker, our lover, our keeper.

Teach us to believe that by your grace all shall be well,

and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Amen." - Julian of Norwich

The image below was taken at the Freer Gallery located in Washington, DC's Smithsonian complex. It is a glazed large-tile mihrab panel dating back to early 14th century Iran -- an example of 'arabesque' design from the Il-Khanid period. A mihrab is often an ornamental niche that serves as the focal point in  Islamic Mosques, marking the direction of Mecca to which Muslims face when reciting prayers. A verse of the Koran is inscribed in this mihrab from sura 11, verse 114: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Perform prayer morning and evening, and in the watchesof the night. Behold, good works and drive away evil.", [1]

download: [forthcoming]


00:00:50 - station id: Amy Goodman
00:01:06 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
00:01:52 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
00:02:40 - Phosphorescent - 'Sun, Arise! (An Invocation, An Introduction)'
00:05:48 - Pete Namlook - 'Spiritual Invocation'
00:"":""' - talking: on theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, [2]
00:09:02 - Xiu Xiu - 'Dear God, I Hate Myself'
00:12:10 - Rilo Kiley - 'Hail To Whatever You Found In The Sunlight That Surrounds You'
00:15:33 - Bifrost Arts (feat. Molly Parden) - 'Bonhoeffer's Prayer'
00:17:56 - Charley Patton - 'Prayer of Death, Part 1 & 2'
00:22:56 - Harry Partch - 'Pray For Me'
00:26:32 - Archie Shepp - 'A Prayer'
00:"":""' - talking: on musicians Harry Partch, Archie Shepp, and Jason Pierce
00:33:00 - Pedro the Lion - 'I am Always the One Who Calls'
00:36:44 - Spacemen 3 - 'Lord, Can You Hear Me?'
00:41:18 - Blind Willie Johnson - 'Lord, I Just Can't Keep From Crying'
00:44:22 - psa: the media co-op
00:44:51 - promo: Below The Decks (radio show)
00:45:22 - Pavement - 'Here'
00:49:19 - Burial - 'Come Down To Us'
01:02:26 - station id: by Yo La Tengo
01:02:35 - promo: Suspended Particulate (radio show)
01:03:08 - psa: vegetarianism
01:03:27 - Panda Bear - 'Untitled 08'
01:06:15 - Lisa Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy - 'Amergin's Invocation'
01:"":""' - talking: on Jacques Derrida and theologian John Caputo, [3], [4]
01:12:38 - Jeff Buckley - 'New Year's Prayer'
01:17:27 - Kid Cudi - 'The Prayer'
01:21:08 - How To Dress Well - 'Lover's Start'
01:23:56 - Bill Callahan -  'Invocation of Ratiocination'
01:"":""' - talking: on various musicians and Southern English Gypsy songs
01:26:37 - The Beach Boys - 'Our Prayer'
01:27:48 - Sheila Smith - 'Dear Father, Build Me a Boat'

"On the one hand, a prayer has to be a mixture of something that is absolutely singular and secret -- idiomatic, untranslatable -- and, on the other hand, a ritual that involves the body in coded gestures and that uses a common, intelligible language. That is the way I pray, if I pray. And I pray all the time, even now. But there is a problem. My way of praying, if I pray, has more than one edge at the time. There is somethiing very childish here, and when one prays one is always a child. If I gather images from my childhood, I find images of God as a Father -- a severe, just Father with a beard -- and also, at the same time, images of a Mother who thinks I am innocent, who is ready to forgive me. This is the childish layer of my prayers, those I perform once a day, for instance, before I go to bed, or a prayer that I might pray right now. There is another layer, of course, which involves my culture, my philosophical experience, my experience of a critique of religion that goes from Feuerbach to Nietzsche. This is the experience of a nonbeliever, someone who is constantly suspicious of the child, someone who asks 'To whom am I praying? Whom am I addressing? Who is God?' In this layer -- this layer of a more sophisticated experience, if I can put it that way -- I find a way of meditating about the who that is praying and the who that is receiving the prayer. I know that this appears negative, but it isn't; it is a way of thinking when praying that does not simply negate prayer. It is a way of asking all the questions that we are posing at this conference, all of them. These questions are a part of my experience of prayer."
- Jacques Derrida (from interview panel, 'On Religion', in response to John Caputo), [3]


Further Info:
[1] Mihrab Panel at the Freer Gallery
[2] Stanley Hauerwas on Truth and the Theology of Bonhoeffer (Video Lecture)
[3] Jacques Derrida, 'On Religion' Conference Panel, (Audio Interview)
[4] 'The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida' by John Caputo (Google Book)

Show Corrections:
1.) Mojave 3's 'Prayer for the Paranoid' never made it to air this week.
2.) Apologies for the various mispronunciations.