The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong

 

John Shelby Spong is a rare paradox.  Both a radical reformist and a scholar of doctrine he stands on the occasionally liberal platform of an Anglican Bishop.  Equally celebrated and reviled by people of the Christian faith, Spong has used his retirement to publish such progressive books as Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.  

In The Sins of Scripture Spong’s main purpose is to isolate the few passages of the Bible that have been used to justify violence, persecution and prejudice and disarm them through lucid Bible study, interpretation, history and simple theology.  The book is divided into sections focusing on the Bible’s relationship with the environment, sexism, homophobia and anti-semitism.  Spong is successfully methodical by opening each chapter with a handful of these ’sinful scriptures’ and addressing them individually.

Clearly, any fundamentalist reading of the bible could easily derail any of Spong’s critical positions.  For this reason The Sins of Scripture opens by looking back at Spong’s earlier work and his claim that fundamentalism is poor Bible study.  Spong delivers an anecdote that describes his lifelong love affair with the Bible (most likely to keep conservatives at bay) and qualifies his position on the nature of the Bible.  As a dynamic doctrine that has changed over millennia and was written by a great number of people, the variety of perspective and frequent contradictions require an active, and critical reading.

One of the most engaging sections of the book is the one devoted to the Bible and homosexuality.  Spong points out that religious homophobes have startlingly few passages to use to their persecutive ends.  A couple of lines in Romans and a couple form the book of Leviticus (the most popular anti-gay writing in the bible).  Spong invites people to begin by considering the purpose of the book of Leviticus as a whole.  It is a book written to guide exiled Jews living amongst Babylonians.  This section of the Torah is a large part of the origin of Kosher lifestyle.  

The prescription of this lifestyle was a successful way for the Jews to retain their cultural independence.  A Kosher diet prevented Hebrews from dining amongst Babylonians and served as an effective barrier against cross-cultural marriage.  Another way Leviticus sought to differentiate the Hebrews was through the admonishment:  ”If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood be upon them (Leviticus 20:13).”

To this hateful passage Spong offers a humorous anecdote detailing his many responses to letters indicting his acceptance of homosexuals:

” ‘Have you not read Leviticus?’  That was a regular refrain in letters written to me by Bible quoters when this debate on homosexuality was raging in my church some years ago.  By Leviticus they could have meant only the texts from Leviticus 18 and 20-I doubt they were referring to the injunction in Leviticus that warns, “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard” (19:27) (Spong pg. 124).”

Even more entertaining is Spong’s analysis of the biblical root of the word sodomite.  Its origins can be found in the book of Genesis in a wild tale containing a God who is clearly not omniscient, some incest and the man Lot offering his daughters up for gang rape (which strangely enough is divinely sanctioned in the tale) (Genesis 19).  If these too are Biblical values than a fundamentalist does have a rather perplexing task.

But, if these antique bits of venom can so easily be cast aside, what would Spong have a good Christian keep?  This is where The Sins of Scripture becomes radical, and somewhat difficult.  Spong outlines an approach to Christianity that is uniquely vigorous, as it places responsibility in the faithful.  At points his cry for a faith centered less on dogma and more on spirituality is vague, but nonetheless passionate.

As a secular reader I found The Sins of Scripture to be a relief.  In a country with a religious majority, an intelligent and formalized attack on what are clearly the most absurd aspects of an aging religion, is like an oasis.  Spong not only gestures to where the Bible is off track, but also to where it is entertaining, lucid and sublime.  If so many people are to continue reading such ancient writing in such a brave new world we will certainly need more John Shelby Spong’s to light the way.

 

**** 

The Night Marchers-See You In Magic/Live

John “Speedo” Reis has been in hiding for a while. This makes some people anxious. The man has become something of a rock and roll guru. Picture the turbaned Swami Records logo and the Reis aesthetic comes instantly to mind. Lending his sleek garage riff skills to both the exploratory Drive Like Jehu, and the more minimalist Hot Snakes, as well as his characteristic hoarse vocals to the nearly legendary Rocket From the Crypt, Reis has become something of an icon. Coupled with his creation of Swami Records (home to Hot Snakes, Dan Sartain, The Marked Men) he has created a distinctive taste; that is all things analog, sweaty, vaguely-vintage and decidedly unpretentious.

In comes the Night Marchers, his first appearance since the Hot Snakes tragically disbanded in 2005. At this point it would be impossible to judge the Night Marchers with impartiality to their members past. Featuring the original Hot Snakes rhythm section, the band reignites the Snakes scratchy sense of presicion. Likewise, Reis brings his same blaring sense of melody to the mic that created so many ready-made singalongs in the Rocket days.

At times like “I Wanna Dead Beat You” it’s not hard to imagine what the Rocket horn section would do with it. The shuffle beat on “Branded” seems like a left over from the Hot Snakes-Audit In Progress, the only thing that is missing is Rick Froberg’s subdued shouts. Like both groups the songs are air-tight compositions with a minimum of wankery. In fact, at first glance the record seems nothing more than par-for-the-course, which isn’t a shame considering the band’s pedigree.

On second listen a bit more stands out. “You’ve Got Nerve” has a much more subdued R&B feeling than anything in Reis’s contribution to the Swami catalog. The intro riff to “Jump Into the Fire” is pure sixties jangle and when the tune takes off the melodic drone of the guitars is shockingly reminiscent of Sonic Youth.

On songs like “Open Your Legs” Reis experiments lyrically with a depraved sense of sexuality. The results are a little unnerving. Whereas much of his word-smithing is 1950’s style romance gone-wrong, or fist pumping abstractions (an achievement in itself), “Open Your Legs” has a unique quality of preventing the sing-along. When the chorus comes up it gets stuck in your throat. Just a little too creepy. If anything, its nice that he can still create a sense of danger at nearly 40, but the lyrical cocks are best left to Nick Cave.

Overall See You In Magic is solid and promising. Like anything else these guys do it will only get better.

***1/2

 

Live at the Larimer Lounge

 

Live the band’s tunes are just as precise only a bit sweatier and more visceral.  Drummer Jason Kourkounis earned stares for his effortless power and accuracy as the band pumps some of its frenzy up to break-neck pace.  Reis navigated through banter with a funny sense of sarcasm.  Often toasting his whisky glass and satirically demanding more applause for the band who is “working so hard up here.”  He tosses off frontman cliches with a knowing grin.  The music however, was all business and the crowd couldn’t help but engage.

Be Kind Rewind

Michel Gondry is back with more of his whimsical imagery that is scotch taped together with Be Kind Rewind.  Gondry seems to brew concepts that are merely launch pads for his trade mark, hands-on design.  It’s a wonder that he has been able to color in the lines enough to give an emotional depth to his bag of tricks.  This particular flight of fancy works as a love letter to what Gondry has been doing all along: making believe.

 

The setup is simple: two normal guys Jerry and Mike (Jack Black and Mos Def) are in a pickle.  Mike is left in charge of a failing VHS rental store in nowhere-New Jersey and Jerry accidentally erased all of the tapes with his electrically charged body (the cause of Jerry’s problem is even sillier).  When an old lady wants to watch Ghost Busters they tell her to come back and then shoot it themselves.

 

So comes another Gondry vehicle for sweetly lo-fi special effects.  The first third of the movie seems to be little more than vehicle.  At points the rickety exposition punctuated with off-kilter slapstick could even be homage to some of the schlock the boys end up remaking, or ’sweding’ as they dub their d.i.y. process.  In any case the trouble is forgotten once the boys pick up the hefty VHS camcorder, the curtain seems to open a little wider and Gondry’s charming wonderland unfolds once again.

 

The neighbors are even brought into the joyous labor, as the girl from the dry cleaning shop becomes a leading lady and the local mechanic fashions make shift vehicles.  Laughs break up the constant grins caused by incautious attempts at Rush Hour 2 and Driving Ms. Daisy.  Black is in his best dork suit; up tight, narcissistic and hilarious, while Mos Def sheds his MC swagger to play a pure and naive young man trying to save a tiny business.

 

The fun comes with an encapsulation of Gondry’s guiding philosophy that anyone’s creativity is more captivating then prepackaged perfection, even if you can see the strings.  Indeed, the strings Mike and Jerry use to float ‘ghost books’ around are what makes it magic. 

 

**** 

 

Best Animated Ten Minutes I’ve Spent In Months

 There’s a lot of interest in personal connection and consolation there.  And man is it beautiful. 

Persepolis

Based on Marjane Satrapi’s outstanding graphic novels comes this black and white animated delight deals with Satrapi’s own experience being an Iranian citizen, her temporary residence in Austria and her return to her homeland.  The film is 90% black and white animation (with a couple snippets of color) and all in French.

 

The first thing an audience looks for in an animated version of a graphic novel is a visual quality that is respectful of its source material.  There are really no qualms to be had there, as co-director Vincent Paronnaud nails Satrapi’s economical but affecting style while making subtle improvements.  A haze of ink splatter here, some radical perspective there, toss in a charming near-psychedelic dream sequence and the comics are in motion.  The only complaint is at points the fast paced 90 min. telling of her autobiography, coupled with the high contrast black and white gets a little fatiguing to the eye.

 

Any biopic (and only in a round about way this is), or book adaptation comes up against the twofold task of editing a story down to get through it all, and not completely alienate the fans.  Paronnaud and Satrapi (who co-directed as well) triumph in this respect because of their screenplay.  No major point in the two Persepolis novels feels too glossed over.  Someone who’s never read the books could understand all of the gravity of the political tumult and war tearing Iran, as well as the gracious sense of humor Satrapi employs to the mix.  The movie easily shifts from impressionistic visions of young Iranian men falling to their death, to a hilarious, surreal montage detailing Satrapi’s awkward physical transition into womanhood.  

 

Finally the movie retains the instinctual gravity of the stories deepest point: the burden of split consciousness.  Most of Satrapi’s battle is a psychological one as she fleas Iran at such a young age to find herself in Vienna.  She is as much delighted at the ease of life in her new home, as guilty for leaving her family in a war zone.  Little Marjane becomes fluent in French while going through teenage growing pains.  She never feels at home amongst her Austrian friends even while head-banging along at a Vienna punk rock show.

 

A return home can only offer oppressive social codes; women are forced to wear veils over their heads in public and can’t be seen walking with a man unless he is a family member.  Marjane’s European sensibilities make her too loud for Iranian oppression, and her respect and awareness of her heritage makes Austria a difficult fit.  Her tenacity and humor add color to the black and white balancing act, a stranger in a strange land, Satrapi dreams of God and Marx in the same sigh.

 

***1/2 

Guadalajara

     

I just got back from a little short of a week in Mexico’s second largest city.  Guadalajara is a fascinating and beautiful metropolitan city  that sits at a similar elevation to Denver. The plazas, cathedrals and brick streets invoke something vaguely European, but the place is unmistakably Mexican.  We saw a majority of Mexican tourists taking pictures of the scenic landmarks.  Aside from the massive and bustling Mercado Libertado (open/free market) where you can buy just about anything, the major events were the Guadalajara Filharmonico at the Teatre Degollado, and the Lucha Libre wrestling (you know the masked guys like that Jack Black movie).   

The Teatro Degollado is said to rival the famous concert hall in Milan.  We saw the Filarmonica de Jalisco perform some great material.  Most memorably Fantasia Mexicana para dos Flautas y orquestra by Samuel Zyman.  There are several levels of box seats in the theatre adorned by columns and reflective gold all over the place.  The impressive circular ceiling has a fresco of angels painted on it.  

Unfortunately the Museo de Arte was temporarily closed, but a helpful man working there directed us to an impressive local gallery.  It was housed in an old nun’s covenant with stone walls.  It featured impressive works by regional artists.  I was even more delighted to find out they were screening Mexico’s art house classic The Holy Mountain .  The screening room was something of a dungeon with movie seats, perfect for such a mind boggling cinematic journey of the psychedelic absurd.  

I was a little disappointed to find out I had a hard time adjusting to the Guadalajaran accent.  I was confident it would be no trouble, but the tapatio’s rapid speech sounded dissimilar to the families I was working with in the fall (most of whom were from Chihuahua in the north and had adopted a lot of U.S. Spanish slang).  The other problem was all of my exchanges were short and business related (at restaurants, the market etc.).  In reality I felt more capable a couple years ago in Spain although my vocabulary was weaker at the time.  Accent does a lot to language.  

One of the only friendly charlas I got was with an old fisherman at Lake Chapala who was using one liter pop bottles as fishing poles.  He had the line wound many times around the middle of the bottles with a key as a sinker and an array of three hooks baited with tortillas on each line.  He started to indicate the change in color of the lake several meters out, thinking he was an expert I asked him what caused the effect.  He just smiled and shrugged “No sabemos, es naturaleza.” (We don’t know its nature.)  I found that very charming.  

Guadalajara is an amazing city.  Un dia yo regresare. 

There Will Be Blood

 
Director P.T. Anderson’s recent contributions to American film have been described a lot of ways.  Quirky for Magnolia’s climax of raining frogs, or Adam Sandler’s cross country trek to tell a sleazy mattress salesman to stop harassing him in Punch Drunk Love.  Oldtimey  grit, Upton Sinclair and California’s desert prairies would never be a guess for Anderson’s next cinematic meditation, but he has arrived at a new vocabulary that eschews high paced urban madness for a slower ticking clock. 

Loosely based on Sinclair’s “Oil!”, Daniel Day Lewis stars as a calculating oil man Daniel Plainview at the turn of the century.  Sharing “The Jungle”s historic aversion to romanticizing early American labor, There Will Be Blood reveals the oil industry in its infancy crashing along in a manner as coarse and dangerous as the men doing it.  Accidents are frequent and ghastly as heavy machine parts sometimes fall into wells upon unsuspecting workers.  Anderson handles the tragedies as unflinchingly as his character Plainview, taking long dark shots of monotonous work interrupted by the frank clanging of metal pieces descending on someone’s head.  Plainview only shrugs it off with a “Goddamn it….. shut down until the midday.”  

The only spice augmenting the greedy sense of chaos is Johnny (Radiohead) Greenwood’s avant score that is heavy on grinding discord from the string section.  Greenwood’s score is an odd fit, but a perfect one.  The film opens with a sudden burst of orchestral drone as the camera confronts a bare Californian hill as if it were the monolith from Kubrick’s 2001.  The soundtrack becomes more frantic and percussive as Plainview buys up property, swindles small towners and confronts his arch enemy: a young evangelist preacher named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).

The film takes a measured pace, building tensions between an entrepreneur and a fundamentalist.  Anderson adeptly gives the audience time to soak up the meaning of their conflict without narrating it in your face by showing the men doing business, and pausing to let you soak up their barren backdrop.  As Lewis brilliantly deadpans his character to the point of emotional crumbling, and Dano fervently leads a congregation in a fire-and-brimstone condemnation of sin, we begin to see There Will Be Blood depositing a new chapter in Americana.  It’s a chapter filled with battle between an old way of life and a new one; between backwoods Calvinism and capitalist ambition.

The story leaves little room for a classic protagonist.  Both Plainview and Sunday are morally corrupt in their own regard.  Plainview considers abandoning his adopted son when he becomes handicapped in a drilling accident.  Sunday beats his own father for what he considers to be sinful stupidity at the error of selling Plainview an oil rich plot.  As the two become more twisted in their respective battles the movie breaks up the tension with black humor of an entirely original tone.  At one point Plainview beats Sunday for demanding money.  The fight is humorously  schoolyard-esque with Sunday screaming and Plainview pushing his head into the mud, but all the laughs come laced with wincing as both characters seem so close to insanity.

The movie is lengthly in considering the ultimately tragic fates of its twisted characters and pays off with a shocking climax that satisfies the titles promise.  When all is done the film closes feeling worthy of canonization with so many famous American pictures that reveal the country’s turbulent nature.  While people like Scorsese, Stone, Coppola and Leone are heralded for confronting the seedy underbelly of American crime and war, now Anderson can be remembered for showing the bloody trail of American business. 

***** 

Juno

Juno’s got more Oscar whispers going than most films right now, and there’s a lot of Academy Award talk this time of year.  Perhaps this Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking) picture offers a little levity in an intense and often brutal list of Oscar nominees.  There are tiny spurts of brutality, but more verbally from ex-stripper (and blogger extraodinaire) Diablo Cody’s writing.

 

From its opening scenes Juno is unabashedly stylized.  Ellen Page’s (Juno) dialogue is loaded up with one-liner zingers that are distractingly witty.  At times her character seems to suffer from Kevin Smith syndrome, only instead of quick lipped meditations on anal sex and mall shopping, Juno seems to verbally cock an eyebrow at peoples eccentricities and flaws.  It may be a little more fresh than Jersey Girl, but it can be equally distracting.  Her soliloquy on China giving away babies like free Ipods is funny, but feels contrived.

 

Much like the snappy dialogue, the soundtrack is a little too precious.  It seems like Juno can’t hop into her dad’s minivan wearing an ironic vintage T-shirt without a twee assault from Moldy Peaches, or Belle and Sebastian. 

 

These hip dressings, only serve to detract from a heartfelt movie about a pregnant teen.  When she doesn’t sound like she’s giving a pre-Late Show Conan O’Brien routine, Page is both believable and likeable.  Michael Cera (Superbad) carries a disarming naivete as her track running boyfriend.  The super-yuppie couple (played by Jennifer Garner, and Jason Bateman) hoping to adopt Juno’s unwanted baby, have a life-like conflict of their own.  Bateman plays  a thirty-something who is all grown up, but still wants to rock and roll.  The subtle sexual tension that develops between him and Juno is almost disturbingly natural, in contrast to Garner’s character who is drawn like an aspiring Stepford wife.

 

There are no easy answers to teenage pregnancy, or martial angst for that matter and luckily the film doesn’t pretend to have them.  It’s a common sense embodied by Juno when she tells her father, “I’ve been out all day dealing with things well above my maturity level.”  With a wry, c’est la vie kind of humor the movie manages to occasionally break through its stylish tendencies and show how people grin through unfortunate circumstances.

 

*** 

 

 

 

 

On Place

 

Subject can be the most burdensome aspect of any writer’s work. In college I worked a lot with reading and writing poetry. My professor brought in a guest lecturer the excellent Major Jackson.  Major shared some of his poetry and lectured on what it is to write. He said a poet typically falls into the category of ’subject poet’ or ‘language poet’.  A subject poet finds one topical centerpiece for their focus and plugs away at it, often for a lifetime.  A language poet is more interested in attaining certain linguistic goals, grammatical permutations, structural experiments or investigations of what a set palette of vocabulary can achieve.  These categories are not mutually exclusive but a way to understand a writer’s dominant interest. 

Being a young and uncertain writer I was not sure which category I fell into, but I suspected that I aspired to be a subject poet.  I was very interested when Major brought to our attention that most current and successful (meaning published, a poet never makes much money) subject poets focus on their ethnic experience.  Major Jackson writes vivid poems considering his experience of being a black man from Philadelphia. 

I felt a bit nonplussed, considering the ethnic experience I have to offer is suburban, caucasian, U.S. citizen.  Not an impossible starting place but I certainly couldn’t motivate myself to deconstruct the suburbs, or the modern American family.  There were many angles at which to attack a prevalent existential crisis amongst affluent agnostics, but I was already starting to exhaust the subject in my song-writing, and it would be even more difficult to construct a solid series of poems on the matter.  Writing good song lyrics is far easier than a good poem.  

At this point I felt quite stifled in what was available to me as an aspiring poet. I had limited interest in post-modern experimentation (more language poetry), and felt my own ethnic experience to be of little interest as a subject matter. This is when I joyfully discovered the work of Elizabeth Bishop .

Bishop’s poetry focuses heavily on place, geography and setting.  She often picks a scene or place for contemplation, describes it visually until the details ultimately review something human.  The poems turn usually arrives when visual aspects of the place reveal something about the people who live/work there, humanity in general, or the viewer’s own psychology.  One short example in the second stanza in Bishop’s “The Map”:

 The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.      
Labrador’s yellow, where the moony Eskimo                                                                                                   has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,                                                                                                       under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,                                                                                                 or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.                                                                                                           The names of seashore towns run out to sea,                                                                                                            
the name of cities cross the neighboring mountains                                                                                                         -the printer here experiencing the same excitement                                                                                              
as when emotion too far exceed its cause.                                                                                                                   These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger                                                                                               like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

“The Map” is unusual because instead of looking at a real place, it considers a map of them.  Effortlessly it weaves in details that take a potentially mundane map and inhabits it with characters, while exploring the emotion of its creator. Bishop’s ethnicity is completely irrelevant, yet the poem is well grounded in a sense of subject.

I found more threads for this technique in the prose of Virginia Woolf.  In her novel To the Lighthouse an entire section of the book considers the Victorian house where it is set with no one in it.  The absence of the characters and the appearance of their summerhouse says much of who they are, and what their effect on the place is atmospherically.   While the section is difficult, it is also very effective.

Later I found variations on this technique of centering focus on place in some of Wallace Stevens’ poetry.  He came up with a tricky way of showing multiple permutations on how to view one place or thing as a way to create epistemological uncertainty, like in “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”.  While the poem is definitely not centered on landscape, or subject alone, it still showed me how contemplation of a place, or thing can yield fascinating output.

Years later I have set my poet’s pen aside.  While at best I may have written a few good poems, I never created anything great. I also did not show the motivations or work habits of what it takes to become a true poet.  Something I now respect as an unusual and herculean task.  I have continued to write songs and much of what studying poetry taught me fuels my lyrics.

After a dozen or so songs that have been centered on autobiographical anecdote, as well as biographical songs (characters borrowed from history and made up), I have arrived again at place.  It is a helpful approach being an avid traveler and a kind of pseudo-Anthropologist making willy nilly observations about a region’s people based on the decorations on their walls, the size and color of their buildings, or the amount of sunlight or rain that graces their skin from day to day.

I am thankful that brilliant writers like Bishop and Woolf have nudged me towards a mental space where a moped ride can create a meditation on the concept of home, or the appearance of an institution’s waiting room begs questions about concepts of freedom and fulfillment.  I could never pretend to harness these writers skills, but often times a good song requires only strong visual language and a catchy melody.  Poetry is another case all together.

Margot at the Wedding

Director Noah Baumbach really came out of nowhere with 2005’s Squid and the Whale. Only serious Wes Anderson fans would have remembered him as co-writer of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Squid won over audiences with its sadly hilarious dysfunctional family full of pretension of a brand that is distinctively New York-intellectual. Margot at the Wedding, boasting an ensemble cast of Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Black, had the independent film community anticipating a slam dunk. It would seem however, that Baumbach is not interested in a victory lap.

From the opening sequence Margot at the Wedding feels weighty. The shots are often very close-up and employ a muted palate of colors, which at brightest take on the bronze flares of over exposed Super 8mm home movies. This seems to intentionally serve the voyeuristic edge of the movie, as the camera wobbles as if there is some other family member holding it. Perhaps, they were hiding from the wrath of Margot.

Nicole Kidman really digs into her role as Margot, the sharp tongued hellion who has arrived to either celebrate, or completely derail her sister Pauline’s wedding. Margot uses a sneer and amateur psycho-analysis to reduce everyone around her to a desperate state. With her already maladjusted adolescent son in tow, it’s clear she is on the verge of meltdown herself; even as she instigates Pauline’s.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the much more sympathetic Pauline. With one marriage behind her and a daughter as well, she is wandering in to a marriage with a lovable-loser played by Jack Black. The two have a believable chemistry and Black really excels playing a role that is not as cartoony as his typical flick.

For all its disaster the movie steers clear of melodrama. When Pauline blows up and starts screaming there is no swelling of a string section on the soundtrack, followed by the slamming of doors. Instead she is still in a room with the person she is screaming at and it’s just awkward. At one point after being reduced to tears Jack Black’s character is so heavily sobbing to Pauline over the phone all she can say is: “Honey I can’t understand what you’re saying.” It’s funny, but the laughs get caught in their cruelty.

Baumbach buries the dark humor that made Squid so disarming even further below the surface. At points, as the characters verbally assassinate each other you wonder if it is still there. Kidman may have earned herself an Oscar nomination for being insufferable, as Margot swallows more meds with Chardonnay and chastises her sister for marrying beneath her. If there is any key to the film it is taking the disasters with a grain of humor. With it, they are tragically funny. Without a sad laugh the movie feels suffocating.

***