One of the reasons why I’m kicking myself for not making it to this year’s Cornerstone Festival is that I missed Andy Whitman’s seminar. Anyone who has read anything Whitman has written—be it in Paste Magazine, the All Music Guide, or just on his blog—knows the guy is passionate about music, and all of the ways in which it communicates truth and beauty to the human soul.

Whitman has just returned from the hallowed fields of Bushnell, Illinois, and he’s posted a lengthy report that sums up beautifully almost every Cornerstone experience I’ve ever had.

His critique of the festival’s musical aspects are spot on, be it consternation over the number of emo/screamo acts that fill the festival grounds or his send-up of the numerous worship music acts:

...nothing fails more spectacularly than worship music at a concert. I hate it, hate the whole artificial Madison Avenue/Nashville hype machine surrounding this music, and couldn’t stand that f#&$ing MC for good measure. I don’t care who’s a rising star in the worship music field, and the whole approach strikes me as fundamentally, spectacularly wrong. I wish it would go away. Worship, by all means, and if you want to write original music to make that happen, then more power to you. But don’t stand up there in front of 15,000 people and peddle your latest (and best yet!) CD and sing your trite “apple of my eye/wind beneath my wings” rhymes to U2 accompaniment for the 20,000th time. Do something better for God. Just quit.

But my favorite part of the whole article chronicles his encounters with the goths. Yes, there are goths at Cornerstone; indeed, there’s a pretty thriving Christian goth community. Which might strike some as absurd, or at the very least, as an oxymoron, but there you have it.

I was involved in an online Christian goth community for several years, despite never really being much of a goth myself (and no, painting my fingernails black on occasion doesn’t really count). As a result of my involvement, the Christian goth tent at Cornerstone—aka “The Asylum”—was a perennial stopping place, a fine location for escaping the summer sun, enjoying late night conversations, partaking in vegetarian potlucks, watching acoustic and spoken word performances from Ronnie Martin (Joy Electric) and Orlando Greenhill (Havalina) respectively, and even throwing a rave or two.

When Renae and I went to Cornerstone last year, I made it a point to seek out the tent. Sadly, I never saw any of the folks I recognized, nor found out when they were having the vegetarian potluck.

Still, I’m glad to know it’s still alive and kicking in some form, and I loved reading Whitman’s experience:

...we kept listening to Scott. He talked about being misunderstood. I was guessing that the Dracula costume might have had something to do with that. He told me I was right. And so we all had an hour-and-a-half long conversation (those cornfields outside Bushnell are a long way from the bright lights of Peoria) about Goth culture, and how God has used that culture to enrich his life. He told us about his band, which was called Leper, and which was playing at Cornerstone. He invited us to the Goth tent, where he and his friends hung out, and he invited us to his concert. It was a good, enlightening conversation.

So we went. The next night we wandered over to the Goth tent, and met people who looked a lot like Scott and his wife Rachel, and who were wearing gas masks over their faces. And Saturday night we went to hear Leper. The music wasn’t nearly as foreign as I expected it to be. It was grating and melodic, pretty much the way I like it, and it sounded like music made by misunderstood teenagers, a farflung and omnipresent musical genre that goes back at least 50 years. And it was about Jesus, a guy who was misunderstood to the point of being crucified. I’m glad we went. And I’m glad we encountered Scott.

All in all, it has me even more eager to try and make it to Cornerstone 2009, though I’m not too sure how well Simon will take to outdoor emo concerts.

One of the highlights of 2007 for me was attending and participating in the Flickerings program at last year’s Cornerstone Festival. The topic was “J-Pop!” and the program featured a number of great films and anime—Train Man: Densha Otoko, Linda, Linda, Linda, Haibane Renmei, Only Yesterday—that were all within the context of discussing otaku and Japanese pop culture. It was a fantastic time of cinema and discussion.

The man behind Flickerings—Mike Hertenstein—has just announced the line-up for this year’s Flickerings, and not surprisingly, it looks great. This year’s theme is “Balkanization: Reconciliation and Other Borderline Insanity”:

Violent fragmentation along ethnic lines has been called “Balkanization”—for good reason. The cinema of the Balkans expresses deep divisions and woundedness, often with a dark humor and psycho-punk gypsy energy. Yet giving in to the temptation to view the seemingly irreconcilable differences of the Balkans as utterly alien to ourselves requires forgetting nearly identical conflicts across the planet and throughout history. The possibility of reconciliation (as seen, for example, in South Africa) seems an urgent matter for all of us who must live with Otherness.

 

And the film line-up looks absolutely stellar, including:

• Pretty Village, Pretty Flame - The Apocalypse Now of the Bosnian war: childhood friends end on opposite sides in a kaleidoscopic nightmare vision of ethnic conflict.
• Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days - Cannes-winning controversial “abortion film” but much more than that, a classic exemplar of ongoing Romanian New Wave.
• Underground - Felliniesque lunatic-tragic fever-dream history of Yugoslavia from WWII to recent Balkan wars, with frenetic psycho-punk gypsy-brass soundtrack.
• Once - Dublin busker-boy meets pretty Czech immigrant girl and together they make beautiful music: rock-n-roll romance, a very different kind of musical.
• Long Night’s Journey into Day - Documentary on work of South Africa’s post-Apartheid “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”.
• The Power of Forgiveness - From Ground Zero to Northern Ireland to the Amish Countryside, this film explores the transformative power of forgiveness.
• Persepolis - Coming-of-age story of precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl during Islamic Revolution. Animation based on graphic novel.

You can find the complete line-up of films here, and the schedule of screenings and workshops here.

Hard to believe that all of this is going to be happening in a warehouse in the middle of some Illinois farmland, but it will. This year’s Cornerstone looks to be another fantastic year for cinephiles, artists, pop culture geeks, and music fans alike.

Alright, I’ve wrapped up all of my Cornerstone 2007 coverage.  I think I covered about everything, though I’m sure I’ve left out a few details here and there.  I’ll update as those come to mind, but it’s essentially done.

I’ve also posted a bunch of Cornerstone 2007 photos to Flickr.  Ironically, given that I only went to a handful of concerts this year, all of my Cornerstone photos are of bands.

If you want to see other photos of the fest, be sure to check out my wife’s set.  Among other things, you’ll find some photographic proof that I really was an honest-to-God speaker this year.

Now that that’s all done, maybe I can get caught up on all of the things I missed while I was away.  What’s this I hear about Apple releasing a cellphone?

For those of you keeping score at home, I’ve begun chronicling my experiences here at Cornerstone 2007.  Don’t expect anything as epic as the coverage of, say, Cornerstone 2001, but I’ll do my best.

For seven years in a row, my friends and I made what was practically (and maybe literally) a religious pilgrimage.  As soon as the end of June drew near, we’d pack up our tents, sleeping bags, and beef jerkie, pile into our cars, brave the summer storms, and make the perilous (and exceedingly boring) trek across Iowa to the small rural burg of Bushnell, Illinois.  Where we’d spend the next week staying up until all hours of the night, hanging out, enjoying amazing concerts, and everything else you do when you’re at the Cornerstone Festival.

The last time we made the trek was five years ago, and we swore we’d always return.  But life inevitably gets in the way—folks get married, have kids, and move halfway across the country.  And so our plans always just remained talk, couched in a heady dose of nostalgia.

This year, however, I am finally making my way back to Bushnell.  It will, of course, be very different than how I remembered it.  The bands will have changed, and I don’t know how many familiar faces I’ll run into amidst the unwashed and unkempt masses of youth group kids, punks, skaters, metalheads, goths, ex-hippies, indie hipsters, and every other subculture you can think of.

And most importantly, I won’t just be going as an attendee.  This year, I’m also going as a speaker.

A month or so ago, Mike Hertenstein wrote me, asking if I’d be interested in helping out with this year’s Flickerings program.  Flickerings is Cornerstone’s own film festival, and quite unlike what you might expect, screening films by Kieslowski, Dreyer, the Dardennes Brothers, Rossellini, and a slew of other greats.

Each year’s program has a special theme.  This year’s theme is “J-Pop” and the line-up looks to be an otaku’s dream.  Speaking of otaku, I’ll be giving a presentation on otaku and Japanese pop culture—what it is, why it has become so prevalent and successful here in the States, and why it resonates with so many people.

I will also be helping out with the various post-screening discussions, and I can’t wait to delve into such titles as Haibane Renmei (my review), Bright Future, Space Battleship Yamato, and Only Yesterday with others.  I’m also looking forward to finally seeing some films that have been on my “to see” list for quite some time now, such as Linda Linda Linda, Kamikaze Girls, and Darkon.

Needless to say, I’m very excited and honored (as well as a fair bit nervous).  The topic is a very wide and diverse phenomena, and while it certainly won’t be possible to touch on everything, I hope I can do it justice.  And of course, I’m anticipating all of the inevitable conversations, discussions, and geek-outs.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some anime to watch.

Back in the day, the entire year here at Opus HQ revolved around one event: the annual Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois.  Put on by Jesus People USA (JPUSA), the festival is a week-long event in late June/early July that features concerts, seminars, art galleries, outdoor activities, extreme sports, and much more—all of which are intended to create a spirit of community, creativity, and diversity.

For many years—7 years, to be exact—the festival was nothing short of a pilgrimage for my friends and I.  We’d pack ourselves into a couple of cars, make the perilous trek across Iowa, and spend the next week or so in a place that was truly like no other—hanging out with old and new friends that we never saw anywhere else, getting challenged by a multitude of speakers and seminars, and of course, seeing a ton of great bands.

Every year, my friends and I would post a mass of content to Opus as soon as we’d recovered the festival—festival diaries, concert reviews, interviews, videos, and tons of photos.  Unfortunately, much of that content had gone missing from Opus in the last year or two.

Continue reading…

If you’re heading to this year’s Cornerstone Festival, you’ll probably want to use the 2006 Cornerstone Schedule Maker to help you keep track of all of the concerts.

There’s a bunch of streaming video from Cornerstone 2003 up on the festival’s website.  Things to watch for:  Pedro The Lion’s new song (including a Radiohead cover), Danielson Famile’s big ol’ tree, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, Starflyer 59, MeWithoutYou, Over The Rhine, and The Violet Burning (is that a wee bit of The Cure’s “A Forest” I hear at the very end?).

For an added treat, check out the dual cam footage from the Prayer Chain reunion.  And there’s also Bono’s birthday message/call for support in fighting the AIDS crisis in Africa.

(Requires RealOne Player… and a high-speed connection wouldn’t be a bad idea.)