Rockabilly Riot

Here it is the day of the US release of Brian Setzer's new album called Rockabilly Riot and here I am without it. Bummer. Normally I would be in the record store the day it is released, but this time I let it slip by. Suddenly, I'm not in the club. I'm uncool, because some people (besides the euros and Japanese, who had this release early this month) have the thing already and are listening to it right now.

It could be just materialism but I think CS Lewis described it better as need to fit into an Inner Ring, a part of a group of people cooler than I am. He said that as we see these exclusive cliques we want to be a part of because it will somehow make us better than others, with some secret knowledge and feeling of belonging that gives us some sense of superiority over others. However we enter one ring, and soon the pleasure of being in wears off, and then we find ourselves disenchanted and looking for an even more exclusive (cooler) ring to be a part of. He said:

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

This of course is something that applies to more than just buying an album or combing my hair a certain way. I find it especially at work at church, which is the last place that there should be an inner ring. In the end, we're all in the big ring of God's grace, and so one home group shouldn't be better than another, and one ministry shouldn't be more exclusive or give an air of superiority over another. Sometimes it happens inadvertently, and we should make every effort to make sure it doesn't happen.

I'll get the album because I love the music, but in the meantime it reminded me to be careful how to treat others. Funny how one little thing like a CD release can lead to these thoughts.

For now, I can read the liner notes!