I am a songwriter, Psychology student, and a guitar repairman. I have attended church and secular schools and grew up in a loving LDS home. I served my mission in the Lubbock, Texas mission, spending a good deal of time in New Mexico also. I am very interested in arts in the church, and, specifically, the way the arts are used as a reflection of our faith in non-traditional ways.
I also have a website dedicated to doing interviews of LDS Musicians who don't write LDS Music. It is located at http://linescratchers.blogspot.com .
If you wish to hear my songs, you can hear them at http://www.myspace.com/atremendousmachine
and
http://www.myspace.com/arthurhatton Author Profile: Arthur
I am a songwriter, Psychology student, and a guitar repairman. I have attended church and secular schools and grew up in a loving LDS home. I served my mission in the Lubbock, Texas mission, spending a good deal of time in New Mexico also. I am very interested in arts in the church, and, specifically, the way the arts are used as a reflection of our faith in non-traditional ways.
I also have a website dedicated to doing interviews of LDS Musicians who don't write LDS Music. It is located at http://linescratchers.blogspot.com .
If you wish to hear my songs, you can hear them at http://www.myspace.com/atremendousmachine
and
http://www.myspace.com/arthurhatton Author Archive for Arthur
As the LDS church continues to grow, the art that its members create continue to fill new and different niches. Most of us are familiar with LDS music, the kind of music you’d see at Deseret Book, etc., and praise-type music like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I’ve focused quite a bit on members of the church who write non-LDS music, or music that doesn’t necessarily have LDS themes. I interview these musicians on Linescratchers.
However, I’ve stumbled upon artists that don’t really fit either way. Mark Hansen has quite an online presence, and his music is a mix. It sounds like classic rock, or just mainstream rock, but the themes are more heavily LDS. However, it doesn’t really fit in to the average LDS CD either. My guess is that in the future we will see more of these artists in the future as well.
Mark has agreed to an online interview to discuss the LDS music scene, his own music, and the future of LDS music. Special thanks to Mark for the trouble!
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I usually post about music here, but this particular entry is something I’ve been considering for a couple weeks.
I remember when I was younger I often, for some reason, considered the case of Pontius Pilate. I remember reading about him and perceiving him as a helpless, unwitting player in Christ’s death. I saw him as innocent, washing his hands of the blood of Christ, wanting to help but not having the power to stem the relentless tide of the throngs of angry people wishing to put the Savior to death. I remember one time in particular when I was very young, probably eleven or twelve, praying on my knees to ask God not to judge Pilate harshly. It hadn’t entered my heart that I was not the first person to do this over the last couple thousand years. I just felt closely connected to the story, and from what I read I saw him as mostly innocent.
First of all, I’d like to bring attention to a new publication that has recently been published called Mormon Artist (http://mormonartist.net). It seems to be right up my alley, anyway, and features Mormon sculptors, painters, musicians, dancers (even glass-blowers, reads the site). Continue reading…
“Therefore, renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Doctrine and Covenants 98:16)
“All soldiers
They’re all gonna die
And all the little babies
They’re all gonna die
All the poets
And all the liars
And all you pretty people
You’re all gonna die” (Low, 2007)
2 Nephi 31:3 (emphasis added)
For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.
When I was a teenager, I had an angry, liberal, bisexual friend whom I loved. Not in a romantic sense, but in a sense that I truly understood her. She was incredibly creative and I wanted her to be successful in her musical and artistic endeavors. We once had a conversation that completely surprised me. She had seemed so anti-religion for as long as I had known her, so when she told me the following, I was completely shocked: “When I saw Tori Amos in concert for the first time, Arthur, I swear I felt something that I never have before. I think I believe in God now… when I saw Tori Amos I somehow knew that there must be a God out there somewhere.” Continue reading…
I was recently asked by someone dear to me to join the fray here at mormonmatters.org, and I looked forward to the challenge. I must admit, due to my “distance” growing up from any major LDS hubs (I have mentioned elsewhere that I grew up in a small branch Western Kentucky), I have been somewhat insulated from some of the issues that effect the posters that post here, and never gave them much thought. It wasn’t that these issues didn’t exist, but, being that I was one of three Latter-day Saints in my high school, when asked about the Church’s position about, say, same-sex marriage, I just said something off the top of my head, using my intuition and what I knew from the Scriptures, and assumed that was the Church’s position. The Church was neither ubiquitous nor monolithic to me. It was a small branch comprised of about three big families. I am sometimes somewhat amused by the difference between the issues facing Latter-day Saints “Out West” and those for me. Continue reading…
