CORPORATE MUSIC STORE: Dispatches 5/29/16

There aren't many music stores around and that hurts a bit.

I notice it by the very fact that I still buy CDs. I can get any album online in moments. I have a subscription account to binge-listen to almost whatever I can dream of.

But I went to a store hoping to get a CD.

I went to a Walmart because the only two that are within 20 minutes are in a mall and I was on a lunch break. One of the two was downsized from what felt like a quarter-acre of space and is now a boutique store, basically. They're both corporate, the same broken, clueless corporation that I used to work for. My store eroded and vacated its fading strip mall.




To make matters worse, I wanted a Bob Dylan album.

A new one.

A covers album of Frank Sinatra songs...

..that is a sequel to a similar one that came out last year.

If I wasn't already embarrassed enough to listen to such anemic music, I had to go into a Walmart to find it.

But it wasn't enough to simply go in and find it. I had to ask for it. And when that didn't work I almost had to beg for it.




What was once carefully curated sections, or even automated-yet-comprehensive Soundscan aggregates, are now a slop bucket and some barren wired shelving, begging for the rest of the recall to put the entire section of its misery.






Why do they even bother letting all of that music suffer? Are they hedging their bets that somehow that part of the music business that still supports the physical medium is going to come around? They are like a company that tries to restructure after declaring bankruptcy. Maybe they can survive, but not with whatever bit of tin starred prestige they had managed to hold on to.

I spent a few minutes flipping through a strange mix of edited recent hip hop releases and both budget and deluxe editions of classic albums. The older artists had multiple greatest hits albums with terrible covers, likely the victims of bad contracts and/or being too dead to protest. The albums themselves might still be profound but in this section, and in this thoughtless selection, they had all been reduced to banality. Everything was out of order. It was terribly neglected.








Still no luck. I have always hated asking for help in a music store. I know the alphabet and I know how to spell. I've done whatever research is necessary to act on the motivation that brought me into the store. Asking for help was a sign of weakness, like admitting that I couldn't read. Even if help was necessary, it came at a price.

I asked the woman at the grey monolith where she and a coworker were congregating. Their jobs were not specialized and none of us were under the illusion that this was a music store. I thought I understood the system enough to have hope that this sad album, this sign of loneliness and loss of a pioneering spirit, could maybe be someplace in this glorified electronics section.

"Hi, I know this might sound weird...", something I normally preface to a request that, in truth, sounds perfectly reasonable to me. "...but I was wondering if you could check to see if you have the most recent Bob Dylan album." The moment these words left my mouth I felt like I had truly vacated whatever marketable demographic I had hoped to still inhabit. I'm 35 but I might as well be 50. Balding, almost completely greyed hair and, now, asking for a Bob Dylan album. A Bob Dylan album of Frank Sinatra songs. I'm no different than a 75 year old baby boomer icon. A man born just a year after my own father. Except they were both brilliant and I'm just someone skating between ice ages.








The cashier looks at me weird and edges towards her computer/register to check before she too realizes something. It's clear that that she doesn't get people asking for CDs very often.

"We can't check stock on CDs. They don't come in through the normal stock. Someone comes in and does it from the outside. You'd have to ask him. He's actually here now. He has a green shirt on."

I then realize that Walmart gets music in precisely the same way that truck stops and supermarkets get their bargain DVDs in. It's a vender charged with bringing in...stuff.

I approach the man with the green shirt, who is pushing a shopping cart that contain 5 cardboard boxes.

"Hi...um...I was told that maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a new release. It definitely just came out. It's the new Bob Dylan album?"

I end on a question. I'm humbled. This is how low it gets. It's not like the day I confidently asked for the new Slayer album, knowing that it's there and that it's good and, at that point, not made by old men who are just prolonging a lifestyle in spite of their bad backs and desire to have more quality time with their families. Buying that album made you a part of something. Today is like getting the last ticket on the last day of a nearly-abandoned rail line.

He thinks for a second but comes back abrupt. "I haven't seen that."

Such an air of authority, not of taste but of a truly limited pool of stock on hand. He opens a box and rifles around while I peer in. It was the kind of box that would come in on a Monday from a label whose newest release was modest but had been the product of many months of writing, recording, mixing, mastering, art production, merchandise preparation, promotional preparation, and tour planning. It was often a catalyst of the next year of a band's life.

"It's not here. There's only one big release for this Friday, it's...yeah, it's the new Dierks Bently."

"Ok. Thanks."







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Dramaturgy and the Wolverine

Last night I watched 2013's "The Wolverine" again. I've watched it more times than probably any high profile movie to come out in the last decade. I've watched it more than any other so-called "superhero movie" and I've reviewed it more than any other short form artwork that isn't the Bible or Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns". I've watched it a lot.

"The Wolverine" got a skimpy score from movie review aggregates. Metacritic has it at 60% and Internet Movie Database has it at a 6.7 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes, which in theory should be drawing from the same pool as Metacritic, had it at a respectable 70%, which is by no means bad but certainly not anything special. "Max Mad: Fury Road" was probably the best reviewed action movie and it set a new standard for things but it isn't really helpful to compare these kind of things. Apples and oranges, really.

It's too bad that the scores are so close to middling because it's an awesome movie. It's a sort-of adaptation of a run of comics written by Chris Claremont, one of the most important comic book writers spit out by this century-old modern art form. The most notable artist from this story line was the same Frank Miller who wrote and illustrated the aforementioned "Dark Knight Returns". It is by no means a true adaptation but it's a good reworking of the atmosphere created by that series. I'd be hard pressed to give a play-by-play of that series, but it felt awesome reading it.

The setting has the same mood as "Blade Runner" or "Lost in Translation" or even "The Bad News Bears Go to Japan". It feels a little like the Japanese sequence of the first "Kill Bill" installment. The mitigating factor is, of course, Japan. Much like Jean Renoir's "The River" or David Lean's "A Passage to India", it's hard to shake the fish-out-of-water trope typical to colonial and post-colonial story telling. The story isn't about integration but, rather, juxtaposition. Everyone in "the Wolverine" is compared with someone else, even if it's simply by association. It's a reminder that the world really isn't homogenized and that, despite the ubiquity of mainstream technologies and fashion, that there still exists a real difference between the cultures of the world. We're much further from turning culturally grey than we may realize.

It's hard to shake the concern that the movie is exploiting its setting. Pachinko machines, bonsai trees, dark decora, bullet trains, and samurai abound. It feels like an idealized travelogue, hopefully less like Marco Polo or even less like Louis Malle's "Phantom India". "The Wolverine" offers little editorial other than that which normally occur in the use of stereotypes. It's also hard to shake the sense that the Japan of this film is built on well-known and oft-used stereotypes.

But maybe it's me creating the stereotype. Stereotypes are the definition of a set of characteristics in a person or culture that are reduced in the process of being made absolutes. But describing something as a stereotype is also a form of stereotyping, a reductio ad absurdum that can be a perpetual definition of definitions, an unending interplay of "this" and "not this" where what is original and what is parody spiral in the fluidity of culture. Maybe not pointing out the existence of a bullet train as characteristic of an image of contemporary Japan is in as much danger of stereotyping as pointing one out. Traditionally, it all comes down to storytelling. "Does it serve the purpose of the story?" the critic asks, "or is it arbitrary? Is it it merely establishing the mise en scène? And who decides that a bullet train is characteristic of modern Japan?"

Perhaps that critic is a western critic, who can be quick to point out the collective guilt of cultural imperialism that has only homogenized a global society in the same way gentrification homogenizes neighborhood cultures or how logging eradicates the ecosystem of the rain forest. There is a sense that we ought not to inhibit cultures by reducing their diversity, to not propagate these stereotypes as a way of constricting the opinions of others who aren't in contact with these cultures, and to preserve the uniqueness of a culture by allowing it to "be".

Of course, this might be the same kind of control that is often typical of American culture, an appeal to the oldest form of domination: the power to name. The oldest argument in this phase of western modernity tends to begin with the words "who are we to...". "Who are we to decide what's best for a culture?" "Who are we to interfere or define?". The process of "naming" exhausts itself because the gaze into our own navels is endless. Identity collapses within itself.

Of course I am also stereotyping the western critic. The whole concept of "western" is part of the myth of Orientalism, that "east" and "west" are accidents of the Occident, those self-appointed authorities of western European origin. Perhaps a native critic would receive "The Wolverine" differently. I'd have to ask.

But what if they didn't like it? Where would that leave me? Could I appreciate it on its own terms? I don't understand the critics because I don't understand what has determined dramaturgical excellence. Where did it fall short and on what terms? I liked it. I think it's excellent. Great, moody storytelling that doesn't try to be realistic but also doesn't try to be fake either. There are hints beyond the fantastical aspects of the storytelling, Silver Samurais and prescient mutants. How about the redub of Svetlana Khodchenkova's voice, devoid of all ambiance and echo? Or Yashida's hospital bed? These are choices of style and atmosphere, not at all flashy or showy but manipulators of mood that bend what we think we should see and what we think we should here. We expect mythic figures articulated in a grounded idiom and we expect realistic settings. But the smaller choices that affect mood and convention change our expectations much like the score (which is excellent) does. The unsettling moment created by the lack on sound upon the impact of the hydrogen bomb on Nagasaki grounds me in natural unreality, those things that suspend normality but are quite explainable. Sound and set design are natural manipulations and so defines the mood.

"The Wolverine" is excellent. I think it's on purpose.

I and the City @ The Neue Galerie in New York

I'd be hard pressed to tell you why this is my favorite painting. I saw it back in January for a few moments when I was last here but ended up regretting that I didn't spend more time with it. I figured it got packed up and sent back home after the exhibition it was featured in. 

I came back for another exhibition and it's still here!

The past few months I've been thinking about it so much. I looked for a print but none are out there. I looked for a decently printed book to tear a page out and frame it. I found two but both were too good to mutilate. It's also the wallpaper on my phone's lock screen. 

So I'm looking at some cool stuff when I turn my head and my heart almost stopped. The last time that happened to me like that was when I went to see the Tel Dan inscription at the Met that is the only extra-biblical mention of King David. I turned around then and saw the Taanach cult stand and the Cyrus Cylinder (both big deals for understanding the history of the bible). It's better than running into a famous person or anything else that hasn't proven its ability to matter in the long term. 

The painting looks so cool in person! It's Ludwig Meidner's "I and the City" from 1913. For me, it's the greatest depiction of anxiety in a world that feels like it's spinning all the time, where technology, clamor, and frenzied activity leaves someone in populated isolation, confused and on glassy eyes wonder. It's the world when you go beyond just noticing things but REALLY noticing things and trying to make sense of it. We look for meaning by instinct and that's born of our ability to reason. Sometimes drawing simple correlations will do. Other times jagged juxtapositions force an obscure, esoteric interpretation beyond the sensible. And still other times we're confronted with things that, deep down, make no sense and are irreconcilable. 

If you hit that point you have to find a way to move beyond the bewilderment because there's no use in staying in a stupor about things either. Realizing the absurdity of things (LOTS of things) can be a way of zeroing in on the things that matter. I think too many things entice us to give them meaning but are ultimately a waste, taking energy and time but leaving us with nothing. It's not that there's no meaning at all, it's just that not everything deserves your attention to cohere and bond with it. People matter, relationships matter, family matters, God matters. These things, in a Christian worldview, will still exist when everything else passes away. Anything that makes your head spin too much is likely a selfish, dying thing. 

When Biblical Translation is Kinda Weird

Translation is an art. In the Catholic Church in America, we use the New American Bible (NAB) translation at Mass (other English speaking countries use different translations). I've never liked it because the language, phrasing, and flow is just weird. 

Today's reading (from the 11th chapter of Second Samuel) is a great example of why. The word מִשְׁכָּבוֹ֙ is translated as "his siesta". Perhaps it's a word that while making sense to an American audience, is still far more jarring from even the most literal translation of מִשְׁכָּבוֹ֙, which could be "his lying down". In the context of the rest of the sentence and episode it simply means that King David was lazily lying down while his generals fought his battles in his stead, something David would never had done up until this moment. This brief line sets up the rest of the episode: this simple shirking of his most most basic responsibilities as King will cascade into a series of events where laziness becomes a wandering eye that sees him as a voyeur to a married woman bathing from a rooftop, seducing her and committing adultery with her, getting her pregnant, trying to cover it up by trying to arrange for her husband (a most loyal soldier of his) to sleep with her, and then having him killed on the front line when that fails to happen. 

That little line is crucial to understanding the precondition to David's behavior. His whole identity up to this point has been about loyalty, responsibility, courage, and fidelity to God. He betrays his most basic principals and paves a path away from them in a series of choices where each is more catastrophic than the last. At the end of it he will repent but he will still pay dearly. We can never avoid our responsibilities for very long and we shouldn't expect that things will go back to the way things were. Still, David will pick up the pieces and try again and try to earn back his nobility, something he never completely achieves. 

But "siesta" is bizarre by making a lateral move to another language. Both Old and New Testaments will use loan words but not here. By conflating the concept of the rest, the approximate time of the arising from the rest (which in Hebrew is simply "evening"), and the context of the rest, I think it confuses clarity and simplicity for the sake of economical phrasing. If I were reading an American novel written in English, the presence of the word "siesta" would usually lead me to pay attention to the cultural situation in the scene (I remember reading a Barbara Kingsolver book that did that very well). In this translation of the passage from Second Samuel, instead of pointing ahead to the rest of the story it seems to me that it's pointing out of the text. That can be valid but that doesn't seem to be the aim of the NAB (and, interestingly enough the revised edition of the NAB - not currently used at Mass - translates this part as "rose from his bed", letting "one evening" suffice in providing the context of the time of rest). 

I really hate this translation and wish we had a different one for Mass. 

Praying in a Pretzel: The Difference Perspective Makes

Today is my youngest daughter's birthday and I was hit by an image of my wife during her delivery. The delivery process greatly hastened towards the end, past the point of an epidural, and I watched horrified as my wife's agony. My wife never really brings it up or over-dramatizes it: it happened and it was hard but parenting is nonstop and the pace of life only quickens from there.

As I walked towards my office at work, I also realized that parents never cease bringing their children into the world. The delivery is a moment but it's as much a symbol as it is an action. In this way it's even sacramental. But it's not like we ever stop bringing them into world. She came into the world four years ago in a very big way, but we also bring her into the world everyday. We bring her to school, back home, to get groceries, and to parks. We also bring her to encounters with her sister, to other family, to friends, and new encounters. Hopefully, we also bring her to a right way to live. The only thing that will change is that she increasingly participates in this process more and more throughout her life until she one day carries most of the responsibility herself. By that point, she may even accompany a life that she brings into this world.

Life might move along a linear path and we do experience time as a successive sequence of events but memory can allow us to weave in and out of past experiences in and out of order (even though, of course, that happens within the regular flow of time). My memory of the day she was born is strong enough to feel at least somewhat present to those moments even now. The significance of those days leading in and out of it was something I couldn't grasp at the time but time and perspective have shown us that what once felt like a lot of chaos is now ordered. Beautiful. Providential. Intentional.

The multi-dimensionality of life can't be discounted. I think we tend towards myopia and seeing things in terms of perspective or breadth or depth is a matter of contemplation. It's hard enough sometimes to describe "what" is happening, never mind "why". But seeing our experiences as multi-layered can betray a sense of Providence and the interconnectedness of things. To realize that I am who I am because of key moments in my life is really a bit much to take in. To further realize that those moments were composed of factors beyond simple measurement or control all the more overwhelming. The truth is that each of us our profound mysteries in all of our parts, in each moment of our biographies, in each decision that we make and in each impulse that passes through our brains. That there is any order at all is mysterious but compounded with the tension that exists between what is ordered in me with what is disordered with me, what is a matter of will and what is a matter of what exists beyond my control, and to even understand these things as facts of the matter in no way diminishes the mystery.

I can be impatient with the idea that the question of God or faith can be reduced simplistically but only because I do not find the concept of mystery at all diminished by a better understanding of mechanisms. We understand the world around us and we will one day understand so much more, but the simple question of it's existence ("why is there something rather than nothing?") remains a profound mystery. Knowledge of the mechanism cannot erase the mystery if appreciation abounds. 

God is the greatest of mysteries. There aren't consciousness exercises that can put into a box the mystery of Being in its fullness, of pure act, of reality much realer than I will ever comprehend. That God would say something to to His Creation, to make Himself known, to use human concepts and language to arrive at a mystery is still a far greater mystery. That I engage the ground of my own being in prayer requires an infinitely greater gulf in understanding. 

I'm regularly in touch with Mystery and that Mystery manifests in the multiple dimensions, in layers of understanding, of practiced and spontaneous contemplation. It's also an art and it also takes practice. To weave in and out of the many, many moments that led to the presence of my daughter in this world through memory lets me see things that I miss in the regular unfolding of time. It's even more so with God. In Catholic theology, the concept of "revelation" is God's initiative. God makes Himself known to His creation and accommodates Himself to their understanding. He makes Himself known and He makes Himself knowable. For us, revelation happens exclusively within the realm of time. History is the medium God uses, be it world history or personal history. 

To see His work (especially in your own life) for what it is, walk around it a few times. See it from a few different angles. Understand that there are things that you bring into that viewing, coloring your perspective. Examine the contours and the lines, the depth and dimension. Comment, criticize, appreciate, and engage. See His fingerprints mingle with yours, where you chose to take things and where He responded. Let your fingers retrace old lines and pathways or imagine new points of departure. The work, it seems, isn't rigid but living and always renewing but you can't appreciate it for what it is unless you take the time to do it properly.

A couple notes about a friend who died yesterday...

A couple things about a friend of mine who died yesterday:

- We went to school together up through high school. He was one of the coolest kids I've ever known. He got in trouble in ways that I wouldn't. I've always been timid and I admired his fearlessness. I was never cool but he was and those things stay with you.

- Looking at a picture of our 8th grade class is a startling reminder that we really were just kids. At the time it didn't feel that way. We all tried on adult ideas, adult language, and adult behaviors and from our vantage point it was appropriate. Our faces tell a different story. In my head, the 8th grade versions of ourselves aren't radically different than the version we currently occupy.

- Like I said, he was really cool and I tried to copy him in the ways that I could actually muster. In the 7th grade, he liked Metallica and that meant I had to as well. That was fall/winter of 1993 and anyone who knew me in the years since then knows the obnoxious degrees I took that love for that band to (he once let me know that my obsessive talking and thinking about, drawing logos and band members of, and relating everything to Metallica ruined it for him).

That little influence made the rest of my life, had he not communicated his love for the band (and other metal bands), really unthinkable because so many later friendships and countless interactions with people came from that. I got into playing guitar because of that and that created whole worlds for me. That's not an understatement either. Even the way I found myself obsessing on music after that transferred into how I obsessively picked up learning about religion and in biblical studies. I see that trajectory very clearly. He later got really into hip hop when we were in high school but, gratefully, the damage was done. 

- Our birthdays were exactly 2 days apart and I think we later found out that we were born in the same hospital. In 7th and 8th grade we got each other birthday presents. I forgot what I got him but he gave me a copy of Nirvana Unplugged that I still listen to today. 

It's weird to think that tomorrow I'll have been the same age when he died (2 days ago) and that the day after that I'll be older than him because it always seemed appropriate that he was older than me. 

- Middle school was so weird for me for a million reasons but he was one of a handful of people from that time that helped me find myself. It's weird how little things from then can resonate. I hung out with an old friend from that time recently who single handedly got me into film by making me see a bunch of higher profile movies. Having worked with middle school kids for a very long time now (including in the same school we all went to) reminds me how much that time in your life really matters and not to dismiss what a middle school kid can offer the world. 

- He once dared me to tell the DJ of our fall 8th grade dance that he sucked and I did. I got in SO much trouble for that. 

- I'm very sad for not only his absolutely tragic loss (and for the children and loved ones who are left behind), but for how we lose touch with the people who mattered most in our lives. Life

Is short and it's worth at least a seasonal text, phone call, or online message. 

Thanks Keith. Love and prayers. 

Jesus, the Crowd, and the Scroll in the Synagogue

Yesterday's reading is probably my favorite in the New Testament.

The setting is a synagogue in Nazareth during the first half of the first century of the common era. The setting is important and it's helpful to have a little perspective on the various social factors converging into this moment. 

Synagogues were a relatively new development in Jewish worship. At the time, the worship of the Jews centered on the Temple in Jerusalem and it was based on the various sacrifices offered to God. A Jewish person would enter the Temple to stand in God's presence (as it was believed that God resided in the innermost sanctuary of the Temple) and offer up sacrifices that would express thanksgiving, purge the guilt incurred by sin, or to offer a little from the gifts God had already given. The Temple was grand to behold after recent expansion and beautification projects initiated by Herod, King of Judea. Herod was a vassal king who paid tribute to Rome and its empire, ultimately receiving his authority from them. It was a place of regular pilgrimage and its centrality was expressed in the practice of praying towards the Temple (as remembered in later traditions).

Several centuries prior, communities would have their own shrines and altars that allowed them to partake in the sacrifices locally. These shrines were later outlawed as sacrificial worship centralized in Jerusalem. But approaching the first century, synagogues became another way for the Jewish people to relate to God through the Torah. The Torah, or instruction, referred specifically to the first five books of the Bible that tradition held came from God through Moses after God had sent Moses to proclaim the liberation of the Israelites from slavery under Egypt. In the process of the writing of the various books of the Bible, two things happened. On one hand, the Jewish people were intimately connected to the people of the biblical narrative so that later generations saw themselves in continuity with the earlier ones. On the other hand, as time went on the immediate circumstances recounted in the Bible became remote and needed to be applied to new circumstances guided on the same principals. As the various books of what we now know as the Bible were more widely circulated and codified through regular use in recitation and prayer, it became necessary to offer commentary within both the wider community and local communities. It was in this area that the synagogues proved useful. They were a natural place for the community to gather, to listen to the Torah (and by this time the term "Torah" was more widely applied to wisdom literature and the prophetic writings that proliferated in subsequent centuries), and to hear commentary and discuss the meaning of the Torah.

After the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD, it was the Judaism of the synagogues that allowed the Jewish people to continue as a corporate entity. Judaism as it is practiced today in all of its varieties stems from them. 

I like to imagine the scene just moments before Jesus stood up to read from the scroll of the prophet of Isaiah and offered his short (though scandalous) commentary. The main image I muster is from Franco Zeffirelli's teleplay "Jesus of Nazareth". Scripted by Anthony Burgess (author of the controversial "A Clockwork Orange") and others, the filmmakers sought to present a more human version of Jesus. With the exception of perhaps one scene (Peter's confession of Jesus being the Messiah), I can't think of any special effect used throughout the film. Instead of desacralizing Jesus, the reliance on the basic narrative and the words of Jesus in the Gospels only heightens the mystery of Jesus in a way that more pious accounts (King of Kings, the Greatest Story Ever Told) do not. Sometimes, it is best to simply let the Gospels speak for themselves.

The scene of Jesus reading the Isaiah scroll seems typical and mundane. A fictionalized rabbi is the mark of continuity between the Nazareth of Jesus' childhood and and the day he reveals himself to his community in Nazareth. In a way, it is just as remarkable as the transfiguration account where Jesus appears luminous and flanked by the long-dead Moses and Elijah to three of his followers as God the Father pronounces divine approval on his son. Instead of ethereal visions and theophonies, it is merely Jesus, synagogue attendees, and a scroll.

This is Zeffirelli's version of the scene:

Since the dawn of reproducible audio and video, we're used to seeing revolutions sparked with words, crowds, and immediate movement. I've seen so many clips of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech and I've watched interviews with Mother Teresa. I've seen how much you can motivate a crowd with Queen's Live Aid set at Wembley Stadium and watched videos of soldiers surprise their spouses and children after spending a long time abroad. We all intuitively understand how group dynamics work, even at a basic level. We've all probably sat or stood in crowds as they experience a shift in their thinking. It can be exhilarating, it can be horrifying, or it can be a little bit of both. 

Great numbers don't necessarily correlate with the significance of an event. In the 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, a slightly fictionalized Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) illustrates the illusion of numbers: "The smaller the attendance the bigger the history. There were 12 people at the last supper. Half a dozen at Kitty Hawk. Archimedes was on his own in the bath." Our scene with Jesus, the crowd, and the scroll in the synagogue is explosive without the benefit of a stadium or packed theater. It starts out subdued, even awkward. He catches the community off-guard in what was routine and simply says something - a little something - that interrupts the flow of things:

He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:  

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.  

Rolling up the scroll,he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.He said to them,“Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

At first blush, "today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing" may not sound very revolutionary, but it doesn't take saying much to upend an entire system. I was re-watching Richard Attenborough's film version of the life of Mahatma Gandhi and he captures this very beautifully. Gandhi is put on trial for upsetting the laws of the British Empire. They threaten him with prison to make an example out of him, setting bail at a low enough amount to make a statement. Gandhi simply refuses to pay it because he doesn't recognize the law as a fair law:

MAGISTRATE

You have been ordered out of the

province on the grounds of disturbing the peace.

GANDHI 

(defiantly) 

With respect, I refuse to go. 

MAGISTRATE 

(sternly) 

Do you want to go to jail? 

GANDHI 

(not giving him an inch) 

As you wish. 

 MAGISTRATE 

(as much sternness as he can muster) 

All right. I will release you on 

bail of one hundred rupees until I 

reach a sentence. 

GANDHI 

I refuse to pay one hundred rupees. 

 MAGISTRATE

Then I -- I will grant release without bail -- until I reach a decision.

Jesus' words "today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing" are loaded with hundreds of years of expectation and anticipation. The passage from Isaiah is believed to refer to a coming Messiah that God would send just as he had sent judges, kings, and prophets to guide and govern his people as well as to blot out injustice. In Jesus' own centuries, false messiahs would claim the role and fail.

The expectation of the Messiah figured greatly into the popular imagination of the Jewish people as well. Of all the important issues we can deal with as people, it's not abnormal to see things primarily through the lens of our own pressing problems. During an election year we see things through our own problems as well as those issues that are dear to us. It was no different at Jesus' time and the Jewish people saw things through the lens of Roman occupation, the loss of self-governance, and the fragmentation in religious leadership. That the Messiah was believed to have been long promised by God would have moved people to wonder how bad things could possibly get before God noticed. In the book of Exodus, it takes 400 years before God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. It took 40 years to take them through the wilderness. It took several generations before they had a king and several more for religious reform. All the while things were getting worse and good people would experience their faith in God as an extended ordeal.He keeps his promises and provides for the daily needs of those who are faithful to him, but within the Hebrew Bible the systemic problems tend to play out over a longer span of time.

Imagine sitting in the crowd in the synagogue the day Jesus spoke up: The day is a Sabbath so there had been 6 days of work preceding that moment. In that week you would have seen Roman soldiers and how they treated your fellow countrymen. You would have recited daily the Shema Yisrael that had been given to the people of Israel through Moses at the cusp of their receiving the fullness of God's promise of deliverance in the form of a homeland that would belong to them, purging the land of those who had usurped that land for themselves. You would have had to calculate how much of your income would have to go to the Romans in the form of taxes, benefiting them far more than they would benefit you. In Nazareth, you would've still been aware of Roman intrusion into the governance and even the worship of your people. God's promise and deliverance would've been welcomed and hoped for, but it was certainly not something to joke about.

And certainly it was not up to a peasant carpenter whose parents were well known to you (as Nazareth was far from a prominent town in size or stature) and whose capabilities had already been long measured up so that to claim that God's ultimate promise of deliverance was coming through him would've been unthinkable.

"Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." In a moment, Jesus announces the coming of God and proclaiming God's immanent deliverance with a relative whisper. It happens with hardly anything changing between the immediate moments before or after his speaking other than the strangeness and discomfort that the words produced precisely because of their audacity. Perhaps it should've been a grander entrance...but it is not.
And as Jesus is wont to do, he does not settle for addressing pious expectations but also provides the divine discomfort that God had created throughout the biblical narrative. God is not merely coming...his arrival changes everything. He is defying expectations as much as he is meeting them. God is coming not only to His own people but also to those who have antagonized and oppressed them as well. He comes to the wise and the ignorant and it will be those who already feel righteous that will feel passed over. He makes things uncomfortable for everyone, risking violent disapproval for knowing nods. 
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)