About the name...

Not a few people have asked me before where the name "Puzzle the Ass" comes from. Aside from the fact that it kind of acts as a version of Mike Meyer's "A sphincter says what?" bit from the Wayne's World movie, it is a completely legitimate question.

It began with a series of mix CDs that I have compiled for about 10-15 friends every few months for the past 3 years. At first, I called the series 60 Cycle Hum, after the droning sound of alternating electrical current that one hears through a speaker when there is a faulty ground in the amplifier (or that's what the guitarist for my old band told me the noise coming from his amp was called). However, one time I googled "60 Cycle Hum" and saw that there were quite a few other publications that shared that name (mostly sound tech-geek web journals) and felt like I needed to change the mix series title.

So, I began to try to think of a new name for my mixes and I remembered one time when I was browsing through an encyclopedia of all things C.S. Lewis and came upon an entry about one of the animal characters from his novel, "The Last Battle," named Puzzle the Ass. Since I don't have the C.S. Lewis book here, I'll cite the Wikipedia stub on him:

"Puzzle is a character in The Last Battle, the seventh and final book of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. A donkey, Puzzle is introduced [as] the friend of Shift the ape, who abuses Puzzle's trust for his own gain. Puzzle is easily tricked into doing whatever Shift bids him to do, even if he knows it is wrong.

When Shift discovers the skin of a lion in Cauldron Pool, he has Puzzle retrieve it and later wear it. Puzzle is then tricked into imitating Aslan and Shift uses him to gain control over Narnia, and later hand it over to the Calormenes. Puzzle is rescued by Jill Pole and sees the error of his ways. When the real Aslan arrives in Narnia, he says some private words to Puzzle that make his ears go down and some more words that make his ears go up. After this private discussion, he is let into Aslan's Country."

I'm not sure when this connection first came to me, but I began to think of Puzzle the Ass as being a metaphor for the arts & culture in relationship to a Christian worldview. In reminiscing on the story, I felt a bit sorry for Puzzle, in that he was being manipulated and exploited by someone else to a diabolical end, however I didn't believe that he was inherently a bad donkey (I guess I could have said, "bad ass"), but just credulous enough to become susceptible to misuse. And although he became a substitute, idol, or one might even say "antichrist" in place of the real ruler of Narnia, in the end, Aslan demonstrated grace and allowed him a place in his kingdom.

I wondered if the arts & culture might have a similar story. As archaic and fundamentalist as this might sound, I honestly think that art has been used to create and promote an alternate kingdom to the Kingdom of God, particularly in the last few centuries--whether it is "art as religion" as conceived by many of the modernists, or simply art that sets up false idols or a naturalistic worldview or anything that is contrary to the actual reality of the universe as God created it (how presumptuous of me to assume there IS such a thing). Even though it may have been used in such a way, it still seemed like art is not something which is inherently misdirective. If anything, it seems that art, beauty, and culture are actually signposts (again, I believe CS Lewis was the source of this idea) that point us to our longing for that which is BEYOND this world, namely the fullness of God's glory. So in using Puzzle the Ass as a name, I suppose that I am acknowledging both the intended function of art & it's distortion, while also hoping for that redemptive moment where art and culture reflect their intended design...

In any case, Puzzle the Ass came to represent the collective title for all of the creative endeavors in which I am involved. Which brings us to the existence of this blog (or, as I like to refer to it, a "blah-blah-blahg").