Part XI - The Gospel According to Joe: Meditations on Joe Pug's Sketch of a Promised Departure

10. Descent from the Cross by Torchlight

If there were any doubts remaining about the Gospels as the model for this album, the title of the last track removes them all. This is the only song on any Pug album with no lyrics; nevertheless, the title and the music speak volumes. 

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Not that I’m by any means well informed about this, but “Descent from the Cross by Torchlight” evokes a major subject of Christian visual art. It seems that as long as artists have been representing scenes from scripture, they’ve been depicting this one. A quick internet search informs this Protestant it’s the thirteenth Station of the Cross and the sixth station of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but even I could’ve told you it depicts the moment when, according to the Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea, the Pharisee Nicodemus (see John 3), and likely others of his followers, removed Jesus’ body from the beams in order to bury him. According to Google, the most famous one was finished in 1443 by the Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden. But there are medieval versions, manuscript illuminations, and even cubist renditions. Rembrandt has a particularly good one, the chiaroscuro of which even looks a bit like torchlight. 

The title also tells us what happened to the album’s protagonist–crucified. What the album conspicuously does not tell us is what happens after his deposition from the cross.

Musically, there might be a clue. The song begins with a funeral snare cadence undergirded by a somnolent drone. The piano comes in, marches along in a dignified manner, trips up into cascading arpeggios, and culminates into a chorus fit for movie credits. Noticeably absent throughout the track is any trace of irony–which effaces the album’s more sardonic lyrical notes a little. The only really suggestive measure is the coda.

The meaning of instrumental music turns out to be pretty inscrutable in the final analysis–it’s hard to say why minor chords sound sad, for instance. They just do. But if the language of music theory means anything, I think we can make a pretty good case for the significance of the last measure. When a song ends on the root chord of a given key, it’s said to resolve. When it doesn’t, it is predictably said to be unresolved. Not unlike ambiguous film endings, this is apt to drive some people crazy. A friend I played music with once hopped up and down at the end of a tune we were playing and practically shouted at us to “Resolve it! Resolve it!” The ultimate track on this album ends on an unresolved chord. Narratively, this suggests…

Alright. I won’t do it. The album ends on an agnostic note. It’s not unreasonable to assume the body gets buried. But what happens on Sunday? Pug doesn’t say. But he does leave the question open. To me–on this album–this suggests a step beyond what he told me he couldn't believe in at the Blue Door circa 2016. I can’t say it’s faith, but it does seem like openness to the possibility of the resurrection.

Maybe the best clue is in “Treasury of Prayers.” In the coda to that song, Pug sings, “My hope will never end / That you found heaven quick from here in Baltimore, my friend.” Heaven requires no bodily resurrection, so this faith may be no more than platonic or gnostic–or it may just be a manner of speaking–but it does seem like an expression of belief in the soul and eternal life, which isn’t unremarkable these days. Like I said in Part I, the intro to this series, I’ve heard Pug somewhere mention his familiarity with the Gospel of Thomas, an extra-canonical text widely considered gnostic. But that was around the time he said he couldn't believe in the resurrection. Wherever he stands now, I’m glad he’s at least posing himself–and us–the question: What might have happened that Sunday?

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