In praise of David Mitchell

One of my most proud recent achievements has been finishing David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. After 3 months of carrying it around with me with a vague hope of getting through a couple of pages on the bus, I discovered that it was actually rated in the top 10 most unfinished books, coming higher than Crime & Punishment and just below Ulysses. Not wanting to be defeated, this spurred me on a bit and, although it has taken a while, it turned out to be one of the most interesting and exciting books that I've read in a long time - am pretty convinced that David Mitchell is a genius. The beginning does put you off a bit - fact - and a sample sentence from the middle 'tale' that took approx a month to read, "You'll mem'ry I, Zachry, was curled in my hideynick in the Icon'ry, list'nin' to Naples tellin' that mildewy yarn to my unwelcome dwellin'-guest an' showin' Meronym his fam'ly icons o' dead lifes." So the language is difficult but one of the points of the book is that ideas transcends language and time. There are 6 stories, connected by a stark analysis of human greed, a clear warning for the future but with a clear offer of redemption - it is a useful critique of the idea that we have to plump for an idea of human beings as essentially evil or essentially good and in the same vein as a book like 1984, suggests that an overly controlled society will ultimately self-destruct. We are introduced to a whole array of characters and across all the stories is the idea of the 'small man' fighting against the system. This is most clearly played out in An Orison of Somni where we learn about a future but worryingly familiar world, governed by a ruthless corporation, reliant on human clones and where certain 'brands' have been incorporated into everyday parlance - However Sloosha's Crossin' does point towards renewal, towards another world, and if anyone thinks that David Mitchell is too pessimistic about humanity, they should focus on the book's last sentence, a word of advice from Adam Ewing's father-in-law, "Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?", lifted straight from Mother Theresa. Very challenging but very satisfying :-)

Jesus the Radical

On recommendation from my brother, I watched Pier Paulo Pasolini's film The Gospel According to St Matthew over the Easter Weekend... all the blood, gore and aramaic in the Passion of the Christ didn't really appeal! Rather than focusing on Jesus' death, the emphasis is on Jesus' life and teaching, portraying him as a political radical who was intent on challenging authority. Pasolini I don't think was a Christian although he was a communist and admitted after making the film, that this 1964 interpretation reflected his own politics. I have always viewed Jesus as a social activist and it was a delight to watch a film that brought out the revolutionary nature of Jesus' words and actions. But I did feel that Pasolini's Jesus is a bit of an enigma, always entrancing but rarely relational. And he barely smiles the whole way through the film! But it is beautiful - go watch and see what you think!

Art for All

I stumbled into the Gilbert & George exhibition at the Tate Modern yesterday and it has been really interesting reflecting on some of the pieces, especially in light of Good Friday. The exhibition is of course irreverent and deliberately shocking, but also bursting full of ideas and energy. I especially liked (although maybe 'like' is the wrong word) The Dirty Words Pictures, created in 1977 out of graffiti and images of social degradation. The pictures that really got me thinking are those works that combine sacred religious imagery, particularly the cross, with the sexually explicit and with graphic pictures of bodily discharge... I don't think it's coincidental that this was the emptiest room! In the exhibition guide, the duo are quoted as saying, "We consist of the stuff. It's our nourishment, it belongs to us, we're part of it, and we show this in a positive light". It is of course uncomfortable to look at but the point they are making is very democratic and a real manifestation of "Art for All". At the end of the day, when status and wealth are stripped away, this is the stuff of humanity - a great leveller! The later work does become much more aggressive towards religion, especially religious fundamentalism and the cross becomes the focal point for all of this anger. Sometimes I think that we are too encouraged to be 'unshockable'. These pictures are shocking and Christians shouldn't just accept them. However the true blasphemy lies not in the pictures themselves, but in any teaching that has allowed the cross to be interpreted as a symbol of oppression, rather than the greatest symbol of freedom.

Maiden Blog

So I have decided to become a blogger despite my fears that it is:
i) far too technical for me
ii) wholly self-indulgent
iii) only for self-publicists and/or those trying to make friends and influence

Despite all of this and the possibility that point iii) does actually apply to me, I have taken the plunge and maybe one day someone will find this site and read my ramblings. The main reason for starting a blog is to give space to some thinking around faith and politics. The title of this blog "we are the ones (we have been waiting for)" came initally from a speech I heard Jim Wallis, www.sojo.net give last year and the phrase stuck in my mind. I love the urgency and the immediacy - our generation is so apathetic and this statement is counter-cultural - it's a call to action. While checking it out on the web, it turns out that it was originally from a South African poet called June Jordan and then also used by Alice Walker as the title of a fairly recent collection of essays focusing on spirituality and political activism. Aside from really enjoying the faith-politics-feminisim combo, have a read of these words as I think this is beautiful:

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:

we are the ones we have been waiting for.