| I've made a large pot of vegetarian bolognaise sauce which is simmering away on top of the cooker. Once it's ready it will be portioned up and put into the freezer for future meals. My very own convenience food.
I've used a bag of Asda's veggie mince, which may actually be vegan as there appears to be no dairy or eggs in it, according to the ingredients on the label. I began by frying onions and garlic in olive oil, then I added chopped celery, red peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms along with red wine and balsamic vinegar. Everything was going well until I discovered that I had run out of oregano! I had plenty of basil, which is what I usually run out of, but this time it was oregano which meant a quick dash to the local shops. Oddly enough, the Coop didn't have any oregano but the wee shop round the corner did. Whew, problem solved. You can't have bolognaise without oregano!
This is the first time I have made bolognaise. It was something that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tanngrisnir would occasionally make and I used to come home to a big pot of it simmering away, smelling wonderful. It occurred to me when I was last making my spicy veggie meatballs that with a few tweaks to the recipe I could make my own bolognaise. And so I have. At least, I have something approximating bolognaise in a pan, cooking. I'll find out soon enough if I have actually succeeded. | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/final-reminder-for-bookshops.html posted by Neil
A quick reminder (as I was just asked) that today is the day that the bookshop Graveyard Book party reports have to be in to Harper Collins. By 9 pm PST.
http://files.harpercollins.com/Mktg/HarperChildrens/PDF/GraveyardContest_rules.pdf are the rules and info for those who lost them.
Hi Mr. Gaiman,
I was disappointed today to read you won't be part of the judging for The Graveyard Book contests. My not-wealthy, middle-of-nowhere bookstore just sent in its entry, and something we're concerned about is the fairness of judging.
For example, independent bookstores like Powell's (I'm sure you know) easily have enough money and are in a convenient enough location to ask you to come at one time or another. Against stores like that, who were able to put more money into their parties, we stand little chance.
I don't think that it's a lost cause for us; we were very creative. I'm just nervous to know you won't be judging. Can you tell me whether you think the judges will take things like size and location of bookstores into account? It would make me sleep a little easier until the results are announced.
Tusen takk,
Allison
Well, per the rules, the judging is based on:
(i) Overall creativity of the Party, as demonstrated by the invitations, signage, decorations, activities, entertainment, and refreshments.
(ii) Customer attendance and response (i.e., enthusiasm, costumes, participation).
(iii) Ability to capture and represent the spirit of The Graveyard Book.
...specifically to reward creativity, and not the ability to outspend other shops. (That was also why the party had to actually be at the bookshop, and not at another location.)
I asked my editor, Elise Howard, and she said,
Gosh, yes. Here's what we think is happening. We are looking at all the entries. On Monday, we'll send you the best 11, from which you will choose the Grand Prize Winner. The rest will get the first-prize package. So the short answer is that you ARE helping to choose.
The longer answer is that we will be very fair and will consider creativity, which includes work done with available resources, along with pure execution. (Don't you think? We haven't done anything yet; still waiting for more entries to come in.)
...which means that
a) I was wrong and will be the ultimate judge, from the shortlist. (Damn.)
and
b) everyone's on a level playing field.
Does that help reassure you?
PS -- Widgett's Graveyard Book Dessert competition winners have been announced over at http://www.needcoffee.com/2009/11/06/graveyard-book-dessert-challenge-winners/.
This one had NOTHING to do with me at all. But lor' the winning desserts look tasty...
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| It's Friday and I ought to be at the cinema watching "Jennifer's Body" however I am really tired and likely to fall asleep instead. I think an early night is on the to-do list tonight.
I had a latish night last night as I was at the Equinox moot in the Solid Rock Cafe http://www.solidrockglasgow.com/ . I got there later than I intended due to the bus being delayed on the way back from work and on the way into the city centre by people heading to the fireworks on Glasgow Green. At the moot there was a good turnout of around 20 people, helped in some part by the fact I sent out a reminder on the Glasgow Pagans' Facebook group that morning. This seems to be a tactic to adopt for future moots.
All went well, apart from one guy who had turned up for the first time, indulged in a bit too much alcohol, and had to be escorted out by security. I don't know if we'll see him back or not. The only other item of note was the fact that my stalker turned up! I think it was an unfortunate coincidence rather than a deliberate attempt at stalking.
I was heading to the stairs to go up to the bar when I spotted what looked like him sitting on a couch at the far end of the room. When I came back downstairs I tried to look without being caught, which I managed to do by returning to my seat and standing up to survey the room in general. There were enough people in the room that this didn't look silly. When he went over to the pool table which was closer to where I was I could see it was indeed him. I really do think it was just a coincidence as he has been silent for several months now.
We stayed till it was chucking out time from the downstairs room. I could have stayed longer but it was after midnight so I decide to head home as I had work to go to the next day. So I headed for the bus stop in Union St where, yet again, some extremely drunk guy tried to hold a conversation with me. Whatever he was saying probably made perfect sense to him but my alcoholese translator wasn't working. This sort of thing frequently happens at that bus stop due to the fact that it's in front of the Goose pub which seems to be open very late, sells very cheap drink, and has smokers standing about outside it. Why they seem to think I'm in any way interested in having a conversation with them I have no idea.
Anyway, I'm in for the night. I have some telly-watching to do and some Spock jumper-knitting to continue with.
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| I’ve been feeling a bit down recently. But today I woke up in Glasgow and everything seems that wee bit better. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m sure that my sisters hospitality has something to do with it. I’ve got a few things lined up to do this weekend, and all of them are enjoyable tasks, and I get to walk around the streets thinking. I love the country and nature, but I also grew up in a city. Much of my formative theology was worked out on the way back from nightclubs, walking through town along rain soaked streets, or sitting beside binghams pond watching swans gliding silently in the dull orange glow of street lamps. There is nothing like a three hour walk after several hours of moshing to slow your mind down and help you understand the texture of subtle thoughts and ideas. Well fasting and meditation is actually something like that I suppose, and for special occasions just leaving the house and wandering where the spirit leads goes beyond either. Anyway, got to go for a stroll last night, no theology involved really, just enjoying the buzz of bonfires and randomly exploding fireworks.
Is it possible to have a personal relationship with a city? People personify cities, and Glasgow has a particular charator, but I don’t think you can have a personal relationship with it, at least not in the way I understand personal relationship to be. I could use all the language of personal relationships to describe my experience of the city, and people would understand what I am saying. I can talk of the city surprising me, giving me gifts or being harsh, but this is all artistic, just like using the word selfish to describe a gene. Genes don’t have a self and so can’t be selfish, and if they did have one then that would mean that they were agents in the process of creation, not just scientifically measurable elements in an explanation of eveolution through natural selection. It seems though that the language of personality and the tendancy to understand the world in which we live using personal terms is compelling.
So is this habit … need? An evolutionary quirk which when adopted by an organism enables them to adapt more efficiently to living in a wide range of environments, or is it an ability which derives from an encounter with the divine? Have we evolved into beings which understand themselves and others as persons and agents, but who have also used the same ability to anphropomorphise being itself and create gods in our own image - and even concieve of the idea of being itself (eternal, unchanging, the substance within which all things that are, participate). Or is it, as Christianity teaches, that we have been made in the image of God, and so we, “in the encounter with God, first experience what person should mean and how it is distinguished from, and must be protected from, everything a-personal” - Tillich
I wonder how you can prove the differnce between the two? Is the existence of God, the divine even, a supernatural reality or a delusion? If the religious position was one of simple dualism it would be easy to think of a test. If god is out there, then we look for evidence of God communicating or revealing godself in some way which would be impossible should there only be humanity. However Christianity (at least the continuing mainstream) despite it’s deviations towards dualism, is not dualistic. This means that there is some sense in which we participate in divine ebing, whilst still being separate from it in such a way that facilitates the space for a personal relationship with god. We don’t leave who we are behind when we approach God, and the aim of christian life is to live a life which will continue through the second birth which death is. Again, this can lead to dualistic thought where you save the soul and burn the body, sure in the knowledge that your eternal life is garaunteed - even if you will enter it like a person surviving a shipwreck. Since much of the public face of the church is focussed on saving people this is usually the direction things are explained in. Us going to heaven, us needing to change, valuing the eternal more than the temporal and so on. However, this is a reduced understanding of the whole gosspel. It de-personalises the relationship between God and creation. It does this by reducing the concept of God to an unattainable goal, and the role of Jesus to a bridge to that goal (and in extreme versions we can’t even act as agants in choosing wether to cross that bridge or not, as such things are pre-determined)..
There is a growing awareness that this is not the whole story. The importance of God being a creator is not to emphasise that god is in control, and that we are subjects. Of this control. Rather it is to emphasise that the whole of time and reality as we experience it has a purpose. Essential to Christian thought is that we are agents who can participate in this purpose, even to the extent of having the option to not participate. God is a creator who creates creations who can create. When I say that we love, not because we first loved, but because God first loved us, I don’t mean that god has commanded or forced us to accept arbitrary conditions under which we must love (or else burnin sulphurous pits) Instead I mean that we are being created within the womb of time and space in a way in which we can experience relationships both between humans and with God and learn what it is to be lovers. Even more than that, to work out in practice what Love means. This means that who we are now is vitl to this task. There are no useless dead ends in creation, even the cracks and the flaws which are scars formed from the process of our growing are a part of the purpose and have value.
This will probably frustrate some people as much as I get frustrated trying to explain my understanding of God (let alone show how this is an understanding consistant with the traditional understanding of the church). There are some ideas about God I can’t defend, and some understandings of an “abrahamic God” who humiliates people that I cannot defend or give any reasons for the existence of. This is simply because I do not believe that such a God exists. It is the fabrication of humans trying to impose religion and depersonalise the relationship between God and creation. I also guess this is why I get wound up sometimes in conversations about this sort of stuff. I understand who I am as a person in the context of how I undestand what it is to be a person and this is derived from an experience of god as a person. I can distance myself from this and discuss it hypothetically, but any encounter with the reality of things (and the need for evidence evidence requires this) will, obviously, be very personal.
Well time to get (metaphoricly)personal with my city then …. And encounter the (real) being of God as I walk through the streets. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/note-to-self-nights-are-for-sleeping.html posted by Neil
Still trying to get back onto a diurnal schedule. (And, I should add, failing.)
Maddy and I started watching the new season of Sarah Jane Adventures tonight, which seems back on form after a dodgy second season.
Many amazing things waiting for me when I got home -- I still haven't gone through them all yet -- but today's mail brought me a copy of the Fantagraphics Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons book. Three glorious volumes. I wrote the introduction to Volume 2, and thus got it for free. (If you're curious, there are many Gahan Wilson Playboy cartoons up at this website. There's a Gahan Wilson virtual museum over at http://www.gahanwilson.com
And, of course, although I posted it before, it bears repeating that you can watch the film that Steven-Charles Jaffe made of the "Dark and Silly Night" comic Gahan and I did for art spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's Little Lit at the New Yorker site, or here:
And if I'd been here for Hallowe'en I would have posted it here then. Which reminds me, The Graveyard Book party season is over. Over thirty independent bookshops had Graveyard Book parties (The ABA's Bookselling This Week reports on thirteen of the parties -- and the shops -- at http://news.bookweb.org/7149.html.) The very best one of all will get me in their shop doing a signing in December and, looking at these thirteen, I am very glad I am not any kind of a judge for the awards.
My only hope is that the shop that wins will be somewhere warm. But most of the places on the party map will be just as cold by December as my house. (Vague and only climate-based relief that HarperCollins said No to Alaska in the rules mingles with vague and selfish disappointment that they also said No to Hawaii.)
It looks like the CBS Sunday Morning profile on me is going out this Sunday, the 8th, 9:00-10:30 AM, ET. According to this website:
Correspondent Serena Altschul visits author Neil Gaiman -- the tender-hearted master of the macabre -- whose books, including Coraline and The Graveyard Book have topped best-seller lists for 25 years.
.. which left me wanting to go "I am NOT a tender-hearted master of the macabre, I am in fact VERY SCARY INDEED," but I suspect I would convince nobody.
Thrilled to see that Odd and the Frost Giants was listed as one of Amazon.com's Best Books of 2009. While I was in China The Graveyard Book was listed as one of the ALA's teens top ten for 2009 as well, an award voted on by over 11,000 teens. (And I made it onto the list with lots of other good people.)
Also, Fragile Things was awarded the French 2010 Les Grands Prix de l’Imaginaire Award for translated short fiction. My thanks to the judges, but mostly to the translator, who in this case is the incredibly talented Michel Pagel. If I ever look good, do well, sell books or am popular in a foreign country, it's because of the translators, and they never get enough thanks or acclaim. And I think I'll post the cover here, because I never have.  I am becoming hooked on http://curiousexpeditions.org. I was extremely disappointed by the news on the current status of Argleton in Lancashier, especially so since I was hoping to buy a house there. I was going to move to Chako Paul City in Sweden instead, but appear to be the wrong gender and orientation. So probably I'll stay home.
(Hmm. You know, posting that French book-cover reminds me that there are some really beautiful new covers out there right now, especially from Poland and Russia. I know for I have signed them for people. I'll try and get some nice clean examples to put up here.)
And finally, a link to Joanne Leow's blog. It was lovely to see her again, four years on, when I went to Singapore - it was a great interview, and you can watch us chatting about writing, what I'm currently up to, signings, and why I don't write the same sorts of things twice in a row, at the Primetime Morning site: here's part 1 and part 2.
...
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
I was wondering if you would be so kind as to mention an upcoming art auction on your blog. The art auction is “art for hearts”. It is an auction of artwork donated by children’s illustrators such as Korky Paul, Lynne Chapman and An Vrombaut. Most of the artwork is original although there are also some signed digital prints and screen prints too.
All proceeds from the auction will be donated to help fund research by the transplant team at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Transplanted organs do not have the same life expectancy as non-transplanted organs and the transplant team is looking at finding ways to combat this.
Full details of the auction are available to view at http://art-for-hearts.blogspot.com
It will run on Ebay for a week starting on the 2nd of November. To locate the items people will need to type "art for heart" into the search area and choose "Art" or "books" for items.
Many thanks,
Kristine Stacey
You're welcome. I think this link has everything for sale in the auction: http://shop.ebay.co.uk/scrawldog/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686
| | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot,
I know no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 
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| It's been an exhausting week. Harry hurt himself very badly and I spent 12 hours on Monday with him wrapped in my arms willing him to be OK, and he was. Steve had to have an endoscopy and that is an upsetting proceedure in itself, combined with the worry of whether they would find anything cancerous (they didn't). I had to work.
I've been thinking a bit about the nature of pain, because it's one of those things we all have to confront eventually and one of the things we're least prepared to deal with.
When you're a child, when something hurts, you panic. You want the thing that hurt you as far away from you as possible. You cry, you shout, you flail around. When you get a bit older, you see pain as a spur to action. You become angry. You attack. Both of these are inbuilt reactions.
When you're a teenager, and maybe beyond, you might toy with pain. You might flaunt it as a control that you have over your inbuilt responses. It's a powerful thing. Building up your tolerance to pain is empowering. You might let somebody else hurt you to prove how much you love them, how in control you are. You might let somebody hurt you because you feel sorry for them, and you feel strong enough to carry their pain and your own. It's a powerful thing.
As an adult, as you get older (and I know a lot of people go through their twenties without ever noticing this) you get unwanted, habitual pain, and you learn to live with it. A bad tooth or an old break, ecsema or a lung disorder. It doesn't challenge your immortality but it hurts and you have to put up with it. You develop a barrier in your brain against your natural responses to "fight or flight" and you will yourself to be passive, to carry on with work or your family or having fun or whatever is more important. It wears you down and you get depressed but you learn how to deal with it. If you're a responsible type, you might learn to change your lifestyle so as not to aggravate it - no alcohol, no cheese, no drugs, no wheat. If you're defeatist you will carry on with your bad habits until it is intolerable (i did). Plenty of people live like this day to day for years because they are not ready to face the greater pain and expense of getting it sorted out medically.
At some point, for most of us, you realise that your body is like a car, it needs bits readjusting or replacing, and whether it is bad teeth, stomach ulcer, cancer or arthritis you have to bite the bullet, go to a hospital, and submit yourself to invasive tests and therapy. You have to actively fight the bit of your brain telling you to run away. Love or hate the NHS, it gets you fixed, but it isn't fussy about how much pain you encounter on the journey. If you don't think things are going to hurt before you go in you learn a harsh lesson inside. You have no control over when or what your treatments willbe and you're suddenly in this surreal, "Brazil" - like arena where life runs on a completely different set of rules to anything you've ever experienced before.
I would like to reaffirm - this happens to nearly everybody. If it hasn't happened to you yet, get used to the idea, because very few people live entirely healthy lives, never break a bone, never have a baby, and die in their sleep.
At this point, you can decide how to deal with it. You can fight and squeal, but it won't help. You can get depressed and withdraw, but it will only make you more prone to infection and complications. You can submit, which I think most people end up doing, trusting your doctors because you have no choice, or you can reach out and overcome, bear your pain stoically, do everything positievely, be cheerful and try to help others, be brave. Its the hardest thing of all and something not everybody manages. But if you go to any ward in any hospital there are people propping themselves painfully up in bed joking with the nurses. I think this is the highest, greatest, most spiritual thing that you can achieve. When I die I want to be joking with my kids and their partners and after they've left at the end of visiting hours I will turn over quietly and let go.
I've had a crash course in pain - myself and other people's. When I was small, I broke things and hid them from my parents because they would have been angry with me. Toes, fingers, I bit half through my tongue. When I was at university I got in a couple of fights and had my eyesocket cracked. I let somebody brand me. After I started working I got pregnant (twice) and had natural births (a bit of an eye opener on the pain scale). Harry was 11 lb. I have had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was conscious. Not life threatening things, but I know pain.
I've watched Steve go through pain at levels I didn't know existed through his cancer and the treatment and I have watched in absolute fucking awe as he went from scared to angry to resigned to reslient in a matter of days, to the point where he was checking we had enough money ofr the electricity bill while recovering form stomach surgery with a crap anaesthatist who couldn't get the epidural to work.
I've watched Lillith have her tooth pulled out, trusting me, even though it hurt more than anything she had ever experienced before because her jaw was too small for the dentist to inject the anaesthetic in the right place.
I have watched Harry stumble stunned through the door with his whole face smashed up, covered in blood, unable to focus or open his mouth, baffled and afraid, and fight through it all evening until he finally got enough of a hold on himself to be able to drink water, and go to sleep. And he woke up in the morning asking if I was ok..
And I love and respect all three of them so so much more for having seen what they went through and how they made themselves bigger than their animal responses, because it isn't anything anyone can teach you, it is the hardest lesson of all and everyone learns it alone.
And I think of other frieeds who were in pain before I understood what that meant, who pulled together their energy to have fun with me and interact with me and made themselves larger than their experiences so that they could share the time with me.
And I think maybe it is time we actually talked about pain rather than brushing it aside so our friends don't have to feel guilty. | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/author-comes-home-and-displays-many.html posted by Neil
I went to XinjiangProvince in Western China to continue researching my Monkey/China book. This is the photo I took of a scenic building that, I discovered when the men came out to arrest us, turned out to be a police station. If you're in Kashgar do not take pictures of this building. Trust me on this.
This is what I was researching and working on. (As seen in a little town square, on the way to Yarkand):
... or discussion of the pomegranate crop, counted as politics. It made my journey even stranger than it might have been already.While I was there my camera started misbehaving: I hadn't even realised it had a motor in it, but the motor started vibrating gently, producing some very beautiful shots that weren't really what I wanted... Like this shot of a lady in Yarkand market selling peppers and tomatoes that seem to have turned into jewels.
After a great deal of reflection I decided not to buy a camel in the market in Kashgar. Here are two camels I didn't buy. In the Russian market in Urumqi I bought a new camera I don't like anywhere nearly as much as my old, sporadically-vibrating one.
I went from there to Jinan, Wuqiao and Beijing.
This photo, taken in Beijing was one of the highlights of my trip -- and was one the main reasons I went back to China. I wanted to talk to Liu Xiao Ling Tong (the stage name for Mr Zhang Jinlai), who played Monkey in the Chinese television version of Journey to the West. ( Here's his blog.) Then I went to Chengdu. I don't have photos on my camera of the Galaxy Award ceremony, or the speech I gave at Sechuan University, or the visit to the Earthquake Zone and the talk I gave to the kids there. (Science Fiction World and I are starting a library for them.) (If I can get some photos I'll put them up.)
And I was not able to take photos of the encounter with the fourth holiest Buddhist in China, because he is not to be photographed.
So instead here's a photo of Amanda Palmer, who joined me for my last few days in China, on the side of a mountain having been recognised by some happy Chinese tourists...
More photos of China and Singapore in my next post, I hope. In summary: Singapore was wonderful, but the visit was much much too short: we were there for about 50 hours altogether. Once again, the food was amazing and the people delightful.
...
Let's see. A quick handful of links...
....
Through most of this summer I was playing with a Lomography Camera. The kind with film in, where you have no idea what you took until it's developed. (The one I used was an LC-A+.) I'm starting to love the results, especially when everything comes in slightly oversaturated. They look like pictures of dreams.
 (Middle photo of the amazing bubble by Miss Holly Gaiman. Who is fundraising.)
(And you can, of course, click to embiggen the pictures.) ... And finally, people sometimes write in and point out that, when I return home, I post pictures of my dog, rapturously dashing somewhere or dancing or stick-wielding to welcome me home. "Why do you not ever post pictures of cats?" they ask.
Good point. Here is Coconut welcoming me rapturously home:  Here is Princess, doing her version of a rapturous welcome, glad that I have not forgotten the trick that she taught me to do, during my time away. The trick involves turning on the tap in the guest bathroom and letting her alternately drink and attack the water with her sharp teeth, until she gets bored: I'm sad to say that while I was away, Hermione died. She was the surviving member of the two mad cat sisters who live in the basement library and Do Not Mingle, and she was almost eighteen. You can see her in this Photosynth of my library downstairs (needs Silverlight). It feels strangely unbalanced to be in a house without Pod and Hermione in it.
There. Goodnight. | | comments: 15 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Love | | Time: | 12:52 pm |
|
| Why is it that of all the spiritual gifts/powers Paul is aware of (prophesy, speaking in other tongues, healing …) the one he really desires is Love? Isn’t it the case that many people can love without any need for religion, it is one of the most basic human capacities. Paul is an evangelist too, wouldn’t the power to move mountains and raise the dead be more useful to him if he wants to convert the world? I’m kinda guessing that he valued love above all other gifts/abilities, he does imply his view that without it any awesome oratory is as useless as clattering bell but I’m reading a personal desire to be able to love into the text, which is primarily an instruction to the Corinthians about how they should live as a community.
So why would Paul desire to be able to Love? Is it because he has already been involved in healings? He has already had personal experience of many situations where events and actions with no obvious causal relationship come together to create a situation that he can only explain with reference to the provident nature of God (a miracle). Times like this are amazing and can be so astounding that we are forced to re-examine our preconceived understanding of so many small happening in the context of an awareness of the overall situation. This can lead to a permanent change of belief, or conversion.
I have been thinking about the story of Lazerus this weekend. I can’t really imagine what it would have been like to see him walking out of the tomb after being buried for four days. There are so many untold stories leading up to and away from that event, and what influence did each of those stories have on the event itself? This morning I have been thinking about the scientific principle of how if something has happened once, it should be possible to repeat it. This is dependant on the conditions being the same when the experiment is repeated. In a lab this can be arranged, in the field there are so many variables that it is much harder to control the experiment, recording the variables and causally linking them to any variation in the outcome of the experiment is a good second best however. How could you recreate the exact conditions involving the death and resurrection of Lazerus though? Where do you even start to measure all the potential variables? It becomes more like a crime investigation than a scientific experiment; there the objective is to prove something beyond reasonable doubt. Scientific methodology can assist in this process, but it is one of several disciplines which contribute to the authority of the final verdict.
Back to Paul, if Paul were to raise someone from the dead it would affect a few people. It would be a good publicity stunt, and certainly would affect the individuals involved greatly. But within a day there would be rival theories about what had happened, after about a week who would believe it had actually happened? Learning to love though, to stick with the simple message of the gospel despite being publicly flogged, imprisoned or scoffed at and called a traitor to your race and religion (Judaism), that is something which has an effect. It is also something which is repeatable.
I love metaphysics, and happy to find the quote “philosophy is that cognitive endeavour in which the question of being is asked” (Paul Tillich, Biblical religion and the search for ultimate reality) It is not the only definition of philosophy, but it describes the yearning in me to know answers and explains what I was doing before I switched from engineering to a road less travelled. Understanding love and learning to love is close to understanding being, because it is when we love that we become most alive. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Floods and gale force winds have not managed to stop Psydoll's tour yet, so roll on Edinburgh this Thursday! Click the image below for all the details on the remaining Scottish dates:
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| | Current Music: | matrix | | Time: | 11:05 am |
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| So Halloween has been and gone. All saints day likewise, It’s all souls day today. There is a decent overview of the history of the festivals on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/halloween_1.shtml
And getting an overview of the history is a good place to start if you want to avoid the nonsense and unhelpful opinion which surrounds the current practice. From my reading of the history it seems that little of what is currently associated with Halloween is a continuation of the early medieval Christian festival, or any other spiritual custom.
There is a surface similarity in that otherworldy/supernatural themes are prominent. Some of the games like dooking for apples and dressing up in disguises are also consistent enough to provide clues to an underlying meaning which may be a survival throughout the many cultural changes that have taken place over the centuries.
One thing which probably hasn’t changed it that the event is a community festival. My reason for saying this is that the current popular celebration of the event reveals the values held by the community which practices it. There is some idea of how it should be celebrated, but far more freedom and variation in how it is actually practiced than can be seen in other state or religion endorsed celebrations like remembrance Sunday or even marriages. So what do I think these values are? The negative ones seem to be: for kids it’s the desire to play tricks (gain power over those who normally have power over them – egging or flouring houses and cars etc.); Consumerism is the general god of this age and homemade costumes have often been replaced with acres of plastic mass produced and disposable kibble; for some Christians this festival also gives vent to their fear of the unknown, loss of influence in their home cultures and desire to be (seen to be) right but not engage with complexities of the issues.
On the positive side, it shows that some parts of the community still want to leave their houses and enjoy being with each other. It shows that individuals will make an effort to be creative and sort out costumes and events. The young people at the Halloween party we ran made (with the help of parents) some amazing costumes.
But what of the spiritual aspects? http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/mellitus.html This letter can either be seen as a cynical piece of statesmanship used to lure an ignorant population into a new religion which bolsters the power of Saxon warleaders, or good advice to answer the questions which many Christians ask now about how they should react to community celebrations like Halloween. Most of our festivals are like temples where consumerism and materialism have replaced the worship of any god. The festivals are the fabric of society we find our identities in though. If we destroy them then we destroy a part of ourselves. Transforming them, and working with people “according to the conditions of time and place” and recognizing that “when one wishes to reach the top of a mountain, he must climb by stages and step by step, not by leaps and bounds....” Is the way forward, and examining our lifestyles and the areas in which we (and the church as a whole) have sold out to consumerism and materialism is the first step. After doing that it is amazing how many people who seemed like enemies previously are actually practicing witnesses to the changes we should be making. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| gigantor is on again this friday, the 6th november, down in teviot underground.
gigantor - 06.11.09
Originally uploaded by piglicker
it's a no-nonsense alternative club that's been going for ages, chiefly because the people behind it still can't think of anything better to do.
we play all sorts of alternative stuff, and tend to try to avoid those kinda hour-long 'sets' of a particular type of music that some other clubs do. some people like that, some are confused by it.
if you fancy dancing to a bit of bauhaus, dresden dolls, nirvana, marilyn manson, gogol bordello, fugazi, mindless self indulgence, klf, placebo, pixies, curve, dead kennedys, eagles of death metal, front 242, pop will eat itself, nine inch nails, sultans of ping, rammstein, new model army, chili peppers, killing joke, hole, prodigy, depeche mode, emf, garbage, daisy chainsaw, chemical brothers, carter usm, madness, siouxsie, the fall, sex pistols, yeah yeah yeahs, etc . . . get yerself down there.
we're very open to requests and usually take about a metric shit-ton of records with us. it's only a coupla quid to get in and the drink is pretty cheap.
so are the djs.
seriously.
a bit more info can be found here, and some lists of what we've played in the past can be found here. oh, there's a bacefook page here, too.
not sure where teviot underground is?
its' the big gothic building next to bristo square. there's a map of sorts here, or you can use good ole googlemaps. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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