GOD vs MAMMON: the fight continues

I don't mention politics very often in this space but that isn't because I'm indifferent to the world outside my imitation ivory miniature tower. I am aware and I do care, a lot. But the feelings I have about the injustice, horror, hypocrisy, deceit, greed, selfishness, violence, insanity and stupidity of so much that the words 'politics' and 'economics' embrace are mainly inarticulate anger and outrage. All I can do is splutter incoherently or cry helplessly so I prefer to leave it up to more eloquent and knowledgeable others to write or speak about such things.

But what's happening right here in London in front of St.Paul's Cathedral, as part of the current global protests about Mammon's domination of almost anything you can think of, has made me want to say my little say. 

Whether or not you believe there is a God or a Mammon is irrelevant. For sure all the people camped on the steps of St. Paul's are not believers. But they are certainly convinced that they belong to a movement which is opposed to a dictatorship: the powerful dictatorship of money, and those who control it, over the lives of every person on this planet.

Today's Independent front page has the headline: God vs Mammon: Britain takes sides. Interestingly, the debate is now questioning what the church's role is, what being a Christian means and whether the clergy, especially those in high-ranking positions, should take a strong stand (against Mammon) or sit back and say nothing out of fear of rocking the church politics boat. So far, two clerics have bravely resigned in protest against the St.Paul's administration decision to seek a court injunction for evicting the protesters. There are many letters from clergy all over the country to newspaper editors, supporting the protesters and lamenting St.Paul's Cathedral authorities' attitude. Thus far the voice which should take the lead - that of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury - has been deafeningly silent. 

Surely this is a golden opportunity for him to define what being a Christian means and what relevance Christianity has in this Mammon-led world? If speaking out in support of the protest will endanger his position in the church and cause shock waves to ripple through the halls of hierarchy, well, so be it. Such a courageous gesture would do more than hundreds of sermons and conferences to inspire those who have given up on Christianity for not being Christ-like enough. 

El Greco: Christ Drives Merchants from the Temple 

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TOO MANY WORDS

Not writing about the riots because thousands of words are being written and spoken about the situation and I don't have anything useful to add. Those who have said the most useful things are not politicians or pundits but people whose actions are better than words, people like Camila Batmanghelidh. Or like the man in the street who had served time in jail and told a reporter that instead of wasting money and time to lock young mayhem-makers in jail for a few months, they should be put to work clearing up the mess and making amends to the communities, and individuals they have damaged. And though I'm certainly not a Daily Telegraph reader, this article also hit some nails squarely on the head. 

I had no intention of making a word-painting and the image below evolved like this: first I covered a large sheet of paper with splashy abstract shapes of the gestural kind. Then I decided to do a splashy self-portrait over the top. Then I painted over it with a grid of heavy white brushstrokes. Then I wanted some abstract shapes to fill each rectangle of the grid. Then I saw that letters made the best shapes. Then the words emerged. 

Greenyellowbluered    Acrylic and ink on paper

 

The next picture is not relevant to anything and I regret falling into the cat-blogging trap once more but Pushkine (she is female) dropped in again and is just too photogenic to resist. 

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IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR

IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR...

when everything accuses:

YOU'RE LATE LATE LATE AGAIN!!! 

The calendar, the weather, the people streaming in and out of shops, the seasonal cards arriving already, the Things To Finish This Year list I made last year and all the lists I've ever made....my whole life suddenly seems like one big end-of-year guilt-ridden apology to myself and others: 

SO SORRY I'M LATE!

No. Not true that I'm sorry. Can't be true. If it were true I wouldn't keep on being late. Lateness must be a state I enjoy. A state I prefer to the state of punctuality, the state of finishing things, the state of satisfaction. Lateness must be what I'm really good at. If I annoy, disappoint or inconvenience others with my lateness, my unfinishedness, that's their problem, isn't it? And if I disappoint, enrage, inconvenience myself that's my problem, isn't it? 

Yes. That is my problem.

(I did the drawing below using the wondrous HARMONY application created by Mr.doob, Ricardo Cabello).

To round off my last post, I must say something about Snow which I have just finished reading. I now have no doubt that the mythological KA or double was present in the author's mind when he worked out the structure of this book. 

First of all, the fictional narrator 'Orhan' is the double of the real author, Orhan Pamuk. Secondly, Orhan tells the story based on his dead friend Ka's diaries and re-traces Ka's journey, trying to see things as the poet did four years ago. The 'double' theme is taken up again in the close relationship between the two teen-age boys, Necip and Fazil, who read each other's minds. After Necip is shot, Fazil says to Ka: "It's possible that Necip's soul is now living inside my body." 

Other instances of doubling, as well as of duplicity, are scattered throughout the story. This is particulary intriguing to me because I was searching for the lesson implied in my dream. I have yet to figure that out but never mind the dream - was I impressed by Snow? 

Impressed, yes. It's an impressive achievement. If it was a sculpture, it would be a public monument standing in a town square. A realistic sculpture but with modernist touches, lots of intricately crafted detail and symbols. Was I moved by it? No. Its monumentality, its intention to be an important novel creates a distance like those barriers not letting you get too near valuable works of art in a museum. While I admire Pamuk's grasp of the complex politics and beliefs of his compatriots and the tremendous skill with which he weaves them into a story, he doesn't make me care about individual characters. Apart from being told repeatedly that Ka's love-object, Ipek, is stunningly beautiful, what do I know about her personality? It has less substance than the snowflakes which dominate the setting. I feel the same about the other protagonists (perhaps Necip is the exception). They are all actors on a stage, reading their roles, and once I've left this theatre, I forget them. The other factor which alienates me from this novel is the surfeit of information: too much, too much! Just when my attention is captured by an incident or conversation, I'm immediately pulled away to look at something else, some irrelevant detail. This is infuriating.

Voilà. I'm obviously not going to join the ranks of those who adore Orhan Pamuk's writing but I will, definitely, take my hat off to him.

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NOT THE BLAIR INTERVIEW SHOWN ON THE BBC ON SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

but my altered version, inserting a different view from those spectacular windows and a more appropriate soundtrack. Unfortunatley the sound doesn't come up on my video below but it's working fine on the main Blaugustine and also at blip.tv

If you didn't see that BBC interview it's available at this link for another five days. Try watching it while playing Leonard Cohen's The Future.

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POST-ELECTION BLUES and a PORTRAIT PARTY

Very disappointed that the Lib Dems didn't get more votes after all the enthusiasm they generated during the campaign. Most of all I'm shocked by the outrageous excuses given for voters being turned away from many polling stations on election night: why isn't more fuss made about this in the media and everywhere? Supposedly, 'an inquiry is under way' but that just isn't good enough. If this were a third world country, there would be world-wide rumblings about ineptitude and conspiracies. But we're a civilised, sophisticated, efficient democracy, aren't we? 

PORTRAIT PARTY 

Some of us prefer art to politics and pay more attention to art than to reality and would rather play than work and can find hundreds of good reasons not to do the things we should be doing in favour of things that have no agenda other than fun. So when I saw on Walt's always fun-supporting blog a mention of Julia Kay's Portrait Party, of course I immediately had to go there and now I'm completely hooked. Here are my first three portraits of artist members of that vibrant ongoing all-day all-night party. I drew these digitally on a graphic tablet, using Artrage software for Wally and Blue Sky Day and Photoshop brushes for Allan. 

ELECTIONEERING

I responded to The Guardian's recent invitation for readers to send in alternative election posters but mine was not among those they chose to print in the G2 section last week. I'm not bothered since I have my own alternative audience right here, haven't I? So here is my take - a Photoshopped montage of bits and pieces borrowed from the internet - on the three-horse race currently taking place here in the not-so-united Queendom.
All politicians, as far as I'm concerned, are endlessly spinning on a carousel which never stops churning out platitudes, promises and palliatives. In the first TV debate between the three current contenders for the top spinning job, the mere fact that there were three of them instead of the usual two (Labour and Conservative) made it slightly more exciting. And when the interloper Nick Clegg began to sound and look like a real human being rather than an airbrushed sound-bitten parody of one, I thought, okay, maybe he'll jump off the merry-go-round and really be the 'something different' his party political message keeps repeating. Besides, he's got an emigré Russian grandmother, a Dutch mother, a Spanish wife, children with Spanish names, and he can speak more than one language. So I'll vote for him. 

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THE G20 SUMMIT

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WANTED: WORLD-CHANGING IDEAS, NO STRINGS ATTACHED

January 9, 2009

People who have the power to change things for the better generally fail to change things for the better for one or more of the following reasons.
1. They are the wrong people to be in power.
2. They are the right people but depend on or are hampered by the wrong people.
3. Right people or wrong people: power itself is the problem.
4. Power always has many strings attached.
5. Too many strings = too many knots and loose ends and broken threads and nooses.
6. While the powerful are busy trying to untangle their strings without losing their power, the innocent and powerless suffer.
7. When the powerless adopt the methods of the powerful, they too become entangled in the strings of power, and the goal of making things better moves further and further out of reach.

THEREFORE:

WE WHO WANT TO CHANGE THINGS FOR THE BETTER

WITHOUT FALLING INTO THE TRAPS OF POWER

NEED TO CHALLENGE OUR IMAGINATIONS

TO CONCEIVE IDEAS WHICH ARE POWERFUL

BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT ABOUT POWER.

NEW WAYS OF LOOKING AT OLD PROBLEMS,

USING THE POWERFUL TOOLS

OF ART, OF MUSIC, OF DANCE, OF THEATRE, OF POETRY, OF FILM, OF SPORT, OF INVENTION, OF BUILDING, OR EVEN OF BLOGGING.

With all this in mind I imagined an unlikely but not unimaginable scenario. This is what I saw:

An army of dancers, amateurs and professionals, wave after wave of them, every style of dancing from anywhere in the world, accompanied by their musicians, moving in disciplined formation like a very long carnival parade. But not a carnival.

A massive non-violent dancing protest, confronting tanks and trucks and armed soldiers intent on their power mission, obeying their power orders. On both sides of the divide, the dancing army confronts the violence and advances inexorably, rhythmically. The fighters in their tanks and behind their rockets are flabbergasted, the music and dancing are so contagious......

Yes, yes, I know. The dancing army would nor be allowed into the country. And even if they were, they would not be permitted to enter the war zone. And even if they were, the dancers would become too traumatised by the dead, the dying, the wounded, the bereaved screaming despair and vengeance, to be able to keep on dancing. And even if they were, they would soon be mowed down by the fighting on all sides. Life is not a cabaret, oh chum. I know this.

A stubborn, childish, rebellious voice in me keeps on insisting my scenario could happen if enough people participated. There are other ways, ways that are beyond politicians and governments and armies. I'm concocting a little video to illustrate the above scenario and will post it when ready.

The killing and maiming and destruction have to stop. Not after discussions and negotiations and conferences but immediately.

If the 'experts' haven't been able to make it stop after years and years of talking and killing, killing and talking, why not try something completely different? I am absolutely not saying that a dancing army (or another idea of similar nature) would be a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict or any other major conflict elsewhere on the planet. But it could (or so I imagine) at least stop the killing, allowing other solutions to be found.

In July 2007 I started another blog, OUT OF THE BOX, which fizzled out after a very short time, mainly because I didn't keep it up. To start the new year, I want to resurrect it and am throwing this challenge out to you:

Can you imagine original scenarios which could STOP THE KILLING anywhere on the planet that people are wiping each other out in large numbers, for whatever reason)?

Here are the rules:

1. Scenarios must be imaginative and constructive, no matter how unorthodox.

2. Please, no lectures or analyses! Only visualisations of events that could be made to happen, using unconventional creative approaches, borrowing from the arts rather than politics.

3. You can post your ideas on your own blog and put a link to your post in the comments here

4. Or you can enter your idea as a comment which I will copy and paste as a post here

5. Illustrations and videos welcome. Post at your own blog and/or give us a link at OUT OF THE BOX.

6. Also welcome are links to existing initiatives which tackle such issues creatively. For instance:

Peace Child , a non-profit organization which uses music and the stage as a vehicle for grassroots repair and reconciliation processes. Serves Arab and Jewish teenagers, their parents and teachers.
Or this which documents some of the international initiatives helping to build peace through the arts.

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IN PRAISE OF PEOPLE POWER

In many of the post-election reports and commentaries I've been reading, the initial celebratory euphoria is gradually being doused with expertly worded buts and ifs and maybes and don't forgets and so on and on. I am just as inclined as the most seen-it-all-before cynic to mistrust politics and politicians and to despair about the state of the planet in general. But not right now. Right now I only want to praise, to laud, to honour and to celebrate the two sides of one coin:

An individual: president-elect Barack Obama.
A very large crowd: the people who supported and elected him.

In his acceptance speech, Obama said:

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington – it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers.......

Clever political speechifying? Yes, of course. But above all, it is true. The Yes-We-Can slogan was actually experienced and acted upon by millions of people, energised by hope, inspired by a man who represents the possibility of change and who is totally unlike the current resident of the White House.

'Charisma' is a word which provokes instant suspicion among thinkers/observers, especially those of us who have been around the block a few times. We've seen too many feet of clay on the idols we ourselves raised up on pedestals when we were naive, or on other popular heroes we never believed in at all. So if someone mentions a leader's charisma our eyebrows are likely to shoot upwards, our lips to curl into the skeptic's sneer and we will say something like: "Well, Hitler had charisma. So did Attila the Hun and Charles Manson etc. etc." We will probably also bring up 'mass hysteria', recalling the terrible extremes to which a whipped-up crowd can go and, therefore, how you can never trust the emotions of a crowd in the grip of charismatic individuals, be they politicians, prophets, soldiers, football players or rock stars.

Well, yes and no. Whatever circuitry in the human brain is responsible for hero-worship and for mass movements, it surely does not always produce negative effects. Was it the same brain circuitry which inspired the followers of Ghandi to non-violence as whipped up the followers of Hitler (and other criminals) to unspeakable violence? And was it 'mass hysteria' when I and millions of others around the world took to the streets to march against the Iraq war? Or when we marched against nuclear weapons? We may not have succeeded in our immediate aims, but these were still victories for people-power. Major changes occur slowly and we may not live to see the results, but I believe that something extraordinary happens to human beings when they come together in large numbers united by good will, concern for each other and a powerful desire to end injustice and corruption. And yes, if a leader can reflect, embody that spirit and inspire people to believe that they themselves have the power to change things, then such a leader is needed. He, or she, is like an orchestra conductor whose skill is to get the best out of each individual player and out of their combined voices, at the service of the music.

Imagine for a moment the kind of radical changes which could happen in the world as a result of concerted people-power. Make a wish-list. Yes, it will look completely unrealistic, naive. Realists will tell you it can never happen.

Yes it can.

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