the spear of the artist?

(Pawel Kuczynski)

The whole Brett Murray/The Spear (of-the-nation) disturbance in the media of late, whichever way one views it, clearly reveals the power of the creative arts to effect society and bring people to their feet, perhaps even their knees.

It seems to have  provoked people on all sides of the issue to start thinking, expressing those thoughts, debating, engaging and some arguing passionately, even heatedly as they wrestle with their own perspectives and our shared destiny.

As potentially volatile as this all is in light of our extremely immature and uneducated “democracy” here in South Africa I think it is a most wonderful thing and hopefully it will keep us wondering for many decades to come.

Yet still I feel compelled to ask the question:  Why are there so few “Brett Murray’s”?

Why are so many artists seemingly locked into almost exclusively doing commercial drivel; “ABBA” type pop ‘tributes’ or playing “Piano Man” for a essentially drunken society who demand nostalgic memories, or serving a placatory propaganda type role in corporate settings merely to get a monetary handout?

Where are the real “prophets”?

Awaken and live long you  “Brett Murray” types!

(regardless of what side of the fence you sit, or what we think about what you say)

__________________________

Maybe the poet is gay
But he’ll be heard anyway

Maybe the poet is drugged
But he won’t stay under the rug

Maybe the voice of the spirit
In which case you’d better hear it

Maybe he’s a woman
Who can touch you where you’re human

Male, female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

Put him up against the wall
Shoot him up with pentothal

Shoot him up with lead
You won’t call back what’s been said
Put him in the ground
But one day you’ll look around

There’ll be a face you don’t know
Voicing thoughts you’ve heard before

Male, female slave or free
Peaceful or disorderly
Maybe you and he will not agree
But you need him to show you new ways to see

Don’t let the system fool you
All it wants to do is rule you
Pay attention to the poet
You need him and you know it

BRUCE COCKBURN  -  “Maybe The Poet”

______________________________________

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spear_%28painting%29

what was that someone else said?

“maybe with all this rampant technology and almost universal connectivity, have we started to run out of original ideas?” – anonymous

practicing safe sects

I’m an avid internet user.  I post and read blogs all the time.  I love to gather information. I work online and communicate online.  I also play online.

Recently I have been made more and more aware of how big a part the internet plays in my life.  I’m sure I’m not the only one.

However, I am fast coming to realize that there is dangerous illusion in all of this.  I feel like I’m in touch with so many but am I really?  Even the data, the facts I hunger for and seek after, are they really the facts?

And then I saw this short TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-04-03&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Some time ago I posted on the topic of making contact http://alalohwhydee.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/making-contact/ and once again I am brought back to a nagging reality in my life.  How real is my reality?  And is the way I do things really helping?  I’d like to think so.  I’d like to believe so.

I look at the life of Jesus and with all the data he must have had at his disposal and alongside the huge importance of his message he seemed primarily focused on simply making contact.  But not just intellectually but basic, demonstrative, interactive, physical contact.  He had a message sure enough but it was his life and his example – his physical example that was the main thing.

He did speak and a lot is focused on and recorded about what he said.  However, he seemed content to speak almost exclusively in parables and live in a realm of mystery to those he was with and even still to us this day.

It makes me wonder about the data driven world we live in.  Even in our spiritual space and spiritual places we tend to major almost exclusively on the cerebral, the intellectual.  We sit docile and respectfully silent and listen to one person preaching, teaching.  Then we leave.  And we call this community, fellowship.

Online social networking means we don’t ever have to leave … or join.

Online there is no real us, …and no real me either.

But we choose to believe there is.

From reading and pondering I understand the life and times of Jesus to have been very noisy and even disruptive.  However, they were full of physical contact.

He touched, laughed with, cried with, walked with, talked with, loved, hugged, lay next to, ate with, rowed with, even died with.

Informal, very physical, tangible, close, unsafe, risky, messy, even smelly.

Physical contact, full physical contact.

For me the internet promises this, but it’s all merely a virtual reality.

And we seem to invest disproportionate amounts of energy to make it seem like we are actually making contact.

But are we?

do we really think…

We live in an era saturated with branding, slogans, memes, pop iconography, subcultures, rampant pop media, fashion obsession, subcultures within subcultures within cultures, and a dominant worldview of citations, quotes, references – whether they be scientific, religious, literary, social, or even tribal.

Of late I’ve been thinking about what percentage of what we think is what WE ourselves actually think and what percentage of what we think is what others think?

I throw this out even though personally we may very strongly not think we think what others’ think influences us to think, say and do things?

… what do you think? … do we, or don’t we?

And what would it mean if we are offended at this thought or if our immediate response is that we haven’t really thought much about it?

the right leg of freedom

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-03-01-angelinas-right-leg

It wasn’t that long ago when we were all up in arms about the POIB (Protection of Information Bill) and the need to protect the freedom of the press and their responsible democratic role in informing the public about…

…me too, I also was mobilised. … the ANC governments diabolical attempts to cover up their rampant corruption and sinister underhand goings on are despicable to say the least …. (still ongoing … perhaps quietly gathering momentum under cover of the frenzied press maelstrom of Malema’s expulsion from the ANC – who knows?)

BUT, is this the press we were/are trying to protect..? … the press liberated, mobilized… and telling us … what? …

…what we want to hear? … definitely… or maybe what we want to hear voraciously piggy-backed on the revenues such repugnant and seductively sensationalized “press” will generate for their own greedy little coffers…

… or maybe it’s the press – that gaggle of educated, sophisticated intelligentsia hooked and dangling with hungry mouths agape as they are led along and played ruthlessly by a cunning master to provide the exact sensationalistic, diverting cover for other more sinister covert operations…?

so, is it about truth and objective journalism in the quest to inform and protect our floundering fledgling democratic society … or is it all about the money? … all about the “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me)?

… and now, here I am … mobilized and once more up in arms about a leg…

… and the way it’s all seemingly such incredibly “Big Press” in a sick society perhaps gone to hell and back way before the end has even come…

… a thought from another planet perhaps?

In South Africa a secrecy bill (the “Protection of Information Bill”) has been shoved through in what clearly appears to be a sneaky, underhand and sinister fashion.  If it gets past any constitutional court appeals and hearings it stands to give the government unimaginable power to control who says and does what … and exclusively at their (the ruling party’s) own discretion and for their own personal benefit and ultimately, protection (from exposure and prosecution for corruption and any other deviance or malpractice).

A thought from another planet perhaps: – the bill, what it stands for and the way it was forced through as well as the alleged reasons for this action is to my mind somewhat extremely unethical to say the least. The fact that it comes through the ANC is nothing less than shocking.

However, in terms of the direct implications of the bill on the “free press” what to my mind does perhaps need to be thought through is the extent to which the press really is “free” and objectively “journalistic.”
Let’s face it, sensationalism sells and revenues from advertising in publications that generate sensationalistic response is what makes the world go round for the press industry.
The press feel like their freedom to inform is being taken away, as well as their freedom to bring an ‘objective’, factual perspective (and before I am branded as a neo-Nazi, totalitarian despot sympathizer, I do believe that strong debate and passionate opposition is essential and very healthy for any community).

But for many decades now I personally battle to read the newspapers, or watch TV, TV news, or read current news editorials as they are to my mind so overwhelmingly manipulatively inflammatory and one sided in terms of the sensationalistic negative spin they seem to take (take the whole recent Rupert Murdoch debacle for example).
Could it be argued that the cries of the “free” press are the same as the cries of the record industry against piracy (who even mobilise the artistes themselves to campaign against piracy) when they themselves, to my mind at least, are the biggest pirates, raping and pillaging creativity, the arts, culture, artistes and the coffers of the artistes themselves for their own gain and dictating to the masses what, when, and who to listen to in order to extract exorbitant profits for themselves?

(and as a personal footnote jab, the Gospel Worship/”Contemporary Music” industry as well as the Christian/Gospel Book Publishing Industries do exactly the same thing – selling manipulatively marketed, sensually “popular” merchandise for exorbitant profits and in so doing dictating to a thoughtless and naive church what the “prophetic” voice and message and culture of God is…  – which in the present Christian scene is merely a very weak, attempted copy of what is perceived to be popular and trendy in the ‘secular’ marketplace. -  A bit extremely blasphemous to my mind … …  .. .   don’t you think?)

Be Bop, Charlie Parker and ‘street talk’

              

It is alleged that according to an interview the legendary Charlie Parker gave sometime in the 1950s, that one night in 1939 he was playing “Cherokee” in a jam session with guitarist William ‘Biddy’ Fleet when he hit upon a method for developing his solos that enabled him to play what he had been hearing in his head for some time, by connecting harmony using the diminished relationship of dominants.  Parker at this time also realized that the twelve tones of the chromatic scale can lead melodically to any key, breaking some of the confines of simpler jazz soloing.

As a result Charlie Parker’s innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries.  At first many didn’t like it, or him much at all.  They even tried to ridicule him, his way of playing as well as all who embraced and continued with this new, crazy idea.

These days the ‘mixit’/text/short message system (possibly as a natural follow-on from street music forms like Rap) is presenting a similar challenge to language as we know it?  Meanings of words and expressions, idioms and the like, and in many instances meaning itself is being challenged and the so-called ‘purists’ are not at all really happy.

Many are scrambling to maintain the ‘purity’ of a language which is changing all the time anyway.

Is it possible that language, (English especially as the dominant force in global communication these days) is experiencing a “Be Bop” period? Like Be Bop, is mixit/text(sms) ‘language’ breaking some of the confines of simpler communication linguistic forms and patterns?

Is there a lesson for us in this? … and might this be applicable to other forms of cultural communication?  Politics?  Religion?  Economics?  Community?

COME BACK, PINK FLOYD!!! ALL IS FORGIVEN!!!!!

I have begun to notice more and more how many people make quotes for their status updates on Facebook.  On Twitter it has reached a level of almost total quotation mania.  In my experience well over 90% of all tweets are links to some article on the web.

It’s almost like a new currency has sprung into existence.  We love trying to impress others by the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the company we keep …  Are we now trying to convince people we are well read and educated?  Are we trying to make a show for the watching world that we are well connected and at the cutting edge of technology, intelligence, art, culture, politics?

Have we lost our ability to think for ourselves?  Could this be the effects of social/cognitive/intellectual/moral consumerism setting in?  Fast food ethics and morality?  No mess, no fuss, just collect it off the shelf.  And it’s all colour coded and wrapped in plastic rap for our hygienic convenience.  God help us!

Yet still the increasing outcry is for individualism and personal significance.  We all desire independence and self determination but could this be a self inflicted form of ‘group think’?  Has the human race given up?

Group·think is the act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view.  It is the tendency within organizations or society to promote or establish the view of the predominant group.

Our beloved democracy is the same only it is far more decisive and demonstratively unforgiving towards those who think independently.  Democracy forces the opinion of the masses into modern doctrine and legislated culture.

Being a follower of Christ myself I have also noticed that Christians seem to spend a majority of time and much effort quoting often extensive passages of biblical text not only in their social networking status publications but also in their interpersonal communication.  Whether offering personal advice or counsel or even simply commenting on a news article even in informal social settings.  It also seems apparent to me that we seem to regard the accuracy of the literal quotation of any given text as weightier than any truth or sensibility that may be present in it in a given situation.  This too appears to me like a form of social and political currency.   Who might we be trying to impress?   Are we really trying to help and engage or market ourselves?  And who do we think we are fooling?

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” – this is what Jesus said as a key part in his teaching on prayer.

So I ask myself, is this what we are doing happening in heaven?  Is this what heaven is going to be all about for ever and ever?  quoting scriptural texts at each other?  Will we reference everything we experience and participate with there?  When we cross over into the heavenly spiritual realm will we hear God quoting back biblical text to every question we have?  Is this the way God speaks?  Does God even speak human language?  Is what we are doing now the language and culture of heaven?   I mean, when one travels to France they speak French and especially in France, … English doesn’t really cut it  …

Will God’s communication to us be tagged with the topographical grid reference of each statement?  Is God at all interested in what we have to say or think?  Is this what we are created and even redeemed for?  To be a silent audience without opinion?  Is this more important that the people God created, redeemed?  Yet in modern Christian culture it seems to me that the content of the passage of scriptural text quoted battles to hold any water unless it is tagged with a “John 3:16” or a “Matthew 28:19-20”.  People are important, yes, but not nearly as important than the accuracy and fluency of the text quoted.  Is this the Gospel?   “Hand me my sledgehammer, .. I want to go tell someone how much God loves them.”

Does God want a mass of “believers” who chant the same thing over and over in unison?  “Oooo, say that again … that part about me being great and almighty and magnificent … “  Is this a true reflection of the nature and character of God?

I was always under the impression that in Christ God was setting us free to be an extension of his presence and a free flow of his life in the present world and in the realm to come.  Will heaven be filled to the ceiling with scrolls and books (now “Kindle’s and iPads too perhaps)?  or will it be filled with liberated beings who have reached their full potential and optimum effectiveness not in word or deed, but in their full spiritual essence?  … in who they are and not in what they managed to make the fig leaves look like in the setting sun.

My God, maybe Roger Waters was correct all along?

COME BACK, PINK FLOYD!!!  ALL IS FORGIVEN!!!!!

making contact

Communication research tells us that less than 10% of our communication is verbal.

That’s an amazing statement.  Possibly even a shocking one.

So what is the other +90%?

It has dawned on me over the years just how textual and verbal we have become in our modern world.  Possibly most of it has been as a result of the advance in reason, knowledge and scientific thought?   The sophistication of life and meaning?

So, can the same be said of the prophetic, the arts, music, teaching? … what about ‘church’? worship?  teaching?  preaching?  informal and formal social activities, argument, persuasion?

Maybe scientific empiricism can be seen from a fresh angle when we consider that in essence all it demands is a practical, verifiable, hands on grasp of reality before any fact is established.

But somehow science is mostly seen to be at war with faith as faith is seen to be at war with science.   Yet the same claim for a tangible basis for thought and belief is present in both.

The story of Christ is an amazing one.  It is a story of God becoming a man, taking on the appearance and form of humankind.  This is still very much a fantastic tale to this day.   A story that is adored and embraced by some, scorned and rejected by others.   A whole big chunk of our spiritual belief is based on this act.   The texts we amplify as central to the faith are the ones that state that God came physically and actually did the things recorded – the miracles, the signs and wonders, dying, being raised from the dead and rising up in front of a whole group of people who together watched him floating up into the clouds, disappearing back to the place he came from.  Back again to the heavens.

The story is that Jesus came to be amongst us.   That he came to physically live amongst us.   To actually touch us.   Physically.

Maybe God needed empirical evidence?

He started by touching our humanity – he became one of us.  He not only sampled our presence theoretically or from some place nearby or just next to us, he actually became fully like us in our humanity.  God walked a mile or two in our shoes, with our feet.

It’s one thing to visit someone at their home and sample their food and an evening of social interaction.  It’s an entirely different thing moving in with them and staying for 30 years.   Even deeper is giving up who and what you are and becoming the ones you are visiting.   Not just becoming like them, but actually becoming them  (It’s a crazy concept to try think about but there is possibly a very big lesson to learn if we do).

One could even say he got lost in it.  He departed from what he was.   He left where he was.   The narrative says that he became one of us completely.  I wonder if this was what was meant by the ‘leaving and cleaving’ phrase in the book of Genesis?

The text suggests that he subjected himself to the frailty of our circumstance, our condition.   He subjected himself to our customs, our social traditions, the code of the legal religious system.   It was a huge sufferance especially in the light of his deity and where he claimed to come from.   This is God we are speaking of here.

And so we believe.

He walked about doing things.  Just normal things, like normal people do.  Yet when people and things came into contact with him they acted in different ways to how things were normally.   Strange things started happening.

The people of the day had the sacred scriptures.   They had the sacred traditions.  They had the culture.  They had the code of the law and all these spoke of the Christ.  All of these pointed to God.  All of these proclaimed the awaited one, the Christ, the great prophet who it was promised would come and show the way.   The great prophet who would make all things new and wrap up all the promises.  Possibly even all the promises not recorded clearly in the sacred texts as well – perhaps even those that were whispered into the ears of Abraham long, long ago?   Maybe Jesus was referring to this when he said, “Abraham saw my glory and was glad.”

Yet it all lay mostly dormant until this contact was made.

Even today, 2000 years after he walked around amongst us, when we reflect on the historical claims of the presence of Jesus of Nazareth, we too have the scriptures, the traditions, the culture, the testimonies, the code of the law in the form of doctrine (our own biblical epistles and gospels) … and all these still speak of the Christ.

But it’s only when intimate contact is made that things really happen.

Could it be that it is not so much what we speak about but that we speak, or rather  that we move into the present space of others?  That we make contact in the most basic, elementary way?

Could this be the real ‘apostolicity’ that Jesus spoke of?   Could this be what was meant to “go into all the world…”?   Could this be the ‘preaching’ of the gospel he called us to do?   Not just with the regular 10%.

We responded to him in the way he did things as it is written down in the texts.   In those same texts Jesus is said to have instructed us to follow his example.   Not only in theory or ideal,  not to simply relay the story, but in exact practical replication.

Didn’t he tell us to do exactly what he did?

Is this not our mandate?

To make contact…

birdsleaze and facepaint

I tried Twitter, it’s clearly THE antisocial network … but Facebook is THE relationship illusion.

Here’s what I did: – for well over a week I tried to get some response, indeed ANY response from Twitters (what do we call ourselves on Twitter? Twits? Tweets? Twerps? Tweeters? Twankers?).. I asked questions, threw out inflammatory statements, insulted here and there …  and, …. no response – well, one or two responses at most, but statistically these were negligible.

My sad conclusion: Twitter is for the pseudo-relational who seem only interested in  wanting to post their own statements and links (and some never seem to say anything from personal opinion but only post links – perhaps to portray that they are well read and conversant with media issues – ?)  and simply seem not at all interested in any form of meaningful personal interaction other than loving the sound of their own fingers ticking away at the keyboard and the ensuing exhilarating, almost orgasmic sensation of hearing their own ‘tweet’ resounding in the canyons of their own mind as they repeat it back to themselves when they ‘proof-read’ their own brilliance.  You know what I mean, … sort of much like masturbation, really only totally self indulgent with no possibility of or any desire for fruitfulness.

On a positive note though, it is an interesting tool to gather info that otherwise would take hours of surfing and research – like the news feed tweets and a very few humerous Twits(?) who from time to time add a stimulating and even challenging angle on things.  My sincere thanks to those few – but you probably will never know who you are as the nature of the beast is what it is.

Also, if you’re a ‘fan’ type of person I do suppose you can feel perhaps profoundly and wonderfully stimulated by following the meandering escapades of some pop persona of your fantasy … but I have yet to hear a convincing argument against my view that this is equally no more than masturbation and desperate ‘soft-porn’ voyeurism of a tragically sad nature.  It may well be worth considering getting a life for yourself instead of living yours through that of some other person.  Perhaps it’s also wiser to go through one’s own underwear before rummaging through that of others.

Facebook however, is not really much better and seems determined to re-evolve (perhaps the better word would be de-evolve) into a purely telemarketing tool sans the telephone … ‘mongrelized’ (don’t look it up – I made the delightful word up myself) with an email spam and phishing scam sans the normal private/business email account.  This serves only to brutally confront any who might use the network sincerely wanting to interact relationally with other humans into being distracted under siege by flashing windows querying whether they would like to join an online dating or singles club, or making one think if the clothes they are wearing whilst typing in the privacy of their own little nest are fitting with the latest fashions and adequately insured for all risks in the unlikely event of them ever meeting one of their ‘friends’ face-to-face.
The only significant advantage in Facebook for me is that it perhaps seems to allow more interaction (albeit not necessarily that much more, but more nevertheless).  For me the interactions and exchanges on updates and notes, pictures and comments are arguably well worth it.   Not really personal contact, but interesting and engaging.

What both share in common is the caressing stroke they seem to play to the ego’s of most subscribers especially those who seem to be high on the “friends” tally.   However, at the bottom of this pile are those who can claim to be a friend of someone they deem significant even if they never will meet them (and if they did the ‘celebrity’ would clearly have no time nor concern for them anyway).  But for the hopefuls who do still wish to climb socially in life …  at the top of this same pile there is the ubber elite who can insert “full” after their page names having exceeded that mystical 5000 friends tally and then occupy themselves by spending the rest of their waking time redirecting the imaginary millions of other “friends” they are convinced will immanently want to flood in and sign up to be their intimate ‘companions’ to another “fan” page of theirs.   All I can say on behalf of the multitudes of defaced bookers is, “O’ Great Poo-Bah(s), we, the lowly, are unworthy, mere mortals … please forgive us for we know not what to do to gather like you.”
On Twitter it is not uncommon to see Twitters(?) ‘following’ ga-zillions of others only to be followed by few – my heart goes out to them. Sneakily,  as part of my ‘experiment’ I deliberately never returned the favour of ‘following’ some who decided to ‘follow’ me (seemingly one of those unspoken universal rules of Twitterville) and they soon stopped ‘following’ me then … Hmmmm??
Cynical old me!! … after all that is the spirit of marketing in our ever so evolved civilised capitalist social system, is it not? – “you scratch my back, I’ll stab yours.”

Neither Facebook nor Twitter are social networks for me.  They are base and insensitive marketing platforms taking advantage of the emptiness of relationships in our modern societies and majoring on the new age currencies of narcissism, political power and economic profit.
So, for me both are really “look-at-me” opportunistic tools … no more and no less … only perhaps Facebook has, along with it’s fractionally more interactive potential, the negative side of actively aiding and abetting distinctly more predators to prowl around, starting with Mr Zuckerberg et al and branching quickly (and exponentially) out to all the hungry 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th tier predatory advertisers – making Facebook, extremely wealthy ultimately at their own and eventually everyone else’s expense.