"We don't yet know if there's a God - and you want to eat!"
An episodic examination of the modern soul...
by Thomas
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Above, The Tower of Babel (artist's impression!) and, left, Nikolai Lilin
| #12
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| [20/08/09]
by Thomas
Dependably, classic Russian Literature was both cruel and religious - two qualities that earned it my eternal admiration. This admiration even saw me complete an MA in 'Russian Stuff' (a bit of philosophy, a bit of literature, a bit of language…) and recently inspired the generosity of two friends, who invited me to their literature-in-translation festival Babel, held in the Swiss-Italian town of Bellinzona, as this year's guest authors would all be Russian.
It was confirmed that I would be going two weeks before the festival itself. Although engaging in sophisticated literary repartee would have remained well out of my grasp, fourteen days of modest but regular study should at least have enabled me to say:
"I can't be a complete cunt - I speak a bit of Russian. How's your English? Horrorshow."
But I am a complete cunt!
Oh I very diligently carried about my old Colloquial Russian textbook - it travelled to and from work with me the full available ten working days - but the right moment to rip it out of my bag and attack some Verbs of Motion… never arrived.
Doing nothing wasn't an option (all the other attendees would primarily speak Russian and Italian), so on the morning I set off, I flung the textbook into my hand luggage...
Where it stayed. At least it did so throughout the train journey to Gatwick (during which I reasoned I could unleash it in Departures). And then through my sojourn at the Departures' Wetherspoons (where I figured I would have to get down to it after boarding). And finally during the flight itself (the modest minibus journey from Milan Malpensa to Bellinzona would have to suffice …).
But no sooner had I comfortably settled into the backseat of that minibus, and finally pulled out the textbook, than the sun treacherously plunged behind the horizon, and the sentence of rudimentary Russian I was scrutinising (Vot moi passport) was fatally smothered by the evening tide of soft shadow.
Turns out I wasn't a cunt after all: I was a blameless victim of fate. I conclusively slipped Colloquial Russian back into its well-defined niche and crossed my hands in my lap. The minibus sped on through the darkness towards the border, as if it were carrying a linguistic saboteur, a kind of 'Englishbomb'. I peered out at the passing mountains and thought of Lenin.
Upon arrival in Bellinzona, my friend introduced me to the widow of a very famous Russian poet. As the significance of her late husband's work is difficult to overestimate, I do not feel it excessive to here bequeath her with the pseudonym 'Mrs. Shakespeare'. As well as being impressively intelligent and beautiful, this Mrs. Shakespeare was also tremendously nice, and promptly began asking me questions about myself in fluent English (she has been living in New York for a number of years)…
"And do you speak Italian, Thomas?"
"No," I replied.
"Oh. What about Russian?"
"A little…"
Was that so?
In case this slightly disingenuous response prompted Mrs Shakespeare to actually start wielding her mother tongue, I held up my thumb and forefinger - as if offering up an unusually small pea for inspection.
Then - to be on the safe side - I squashed it…
"And are you a writer Thomas?"
Now if you happen to be, frankly, a somewhat mediocre scrivener (no, no: we're all friends here) and Mrs Shakespeare interrogates you on the subject, I can vouch that the question is a tricky one. I was certainly loathe to answer yes ("I'll send you a link...") - but I was equally loathe to answer no (and thereby commit a sort of spiritual suicide).
This double bind appeared to leave me with only one course of action:
Mumbling.
After I had chewed through my response, a slightly baffled Mrs Shakespeare attempted to steer the conversation in a more general literary direction. Now in his day, 'Mr Shakespeare' had not only been a hefty poet, he was also famously and imperiously opinionated, and I found myself no more enthusiastic to discuss literature with his widow as I had been my own artistic aspirations.
After a further two or three of these mumbled exchanges, I seemed to have Mrs Shakespeare doubting the competence of her adopted tongue.
Or the sanity of her interlocutor.
She eventually turned back to my host for concrete, legible information about me (I appeared to have stumbled into a successful rendition of 'hard to get'). While I spoke to someone else, I heard him inform her I was, "a real fan of Lev Shestov" - a Russian philosopher her late husband had almost single-handedly revealed to the West.
This was certainly true. Indeed, there were even moments when I considered myself a Shestovian; this philosopher was the first to plant the crazy seed in my skull that we could witness teleology in the most unorthodox places…
"Is this true," Mrs Shakespeare asked me, "you read Shestov?"
I merely nodded. Schtum!
******
The next morning I began to get in the embarrassing swing of being 'the foreign monoglot at the festival of translation'. The (to me, meaningless) discussions and readings took place in a miniature opera house, beside which ran an elegant marquee, wherein authors, organisers, translators, dignitaries and moi ate lunch sat around long tables. On my way inside, I bumped into one of my hosts, who asked if I had "met Nikolai", gesturing to a grinning gentleman stood beside him.
My host had previously mentioned booking an author born to a Siberian criminal family, and who had fought in the Russian army, killed numerous people, and now wrote quite popular Italian prose about his experiences. This had to be him: 'Nikolai' looked like someone who'd read two books their entire life: the New Testament and Mein Kampf. He had the deep blue glare of a born psychopath, and his skin bristled with tattooed guns, knives, crucifixes and tombstones scrawled in ominous Cyrillic. In fact he resembled a cross between Maxim Gorky and Charles Manson.
"You are an Englishman!" he exclaimed merrily as he shook my hand, his broken words slightly twisted by a mild Russian accent. "I had Irish girlfriend once. Whole family real IRA, terrorist family, crazy people! Many killed in your Bloody Sunday. Good people! I hate your queen and your Masons…"
With this he disappeared inside. I followed and sat down, soon finding myself hemmed in by Russian and Italian speakers, and opposite Mrs. Shakespeare (who spoke both). Lunch was served - looking down I saw I had as little chance translating what was on my plate as I did the surrounding conversation: kebab it weren't. Whatever it was, however, it tasted good, and tucking in gave me an excellent excuse to literally keep my head down.
But Mrs. Shakespeare wasn't content to let me hide behind my mysterious lunch …
"And what do you think Thomas?" she suddenly exclaimed, addressing me in English, "I know you like Shestov, but so far this is all. We are discussing the international perceptions of contemporary Russian literature. Of course nineteenth century Russian fiction is usually thought of as quintessentially Romantic, the literature of the soul so to speak. But, in England, does contemporary Russian literature have any cohesive identity, or is it merely treated as something exotic, a minor literature?"
As she unfurled this lengthy intellectual query, I tried to fix my lips in a polite anticipatory smile, but my wide eyes must have decalred my true feelings, which were: FUCK OFF MRS. SHAKESPEARE. In retrospect, her delicate effort to include me was almost saintly, but at the time struck me as a direct assault.
And she had me: there could be no mumbling my way out of this. Furthermore, her regal voice was a magic wand, and with its two taps the entire table had fallen silent - I even fancied myself able to discern a preparatory flicker of Italian-English dictionaries. It didn't even occur to me to answer the question (a simple, "exotic, ma'am", would have sufficed) - I was solely focussed on extricating myself from its aristocratic beam.
"Couldn't say," I began, slowly, fixing my eyes on my unwitting adversary and swallowing another indecipherable mouthful. "I… don't… read… contemporary… Russian… literature!"
Yeah! Put that in your pipe and smoke it...
Oh dear. Granted that this ignoble admission was true, it was also irrelevant. I watched as it caused the light lines on Mrs. Shakespeare's brow to deepen - no doubt she was now doubly perplexed as to what this mumbling monoglot was doing at a festival of contemporary Russian literature. Cheeks tingling, I went back to my lunch.
******
Later that day I was sat writing in my notebook outside a café when Nicky passed by. "You write booky?" he asked, making a scribbling gesture with his fingers and laughing. He went and fetched a beer and sat opposite me, leaning forwards so that his blue eyes were millimetres from my own.
The conversation turned to Russian neo-Nazis, Nikolai telling me how some of his former comrades in the Russian army were now commanders in far right organisations. I asked him if he had ever read of the prophecies of Daniel Andreev, a visionary who claimed to have witnessed the two beasts underlying Russian politics, beasts whose struggle doomed the country to veer violently from the extreme left to the extreme right. Andreev had a cult following in Russia that wasn't traditionally literary, but Nikolai shook his head when I mentioned him.
"I never heard of that stuff, because when I seventeen I join Russian army and train as sniper," he made a hand gun with his fingers and pumped two imaginary bullets into the table, "blowing motherfuckers' heads off in Chechnya!"
He concluded this statement with a burst of manic laughter.
"I used to work in a callcentre," I said, making a fingerphone and wagging it twice, "raising money for charity!"
This prompted more meaningless hysterics.
His having been a sniper made perfect sense: there was a professional intensity to that blue glare. I remember once being impressed by how the eyes of a painter I knew would change before she struck the canvas - they suddenly became instruments of observation, mirrors instead of windows. Nikolai's sniper stare had a comparable quality, only it was perpetual, giving one the disconcerting impression that a black cross was hovering between your eyes whenever he fixed his on you.
"But I go and see these neo-Nazis in Russia and Italy," Nikolai continued, "I like these guys: they don't smoke" (I quietly extinguished my cigarette) "and take proper care of themselves." I wondered if Nikolai wasn't overestimating the importance of health and hygiene. "When I explain to them the new politics though, they understand very quickly how it is America which is the fucking problem. I go to Afghanistan with Italian army to do sniping," (the reason he was living in Italy) "and I have no problem killing fucking Muslims… but I don't particularly want to go there! I want to stay with my fucking wife and daughter, not fight American war to control heroin industry. I don't like American culture, music, film, or their fucking N***** president!"
"N*****"? "Killing fucking Muslims"! Cripes. I wondered if my hosts realised these were such casual constituents of this author's vocabulary (I presumed that, having sat on the fence during that whole Hitler business, the Swiss public would be impeccably PC). It seemed that a healthy lifestyle wasn't the only thing Nikolai shared with the neo-Nazis. I re-examined his tattooed skin; there didn't appear to be any swastikas or double headed eagles anywhere...
His politics weren't the only controversial thing about him either. Over the next 24 hours I heard whispers that his books had been ghost-written, rumours that he had fabricated his experiences, and reports that he had brought an assault rifle with him, which he kept up in his hotel room.
The following night, after his reading, I watched his manner change again, inviting further associations. He was walking about the festival marquee signing books and talking to the audience; accepting each compliment with a little bow that immensely accentuated the Oriental strain in his Siberian features - suddenly he was a Zen warrior on the make, a personification of conniving modesty.
I was told that he had spoken a great deal of Christ in the latter half of his speech and I was interested to hear about his own religiosity.
"I believe we are all sinners," he explained over dinner, eating and drinking with the delicate relish of a born Italian. "We are sinners because the flesh and blood are of sin. But this is ok, God knows this, He forgives us if we ask him to. Obviously if I was born somewhere else, I would be a different religion… But I think Christianity is the best religion in the world," he clasped a thick rosary in a tattooed fist, "because at its centre is forgiveness. The Muslims have none of this."
A friend at our table began to speak of her own religious childhood, how her parents had occasionally taken her with them to live in an Indian commune under the tutorship of a guru. To my surprise Nikolai had not only heard of the guru but could relate some allegations against him, along with similar bits of information about other Indian religious figures. He explained how he had spent time in India studying yoga and meditation, but had later rejected Eastern spirituality entirely. I was pleased to hear this peculiar Zarathustra had been on a pilgrimage to India (and also amazed - Nikolai was still only twenty nine); he seemed intent on single-handedly embodying Churchill's famous cliché about Russia: a killer wrapped in a Karamazov wrapped up in a clown.
"After Jesus Christ," he declared, "there is only one other guru in this world."
"Who's that then?" I asked.
"AK-47" he said, laughing again. "The best assault rifle in the whole world!"
Mrs Shakespeare, passing by our table, gave us both a funny look.
[top]
With thanks to Anna, Vanni, and the other hospitable Babelers.
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| A Multitude: Part 2 (tap here to go to Part 1) | #11
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| by Thomas In the meantime my ‘sponsor a schizophrenic’ programme had doubled in size, as I had recently hearkened to a second quiet summons for financial assistance. This fresh recipient of my reluctant generosity was a Rastafarian known locally as the Professor – a title used by some of the other streetdrinkers that alluded (I presumed) to his habitual expression of piercing wisdom (often worn by the chronically deranged), rather than any outstanding academic achievement. Professor had the look of an overstuffed mattress; a squat and meaty man with a small, curly beard, his clothes were uniformly black and densely layered, and he wore his thick dreads high in a similarly black, similarly bulging woollen hat. He was often sat beneath my window, staring silently out, occasionally rising to anoint each of the three bollards on the edge of the pavement with a sacerdotal splash of Orange Tango from his omnipresent plastic bottle. He never asked me for any money – in fact we never even spoke, until one evening I saw him on the top deck of one of those sodden Friday night buses coming back from Central London, a ship of fools rocking through the dark streets between Soho and Hackney. He was fast asleep, sat up in the aisle seat, with one somnolent hand resting on a (predictably stuffed) rucksack occupying the adjacent space. It was obvious that this was where the Professor slept, at least during the winter: circulating London on his bouncing bed until ejected at a distant depot lit by a glowing, chilly dawn. This moving vision was the kind of excuse our sentimental instincts long for. Like the majority of my colleagues at the callcentre – I didn’t give a penny to charity (the very suggestion could instigate a ripple of wicked chuckling through our offices). I was aware of this placing me in extreme spiritual peril, however, and was looking for the opportunity to correct it. The realm of Virtual Morality we were operating made me suspicious of corporate charity though: I suspected that any Karmic boon a philanthropic act might traditionally carry was probably jeopardised by the immense distance imposed between the giver and the receiver, and the necessary fiction thrown over the act itself (a fiction that covered the distance) might capture the good intention in its folds of Maya, irrespective of some small amount of money perhaps dribbling out into some distant actuality. So I didn’t give (had never really given) to charity. Until Cornelius that is, which was hardly satisfying. The Professor, however, seemed to offer the perfect opportunity to adjust the worrying imbalance… “Hey,” I said, the next time I passed him, “do you want something to eat, or some money or whatever?” “Irie Irie. I wouldn’t mind a beer,” replied the Professor, in a desiccated West Indian accent. I went to an off-license andbrought him back a can of Fosters. From then on in – and to my mild surprise – the Professor also became quite cocky. “Change for the poor, change for the poor,”he would croak whenever I walked by, grinning in a manner that struck me as the visual equivalent of the Cornelius Chuckle. And in truth, I couldn’t really afford the Professor, as Cornelius himself was getting increasingly expensive: he even seemed to have made some sense of my fairly irregular schedule. Whilst I still held out on giving Cornelius actual paper money, I was coming close, and doing so two, three and sometimes even four times a day. I figured that this escalating sponsorship at least entitled me to use him for a bit of research. To his credit, Cornelius was utterly accommodating... “So,” I asked him one afternoon, whilst dropping a fiercely haggled £3.50 into his open palm, “how much do you make a day, begging?” “Between one or two hundred quid.” “Not bad. And you spend it all on crack?” “Yeah.” I appreciated his frankness! And was also somewhat surprised by it. I wondered what it could signify – had the regularity of my gifts entitled me some kind of platinum service, a privileged transparency? Was I now even considered an investor, shareholder, or perhaps partner in this enterprise? “Irie Irie” sounded a familiar voice from behind my back. “Oh, hi Professor. I’m afraid I haven’t got any change today, I just gave it all to Cornelius,” I explained, gesturing to an empty space Cornelius had abruptly vacated. “Change for the poor, change for the poor.” “Ok, I’ll get some money out, come along,” the two of us trotted over to the cash machine. Whilst waiting for my money, I meditated on Professor’s bum deal. Here, after all, was the real thing – a bona fide homeless person in 21st Century England. He wasn’t a faker, and he wasn’taddicted to drink, crack or heroin; he was, instead, honest bonkers - surely the most blameless of the ailments that force people onto the streets. And compared to Cornelius (who had just minutes ago been flaunting his insatiable appetite for hard drugs, alongside an income that on a quiet day stood a good chance of making a tabloid headline) he got next to nothing. I didn’t want to denigrate Cornelius’s own tough circumstances on this plane of being, but how exactly wasI helping? I was cold bloodedly (and lucratively) facilitating a dangerous drug habit, one which would eventually, inevitably kill him, and certainly inhibited his soul’s effort to attain equilibrium in this troubled incarnation. And in its next intermediary state that soul would probably and quite correctly condemn me, while in its current complicated entwinement with the shell known as ‘Cornelius’ – it couldn’t give a shit. Flushed with this reasoning I decided to splash out, and strode out of the off-licence laden with two cans of Guinness, a BigBite packet of Walkers Ready Salted, a king-size Mars Bar, and a greasy little vegetable samosa. I left the Prof cradling these like a proud breeder of unusual puppies, muttering something about Babylon. What was it about Rastafarianism and schizophrenia? I wondered: Chicken or egg? On my way home I passed a Kingsland Road bookshop, in the window of which was a children’s book entitled Rasta Mouse, a cartoon depicting the adventures of the eponymous dreadlocked marsupial. It looked quite sweet, but I couldn’t help but concoct my own Rasta Mouse adventures… “Now Rasta Mouse,” asked the doctor, “how have you been finding those new antipsychotics we put you on?” “Irie Irie,” replied Rasta Mouse. A couple of days later I was sat on my windowsill watching the Professor anoint the bollards. Having shaken out thef inal drops of Tango, he trod heavily back to where he had been sitting, eased himself down, pulled out a mobile phone, and started listening to some reggae. I must confess to a small tingle of disappointment when I saw that my cause celebre owned a mobile. Granted that they were frequently referred to as a ‘necessity’, this only indicated how completely insane the country was. I could only assume that in ten years time every homeless person would own an iPod… A man passing by the Professor’s crossed legs suddenly stopped and did a double take. “Is that you Eddy?” he asked, flabbergasted.“What you doing here?” “You know, you know, just chilling and that.” “You still got that house in Jamaica? The one by the beach? I haven’tseen you since me and Jan came to stay. God it was beautiful.” “Yeah.” “You want to get back there mate, stop hanging around Dalston…” I was crushed. My flagship Good Cause was a property owner. Granted that he was off his rocker, and a different man to the gregarious Jamaican host of yesteryear (I watched the random acquaintance excuse himself with conspicuous haste – bumping into Eddy had obviouslynot been a heartening coincidence), he still had to have a damn sight more capital than me, his supposed benefactor. And Cornelius earned more than me too! The trouble with both was that they were insane. Or spiritually afflicted - I was happy to entertain the possibility that Cornelius was indeed ‘protecting Dalston from demons’ (with the Antichrist dwelling only half a mile away this probably was an especially demanding job –no wonder he needed so much crack-cocaine to unwind); and Christ himself had said that the ‘poor will always be with us’; if poverty was often a consequence of madness and ensuing incapacity, perhaps this was a divine dispensation, and there were certain psychological scapegoats needed to weather the full demonic onslaught on behalf of everybody else… Such considerations had a slightly Hindu quality – I had read that prostitutes in India used to receive gifts on religious holidays in gratitude for assuaging the population’s excess lust, which would otherwise be a dangerously disruptive force. Perhaps the farce of urban philanthropy could justify itself in comparable terms… That very night I went out drinking, and was sat smoking outside a bar on Kingsland Road when Cornelius approached me. “Look at this,” he said, immediately hoisting up his top to reveal a scrawny ribcage partly covered by a bandage. “My lung collapsed smoking crack. They had to put a needle in it.” I looked into his glittering brown eyes – they really did appear to be staring into two worlds at the same time. Well, I thought, better you than me… and opened up my wallet. The only thing staring back at me was a five pound note. It had been difficult, but up to that point I had resisted giving him any paper money. Doubtless I had come close a number of times, but actually giving him such a significant amount in that specific form had always struck me as unforgivable, a complete capitulation of common sense. This time however, on the winds of inebriated whimsy and the aforementioned meditations, I plucked it out and held it up to him. He swiped it out of my hand and disappeared. Forever. Although there are other possibilities to consider, the most obvious one is that I accidentally killed him. After all, the last time I saw him he had clearly been in a particularly precarious physical state. It was also many months before the clean-up of Dalston was inaugurated, the council methodically stripping residents of their protection from the wickedness which flows down Kingsland Road from the Maitreya’s clandestine throne. Should reincarnation be a reality, I anticipate having to answer to Cornelius’ shade directly.
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| A Multitude: Part 1 | #10
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by Thomas
“Charity covers a multitude of sins” – never was this more accurate as when applied to that charity fundraising callcentre I worked at. No mean sinner myself, my own character’s sizeable stains frequently paled beside the lurid technicolour splashes sported by many of my roguish colleagues. Were one to peel away our thin veneer of capitalist philanthropy, a multitude of sins is exactly what would greet the inquiring eye. Furthermore, the job itself inculcated callousness – we laced our calls with global suffering, creaming the top off the tear-froth whisked up by our bad art, while our own sensitivity was increasingly brutalised through the remorseless repetition of those tales of woe. Throughout my time as a charity fundraiser, my resident Dalston was renowned for its beggars (they have since been moved on inthe name of the area’s economic rejuvenation). My flat hangs over a street upon which many local derelicts used to congregate, and my girlfriend and I would frequently perch on the windowsill to observe the mediaeval soap opera unfolding yards below (those streetdrinkers and crackfiends were usually stinking, squelching hysterics, brimming with melodrama). We got pretty familiar with the participants in these daily performances, and those whose names weren’t discernible we replaced with our own inventions. Now, these beggars were my vocational cousins, and most had cultivated their very own pitch, which could often be successfully defined using the professional vocabulary of the callcentre. One of them, whom we had christened Pounder, sported a definite Hard Sell… Pounder was a short, muscular black man. He would catch the eye of his begee from the other side of the street, expand his own eyes in what looked like a combination of recognition and intense fury, and begin to pace towards them, pushing through the crowds on the pavement while vigorously swinging his thick arms. Casting uneasy glances over their shoulder, and tentatively increasing their pace, the victim of Pounder’s inexplicable attention is comparable to a Bedouin who, enthroned on a camel in an empty stretch of desert, suddenly sees a Hellfire missile emerge on the horizon. As it moves closer, the Bedouin, speculatively anticipating its trajectory in his mind’s eye, is nervously amused to note that it appears to beheading his way. Surely some mistake! He gives his camel an empirical prod, and has it sway a dozen yards to the right. But the missile tip (daubed with increasingly visible flames) also seems to adjust itself. Soon there is little time left – with his eyes screwed shut, a prayer on his lips and an ad hoc conclusion that there has been some mix-up (the harmless simpleton probably mistaken for a terrorist mastermind), our Bedouin is face to face with the screaming projectile.
It is at this exact moment, however, that his path converges with that of our begee, whose own blind prayer is interrupted, not by the anticipated hail of fists, but the bellowed request: “HAVE YOU GOT A SPARE POUND PLEASE!” Whilst Pounder’s specific method was nigh unforgettable (the engendered anticipation capable of springing panic attacks in successive reincarnations) one still required a good dozen exposures to itbefore being able to relax when you saw him begin his approach. From a critical perspective, however, Pounder’s Hard Sell has its flaws: the fear and relief he stimulates in his victim arguably outweighed by the victim's consequent desire to distance themselves from its author, rather than spend a few minutes applying trembling fingers to the sudden rubix cube of their wallet. His method had its female equivalent in Carol (real name). Carol used to traverse North East London like an Afro-Caribbean Antigone, a sobbing hurricane of indecipherable lamentations. These constantly threatened to overwhelm the embedded request for financial assistance; though her art consisted in never allowing them to quite do so. Carol sounded something like this: "AHHHHAHGTENPTENP..." Often, lying in bed at night, my girlfriend and I would hear her approach from a great distance, a disturbing gurgle that grew in volume until transforming our narrow street into a vortex of mourning. We would lie still and exchange a knowing, uneasy look, as if the Angel of Death itself were sweeping by en route to the London night. Even the verbose bums that gathered beneath our window would fall silent as Carol thundered by (clutching my own covers, I would envisage them turning a self-protective shoulder). The hallowed atmosphere would only crack when the cries had receded to a distant ominous frequency, and all of us (my girlfriend, myself and the streetdrinkers) would erupt in hysterical laughter. But I never gave Pounder or Carol so much as a penny. Cornelius, however, had subtly extorted a veritable salary from me preceding his sudden disappearance. To my mind his method is (or was) utterly unique. Now,the drug addict lives an existence that is surely the archetype of hand to mouth, perpetually sacrificing future months, days and even minutes on the alter of their present: what distinguished Cornelius’ method in my eyes, therefore, was its innate patience - and the concomitant temporal reach. Possessing quite cherubic features and of unimaginable age, every evening Cornelius would linger in his crack rags outside the local McDonald’s to petition the thinning crowds. “Spare any change?” he would ask, with an apparent absence of purpose or imagination. You barely even felt compelled to shake your head, let alone articulate the staple “sorry mate.” Like a ringing public phone booth, you were as free to not answer as to do so. It was here, however, that Cornelius surreptiously unveiled what transpired to be his coup de grace. “Alright,” he would say, utterly without resentment, “bless.” Every time. Now I don’t know exactly where my soul stashed these delicately distributed benedictions, but the mysterious receptacle soon began to overflow… A friend of mine downloads almost all his music, but when he comes across something a little bit special, in order to encourage and support the artist, he will actually purchase the record. Eventually, in order to encourage and support such noble begging practises, once or twice I similarly slapped a gleaming fifty pence piece into Cornelius’ humble palm. This was in appreciation of his polite (yet insidiously intelligent) method, and I blithely assumed that that would be that. But that was only the beginning; Cornelius had just been earning his pre-emptive inch. My supposition that his method would remain the same - and I would continue to be at liberty as to whether or not to answer the patiently thrumming phone - was far wrong. Cornelius next unleashed his second weapon. This consisted in his uncorking a wild warmth whenever he clocked my approach. You’d think I were a homecoming superhero, though his cries of celebration were usually accompanied by an odd chuckle, the sort that could feasibly accompany the discharge of a diabolical fork in a game of chess. “Alright mate,” Cornelius would now shout, “ha ha ha, give us a couple of quid.” “A couple of quid! You can have 50p.” “Pound fifty.” “50p.” “A pound.” “Fucking hell Cornelius. Alright a pound.” “Ha ha ha!” Before long I was scanning the street wheneverI left the house; but my pursuer had the eyes of a hawk. If I espied him on the other side of the road it always proved impossible to blend into a crowd orduck into a doorway without hearing that exultant chuckle. Occasionally I would muster up the will to refuse him (which was like trying to command an excitable stray to stop humping your leg) but this was only ever worth the trouble when it was an economic necessity – which was increasingly often: I was starting tof actor Cornelius into my daily budget, as when one takes a tip into account when pooling resources for a meal out. In fact, Cornelius never took refusals badly (and would more often than not habitually deliver a doleful “bless”), instead taking the opportunity to cultivate a greater intimacy than before. “So what’s your full name Thomas, middle name and all?” “Thomas Benedict McGrath.” “Where’s your dad from?” “My Dad’s Dutch.” “And your mum?” “German-Irish.” And so on. But this wasn’t just small talk. Two days later an all too familiar voice beckoned me in the following terms, “Hey,Thomas Benedict McGrath, your dad’s Dutch and your mum’s German-Irish.” I have read that the possession of someone’s full name can be exploited by a magician in a manner comparable to the possession of an intimate object. Now I would add to this that one’s parental heritage must be equally efficacious, because the combined cocktail in this unorthodox greeting made the proceeding requests impossible to refuse. Sensing this (or perhaps knowing it), Cornelius raised the stakes. “Do us a fiver.” “What! No way.” “Oh, go on.” “No.” “Yeah.” “No.” “Go on.” “I’ll give you two.” “Two-fifty…” And so on, me heckling for nothing in particular and steadily ceding more and more ground. During this time my girlfriend had also been seduced into Cornelius’ nebulous racket. Being a more sensitive and inquisitive soul than I, she returned home one afternoon having gleaned actual biographical information about our stealthy beggar: “It’s terrible – he was taken off his mum when he was little by social services, and then went from one awful foster home to another,” she reported. “By the time he was a young man he was schizophrenic, and convinced he was protecting the world from demons, which is about the time he started taking crack. And you’ll never guess how old he is – fifty four!” Somehow, someway, Cornelius managed to look at least twenty years younger… (click here to go to part 2) [top]
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| #9
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| [20/08/09]
by Thomas
The following passage is one often used in Judeo-Christianity to repudiate any belief in ghosts or reincarnation: "For the living know they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion in any [thing] that is done under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6). The Bible is very unusual in denying that ghosts exist, or that the dead can be contacted (Jesus describes a "great gulf" separating them from us), and it solemnly forbids any attempt to do so. Evangelical Christians see the countless apparently successful examples of necromancy as communications with demons, entities observing us at all time and therefore in possession of many of our secrets. But as Paganism reasserts itself in the modern age, such prohibited communications are becoming increasingly common…
Stopping for a pack of cigarettes at a cornershop a couple of weeks ago, my eye was caught by an inimitable Sun headline: 'JADE SPEAKS FROM THE GRAVE - MUM'S AMAZING TWO HOUR SESSION WITH PSYCHIC'. "Wot," thought I, snapping up the redtop, "Jade's mum actually shagged the psychic?" Sadly, I soon discovered that my Sun terminology was a bit rusty; that 'amazing two hour session' referred only to Jade's mum's (Jackie something or other) time channelling her daughter's ghost along with professional medium Jane. This phonetic correspondence between the story's three protagonists resulted in some very confusing sentences indeed: "again communicating with Jade, Jane revealed BISEXUAL Jackie had her daughter's seal of approval", for example. I was however rewarded with one of the most bizarre lines I had ever come across in my history of tabloid perusal:
Meanwhile Jade, through Jane, "offered advice" about a MUSICAL being planned to commemorate the life of the flamboyant TV gal.
It appears that from her eternal perch Jade is keeping a close eye on her posthumous career and cultural legacy, also sagely advising that her mother "reveal all" in an upcoming autobiography. Fear and Trembling would have preferred to interrogate Jade on her current feelings regarding that conspicuously last minute conversion to Catholicism. Was she making these career moves from purgatory? Or had she gone straight to Heaven as she publicly anticipated weeks before her demise? And if so - from her new vantage point did the world resemble one epic, endless episode of Big Brother?
The Sun concluded this classy piece of reportage by stating that "Six out of ten have used a medium or other psychic and nine out ten believe ghosts exist. Of more than a thousand readers polled, almost half claimed to have seen a ghost and 72% said they possessed some psychic powers." 72%! Of Sun readers! Had I been cruelly excluded from some recent collective leap in spiritual evolution? Or might regular Sun reading actually give people magical abilities? The article concluded with the topical observation that "psychics have seen a 40% rise in custom in the recession."
It does indeed seem that the national lumpen proletariat somehow manages to make space amongst the fags, beans and television for a spot of necromancy; the Christian era seems to have fallen off them like grease from a George Foreman Grill. Whatever next: automatic texting - 'Tell mum cant w8 2 c her again' and that sort of thing? One more frequently discovers Paganism rather than Christianity when scratching the Enlightenment surface of modern England. Perhaps the 'Old Religion' simply never went away…
Last weekend I found additional support for this theory when accompanying my girlfriend to Beverley (a charming little market town in Yorkshire) for a family wedding. It's all a bit "Ay-up Val, I saw your Graham's ghost t'other day" in Yorkshire - they practically set a place at the dinner table for the undead there (or rather purchase an extra container of sweet and sour chicken and chips). While in Beverley, I heard at least a dozen conversations about mediums, ghosts, spiritualists and out-of-body experiences, predominantly accompanied by a decibel defying soundtrack of Top Gear perpetually looped on digital television channel Dave. And when Dave finally did give Clarkson and the boys a rest, it was replaced with a show where mediums converse with the dead about subjects so prosaic it made Jade's interred thoughts on marriage and musicals sound like W.B Yeats' The Vision.
In his Metamorphoses, Ovid describes a marketplace in the underworld, where the dead can exchange news and gossip: if he wasn't referring to Beverley I'll eat my flatcap.
I almost forgot - there was also an outright sighting in the house I was staying in. Come to think of it, I had my first ouija board experience in neighbouring Selby three odd years ago. Impossible to describe the feeling when that crystal glass slid autonomously across my friend's living room table, taking three trembling fingertips with it in its wild and meaningless lurch between consonants (later it reverted to the clearer YES and NO option). Even this soon slipped into the prosaic, however. Our small group quickly ran out of portentous questions and reverted to outright small talk, my girlfriend even asking our visitor if "it did this sort of thing often".
But I was staggered it could be so easy to make contact with entities the vast majority of the world's leading intellectuals simply assume are sheer fantasy. It seemed reality could be turned upside down, as if it were as light as the wineglass we were using - and perhaps it really is, despite all the titanic efforts of rationality to fix it in place.
Yes, despite being middleclass I too suspect that this dimension is surrounded by clamouring ghosts or spirits or demons, though I do try to at least keep the Biblical admonition in mind: "Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out and be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God" (Leviticus 19:31). But then this was given long before we had important things like MUSICALS to think about…
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| #8
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| [14/08/09]
by Thomas
Theodicy is the attempt to metaphysically explain the existence of evil. Many religious traditions put it down to a God too busy, incompetent or indifferent to have eradicated it, which is at least consistent with the world we live in. But Judeo-Christian Theodicy is a tricky art indeed, as these religions testify to a Creator that is both omnipotent and morally perfect - in their traditions even the devil was both created and subjugated to the will of the deity (observe how, in the Book of Job, Satan has to get God's permission to torment the unfortunate protagonist). Of course, science scowls at this sort of nonsense - explaining that things have arisen through a circumstantial causality. But I've never been able to pay attention to practical, logical ideas - I have a very vague understanding of evolution (I don't buy it!) and that's about it...
I used to work at a call centre, fundraising for various charities. One particular campaign involved calling on behalf of Cancer Action, an English cancer research facility. We would phone occasional supporters to request that they allow Cancer Action to sink its teeth into their bank accounts, and suck out a sizeable monthly stipend (in other words, open a Direct Debit).
In the middle of one epic Sunday afternoon shift I found myself lent back on my swivel chair and staring up at the sky, when a middle-aged, well-spoken woman answered the phone. Having long ago surrendered conscious control to corporate auto-pilot, I launched into the call, thanking her profusely for her and her husband's previous support, and innocently inquiring what it was that had 'inspired' her household to support Cancer Action in the first place.
"Well," responded the woman's crisp voice, "obviously we know people who have suffered from the disease, plus my husband and I are both Christians, so we do try to support as many charities as we can."
"Of course," I responded (stifling a sympathetic yawn, and beginning to muse about the Christian attitude to disease), "and do you happen to know much about what we're up to at the moment? Or even keep up to date with the battle against cancer more generally?"
"Not really."
"Ok. It's actually a very exciting time for cancer research at the moment," I went on, in a morbid monotone, "as our scientists have recently become interested in molecules called integrins. Have you heard of these before at all?"
"No I haven't."
"Well," I sighed, limbering up for another recitation of the 'science bit' (as popularised in shampoo ads, but with cancer standing in for dandruff), "these are the molecules that help our cells to move around the body," I said, still staring out of the window and following my own thoughts, "but when God created cancer, He…"
"Excuse me," my interlocutor suddenly rapped out, "what did you say?"
Her question pulled me out of my trance, and I swiftly rewound my memory banks to find the answer: I was as surprised as she was to stub my toe against the offending words. I had obviously allowed my own chain of thought to bleed into the conversation! I would have to think very, very quickly. The woman clearly knew exactly what I had said, and wasn't going to be convinced otherwise. It was equally obvious I'd have little chance convincing her my comment was an accidental incursion of certain personal idiosyncrasies - her terse tone suggested she was convinced it was both premeditated and ironic. So far as I could see there was only one available course of action. I took a deep breath…
"I said: 'When God created cancer'," I repeated, enunciating the words with unmistakable clarity.
"How dare you!"
"I'm so sorry madam," I went on, "I thought I heard you say that you were a Christian…"
"That's right."
"Well then," I said, letting my voice grow in volume and piety, "don't we believe in one all-powerful God, the Creator of heaven and earth?"
"Yes but…"
"While our desire to excuse God for certain details in His creation is understandable, it is also a negation of His omnipotence, and a contradiction of scriptural truth. Christians are monists, not dualists. That is, creation is the perfectly realised intention of one divine intelligence, rather than a cosmic accident, or battle between competing forces. You are a Christian aren't you? Not a Manichean, Gnostic or Hindu?"
"No," she sheepishly conceded. It looked like I had successfully bamboozled her! All I had to do now was carefully follow it through...
"Right then, as I said: When God created cancer, He imbued it with a special kind of integrin, in order that it would spread satisfactorily - a clever touch He recently saw fit to reveal to our scientists…" Instinctively I glanced behind me, and discovered my colleagues and supervisor were all staring at me with opened mouths. The supervisor's finger was poised dangerously above a button on his desk, and I strongly suspected that, should he overcome his bemusement and plunge it down, the action would simultaneously cancel both my call and employment. I raised an uneasy thumb in his direction, accompanying it with a listless wink. "As I say," I continued, albeit with fresh haste, "God has seen fit to reveal these special integrins to our scientists, along with the possibility that we could develop a treatment that specifically targets them, effectively stopping cancer from growing and spreading" (the dandruff magically vanishes). "However, in order to develop this treatment we will need more regular support. Many believers have been able to help us with twenty pounds a month - could you manage this as well?"
The room held its breath - I watched the supervisor's finger twitch, ready to unleash the trap door. But (Hallelujah!) the lady found that she could manage it. Applause. Gasps. Slaps on the back. I entered her bank details with a flourish, a virtuoso concluding some sonata of notorious complexity.
But my moment in this tawdry sun soon passed, giving way to existential discomfort. Mightn't I have left something very important out? Mightn't I have accidentally gobbled up another perilous wafer…
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| #7
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| [09/08/09]
by Thomas
On a Saturday afternoon, outside the Kingsland Road train station, two lonely looking Communists habitually deck out a solitary table with books and pamphlets. These fellows have seen better days: the local proletariat flow by ceaselessly, laden with shopping bags, never once stopping to thumb through some weighty Stalin hagiography or Leninist tract. The decrepit Commies resemble two penguins stranded in the Bahamas after a hospitable Ice Age, blinking at the palms.
Even the anticipated collapse of global capitalism has failed to return the old murderous twinkle to their eyes, and if the opportunity did arise to execute some 'counterrevolutionary', I doubt they could summon the joie de vivre needed for pulling the trigger; those trigger-fingers anyhow long disabled filling out steadily thickening benefit forms…
Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, outside the entrance to the Kingsland Shopping Centre (the selfsame divine prism mentioned in my fifth post), local Muslims man three tables piled high with Islamic DVDs and pamphlets, the teetering stacks occasionally crowned with bird's eye pictures of the Hajj, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims throng about the numinous Kabba (probably the most popular cube in the world…ever!).
Passing the display last Christmas, I stopped to examine one of those breathtaking shots. A middle-aged black man in full Imam regalia shot me one of those nasty, austere glances.
Ever since Muhammad had his eureka moment in the desert 1400 years ago, sprang to his feet and founded a religion, Islam has spread all over the world, losing little of its supernatural potency during the intervening centuries. Yet Caucasians often appear immune to its appeal, somewhat awkwardly gesturing to Cat Stevens for the solitary example of the all-important Celebrity Endorsement.
Assuming that the Imam thought I was gazing through the picture's (gaudy) frame with aversion or satire, I smiled genially at him.
"This is the Kabba right?" I asked - shamelessly fishing for infidel brownie points (though a fat lot of good they'll do me if there really is 'no God but Allah').
"Yeah that's right," the man said, smiling back and stepping over. He didn't appear at all interested in turning me into Cat Stevens 2 (little realising what a coup it would be to convert the author of Fear and Trembling!), but seemed happy to engage with an infidel on something not pertaining to 'fakin terrists'.
"You been there?"
"Yeah. Amazing. Trouble is, lot of people get overexcited, and some get crushed and killed." His East London accent made it all sound like some precarious trip to EuroDisney.
"Oh well, at least you go straight to heaven…" (God I'm ingratiating.)
"Well," he replied with an odd little chuckle, "in Islam we have a saying…" he opened up his palms and raised his eyes to the grey sky, "En Sh'Allah - Allah willing!" There was something almost ironic about the gesture: this was a man not overly confident about the fate of his immortal soul.
It again struck me how this was one of the main doctrinal distinctions between Christianity and Islam. In the latter faith one subjugates oneself to a grueling moral causality in an attempt to avoid damnation, whereas in Christianity proper it is sola fide (faith alone), which can extricate the soul from the poisonous birthright of original sin. Luther even interpreted Judaic Law as a hammer with which God demonstrated our inability to adhere to even the simplest commandments (an inability arguably testified to by the Imam's nervous irony).
A few weeks later, passing by the Muslim stall one evening on my way home, I saw my affable new friend in an entirely different mode. A small crowd had gathered around him, which included a young black woman in her early twenties. Her face was tearstained, her expression wrought as childbirth. My friend was addressing her in an intense loud voice devoid of anger. I stopped and listened.
"What I'm telling you to do," he shouted, fixing her with two wide eyes and one rigid forefinger, "is check our scripture against the Christian one, look at what the prophets say, look at when they said it, compare our dates with theirs, and see which is more historically accurate. We have the same prophets, the same origins, so look and see which is more credible."
Having served time in various call centres, I recognised the man's state. He was in the full throes of rhetorical inspiration; his will confidently fixed on closing the deal. But whereas I had only been convincing the feeble-minded to insure their appendix or sponsor a new carpark, this man was wise to a weakness in the girl's very soul, a weakness invisible to the lay eye. It was also interesting that he was appealing to her rationality: I didn't doubt that the similar (and probably stronger) arguments of an atheist would have none of the same impact. The girl's tortured expression was the rare grimace of conversion, as - beneath the banner of the same Abrahmic deity - her soul was pulled towards a new moral metaphysic, a new method of breaking into heaven…
Throughout this spectacular the fashionistas sauntered by with utter indifference: for some time the West has been dabbling with the idea of sinlessness, laying siege to stubborn Eden, and from these haughty faces you'd almost think the walls had been successfully stormed. In the near distance I could make out the ethereal echo of a Christian street choir softly protesting their salvation - Dalston had become quite Byzantian!
I crossed the road, where the Communists were refilling their solitary box. Both afforded me a vicious look. Almost clairvoyant that, the ideologue's instinct for silent blasphemy…
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| #6
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| [29/07/09]
by Thomas
During their Eucharist, Catholics believe that bread and wine are transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ (what they call the 'Miracle of Transubstantiation'). Partaking of this metamorphosed snack is meant to bestow an unspecified portion of grace - that is, a partial remission of sins. I hesitate to bore readers with the theological significance of this audacious deviation from scriptural Christianity, besides indicating that the process appears to be little less than an Occult magical ritual. And if one were compelled to ascribe a pigmentation to this magic, it would have to be black (the definition of which depends on whether the ritual is done for personal gain - such as having that lustful or glutinous thought scratched off the divine receipt).
These strange preoccupations of mine naturally complicated my attendance of my eight year old sister's first Holy Communion the other week, especially as I had long ago been designated the girl's godfather!
Does anyone recall the sinister ITV programme Kids Say the Funniest Things? I saw about ten minutes of it when I was quite young, and have never been able shake off the memory. The premise was this: Michael Barrymore coaxes children into talking about sex before a studio audience of cackling grannies. This was always a delicate operation, and ITV were no doubt grateful for Barrymore's innate tact and fine judgment; while the grannies joyfully lapped up any references to stalks or seeds, there was always the danger of stunning them into appalled silence should one of the youngsters innocently relate an accidental peak at the Primal Scene, or have too precocious an understanding of the biological facts Barrymore and friends were so gleefully reeling around.
A first Holy Communion reminds me a bit of this, but with religion (or ritualistic magic) standing in for sex, and a sixty year old Irish virgin standing in for Michael Barrymore (whom in recent years the Vatican has managed to make look something of a moralist).
The paradox hinges on the fact that, to justify its involving children in ritualistic practice, the Vatican makes some show of requiring proof of their 'sufficient understanding' before bequeathing its Most Holy Eucharist. But participation in a magical ritual requires the suspension of disbelief alone. For adults this may be a matter of 'faith', but for children it is of course not so difficult. It is the absence of understanding that makes them such ideal initiates.
Nevertheless, at my sister's communion, the priest was compelled to haul one of the initiates before the altar, and have the boy demonstrate to the congregation the 'understanding' supposedly imparted to the children during a succession of special Sunday school classes at the local convent.
The best the lad could do was rattle off the bare bones of Noah's Ark, which had never sounded more like a brutal children's story. Once we had again heard how all the lions and badgers and ostriches had tottered onto the boat, and God was ready to wipe out everything else, the priest nodded solemnly (obviously satisfied with the boy's adequately muddied reality principle) and allowed him to return to his family's teeming pew.
As for my sister, she was under the very vague impression that she was somehow "marrying Jesus", and the impending wedding had easily taken the usual firm precedence over the marriage. Had she been summoned to give a similar account of her religious knowledge, she would have probably concluded there had been some amusing mix-up, the church accidentally double booked, and that this explained why such an inelegant old man was hosting a junior beauty pageant.
Earlier that day I had done my level best at fulfilling my assignation of godfather by raising my conjecture that the Catholic Eucharist was perhaps some kind of occulted heresy, but even this racier perspective failed to make any more impact than the nuns' orthodox efforts.
"A good thing too!" my mother exclaimed when I lamented her daughter's lack of religious sensibility, "did you want an eight year old eating that wafer and worrying she was angering God?" By this point my mother was obviously regretting giving the gig to the one family member odd enough to take these things at all seriously.
Throughout the service the priest frequently covered up his light entertainment grin with the standard theatrical poker face, correspondingly changing his tone from wooden condescension to basso solemnity. He was one of those priests that quite readily resorted to sporadic acapella ("in the u-u-unity of the ho-o-ly spir-ir-it"), which constantly threatened to fully elicit the smothered smiles of our astonished non-Catholic guests. By this point these were already giving us funny looks, as if we had revealed ourselves as members of a belly-dancing cult of Elvis. Or Scientologists.
Prior to the actual Eucharist the priest lined up the initiates in front of the alter facing the congregation. The miniature Bridezillas of Christ emanated waves of gratified narcissism, occasionally exchanging the thin-lipped smiles of bitterly competitive beauty queens; the boys were just twisting mindlessly on the spot (although one, with the bee-stung features indicative of serious learning difficulties, was wrestling awkwardly with his tie).
The priest initially addressed his little platoon in the Barrymore voice, throwing his real audience the odd glance over the shoulder to underscore some inevitable wink or nudge. Once the preliminary niceties were over, however, he began to allow a tablespoon of melodious solemnity to seep into his tone. He explained to the children how, when they were baptised ("and quite rightly, because you were only babies," he cooed) their parents had made "certain promises and commitments" (serious and sonorous here) on their behalf; now they had reached the grand old age of eight the time was ripe for them to pick up the existential slack. By this point his voice was pure tremulous severity, ready for the series of heavy promises the children were expected to make in unison. These culminated in a barnstorming:
"DO YOU REJECT SATAN AND ALL HIS WORKS?"
"NO!" rejoined the boy with learning difficulties.
The sudden introduction of Satan came as some surprise (though in some deep reach of my own past I had obviously made the same daunting vow). What "works" did the priest mean to refer to? Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen? The Papacy? It was impossible to tell.
I was still pondering this when it became time for the congregation to 'make the sign of peace'; that is, limply shake your neighbour's hand while mumbling 'peace be with you'. Up to this point a second cousin of mine had been quite out of step and sorts. Coming from a wholly secular side of the family, he had never attended a Catholic Mass before, and had no knowledge of the demanding choreography (sit down, stand up, kneel, sing, chant etc) remembered in the very nerves of a Catholic.
But now I could see him shaking a neighbouring old woman's hand with renewed confidence and even joy.
"May the force be with you! May the force be with you!" he repeated with each vigorous shake of the confused granny's tiny palm - under the sincere impression that George Lucas had borrowed the famous catchphrase from the One True Faith.
When the time came for the communion itself, I was in the absurd position of having to accompany my sister to the altar alongside my mother. As if this wasn't bad enough, with one funny, stern look from the priest, I gobbled up one of those magical/blasphemous/blessed/just-plain-wheat wafers myself! Religious habits quite clearly die the hardest of all.
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| | #5
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| [20/07/09]
by Thomas
Another (hopefully final) bus update. It would appear that many Christians feel the same way I do about the rather blasé tone of recent evangelical propaganda. Last Saturday I espied the latest addition, which gingerly attempts to reassert the traditional tone of Christian proselytising: "LIFE IS SHORT," it declares, "ETERNITY ISN'T. CHOOSE CHRIST TODAY." Disappointingly, they softened this solemn message by allowing some heathen graphic designer to embed it in pallid primary colours. I'd have preferred pure white lettering on a black background, with a few feisty flames licking (and perhaps even singeing) the bottom of the words. Within minutes of seeing this proclamation, and as if to consolidate my conviction that the London bus has become the very crucible of metaphysical struggle, two more rolled by advertising new Hollywood releases: Drag You to Hell and Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen. Quite why the producers of the latter flick (crafted exclusively for children and simpletons) felt it necessary to douse it in Gnostic symbolism is a mystery too ominous and surreal to even contemplate.
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But the invigorating sense our spinning rock was in fact a plane of Manichean combat was soon spoilt by the Christian rappers that perform on Kingsland Road every Saturday afternoon.
"Yo yo yo, big up Kingsland Road sinners!" hollered one young man during a musical interlude, giving his trite rhymes a rest for the sake of a more traditional form of preaching. "Who do you think made these buildings?" he implored, gesturing at the Kingsland Shopping Centre. "Well," he added, presumably realising that it was very likely the handiwork of builders, "the bricks that made the buildings. Or the elements that made the bricks…"
Was this very large Matalan and Sainsbury's hybrid an appropriate prism through which to contemplate the divine? I suspected that it was more likely to prompt meditation in the Gnostic/Transformers vein - the Gnostic famously derides the material world as the work of a malevolent or incompetent deity, just as the Kingsland Shopping Centre is clearly the work of a malevolent or incompetent architect.
Many Fundamentalist Christians see Gnosticism as intrinsically Satanic (hence the Miltonic resonance of Revenge of the Fallen), and furthermore that this evil theology has utterly pervaded the institutions of global power. Which brings me to this week's earthshaking revelation (albeit one I have borrowed from those very Fundamentalists): Barack Obama is a Satanist. As I have admitted, that type of Christian does tend to think this about almost everybody. However, besides his worldly sway and preternatural charm (nothing gets a Fundamentalist's back up like charisma), President Obama does have the disconcerting habit of 'flicking the horns' at significant public functions. Even Michelle seems intent on surreptiously unveiling the diabolical combination of index and pinkie in various high profile photo shoots (carefully observe my accompanying snaps). Now I'm willing to give the King and Queen of the world the benefit of the doubt; they might just be big metal fans; or conducting an elaborate wind up of the Bible Belt; or perhaps these sinister gestures are just the innocent shapes accidentally made by idle hands… But on the off chance that these Christians are correct, I felt a responsibility to research the cult on behalf of my readers.
This entailed reading the short, ridiculous and badly written volume, Satan Wants You by Arthur Lyons.
It seemed logical that Satanism must presuppose the existence of the Christian deity, and therefore salvation, heaven and hell also. Difficult as it is to understand why someone would be so contrary as to throw their support behind the self-styled Father of Lies, the idea of someone consciously endeavouring to guarantee themselves a spot in the lake of fire was quite inconceivable. Surely these preconceptions would be overturned as I learned more about satanic dogma?
Not exactly. The majority of Satanists believe in hell all right, and are certain of it being their only posthumous destination. But here's the secret - they won't be tethered to those everlasting spits: they'll be turning them. Imagine suddenly realising, right in the middle of another day's suffering, that it's President Obama smilingly overseeing your afternoon's torture. I'm so stereotypically smitten by Barack that I'd probably still manage to slavishly mumble (while another blister melts into the eternal fire) something about it being "a great honour". Yuck. Now I can sort of see how this sort of vocation might appeal to the obsessive sadomasochist. To some extreme individuals a month in hell might well make for a tantalising prize on a peculiar scratchcard. But surely even the hardiest degenerate (I'm thinking of Camden Town in the mid 90s) would go a little pale at the thought of spending hundreds of thousands of years keeping a subtropical torture chamber running smoothly.
I can only assume that, if Satan has roped in somebody as classy as Obama into the scheme, that the ultimate aim is far grander. Maybe Transformers II contains some significant hints - I may have to join the children and simpletons at the local Odeon to find out…
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Iain Sinclair
| #4
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| [13/07/09]
by Thomas
ON TUESDAY I interviewed Iain Sinclair, Hackney's resident White Wizard. I was, to say the least, somewhat nervous about it. After all, this is a writer whose London Orbital is adorned with a quotation from the late JG Ballard, in which the seer of Shepperton asserts that Sinclair's book (a fabulous document of his counterclockwise hike around the M25), will "still be read in fifty years time"! That's fifty years of Ballard time - a pretty rough passage, you feel, for the internet, let alone English prose. London Orbital thoroughly deserved the voluminous praise heaped upon it, a work in which Sinclair shook reality so hard that it alchemically transformed itself into fantastical fiction, revealing a territory both proximate and alien, and delivered in exhilarating prose that frequently attains the preternatural shimmer of truly great writing. This Saturday, at London festival Occulture, Sinclair will be introducing the accompanying film with which he documented that inspired expedition, and I seized the opportunity to meet him.
My introductory email would be my first notable obstacle to achieving that end, however. Almost every word (including some of the commonest little monosyllables) found itself cut, pasted and plunged into an online dictionary; distinguishing between there, their and they're unveiled itself as a Derridean riddle: my English had become a panic tongue, a fourth language hastily acquired by the tourist-victim of a Mexican miscarriage of justice. Eventually, the bland little missive was ready, and I dispatched it with a tentative tap (or spasm) of the mouse. Within seconds a response was embedded in my own inbox - Sinclair breezily accepting my agonised invitation to lunch. Beneath his reply was the initial invite, which I fruitlessly checked over one last time. It began: "Dear Ian" (sic). I clamped a knuckle between my teeth and prepared for the worst…
I met Iain at a Turkish café in his adopted Hackney, the London borough in which he has lived for over four decades but only recently colonised in prose with the latest contribution to his weighty oeuvre, the surprisingly voluptuous Hackney, that Rose Red Empire. His imminent appearance at Occulture gave me the wonderful excuse to ask him all about his association with esotericism and the occult; along with authors like Yeats and Burroughs, Sinclair is part of a tradition of celebrated modern writers for whom the supernatural is a fact (albeit a complicated one). It was interesting to learn that, as with both Yeats and Burroughs, Sinclair also identifies childhood experiences as responsible for demarcating a reality broader than the narrow box most inherit.
In person, Sinclair, like his prose, exudes benevolent mischief, little resembling the languid intellectual captured in footage and photograph. He spoke about topics ranging from the occult to the Olympics, and even addressed (with pleasing spontaneity) some of issues touched upon in this very blog.
(ME) JG Ballard appears in the film and book of London Orbital. He was a very vocal exponent of your work, and I was wondering what he made of the esoteric motifs that run through it…
(SINCLAIR): I imagine he ignored them. His take on the world was his take on the world and other people's worlds were interesting in as much as they were kind of refractions of things he was interested in himself. He certainly responded to the whole notion of the landscape of the edge lands of London as revealed in the film because that was exactly his whole territory - although this was coming from a very different angle. And the madness of my walking through it, which is something he would never have contemplated, interested him because one of his great themes was the obsessive and satanic nature of Moby Dick. Moby Dick was one of his great markers. That book, and this sort of Ahab- like tramping around this orbital landscape, was really appealing to him, so it was sort of like a combination of Moby Dick and Ballard.
How do you think he interpreted obsession, from a Freudian perspective?
Yes I think largely he did. His whole work in a sense was about psychosis. It was about early fractures in his own life, the breakdown he saw of the English version of colonialism that he'd grown up in, and then the England he arrived back in, which he always said was like coming from a colour movie and into a black and white newsreel, and feeling estranged from it and having to come up with devices that could energise a world of boredom and greyness. And the subversive strategies he adopted were obviously incredibly effective
Do you think he would have interpreted your esoteric motifs as examples of 'subversive strategies'?
I think he read me with a sense of difference, along with a sense of its parallel, sympathetic nature to what he was doing himself. He didn't want to engage with the inner city at all. He didn't like the inner city, didn't like the old buildings, he didn't want to be part of that. So someone doing that was interesting as a sort of alien species. And the way I wrote was so different to the way he wrote, that stripped forensic style, that again he was interested in it for its difference. But then when we got to know each other best I would sort of move into his territory and discuss things within his sphere of interest.
Did you ever try to discuss things from your own territory?
No. I mean I found him strangely like a version of Sir Les Patterson; very, very genial, very civilised, very friendly and generous in all his dealings. In a sense you felt he was like a being from another time or another world. I was just very happy to listen to him and gather up little fragments from his memory banks.
I was curious, because another writer he was very interested in was William Burroughs, with whom he must also have been confronted by many beliefs he would have had to completely 'ignore'.
I think Michael Moorcock introduced him to Burroughs very early on. He saw Burroughs very much as a kind of version of what he did himself. But they couldn't really get on in personal terms because they were both so strange. His writing was much closer to the way Burroughs writes than to the way I write. When I first knew his work I felt him very much to be a sort of English Burroughs, in that he was dealing with a kind of deep-in-the-bone satire and misogyny and darkness, but then as time went on I think he moved away from that and they became quite separate. But they both had that stoic humour; they both trained as doctors and gave up on it. Ballard by the end was sort of making his own mental prognosis of a culture - and Burroughs had become this Zen outlaw figure, stepped away from the word and into image, dream and ritual practise.
You met Burroughs, did you find him as taciturn as he was purported to be?
Well I had dealings with him from very early on, and corresponded with him when I was a teenager, then published him in Ireland, and was going to do a film with him, so I knew him a bit in that period. But then he went into Scientology and I lost touch with him. I didn't meet him again until he was pretty old and living in Kansas, and by that time he was totally detached, we didn't have a conversation where I felt he was present at all. It was fascinating to see him, to be with him, but he wasn't there. But Ballard was there and was somebody you could have a friendly relationship with in a way you never could with Burroughs. If you fell within his circle of disciples you could have a kind of relationship of power with Burroughs, but otherwise not. Whereas a lot of people had good friendly relations with Ballard as long as it was on his terms.
You mentioned Burroughs going over to Scientology. What did you make of that?
I though it was an interesting process for him, and provoked metaphor for lots of stuff in his writing. For me it was completely deranged and extreme, but I could see why he'd want to do it, and I had a lot of sympathy with him going there, even though it was completely inconvenient because we were trying to start a film at that point and he just completely lost interest.
Scientology's very interesting. This pseudo-scientific mask covering an esoteric system…
Yes with L Ron Hubbard as this sort of science fiction writer, super-galactic conman character with the boat and the slaves and this notion of the occult. The cult aspect of the occult.
Do you see the connection between demagoguery and magic as intrinsic?
I think it is, from my experience of the nature of the practitioners. Apart from, say, someone like Alan Moore, who is not at all a demagogue, but is a pretty full-blown magical practitioner, and that's one of the most important elements of his work. I just got yesterday morning The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, this comic he's doing, in which a fictional character, an alter-ego of mine called Norton, appears, drawn to look like me - or sort of a mad Nazi dentist or something - spouting this occult loaded madness in a comic strip! Like a parody of aspects of my writing. But Alan's engagement with magic doesn't seem to be in any way about personal power. In a sense it's more to do with some deep engagement with Northampton.
That's the distinction between white and black magic, the former you don't practise for the sake of personal gain…
Well Alan Moore sounds quite dark, to do with summoning particular demons and entities, but it can also seem really quite white in its nature, to do with natural forces and place and the nature of place; it's not to do with making magical entities work for him in other worlds.
Did you become interested in the occult through the Beats?
Well, occult is such a blanket term, it has aspects I was interested in through my family in Wales: my mother's side of the family were very interested in things that sound almost shamanic or magical you know, in terms of superstitions and the sense of the dead being ever-present and all those things, and rituals to do with horses' heads being dug up. All of that stuff was very familiar, all of that theatrical canopy was part of my childhood, so it seemed a natural thing rather than anything else. But this is to do with white magic, earth magic, and the druidic aspect, all of that stuff. And then looking into London and what was the nature and cultural make-up of London and its mythology you inevitably move into those areas, in terms of the nineteenth century of the Golden Dawn, Crowley… (recording indecipherable)
Then in the 60s and 70s, around that era, combined with a lot of the stuff that came out of the counterculture, earth magic and Carlos Castaneda, you know a lot of that was floating about. And then the whole thing cycles round to come back in a very different form in the aspect of politics. I began to see Thatcherite politics as a kind of black magic. But this is a metaphor as much as anything. I don't mean she actually sat around looking at a skull, although metaphorically she did, and then I think it became a battle in that sense, a battle for the city, for the soul of the city.
Do you see politics broadly as an esoteric realm?
No I see it as a profound unreality and one that's falling apart in front of our eyes. A projection that had no basis in reality, it was a mind game that involved a lot of symbols and mind control in terms of advertising and brain washing; all kinds of techniques that were essentially occult were used. But it fell apart - it wasn't real, it wasn't genuine, it wasn't about anything, there was no content. And it's quite interesting how it just dissolved and disintegrated in front of our eyes. The other thing is that a lot of the magical practises we're talking about are covert, esoteric, secret. You don't necessarily have to know these aspects in Yeats or something, but there it is, he's doing it and it only emerges later that it's the source of his poetry. Whereas in the political world it has to be totally visible, in theory, so there's a real schizophrenic bite there. They are calculating ways to hypnotise the masses, and at the same time they have to appear to not be doing any of the things that they are doing.
What do you make of the recent popularity of books regarding atheism and this whole debate?
Yeah, the adverts on the busses about God and all that; I thought, 'why are you fighting this campaign in this particular forum'. It's like a version of reality TV, it seems an argument in the wrong place. And then the other aspect are these enormously successful things like Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and all of this which are a Xerox of the real material, so far down the line from their sources that they become massively successful. That's the process in the world where you copy something, and copy it again, and copy it again and it loses its bite, but achieves a kind of formulaic, simple-minded version which appeals massively. People are interested in the underlying things, but they're getting them through the pre-chewed, pre-masticated form. And it works gigantically, you look at any of these massively successful things and then you go back always four steps to get to something where it's originally from.
But the success of all these books - The God Delusion, The Da Vinci Code - reflects people's underlying interest in these topics….
Yeah. It's clearly a deep thirst for an advance into new territory. But it comes from study and practise and a lot of other things which are done by yourself. You can't sort of dip into some easy guide and have it all done for you.
Did the composition of your last book entwine you more with Hackney or did you finally extricate yourself from the area?
In the short term it entwined me much more, because I got very much drawn into taking part in all the stuff that's going on here. Four nights a week, solidly, from February to now, I've just been doing stuff locally. Dozens and dozens of people have come with the projects they're doing and wanted me to see them or contribute to them. So in a sense it ultimately involved me more in the area. But in other senses I feel I would now like to disappear into the landscape and keep well clear of it.
But you can't now…
I mean, we're not going to win. Whatever it is I'm writing about will be comprehensively wiped out by what's happening. The whole of Dalston Lane is going to disappear into this kind of Barratt monolith, and around Morning Lane around Ridley Road. So I think people will become much more fragmented, and the lines of energy which I talk a lot about will be broken up. I think the whole psychology of Dalston is going to become much more neurotic, nervous and dangerous.
I live there…
Good! Good! That makes it interesting.
Do you think the Olympic Committee is it a malevolent force?
I think so. Big time. I think they were so mendacious that a level of malignancy has been embedded into the system. In the same way that now the whole kind of nonsense with the MPs and their swine-like behaviour that's supposedly minor- 'it's all within the body of the law' blah blah blah - but unveils a system of double standards, greed, madness …and with the Olympics it's is the same thing but on a vast, vast scale. And at a time of financial meltdown it's economic insanity for a kind of folly of a project that involves huge expulsion of so much which is of value, and the destruction of the whole kind of environment, to present something that is totally unreal and only for a very short space of time. And all that's left behind is what? A sort of monstrous shopping mall, like Westfield in Shepherd's Bush.
Have you taken much interest in the aftermath of the Beijing Olympics?
Yeah I have. I haven't been there but I've talked to a few Chinese people. It's moderately grim and in places like Athens it's very grim, a total disaster. They've got these huge stadiums totally unused and just rotting, rotting away. They can't afford to keep them up and there's no use for them. They're going to be paying them off for the next fifty years, and the break up in Greek society, with young people taking to the streets and feeling really, really disaffected, is all very much to do with what happened with the Olympics, and all the debts that have been incurred to push through with this grand project that only revealed this moral bankruptcy and left this catalogue of ruins. The only way it works is if you incorporate the games into structures that are already there, which can be done and to some extent if they had gone to France that would have happened.
Where does the motivation come from?
That's interesting. It's in part the hubristic sense that you still have it, you're the equal of China, you're still a player in the majors, when in fact you're not - you're a kind of offshore airstrip for the Americans. Politicians love these ceremonies, if you go back to Berlin in 1936 - that's really what it's about, the occult business of carrying the Olympic torch. You want something occult that's it, that's a kind of major public occult ceremony.
I liked your description of Thatcher's immediate deterioration upon leaving office as indicating that she had been sort of unhooked from some black magical power source…
We created her as much as she was psychically tapping on our bad will. All the bad will around was focussed on her, a sort of Metropolis robot creation, the ugliest thoughts and aspirations of the whole country, which gave her that dynamic and insane energy. And as you say, when she's unhooked she kind of crumbles away like an old mummy.
What do you make of Blair's recent bouncing good health, he seems very well?
He looks like a vampire; he was always a freakish, cartoon creation that was always grinning and bouncing, but again with zero content. Then he buys into the Catholic Church, he's like a Dan Brown character.
And what would be his esoteric archetype?
I'm not sure which one, but he definitely is from that territory. Much less powerful than Thatcher, but maybe he was just in the spirit of his own times. He's a chip, a kind of virtual fragment; he doesn't really exist at all, there's so little there. And he also had the sense to get off screen before it all really hit the fan, leaving this sort of lumbering, material creature - Brown - to pick up the flack for him.
It looks now a bit as if Blair was some sort of protective shield around the government, and in his sudden absence they're completely exposed.
Well he does confirm this idea that politics is a totally occult practise. You jumble all the elements together, create this shining, sort of hermaphroditic figure who just carries it all and then you remove him and everything's wiped out and you start again. All these other figures like Cameron and Clegg are just clones of Blair, they're the same thing, but it doesn't quite work yet because they've got almost too much content. But [Blair] began to look quite ill towards the end...
I thought that Iain might be interested in the Maitreya saga I discussed in my second and third posts. After the interview was over I switched off the recorder and (with a flick of the nose and my best off the record voice) began to tell him about Share International, Benjamin Crème and the Brick Lane messiah. By the time I was finished the mild curiosity in his eyes was completely extinguished; it was as if I'd just 'broken the news' that Princess Dianna was dead.
"Yes, I've written about that story," he explained.
"Oh. Where?"
"I think it was in White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings."
"Ah. I haven't read that one. And you know that he supposedly lives in Brick Lane?"
"Yes of course - the entire book's about the area."
Naturally! So I recommend readers interested in further information and analysis of the Maitreya phenomenon look to the aforementioned title.
Sinclair disappeared with the same speed with which he arrived, departing with such haste that I forgot to ask him to scribble in some of the titles I had crammed into my rucksack, which then may as well have been full of bricks so far as my walk home was concerned - my stroll back to the 'neurotic, nervous and dangerous' (if impeccably fashionable) Dalston.
Iain Sinclair appears at Occulture this Satuday the 22nd of May. Hackney, that Rose Red Empire is published by Hamish Hamilton.
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| #3
| Russel Brand & Pascal (could have been such great friends)
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| [05/07/09]
by Thomas
SO WHAT type of rough beast might we expect to have been born in Brick Lane? Under the impression that the Emperor's New Postcode (momentarily disregarding Dalston's recent usurpation) was in fact only a fatuous cloak for some apocalyptic prelude, I travelled down there last Wednesday evening. I was looking for a fissure in its diabolical disguise - some pentagram, caduceus or purposeful goat - but beside the bursting pink and white blossom that decorated the surrounding suburbs, the area (at least beneath its modern patina of 'fashionability') was in fact uniquely bereft of spiritual or magical vitality. I could only dimly speculate that evil festers and thrives in the dead zones where the modern heart beats weakest. Bewildered, I staggered about for the best part of an hour without any indication that it was anything but the most consummate of disguises - or perhaps an elaborate, meaningful joke. As I neared the area I did begin to come across a graffiti motif, a thoughtful looking fellow with long hair, stencilled in spotted silver paint and accompanied with pseudo-spiritual slogans such as GODLOVE. These thickened around Brick Lane itself - could they be the handiwork of a subterranean hipster Maitreya cult? I feared that I was clutching at straws. My expedition was looking hopeless.
Eventually I stopped for a coffee. As I sipped it outside a café on a grim patch of E1 pavement, a bus serendipitously passed by; although there was no Maitreya visible on the top deck, bent in thoughtful perusal of that day's London Lite, the bus itself boasted the latest theist retort to the Atheist Society's humanist propaganda campaign (discussed in my first post). This one came courtesy of the Russian Orthodox Church: "There is God", it declared, "Don't worry. Enjoy life". The unfortunate resemblance of this message to the preceding Christian response (the peppy little "There definitely is a God - so enjoy your life and join the Christian party") certainly ranks as one of the smaller historical consequences of the Great Schism, but the potential benefits of greater communication were easy to discern. Unless the quintessentially Russian omission of the definite article was intentional - perhaps as an obscure allusion to the Ontological Argument - it would appear that the Eastern Church has fallen into the common trap of putting excessive faith in the appropriately named Babelfish (last year I came upon a Tenerife menu offering English-speaking patrons the delicious delicacy: 'Turkey gizzard and fun spaghetti' - at least I presume this was lost in translation, though perhaps they were just trying to lighten up the turkey gizzard).
Grateful as I am to the Orthodox Church for pitching in - especially as it gives my blog the dizzying flavour of mediocre prophecy - what is it with all this "don't worry" business? What kinds of tipples are served at the seemingly oxymoronic "Christian party"? One need not be Pascal to find the blithe tone somewhat incongruous. In the Twelfth Century an infinitely sterner theological tradition begat a frightening little volume called entitled Hortus Deliciarum, a book that ranks the supposedly benign joys of gardening as a danger to soul only marginally milder than classics like fornication (incidentally, I am currently trying to rehabilitate this underused word, as it could potentially give things a novel ring, 'Fornication and the City', for instance, sounds wonderful). The Atheist Society might like to consider an amusing and unanswerable retaliation to its two opponents by plastering some more buses with the ironical slogan: "There is a hell - now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
The English Religious Renaissance requires a tautening of the soul's bow; not further reckless relaxation. I think that in this age of enduring (if precarious) wealth, only a dose of mediaeval severity is capable of curing the English of their endemic fatuousness, and the concomitant self-disgust that suffocates its possibility of noble or poetic existence. Will my generation really offer history no more than its current dismal little platter of indie bands and graphic designers? If so, then - irregardless of its slight though tantalising possibility of veracity - the purported residence of a demonic avatar in an area currently renowned for its 'creative' hairdressers is a powerful and apt symbol. "It is a monstrous thing to see," writes Pascal, "in the same heart and at the same time, this concern for the most trivial of matters and this lack of concern for the greatest. It is an incomprehensible form of bewitchment and a supernatural torpor which is a proof of an all-powerful force that causes it."
I walked home with my empty hands disconsolately wedged in my pockets, and again passed one of those stencils. I scrutinised it again. Could it be the Maitreya? I tilted my head. It certainly resembled somebody, though perhaps not the man whose photograph accompanied my last post. I looked hard into the thoughtful expression, the piercing eyes, the guru-long hair… Russell Brand. It looked a lot like Russell Brand. Could he in fact be the "rough beast", an anti-Christ propagating peace, vegetarianism and free love? Or the alleged reincarnation of Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna - residing in fashionable East London? It all makes ominous sense…
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| #2 | Maitreya and Brick Lane today
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| [20/06/09]
by Thomas
FURTHER NECESSARY features in any religious revival are a steady succession of self-appointed messiahs, suspected Anti-Christs and apparent charlatans. Happily enough, I have recently discovered that within my own London town there resides a person or being that furiously divides increasing numbers of people as to which of the three categories he should properly be consigned. For those of you that don’t know (and how out of the loop can you possibly be) I am speaking of the Maitreya.
The full, public emergence of this Maitreya has been anticipated by his followers for a few decades now. Anyone that has already heard of him has probably done so through his spokesperson Benjamin Creme, a wealthy Scottish painter that travels the world imparting messages psychically communicated by the Maitreya himself. These tend on the side of Michael Jackson morality, an ethical key that runs through Creme’s Maitreya-fervid organisation Share International. One apparently mad but wealthy Scottish modernist may not impress anyone, but the funny thing is that this supposed Christ-cum-Buddha-cum-Mohammed etc (Creme claims that his boy is the second coming anticipated by all the major religions) apparently actually exists, which is to say that there is an actual person (or whatnot) making actual appearances as the Maitreya. You can go on the Share International website to observe photos from one broadly publicised performance at a large Kenyan evangelical congregation, the accounts of which wondrously depict crutch-twirling cripples miraculously healed on sight, mass recognition of this white-clad, Arabic looking fellow as Jesus incarnate, and other messianic hallmarks.
Once one investigates this bizarre and I think quite unique phenomenon, even the most rational conclusions look distinctly original. We could suppose, for instance, that this Creme figure is participating in some unprecedented global hoax. Of course religious demagogues are hardly unusual, but Creme doesn’t appear to be wielding his for the usual reason of immediate wealth and power. According to his numerous talks and appearances this has been and is still all in anticipation of the Maitreya’s ‘Day of Declaration’: on this day, explains Creme, “The Christ will come on the world's television channels, linked together by satellite. All those with access to television will see... [His face]. He will establish a telepathic rapport with all humanity simultaneously." This would definitely top the end of year television highlights! Creme talks of the new era of harmony and spiritual wisdom that this Maitreya will inaugurate, by the way, so on the surface this promised spectacular heralds good news for one and all. However, a growing number of evangelical Christians are increasingly convinced that this Maitreya is none other than the anti-Christ himself, and cite alleged connections between Share International and the UN (with whom Creme does indeed appear to have a ready audience) as evidence of a global Luciferean plot. We may assume that Richard Dawkins thinks absolutely everyone involved is off their rocker.
Now I had been aware of this information for some time, but I was unaware that the Maitreya was currently apparently residing in a suburb of Brick Lane. This shows an appalling disregard for fashionable mores, and if there are any pilgrimages going on in North London it is the warm river of fashionistas travelling away from the Shoreditch Axis towards Dalston, which has officially inherited the crown of cool so long held by its Eastern neighbour. Hipsters will no doubt be concerned that no number of miracles could lead them to worship at an alter presided over by a messiah so intransigently passé.
An odd recollection. A few months ago an English friend of Pakistani descent spotted former Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf at a Brick Lane curry house. Please drop me a line if any other odd figures have been spotted sampling the delights of that area’s free bottles of house white wine and poppadoms…
Well, I can hardly hope to write about the English Religious Renaissance and not visit its arguable Galilee can I? Perhaps I’ll bump into the Pope having a coffee with Tony Blair, waiting for an audience with the anti-Christ.
But Christ or Anti-Christ, I assume the Maitreya is tucked away somewhere pretty inconspicuous. My initial idea was of offering waiters generous tips for information (I don’t know, 25%). But one Indian meal usually leaves me horribly stuffed, and a succession would also leave me damn short of pocket. There is another rather prosaic reason for my reluctance to embark on this journalistic pilgrimage: good old fashioned English timidity, the ready blush that makes us such poor zealots.
“Excuse me mate,” I can see myself asking a local, with the usual cringe-worthy roughening of my middle-England vowels, “don’t suppose you know where I could find the, eh…” and here my voice will drop to a conspiratorial whisper, “….Maitreya do ya?”
“What’s that mate, a restaurant?” a second generation cockney voice will respond.
“No, eh, the Messiah…”
Or perhaps, in the style of a spy film…
“I’m looking for the Maitreya… Hey come back! Please.”
Or maybe another response still…
“No mate, and you’re the fifth person that’s asked me that today. Just ’cos I’m wearing a turban…”
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| #1
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| [13/06/09]
by Thomas
"We don't yet know if there's a God - and you want to eat!"
I'VE CRIBBED the above quotation from Henry Miller, though I believe he in turn lifted it from the lips of some long dead Russian, a Russian that no doubt lived in the midst of that nation's 'Religious Renaissance' of the nineteenth century. Dostoevsky described this period in his diaries and novels, how everybody continuously participated in an ongoing debate about the Big Questions, in markets, street corners and bars, trying to guess at the existence of God and the mystery of suffering. But hasn't the debate been settled, here in the secular Western Europe of the 21st Century? Apparently not - even my bus has joined the debate. The other week it was swaggering around like a teenager boasting that there "probably isn't a God", yet only a few days ago it had experienced an abrupt change of heart and declared conversely that there "definitely is a God". What insecurities must have bristled in that 'probably' - I didn't even know that the number 67 ran all the way to Damascus…
And what about the common reading matter observed on public transport over the last few years? What books have the passengers been scrutinising? One of only two titles, according to my count (excluding that Pope bothering kid's book): The God Delusion and The Da Vinci Code. Bless it, the British public isn't the best read bunch, but these two titles arguably indicate a burgeoning preconception with metaphysical matters.
Were it not for the Romance novels, Bond pastiches, and the ubiquitous Jeremy Clarkson triptych (our national philosophe), in many cases The Da Vinci Code would stand alone on the book shelf of its millions of owners. Numerous friends and acquaintances, not usually disposed to discuss fiction or theology (yet knowing my predilection for both), have approached me with pregnant intent to comment on the thriller's esoteric subtext.
My girlfriend's mother, knowing that my family are Catholic (and assuming that my very haemoglobin sported little papist caps), interrupted my reading one afternoon during a visit to her Tenerife holiday home.
"I've read The Da Vinci Code," she declared, with a Lutheran twinkle visible beneath her blue-tinted contacts.
"Good show Linda. Well done," I responded over the brim of Anna Karenina, wondering why one of her eyebrows seemed to be violently twitching…
"… I believe it!" she finally declared.
"How do you mean mother-in-law - you don't think it's a work of fiction?"
Linda seemed momentarily inconvenienced by my unexpected though innocent enough retort.
"No. I mean what it says about the Church," she continued, shaking off my Jesuitical casuistry, "I believe it."
This is indicative of the general gist of its readers' responses. The book offers them new ways to believe, and reasons for the conspicuous absence of religion in their inner lives. A pity it's gash!
Then there is that other bona fide publishing phenomena of recent times (again excluding children's books): The God Delusion. In a nation that has for many decades treated churches as little more than picturesque and whimsical venues for weddings, the success of Dawkins' polemic (the best-selling work of non-fiction since the Bible, or something), is arguably a bit of a mystery. Atheists wouldn't flock to Waterstones in order to scoop a hardback copy of The Toothfairy Delusion, and as far as I can see the only explanation for the enormous success of Dawkins' tract is that it serves as a palliative to its reader's latent fear and trembling, the atavistic nervousness over the fate of the immortal soul, a trepidation that possibly announced itself only upon a confrontation with the book's bold title. Yet it would seem that the book has done more to irritate those buried nerves than soothe them - according to Amazon, The God Delusion is the cause of a 50% growth in sales on religious and spiritual books, and a 120% increase in sales on the Bible! Atheism never had a more vocal and fervent following than in Holy Russia itself, and so long as it is not silently assumptive, atheism constitutes a vital ingredient in any spiritually introspective culture. For these very reasons I adore Richard Dawkins. He is Nietzsche's fool in the marketplace imploring the peasants that God is Dead. This is a man that believes that humanity can be reinvigorated morally, politically and even artistically if we can return to the apparently abandoned Enlightenment agenda - Halleluiah!
Between our suicide bombers, conspiracy theorists, Rastafarians, Scientologists, militant atheists et al, it can be argued that the contemporary UK is a much richer religious ferment that Dostoevsky's Russia, and far more riven with spiritual conflict than in its own hectic period of Reformation. And I, comfortably savage, terrified by the sky, believing in everything, wish here to comment upon, document, and encourage our English Religious Renaissance.
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