Pope Uber Alles

Nice of the Catholic Church to take this opportunity to show the world they can adapt the the modern world by sequestering a number of 70 year old Cardinals (and what does a baseball team know about theology?!?!?) in secret to hold a ballot in a mysterious ceremony - no wonder so many folk read Dan Brown's thrillers and think there must be some truth in them! And then elect a pope who is a former member of the Hitler Youth (admittedly it was compulsary when he was young) and who is often referred to as "God's Rotweiller".

Sounds like he'll be able to reach out to minorities just the way Jesus did... And is it just me or when all the media attention was focussed on the Vatican chimney did any of you think what is going on in there? Are the cardinals having an indoor BBQ??? Perhaps they're all skinning up and getting wasted and that's where all the smoke is coming from...



Come to think of it, I reckon some of them could do with a relaxing stoner session, mellow the old buggers out a bit (although in fairness, here in the UK men of such advanced years would be expected to work for another 20 years as High Court judges). And this all reminds me of a new comic I came across in the advance previews at work, due this summer, with the fabulous title Battle Pope - when he's not saying mass he's kicking ass! Actually I think it was around before but seems to be getting another chance at comic fame, or infamy depending on your point of view. Anyway, my old mate Adrock, suffering the pangs of ciggie withdrawal by stuffing himself with pasta in his new home in Oz certainly isn't impressed with the new Pontiff.

I received this email today, so in the spirit of social awareness I thought I'd post it for those who may be interested:

"The Women’s Art Library (Make) former publisher of Make Magazine is pleased to announce that the research collection is now housed in the Special Collections of Goldsmiths College Library. The Women’s Art Library (Make) continues to collect and provide information on contemporary women artists."

Whatever happened to manners?

Walking home on a cold but sunny spring evening from work I paused at a busy road to wait for a break in the traffic. Rush hour with cars whizzing past and pedestrians stalking along, eyes down, pushing past other equally ignorant pedestrians. Standing a few feet from me as I wait is a woman in her 20s tapping her white cane against the kerbside. She was quite obviously requiring a wee hand yet everyone passed her by. I asked if she wanted some assitance and helped her across the road, wondering how long she'd had to wait for someone to offer.

And I wondered just how we've ended up with a society where most folk wouldn't even think to pause for a moment and help a blind person across a busy street. Is it the same kind of selfish mentality that leads folk to shove through shop doors and let them swing shut behind them without looking rather than pause, look back, hold the door ajar for anyone behind you? The ignorant, selfish sense that leads folk to ignore their elderly neighbours struggling up the stairs of the tenement with heavy shopping? The same selfish outlook that lead a rich woman with her children in a huge Mercedes to drive right through the pedstrian crossing at Haymarket this morning, while the green man was on and people crossing?

We do seem to becoming increasingly selfish and mannerless and it seems to me to be endemic, spread across all age groups and social classes. With examples like the Merc-driving woman shoving across the crossing like a panzer I'm moved to wonder just how horribly rude and arrogant her children (sitting in the car on the school run) will be when they grow up. When I was very young I vividly remember my dad pulling over the car on the way into Glasgow. He had seen a blind man trying to cross the road and he pulled over the car, got out, helped the man across, came back, got into the car and continued on our way. Neither he or my mum said anything to me - they didn't lecture me on proper behaviour or anything like that; this lesson was far more effective and one I've never forgotten.

Perhaps I'm being old-fashioned but I tend to think good manners and being able to offer a wee hand to others rubs off and encourages others to do the same, make the world a wee bit better. When everyone acts selfishlessly it has a similar effect. I think I know which example I prefer. It's a sad day when folk become so unwilling to offer a hand to another.

Myth

My chum Sandy Auden has just posted an excellent chat with one of my favourite history writers and presenters, Michael Wood. I've mentioned Michael's excellent books and BBC series here before and was once surprised to be contacted by the adminstrator of a web resource on South American history because I had been commenting on Michael's Conquistadors and they wanted to link to the comments (which was very flattering and a reminder of how linked up we are today).

Michael's recent series and book was In Search of Myths and Heroes, which I thought was a natural progression for him since in all of his series he has explored not only history but oral tradition and myth, a quality which is especially noticeable in In Search of the Trojan War and In the Footsteps of Alexander (do yourself a favour, ignore Ollie Stone's dismal movie and watch Michael's series instead). In the Alexander series there were a number of scenes in the East where native tribesmen would recount for him ancient poems handed down century after century detailing the epic of Alexander, recited around camp fires, the way humans have told tales since before even Homer.

I see from Sandy's excellent interview that this is a quality Michael has been quite concious of and indeed influenced the making of this latest series. He is also excellent in relating ancient to modern, making long-past events and myths relevant to a modern audience not necessarily familiar with them; in one scene following Jason and the Argonauts he remarked that once they left the Meditteranean they were, as a more modern myth would put it, 'boldly going where no-one had gone before.'

It shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone that a person who reads so much history and fantasy would find mythologies so compelling. I've just read Karen Amrstrong's A Short History of Myth due from Canongate later this year as part of a series of books by contemporary authors re-working ancient myth (the series will be simultaneously released by 24 publishers around the world). Many of our best fiction writers use myth and folklore to great effect: Gaiman, Holdstock, Aldiss to name but a handful.

When used skilfully it achieves great effects because they are using themes and stories which humans have passed down for thousands of years and they resonate, sometime conciously, sometimes at an unconcious level. Myths should never be written of as the mumblings of primitive peoples struggling to understand their world. Although many do discuss subjects such as gods and creation stories, they are less about those subjects and far more about people. That's why they are still relevant and why gifted writers still re-work them for modern audiences.

Spring

Today is cold and gray and rather more like February than April, but there have been some signs of spring in the last week. We had a few very bright, sunny days with clear blue skies. Raising my eyes from my book I looked out of the window on the top deck of the bus as we passed the nearby graveyard. The trees are still mostly skeletal, but from the upper deck I could see little green shoots budding in the spring morning light, the branches gently scratching along the bus roof.

On Princes Street the blossoms are slowly growing and flowering on the trees in the Gardens (see Xenarche's Fotolog here for a lovely picture of the blossoms). The rising sun was filtered right through the branches, bathing everything in a warm, golden glow. The tulips and daffodils are bright against a grass which is becoming more verdant - the whole place is slowly re-greening as the Caledonian soil awakes from its winter slumber, the miracle of the seaons; rebirth and renewal returns to us once again. Within only a few days everything is noticeably greener - in a few weeks we will have that incredibly lush multiple mosaic of a thousand rich shades of green.

No wonder our ancestors incorporated this seasonal, natural event into their mytholgies the world over. Birth, death and rebirth litter our collective folklore and mythologies across all cultures and histories, from the very oldest such as Gilgamesh through Isis and Osiris, Demeter and eventually adapted to Christ (sorry to the religious among you - to you it is an article of faith, and fair enough, but to me it is a fascinating adaptation of a mythic archetype as old as humanity). It even enters our more normal, profane, everyday life - we talk about people being 'reborn' and changed by experiences, effectively like the heroes and gods of myth, dying to their old existence to accept death/change in order to be reborn.

I've been reading A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong this week on the bus, which fitted what I was looking at perfectly. It is a very short but absorbing read sent to me by a chum at Edinburgh's Canongate books which serves as a primer to an amazing new series they are doing, where contemporary authors will rework any piece of world myth they choose (Margaret Atwood is doing the Penelopiad, reworking the tale of Ulysses from Penelope's point of view). The series mirrors the world-wide nature of shared human myth by having the simultaneous publishing of the first books by 24 publishers around our little world - a very intersting idea and one I'll hopefully be able to support at work since these books will, by their nature, appeal to the literary-minded fantasy readers.

Also had the pleasure of re-reading Alasdair Gray's A History Maker from Canongate, who published a new and revised edition (Alasdair can't resist tinkering and I don't think he ever considers any work finished). It is a short but fascinating take on the Utopian SF story by one of the most respected of living Scottish writers, complete with his trademark artwork and notes. Its a great little meditation on politics, war, society, gender roles and human nature and society. Goes perfectly with the recent limited edition Jocasta novel from Brian Aldiss, re-working the Theban Plays by Sophocles

Moving image

At least I did manage to squeeze in a couple of visits to the Emporium of the Moving Image in the last ten days. The Rage in Placid Lake is a terrifically quirky little Australian indie movie. Placid, raised by new-age parents who are so hip they send him to school in a dress to 'challenge' perceptions, is a bit screwed up and finally decides to be 'normal', taking a job in an insurance firm and trying to fit in, much to his parents' horror. Think on a weird Australian take on the Modern Parents from Viz comic but much better done and with a lot of emotional honesty and sympathy that most of us will empathise with. A great wee film and one well worthy of your support.

Finally caught the Machinist a few days ago – very odd little film, kind of Jacob’s Ladder crossed with Memento, shot as if by Darren Aronofsky (around his Requiem for a Dream and Pi period - and by the way he has a fascinating looking graphic novel called the Fountain out this August, which is a 'director's cut' of the Fountain movie he is making with Hugh Jackman - more on that later).

Very weird, even by my standards, but very interesting. Christian Bale is amazing in it, although it is very difficult to look at his emaciated form (hard to believe he got down to this weight then had to go bulk up again right after for Batman Begins). He does resemble a Belsen victim, an image re-enforced at one point when he puts on a stripey shirt that is far too big for his shrunken frame. The camera often moves across his half-naked, ravaged frame in an almost fetishistic manner, forcing the viewer’s gaze, challenging it.

Of course, a few days later it was the anniversary of the Allied liberation of the Bergen-Belsen death camps and there were those haunting images for real - no wonder some of the British, Canadian and American troops shot the SS guards hiding among the prisoners out of hand. I can't condone that, but if I had been there I'm not sure I would have stopped them. The BBC had a particularly good audio-visual presentation combining Dimbleby’s radio report with a slide show to mark the occasion. Incredibly difficulty to listen to and look at, but then it should be and we should look at it, because there are still people out there who says these events never happened and who call for people who are ‘different’ from us to be treated differently.

These people are one step from ‘untermenschenen’, racial ‘purity’ and hatred of all that they dislike. And some of them are out there campaigning right now in the election here – and I’m not just talking about the far-right nutters who proclaim there ain’t no black in the Union Jack (and I don’t care how much you protest you are ‘nationalists’ and ‘patriots’, you’re not, you’re bloody Nazis and as far as I’m concerned that makes you a traitor rather than a patriot after all this nation gave to eradicate that pollution from the world).

I’m also talking about the Tories and the Labour bandwagons playing the race card, vilifying immigrants and travelling folk alike. When the far-right have gained some council seats in a few Northern cities, feeding on hunger politics, the main parties should be distancing themselves ever further from such ideas, instead of greedily chasing the votes such hatred-stoking brings. That’s how discrimination remains among us and that’s how low-level discrimination can grow, even in a civilised, advanced, educated society to a hatred and fear which will contemplate any treatment of those it learns to blame and hate.


That is, after all, what happened in 1933 in Germany. Not in some Third World country of rural, uneducated folks, right here in the heart of Europe, within living memory. Ah freak one-off? The terrible events in the former Yugoslaviashow us we cannot allow ourselves the comfort of that flawed myth. And yet here we have our ‘responsible’ politicians stoking racial and national prejudices once more while decrying the right wing fascists for the exact same thing. It is only one small step from villifying immigrants to ethnic cleansing. It all rebounds upon our society of course, for a community riven by hatred will eat itself in fear and loathing and violence and distrust. No wonder so many people no longer wish to vote.

Busy, busy

Every time I vow not to let more than a few days elapse between postings I find I get busy and several days lapse between postings… Oh well, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, which explains why when I go to see my old mucker Satan (or ‘Stan’ as we call him) I find it easier to take the train (underground train of course) rather than drive since good intentions make for a poor paving surface and the resultant constant road works on the Highway to Hell lead to gridlock and tailbacks which are, appropriately enough, hellish.

Very busy but productive week for me – my colleague Lee was up to install new software and give me some instruction so I can get a more direct handle on the soon-to-be-launched, all-new graphic novels site. It’s a massive amount of work, between the constant new material required to be put on in good time and checking and updating the existing entries to the new standards while getting to grips with a new software package (which lacks a bloody ‘undo’ function!!! Arrrgghh!).

Still, I’m not complaining – it’s a genre close to my heart that I’ve posted many reviews of over the years and here I am being given a chance to roll my sleeves up and help shape FPI’s graphic novels site. Several members of staff, friends, fellow reviewers and authors have also been persuaded to supply me with their personal top ten graphic novels for a nice little feature for the site when it launches, so it is going to be more than just a webstore and although the task is a little daunting its fun too. Also nice to meet Lee at last – we work together everyday via email and instant messenger, but this was the first time we’d met in person. Naturally some post-work beer and food was required (can’t work properly without fuel you know).