Guidance from Culture..

Loved this article from the Herald earlier in the week about getting guidance from Albus Dumbledore, and the premise of a the book Slack is working on called What Would Dumbledore Do? - a self-help guide to living in the world according to the tenets of Albus Dumbledore.

It reminded me of a book that I read some time ago now called "I learned Everything I know from Watching Star Trek". There is some fun in this book but not sure there's any more than that.

It's a strange world

It was quite intriguing over the past few weeks to read how the British backpacker may well have "faked" his survival story. The Herald yesterday had a great piece by Richard Glover about cynicism in the Specturm. Perhaps unsurpsingly I find it quite easy to agree with him, I think its really sad that its so easy to be cynical, and perhaps there is a price we pay for this.

"And cynicism exacts a terrible cost- in terms of cruelty towards the people we accuse; in terms of our own sense of the world and its possibilities [...] But bleakness pessimism and cynicism create a worldview just as limited, just as one-note, as the naive optimism they were said to challenge... Its just flipside Disney ... How do you change the world for the better if you assume the worst about everything and everybody? And why are trust and optimism the worst crimes of them all."

As for me, I know which way I'd rather fall: I'm a naive optimist.

New music from The Swell Season

I am excited by news that The Swell Season, are putting the finishing touches on ‘Strict Joy,’ (Sept 29/Anti- Records), the tracklisting is below, and the album includes some of the songs played on their tour earlier this year, and a few new ones.

1. Low Rising
2. Feeling the Pull
3. In These Arms
4. The Rain
5. Fantasy Man
6. Paper Cup
7. High Horses
8. The Verb
9. I Have Loved You Wrong
10. Love That Conquers
11. Two Tongues
12. Back Broke

Bad...

Bad (from The Unforgettable Fire) is one of my favourite U2 songs, and this performance, from their Vertigo tour, was one of the highlights of the two shows I saw in the US.

search for a new Messiah

There is something in the article here, the hunger we have for something, or someone bigger than us.In the article Howard talks about the outpouring of emotion for Michael Jackon and more broadly celebrities.

Some decent, humane sorrowing over that – a life gone nowhere, for all the fame; a life lived in desperate confusion – would not be inappropriate. And a little soul-searching, as well, on the part of those who must idolise before they know they are alive. This, too, has been gone over and over all week – the hellish compact between a star and those who worship him. We destroy those we inordinately admire. That is the cliche. I would put it differently. Those we inordinately admire destroy us.

It has been said that Michael Jackson changed the lives of millions of his fans. But I have yet to read an account of what he changed them to. Yes, he gave them songs to sing. Few of them remarkable. And he gave them a dance to dance. I can see with my own eyes that he moved unusually. So let's say he taught others to move unusually too. Perhaps we can say he liberated them into a bodily vitality they hadn't known before. That's not nothing, if it's true. But if it is true, you wonder where all that bequeathed vitality has gone to. After you've done your moonwalk, then what?

And there is certainly a lesson from his final line..

We should revere less and forgive more. There are no gods among us, and few devils. If we must do huge, let's do benign scepticism, hugely.