Thanks to Tessa for the photos.
Listen to Silver Cinder on myspace or follow Silver Cinder on facebook.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
SILVER CINDER : BASEMENT and BOAT SHED
Some shots from recent Silver Cinder gigs at The Basement and The Old Manly Boat Shed. If you find yourself at a loose end tonight, we are going to be playing at the Clovelly Hotel, in Sydney's eastern suburbs. We'll be on stage at 9pm.
Thanks to Tessa for the photos.
Listen to Silver Cinder on myspace or follow Silver Cinder on facebook.
Thanks to Tessa for the photos.
Listen to Silver Cinder on myspace or follow Silver Cinder on facebook.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
New Ronnie Johns Half Hour DVD: ON SALE NOW
In early 2010, we got the Good Taste Pony out of storage and took a best of live show to Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Woollongong and Gosford, amongst others. Hell, we even made it to bloody Brisbane. No I'm only kidding. Brisbane was actually our best show. We played at the Tivoli. I almost didn't make it on stage because I was so starstruck by sharing the same green room as Powderfinger*.
Well, now we have a DVD of that Live Show for you guys to munch on. Not so much "back by popular demand" as back by "unsolicited silence from fanbase". You waited patiently, and in many cases, unknowingly for it, so here it is : The Ronnie Johns Half Hour Live On Stage DVD - now on sale in all good DVD stores.
*Powderfinger weren't actually in the green room at the same time as us, but there was a signed poster on the wall, so, like, they had been there... in the past. Hey! It still counts!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Nina Simone - Do what you gotta do
Absolutely love the lyrics and phrasing in this song. Just listen to the wandering verses. It's as though she's trying to convince herself of what she's saying. This is Nina Simone at the top of her game. What a voice. Let's spare a thought too for the writer and composer. Amazing, soulful, passionate pop music. And to think that these days kids have to deal with Justin Bieber.
On the recording I own of this song, you can hear Nina telling the recording studio (and perhaps the band) to hurry up and get ready for a take. She says, "I got a lot of living to do before I die, and I ain't got no time to waste. Let's make it-" and then proceeds to launch into the song. It's a yummy moment.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Silver Cinder played at Adelaide Fringe
Silver Cinder played the Basement in Sydney last night in what was possibly our best show to date. Big shout out to Eric from New Caledonia who happened to come to the Basement with his new bride whilst on honeymoon in Sydney. Thanks for buying our cd's and make sure you spread the word back home!
While it seems like a long time ago now, Tam and I made the trek down to Radelaide last weekend to perform at the Adelaide Fringe Festival. On Friday we played a half hour set in the Deluxe tent at the Garden of Unearthly Delights. Then on Saturday we entertained for 2 hours at the outdoor bandstand. If you were walking down Rundle Street Mall at about 11pm on Saturday night, you would also have heard Tam and I busking. I have to say that, while it is daunting to busk, there is nothing like having to compete with traffic and city noise to get people's attention. It is very humbling. In a strange way, it was almost the highlight of the trip. Very real. Tam also managed to sneak in a quick trip to the Barossa, so all round, a fairly productive couple of days. The concave trundle bed at Quest Apartments was a bit of a struggle. Thanks again to Nick and Ben from Smart Casual and to David Quirk for making room for us!
Heads up to Tam for the photos.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Silver Cinder playing Adelaide Fringe
Silver Cinder are going to be playing at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in the Garden of Unearthly Delights this Friday at 6pm and Saturday at 2pm.
We are also very excited to unleash our new EP to our free settler friends in South Australia. The disks have been printed and Tam is currently putting the final touches on the artwork. It's exciting stuff.
If you haven't already done so, make sure you "like" Silver Cinder's page on facebook. Once you've liked it, we'll automatically keep you up to date with upcoming gigs and information.
We are also very excited to unleash our new EP to our free settler friends in South Australia. The disks have been printed and Tam is currently putting the final touches on the artwork. It's exciting stuff.
If you haven't already done so, make sure you "like" Silver Cinder's page on facebook. Once you've liked it, we'll automatically keep you up to date with upcoming gigs and information.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Buechner and Childhood
When he was 10 years old, Frederick Buechner woke one morning to the news that his father had committed suicide. When he reflects on his life, Buechner talks of that morning as being the moment when "time" started. For in that moment came the dreaded confirmation that there were indeed things in life that could not be solved with the comforting word of a loved one or by the embrace of a grand-parent. All time before that moment, Buechner calls "below time". Below time is childhood's time, a time when life is appreciated for what it is, rather than for when it will end.
"For a child, all time is by and large 'now time' and is apparently endless. What child while summer is happening, bothers to think much that that summer will end. What child while snow is on the ground, stops to remember that the ground was once snowless. It's by its content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity. Happy times and sad times. The time that a rabbit bit your finger. The time you first tasted bananas and cream, the time you were crying yourself to sleep and someone came and lay beside you in the dark, for comfort.
Childhood's time is Adam and Eve's time, before they left the garden forever and from that point on divided everything into 'before' and 'after'. It's the time before God told them that the day would come when they would surely die, with the result that from that point on they made clocks and calendars for counting out their time like money and never again lived through a day of their lives without being haunted, somewhere in the depths of themselves, by the knowledge that each day brought them closer to the end of their lives.
Summers end, to be sure. And when the sun finally burns out like a match, summer will end for good. But be that as it way, it can never be otherwise than that there was a time when summers were. It can never be otherwise than that fifty years ago, on some July or August day at dusk, I raced as a child through fireflies across a green lawn, and in some way, with the insight of a child, sensed that that moment would never cease. What was true in my childhood belief that time would go on forever was that once a moment has come into being, its "having beeness" is beyond any power in heaven or on earth, in life or in death to touch.
And the people I knew as a child, my parents and grand parents, my brothers, the nurses that came and went, the teachers and friends, the characters in the books I read, I saw them all in very much the same way as boundless. It never crossed my mind that there had been a time before they were, or that there would come a time when they would be no longer. They were the Atlas's who held the world on their shoulders, held my world, held me, and their heads towered above the clouds. As with time I hadn't yet acquired the fateful skill of standing off from them to weigh and measure. I knew them not for whoever they were in themselves, but for whoever they were for me. Mummy, Daddy, Grandpa Kune, Grandma Neya. The names they had were the names that, like Adam, I gave them. And through these new names I gave them, I gave them new selves to be. I made my father a father, my mother a mother. And what they were apart from me I no more knew or cared than I knew or cared what the world had been before I appeared in it, or what the ocean was like when I wasn't there to feel the waves suck the sand out from under my feet...
...Home was not a place to me as a child. Home was people. How they live on, for all of us, those giants of a childhood. How well they take even death in their stride. Because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they might have come to light since, it's beyond a doubt they live still in us...
...Any house where my father and mother were, was home to me. But for that very reason, whenever they left, even for a day, even for an hour, it was home no longer, but a house with walls as frail as paper, and a roof as fragile as glass. My fear was that they would never come back.
I knew nothing more of death then than what I had learned from the slippery green frog that my friends and I tossed between us by the legs until it broke and its slippery life spilled out, and nothing more of darkness than the night. I'd never lost anything that I didn't know would be replaced if I really needed it by those that I loved, and I'd never been hurt beyond the power of a word of comfort to heal.
But whenever my mother and father left, taking home with them, I knew that hurt, loss, darkness, death could flatten that house in seconds. And to a degree that I had no way of knowing, and in a way that I couldn't possibly guess, I was of course right."
If Buechner's childhood was like Adam and Eve's time in Eden, that fateful morning when he woke to the news of his father's death was Buechner's fall from grace. But what I find hauntingly profound in Buechner's recount is that even in the magical, legendary land "below time", where the concept of time as having a finite duration is yet to be fully comprehended, there is nonetheless an awareness, albeit a very dim and distant one, that it is perhaps just possible that Eden will not last forever and that when it ends, the resulting world is one filled with as yet unknown sources of sadness: hurt, loss, and incredible, penetrating darkness. So that even in that land "below time", we are capable of grieving for the loss of our childlike innocence before we are even made aware of its very existence, or indeed the fact that it might not exist forever. We grieve for something we cannot know or fully understand, other than with our dimmest "below time" understanding of it, so that, when the source of that grief is confirmed, and we realise that our time spent "below time" was in fact always going to come to an end, we grieve again at the devastating confirmation of that truth, and at our prior unawareness of it, and perhaps most devastatingly of all, at the fact that things will never again be as they were in that now most precious of times: "below time".
"For a child, all time is by and large 'now time' and is apparently endless. What child while summer is happening, bothers to think much that that summer will end. What child while snow is on the ground, stops to remember that the ground was once snowless. It's by its content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity. Happy times and sad times. The time that a rabbit bit your finger. The time you first tasted bananas and cream, the time you were crying yourself to sleep and someone came and lay beside you in the dark, for comfort.
Childhood's time is Adam and Eve's time, before they left the garden forever and from that point on divided everything into 'before' and 'after'. It's the time before God told them that the day would come when they would surely die, with the result that from that point on they made clocks and calendars for counting out their time like money and never again lived through a day of their lives without being haunted, somewhere in the depths of themselves, by the knowledge that each day brought them closer to the end of their lives.
Summers end, to be sure. And when the sun finally burns out like a match, summer will end for good. But be that as it way, it can never be otherwise than that there was a time when summers were. It can never be otherwise than that fifty years ago, on some July or August day at dusk, I raced as a child through fireflies across a green lawn, and in some way, with the insight of a child, sensed that that moment would never cease. What was true in my childhood belief that time would go on forever was that once a moment has come into being, its "having beeness" is beyond any power in heaven or on earth, in life or in death to touch.
And the people I knew as a child, my parents and grand parents, my brothers, the nurses that came and went, the teachers and friends, the characters in the books I read, I saw them all in very much the same way as boundless. It never crossed my mind that there had been a time before they were, or that there would come a time when they would be no longer. They were the Atlas's who held the world on their shoulders, held my world, held me, and their heads towered above the clouds. As with time I hadn't yet acquired the fateful skill of standing off from them to weigh and measure. I knew them not for whoever they were in themselves, but for whoever they were for me. Mummy, Daddy, Grandpa Kune, Grandma Neya. The names they had were the names that, like Adam, I gave them. And through these new names I gave them, I gave them new selves to be. I made my father a father, my mother a mother. And what they were apart from me I no more knew or cared than I knew or cared what the world had been before I appeared in it, or what the ocean was like when I wasn't there to feel the waves suck the sand out from under my feet...
...Home was not a place to me as a child. Home was people. How they live on, for all of us, those giants of a childhood. How well they take even death in their stride. Because although death can put an end to them right enough, it can never put an end to our relationship with them. Wherever or however else they might have come to light since, it's beyond a doubt they live still in us...
...Any house where my father and mother were, was home to me. But for that very reason, whenever they left, even for a day, even for an hour, it was home no longer, but a house with walls as frail as paper, and a roof as fragile as glass. My fear was that they would never come back.
I knew nothing more of death then than what I had learned from the slippery green frog that my friends and I tossed between us by the legs until it broke and its slippery life spilled out, and nothing more of darkness than the night. I'd never lost anything that I didn't know would be replaced if I really needed it by those that I loved, and I'd never been hurt beyond the power of a word of comfort to heal.
But whenever my mother and father left, taking home with them, I knew that hurt, loss, darkness, death could flatten that house in seconds. And to a degree that I had no way of knowing, and in a way that I couldn't possibly guess, I was of course right."
If Buechner's childhood was like Adam and Eve's time in Eden, that fateful morning when he woke to the news of his father's death was Buechner's fall from grace. But what I find hauntingly profound in Buechner's recount is that even in the magical, legendary land "below time", where the concept of time as having a finite duration is yet to be fully comprehended, there is nonetheless an awareness, albeit a very dim and distant one, that it is perhaps just possible that Eden will not last forever and that when it ends, the resulting world is one filled with as yet unknown sources of sadness: hurt, loss, and incredible, penetrating darkness. So that even in that land "below time", we are capable of grieving for the loss of our childlike innocence before we are even made aware of its very existence, or indeed the fact that it might not exist forever. We grieve for something we cannot know or fully understand, other than with our dimmest "below time" understanding of it, so that, when the source of that grief is confirmed, and we realise that our time spent "below time" was in fact always going to come to an end, we grieve again at the devastating confirmation of that truth, and at our prior unawareness of it, and perhaps most devastatingly of all, at the fact that things will never again be as they were in that now most precious of times: "below time".
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Radiohead - The King of Limbs
Initial impressions of Radiohead's most recent album, The King of Limbs, are that it is another signature Radiohead effort. Some might say "more of the same". It's true that the album will not please those who were hanging out for a remake of The Bends as it continues along the band's arc from In Rainbows and Kid A. But it's early days for this record. Multiple listens are yet needed. (Already, I can't get the final track on the album, Separator, outta my head.) And in my humble opinion, if it is indeed "more of the same", it is "more of the same" in the same way that a second helping of butterscotch ice cream is "more of the same". Whichever way you look at it, it's still delicious.
Check out the video for track five on the album, Lotus Flower. Gotta love a Thom Yorke dance.
Check out the video for track five on the album, Lotus Flower. Gotta love a Thom Yorke dance.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Yesterday's Hero
Late last night, with the Tropfest winners announced, the VIP bar well and truelly vacated and the viewing public back in the comfort of their beds, I snuck back onto the red carpet for a final photo. I say final photo. It was actually my first of the day, I'm sure. Sometimes you just have to do your own publicity. And if nothing else, who knows, it might be one for the grandkids one day.
Y2GAY: now of the web!
Well, no cigar last night at the Movie Extra Tropfest 2011 Finals in Sydney for our film Y2GAY, but there were some absolute cracking entries. We're so proud to have been included amongst them and personally, I'm very proud of our little film and everyone who worked on it.
We didn't go away altogether empty handed. Kate Worsley deservedly picked up the Best Female Actor award and our cast were singled out for mention by Shakespeare in Love actor and Tropfest judge Josephe Fiennes. Well done guys!
A big thank you to all those who came down and watched it at the domain. I feel very lucky to have such special friends. To my family, I love you. You continue to surprise me with your unerring support of this crazy search.
Y2GAY is now available on the net, so if you didn't get the chance to see it live last night, you can click away to your heart's content.
Enjoy!
We didn't go away altogether empty handed. Kate Worsley deservedly picked up the Best Female Actor award and our cast were singled out for mention by Shakespeare in Love actor and Tropfest judge Josephe Fiennes. Well done guys!
A big thank you to all those who came down and watched it at the domain. I feel very lucky to have such special friends. To my family, I love you. You continue to surprise me with your unerring support of this crazy search.
Y2GAY is now available on the net, so if you didn't get the chance to see it live last night, you can click away to your heart's content.
Enjoy!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Clarke and Dawe: Balancing the budget
Clarke and Dawe are at it again. click the below image to watch their latest take on the Australian government priorities when doing a budget. Foreigner warning: there are lots of references to local political issues and personalities in this sketch. apologies if it doesn't make sense to those overseas.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Y2GAY is coming... no seriously... it's this SUNDAY!
Dan Ilic and I wrote and directed a little film over summer called Y2GAY. The gate keepers over at Tropfest have deemed it good enough to sit in their final 16. It stars the very excellent, very funny and talented Kate Worsley, Dave McLaughlin, and Nick Mattick (Smart Casual).
So Dan, Peter Slee (producer) and I would love it if you would join us in a semi-designated Y2GAY area on the night this coming Sunday. We will be there early to stake out some Y2GAY-members-only turf. All you have to do is wander on down in time to see the show kick off around 7:30 or so... I mean, we're not asking much now. It's free. And we did all the hard work after all. All you have to do is turn up with your camembert and wine and get completely shitfaced while taking in some 1st-class austrayan "culcha".
We will be in the Domain from around 2pm next Sunday 20th of February with this Y2GAY sign. Look out for it, and come and sit with us and cheer on the films in what will be a celebration of champagne tropfest sketch comedy.
Hoorrah!
Our great democracy
In recent weeks, Western commentators have been effusive in their praise of the unfolding wonder that is the "democratisation" of Egypt. Some have suggested that the rest of the Arab world would do well to follow suit as quickly as they possibly can. Apparently, the Beatles were wrong. All you need is democracy.
If only that were true.
Our own great democracy has been performing at spectacularly underwhelming levels. In the last month, our great leaders have fought over who has the right to pay the least amount of money towards the nation's health care; they have fought over who should pay for the desperate task of rebuilding QLD after the floods/cyclone that destroyed the state; and most recently, our leaders tried desperately to start a fight over whether Australian taxpayers should foot the bill for Christmas Island asylum seekers to be able to attend the funerals of their drowned relatives. (They should just be grateful they weren't smashed against the rocks themselves, I guess.)
So much for this great-hearted sunburnt land of Vegemite smeared babies who grow up, embalmed in the salty waves of equality beach, to be the very personification of the most precious of all australian values, the fair go.
Democracy gives power to the people sure (inshallah), but the test of a good democracy depends just as much upon what the people are prepared to let their leaders get away with.
Enter Tony Abbott.
Footage has been found which shows Tony Abbott being briefed by the Commander of the Australian troops in Afghanistan (An American! I know! Need I mention the Breaker Morant and Suva Bay debacles?!). The Commander describes the fact that in an attack in which an Australian soldier died, the army did not receive sufficient air support. He commiserates that the air support failure could not be attributed to any specific reason. In response, Abbott is seen on camera saying that in war, "shit happens".
Fair enough really. I'm sure it does. Having just finished the censored account of an Australian digger's experience at Gallipolli (To Hell and Back, if you're interested), I couldn't agree with Abbott more. Shit does, and did, happen. Pretty much every day.
What didn't look great was that Abbott was seen to be flippant about an Australian soldier's death. All he needed to do was explain that he was not at all being flippant, and it would not even have made the papers. Instead, our opposition leader stood, staring down his inner rage, hoping the film in the journalist's camera would run out before his fuse did. Have a look for yourself:
What is disturbing about this footage is not that Abbott got caught out saying that "shit happens". What is disturbing is that when questioned about the matter, he was so incapable of controlling his own inner rage that he is barely able to restrain himself from coming to physical blows with the journalist.
We are a great democratic nation. And this is our great democracy. One leader is so desperately lacking in charisma that people write 500 word articles rejoicing the fact that her voice "faltered" when describing the deaths of Australian citizens in the QLD floods during a session of parliament. (She lives!) The other leader is an intellectual nobody, a brazen steel-balls oxford fighter who is on the record as not wanting us to believe everything he says, a man so incapable of controlling his feelings when reasonably challenged, that he is not able to think of one sane word to say in his own defence.
The choice is anaesthetising.
Allah and God be praised. Here lies the great democracy we never bothered to fight for.
If only that were true.
Our own great democracy has been performing at spectacularly underwhelming levels. In the last month, our great leaders have fought over who has the right to pay the least amount of money towards the nation's health care; they have fought over who should pay for the desperate task of rebuilding QLD after the floods/cyclone that destroyed the state; and most recently, our leaders tried desperately to start a fight over whether Australian taxpayers should foot the bill for Christmas Island asylum seekers to be able to attend the funerals of their drowned relatives. (They should just be grateful they weren't smashed against the rocks themselves, I guess.)
So much for this great-hearted sunburnt land of Vegemite smeared babies who grow up, embalmed in the salty waves of equality beach, to be the very personification of the most precious of all australian values, the fair go.
Democracy gives power to the people sure (inshallah), but the test of a good democracy depends just as much upon what the people are prepared to let their leaders get away with.
Enter Tony Abbott.
Footage has been found which shows Tony Abbott being briefed by the Commander of the Australian troops in Afghanistan (An American! I know! Need I mention the Breaker Morant and Suva Bay debacles?!). The Commander describes the fact that in an attack in which an Australian soldier died, the army did not receive sufficient air support. He commiserates that the air support failure could not be attributed to any specific reason. In response, Abbott is seen on camera saying that in war, "shit happens".
Fair enough really. I'm sure it does. Having just finished the censored account of an Australian digger's experience at Gallipolli (To Hell and Back, if you're interested), I couldn't agree with Abbott more. Shit does, and did, happen. Pretty much every day.
What didn't look great was that Abbott was seen to be flippant about an Australian soldier's death. All he needed to do was explain that he was not at all being flippant, and it would not even have made the papers. Instead, our opposition leader stood, staring down his inner rage, hoping the film in the journalist's camera would run out before his fuse did. Have a look for yourself:
What is disturbing about this footage is not that Abbott got caught out saying that "shit happens". What is disturbing is that when questioned about the matter, he was so incapable of controlling his own inner rage that he is barely able to restrain himself from coming to physical blows with the journalist.
We are a great democratic nation. And this is our great democracy. One leader is so desperately lacking in charisma that people write 500 word articles rejoicing the fact that her voice "faltered" when describing the deaths of Australian citizens in the QLD floods during a session of parliament. (She lives!) The other leader is an intellectual nobody, a brazen steel-balls oxford fighter who is on the record as not wanting us to believe everything he says, a man so incapable of controlling his feelings when reasonably challenged, that he is not able to think of one sane word to say in his own defence.
The choice is anaesthetising.
Allah and God be praised. Here lies the great democracy we never bothered to fight for.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Silver Cinder on Facebook
Silver Cinder are now on Facebook. You can follow us and keep up to date with all the latest information on upcoming gigs by clicking on the below icon:
Also, stay tuned for the new Promo CD from Silver Cinder. Here's a taste of what it will look like:
Monday, January 31, 2011
Y2GAY in Tropfest 2011!
We found out today that Y2GAY, the film that I co-wrote and co-directed has been chosen as a finalist for the world's largest short film festival, MovieExtra's Tropfest 2011. Exciting stuff! The finals take place on 20 February when the films will be screened in all capital cities around australia. The winner will be announced on the night. So, let's party!
Film Synopsis:
Y2GAY. Yep, it’s real. The gays are getting married. In 2011, The Australian Government has decided to legalise gay marriage and Mick is not happy. He’s convinced that everything will change for the worse once the gays get married because, well, “they’re weird”. So it’s time to dust off the Y2K bunker and head back down there with his wife Sharon and his best mate Gary.
In this comedy we get a first hand look at the inside of Mick’s anti-gay bunker. Everything in it is straight. There’s straight water, straight non-perishables, and Mick’s straight DVD set, including Spartacus, which Mick says is “definitely not gay” and Ricky Martin’s greatest hits, who as Mick says, “the lady’s love”, so you can’t argue with that. Mick’s wife Sharon is there as well, because that’s not gay, and so is his best mate Gary, because Mick thought he’d need someone to talk to while Sharon was busy cooking and cleaning the bunker.
We all remember how bad Y2K was. Well, reinforce your steel doors with concrete and stock your cupboards with anti-gay spray, because it’s happening all over again. There’s always something to be scared of. And this year, it’s Y2GAY.
Stay tuned for more Y2GAY news here!
Film Synopsis:
Y2GAY. Yep, it’s real. The gays are getting married. In 2011, The Australian Government has decided to legalise gay marriage and Mick is not happy. He’s convinced that everything will change for the worse once the gays get married because, well, “they’re weird”. So it’s time to dust off the Y2K bunker and head back down there with his wife Sharon and his best mate Gary.
In this comedy we get a first hand look at the inside of Mick’s anti-gay bunker. Everything in it is straight. There’s straight water, straight non-perishables, and Mick’s straight DVD set, including Spartacus, which Mick says is “definitely not gay” and Ricky Martin’s greatest hits, who as Mick says, “the lady’s love”, so you can’t argue with that. Mick’s wife Sharon is there as well, because that’s not gay, and so is his best mate Gary, because Mick thought he’d need someone to talk to while Sharon was busy cooking and cleaning the bunker.
We all remember how bad Y2K was. Well, reinforce your steel doors with concrete and stock your cupboards with anti-gay spray, because it’s happening all over again. There’s always something to be scared of. And this year, it’s Y2GAY.
Stay tuned for more Y2GAY news here!
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Morning Benders
Sorry Darren, another music post. Saw these guys at The Oxford Arts factory in Sydney... I've heard them described as the West Coast Grizzly Bear. Strange looking guys, but they were excellent live. Tight like a tiger.
Their big hit of the new album Big Echo is a song called Excuses, and the hits on Youtube reflect that. I've chosen to post Hand Me Down. It is a great song, and probably my favourite on the album:
Their big hit of the new album Big Echo is a song called Excuses, and the hits on Youtube reflect that. I've chosen to post Hand Me Down. It is a great song, and probably my favourite on the album:
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Faith is...
When he was 10 years old, Frederich Buechner awoke one morning to the news that his father had locked himself in the garage, turned on the car engine and poisened himself on the fumes of carbon monoxide from the car's exhaust. A week later a note was found scribbled on the final page of Gone With The Wind, the last book his father had been reading before he died. It was addressed to Buechner's mother and read simply, "I adore and love you, and I am no good. Give Freddie my watch. Give Jamie my pearl pin. I give you all my love."
In the wake of Buechner's father's death, and in spite of his grandmother's calls for the family to stay in Pittsburgh and "face reality", Buechner's mother took her children to the island of Bermuda, where they would live for three years, until the outbreak of WWII in 1939. During that time, Buechner learned to love again, learned to listen to the beauty of life around him and in his own words, was reborn. In the following passage, he reflects on his time in Bermuda as a time not just of running away and new beginnings, as many might have considered it to be, but a time of healing and resurrection against all apparent odds.
"In that never never land, that Oz of an island, where we had no roots, I found for the first time a sense of being rooted. In that land where as a foreigner we could never belong, I found a sense of belonging. In that most frivolous place, which travel brochures billed as a vacationer's paradise, I made what was perhaps the least frivolous discovery up till then, which was that Love is not merely a warmth to bask in, like the boatloads of honeymooners who basked on the warmth of Coral Beach, but a grave and fierce yearning and reaching out for paradise itself, a losing and finding of the self in the paradise of another.
This is the reality of those years as I look back at them, and part of their reality to me, is that all the healing and strengthening that came my way, came my way as a gift, and as a gift that implies a giver.
Did it?
There are lots of ways of looking at those years, at any years, of course. The common sense way would be to say simply, "the boy grew up a little." Time heals all wounds and his were no exception. Things started to fall into place for him, that's all. What happened, happened as much by chance as the chance patterns of raindrops on a glass pane, as much by luck as when you draw the lucky number in a raffle. If you want to speak in terms of a gift and a giver, then you should speak of the boy's grandmother, that formidable old lady who seems to have gotten short shrift in this account, but who paid the rent after all and financed the whole operation even though it was against her better judgement to do so.
Or there could be psychological ways of describing those years. You could say that the trauma of the father's suicide was such that the boy, unable to come to terms with his own feelings, repressed them, to the extent that they were bound to cause psychological conflict later on.
You could speak in terms of oedipal conflict and say that part of the reason that the boy seemed to recover from his grief as quickly as he did was that through his father's death he got what, subconsciously of course, he'd always wanted and that was his mother to himself, one consequence of which might well be just such a residue of anxiety and guilt as might in later years lead him to the consolations of religion.
As for the incident of the girl it was clearly a case of pre-adolescent sexuality romanticised to the level of a temporary obsession, or something like that.
I cannot deny such ways of looking at those years, nor do I want to. Many such insights, including many of those, seem very real to me. Yes, time heals all wounds, or at least dresses them, makes them endurable. Yes, at the king's death, the grief of the prince is mitigated by his becoming king. Yes, the great transfiguring power of sex stirs early and deep within everybody. And who can look at his life without seeing the role of blind chance and dumb luck?
But faith, says the author of Hebrews, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And looking back at those distant years, I choose not to deny either, the presence of an unseen giver and a series of hidden gifts, as not only part of their reality, but the deepest part of all.
Grandma Buechner might have been right about our going to Bermuda. It could have been a terrible mistake. Instead it was a kind of rebirth. My father's death could have closed the door of my heart once and for all against the possibility of ever giving entrance to such love, and therefore to such pain again. Instead it opened some door, in me, to the pain in other people. Not that I did much about the other people, God knows. Nor have ever done much about them since, because I am much too lilly-livered for that. Too weak of faith, too self-absorbed and squeemish. But such pain as I'd know in my own short life opened up, if not my hands to help them, at least my eyes to see that there is pain in every life, that buried grief and hurtful memories are part of us all. And there was so much else to see too... And there is so much to see always. Things too big to take in all at once. Things so small, it's hardly even noticed. And though they may well come by accident, these moments of our seeing, I choose to believe that it is no means by accident when they open our hearts as well as our eyes. I believe it is by grace. I believe these moments themselves are gifts of grace, and that what they open our hearts to is the grace of life itself, a "crazy holy grace" I've called it.
Crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who could ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that wells up out of a lostness and pain of the world and our own inner worlds?
And Holy? Because these moments of grace come from farther away than Oz and deeper down than doom. Holy, because they heal and hallow.
"For all our blessings, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, we give thee thanks" says an old prayer. And it's for the all but unknown ones and the more than half-forgotten ones that we do well to look back over the journey of our lives. Because it is their presence that makes the life of each a sacred journey.
We cannot see them clearly for the gifts they are. And we surely cannot see clearly the giver's hand who gives them. But part of the gift is to be able, from time to time, to be "assured and convinced without seeing" as Hebrews says. Because that seems to be of the very style and substance of faith, and what drives us always to seek a farther and deeper seeing still.
There will always be some who say that such faith is only dream. And God knows there are none that can say it more devastatingly than we sometimes say it to ourselves.
But if so, I think it's like the dream that Caliban dreamed. Faith is like a dream in which the clouds open to show such richness ready to fall upon us that when we wake into the reality of nothing more than common sense, we cry to dream again. Because the dreaming seems truer than the waking does. The fullness of reality, not as we have ever fully seen it, to be sure, but as by faith we trust it to be, without seeing.
Faith is both the crying, and the dreaming. Faith is the assurance that the best and holiest dream is true. Faith in something, if only in the proposition that life is better than death, is what makes our journeys through time bearable. When faith ends, the journey ends. It ends either in a death like my father's, or in the living death of those who believe themselves to be without hope."
In the wake of Buechner's father's death, and in spite of his grandmother's calls for the family to stay in Pittsburgh and "face reality", Buechner's mother took her children to the island of Bermuda, where they would live for three years, until the outbreak of WWII in 1939. During that time, Buechner learned to love again, learned to listen to the beauty of life around him and in his own words, was reborn. In the following passage, he reflects on his time in Bermuda as a time not just of running away and new beginnings, as many might have considered it to be, but a time of healing and resurrection against all apparent odds.
"In that never never land, that Oz of an island, where we had no roots, I found for the first time a sense of being rooted. In that land where as a foreigner we could never belong, I found a sense of belonging. In that most frivolous place, which travel brochures billed as a vacationer's paradise, I made what was perhaps the least frivolous discovery up till then, which was that Love is not merely a warmth to bask in, like the boatloads of honeymooners who basked on the warmth of Coral Beach, but a grave and fierce yearning and reaching out for paradise itself, a losing and finding of the self in the paradise of another.
This is the reality of those years as I look back at them, and part of their reality to me, is that all the healing and strengthening that came my way, came my way as a gift, and as a gift that implies a giver.
Did it?
There are lots of ways of looking at those years, at any years, of course. The common sense way would be to say simply, "the boy grew up a little." Time heals all wounds and his were no exception. Things started to fall into place for him, that's all. What happened, happened as much by chance as the chance patterns of raindrops on a glass pane, as much by luck as when you draw the lucky number in a raffle. If you want to speak in terms of a gift and a giver, then you should speak of the boy's grandmother, that formidable old lady who seems to have gotten short shrift in this account, but who paid the rent after all and financed the whole operation even though it was against her better judgement to do so.
Or there could be psychological ways of describing those years. You could say that the trauma of the father's suicide was such that the boy, unable to come to terms with his own feelings, repressed them, to the extent that they were bound to cause psychological conflict later on.
You could speak in terms of oedipal conflict and say that part of the reason that the boy seemed to recover from his grief as quickly as he did was that through his father's death he got what, subconsciously of course, he'd always wanted and that was his mother to himself, one consequence of which might well be just such a residue of anxiety and guilt as might in later years lead him to the consolations of religion.
As for the incident of the girl it was clearly a case of pre-adolescent sexuality romanticised to the level of a temporary obsession, or something like that.
I cannot deny such ways of looking at those years, nor do I want to. Many such insights, including many of those, seem very real to me. Yes, time heals all wounds, or at least dresses them, makes them endurable. Yes, at the king's death, the grief of the prince is mitigated by his becoming king. Yes, the great transfiguring power of sex stirs early and deep within everybody. And who can look at his life without seeing the role of blind chance and dumb luck?
But faith, says the author of Hebrews, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And looking back at those distant years, I choose not to deny either, the presence of an unseen giver and a series of hidden gifts, as not only part of their reality, but the deepest part of all.
Grandma Buechner might have been right about our going to Bermuda. It could have been a terrible mistake. Instead it was a kind of rebirth. My father's death could have closed the door of my heart once and for all against the possibility of ever giving entrance to such love, and therefore to such pain again. Instead it opened some door, in me, to the pain in other people. Not that I did much about the other people, God knows. Nor have ever done much about them since, because I am much too lilly-livered for that. Too weak of faith, too self-absorbed and squeemish. But such pain as I'd know in my own short life opened up, if not my hands to help them, at least my eyes to see that there is pain in every life, that buried grief and hurtful memories are part of us all. And there was so much else to see too... And there is so much to see always. Things too big to take in all at once. Things so small, it's hardly even noticed. And though they may well come by accident, these moments of our seeing, I choose to believe that it is no means by accident when they open our hearts as well as our eyes. I believe it is by grace. I believe these moments themselves are gifts of grace, and that what they open our hearts to is the grace of life itself, a "crazy holy grace" I've called it.
Crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who could ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that wells up out of a lostness and pain of the world and our own inner worlds?
And Holy? Because these moments of grace come from farther away than Oz and deeper down than doom. Holy, because they heal and hallow.
"For all our blessings, known and unknown, remembered and forgotten, we give thee thanks" says an old prayer. And it's for the all but unknown ones and the more than half-forgotten ones that we do well to look back over the journey of our lives. Because it is their presence that makes the life of each a sacred journey.
We cannot see them clearly for the gifts they are. And we surely cannot see clearly the giver's hand who gives them. But part of the gift is to be able, from time to time, to be "assured and convinced without seeing" as Hebrews says. Because that seems to be of the very style and substance of faith, and what drives us always to seek a farther and deeper seeing still.
There will always be some who say that such faith is only dream. And God knows there are none that can say it more devastatingly than we sometimes say it to ourselves.
But if so, I think it's like the dream that Caliban dreamed. Faith is like a dream in which the clouds open to show such richness ready to fall upon us that when we wake into the reality of nothing more than common sense, we cry to dream again. Because the dreaming seems truer than the waking does. The fullness of reality, not as we have ever fully seen it, to be sure, but as by faith we trust it to be, without seeing.
Faith is both the crying, and the dreaming. Faith is the assurance that the best and holiest dream is true. Faith in something, if only in the proposition that life is better than death, is what makes our journeys through time bearable. When faith ends, the journey ends. It ends either in a death like my father's, or in the living death of those who believe themselves to be without hope."
Christmas Bike
This lovely bike from Tokyo Bikes is the new addition to the family in 2011. Their website states,"more about slow, than fast, Tokyo Bike believes that speed is not always the aim, destination is only part of the story, and losing yourself in a city’s small back lanes and expansive parks and gardens, is one way of switching off and escaping it all..." Hurrah!
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Love is...
"Love is not merely a warmth to bask in, like the boatloads of honeymooners who basked on the warmth of coral beach, but a grave, fierce yearning and reaching out for paradise itself, a losing and finding of the self in the paradise of another."
- Frederich Buechner
- Frederich Buechner
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