Hieronymous the Anonymous

Faith: What Australians believe in

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NEXT weekend the nation's churches will be filled to overflowing. But then, Christmas and Easter are the exceptions to the great Australian indifference to worship. Belief for most Australians is about values far more than devotion. It's belief without belonging.

via www.theage.com.au

I read this article in the The Age this morning and was surprised at the findings. In actual fact I'm sceptical given my own experience of life here, and let's face it, surveys and polls like this are easily skewed depending on the sample of the population surveyed and the way the question is phrased.

That said I belong to the demographic probably least likely to be deemed as 'believers'. Certainly if I glance around my circle of friends and acquaintances I can pick out 2 out of about 50 who are church goers, and not many more than that I would consider as being spiritual, let alone religious.

In any case, let me respond:

Do I believe in a god? No.
Life after death? I waver on this, largely because I'd like to believe it is true. And there is enough in stories of odd near-death experiences and discussions to believe it may not be black and white. On balance probably no, but I'll keep my options open.
Heaven? No.
Hell? No.
Devil? Would be interesting, but no.
Angels? Are you kidding me?
Witches? Depends on your definition of this. Do I believe there are crooked nosed women casting spells? No.
Astrology? Not really. I certainly don't believe in horoscopes, but I think there is some fact to support the belief that personality can be influenced by the time of year one is born. I don't think it's anything magic though, and whether it has anything to do with the planets I would have no idea.
Psychic powers? Strangely yes, to some degree.
Miracles? No, not as they are commonly thought to be anyway. Extraordinary things can and will be achieved sometimes, but that isn't magic either.
The Bible? As a good read and a rough history, yes. As the word of god? No.
Literally true? No.
The un-ambiguity of religious teaching?No.
Evolution? Yes. Shocked at this result, and very sceptical of it.Ultimately I agree

Ultimately I agree that for most Australians religion is a very casual belief. Pressed to answer they may come down one side or the other of the question, but for most I think it plays only a remote role in their daily life. You can question the good of that, but for me I am glad that we are free from the narrow focus religion often brings with it, and true to nature are anything but dogmatic when it comes to belief in higher matters.

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Practising my scales

Over lunch today I read an article by Christopher Hitchens about Arthur Koestler. It was an interesting read, but what struck me as I read was how much I enjoyed taking the time to sit and read about different people, different times, how much fun it was to learn and to continually investigate. I realised this was my ideal life, to live amid these lives, that history. It seemed so much more real to me even if the likes of Koestler are now long dead. He added his two-bob’s worth after all, and it’s his contribution and the multitude of others that has made the culture we live in. It’s important because we are contained within that culture and are perpetually carried forward within its silent onward progress – whether we know it or not.

Hitchens lives amid that world. If he is not an active participant in the doing then he is a prolific commentator on it. He is a writer of great authority and erudition, given to comment on a wide spectrum of topics and people. He has his controversial moments, but then anyone with a skerrick of passion has those. I don’t agree with everything he writes, but that is largely unimportant. What is important is that there is foment of opinion and attitude, left and right. Hitchens is a significant part of the cultural and intellectual discourse in our time.

I read and I am fascinated. I am drawn in and wish to know more. For a little while I am consumed by these things and delude myself into believing that I am part of a world where these things are important, and not just scattered remnants of another time. Sometimes I indulge myself by jotting down my passionately held but much less erudite opinions in these pages – but that’s as near as I get to being more than a passive spectator. I return to my designated role, the stuff I am deemed to be good at and which I get paid for – right now cost centre accounting, asset management and system architecture.

I sigh. I read the article on Koestler – another man in the thick of it in his time – chewing on my burger. I close the paper and push out my stool. For a little while I have been transported, the opera buff who wishes he could sing an aria himself. Then I return to earth with a thud. That is not my world nor my life. I return to my spreadsheets, and to my feeble words of frustrated purpose...

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Where have all the bank robbers gone?

Cover of Fun with Dick and Jane

I got home last night and flicked on the TV and watched the end of an odd movie before the next one came on. The next movie was Fun With Dick and Jane, the seventies version with George Segal and Jane Fonda. For those who don't know it's about a high flying executive and his young aspiring family, big house in the 'burbs, in-ground pool being dug, when he gets laid-off. He tries for benefits and to get another job before, in desperation, he starts to hold up stores with his wife.

It's pretty well a comedy, though perhaps with a bit of a satirical edge. It's fun and well made and very seventies in a way; and last night watching it resonated with me pretty strongly. What is crime after all but free enterprise taken to an extreme?

Anyway I was watching it when I realised that while the news will feature the odd convenience store hold up, they're pretty infrequent these days, and very rarely does a bank get robbed. When I was growing up banks were robbed all the time - not now. Is it the increased security and technology that have made it too risky? Or is simply that there is a different class of crim these days?

Whatever, I went to bed thinking worse comes to worse a ram raid on an ATM may not be the worst option - though not with the Audi.

Home of the coffee nerd

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Melbourne has been long been passionate about it's coffee, but in recent times that has been elevated into a science. The place is chock-full of coffee nerds searching out the best macchiato or latte, the best coffee roaster or barista, and then squirreling on about it to like minded nerds. I'm not fond of the nerd appellation, but I'm similarly passionate about my coffee. I source only the best beans, often getting them from specialised roaster by mail order, I grind my own beans to ensure it's just the way I like it. Half of my friends are similarly nerdful.

Melbourne has been one of the leading coffee cities in the world probably since about 1990, when the public consciousness switched from instant coffee and the occasional frothy cappuccino to coincide with the emergence of a multitude of cafes throughout the laneways and arcades of the CBD, and through the inner city suburbs. At the same time coffee making came to be seen as an art - hence the barista, a groovy job looked on with respect and envy by many, and as something similar to being a good sommelier in status.

In recent years this has gone through the roof. There is probably some aspect of navel gazing in the universal reverence for coffee in this city, and the self congratulation that goes along with that. There are plenty of coffee snobs in Melbourne, and the success of a cafe will depend entirely on the quality of the coffee they put out - there is nothing more important, certainly not in the CBD where workers vote with their feet. And when Starbucks dared to open here Melbourne looked down its collective nose at them - and Starbucks failed (it's not just that the coffee lacked individuality, or that it was an American chain store - I would contend Starbucks took coffee too lightly for Melburnians taste. In a city where coffee is put out by craftsmen working in boutique cafes the mass produced department store approach is never going to work. As I said, Melburnians are great coffee snobs, but they are also purists, and know just what they want). Coffee drinking and making in the city is a serious business, and is without doubt a pretty central part of our local culture.

It has now got to the point that it also a very big business, with industries and sub-cultures all consequent of that. There are now professional coffee tasters much as there are wine tasters. The technology roasting, grinding and creating your cup of coffee has become incredibly innovative. (St Ali in South Melbourne and its sister operation, Outpost, in South Yarra, are good examples of fine coffee being taken to the nth degree). It's hard to think of another city in the world that takes its coffee as seriously as what Melbourne does, and there is good reason to think that Australia is the coffee capital in the world.

All this is good I guess for someone living here and with a passion for coffee - and yet I feel a slight misgiving at how far cafe society has progressed in the last 20 years. Is it too much? It's hard to make that claim when the quest for a good coffee counts so high. And yet I wonder if we have made too much of it. In a way it's the old difference between the amateur and the professional, one does it for love, and may fumble doing it, the other for profit - though doubtless there is still much passion. In considering this I feel a little like the man who has been sweetly flirting with a pretty girl on the tram, only to discover she's a burlesque dancer in her spare time. There's a certain piquancy, but also a subtle loss of innocence...

After the furore

At about 5 this morning Rigby came nosing up to the side of my bed wanting to be let out. I let him out and returned to bed. I was far from sleepy and lay in bed comfortably thinking about the Socceroos match the previous night, and then inevitably back to the race row sparked by Hey, Hey last week.

I've been been stewing on this ever since. On the one hand I felt a kind of outrage at the over the top and ill informed international reaction to the event. Like many Australians I figure I got to the point where I felt like flipping the bird to international opinion. On the other hand there was a sense of dissatisfaction about the discourse it had provoked, mostly shallow and clichéd drivel from a variety of commentators.

This last week has highlighted to me how inadequate our thinking about racism is. People react with shock and horror, but with little real discernment. Few stop to look deeper, not just at what it means but at how it shapes our society. Racism is rightly abhorred, but for most part our response is reflex.

I'm a believer that any healthy society must have a voice of dissent, and the louder the better. I'm not against opinions being rowdily expressed whether I agree with them or not, and think the status quo is there to be challenged. We should never get too comfortable with ourselves, and should never shy away from the tough questions needed if that society is to progress. Somebody needs to ask those questions though, and the questions have to be heard.

In a funny sort of way that controversial little skit has acted as a lightning rod for discussion and dissent on the subject of racism. Far from being a bad thing I think it's a positive. It was certainly not the intention of those suburban doctors to make a political statement, but the result is that their act has opened up a conversation everyone was too afraid - or too polite - to speak of.

One of the first things I felt last week in the wake of all this outrage was a sense of offended innocence, as if in another world we might have been able to say sorry mate, didn't mean to upset you and moved on from there. And of course that is a trivial reaction on the surface until you begin to look a little deeper.

One of the things we have lost as a society in recent generations is our innocence, our naivety. What small pockets of it that remain ultimately die a nasty death. With everything broadcast all around the world and with information instantly available at our fingertips there is little excuse for ignorance any more. At the same time much of what we receive as information and news has been pre-digested for us. Commentators, editors, fashionistas put their spin on the news until it becomes received wisdom. This is what you wear, this is what you think, this is what you believe, and even if you are a truly independent free-thinker you live in a society shaped by this.

This is why dissent is important. This is why we need to ask why: to upset conventional wisdom and look deeper, to question cultural mores rather than blindly accept them.

Naivety is a much underrated quality. Our children have it and they are beautiful because of it. A child feels and it acts. It sees and it responds. A child doesn't think twice about expressing what it feels; there is no thought of conforming to a standard. A child is yet to be laden with the baggage our society will pile onto it, whether it be cultural or personal. A child is transparent and natural.

Now I don't advocate we become like children - that's asking too much - but we would do well to recall those qualities.

I believe in basic concepts, in liberty, in equality, in a fair go for all. They are the bedrock of belief for any fair minded person, but as a society we have built upon that a shanty town of disparate habits and attitudes and dos and don'ts that grows with every minute. We no longer see things just as they are, but rather qualified by these constraints. We have wandered a long way from our child like ways.

This is not just about race: it is about many things now. We have drawn so many lines trying to do the 'right' thing that there is little room left to move between them, and the lines too easily over-stepped. 

The outcry last week served to do the opposite of what it represented: it drew attention to our differences, and not to what binds us together. Well intentioned people across the world climbed aboard their soapbox and declaimed what had happened, but in so doing made it all about 'us' and 'them'. Well intentioned as it was it was also a kind of discrimination by drawing attention to our superficial differences: don't do that because you'll offend them.

I may be a cock-eyed idealist, but rather than us and them shouldn't it be we? Isn't that the ideal, what we should be aspiring to? A colour of a persons skin should be as relevant as the colour of a persons hair or the size of their foot. Each time we make this distinction we draw another line, we travel further from where we want to be, and put something more between us. Each line we draw is another boundary between us at a time when those boundaries should be removed.

I'm sorry if people were offended by that little skit. We don't want to be the cause of discomfort or distress. Yes, we acknowledge the ugly past - but are we condemned to repeat it? In the end it was just a silly skit and nothing more than that. That it can't be seen as that points to something seriously wrong with our society. We have to undo much of what we have done, clear away the ramshackle set of beliefs we have built up over time. In it's place our society should be such that we can look each other in the eyes and be open, and recognise things for what they are rather than what our darkest fears would have us believe them to be.

Pompeii in Melbourne

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Typical of my random, capricious lifestyle at present I worked to nearly midnight on Wednesday way over-delivering on a job, and then spent yesterday afternoon drinking coffee, visiting the Melbourne Museum and last night attending the Taste of Melbourne show at the Exhibition buildings.

The museum visit was pre-empted by the exhibition last night. I've long intended to visit the 'new' museum, which opened 6-7 years ago, but never seemed to get around to it. As the museum is next door to the Exhibition building this was the ideal opportunity - cruise the museum for a couple of hours and then pop next door to get stuck into the food, wine and produce exhibited at the Taste of Melbourne. That's pretty well how it worked out.

One of the drivers for visiting the museum now was the Pompeii exhibition. I've been to Pompeii and found it pretty interesting, but also pretty spread out - and though fascinating at times the power of it is diluted by being spread out over an area of a few square kilometres. At the museum it promised to be concentrated into the space of a few rooms.

Of course looking at the various exhibits is not like being in Pompeii and walking down the cobbled lanes rutted by generations of chariots long gone, or laying hands on the bricks and mortar of the homes of Romans now long dead. There is not that immediacy, but there are compensations.

Looking back now at my visit to Pompeii what was missing was some kind of context. There were a few bits and pieces on display, and guided tours through the ruins, but there was little effort to explain, to illuminate what it was like to live there, and what it must have been like on that fateful day. Not that I remember anyway.

This is where museums are good. What they lack in the physical exhibits they compensate by reaching into their curatorial bag of  tricks. And so yesterday while there were odd little bits and pieces exhibited they were augmented by more imaginative displays and shows. For example, there was a animated 3D movie which imagined a fixed camera looking out over Pompeii on the day Vesuvius erupted. Time laps film was taken as such as the first tremors set a few tiles sliding from rooftops and the local dogs barking, all the way through to the eruption, the smoke billowing in the air and pumice raining down on the town setting it alight and burying the stone buildings beneath its growing weight. It conncluded with the awesome a fearsome spectacle of a wall of dark cloud charging to and burying the camewra. What was left afterwards was a wasteland, Pompeii buried beneath tonnes of ashen rubble, with only the highest structures here and there poking through the surface.

Other than that there were the usual audio-visual displays and explanations of what happened and why, a history of Vesuvius and some general info on vulcanology. 

Besides the 3D show there were two things that really fascinated me. One, of course, was the casts made of people who had died in the eruption. These casts were made where people had been buried in the ash and decomposed, leaving a hollow in the shape of their bodies the moment they died. They're eerie in a way, fascinating for what they are. I remember seeing some of these in Pompeii, but there is no end to the fascination I find. It's pretty macabre perhaps, but understandable.

Most of the casts were familiar. A man sitting on the ground, his knees pulled tight to his chest, his head buried into his knees. A dead girl with her dress over her head to keep the ash out. There was couple I had not seen before, close and touching in their last moments. And another, a man in shackles, a slave presumably, or a criminal, who had almost made it out. Most poignant for me though was the dog.

I've seen the dog before. It's poignant for me because it is a dog. Rightly or wrongly it's hard not to see the family pet as more innocent than its masters. In this case the dog was evidently in some agony, its body twisted back upon itself as if writhing in pain. It is preserved like that, buried beneath tonnes of ash for two millenium. As I read of it there was something more I did not know: the dog had been chained up: it didn't have a chance. Poor thing.

The other thing that really fascinated me was the Pompeiian graffiti they had replicated here. It brought an immediacy to the history, it made real the people who had lived there and died there. Much of it is witty or scathing or plain old gossipy. Some is boastful, a Roman legionary going on about what a stallion he is or how many women he screwed and where, and a good proportion of it is pretty blunt and sexual. The Roman's were a raunchy lot.

All in all, not bad for $20, and then there's the rest of the library to see. Worth visiting.

At the library

God knows I’m no royalist, but I’m thankful to the Queen for giving us a day off to celebrate her birthday (which is actually in May I believe). It gives me the excuse to be a slob for one more day.

In actual fact I didn’t get about of bed until 11 this morning. From about 8.30 on I was reading. I finished off another, quite disappointing book, before embarking on the next.

The book I have started is Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle. That planet of the apes, the original they made all those movies about. It’s not bad, intriguing more than compelling, dated in ways you might expect – it was written in the 1950’s – but fascinating in concept. I’ve read about 120 words so there’s still a fair way to go.

This is actually a library book. I don’t remember the last time I went to the library, though I used to go all the time when I was a kid. Normally I buy my books, which seems a pretty expensive exercise for something I’ll not likely read again, but what price pleasure? Unfortunately it’s not unalloyed pleasure, I buy and read my fair share of duds, no matter how well reviewed. The library then seems an obvious friend to me.

For some reason I had not even considered going to a library for many years. I would pass by them with my mind a blank. Then the week before last somebody asked why I didn’t go to the library. I’d just been complaining about many books I was going through and how much I was spending. A library? What a curious thought! There and then I dismissed it with some lame excuse, but found later and in the days after that the idea held an odd attraction for me. Part of it was nostalgia I was sure. I may have kept away in recent years but when I was younger I would go all the time. Close my eyes and I can picture the different libraries in detail. More particularly I can recall the distinct atmosphere of a library, like a church really in some ways, a place which seems to naturally discourage noise or brash movement, and instead wraps the visitor in the cloke of studious curiosity.

I had an appointment in Hawthorn last week at an osteopath. Afterwards I visited the nearby library I had scouted out earlier. By now it was darkening outside, and the early evening commuter traffic was keeping the roads busy. I walked to the counter and with a smile explained I wanted to join the library. They took down some details and within 5 minutes I had a freshly minted library card in my wallet.

I browsed the stacks for about an hour, getting no further than N in my exhaustive perusal. My excuse the week before was that libraries do not have all the latest releases, which is not strictly true, but close enough. What I remembered in browsing was the joy of the extensive back catalogue of books that libraries carry but few bookshops will. And so I came across old and near forgotten favourites, and stumbled across other books that piqued my interest. The beauty of a library is that it’s a lot easier to borrow a book you’re not sure you’ll enjoy, rather than fork out the hard earned for it. The options are greater, and they cost less.

I walked out with seven books under my arm. It was dark outside and I caught the train home. I stopped for some take away Japanese and as I waited for it to be prepared I browsed my books. I was excited already at the prospect of discovering more.

Sir Richard Burton - one of a kind

Another I might one day invite to a heavenly dinner party is Sir Richard Burton. No, that's not the actor, but rather fabled and famous in his day Victorian explorer, spy, translator and iconoclastic adventurer. He was one the first white non-Muslims to visit Mecca. Discovery would have meant death but his knowledge of the language and customs, and an elaborate disguise (including an adult circumcision for authenticity) meant he made it there and back - a great feat.

He translated an unexpurgated version of the Kama Sutra and published it to great controversy in 1880's London (he was also the original translator of 1001 Nights). He set out with John Hanning Speke to search for the source of the Nile, an epic journey that led to them falling out in disagreement and Speke's ultimate death (probably suicide).

He was a great linguist and scholar, a man of unquenchable curiosity and spirit. He lived through the era of Victorian conservatism and prudery, and was out of step with it in nearly every regard, and didn't give a toss. A little poem by him illustrates his personal philosophy:

“Do what thy manhood bids thee do / From none but self expect applause; / He noblest lives and noblest dies / Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.”

He was an explorer by spirit. He needed to know, to understand, to experience. As much as he was fascinated by the blank spaces on the map it was other customs and ways of life that intrigued him. In his writings he was frank and up-front about the variety of sexual practices he encountered on his travels, and he was a a sexual explorer in his own right.

In many ways he comes across as a man's man not just in his great and daring adventures, but also in his irascible and unapologetic nature, summed up pretty well by the verse above. In the same way he was obviously a man sensitive to nuance and subtlety. He could not have journeyed so far into other cultures or translated so honestly without being open to them. He was a fascinating man who led a fascinating life.

I'd have him along for his stories, and for the man he is, the character to behold and admire.

John Brack

 Yesterday afternoon I went and saw the new John Brack exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre.  John Brack (self portrait, right)  was an Australian artist - intrinsically a Melbourne artist - who in a career spanning 40 years (from the early 1950's to his death in 1999) produced a succession of fascinating art works. He was an iconic painter though without the name of some of his peers. He is best known for Collins St, 5pm:

This is the painting most people know even if they don't know Brack. Painted in the mid-fifties it illustrates the drone like conformity as people pour out of their place of work and head home. Much of his early work is similar, ironic in tone, earthy, occasionally washed out colours, and spare, angular, lantern jawed people representative of different gradations of urban and suburban existence. In later years he came to disavow much of this work, but to me it is very powerful. His is a distinctive, almost unique style, less interested in the individual than in the collective meaning of everyday life.

Look at the painting to the left, Man in pub, look at the chiselled planes of his face, his eyes closed to enjoy the cold beer, hat perched on his head. Look at his knobbled, knuckly hand and the warmth of the colour, reds and browns and pale washed out yellows. It is an evocative but simple painting that has some of the quality of a stained glass window. There is something classic and timeless in the composition.

After the fifties his style developed while his themes became more sophisticated. Walking around the gallery yesterday amid school students on excursion  taking notes on the variety of paintings I was struck by the range of his work - portraits, nudes, sketches, still life's abstract representations of life, and how striking and interesting almost all his work is, whether it be intriguing or provocative, or in the bold use of colour.

The Old Time, depicted to the right, is one of a series of paintings showing a dance competition. All are vividly coloured and sharply drawn, in a variety of poses. In each of these it is as if a particular mood and time is captured in an artistic aspic, in much the same way he earlier painted commuters going home or closing time at the pub.

Walking amongst these artworks I stopped  often to look more closely at different paintings. On a purely aesthetic plane I found most of them to be compelling. Looking more deeply they gave me pause to ponder what I saw, what was represented, what was intended. Without being any sort of art expert it seemed to me that the paintings of Brack were informed by an intellectual rigour that guided subject matter and how he represented it.

As I wandered through the gallery I would stop to read the little notes tacked to the wall. Amongst a collection of portraits I read that while the paintings were widely admired most of the sitters did not at first like them - though often, after a period, the sitters would come to appreciate and understand them. I could understand that in some ways. Few were conventional portraits. In composition or background there was always something a little odd. Perspective might have been skewed a little, or proportions altered. Or perhaps there was a prop that seemed out of sync with the sitter. These things drew the eye, made you stop and consider further.

If you look at the portrait of Fred Williams it is hardly a conventional portrait at all. It is more like a photo of a man who did know he was being watched, seemingly uncomfortable in his jacket and tie and leaning forward in his chair as if impatiently waiting for something. There is this distracted, absorbed air, caught up in oneself whilst poised to act. It is the portrait of a man looking to do things, and used to acting, moving forward.

There were also a wide variety of nudes, none of which could be described as erotic, and few with any sensuality to them. This was no accident. He depicted these naked women plainly, unadorned by any artifice. Some are almost banal, but powerfully so. Others are cool, not just in composition but in colour - yellows, greens, and the like.

In his later years his compositions became more abstract. People were replaced by objects - most often pencils - as a symbolic representation of their individuality.

Many of these paintings were larger than his earlier work. From a distance they often seemed striking in their colours and in the strange mix of imagery. Up close they had a mixed impact on me. Whilst I understood the theme I thought at times it was overdone. These were the works he came to regard best, but for mine the lack of anything human in them made some of the pieces inaccessible. There were others though which I thought were great.

Overall I have tosay I was very glad to have taken the time to have checked this out. I think he is a great painter and a very interesting one. There are few things I wouldn't give to be an accomplished artist.

See this if you can.

Free Nelson Mandela

I am here in Australia and occasionally in the last few days and in the weeks ahead my mind has travelled to South Africa. It is the cricket that takes me there, but once there I stop to look around.

I have in the past looked through a particular lens. I see what I expect to see, see only what I choose to see. That is the easy way, it may even be the normal way. And so I have come away with a limited view on the country. I have felt buoyed by watching my cricket team beat theirs, and in the satisfaction of that have failed to take account of anything beyond that. There has been little to shift my mind from that, and little reason in that narrow perspective to reconsider the notions I have long held.

This time it is different. For reasons I don't understand I have looked beyond that perspective this time - today - and past the prejudices I have held. It is the person of Mandela who has prompted this. He has always been there of course, even when he was imprisoned. Like many millions of people around the world I have a great admiration for him, but I have failed previously to connect the man I admire with the country I see displayed on my TV screen. If anything the abiding reference is to those years of imprisonment, when he was both symbol and rallying cry.

That is unfair. Tonight I see the great journey he has travelled parallels that of his country. He is a great man. Though my perspective was limited to the sporting field and to the battles there, and victories, there is a bigger story which I should be more mindful of. It is easy to glory in our sporting victories, and long shall I do that - but beyond that the country and its people deserve the support of the likes of me, and all the good fortune we can send its way.