“If I die before I wake…”

…which I might well do when this post hits the internet, then I hope somebody will at least look down upon my soul & life’s work favourably. Today, I am going to be dealing with the internet’s least favourite topic, an idea whose adherence will get you first derided and later inundated with offers to go and be slaughtered in one’s bed, a subject that should be taboo for any blogger looking to not infuriate everybody; that of religion.

I am not a religious person; despite a nominally Anglican upbringing my formative years found most of my Sundays occupied on the rugby pitch, whilst a deep interest in science tended to form the foundations of my world beliefs- I think (sometimes) to some personal detriment. This is a pattern I see regularly among those people I find as company (which may or may not say something about my choice of friends)- predominantly atheists with little or no religious upbringing who tend to steer clear of religion and its various associated features wherever possible. However, where I find I differ from them tends to be when the subject is broached when in the present of a devoutly Christian friend of mine; whilst I tend to leave his beliefs to himself and try not to spark an argument, many others I know see a demonstration of his beliefs as a cue to start on a campaign of ‘ha ha isn’t your world philosophy stupid’, and so on.  I tend to find these attacks more baffling and a little saddening than anything else, so I thought that I might take this opportunity to take my usual approach and try to analyse the issue

First up is a fact that most people are aware of even if it hasn’t quite made the jump into an articulate thought yet; that every religion is in fact two separate parts. The first of these can be dubbed the ‘faith’ aspect; the stories, the gods, the code of morals & general life guidelines and such, all of the bits that form the core of a system of beliefs and are, to a theist, the ‘godly’ part of their religion. The second can be labelled the ‘church’ aspect; this is the more man-made, even artificial, aspect of the religious system, and covers the system of priesthood (or equivalent) for each religion, their holy buildings, the religious leaders and even people’s personal interpretation of the ‘faith’ aspect. Holy books, such as the Bible or Torah, fall somewhere in between (Muslims believe, for example, that the Qur’an is literally the word of Allah, translated through the prophet Muhammed) as do the various prayers and religious music. In Buddhism, these two aspects are known as the Dharma (teachings) and Sangha (community), and together with Buddha form the ‘three jewels’ of their religion. In some religions, such as Scientology (if that can technically be called a religion) the two aspects are so closely entwined so as to be hard to separate, but they are still distinct aspects that should be treated separately. The ‘faith’ aspect of religion is, in most respects, the really important one, for it is this that actually formulates the basis of a religion; without a belief system, a church is nothing more than a place where people go to shout their views at those who inexplicably turn up. A religion’s ‘church’ aspect is its organised divisions, and exists for no greater or lesser purpose than to spread, cherish, protect and correctly translate the word of God, or other parts of the ‘faith’ aspect generally. This distinction is vital when we consider how great a difference there can be between what somebody believes and what another does in the same name.

For example, consider the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban currently fighting their Jihad (the word does not, on an unrelated note, technically translate as ‘holy war’ and the two should not be thought of a synonymous) in Afghanistan against the USA and other western powers. Their personal interpretation of the Qur’an and the teachings of Islam (their ‘church’ aspect) has lead them to believe that women do not deserve equal rights to men, that the western powers are ‘infidels’ who should be purged from the world, and that they must use force and military intervention against them to defend Islam from said infidels- hence why they are currently fighting a massive war that is getting huge amounts of innocent civilians killed and destroying their faith’s credibility. By contrast, there are nearly 2 million Muslims currently living in the UK, the vast majority of whom do not interpret their religion in the same way and are not currently blowing up many buildings- and yet they still identify as Islamic and believe in, broadly speaking, the same faith. To pick a perhaps more ‘real world’ example, I’m sure that the majority of Britain’s Catholic population steadfastly disagree with the paedophilia practiced by some of their Church’s priests, and that a certain proportion also disagree with the Pope’s views on the rights of homosexuals; and yet, they are still just as Christian as their priests, are devout believers in the teachings of God & Jesus and try to follow them as best as they can.

This I feel, is the nub of the matter; that one can be simultaneously a practising Christian, Muslim, Jew or whatever else and still be a normal human being. Just because your vicar holds one view, doesn’t mean you hold the same, and just because some people choose to base their entire life around their faith does not mean that a person must be defined by their belief system. And, returning to the subject of the ridicule many practising theists suffer, just because the ‘church’ aspect of a religion does something silly, doesn’t mean all practitioners of it deserve to be tarred with the same brush- or that their view on the world should even matter to you as you enjoy life in your own way (unless of course their belief actively impedes you in some way).

I feel like I haven’t really got my point across properly, so I’ll leave you with a few links that I think illustrate quite well what I’m trying to get at. I only hope that it will help others find a little more tolerance towards those who have found a religious path.

And sorry for this post being rather… weird

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NMEvolution

Music has been called by some the greatest thing the human race has ever done, and at its best it is undoubtedly a profound expression of emotion more poetic than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. True, done badly it can sound like a trapped cat in a box of staplers falling down a staircase, but let’s not get hung up on details here- music is awesome.

However, music as we know it has only really existed for around a century or so, and many of the developments in music’s  history that have shaped it into the tour de force that it is in modern culture are in direct parallel to human history. As such, the history of our development as a race and the development of music run closely alongside one another, so I thought I might attempt a set of edited highlights of the former (well, western history at least) by way of an exploration of the latter.

Exactly how and when the various instruments as we know them were invented and developed into what they currently are is largely irrelevant (mostly since I don’t actually know and don’t have the time to research all of them), but historically they fell into one of two classes. The first could be loosely dubbed ‘noble’ instruments- stuff like the piano, clarinet or cello, which were (and are) hugely expensive to make, required a significant level of skill to do so, and were generally played for and by the rich upper classes in vast orchestras, playing centuries-old music written by the very few men with the both the riches, social status and talent to compose them. On the other hand, we have the less historically significant, but just as important, ‘common’ instruments, such as the recorder and the ancestors of the acoustic guitar. These were a lot cheaper to make and thus more available to (although certainly far from widespread among) the poorer echelons of society, and it was on these instruments that tunes were passed down from generation to generation, accompanying traditional folk dances and the like; the kind of people who played such instruments very rarely had the time to spare to really write anything new for them, and certainly stood no chance of making a living out of them. And, for many centuries, that was it- what you played and what you listened to, if you did so at all, depended on who you were born as.

However, during the great socioeconomic upheaval and levelling that accompanied the 19th century industrial revolution, music began to penetrate society in new ways. The growing middle and upper-middle classes quickly adopted the piano as a respectable ‘front room’ instrument for their daughters to learn, and sheet music was rapidly becoming both available and cheap for the masses. As such, music began to become an accessible activity for far larger swathes of the population and concert attendances swelled. This was the Romantic era of music composition, with the likes of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Brahms rising to prominence, and the size of an orchestra grew considerably to its modern size of four thousand violinists, two oboes and a bored drummer (I may be a little out in my numbers here) as they sought to add some new experimentation to their music. This experimentation with classical orchestral forms was continued through the turn of the century by a succession of orchestral composers, but this period also saw music head in a new and violently different direction; jazz.

Jazz was the quintessential product of the United States’ famous motto ‘E Pluribus Unum’ (From Many, One), being as it was the result of a mixing of immigrant US cultures. Jazz originated amongst America’s black community, many of whom were descendants of imported slaves or even former slaves themselves, and was the result of traditional African music blending with that of their forcibly-adopted land. Whilst many black people were heavily discriminated against when it came to finding work, they found they could forge a living in the entertainment industry, in seedier venues like bars and brothels. First finding its feet in the irregular, flowing rhythms of ragtime music, the music of the deep south moved onto the more discordant patterns of blues in the early 20th century before finally incorporating a swinging, syncopated rhythm and an innovative sentiment of improvisation to invent jazz proper.

Jazz quickly spread like wildfire across the underground performing circuit, but it wouldn’t force its way into popular culture until the introduction of prohibition in the USA. From 1920 all the way up until the Presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt (whose dropping of the bill is a story in and of itself) the US government banned the consumption of alcohol, which (as was to be expected, in all honesty) simply forced the practice underground. Dozens of illegal speakeasies (venues of drinking, entertainment and prostitution usually run by the mob) sprung up in every district of every major American city, and they were frequented by everyone from the poorest street sweeper to the police officers who were supposed to be closing them down. And in these venues, jazz flourished. Suddenly, everyone knew about jazz- it was a fresh, new sound to everyone’s ears, something that stuck in the head and, because of its ‘common’, underground connotations, quickly became the music of the people. Jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong (a true pioneer of the genre) became the first celebrity musicians, and the way the music’s feel resonated with the happy, prosperous feeling surrounding the economic good times of the 1920s lead that decade to be dubbed ‘the Jazz Age’.

Countless things allowed jazz and other, successive generations to spread around the world- the invention of the gramophone further enhanced the public access to music, as did the new cultural phenomenon of the cinema and even the Second World War, which allowed for truly international spread. By the end of the war, jazz, soul, blues, R&B and all other derivatives had spread from their mainly deep south origins across the globe, blazing a trail for all other forms of popular music to follow in its wake. And, come the 50s, they did so in truly spectacular style… but I think that’ll have to wait until next time.

‘Before it was cool’

Hipsters are one of the few remaining groups it is generally considered OK to take the piss out of as a collective in modern culture, along with chavs and the kind of people who comment below YouTube videos. The main complaint against them as a group is their overly superior and rather arrogant attitude- the sense that they are inherently ‘better’ than those around them simply by virtue of dressing differently (or ‘individually’ as they would have it) and listening to music that nobody’s ever heard of before.

However, perhaps the single thing that hipster elitism is loathed for more than any other is the simple four-letter phrase ‘before it was cool’. Invariably prefaced with ‘I was into that…’, ‘I knew about them…’ or ‘They were all over my iTunes…’ (although any truly self-respecting hipster would surely not stoop so low as to use such ‘mainstream’ software), and often surrounded by ‘y’know’s, this small phrase conjures up a quite alarming barrage of hatred from even the calmest music fan. It symbolises every piece of petty elitism and self-superiority that hipster culture appears to stand for, every condescending smirk and patronising drawl directed at a sense of taste that does not match their own, and every piece of weird, idiosyncratic acoustic that they insist is distilled awesome

On the other hand, despite the hate they typically receive for their opinions, hipster reasoning is largely sound. The symbolism of their dress code and music taste marking them out from the crowd is an expression of individuality and separatism from the ‘mass-produced’ culture of the modern world, championing the idea that they are able to think beyond what is simply fed to them by the media and popular culture. It is also an undeniable truth that there is an awful lot of rubbish that gets churned out of said media machine, from all the various flavours of manufactured pop to the way huge tracts of modern music sound the same, all voices having been put through a machine umpteen times. Indeed, whilst it is not my place to pass judgement on Justin Beiber and company (especially given that I haven’t listened to any of his stuff), many a more ‘casual’ music fan is just as quick to pass judgement on fans of that particular brand of ‘manufactured’ pop music as a hipster may be towards him or her.

In fact, this is nothing more than a very human trait- we like what we like, and would like as many other people as possible to like it too. What we don’t like we have a natural tendency to bracket as universally ‘bad’ rather than just ‘not our thing’, and thus anyone who likes what we don’t tends to be subconsciously labelled either ‘wrong’ or ‘misguided’ rather than simply ‘different’. As such, we feel the need to redress this issue by offering our views on what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’, which wouldn’t be a problem if other people didn’t happen to like what we see as bad, and perhaps not get on so well with (or not have heard of) stuff we think of as good. Basically, the problem boils down to the fact that all people are different, but our subconscious treats them as all being like us- an unfortunate state of affairs responsible for nearly all of the general confrontation & friction present in all walks of life today.

What about then that hated phrase of the hipster, ‘before it was cool’? Well, this too has some degree of logic behind it, as was best demonstrated in the early 1990s during the rise of Nirvana. When they first started out during the 1980’s they, along with other alternative rock bands of the time such as REM, represented a kind of rebellious undercurrent to the supposed good fortune of Reagan-era America, a country that was all well and good if you happened to be the kind of clean cut kid who went to school, did his exams, passed through college and got an office job. However, for those left out on a limb by the system, such as the young Kurt Cobain, life was far harsher and less forgiving- he faced a life of menial drudgery, even working as a janitor in his old high school. His music was a way to express himself, to stand out from a world where he didn’t fit in, and thus it really meant something. When ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ first made Nirvana big, it was a major victory for that counter-culture, and pretty much put grunge on the map both as a music genre and a cultural movement for the first time.

And with success came money, and here things began to unravel. Unfortunately where there is money, there are always people willing to make more of it, and the big corporations began to move in. Record labels started to sign every grunge band and Nirvana-clone that they could find in a desperate attempt to find ‘the next Nirvana’, and the odd, garish fashion sense of the grunge movement began to make itself felt in more mainstream culture, even finding its way onto the catwalk. The world began to get swamped with ‘grungy stuff’ without embracing what the movement really meant, and with that its whole meaning began to disappear altogether. This turning of his beloved underground scene into an emotionless mainstream culture broke Kurt Cobain’s heart, leaving him disillusioned with what he had unwittingly helped to create. He turned back to the drug abuse that had sprung from his poor health (both physical and mental) and traumatic childhood, and despite multiple attempts to try and pull him out of such a vicious cycle, he committed suicide in 1994.

This is an incredibly dramatic (and very depressing) example, but it illustrates a point- that when a band gets too big for its boots and, in effect, ‘becomes cool’, it can sometimes cause them to lose what made them special in the first place. And once that something has been lost, it may never be the same in the eyes who saw them with it.

Although having said that, there is a difference between being an indie rock fan and being a hipster- being a pretentious, arrogant moron about it. *$%#ing hipsters.

Some things are just unforgettable

What makes an amazing moment? What it is that turns an ordinary or mundane event into something special, something great, something memorable, something that will stick in the mind long after countless other memories have faded, and which will be able to conjure up emotions that, for years and years to come, will send thrills of excitement shivering down your spine? What, precisely, is it that makes something unforgettable.

Is it the event itself? Sometimes, yes, that could be enough. Every so often there are moments so amazing, so surprising, so out of this world and different, that it is burned into one’s soul for evermore. The feat of athletic ability and genius, the trick or feat of skill that just seems completely impossible, the speech or book whose mere words can force themselves through the rigid exterior of the mind and imprint themselves permanently into the soft, pliable core of the soul itself. But… are these moments truly unforgettable? At the time, they may seem so, and for a while afterwards they may become something of a mini-obsession- telling all your mates about it, linking it on Facebook or Twitter, but will these moments continue to inspire and delight however many years from now? On their own… I don’t think so.

Is it the context? To take a favourite example, Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal to win the 2003 Rugby World Cup for England. The clock was in the final seconds of the second half of extra time, Jonny was the nation’s golden boy, beloved by all, it was against old rivals Australia, in Australia, with the home media having slaughtered England in the previous few weeks. England had been building and building for this moment for four long, hard years, and it all came down to one kick (his speciality), by one man, with the hopes and fears of the entire rugby world on his shoulders… if that context wasn’t special, then I don’t know what was. This is but one example of a moment made by context- there are countless others. The young Chinese man who stood up to the tank in Tienanmen Square is one, the Live Aid concert another. But… is it everything? Is a moment being poignant on its own enough to make a moment affix itself in your memory? Or, to come at it from another direction, is a moment excluded from being special simply by virtue of not being worth anything major? Just because something is done for its own sake, does that mean it can’t be special? Once again, I don’t think so.

So… what is it then, this magic ingredient, what is needed to make a moment shine? For an answer, I am going to resort to a case study (aka, an anecdote). A few of my mates are in a band (genre-wise somewhere near the heavy end of Muse), and there is one particular gig that they have now done two years in a row. I should know- I was at both of them. Both times, the crowd was small (around 70 people), and the venue was the same. Last year, the event as a whole was a great laugh- a few of the bands were received a bit coolly, but several others had the crowd going mental- joke-moshing, pressing against the barrier, and generally getting really into the music. My mates’ band was one of the well-received ones, and their set would have been one of the highlights of the night, if the headline act hadn’t blown everyone else completely out of the water.
This year, however, things were a little different. I can personally attest that, in the intervening 12 months, they had improved massively as a band- singing was better and more coherent, music itself was flawless, and they had even gained in confidence and charisma on stage. The music itself was infinitely better, but the actual set… lacked something. Through no fault of the band, that moment just wasn’t as special as it had been a year ago, and the evening as a whole was actually pretty forgettable. And the difference between the two events? In a word: atmosphere.

The previous year, the headline act had been a… well I don’t know enough about music to genre them but suffice it to say it was on the heavier end of the spectrum, and as such the crowd were fairly wired up generally, and especially for anything involving heavy guitar-playing. This year however, the headliners were acoustic in nature- while their music was far from bad, it didn’t exactly inspire surges of emotion, especially to such a small crowd, and this was reflected in the crowd and their preferences. Thus, the whole night just did not have the same atmosphere to it, and just didn’t feel as special (there were other reasons as well, but the point still stands- the lack of atmosphere prevented the moment being special).

This, to me, is evidence of my point- that, to make a moment special, all that is required is for the atmosphere surrounding it, wherever you are experiencing it, to be special, because it is the atmosphere of a moment that enables it to bypass the mind and hit home straight at the emotional core. There are countless ways of giving a moment the required atmosphere- appropriate music can often do the trick, as can the context of the build-up to it (hence why context itself can have such a big impact), or simply the stakes and tension that the moment inspires. However it is inspired though, what it means is simple- to make the most out of a moment, go out of one’s way to make sure the atmosphere you experience it in is the best it possibly can be.

Life is not just a body

Today, I am in a bad mood. When I get into this particular bad mood, my thoughts turn a little dark. So, as such, this post is going to be on the subject of death.
People die all the time- just about the only certainty of anyone’s existence is that it’s going to happen eventually. Death is perfectly necessary, and for most humans living in the developed world, it happens after a long and hopefully fulfilling time on this earth. In fact, across nature this is a fairly established pattern- if a wildebeest survives to be full-grown, it’s likely that, barring illness or injury, it will continue to live until it is old enough to become a prime target for the lions again. Another regularly occurring feature is the method of death- animals die either of disease, or they are hunted and killed- this is the natural cycle. However, humans are the exception to the rule, as we have taken death and killing to an entirely new level.
The most obvious example of this is pure, cold-blooded murder. Humans are not the only species to fight and kill one another over, for example, a mate, but they are the only race to commit pure slaughter of innocents on such a massive scale as has been done. Psychopathic killings, grotesque genocides- many times throughout human history killing innocent people has been done for no justifiable reason. The Nazi genocides were of course the worst example of this- millions upon millions of people, innocent of any crime, were slaughtered like worthless animals simply for being different to a perverted image of perfection.
With its prevalence in everyday culture, the true impact of actually killing someone can often be forgotten. Consider it for a moment. You are the killer, faced with an innocent figure, begging you for their life. They have a life, maybe a family. They are a person just like you or I. They have hopes, dreams, emotions- they could be a wonderful person, do amazing things, help other people.  Once they are gone, all that can never be. You have removed someone’s child, someone’s parent. You have removed someone’s protector, someone’s friend. By removing them, you are abandoning their friends, their partners, their relatives, leaving them alone without a shoulder to lean on. When one really thinks about it, human beings can be truly amazing, capable of doing truly amazing things. Now, ask yourself- how is anybody capable of taking a perfectly innocent life?
Notice how all the above points make no reference to the destructive effect on the body- the real crime of a murder is not the destruction of their vehicle to live and breath, but the destruction of their ability to think and, in a more philosophical sense, be. There is something truly and deeply inhuman about idea of deliberately targeting a fellow human being’s soul to be forced to undergo the most horrible atrocities against its nature, to be battered and bent and destroyed. And that is why there are two other crimes I wish to talk about here that I believe, loosely, to be in the same bracket as murder.
The first of these is torture (and also, for much of the same reasons, rape). For anyone who hasn’t read it already, I refer you to part 3 of George Orwell’s ‘1984’. For everyone who has read it already, read it again- it’s a great read and I always thought that his descriptions of the effects of torture were especially accurate. Orwell makes a very telling point- the torture does not stop when Winston’s body is battered and destroyed- it stops when he surrenders his will. At that point, he has ceased to be Winston Smith, a man under his own control- his very being has been bent into the party doctrine. One does not even have to force the surrender for torture to be the basest of crimes- deliberately causing another human being to hurt and suffer. Deliberately making the life of another worse to the point of mental collapse, another person like yourself… now there is inhuman.
The last of the three crimes in this bracket is somewhat far removed from the other two, and is certainly not as severe a crime as either- it is defamation of character, ie formulating lies about another person in order to make them social rejects and generally ruin them. This varies widely in scale, from simple bullying (something else I have an obsessive hatred of on principle), to… well go onto BBC iPlayer, watch the latest episode of Sherlock and you get the idea- its a far more effective and complete victory than murder ever would be. The really interesting thing about this is the effect that it has on the mind. Loneliness is never noted as being a good thing for one’s mental health, but when it is combined with the knowledge that it is perpetuating for as long as you remain in the same sphere of existing, it is enough to drive you insane. Knowing that you are innocent of what is being said, and yet simultaneously having that fact thrown back into your face at every turn sends the mind into a spiral of confusion and chaos, ruining someone from the inside out. It may seem like something completely alien from the inhuman atrocities of torture and murder, and when it is performed ineffectually its effect is trifling. But doing it properly, to the right target in the right way, watching all the structure of the life they lead crumble about them, is one of the most destructive forces to target the mind.
I don’t really know why I wrote this, or if it sounds like some disjointed ramble or not (if it does, please comment and say so). But this has been going round my head for the past 24 hours, and I kind of needed to get it off my chest. My apologies for the dark subject matter, I’ll try to be more light-hearted next time