Painting Fakes

Happy Christmas Everyone! Since it's Christmas and I've been reading a book on religious philosophy, here's a Christmas thought. We're told that Jesus was born to Mary even though she was a virgin. That is to say, she had never had sex, and so no sperm had ever entered her uteris to fertilise the egg. Yet the teaching of the church (both Protestant and Catholic) is that Jesus was fully human - hence that he grew from an embryo into a human baby like the rest of us. Now we know that in normal circumstances an unfertilised egg is barren - it doesn't divide and grow, it just decomposes. We also know that even if it did begin to grow of its own accord, unfertilised, the outcome would be a girl, since it is the man who provides the Y chromosome. So, in the absence of male sperm, how did her egg get fertilised, and the required male DNA enter the ovum? This problem leads sceptics, particularly those of a scientific persuasion, to dismiss this story as a "mere myt...

Each semester in High School English we would study one main novel, and in Grade 11 we "did" John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I loved it (as I loved most of what we did in English) despite the curriculum. I was moved by the way the Joad family maintained their dignity in the face of the crushing poverty of the Great Depression and the absurdity and cruelty of their society. As a result I read quite a few other Steinbeck books in my youth, and they were just the thing for a sensitive young man. Coming back to some of these stories as a supposedly mature person provides some interesting food for thought. Take, for example, The Pearl. This little novella, a kind of meditation on Jesus' parable of the pearl of great value, features Kino, his wife Juana, and their infant son Coyotito, a poor Indigenous Mexican fishing family. One day Kino goes pearling and discovers an amazingly beautiful, enormous pearl, a find that should enable him to live out his dreams. Modes...

Since last Sunday’s sermon I’ve been thinking about the letter to the Laodiceans. My wife grew up among the Brethren and we spent six years when we were first married going to a Brethren assembly. Most of them read the seven letters of Revelation as seven eras of the church, with Laodicea as our present era, the final one before Christ’s return. I don’t go for this entire prophetic system – it’s way too forced – but it’s an interesting insight into our current age. We are lukewarm, neither one thing nor another. I think the current debate about climate change is a great example of how this happens. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the majority opinion amongst climate scientists, that global warming is happening and is caused by human-generated pollution. Governments try to act on this understanding, but there are plenty of dissenting voices, saying there is no global warming, or it's caused by something else, or it's way worse than the scientist...

In the 2002 movie adaptation of HG Wells’ The Time Machine (which bears only passing resemblance to the book), its chief character is driven to complete the invention of his time machine by the murder of his fiancé. Traveling back in time, he repeatedly attempts to prevent the murder, only for her to die in some other way. In despair, he travels far into the future and meets someone of highly advanced intellect who explains that since the murder triggered the invention of the time machine, it can only exist in a time stream where the woman dies. Ever since Wells’ novella, time travel has been a staple of science fiction. Usually, as with Wells, the ability to travel through time represents a technological triumph, although ultimately a mixed blessing as various versions of the paradox perplex or endanger the participants. The Time Traveler’s Wife , both the novel by Audrey Niffenegger and the recent film adaptation starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, makes it a disability. ...

Apropos of pretty much nothing, I'm sitting here listening to Tom Waits CD "Alice". It has this great song called Poor Edward , the lyrics of which go like this. Did you hear the news about Edward? On the back of his head He had another Face Was it a woman's face Or a young girl They said to remove it would kill him So poor Edward was doomed The Face could laugh and cry It was his Devil twin And at night she spoke to him Of things heard only in Hell They were impossible to separate Chained together for life Finally the bell tolled his doom He took a suite of rooms And hung himself and her From the balcony irons Some still believe he was freed from her But I knew her too well I say she drove him to suicide And took Poor Edward to Hell. Very spooky! And fascinating. The two sided personality, good and evil co-existing in the one person. More fascinating - Mr Waits (or the song's narrator) sets you up to think that the sonmg is about Edward, but then at the end he...

I’ve recently heard a couple of sermons based on passages in the New Testament talking about persecution. The most recent was just this Sunday, based on Revelation 2:8-11 – the letter to “the angel of the church in Smyrna”. The Lord, speaking through John, says, “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the Devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Unlike most of the book of Revelation, the meaning here is unambiguous. They will suffer a severe official persecution, and they should stand firm (ie not renounce their faith) even on pain of death. The same message is repeated in other New Testament passages. Preachers these days struggle to make these passages relevant to their hearers, and with good reason. In Western societies Christians haven’t experienced this kind of persecution for a long time (although they do in other so...

On the Hill of Tara all four points Stretch to far horizons. The sheep are lords of all they survey, And the mounds and gullies sing of former glories. The tourists dance around the phallus Singing of glories to come. At Newgrange the inscrutible dead Sleep the sleep of millennia, Protecting the secrets of their strange carvings. After so much labour, Carting stones so many miles, Rolled on makeshift logs Lifted labouriously into place So the sleepers within can catch the fleeting sun To light their eternal darkness. In every town there is a reminder Of the days long gone And of the days hardly gone - The fight with the English, The bombings, the murders, The Protestant churches firmly locked. Things grow and change, The golden arches beside the Boyne, The half built houses on every street The "yes" and "no" to Europe at every junction, The English papers, the European soccer, The Chinese students walking the streets. Time marches, the ...

I thought you might enjoy some extracts from the journal I've been keeping on my travels. The monks chant, their drone puctuated by cymbals, quickened by the building, fading pounding of the drum. Behind their striking purple, their gaudy green and yellow, worshippers bow in street clothes, shoes in plastic shopping bags, some kneeling, telling over beads, holding out bags and packages for the mysterious blessing of the fire. Above, the fierce god in his blue war paint scowls at his worshippers, his blue attendants matching his ferocity, brandishing sword and chain, fiery halo and pointed fangs. Yet around the walls his worshippers remain calm, unafraid, seated in their socks slippers stowed carefully beneath the sepia sky. Outside, the fierce sun shocks us out of winter. The carp beg beneath the bridge. The blossoms defy stereotype. The old man smiles a greeting, or a comment, or perhaps asks a question I can never answer. Later, on the bus, the yo...

Speaking of socially tinged science fiction, I picked up another book at the same Lifeline sale. It’s called Out of the Silence be Erle Cox . It was published in 1925, and what I said about the advance of science fiction writing since 1977 goes double. It’s a clumsy book, but fascinating. After a very obviously SF prologue, the story proper starts like something from Miles Franklin or Frank Dalby Davison. A young vineyard owner, Alan Dundas, works on digging his dam, is visited by his friend from town, and gets lined up for a romance with a nice local girl. The difference, however, is that he is prevented from getting very far with the dam because a huge solid construction is in his way just beneath the surface. Intrigued, he digs on and finds the door. There follows a rather laboured rewriting of Sleeping Beauty as he is forced to overcome various life-threatening traps on his way to the centre of the structure, where he finds an extraordinarily beautiful woman in suspended ani...

Well, I finally got to the top of the holds list for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . It’s a bit of a hoot – Jane Austen’s original with inserted zombie killings. It provides a kind of twist to left-field on the original story – it’s main characters have studied martial arts in the East, have dojos attached to their houses, and in Lady Catherine’s case are attended by ninja bodyguards. It has some quite funny moments, like when Charlotte Lucas gets infected shortly before her marriage to Mr Collins and slowly turns into a zombie, unnoticed by all but Elizabeth. Other bits are more predictable, like Elizabeth’s interview with Lady Catherine ending with a sword fight – no prizes for guessing the winner. Overall it’s a bit flat – I certainly won’t be lining up for any of the further Austen rip-offs leaping onto the gravy train. More to my taste was a little book I picked up from the Lifeline book sale in January and finally got to reading. It’s a science fiction novel by Kate Wilhelm c...

On the cover of Mermaid Avenue there’s a great picture of Woody Guthrie playing a guitar painted with the words “this machine kills fascists”. It’s a good introduction to the idea of music as a subversive activity, which was taken up so enthusiastically by the next generation of American folk musicians, led by Pete Seeger and later Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary. These men and women were subversive in a very overt political way. However, I was led to think about some more subtle forms of subversion recently while listening to one of my son’s favourites, Blackfield . A collaboration between the Israeli Aviv Geffen, and Englishman Steven Wilson (prolific songwriter and muso in a number of different guises), Blackfield are not political at all. They sing melodic rock songs of lost love and general depression. I was struck by one song in particular, called “End of the World”, which illustrates exactly what I mean. It has a killer piano hook which sucks you into a famili...

Speaking of ways to provide meaning in our lives, I’ve just finished reading Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work . Judging by the holds queue at the Council library it’s currently a very popular book – I joined the queue at somewhere around number 42 (about the same number, incidentally, as for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies , for which I’m still waiting). It’s interesting that what is basically a work of sociology cum philosophy should attract such a crowd, and suggests how important our work is to us. It’s also a fascinating and elegantly written book. De Botton takes us on a virtual tour through people’s working lives – the workers in the biscuit factory; the transmission engineer and pylon enthusiast who takes him on a walking tour of the transmission line form Kent to London; the career counsellor who helps workers get in touch with their inner selves along with helping their bosses to fire them; a painter who spends years painting a single oak tree; and my favour...

I don’t usually talk about my work on this blog, since I talk about it so much in the rest of my life. However, I had a curious experience recently. I’ve just taken on a bit of work around support for low income home purchasers, and to get a bit of historical context I tracked down a 1983 book called “The Great Australian Nightmare” by Jim Kemeny . I had never read this book, or even seen a copy, before the last couple of weeks. Yet its influence on my work has been huge. In the mid to late 1980’s this book was constantly quoted in articles on housing policy, and his arguments even if not attributed were the staple of left-wing housing comment. I was surprised, then, by a couple of things. First, how short the book is – at a little over 100 pages its volume hardly matches the weight it carries. Second, I was intrigued by the slightness and at times the confusion of its arguments. There was little data, a lot of assertion, and plenty of missing logical steps. His argument is rea...

A bit of a post-script on the popular religion thing. Not long after Anzac Day, Australian news reports featured the exhumation of the remains of 400 Australian and British soldiers killed in the Battle of Fromelles, in the north of France. This engagement in 1916 resulted in thousands of deaths, and many soldiers were buried in mass graves. Recent historical research has led to the location of one of these graves, and the Defence Departments of Britain and Australia are sponsoring the DNA testing of the remains to identify the soldiers. Afterwards they’ll be re-buried in individual graves. Three reasons are given for doing this. it will allow the living relatives of lost soldiers to finally know what happened to their ancestors it will honour the men themselves who gave their lives to “save” the people of France it will “help the people of Fromelles to erase the wounds of the war”. Given that these young men died over 90 years ago, they are unlikely to have any living re...

Speaking of Australian folk religion, yesterday was Anzac Day. For those readers from outside Australia, this day commemorates that landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (the ANZACs) at Gallipolli in Turkey in 1915. In military terms this landing was a complete disaster. Originally planned as a surprise attack, the Turks found out about it and placed machine guns at the top of the hill. The ANZACs had nowhere to go and spent months trapped in the cove, gunned down whenever they tried to advance beyond their trenches, until months and thousands of deaths later they retreated. Yet in Australian folklore the obvious command failures were overwhelmed by the bravery of the ordinary soldiers. Anzac Day became Australia’s main military commemoration. I remember as a child buying and selling Anzac ribbons at school to raise money for veterans, and then on the day marching with my scout group down the street past my house to the service in the Sunnybank Municipal Hall. There, ben...

One of the stories that has featured in the news this week is the death and funeral of Shawn Mackay, a young ACT Brumbies rugby union player who died after being hit by a car during a tour of South Africa. A low-profile player, unknown to even many rugby fans, has become a celebrity in death. Why is the media, and the public, so interested in the ordinary death of an unknown young man? Why did we follow the daily details of his injury, initial recovery, death and funeral? Partly I suppose it is the genuine fame of a number of his team-mates, and partly the fact that it’s just a tragic story that tugs at our heart-strings. But there's more. We like to hear about the intimate lives of famous people, and sports stars play a particular part in this fascination. Whereas the lives of Hollywood celebrities just seem bizarre, and politicians carry an aura of power, sports people seem very ordinary. Sure, they can run, swim, hit or kick a ball better than anyone else, but they are...

In order to stop this from becoming a dead blog, I feel a deep-seated need to post something, so here it is. I've been occupied with a few things including the illness and death of a close family member. That sort of stuff makes you lose heart, and you tend to look at the world in a more distant, cynical way. It can do two things to your relationships. At its best it can make you value them all the more. However, I find that there's a danger (because I'm an introvert anyway) of it working the other way. Like "you're going to die sooner or later, so maybe its better not to invest too much in this relationship". Not that I really think that way consciously. I just find myself being more distant, and I think that's why. Or maybe my emotions are just a bit over tired. Speaking of returns from the dead, Queensland just re-elected its Labor government for a fourth term, and for the first time with a woman leader in Anna Bligh who is almost my local member ...