Painting Fakes

Jimmy Barnes won't need any introduction to my Australian readers.  He's been in our ears since the early 1980s, first as lead singer of Cold Chisel and later as a solo rocker.  He has played big stadiums, he performed to an audience of billions at the Sydney 2000 Olympic closing ceremony, and his voice is never far from our radios. He's not everyone's cup of tea.  Often he's not mine.  He tends to scream rather than sing.  Yet I also have a sneaking admiration for him, like a kind of dirty musical secret hidden amidst my supposedly more cerebral tastes.  When he has great songs to sing, for instance those written by Don Walker for Cold Chisel, or singing Andy Durant's ' Last of the Riverboats ', he can pull back the intensity and deliver as well as any singer in the country. Lately his musical output has dropped off, and instead he has written and published two volumes of his memoirs - Working Class Boy,  which tells the story of his childhood, a...

So, over the next couple of months we are going to be talking a lot about same sex marriage thanks to the governments decision to hold a 'national survey' on this question in place of the promised plebiscite.  Debate is hotting up already.  The level of vitriol from some conservative Christians has risen appreciably, and it is not only directed at proponents of same sex marriage.  I have seen savage things said to and about quite conservative Christians who have gently suggested that their fellow Christians could consider voting yes , or even just abstaining  without compromising their own view of marriage.  The fear and anger in the air is palpable. I don't want to rehash those arguments.  You can follow the links or find them, and many like them, on the internet if you are masochistic enough to want to read them.  Personally I will be voting yes, but you need not let that influence your decision.  Follow your own conscience wherever it leads...

Traditionally-oriented Christians are often portrayed as homophobic because of their opposition to same sex marriage and the various things that go with it. While it's true that there are some Christians who really think that "God hates fags", in my experience they are relatively few.  Most of the conservative Christians I know, and most of the conservative Christian writings I've read on the subject, are quite clear that God loves LGBTI people as much as he loves anyone else.  They will also tell you, if you ask, that same-sex relationships or encounters are not in a special category of sin - they are no more evil than, say, heterosexual adultery or stealing. However, after saying all these nice, loving things and providing an assurance of God's love, acceptance and forgiveness they will be immovable on one thing.  A same sex relationship, they will tell you, cannot possibly be right.  While there are lots of wrong ways to do heterosexual relationships there is...

Ok, so I've been participating in the debate about same sex marriage, in a desultory sort of way.  I'm for it.  I don't feel that strongly about it, but if people really want it I can't see why they should be refused. I'm not enjoying the debate though.  It seems to be so black and white, as if it was clear what marriage is and it's just a question of who has access to it.  Like cornflakes, or the internet.  I'm longing for a discussion which actually talks about the question in a meaningful way. Recently I got a taxi home from the airport, and the driver was a young Indian man, as most of them are now in Brisbane.  He had just been married over in India, and was hanging out for the day when his wife's visa was approved so they could be together.  He was more than happy to talk about the whole thing at length. Like a lot of Indian marriages, this one had been arranged for him.  His uncle had gone looking, found a girl who he and other rel...

I know I'm about seven years late, but I've finally got around to reading the first Twilight book. Not being a teenage girl, or a girl of any age, I'm a long way from the intended audience for these books.  Still, I wasn't in the target audience for the Harry Potter books either, and I read all of them pretty much as they came out.  Of course I had kids of the right age, and it was nice to share something with them.  But the early books themselves were a lot of fun, full of spells, potions, magical creatures and objects, odd characters and childish high-jinks, plus a villain dangerous enough to be scary but ultimately weak enough to be beaten by well-intentioned children.  It's a shame the later books got bloated with badly written teenage angst and clumsy attempts to darken the atmosphere, but even then there was enough fun to keep me reading.  No doubt many of the young readers who got hooked on the early books were less critical of the late...

It is fashionable in certain Christian circles to talk disparagingly about what are called "Jesus is my boyfriend" songs.  These are songs which express a love for Jesus without a lot of theological content.  If you swap "Jesus" for the name of your latest flame, the song will work just as well. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've reached the conclusion that there is a lot to be said for the "Jesus is my boyfriend" song.  Certainly a lot more than could be said for the "blood and gore" song.  I suspect that our desire to explain and defend our theology every time we open our mouths shows we are not all that secure about it.  This leads us to overemphasise it and in the process neglect other important aspects of our spirituality.  So here is my defence of the "Jesus is my boyfriend" song. The origin of this type of song can be found in the Jewish and Christian tradition of reading the Song of Songs allegorically, ...

Speaking of love, a while ago I waxed lyrical about Richard and Linda Thompson at the height of their musical and life partnership, and their beautiful song A Heart Needs a Home.   Well lately I've been listening in a similar slightly obsessive fashion to the last album they made together, Shoot Out The Lights , released in 1982. Their marriage was pretty much over by the time it was released, as the cover tells you plainly, yet they were contractually obliged to tour in support of it.  Audiences (not to mention the band) got to see the painful last rites live on stage as the couple struggled and bickered their way across Europe and North America before departing for what must have seemed by comparison the blessed relief of divorce.  Shoot Out The Lights tells the death of their love in seven songs.  Gone are the wide open spaces, tranquil rythms and deep yearning of Dimming of the Day or A Heart Needs a Home.   In their place are insistent b...