inspiral blog

Who but leunig can bring together these kinds of things and renew our perspective?

Erica’s may be the first and only 21st party I’ve genuinely enjoyed. I don’t know, maybe that’s exaggerating, but it sure seems like it.

When I went through my spate of 21st parties (including my own), I was not in a place where I could easily enjoy myself at such an event. Painfully shy and horrendously self-conscious, I spent most of my time wondering when the night (or the world, didn’t matter which) would end.

It was a joint 21st party with Erica’s current housemate, Chris. I must say it was fantastic to get more of an insight into someone I don’t know all that well yet, but respect greatly. It turns out that social justice has been a theme right through Erica’s life, and continues to be in a big way. The speeches were littered with a great deal of affection and funny college anecdotes, and were timed to perfection.

We got to catch up with a few ex-Whitleans too, like Ilka Barr, Anna Green, and George Hemmings. It was great not only to catch up with them and hear how they’re doing, but to show them how our time at Whitley had kind of culminated in what we are doing now.

Then we finished up with Anthony (and Julie…and I) inventing some new dance moves. And to think we hadn’t even been drinking.

So really, an all round good night. Thanks Erica.

He may have died in 1968, but Thomas Merton could easily have been writing for contemporary Australia. Apologies for the gender-exclusive language, but I read this last night and, well, I couldn’t have said it better myself:

Where there is a deep, simple, all-embracing love of man, of the created world of living and inanimate things, then there will be respect for life, for freedom, for truth, for justice and there will be humble love of God. But where there is no love of man, no love of life, then make all the laws you want, all the edicts and treaties, issue all the anathemas; set up all the safeguards and inspections, fill the air with spying satellites, and hang cameras on the moon. As long as you see your fellow man as a being essentially to be feared, mistrusted, hated, and destroyed, there cannot be peace on earth. (from The Christian in World Crisis, June 1964, emphasis mine.)

I could be arrested for sedition just for posting that.

And this on non-violence and our stubborn refusal to embrace it:

The human race today is like an alcoholic who knows that drink will destroy him and yet always has “good reasons” why he must continue drinking. Such is man in his fatal addiction to war. He is not really capable of seeing a constructive alternative to war.

If this task of building a peaceful world is the most important task of our time, it is also the most difficult. It will, in fact, require far more discipline, more sacrifice, more planning, more thought, more co-operation and more heroism than war ever demanded. (from Peace and Protest: A Statement)

Both quotes taken from “The Nonviolent Alternative”, a collection of Merton’s writings on peace and nonviolence.

Everything relates back to The Simpsons somehow.

When Homer is accused of sexual harrassment, he tries to clear his name by being interviewed on a sleazy current affairs show. When that ploy backfires, the following conversation ensues (click here to view the clip):

Homer: [fearfully] Marge? Kids? Everything’s going to be just fine. Now go upstairs, and pack your bags…we’re going to start a new life…under the sea.

[Cut to Homer imagining a 'Little Mermaid-esque' scene of the family living and dancing under the sea, with Homer singing.]
Homer: Under the sea, under the sea,
There’ll be no accusations, just friendly crustaceans
Under the sea!

Marge: Homer, that’s your solution to everything: to move under the sea. It’s not going to happen!
Homer: Not with that attitude!

When I went to pay for my petrol today wearing my MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY t-shirt, the attendant looked at me and said, “Do you really think it’ll happen?” At first, I had no idea what he was talking about, then when I realised he was referring to the shirt, I replied, “Well, I think it could happen.” He said, “I just don’t think it’s realistic. There is always poverty. Take the new industrial relations thing the government is pushing. I work here; I have no power to bargain with my boss about wages and conditions, so I will always be poor. As long as the government has the power, I can’t do anything about it.”

I understand this attitude, but I can’t agree with it. What if Gandhi had said “I’m only one man; what can I do?” Or if Martin Luther, William Wilberforce, or Martin Luther King Jr, or any of the people who helped them to make the massive changes in history that no-one could have foreseen. I mean, take slavery as an example. It was said at the time that the world economy could not afford to lose slavery; it was said that abolition was an impossible pipe dream. It took women and men of conscience, courage and perseverance, but they got the job done. Ditto the end of apartheid in South Africa, and ditto the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. When will we learn that we as people have all the power we need to make change happen?

The Christian hope looks like an impossible pipe dream most of the time. Passages like this one from the book of Micah are inspiring, but seemingly unrealistic:

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised up above the hills.
Peoples shall stream to it,
and many nations shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid.

(I love the image of everyone sitting under their own vine and fig trees – such a peaceful image.)

Yet I believe it not only can happen, but will happen. A pipe dream? Only if we take that attitude.

Of course, we need to be patient, but we also need to work diligently towards that goal. God’s Kingdom isn’t characterised by coercive power, but rather servant leadership; thus, the in-breaking, or method of enabling God’s Kingdom, can’t be characterised by coercion, but by servanthood. If God wanted to coerce this Kingdom into being, God could easily have done it by now, but this is not the way of God. God is an empowering God, a God who wants us to participate in making this happen. Isn’t that part of God’s grace – that we get to participate in the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom?

So I have sympathy with Marge saying “it’s not gonna happen”, but I have to agree with Homer; living under the sea to escape your problems and making poverty history share something in common. Both may be unrealistic, but they’ll never happen if you don’t try it.

ok, how freaky is this: I only realised it last night. when we were working out the idea for inspiral, we wanted to try to capture its central themes in a short, pithy phrase or set of words. using the inspiral theme, we came up with three ‘in’ words: inspire, include, and involve, words that we felt captured the kinds of values we wanted this community to represent. we felt rather clever that we’d been able to think of three words that summed it up so well that started with the same two letters.

now I don’t remember the train of thought that brought these two thoughts together, but I was thinking last night about survivor, the cheesy reality show that involves a bunch of people on an island or some other foreign and deserted place, voting each other out of their respective tribes until only one person is left. I’ve been a fan of the show since the first season, and it’s been a feature of our lives in some way shape or form ever since. and what is the slogan for this wonderful slice of cultural heritage?

outwit. outplay. outlast.

so let’s put those two together. outwit, outplay, outlast; inspire, include, involve. three ‘outs’ for survivor, and three ‘ins’ for inspiral. even if you leave aside the fact that they both have three two-syllable words, you can’t ignore the ins and outs. could it be that inspiral is the anti, or bizarro*, survivor?

I’m not going to overthink this, but it did make me laugh very, very hard to think that maybe there was a lot of subconscious thinking going into our little catchphrase.

*bizarro world is a phrase coined by the superman franchise, which referred to an alternate world where everything was the exact opposite of the real world. up was down, left was right, right was wrong. even superman had his bizarro counterpart.

EDIT: ***GASP*** – the synergy is frightening, long before Thom and inspiral met.

Went to the intercollegiate Battle of the Bands on Sunday night, and was seriously impressed by the talent. I’d even (begrudgingly) admit that the colleges other than Whitley put in a good performance.

Whitley played three songs; Dr. Worm by They Might Be Giants, I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness and What I Like About You by The Romantics.

Hearing Thom (and the rest of the crowd) sing Dr. Worm reminded me of what a great song it is. They may not have done anything else special (even counting the Malcolm in the Middle theme song) but they sure got this song right:

Dr Worm by They Might be Giants

They call me Dr. Worm.
Good morning. How are you?
I’m Dr. Worm.
I’m interested in things.
I’m not a real doctor,

But I am a real worm;
I am an actual worm.
I live like a worm, and

I like to play the drums.
I think I’m getting good, but I can handle criticism.
I’ll show you what I know, and you can tell me if you think I’m getting better on the drums.
I’ll leave the front unlocked ’cause I can’t hear the doorbell

When I get into it I can’t tell if you are
Watching me twirling the stick.
When I give the signal, my friend
Rabbi Vole will pay the solo
Some day somebody else besides me will
Call me by my stage name, they will

Call me Dr Worm.
Good Morning how are you, I’m Dr Worm
I’m interested in things.
I’m not a real doctor,
But I am a real worm;
I am an actual worm.
I live like a worm.

I like to play the drums.
I think I’m getting good, but I can handle criticism.
I’ll show you what I know, and you can tell me if you think I’m getting better on the drums.
I’m not a real doctor,
But they call me Dr. Worm.

Very funny and very catchy.

I’d been looking forward to this for a while, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Not gonna detail the whole thing, but just wanted to say thanks to Thom for being so open and honest, even about stuff that may have seemed uncomfortable. I love and value the diversity of this group, regardless of their background or where they are at now, it’s a remarkably precious community to hold together, and what we have is so much the richer for that difference. I value Thom enormously because he continually asks the hard questions which are needed, not only for me personally, or for any other individual, but for us as a group to have the integrity I strive for. His continued conscientious commitment to spiritual discovery is an inspiration and a challenge.

If you haven’t seen his blog, go and do it now. He posts under a pseudonym, so make sure you don’t blow his cover.

…but somehow we did manage to get some stuff done.

tonight we dedicated to catching up with each other and getting more concrete plans for involvement in our local and global justice focuses (or is that focii? whatever). not sure how much to detail here since the outcomes are mainly nuts and bolts things about what we’re planning to do, but it was an enormous amount of fun.

so our fundraiser for the rest of the year will largely be concentrated during swot vac, where right when the students’ attention is diverted towards exams, we’ll hit them where they least suspect it. By supplying them with a catalogue of weird, wacky and wonderful services (including random singalongs, massages and coles runs) we will drain their wallets while they are still punch-drunk from late-night cram sessions.

seriously, it should be a fun and even useful way to support the whitley students in particular during exams, and raise some awareness of OI and inspiral at the same time.

the process of discussing this as a group is more than fruitful – it’s easy to stay on one track when you’re thinking by yourself, but with a group bouncing ideas around, you ultimately get better, more refined ideas. so we discovered the idea of an entrepreneurship (that’s a shocker to spell) competition, as a way of raising money and awareness for OI.

we’ll start the tuesday dinners at the welcome centre next week too. there’s some apprehension, but I think it will be an exciting way to engage with stuff locally.

so things are getting going, which is not bad for an extreme myers-briggs p like myself.

can I say too how much I appreciate the honesty of this group. there are a couple of people in particular whose courage and commitment to integrity, despite the potential blowback, are nothing short of astounding. you know who you are. thankyou for that precious gift.

I went to an acoustic band competition last night for “undiscovered talent”, and it was a good night. Meryl and Croz came too, and we spent most of the time talking, but occasionally listening to the performers. The winner was Jess McAvoy, who I’ll talk more about in a minute.

I find the dynamics between stage and audience at a live gig fascinating, especially where there are no cover songs to create an artificial link between you and the audience (not that all cover performances are artificial, but it’s easier to create engagement where there is familiarity). there are at least 4 or 5 types of dynamics that I’ve observed:

1. Ignored: this is where the performer basically fades into the background of everything else going on. There is little or no engagement between the audience and the performer; it might as well be house music. Usually it’s because a performer has been there too long, and is going through the motions: get in, play your set, get out. That and there’s no engaging hooks to grab people or keep their attention.

2. Drawn in (negatively): this is where the performer draws the audience in, but mainly because it’s excruciating. Like watching a train wreck, or the Kramer picture, “It’s hideous, yet I can’t look away.” There was at least one of those last night, and I couldn’t help feeling sympathetic. But feeling sympathy is not something you go to see a live band for.

3. Repelled: this is where the performer, far from being able to be ignored, is so bad as to even fail to draw sympathy from the audience, becoming more of an aural pest. It’s pretty rare, but I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not nice. Usually it’s their own fault, because if you’re bad, but draw sympathy, there’s something about you that the audience can relate to. If not, you’ve successfully alienated them, and that’s pretty extreme.

3. Drawn in (positively): this is what jess did last night. I wouldn’t say she exactly came out and blew us away, but a good artist doesn’t necessarily blow you away in the beginning. We were having a good chat, the three of us, but her stage presence, impressive voice and pleasant groove drew us in. And although it wasn’t exactly a tough gig, it wasn’t an easy one either; despite a number of people at tables near the front of stage who were there for the music, it was largely people standing around drinking before they moved on to other places. It takes a particular type of talent to draw people in in these circumstances; you can draw attention to yourself initially in any number of ways (one guy randomly tried to do it with a hula hoop), but to hold attention is something else entirely. She drew attention subtly, and held it compellingly with impassioned performance of songs she obviously felt. They weren’t bad songs either, which helped, but with live music, it’s mostly in the delivery. And they were delivered well, and authentically.

4. Unified: this is pretty rare, but I reckon it happens at u2 shows a lot. That is, the audience is so drawn into the experience, and the band so drawn into the audience, that the two kind of become one entity. bono describes it as being like a worship experience; you are no longer driving the music or the experience, there’s a corporateness to it that is above and beyond any one person.

I realized again last night how difficult it is to actually put in a good performance. You really put yourself out there with live music. You have to risk failure every time you get up on stage, and while that’s part of the attraction of it, the excitement of risk, it can also spell disaster to a person’s confidence. And once a performer is self-conscious, they begin to embody all they’re afraid of, and the audience can see it. Too many young performers are self-conscious (which is one reason why australian idol sucks), and that instantly spells the end of a good performance. That’s why to be good you either have to lose yourself in the moment, or be so comfortable in your own skin that you know you’re good, and Jess did exactly that. It’s not about being arrogant, but about being devoid of guile or pretense.

So good work Jess. I’ll be keeping an eye out for you in future.

What do Homer Simpson and the new anti-terrorism laws have in common? Specious reasoning, that’s what.

The following takes place after a bear tax is imposed on Springfield following a single bear appearing in town. A bear patrol is dispatched to deal with the ‘bear problem’.

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That’s specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn’t work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It’s just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
[Lisa refuses at first, then takes the exchange]

(from episode 3F20 ‘Much Apu About Nothing’)