Larry Norman

Thing is that Larry Norman was not a great singer, not really a great songwriter. He was not particularly successful, went through a couple of marriages and spent the last few years in and out of hospital - largely forgotten.

But y'know, his songs had an unusual power. He had an amazing way with words. He said things that nobody else was saying in the clean-necked church of his day.



I don't believe in politics whilst the masses stay unfed.
Until the leaders change priorities and supply the poor with bread.

No Country for Old Men

I'm not sure if you have seen this film, but briefly if you haven't, it is the (rather bloody) story of a mass murderer, a policeman and a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is set against large and bleak landscapes with detailed characters for even small parts.

Although it made me wince, it is a really powerful film and I am glad I saw it.

The backstory, I feel, speaks of a feeling of hopelessness - that even good guys lose out in the end, that bad guys prevail and things don't work out neatly as they should. As a piece of post-modern, post gen-X theatre, I think it works well, with confusing dialogue, dead-ends and so on.

But ultimately I think this is how many people feel. Those within the radical community (which of course can be defined in any number of ways) are now starting to lose the plot. The past 'certainties' are gone (even where those are things that we discovered ourselves), the beliefs we started our earlier adult lives with now start to sound like nonsense. In spite of what others want to tell us, the world seems a dark place with few sparks of light, and whilst we try to rejoice about the light it seems curlish not to admit the darkness exists. Yet, no matter how much we want things to change, no matter how hard we change ourselves, things don't seem to change as fast as we want to, and it is really hard to keep going.

book tag

Dave Keen tagged me with one of these silly blog things:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other people.

Which seems pretty harmless.

Question: what is the point of 3?

OK, I'm going to assume we are posting the fifth, sixth and seventh sentences from page 123.

Kitty did not say a word of this; she spoke only of her state of mind.
'I have no troubles whatever,' she said when she had grown calm - 'but can you understand that everything has become horrid, disgusting and course to me, and above all I myself? You can't think what horrid thoughts I have about everything.'
'But what horrid thoughts can you have?' asked Dolly smiling.

I'm not sure what that is supposed to prove. Special prize to anyone who can identify the novel, which as a hint was not written in English.

Anyway, I don't really go for this tagging malarkey, but to play along, I tag Karin, Benjamin, Scott, Jamie and there is space for anyone else who wants to be tagged. Don't all jump at once.

I'm guessing most of those aren't going to bother, having more important things to do. Still, all their blogs are worth a look.

Meanwhile, in case you've been wondering where I am, I have been blogging about our local diet here and also writing regular articles for the celsias blog here.