the gospel according to...

After talking to a friend who cheered me up, I came across a quote online somewhere that said something along the lines of 'a life is lived in the doing and its what you do that makes a difference'. I couldn't agree more. i haven't been looking after myself properly lately - and consequently got ill - lost my voice and have been in bed for the day (and on my day off as well). Today however, saturday, a new leaf was turned over. It started with discovering a sweet potato. i discovered it in the fridge and decided - today i am going to cook something using that sweet potato. Googling sweet potato dishes i came across a recipe It was joyously easy and quick to follow - i am not that keen on too many carrots in dishes and didn't have any in the fridge so i added some frozen soya beans instead of carrots. I also added less liquid as suggested by others and less wine (and a bit less cheese - cos it can't be that healthy and it belonged to my housemate!).

There is plenty for tomorrow. Am watching pier pasolini's 'Gospel according to st matthew' - am really enjoying it where usually its the kind of film that would really annoy me - but the soundtrack is unusual - and includes billie holiday singing 'sometimes i feel like a motherless child'. It has brought the bible alive and its relevance in terms of 'how to live' by ten simple principles. I would probably replace the first three with 'to thine own self be true'. What's remarkable about the film is its sense of realness. Jesus is kickass to his people - scornful of them and their greedy, stubborn ways - spitting at them 'its easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven'. How much do we need to hear that right now?! It struck me at the beginning the very idea of a man able to take on another woman's child, raising him in the knowledge that he would be a leader of people. Protecting him, loving him. This is the birthplace of humanity, loving another as you would your own family, so that he might have the opportunity to make a difference.

Interestingly i have come across this concept of 'predestination' which Lutherans (which i was christened into) believe in: that god, before creation, god determined the fate of the universe throughout space and time. I guess this is why my pastor was so displeased with me wanting to study genetics. learn summit everyday! from sweet potato to religion and so to sleep. night. x

Take off your glasses...

I am concerned, worried, about the cultural lenses with which we are forced to view the world depending on how we choose to look at the world and who is and isn't at the table when we choose to look. My eyes ache in fact. I went to an event - the format was a debate - i was at a government event a few weeks ago with the same format - a debate. At both events i got this creeping sense that a debate sets up the frame for argument in a way that sets up an artifice of us and them, simultaneusly creating positions against which opposites seek to protect and attack. Debate forces us (and them) into discussions about polar opposites - black and white, terrorism and security, able bodied and disabled - which are probably artificial but help the mind think it is making sense and seeing things clearly. It moves us away from possibility and from much needed fresh ideas and divergent thinking.

What are we missing when we engage in this way? Everything in between - everything that cannot be defined and is unknown (but necessary - the vernacular and the tacit) and crucially depends on the presence of the other. There is something about saying 'we' that conjoins and circumvents 'us and them' like we are all included and a neccessary part of a whole rather than a cake sliced in two or multiple versions of ethnicities, class and gender and other others that are yet to be defined. How can we belong to a whole rather than these artificial fragments? where is home - where we are treated as equals and the assumption is that everyone has something to contribute.

When the debate ended 'we' (who were frustrated at the slicing of the cake) started thinking about what's missing - what would we want to see/hear/ participate in - what can we bring to the table collectively that binds us rather than divides us?

I have been thinking about this a great deal lately and experiencing it in everyday life and getting surprised again and again that it keeps resurfacing. One of the things i noticed was to do with language. When i make up stories for my niece i always have her as the main character in the story - which thrills her - i have her full attention - the main character bears her name and she listens intently and asks me to tell the story again and again (mutant versions abound). Other times i tell a story and she acts out the main character and what the main character does - takes on that characters persona - and we fall about laughing as the character that she inhabits starts influencing the story and making my storytelling flow in other directions that i could never have imagined - a kind of call and response collaboration that draws on her memory and mine, that resonates with us both because we are both participating and creating in the moment. Anyhow - i thought i'd touch base with her and retell some elements of the story by writing to her and in writing to her i realised a dichotomy - when i write 'i', i mean me, when she reads 'i' she will assume i am talking about her. there is this dichotomy of 'i' and 'you' in language - and i wonder at what point do kids make the connection of being able to unconsciously switch between not understanding this and to understanding and adopting it and seamlessly integrating it into reading and writing. In being the teller of a story from a first person perspective, the 'i' is the owner and the 'you' is the listener. how often in conversations when we say 'you' do we actually mean 'i'?

The artist, katya sander, who was on the panel at the last event articulated something around this in her artistic creation of some badges with the words 'if you read this, i'll give it to you (but then you must wear it)' written on them. Through exchange of the badge from one person to another there is a switch of the 'i' and the 'you'. But i think this was lost in the frame of the dialogue in which she was constantly asked to tell us about how things were in denmark like she was representative of the whole of denmark - as one guy remarked in the audience - "i feel we are falling into a trap" and avoiding the real and interesting areas for discussion by this distraction of talking about Britishness and white and black. And the good ideas die a death as we try to understand the increasing smart questions that people pose (and subsequently have to explain because they are theories that they want to disprove and the question is a trick or a trap that the 'asker' hopes the panel might fall into). Indeed they were all trapped.

Anyway it gave me some ideas about 'who is the other' and actually is the other just a reflection of me and all that i might be and might not be. I wonder which languages get around this dilemma. I think maths circumvents the problem through logic and reasoning but i need a mathematician to back this up.

I think there is a connection in particle physics, conceptually at least, to the Higgs boson particle that is yet to be observed. Scientists think it exists but it hasn't been seen yet - and it begs the question - and by thinking about that conundrum, by analogy, i have reached a question - is the mechanism with which we are trying to see the whole picture truly objective or is there something about the act of 'looking' that prevents us from seeing what is there? Time poses a problem here - how long can you be looking to ensure that you don't miss the thing that you are looking for and what if we just assume that it exists and is a necessary part of binding us together and allowing things to fall apart over time? how can we measure multiple interactions that all contribute to what happens next?

Maths, physics and storytelling - different ways to explore and explain the universe. I wonder does a story equate to a theory? Somehow we can be receptive to a story - it can bypass our intellect and we respond - a belly laugh might uncover a truth or proof of something we thought was there but had no evidence for. But who is counting the laughs? and who is laughing!?

Walking...

i am trying to walk more. Walking and thinking seem to go hand in hand for me. I noticed at the beginning of the year, one of my work colleagues and i used to have great ideas springing out of conversations as we walked from one part of Manchester to another.

I have been reading a great book (so far) on walking, i came across it at the cornerhouse bookshop in manchester. Of course, as with most books that i start (and never finish) i initially got distracted and swept up into some other project or work-related thing and forgot all about the book until i started walking again.

last weekend i was walking - the ball of my foot is still sore from it - but it was a great walk so when i rub the sore foot the pain it elicits is tinged with the pleasurable memory of the walk.

So what was the book (Wanderlust: a history of walking by Rebecca Solnit) and what was the walk (East London in the world as part of six billion ways). I was reading the book on the train to london for the six billion ways. I had no idea that walking was an option on the agenda and it was by far the most interesting bit of the all day event.

Artist activist, Shane Solanki who took us on a walk to discover 'the radical history of East London, from anti-slavery struggles of the 18th century to anti-racism in the 1970s; from the fight for women's votes to the threat of fascism; and most recently, fights against 'gentrification' and the Olympics'.

Now, i am from the eastend and i am ashamed to say a lot of it was news to me - not the history but the spaces and the places and the detail - the interconnected stories inhabiting not one street but many and the idea that people from the 'slum' did some amazing stuff that still has its legacy today. Centuries worth of stories unfolded and flashed into the future and the present as we walked and talked and listened and looked. Time was not linear it was circular - with connections made on a multitude of levels. All my senses were engaged and additional treats for a writer's eye were uncovered en route. I will post some of the walk - talk to give a better insight into what i am trying to articulate and what needs to be imported from the east end to manchester - another slum city, borne off the back of great industry and creativity and mashed up heritage. The manchester stories that are currently missing and need to be told and played back, remixed and revisited.

its that old adage - if you don't know where you've come from - how the hell do you know where you're going?

the story passed onto through another book, one that i have carried with me in my head and only understood consciously a couple of years ago when my father died was the quote on the inside cover of chinua achebe's book 'Things Fall Apart'. I could tell you the saying but it might be more fun to check it out...

Achebe says 'the power of the storyteller lies in his or her ability to appeal to the mind and reach beyond his or her particular circumstance and thus speak to different periods and generations; the good story teller is not bound by narrow political or personal concerns or even by the demands of specific historical moments.'

This resonates with me - and where i am right now - an interloper - flitting between two cities and learning and remembering from both so that i can eventually move on, feet aching, with many new stories to tell...