Times run away

Isn't it funny how time runs away for you, good times, bad times, eventually they run away. I heard a story about King Solomon asking the Court Jeweller to fashion the most beautiful ring in the world for his bride to be. The Jeweller was petrifed when making the ring, afterall when Solomon was surrounded by huge beautiful palaces how could he create something to trump them.....this was only the half of it, when he returned Solomon asks him to go away andengrave an eternal truth in it. The Jeweller is away for a year before returning and in the ring is written

"this too shall pass"

True of kings and peasants good times and bad all shall pass and even memories will fade, I have often wondered how many films have been made that you now can't see, miles of celluloid or video or megabytes of digital data will be toiled over and not last a century, how many more writers were about at Shakespeare's time making a living that we now don't know. It gets me to thinking is art and music an attempt to express a culture, capture a groundswell for posterity or an attempt to move it on and if it is to move it on does art, if not the artist, embrace only the zeitgeist of tomorrow. Is art like an insecure and greedy child always wanting the next best thing never truly cherishing the gift of today? CHERISH!!!!! What do we truly cherish in art....nothing surely it seems now to be about the abandonment of the last expression? Are modern artists anti artists? Destroying the last muse and creating the new? Banksy's petshop overwriting the wall painting in urban centres? Does that make all art Graffitti; over writing the last artist asserting it's existence as part of a legacy of vain destruction and self destruction?

How many miles of film goes unwatched every year.....I want to know.

Gay Bishops & Cowboys

Yeah, all very random but stuff that I have thought about at one point or another today. Gay bishops was a chat with J over Chai Latte at Starbucks not far from Borough Market. Borough Market like many of the great markets of London is going the way of a tourist attraction and twenty five minute queue's for coffee just weren't our thing so it was Starbucks not Monmouth's. J is just back from Africa so we chewed the fat abit - I miss Africa alot so it was cool to talk. Somehow we got on to gay clergy, we are both Bible believeing christians and there are plenty of views about; after some bishops from Africa boycotted the Arch Bishop of Canterbury's summer conference. No one seems quite sure if there should be gay clergy or not. This is something the church can tie itself in a knot over...one of several things... to me it is simple Leviticus 18:22 (don't sleep with a man as you do a woman - look it up to check I ain't lying)...does this mean I am anti gay clergy....well er no...not entirely. I mean to say I don't think God is thrilled about gay clergy, in the same way he isn't happy a bout clergy who lie, cheat steal. covet, are prideful. I can't work out why we have singled out this one thing that clergy should not be, I am totally on the train that being gay does not glorify God but nor does putting your congregation before your wife.

.......where is he going with this......

Every clergyman is human, they will sin, that is the nature of it, they are forgiven and that is not mine to take away - so how does it work......well I guess it is like teaching dance classes if you don't know the steps how can you teach the dance. Now you may know the Tango but not the Foxtrot and that would mean you could teach one and not the other but you can't be the principal of a dance school and look to teach the foxtrot with the wrong steps, you have to find someone who can teach the steps right and acknowledge that you can't. I guess that is how I see it with the clergy, as long as you are up there acknowledging that you're not dancing the steps in the book and you keep trying to learn the right steps and you have someone competent to teach the right steps then it may just perhaps all work out. My wise wife makes the point that this is something we haven't seen, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't happen let's not be polarized about this let's be honest we are all work in progress and let's apply this to every sin in the book not just the one's we don't find socially acceptable.




Oh and the cowboy thing......er well I was just thinking how much I love the scene in movies where the cowboy just slips his rifle back into the sleeve behind his saddle and rides of into the sunset, it's just the coolest..........doesn't it just make you want to jump on a horse and hit the road?...... No .....oh .....er well it's just me then. Well I can't be serious about everything.

New York New York & America I think I love You

Firstly the whole logging on to blog just jumps on the rythms of my mind, I mean it is so counter the flow of conciousness which spurs my creative that I am sometimes just chasing my tail to get back where I was....but for New York New York.

I never heard Alistair Cooke, the famous BBC journalist who commented on Americana over many years from his window on the world which I believe was several storeys up in New York. I think may have heard a few dulcet tones as he retired. I did wonder how someone could fall in love with a country like America,

......Laura arrives home and wants to talk.....you see if your writing in a book people leave you to write but IT doesn't have the gravitas of pencil and paper. Byron wasn't on line, Yeats never worried about his connection dropping out, Kerouac was all about dropping out in the beat generation.

So where was I on New York, I wondered how someone could fall so in love with a country like America, but as I watched Griff Rhys Jones in NYC I was intrigued by the place. I realise all I have is Hollywood and second hand accounts and just bad examples. New York seemed multi-cultural and as the montage layered jazz over melting New York sunsets, bridges silhouetted, pinks and oranges fading behind a sky line starting to sparkle. I thought I want to be there, I started to remember that the beginning of all my journeys was in New York, Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty setting out on the epic OnThe Road. My trips to Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe all started in New York. I love America, to love isn't always to like and I think that is true whether it is about loving your wife, your job, your favourite food or a country. Love is to recognise it for it's intrinsic value, accept its faults.....maybe even cherish them.... but to always see all that it, or they, can be. America....I think I love you.

A little history of blogging for the man behind the moustache.

Quite frankly blogging has been something that appealed but was actually quite alot of effort I had things to do and places to see or vice versa. In reality that was alot of tosh...yes I used the word tosh. I had some stuff to do and in reality I often wanted to head back to the same old places....Acton Villas and the like and really had i recorded some of it, it would championed the fictional persona that I drivelled into and out of in the blogs. So now The Man Behind The Moustache (TMBTM)...why the man behind the moustache...... a skeggies off look at some of the hilarity, creativity, doubt, discernment and deity that goes on in my little head. Quite frankly I love words and the chance to write words like scurrilous and ribaldry in a sentence and to expand my powers of articulation quite appeals. Do nudge me when I go quiet, the mind is rarely becalmed but the old digits sometimes can be.