World's Best

I really enjoy watching music videos. They somehow manage to satisfy my desire for creativity and mindlessness at the same time. Here's the best ones I know.

Michael Jackson "Smooth Criminal". I'm a sucker for men doing synchronised dancing, and this dancing is so sharp and stylish. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, the best bit's from 6:39 on. Michael Jackson rocked.

Justin Timberlake "My Love" and "Like I Love You". I'm also a sucker for JT. He's very baby-faced in "Like I Love You". Absolutely classic dancing. "My Love" has more creativity and style. Justin is a fine dancer - he's sharp and he's got attitude. You can tell he really feels the music.

OK Go "Here it Goes Again" and "W*F". "Here it Goes Again" is the song they do on the treadmills. It's so funny. "W*F" is the song with that wicked special effect, the name of which I've forgotten. Anyway it's mesmerizing.

Fatboy Slim "Weapon of Choice". Totally unexpected. The sort of dancing that's extra-cool because it authentically reflects the character of the dancer.

The Avalanches "Since I Left You". Ditto the above. This one's also very sweet.

Janet Jackson "Rhythm Nation". Sharp as sharp. Impressive stuff.

Beyoncé "Crazy in Love" and "Single Ladies". "Crazy in Love" has some cool scenes. I especially like the colourful closing scene - there's some sweet dancing there. And Beyoncé is so breathtakingly beautiful that I always enjoy watching her. It's somewhat sleazy/sexual though, so might be really unhelpful for some guys to watch this clip. "Single Ladies" however is totally awesome. This is my alltime favourite music video. Majorly impressive, sassy dancing. Beyoncé rocks!

PS While I've linked to YouTube videos, I have purchased all of these videos that are available on itunes. That makes me feel okay.

What gives him the right?

Josh did a great job of preaching on Mark 12 at church the other week. (He kicks off at 0:23.)

Keen & Kapable

On Sunday the kids of my Sydney church put on a fundraiser for me! It took us all a lot of organising. Directing a bunch of kids to put cans in ice, write signs and cut bread rolls in half is, I imagine, not wholly unlike herding cats. And I never want to make a 'Latin American' figurine again. But once it was all set up and the sausages were rolling in, us adults just sat back and watched the kids take care of everything. In all it was a cute, colourful, professional affair. Why do your own promo when you can get a bunch of kids to do it for you?

Lovely men

The other day David Cook told us about how, back before he became a Christian and not long after his father had accepted Christ, some religious men came to their house showing photos of the Holy Land on a slide projector (the new technology). The men were lovely men, and, when they had gone, David's father asked his son if he should invite them back. David said he didn't know, and his father replied, "Yes, I think you're right. I don't think we should invite them back" as if that was what he had said. He went on: "I don't know much about Christianity, but I do know it's about grace and faith, and they didn't talk about either of those." May we follow David's father's lead and steer well clear of pleasant people who would take our eyes off Jesus.

Spring clean

A few days off - time to find a beautiful new template and to import/destroy my old blog. *ahhh*

More posts on the way.

It's in the air!

In the last post I spoke about the liberal milieu of the poetry festival I attended. It was a curious phenomenon because there's a very real sense in which poets are the most ordinary of folk, simple observers of the human and natural worlds. Yet even description often carries an underlying morality. The better poets have the vision and discipline to push past socially acceptable grooves, but a mass of people can't help but create an atmosphere. So topics such as motherhood, the migrant experience, George Bush, suicide and observations penned from a café table are all warmly welcomed. Other topics teeter on the edge of comfortableness - but may be appreciated all the more for that. Then there's others that would never actually be written about - hell would be one; a (morally negative) apprisal of abortion another.

This sort of thing became plain when, during a panel discussion, an audience member asked: if a poet is themselves anti-Semitic, it is still okay to read their work? There was a pause, then a number of people tittered at the questioner's audacity - the panel members among them. Yet they knew that there can never be (never?) anything wrong with an honestly-meant question, so prepared to respond. You could almost see them weighing their words before they spoke, such was the delicacy of the topic. Why so delicate and so confronting?

I think it was because the questioner was pushing the room to consider the consequences of their adoration of tolerance, on the one hand, and the evil of Nazism, on the other. She was forcing their collective hand. All were acutely aware that any answer had to display a thoroughgoing rejection of Nazism, an equally thoroughgoing embracing of Judaism, and an affirmation of tolerance and freedom of speech/reading. A minefield indeed!

But no-one commented on the untenable nature of what was going on. Instead they rose valiantly to the challenge. One panel member said that she personally couldn't read something if she knew it was coming from a bad place. Another said that you could read it to garner fuel for an attack. And another pointed out that covert - and racist - passing over of peoples is often worse than anything explicit. And then there was the one that heartened me: Don't refuse to read it just because you don't like the guy, because all humans are arseholes on some level. Amen to that.

Inventing the tradition

I spent the day at a poetry festival. One of the better ways to spend a day . . . if you like that sort of thing, and, let's be honest, it is a niche artform and likely to remain that way. It would be helped by more/better exposure in schools though.

As a Christian it was a strange environment to find myself in. This was epitomised at the end of the day when the lady who received the prize for best indigenous poetry read out a poem railing bitterly against Christian missionaries. This was followed by the prize for best religious/spiritual poem which was won by a lady who is currently in the middle of a months' long Buddhist retreat in Japan and whose poem was about Siddhartha Gautama.

And there I was in the midst of it all. I was mainly there for a bit of r&r, so I wasn't too stressed about being a Christian presence, but I also didn't want to be selfishly looking inwards. So I prayed for opportunities to speak with people, and for the wherewithal to make the most of these opportunities. And it's my joy to tell you that God answered my prayers. I overcame my introversion and chatted comfortably with the people around me. And at lunchtime when the people I was sitting with asked what I did, I calmly told them that I was a student at a Bible college and was planning to be a missionary in Latin America. They were good about it but it was obvious I had overstepped a powerful, invisible line. But, thank God, I remained unashamed and unruffled and was even prepared to press on with a little talk about Christian things.

I'll post more on the festival soon. For now, let me finish by saying that LK Holt is a kick-ass poet.

Leeches, hills and hard beds

Today I was speaking to a certain anonymous someone. I'll only tell you that their first name was David and their last name rhymed with book. Anyway this mystery person was claiming that there's no point to beautiful scenary unless you can get there in a car. As someone who used to do a lot of pretty serious bushwalking I had a few things to say . . .

1. Life is simple out there. Everything gets pared back, reduced to a purer form. Responsibilities and roles drop away and you simply exist.
   
2. The challenge is enjoyable. Having to be tough and savvy enough to achieve physical - and perhaps technical - feats is stimulating. There's an air of valour about the whole endeavour.
   
3. It's a world of technical knowledge and skill. Bushwalking and rockclimbing (etc) are not unlike an artisan craft. That world can be intoxicating once you've stepped in.
   

I might have spoken about how beautiful it is out there, but I guess my adversary acknowledged that. It is beautiful though. It's hard to convey to people who've only ever seen wilderness calenders. For seven years whenever I was visiting or living in Tassie I would routinely go bushwalking with my friends and see the most sweetly beautiful and staggeringly majestic sights. We'd wander through lush rainforest and make our camps by pretty mountain tarns or at the base of soaring cliffs, and think it unremarkable.

It's funny though . . . I've barely been bushwalking these last few years. Doing multiday walks takes a degree of mental toughness that I can't seem to muster any more - becoming a Christian has made me a little softer. And for a while there I was felt as though bushwalking was somehow incompatible with femininity or intellectualism. I'm over that now, yet I still don't find myself rushing out. It's partly because all my bushwalking friends have got little kids, but mainly because I find it near-impossible to do anything by half-measures. I can't quite see my way clear to going bushwalking from time-to-time. I know it's strange, but there it is. Ah, but I'll still defend it to the death.