Kate Tempest.

Dear Reader

Okay... I am really supprised I haven't posted this poet. I had to check a couple of times just to be sure. This is Kate Tempest. The name you should always say when people ask is rap have any technical or literary complexity?

Eden is a tent at Greenbelt (no really the venue was called that)

Dear Reader.

I think it sounded a little weird when I said that my idea of heaven involved drinking tea in a tent. Keep in mind that this was the tent.

Greenbelt. What I learned.

Dear Reader.

I am back from the Cheltenham greenbelt festival (art, faith and justice) and after spending four days in a muddy rainy field going to seminars, music gigs, comedy gigs (I saw robin Ince live three times. Be still my rationalist heart) and poetry readings what have I discovered?

1. Water proof cagoules (good word) have a maximum capacity at which they will somehow overflow and your limbs and back will be completely soaked with guttering water.

2. I discovered this lovely singer. Grace Petrie. Which you should look up. She does do non-political songs as well.

3. if you fart and sneeze at the same time you will actually implode and cease to exist.

4. if when a cat is yawning and arching its back you press on its spine it will bust.

5. cats always land on their feet unless you butter their back.

those last three weren't from experience but I have it on good authority, from a comedian called Mike Wazniak, who wears a space man suit no less, that it's all compleately true. 

Yeah you say you don't believe it but you'll all be trying it with your cats at home.

6. Robin Ince is just quite frankly a lovely human being as well a brilliant comedian.

7a. My idea of Heaven does not feature "foie gras to the sound of trumpets", it must involve drinking tea, in a tent, to the sound of sitar players.

7b. Christian Indie Sitar players (Hindi Indie) actually exist!

Yeshu Raja (Jesus King)

8. Finally I discovered that describing yourself as a Christian tells someone very little about who you are. This week I have seen anything from hippie Christians to punk Christians, to Goth Christians to Hipster Christians, to Geek Christians and Bookie Christians to feminist, socialist, lesbian or gay Christians. There are Christians all over the world with different languages and traditions. Not to mention the seemingly countless denominations within our own country all with their own focus on morality and ways of worshipping god and similar to any group in fact any crowd of people if you talk to enough of them there are bound to be some you disagree with and sometimes wish would just go away (that's not religion that's just people).

In fact often I feel that those are the only type of Christians greenbelt never attracts, the people who have such a ridged idea of Christianity that they could never stand being around all the kinds of Christians I just mentioned.

If you have a picture of a Christian in you're head it could possibly be as stereotypical as when people think all gay people act, look and talk like Graham Norton or Mr. Humphrey's in "are you being served" and in the similar way being Christian doesn't take up every element of our entire existence, (often religion is one of the lights by which we see the world not just our world itself). We should never be a Christian "full stop" because if nothing else Christians should never get stuck in their own beliefs and should always be questioning where they stand on  the questions of life and always live in doubt.

I will now calm down.

Street Chess

Dear Reader.

I was in the square outside the Huddersfield library today, waiting for my parents to return from doing boring shopping and I was sitting on a bench and there was one of those plastic giant garden chess sets and suddenly this group of big gruff skin headed tattooed "working class, salt of the earth" types of men walked into the square and almost silently laid the pieces out to play and two of them played and the rest watched and ate their lunch.

And at no point did these men start talking or joking around these two giant men moved silently moved the pieces around the board and the other men watched and it was very strange because it began to take on the feeling of some of street performance. Infact it did draw a bit of a crowd of people eating their lunch, living under the ruling that staring at anything is more interesting that staring at nothing but something about the whole experience kind of made me feel better about humanity for some reason. Maybe its because chess just represents the appreciation of the human brain rather than its muscles or its bravado.

If nothing else the sheer fact that even though the chess set is left there every day for anyone to play with, none of the pieces have been stolen which I think shows something.

The clever Spider

Dear Reader.

All this week every evening my bedroom ceiling has been absolutely covered with midges now there is one fat spider.

I love spiders, because I hate flies.

There's actually a philosophical question about spiders and light bulbs.

You're walking down the street at night and you look up at the street lamps above you and you notice there are spiders webs hanging from them, completely dripping with midges and one fat Spider and as you go along you realise that lots of the spiders are doing this and they're all getting very fat.

now there are a few ways of interpreting this I won't say these are the only ones it's just something to think about (I suppose you could comment if you can think of any more). Here are some.

1.  These are very clever Spiders who, either by speeded evolution or with something like Pavlov's dog (Pavlov's Spider), have learnt to spin their webs every night in the same place so the midges (their food) who are drawn to the light will get caught in their's web because there is an association between the light and getting food.
2. The only webs you see are the ones that are in the light and there are equally fat and successful spiders in the shadows. The only way to know would be to check the area.
3. All the spiders choose their place completely randomly however the ones who build in the light are successful but may never learn to associate light with food and the next night they return to the shadows and go hungry. They aren't clever at all, they're just incredibly stupid and for one mystifying night, incredibly lucky.

Ginger people who dye their hair make me sad

Dear Reader.

Ginger people who dye their hair make me sad. 
Ginger hair is so beautiful and has so many complexities of colour and shade that to cover up, destroy even (because often it doesn't come back) something so rare and beautiful, just seems so much like self-vandalism that it just breaks my heart. I may just write a sonet to the colour ginger that is how much I like it.

Amy Pond Exibit A through to G on how beautiful ginger women are (yes I know she's just a character played by Karen Gillan but in my head she's always Amy Pond). Now Just imagine her with black hair. Do it right now. Its Weird isn't it? 

by the way this was the only picture of Amy Pond I already had on my computer. I'd like to call this at least a level three Geek joke (yes there is a system) just for the complexity of knowledge you needed to spot the double entendre. The only level ten I've come across is "there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't". There are so many people in this world who don't get this joke that It should be the geek joke from which all geek jokes are measured.

the only level ten geek moment I've ever experienced was while listening to a remastered classic Doctor who story on BBC 7 (I think it was called the head of Morbious) I found out that the story was set on the planet Kaan at which I screamed at the top of my voice "KHAAAAAAAN!" a la Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan. That's right, the multilevelled geek moment.

Literary Pilgrimage

Dear Reader.

I went here on my holiday. This is Barter Books it is one of the largest (and I would argue the nicest) second-hand bookshops in Europe. It has been described as "the British Library of second hand bookshops". It is just so beautiful and the cafe is so good and there is such a brilliant selection of books that if they don't want to give me a job I'm honestly considering living there and making it my home.

There are some places that just feel like they're sights of literary pilgrimage. The British Library, The Bodlian Library, the Nazi book burning monument in Berlin, the Gutenberg Statue in Mainz, The Gutenberg bible itself, for that matter are all monuments literature as a whole and often they're places of remembrance and gratitude that I would love to visit. I have been to the Gutenberg Statue it is often fairly ignored (there are no letters of thanks or candles left to him) but there is a weekly second-hand book market (mostly German books of course) and I love that it's there. I should say that I did leave a not to Johannes Gutenberg basically saying thank you. Good idea isn't it?

These places are all important to me. I would argue that culture, words and religion are probably the three things that make up my core and solidify me. I am grateful to these people and the things these places represent because I know if I never started reading I'd still be an idiot, and I kind of feel a greater need to go to these places than going to the Holy Land or the Vatican because I don't believe that god lives in certain buildings or places because she's omnipresent (though, maybe there are places where she might be more noticeable) but words are here. They are solid and it seems like they are more connected to solid places.

I know this all sounds a bit weird and insane and its probably dangerously close to being blasphemous or worshipping false idols or something, but its kind of true.

This is the book burning memorial I talked about.
A window onto a room full of empty shelves.

Is this me?

Dear Reader.

Today I'm going to get a bit philosophical and to start at the very begginning, its a very good place to start, when read you begin with A, B, C when you philosophy you begin with;

Who are you? What are you supposed to be doing? And where does the world come from?

Yes I am paraphrasing "The Sound of Music" thank you dad for the weird upbringing. these arguably are the three questions all philosophy is built on. Today I'm going to be talking about "Who are you?" but its always useful to think of philosophy in these terms especially if you want to start studying it.

So "who are you?" if you answer with your name "I am Joseph" (for example) well you need to start thinking about whether you're name makes you what you are. If I was born and given a different name would that make me a different person, do "Franks" have a certain frank quality that comes with the name? I have several  But I digress really the question "who are you?" or "who am I?" (perhaps an easier question because you know more about you than anyone else. Don't you? ...) brings me to the picture bellow.

This is me aged around aged five taken by a man named Donald who goes to my church (and quite interestingly was childhood friends with Ted Hughes the past poet lariat),

and this is me today taken on my dad's phone to test out a new app on his phone.

and just to show ballance in-between here is a picture of me looking fat in front of a boat.

are the people in these pictures the same person? because I believe I have developed a bit both physically and mentally, I have changed and developed and have been moulded by time. They have different bodies, different brains, different tastes in hats and clothes and different beliefs and ways of seeing, the boy in the first picture wanted to be an inventor, had never read a book in his life and thought girls were stupid (ironic because I know now that he was fucking idiot).

The people in these pictures are even different people by most physical standards because every cell in your body, even down to your bones and your braincells dies and is replaced in at least a year. And yet I can say to you in every picture this is a picture of me. Who am I? What makes me, me?

I suppose what this does show is that what I might be is an accumulation of things but it is one of the reasons why I like looking at these pictures because its such a complicated experience. They're me but then they're not me yet.

its a bit like that when you watch really old films of heroes doing death defying stunts you find yourself thinking "oh gosh they're going to die" and then of course you realise its just a film and they won't really die and then you realise that if its a really, really old film, then they might well be dead already.

Both dead alive and about to die at the same time.

"No." don't "bring it back!"

Dear Reader.

Its been a horrible week in Britain we've all been brought into that unpleasant world that we'd all rather leave to some other person to clean up or worse simply ignore. People have done horrible things to innocent people and children. It is monstrous. Which is why of course people post things like this with things like "who agrees?", "like or comment if you agree!" and we say just hang them or even some of us say "hanging's too good for them" torture them burn them then kill them. We say all these things on our computers behind our screens with no sense of, well I suppose reality might be the word, don't we? Do you know what I wrote in the comments for this? Between all the table banging the roaring angry arguments (often with nobody in particular) there lies for ever one, simple one word statement from me;

"No."

For so many reasons "No." not only for moral reasons over whether we should fall to their levels, is murdering murderers justice or simply revenge and if it is should law be driven by that or something higher? But also I would argue that its wrong for a much more practical reason. Sometimes courts are wrong, sometimes new evidence is found and the person is found to be innocent (though with many cases it seems incredibly obvious) but a pardon for a wrongly executed man is little use to him or his family members and there are people wrongly imprisoned and executed for murder and to say they exist doesn't make the guilty any less guilty but the phrase "within reasonable doubt" says that it is as terrible a crime (if not more so) for the state to kill an innocent man as it for it to let a guilty one go free.

By the way that "No." comment got one "like" from someone and it is one of the pieces of writing I am most proud of.

Here's Jeremy Irons talking much more eloquently than I ever could for Amnesty International.

Holy Island is a "Close Place"

Dear Reader.

Do you know the amazing thing about the silence on holy island? Its how noisy it is. The birds are constantly twittering and the sheep are constantly calling for their lambs who must have been torn away from them I'm sure, nothing can sound that sad. But one thing that amazes me is how silent the island itself is. The sea makes no sound whatsoever, the waves are completely silent and still, even though the tide can come in, in a matter of minutes and there is hardly any wind and when it comes its soft and fresh.

Have you ever heard a seal? Not the honking barking noise I know your thinking of. I mean the noise it makes when it sniffs the air before dipping its head under the water again. Its an amazing experience. You can hear it from the shore. That's how quiet it is here.

My dad said that Holy Island is a "close place". There is this really old tradition in some of the Celtish Paganism which says that holy places are places where the two circles of heaven and earth are so close that their walls almost touch if that makes sense.
But it also says that in some places it even crosses like a Venn Diagram and of course they argue this is where religious experiences happen (as I suppose does the messiah, ghosts etc where something comes through this cross over) I'm not sure if its true of course but its a good way of thinking about places like this. I hope some parts of heaven are like this.

it confuses me when the tourist parties come here because they come to a holy place and ruin it simply by being there. They roll in with their noise and their money and then they leave just when the island is at its most beautiful. If they leave when the silence returns then what's the point?

I see children and teenagers complaining that there's nothing to do here and I think "yes! that's the point!" Lindisfarne isn't a place where you are given things to do. There are virtually no shops and there are only a couple of landmarks to visit. Its a terrible place for tourism but it is a place where there are things to discover and make your own entertainment and you are left to fill your world with thoughts. You read, you write or you sit and think and watch. I would never recomend you come here (if nothing else that would encourage something I've already said ruins the place e.i. tourism) but I would say, like most places of pilgrimage, for people who are ready, its there.

And no I'm not sure if I'm ready for this place either.

Possibly gone for a week.

Dear Reader.

I'm going on holliday tomorrow to this half island called Lindisfarne (or holy island) and I call it a half island because its unusual because if you don't know it only really and island for about half the day (we have to get there by 2 o'clock otherwise our car won't be able to get across the causeway) and faced with what can only be described as the premise of a classic horror film with an ancient, tiny, isolated island I'm not entirely sure what the internet connection's going to be like so I may have to try to send some stuff by phone (if that works) or write everything down for my blogg and post it in ten days time when I come back. Wish me luck and pray that I don't fall into the plot of the woman in black hopefully Daniel Radcliff will turn up and he'll be able to use his training as a wizard.

Dear Reader. Why "Dear Reader"?

Dear Reader.

Since I've just gone over the 500 view mark  and I'm coming up to my hundredth post (its a small road mark I don't care) I thought I might like to explain why I keep addressing you as, "Dear Reader"...

I kind of got the idea of starting with a greeting, from watching several hundred YouTube Vloggers (video bloggers) and picking up that they usually start with the same greeting. my favourite are "Hello gentlemen and female gentlemen" from Scarf Demon and "Hey internet. Let's get drunk." from the My Harto series "My Drunk Kitchen" (both links at the bottom). Its not that uncommon in some actual bloggs I follow "hello internet :]" (Will's blogg at the bottom) actually starts with just that, the phrase "Hello internet :]" and it can be much subtler than that a lovely writer I know called Kate who starts almost every single one of her Facebook posts with this piece of punctuation "..." which is frankly a brilliant way of starting a post because it shows that its a continuation of a thought or that one post leads onto another (which is what Facebook either is or should be to you). But I'm not doing it simply because everyone else does it I'm merely pointing out that alot of people have found the soloution to a common problem. Its a unnerving experience to just blurt out and start talking to... everyone, and anyone.

Secondly it doesn't make sense to start with "dear everyone" or "dear internet" or "dear blog" or "dear diary" or even "dear friends" (because I do have a diary and I still address it "dear reader" there) firstly because I'm not addressing the internet or a blogg or a diary because they are inanimate objects and are unable to understand (I hope the internet isn't sentient) instead I'm addressing the people who view these things (in the same way a news reporter doesn't address the television). Also there's something slightly mystic about addressing something so vastly omnipresent and omnipotent as the internet these days that I wouldn't dare approach it I cannot claim to address the internet in the same way I cannot address the universe or "everyone".

thirdly it seems silly to label people who read this blogg as "fans" or "friends" or "followers" because I don't know whether you like me or even that you follow me (this may be the first blogg you see) you could be anyone. And although I do try to write this as if I were talking to a friend there are only two things I can tell about who you are 1) you are able to read (because you can read these words) so are a "Reader" and 2) you are very much dear to me, my Dear Reader. Because you make this whole thing worth doing. Without you I'm just a mad man screaming into the darkness.

Scarf Demon http://www.youtube.com/user/ScarfDemon
My Harto http://www.youtube.com/user/MyHarto