Forgive me Tolkein for ripping off your beautiful poem from Lord of the Rings. It is perhaps aptly fitting, considering he was quite famously a devout Christian man.

I should preface this rant on monotheistic religion by saying I don’t intend to belittle your beliefs; I firmly believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and opinions. It is your God-given and basic human right to be allowed the freedom of thought. What I plan to do here is simply state just how out-dated and perhaps antiquated a lot of our religious doctrine and axioms are. I want you to see that just because you’ve been told something, it doesn’t necessarily make it true. Because someone (or some people) wrote something 2000 years ago, it does not make it accurate or true today.

Let’s begin with the creation of the Hebrew Bible, or the Torah, sometime around 1300 BC, and the major contributing factor to monotheism in the world today.

Curiously, depending on the interpretation, some people claim that the God that exposed himself in the Torah wasn’t the ONLY God — he was just the only God that showed himself to Abraham. He may have just been the God of Israel, an idea which would fit in with the polytheistic pantheon of Greek and Egyptian Gods, and the slew of other tribal Gods that existed all around the world. Over the following years, and as more scripture was divinely inspired and added to the Hebrew Bible, it seems that the Israeli God slowly pushed out all other Gods until he was the only one:

“Know this day, and take it to heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is none else.” Deuteronomy 4:39

And thus, monotheism was born. Polytheism quickly fell by the wayside, shunted aside by the vast strength of the monotheistic belief system. Christianity quickly followed in the first century AD, with Islam following a little later.

Fast forward to today and the belief in a single almighty, all-knowing and dreadful God rules more than half the world.

Humans have long believed in some kind of spirituality. We want to believe that we’re not just lumps of meat that walk around for 80 years and then die, to be consumed by the earth; there’s something in our DNA or our physiological makeup that makes us inclined to believe in some kind of higher power. Somewhere along our genetic time track, between being primordial ooze and the humans we are today, something went click, and we started explaining away certain phenomena as the actions of Gods, or at least some kind of omnipresent force that watches over us.

With so much belief, it’s unsurprising that Gods literally sprung up everywhere. A God of Wine, a God of Battle, a God of Love — you name it, at some stage there was probably a God that ‘oversaw’ that sphere of reality. When Caesar won a battle in Gaul against an army 10 times greater than his, that belief in something greater, that urge to find explicate all things wonderful, he attributed his overwhelming good luck to a benevolent Mars, the God of War.

It is this slightly odd urge to attribute everything that happens to some kind of higher power that makes us susceptible to religion in general, and monotheism in particular.

I wonder if, when a male lion fends off his pride from another male, he stops to thank the Gods or God, or if he just marvels at his own prowess and strength. Why then must we, as humans, always be humble in the eyes of God? Why can our greatest endeavours only be realised and ratified with the grace and benevolence of God? Why can we not be great and powerful in our own right, and why must we thank God instead of the work by other great men and women?

The thing is, monotheistic religion actually had a valuable place in ancient civilisation. Most things happen for a reason, and monotheism was required for the development of the world that we live in today. It’s widely believed that the development of monotheism went hand-in-hand with the development of large cities and trade between countries — as people moved from villages and tribes into larger cities, monotheism began to take hold. In such a large, messy and dangerous environment — a veritable melting pot of different cultures  and tribes — a single religion, with a single God, was undoubtedly a desirable resolution to such problems.

When you swear on mighty, vengeful God to make good on a trade agreement, other believers of the same religion are very likely to believe and trust you. Before monotheism, trading and buying goods from around the world was almost nonexistent. Unfortunately, for the believers, some intelligent people quickly realised something else about monotheism: it’s very good for controlling people.

While polytheism was generally about explaining away unknown phenomena, monotheism is much more about the control of people, and much more importantly about the control of thought. God expects you to act like this and treat other people like that; God tells you what is right, and more importantly what is wrong.

Therein lies the rub: it’s not actually God telling us these things, it’s a bunch of prophets, scribes and priests. Not to be left out, even a few kings and emperors, over the millenia, have leaned over the shoulder of a scribe and said ‘Oh, I don’t like that bit… take it out.’ If an almighty being, one that was  actually omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent had written the Hebrew Bible or New Testament, then we might be on to something. Sadly, they didn’t — humans did. Now, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Religion had its place, historically. Sure, it preyed upon our inherent belief that there’s something bigger than us out there, but it did enable civilisation to grow, and develop. It made it possible for people to live in relative safety, and to develop empires that shaped the world we know today.

Now that we’ve reached modernity, religion seems a little outdated. It still controls what we say and what we do. Once upon a time, eating bacon or shellfish was undoubtedly risky; just as a homosexual relationship probably was too. Today, they are not. Today, religion — organised religion, with a hierarchy, with priests, and with a system for regulating our actions and thoughts — serves very little purpose. It might be argued that religion has killed more people over the past 2000 years than it has saved. It might be argued that the world would be a different, wonderful place if the intellectual and spiritual road-block of the Dark Ages had never existed.

The problem is this: our need to believe in something is so great and so unerring that once belief is instilled in us, it’s almost impossible to shake off. The most monstrous atrocities can happen to a person, and they will still believe in God’s infallibility; they will still believe that God is watching over them, and that he has a mighty plan that justifies everything.

The root of almost every failed civillisation can be traced back to an over-zealous High Priest

I use the term ‘High Priest’ loosely; it could be a king, emperor, president or anyone that is buoyed up by the belief of a religion’s followers.

The thing is if God actually existed, and he actually guided us, there wouldn’t be a problem. He would actually know everything that has happened and will happen in the future. Unfortunately, I can’t disprove God — no one can. That’s the key, the linchpin and the crux to every single organised religion: they prey on our fear of the unknown. That’s why every religion exists and why they are followed fervently — from tribal polytheism to modern monotheism — to explain unknown phenomena. Every single religion has some tie-in to an afterlife, or heaven, or hell, or purgatory, or even rebirth. They rely on ideas that most likely can never be proven wrong. They rely on appealing to that spiritual side of us that we seemingly have very little control over.

Perhaps it is finally time to throw away a God that disables and lessens our vast abilities. Letting someone else decide for us what is right and wrong, what we can and can’t do, is such a damn cop-out! We, the human race, are so infinitely capable; why would we listen to anyone, or a God, that tells us otherwise?

This continues on from my hot air balloon flight over Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Turkey. If you like, you could also read about all of my adventures in Turkey.

Below us, as we flew over the unique, wild moonscape of Cappadocia, were thousands of hand-carved dwellings and churches. From above, we couldn’t make out much — just valley after valley of ancient villages and cities. I couldn’t wait to get down there and actually explore on foot; getting lost in some of the most ancient man-made structures on Earth is a dream very few people can fulfil, but I was about to!

I’d booked a small tour to Goreme (Göreme) National Park for later that day. Just three of us, and a tour guide. To say I was excited would be an understatement. Fortunately, I would be sharing the tour with a lovely, young American couple — and Americans can’t get enough of hairy, bouncy easily-excitable British guys!

Cappadocia and its ancient cities are so unique and so special that it’s actually a UNESCO ‘World Heritage’ site. That’s no surprise, considering some of the world’s most ancient, recorded history occurred there: It was the home of the Hittites in the Bronze Age and later provided considerable resistance to Alexander the Great, even as he was riding high on the wave of a world-spanning empire after destroying the Persian Empire.

Coming up to ‘modern’ history, and birth of Christ, Cappadocia was a safe haven for religious types. While Christians the world over were being persecuted for their cultish beliefs, priests were holing up in the hand-hewn caves now found in Goreme National Park. While it’s impossible to date when the structures actually became churches, it’s believed there were sites of Christian worship long before Emperor Constantine ratified Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire.

Today, Goreme has the remains of the oldest churches in the world. To tell you that it’s weird to walk through a hole in the wall and find a 10th century Byzantine fresco would be a gross understatement. Around 900AD, the monastic complex at Goreme was carved out, and within 300 years, scores of churches were cut into the earth itself. Fast forward to today and there are still more than 10 fantastically preserved churches; churches that you can simply walk into!

What I found interesting was how small these churches were. Perhaps due to the constraints of their tools, or their knowledge of engineering, the largest churches were only 3 or 4 meters square. You’re walking into a single room — soom of which were vaulted — literally plastered with murals and frescoes. I wonder if they were small for another reason though: perhaps these churches were built back when religion wasn’t about being grandiose and self-important. Once upon a time, religion was probably about prayer, and finding solace in some greater entity than ourselves. A small room, with a priest, would be more than suitable for that, right?

Somewhere along the line, probably hand-in-hand with advances in engineering, churches became bigger, vaster and more pompous. If you’ve been to a truly huge cathedral, I think you can relate to that feeling of awe and wonderment as you cross the threshold and look up at the stained glass window above the altar — but that’s the majesty of the building, not God touching you. I assume that churches grew in size as faith swelled, and their eagerness to reach the firmament increased. It’s the same reason banks are always large, imposing structures — they inspire you to trust and believe in whoever dwells within, whether it’s the bank manager or high priest.

I don’t want to get too stuck into the topic of religion, as it’s rather obvious that the churches in Goreme were certainly not used as some kind of control structure; there were simply too many Churches for a single priest, or some particular rites of worship, to prevail! They were meant only as places of worship; vestibules of silence where you could be on your own, or with God.

We poked around for a few hours, scampering from room to room, trying to avoid the incredibly hot summer sun. There were houses, baths and even halls where they would gather to eat (but again, they were small, only a few meters across). My favourite features, though they scared me senseless, were the pitch-black escape tunnels that ran out of the city into adjoining valleys.

Building a city at back of a valley is already fairly hard to penetrate — you have to climb a mile-long incline to get there, with almost no cover — but, if an aggressive force actually made it to the top, there were a few tunnels that had been carved, by hand, out of the solidified volcanic ash.  These tunnels — which could be longer than a mile! — would enable the women and children to safely escape to another valley.

They also enabled poor, hapless, home-sick tourists like myself to escape to… ’safety’. Egged on by some hopelessly enthusiastic American (’Dude, I bet it’d be totally awesome…’), I finally steeled myself and climbed up some near-vertical stairs into the escape tunnel itself.

What followed was an experience I don’t really want to relive, but I will anyway, for your sake and certainly not mine. The stairs you see in the photo were just the beginning — there were two more flights, each one more run-down and life-threatening than the next. On the last flight, before the tunnel itself, the American in front of me slipped, fell, and broke the torch he was holding.

We were plunged into complete darkness. Most people have never experienced real darkness — the kind of darkness that you only get when you’re surrounded on all sides by at least 100 meters of rock. You’d probably consider a dark, moonless night ‘quite dark’; dark enough to bump into other people, at least. Let me tell you, a moonless night is about 10 times brighter than that escape tunnel — an escape tunnel that I was sure would shortly become my final resting spot. How ironic.

‘Eric?’ I called out quietly. I don’t know why I called out quietly; probably because of some primordial urge to lay low and pray the velociraptor doesn’t eat me.

‘Seb?’ came back the hushed, not-quite-so-enthusiastic voice of Eric the Enthusiastic American.

‘You’re right, this was totally awesome.’

‘I think I’ve busted my ankle, Seb. I can’t move.’

And so we crawled on in darkness. Or rather, I crawled on, using my super-human inner geek-strength to drag Eric behind me. Minutes went by, and soon hours. Scrapes from the jagged lining of the tunnel turned into bruises when we tumbled down some stairs and ended up in a pile of scared, sweaty man flesh. But we persisted, and eventually — about 2 hours later — we emerged into another valley to be greeted by a beautiful Anatolian sunset.

We were cut up and bleeding, shaken and stiff, rendered blind by the return of the sun. Worse than all that though: we had no idea where we were. The agreed meet-up time had long past, but when you don’t know where you are, it’s very hard to know where to go. Somewhere, Eric’s wife was eagerly awaiting his return.

I stood up, and looked down at Eric’s scratched, crumpled heap of a body.

‘She’ll be wondering where I am, Seb…’

‘I’m not the most athletic person in the world, Eric. I’m not sure I can carry you all the way to safety, after dragging your broken ass through a mile-long half-meter-wide tunnel…’

He grunted pathetically up at me. I sighed deeply.

And that’s how I walked off into the sunset, with an American called Eric in my arms.

(Can you believe there’s no ‘Alliteration Is Demented Society’ yet? Perhaps I should found it, to stop the rampant meme-use of alliteration across the blogosphere. Though, I would call it the  ‘Abolition of the Abject Abuse of Alliteration Association’. Just for ironic kicks. Even if the acronym isn’t quite as good.)

This was actually going to come yesterday (Time-Warp Wednesday), but April 1st just happened to fall on the Wednesday, so I quickly had to fabricate a hoax suitable for the occasion!

Now brace yourself. This might come as a shock to some — and I hope I haven’t broken any more hearts – but, putting my finger on the proverbial nub, I’m afraid to say the fact of the matter is, I’m not gay. An overwhelming abundance of facts might lead you to believe that I’m lying — that I’ve jumped back into the proverbial closet, not quite ready to face the music, or my father’s face over fudge sauce — but I assure you, I am straight. As straight as an arrow fired from Artemis’ bow; or perhaps from a cherub’s bow — but into the heart of a woman, not a man. I like sticking it in women. Believe me, I’ve tried both, and women are just plain better; warmer, tastier and infinitely more pliable.

With that little embarassing fact out of the way, I welcome you to Time-Travel Thursday. Please follow me as I take a trip down my often-emo and angst-ridden LiveJournal memory lane. I was going to start from the beginning, but to be honest I ran out of patience reading back through page after page of geeky, inane drivel. Turns out it only goes back to when I was 19 — I thought it went back much further! I was hoping for some juicy, self-hating nobody-likes-me entries from my mid-teens, but I’m afraid they’re all from the end of my first year, after the Lesbian Encounter — an encounter that hardened me considerably (emotionally).

Though, there are the journals of a few of my past… girlfriends… that I could have a leaf through to check if there’s anything particuarly juicy about me which I can post next week.

Let me tell you a story… — March 19th, 2005

As some of you may or may not know: I quite like cheese.

My love of cheese didn’t really make itself quite so pronounced until I came to university however. That first time I ever visited Tesco, the supermarket, looking for a ‘fix’ of cheese. “10 varieties of cheddar! 5 ratings of strength and maturity!” I squeaked excitedly.

I remember that day as if it was yesterday – yet it was over 2 and a half years ago.

So, the weeks passed, I sought harder and stronger fixes of cheeses. I stuck mainly to the soft French cheese and English cheddars. Camemberts came and went; de meaux, unpasteurised brie came, and left with a little bit more of a smell.

Grade 3 cheddar became Grade 4 which in turn maxed out at Grade 5. I branched out to Irish cheddar, Canadian cheddar.

You name it, I’ve had it. From Havarti to Emmental to Chaumes.

I thought that I’d tried everything, that I’d never find a harder, more exciting cheese.

Until…

My life is now complete.

And thus concludes this week’s fantastic insight into the life of final-year university student, Spring 2005.

I was going to ‘analyse’ it, but I figured it’d be a lot more fun if I simply answer any questions that pop up… so do your worst! (There’s actually a fun story about me, cheese and my first year at university — a goose egg one, but still one that needs to be told!)

Plus, anything that makes you look at that truly atrocious photo for more than a few seconds must be a good thing.

(The days of the week are merely a consideration of time. There’s no real reason why today can’t be Monday. In fact, considering we’ve probably lost days and weeks, or even years, back during the Dark Ages, today might actually be Monday. Who knows, and who cares — today is Musical Monday, whether you like it or not.)

It’s been a long time coming, but hopefully worth the wait. I’ve finally made it to the last stage of this little lesson in musical theatre history: contemporary West End and Broadway shows!

We had the golden years in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. I’ve discussed the birth of rock musicals in the 60s, and their eventual maturity with masterpieces such as Rent. The 70s and 80s were full of Sondheim masterpieces and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s ‘power’ and ‘pop’ musicals. And now, we have the new millennium. The musical composers that kept the stages and audiences around the world buzzing for the last 50 years have proverbially taken their last bow and left the stage. It’s been a long time indeed since Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera debuted. That’s not to say we’re without good, contemporary musical writers — there are a few, and I certainly remain hopeful to see a second smash hit from Wicked’s creator Stephen Schwartz — but there has certainly been a bit of a creative slump in recent years. The same stagnation that’s plagued the popular film industry has seeped into musical theatre.

Today, it’s all about brand re-use. It’s all about value-added productions. Why bother to spend time and money on something that might fail? Today more than ever, commercial success is vital — gone are the days when musicals might only run for a week or two. Experimentation is not something that goes down well with investors! Couple this with the world’s  ‘need’ for bigger productions, shinier productions — moving stages, sinking ships — and it’s no wonder we’re seeing consolidation in the musical industry. With the recession, it’s almost a certainty that we won’t see any new, refreshing and big productions. In fact, Wicked was probably THE last great, original musical — at least until the end of this decade, I would’ve thought.

Now, this ‘consolidation’ (vertical integration) is nothing new, and it’s borrowed directly from the multimedia industry. When you make a blockbuster film it makes sense (for the publisher at least) to piggyback video games and merchandise on the film’s marketing strategy. The number of video games sold on the back of the Harry Potter and Spider-Man films is huge! It was only inevitable that musical theatre would go the same way, which is why we’ve laboured through such 3 1/2 hour epics as Lord of the Rings: The Musical and Titanic: The Musical. It’s why we’ll soon have to struggle through Spider-Man: The Musical.

This isn’t to say that screen-to-stage adaptations don’t work! Look at My Fair Lady, The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast — all huge hits on the screen, and then the stage. Though, there’s one major difference: they were already musicals with fantastic scores! Sunset Boulevard is one of the only non-musical-film-to-stage adaptations that’s been a large success and funnily, Lloyd-Webber’s musical version is  scheduled to become a film again. That’s not new though: The Producers did it too with fantastic results: Film, musical, and finally becoming a musical film.

Somehow I can’t see Spider-Man: The Musical being adapted for the big, silver screen though. Unless Toby Maguire can sing, then we might see it after Spider-Man 5. Maybe. Though, I get all excited, thinking about the harness work they’ll do on stage for Spider-Man. The acrobatics in Mary Poppins, though very simple, were incredibly effective. On a larger scale, it might be very impressive indeed. I do wonder if a singing Spider-Man could be taken seriously though. Crowd-pleasing, full-chorus numbers lamenting his inability to get the girl, or control his sticky web issues.

Anyway, the other popular musical production today is the ‘jukebox musical’. It’s a format that has existed for a while, but only really lifted off with Mamma Mia! in 1999 (which recently became a film, completing the circle of life!) In 2002, the genre was firmly cemented with the truly awesome production of We Will Rock You by Ben Elton and Queen. But what is a jukebox musical exactly? It’s when an enterprising person takes an existing body of pre-branded music and shoehorns it into a totally wacky, nonsensical story. And it works — just. If you’re an ABBA or Queen fan, you’ll love it; if you’re not, you’ll probably leave the theatre a little worse for wear, and very confused. Fortunately, the music industry is massive and there’ll always be enough fans to drive these jukebox musicals for years and years.

Though, saying that, there’s a depressingly large list of jukebox musicals that have been produced, or are in the works. Musicals based on the works of John Denver — OK, I can kind of envision something Calamity Jane‘ish. But really, would people go to see a Green Day musical? Or Boney M? Or even… Take That? (OK, the Take That musical is actually quite good; don’t hurt me, girls, please.)

The future looks pretty bleak for musical theatre. Recent years have only seen a handful of musicals that would make their ‘golden years’ brethren proud. We can pray that musical theatre doesn’t follow in the footsteps of the other media industries, but I think that would wishful thinking — everything in this world is becoming larger, globalised, monetised and capitalised upon. You can guarantee that if a studio spends 10 million on the marketing of a film and video game, they’re going to make a stage production too!

As always then, it comes down to a few enterprising composers, or an investor that see that little glimmer of potential that everyone else missed. Unless we want to be plagued with the third and forth revival productions of classic productions, something has to change. More risks need to be taken. It’s down to you Stephen Schwartz; make your Jewish musical masters proud.

I know I’ve painted a grim picture, but it’s worth noting that musical theatre is more popular than ever (which must be a good thing?) The problem – at least, in my eyes — is the quality of productions. Musicals have become  ‘a special, expensive trip to the cinema’ that a family might do once a year. Musicals should be more than that! They shouldn’t simply be part of our entertainment consumption regime; they should be part of our culture, and the future culture of our children.

In September 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. With thousands of tanks and planes, the invasion was short and victory was absolute. Two days later, Hitler’s steady advancement across European borders was finally curtailed by the Allied declaration of war. It would be the last, world-encompassing dying breath of an empire that once spanned a quarter of the world, an empire that had already sustained massive social and military erosion since the First World War.

“I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” Winston Churchill, Prime Minister

Winston Churchill was not Prime Minister when war was declared — Neville Chamberlain was — so most of his rousing, now-renowned speeches came later, after the fall of France. Ironically, it took Britain’s biggest failure in war to see Churchill become the prime minister. The Battle of Britain followed, as did the joining of the war by the Americans. Bridging both the Atlantic and the 250-year imperial divide created by the American Revolutionary War, Roosevelt effectively, excuse the Americanism, ’saved our asses’.

The rest is history. Messy, corpse-riddled history. But this story isn’t about America, or even England; it’s about my visit to the Poland in 2008. A trip down a cobbled, dark lane littered with the shadows of my Jewish ancestors. I stood where Hitler had stood. Hitler commanded a vast audience that filled the streets of Danzig (Gdansk) as he delivered his first victory speech. While he spoke and the occupants of Danzig gawped at their new charismatic, self-deprecating emperor, Germany’s vastly superior army was busy destroying the scattered, fragmented remnants of the Polish military.

And do you know the scariest bit about his speech? Not his passion, or immensely self-righteous attitude, nor the propoganda or his fantastic oratory control.  It’s the last few words of his speech:

“We are determined to carry on and stand this war one way or another. We have only this one wish, that the Almighty, who now has blessed our arms, will now perhaps make other peoples understand and give them comprehension of how useless this war, this debacle of peoples, will be intrinsically, and that He may perhaps cause reflection on the blessings of peace which they are sacrificing because a handful of fanatic warmongers, persons who stand to gain by war, want to involve peoples in war.” Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of the Reich

Another war, another crusade. One more Earth-shaking tirade in the name of God! However, this won’t be about God or the atrocities committed for and in his name, I’ve already written more than enough on that topic… at least for now. No, this trip was simply to see Poland, to see a friend, to sample the food and the culture. This wasn’t the stereotypical trip to Auschwitz; the kind of trip that many Jews take in a fruitless attempt to absorb a tiny fraction of what war-time Poland must’ve been like for our ancestors. I can’t begin to conceive what the Holocaust was like, and I have no idea how many members of my family were mercilessly slaved and later executed.

(Old town Sopot, close to where Hitler delivered his victory speech, and one of my favourite photos!)

I couldn’t hope to experience the past, but I could certainly go and see what had become of the trading city of  Gdansk (Danzig), 60 years on. I had been lured by my Canadian friend Mike, enticed by sleazy, hedonistic promises: 

‘Just come for the weekend, Seb. You just have to pay for the flight, I’ll pay for everything else.’

‘Even the hot, Eastern European kurwas?’ Without missing a beat, I’d used one of the few words I’d learnt from my trip to Serbia (pretty photos and a fun story!)

‘If you want some certified-diseased prostitutes, Seb, we can do that… just bring your health insurance documents.’ Mike sounded awfully experienced in the ways of fleeting, paid-by-the-hour love.

‘I’ll see you on Friday.’

The next part will chronicle my long weekend in the Tricity of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot: the first of many cheap hookers; one of the few times I’ve had acute alcohol poisoning AND… of course there will be more, awful photos of me.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law

In 1968, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick finally finished 2001: A Space Odyssey – the book, and the film. It would change the way the world looked at evolution and ethics; artificial- and extra-terrestrial life. Religion and genesis.

But those are meaty topics that I couldn’t hope to cover in a simple blog entry. Instead, I want to talk about all of them combined, magic. Events that leave you so mystified, so jaw-droppingly nonplussed that you can only call out in disbelief that’s impossible! Perhaps you mumble it incredulously, wiping away an emotional tear, your raw nerves leaving you overwhelmed. It’s the same thing, though, magic: the impossible, in the blink of an eye, becoming possible.

When magic occurs, it’s like the world has been re-written. You have one moment in time, the past, where it seems impossible. Snap. You’re in the future, impossibility split asunder and replaced with a new reality. Magic occurred before your very eyes. The world changed around you. The flat line blips and shows a pulse. The Great Wall of China disappears. Poof.

And that’s all magic is, whether it’s performed by Harry Potter or Gandalf, a heroic doctor or David Copperfield. Now, the fun bit, and the tie-in to religious ‘miracles’ — magic is based on what we, by consensus agreement, deems impossible. We agree that it’s impossible for a man to disappear. We agree that, really, you shouldn’t be able to step through a plate glass window.

Once upon a time we agreed that being chained and helplessly dumped, submerged in a tank of water spelled certain death. And then Harry Houdini did it, and it wasn’t quite so magical any more; it’s only magic once, afterward it simply becomes a talking point, a fantastic improbability. The magician moves us from an impossible past, to a future full of possibilities where his ‘magic’ continues to occur around us, unabated. The cat’s out of the bag. Pandora’s can of worms hasn’t just been opened — it lies broken upon the floor, exposed, the world looking on in wonder — so that’s how it’s done! – our decision of what constitutes reality is rewritten in that moment. Magic becomes mundane.

It’s by this logic, sadly, that you disprove the existence of magic. The last 200 years have more than adequately proven that declaring something ‘impossible’ is stupid and counterintuitive. It’s not impossible, someone just hasn’t done it yet! It’s not a miracle, it’s just utilising mechanics that you didn’t know existed. Perhaps someone close to Jesus invented the sterile bandage and handed one to Our Lord — ‘Here, try this, mate’ — maybe he didn’t actually cure people with the power of God.

That’s what Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law is all about. Technology — a sterile bandage — is magic. Magic changes history, redefining our universal axioms, redeclaring what can and can’t be done. The impossible, as the cliche goes, becomes possible. Stone Henge, the Great Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower — pure impossibilities, paper-only pipe dreams, fabrications only extant in the minds of great thinkers until someone actually devised a way to make them. Technology allows engineers to transport ideas from the realm of fantasy to reality. Imagine bringing a Roman forward through time to modern-day and showing him a computer. Magus he would say. Magic.

It is for this reason that inventors and scientists belong in a higher echelon. Without them, we’d still be in sitting in a cave, lamenting the taste of raw meat.

The search for immortality has plagued humanity since the dawn of time. The only certain thing in life is death: we can run from the Reaper but we can’t hide. Eternal life, or the lack of, remains a problem that scientists and philosophers alike have failed to solve for millennia.

For centuries we have gone to extreme lengths to prolong our life, but so far physical immortality has eluded us. With drugs and surgery — and leeches and the warm blood of animals! — we can maintain the illusion of youth for decades, but evading death itself has proven a little trickier.

Enter religion with its universal theme of immortality of the soul, or in some cases reincarnation — the best get-out-of-jail-free card ever. ‘Hey, we can’t grant this body of yours eternal life, but how about another go if you mess up?’ The single most wished for trait of all time, that which all humans crave — more than wealth, or happiness, or progeny — immortality became available at a low low price of a few Hail Marys or donation to the church of your choosing.

Immortality: the frustratingly-close mirage, finally within reach! Trample each other as you try to get to it first; God doesn’t mind. Anyone can have it, at the price of your dignity and a handful of coins; who cares if you live this life in squalor, while a fat priest sleeps soundly, resplendent in his gold-trimmed vestments — there’s always the next life! A helpful, portly priest once told me that there’s surround-sound TVs in Heaven; The Kingdom of God, Araboth, Nirvana. In the old days there was obviously lots of black slaves, and taverns with lots of beer — and quaffing! — and Valkyries. But today, that doesn’t sell so well…

I wouldn’t be quite so pessimistic if all religions could at least agree on one common theme — immortality of the soul or reincarnation — but as they can’t seem to agree, and kill each other over the minutiae, it’s likely that none of them are right. God himself seems to vary a lot from religion to religion, and if you can’t agree on something as basic and omnipresent as God, what’s the point? Were the gods of ancient history (there were hundreds of them!) fake?

That’s the problem with a divinely-inspired canon – words, from the infallible mandible of God – if you disprove just a single facet of it, one breathlessly intoned phrase of God, the entire thing falls to pieces. So if the tribal shaman got it wrong about their deities, and the Greek priests got it wrong about their polytheistic Parthenon, why should we believe modern-day monotheistic religion? You can read a little more about my views on monotheistic religion, if you like, but that’s enough for this entry.

If you take God and paid-for immortality out of the equation what do you have left? A moral code of conduct and a few archaic rules that (sometimes) made sense in the religion’s hey-day: a moral code then, and not much else.

But wait… there has to be something to it. Unless humanity really has fabricated a belief in the supernatural (and geneticists will argue that this is the case) for the past 10,000 years, there has to be some truth in it all. What if we take God or any ‘higher power’ that we are subservient to out of the equation, and just leave the spiritual side of things? Current science is leaning towards something, a quantum force created by particles either millions of times smaller than atoms, or by something else entirely. We might never know what that force is, but the mere fact that there’s something outside the realm of empirical measurement — the most common argument against the existence of a spirit or soul — will certainly be a tricky one for scientists.

Physical immortality is just around the corner, or at least you’ll soon have new organs grown at a whim. Bust your heart? Buy another one — it might be grown inside a pig, but who are you to complain? You’ve probably seen or heard about the mouse genetically engineered to grow an ear on its back. There are projects working on the important biological aspects of aging (cell aging being the main one), but there are other caveats too. Is it ethical for us to live forever? Do we have the technology and the resources to sustain 40, 50, 60 billion people here on Earth? Perhaps most importantly: would we do anything today if we could always put it off until tomorrow?

It’s at times like this I wish I could remove myself from the equation. I have beliefs which interfere with my objectivity! It’s awfully hard to derive a solution or even an answer when my flesh-and-blood brain has to be consulted first — my brain which has been meddled with by my parents, my friends and the media. It’s comforting to know that everyone else suffers the same fate though; even philosophers had to grow up.  It’s impossible for me to claim there’s a world beyond our own, but if science and technology has shown us anything in the last 50 years: don’t place any bets.

If we could give birth to a fully-grown adult — a test-tube human born into physical and mental maturity, without any of the pain or suffering sustained in childhood — how would they view the world? Without bias and with complete and utter objectivity, some pieces of the universal puzzle might just slip into place.

If immortality yet again slips  between our greedy paws, we still have transhumanism to look forward to: augmented human bodies. Bionic eyes, mithril exoskeletons and steam-powered muscles — well, perhaps not so much the mithril or the steam-power, but it’s coming! I’ll talk about that after Terminator 4: Salvation hits the cinemas.

I took yet another wrong turn and looked around. It was 10am, but down here in the maze-like bowels of Venice it could’ve been 10pm. I’d been up since 4am and the caffeine from the cup of coffee on the plane was wearing thin. Breakfast would’ve been lovely and there was certainly the tantalising smell of food in the air, but following my usually-acute sense of smell had already led me into three dead ends.

A couple of geriatric Italians grinned at me toothlessly from a doorway. Even if I attempted to ask them for directions in Italian they would feign illiteracy.

I stared at them and grinned back, making the shape of a gun with my index finger and thumb. My over-sized canines had done most of the work, but I had to admit: the finger-gun was a nice touch. Pointing it at the pensioners I asked: ‘Dov’è Al Doge Beato?‘ They showed me, with a nervous succession of frail arm movements, where I might find my humble abode for the next two days: The Blessed Duke, the Happy Duke — something like that.  It sounded cheesy, but it was charming– everything in Venice is lovely.

Perhaps ‘lovely’ isn’t quite the right word; ‘quaint’ better describes the almost-complete dilapidation of the city. As I walked on, almost everything is in an awful state of repair. There’s something about floating in the middle of a warm and windy salt-water lagoon that really eats away at the paint and brickwork. A few bridges and labyrinthine turns later, I stood outside my hotel: a canal-side, turn-of-the-millennium building — and I’m not talking about a few years ago! My room looked out over a canal on one side, and had a floor-to-ceiling double-door leading out onto an ancient stone balcony on the other. It wasn’t cheap, but considering nothing in Venice is, I thought I’d splash out.

‘You can’t miss Piazza San Marco, just head towards…’ I zoned out as he begun gesturing wildly with his hands. It was obviously an Italian thing, pointing and gesticulating; some kind of sign language that I wasn’t privy to. He noticed the blank look on my face. ‘I’ll get you a map.’ Armed with my map and camera and finger-gun I looked around and then at the map, trying to catch my bearings. Picking one of the three paths that headed south at random I felt like one of my other namesakes, Sebastian Cabot. He’d been a major player in Venice back in the day and he’d probably had less difficulty navigating Venice than me — he ended up exploring Brazil for the King of Spain! — but I gave it my best shot. I’d already decided ahead of time that ‘getting lost in Venice’ would be one of the primary objectives of my trip. Losing myself as I cut between two buildings that were no more than half a meter apart; disappearing amongst the endless serpentine alleys, lost to the world. Venice isn’t big, but you only need walk 50 meters off the beaten path, turn a few corners, and you’ll find yourself alone, standing beneath the imposing facade of a  Gothic church or Renaissance house.

First up was a trip to to the Piazza — the only real open space in central Venice and the home of most major landmarks in Venice. There’s also a huge clock tower in the middle which, as you’d expect, grants a spectacular view of the ancient core of Venice.

There are museums and churches aplenty in Venice, much like every major city in Italy, but they pale in comparison to the ones in Florence and Rome. I could easily spend hours writing about the 50 churches that I visited during my trip, but that’d be boring! (Unless you like churches a lot… like me!) Perhaps you can now understand where my recent interest in dissecting religion has come from — you can only spend so long basking in the shadow of such an ancient, powerful institution — Roman Catholicism — before something goes ‘pop’.

Venice was home to the very first Jewish Ghetto, a Venetian word that probably derives from ‘iron foundry’, or a corruption of ‘Judaca’, the name given to the streets in which the Jews were confined to in Venice. This is where Jewish segregation all began, though this ghetto didn’t enforce labour like later incarnations around the world — it was merely separation from the aggressive and violent Christians. Set up by the incumbent Duke to protect rather than enslave, the Jews probably sought refuge there — they definitely weren’t free to leave however! It was also around this time that Jews became, um, Jewish: Catholic law prevented money-lending, but Jewish law did not. Jews also became the best doctors because most medical texts at the time were in Arabic, a language that Italians and Venetians struggled to understand.

The Venetian Ghetto existed until Napoleon came along in 1797 and removed all of the gates that had penned them in for 250 years, though some early documents could put it over 700 years! All that remain are the hinges that held those gates, but the Jewish love of money lives on! (Remember, it’s not our fault though — blame the Pope!)

It was a little sad, walking around the dirty, tired streets of Venice, a city that had once been the most affluent city state the world has ever seen. The Queen of the Adriatic was one of its many names, a name that makes you wonder just how opulent and vibrant the city had been 600 years ago. For centuries, Venice was ruled by merchants – a republic, led by aristocratic merchants, their sole purpose being to make more money (something they did very well. What most people don’t know is that Venice actually held an empire — a small one, mainly consisting of the Aegean islands Crete and Cyprus, but an empire nonetheless. They had a sizable military force, and their navy of 3,000 ships were almost invulnerable in their stronghold of a lagoon. Most were merchant ships but often converted into warships when piracy flared up in the East, or when they played a large part in the Forth Crusade — the crusade often viewed as the final schism between Catholic and East Orthodox religions — a role in a war that would ultimately spell the end of the Byzantine empire. Not bad for an unnavigable flyspeck of an island!

And the scary bit? It was all made possible with money; a leader with almost unlimited resources and support from a loyal, trusting republic:  that’s capitalism.

Welcome to my first American special: Why Americans are awesome. I appreciate that I haven’t actually written a whole lot about America, so you might question my authority — and rightly so! I’ve visited a few times — about two months in total on five individual trips. I don’t claim to know everything about the States but as you probably know by now, that won’t stop this entry from being highly opinionated. Bear in mind then, as you read this, that ‘awesome’ doesn’t necessarily mean really neat, though it often does. Awesome means ‘awe inspiring’ — mouth-agape and stupefied — something you tell your kids about! Awww-sum, dude!!!

That’s why I chose that word in particular. America is awesome, no matter which facet you gaze upon. Either in military might or economic growth, America rules supreme. From the sheer vastness of their natural splendours — Yosemite, Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon — to the rich oil and gold and mineral reserves, America really is an adventurous place.

You have to imagine what it would’ve been like for an Irishman, pushing west across undiscovered America. How it must’ve felt to experience those sense-shattering sights. Mountains, glacial valleys, geysers — it would’ve been overwhelming! As I explored America, I liked to think I felt an inkling of the awe that those tiny colonies of trailblazing frontiersmen felt centuries ago as they pushed west across the New World.

It is perhaps no wonder that Americans retain an adventurous glint in their eye and bounce in their step — an enthusiasm and appetite for endeavour that precious few nations have. I guess, unlike many other countries, they still have something to be enthusiastic about. They’re still looking through rose-tinted spectacles left by their one-sixteenth Irish-blood great grandfather.

They’re big and brash

No matter which way you look at it: over wide, beautiful vistas or around the orbital curvature of an obese chest, Americans are by far the biggest race in the world. It’s no surprise, considering the seemingly never-ending expanse of their virgin habitat, that they’ve evolved into the largest of the Homo neanderthalensis. Animals tend to grow to occupy a given space — in high-density areas, animals tend to be smaller. America is huge and its population equally expansive.

The equation isn’t quite so simple though. The reason Americans are so large is because they are so self-sufficient. They have so many natural resources and such huge swathes of land suitable for agriculture that they have an abundance of cheap, locally-grown food. Couple in the fact that tropical conditions are available just short boat ride away, across the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s really no surprise that Americans are big (see Appendix A).

The brashness comes from being big and knowing you’re a force to be reckoned with, both on a global scale thanks to a huge military, and in the dusty, windswept saloons with your natural body armour. The confidence that Americans ooze is one of the (desirable?) traits that separates Americans from the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s because they’ve never really tasted defeat like most other Western nations, or just because they’re still so incredibly young in the grand scale of history.

The rest of the world knows about its weaknesses only too well. Americans are sure that they have some weakness, some flaw, somewhere… they just don’t stop to think about it. Maybe they’ll stop to think about it after yet another conquest — following yet another war that they can’t possibly lose. Because losing has never been an option.

That’s why Americans are confident.

They don’t have a class system… kind of

While the rest of the Western world is still battling with an archaic, feudal hand-me-down class system, and the undeveloped world still qualifies its leaders by the size of their ears or gonads, America is essentially classless. In England you can spot a millionaire from 100 meters. In America… good luck! A millionaire might wear a suit, or he might just wear jeans and a t-shirt, depending on how he feels. Or what’s fresh out of the washing machine.

This is because America is primarily made of new money. There are certainly a few British-occupation throwbacks — old, rich slavers  — but most rich people in America today made their own money. They struggled against adversity to become stupendously rich. Capitalism might be frowned upon by many other developed nations but people forget that America has only had a couple of hundred years to catch up with the rest of the world! Without capitalism, America would probably still be a farming country (and some of it is!)

It’s only classless by definition though. Americans still strive to be better than their neighbours, it’s just more of a low-key, Cold War affair. Bigger cars. Greener lawns. Smaller dogs. Prom, rodeo and Mardi Gras queens. Beauty pageants. Bigger cows; riding rowdier bovines and horses. America is competitive. Without a defined class system, with nothing more than the equivalent of a league of comparitive penis lengths, Americans go out of their way to be bigger, better, faster and wholly more awesome than everyone else.

That continuing, never-let-it-lie attitude of trying to one-up its compatriots and the rest of the world has resulted in their global supremacy.

You can buy anything

Thanks to capitalism everything in America has a price. Really, anything; it’s shocking and at the same time strangely impressive. In most of the Western world, manners, deference, politeness and etiquette grease the cogs of society. In America it’s money. A big, toothy smile helps too — but mostly it’s cold, hard cash.

My trips to America have been liberating. I’ve known that at any time, as long as I have some money in my pocket, I’m safe; I’m enabled. I can (and did) literally anything I could think of. You’ll have to wait for my travel stories from America before you hear about those!

Back in England and Europe I’m fettered, restricted by social norms and expectations: who I’m friends with matters, and possibly who my enemies are too. I don’t think it’s any surprise that people searching for a new beginning travelled to the New World where there were no limits to what you could do or accomplish — no more arbitrary limitations  imposed by your family’s history or religious affiliations — just an as-far-as-the-eye-can-see, unspoilt horizon and only one way to measure and compare success: money.

Appendix A: American Food

I’ll continue this tomorrow — there’s simply too much awesomeness in America for one blog entry — but for now, I want to leave you with some truly amazing culinary (I use that word loosely) creations, ripped off from thisiswhyyourefat.com.

The thing I love most about this one is the piece of lettuce. God bless America.

Two Danish pastries. And bacon. And is that the yolk of a sunny-side-up fried egg I see in the mix too?

You probably scrolled off this one quickly because it almost looks internal. Entitled ‘The Cornhole’, this… creation… this… monstrosity means I’ll never be able to look sweetcorn in the eye again. Or anyone else for that matter.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: God bless America.
That’s a chocolate cake with crispy bacon sprinkles. You can’t see, but right now I have tears running down my cheeks.
Salty-wet trails of pride. The tears of someone that has glimpsed true beauty in the form of cake.
America, you truly are one of a kind. Thank God.

America’s so awesome that I ran out of space yesterday! I’m going to continue where I left off, but not without first wowing you with a recent discovery of mine: The Heart Attack Grill. Words don’t really do it justice, so just watch this little video segment from a very serious-sounding TV news reporter.

With that out of the way — Christ, those nurses were hot, eh?  Did you see that ‘A wheelchair ride to your car’ is on the menu? My kind of establishment! — it’s now time to conclude why Americans are AWESOME.

Guns don’t kill people

There’s something about America and the celebration of firearms. It’s probably tied into what I said yesterday about Americans being big and brash — what better way to win an argument or ensure the cessation of all disagreement than with an automatic shotgun? If that doesn’t work, how about equipping it with a clip of armour-penetrating grenade rounds that can be fired off in under two seconds?

Apparently, it’s your God-given right to bear arms in the United States. Well, not God-given, but granted by the second amendment — which was probably divined under the omnipresent supervision of God. Most things back then were, don’t worry — anyway, constitutionally, Americans are allowed to own a firearm. 200 years ago, y’see, there was still some risk of a tyrant leader forcing their way to the top. It was actually sensible that localised militias were maintained in case of emergency — in the event that they would have to help maintain the republic (by shootin’ the dictator).

Fear of oppressive/tyrannical leadership is a common trait amongst all democratic republics and begun way back in Roman times. Today though, there isn’t really a reason to own a lethal weapon, other than because your neighbours do. And other bad drivers. Do Americans really think that owning a gun makes them safer? I can’t get my head around that one so I’m just going to label that particular logic as ‘awesome’ — perhaps there is a method in the madness. Perhaps you really can whip your gun outta your glove box and shoot ‘im dead faster than he can squeeze the trigger.

Maybe, if the mugger knew you weren’t packing heat, he’d carry a baseball bat instead of a gun? Broken ribs instead of dead on the cold floor.

I still remember the day I first saw an automatic submachine gun, at the airport, cradled gently, reverentially, in the arm of a police officer. I was meant to feel safe; I had never been so afraid.

McDonalds and Starbucks — globalisation — American havens the world over

Most non-Americans reading this will probably have bumped into an American tourist at some time or another. More than likely this would be in a Starbucks or McDonalds — the American’s there to pur-chase a slice of cake that’s just like my momma’s home cookin or a cup of hot, national-pride piss. I’ve found the best way to enjoy Starbucks coffee is to drink it fast while it’s still hot; burn all of them there pesky taste buds off! You then have a tongue that’s ready to sample the finest of American mud. Like KFC: they tell us it’s chicken, as we’re biting down into that slippery, spicy succulent morsel we try our damnedest to believe it is chicken — but is it really chicken? Starbucks tell us they serve great coffee. They wouldn’t lie to us like KFC, right?

(As an aside, the gangster slang ‘homeslice’ originates from from the phrase ‘a slice of home’, i.e. someone that reminds you of what it’s like to be back home. How cute is that? Starbucks, your American homeslice, the only solid bastion in a sea of crazy foreigners; seriously, Europeans, go check out a Starbucks in a busy city like Paris or Rome and just marvel at the number of Amerkins you find.)

The unstoppable sprawl of globalisation is an almost-uniquely American thing. The fast food chains, music, film — television. I’ve seen a news clip of a religious fanatic in Iraq decrying Americans as imperialist pigs with Friends and Joey’s inane face plastered on the TV behind him — you couldn’t make that kind of sweet irony up. A lot of people actually learn English from syndicated TV and Hollywood films and pop music — it always amuses me when I meet a local resident in Turkey or Croatia or Serbia that has an American accent. I wonder if they know just how funny it is?

Realising fairly quickly that they couldn’t actually take over the whole world (damn those commie Ruski pigs) they had to settle for the next best thing — CAPITALISM! Once you’ve reached national saturation there’s only one option left: go multinational! There’s a place in Portland, Washington there are actually two Starbuckses opposite each other. Either side of the street. That’s saturation and that’s why I have more Starbucks stores in London than in New York — I’m not complaining though — their coffee might be shit, but their ice-blended coffees with whipped cream on top… mmm.

(I did a little research, and it turns out ‘two Starbuckses on the same street’ is actually a smart move intentionally deployed by Starbucks. Each cafe would be decorated differently and thus serve a different kind of clientelle! So that’s actually quite smart, Mr Starbucks…)

I don’t think globalisation is intentional though, it’s just a side-effect. In the olden days, only the richest of merchants would have offices in more than one city. Today, our technology-rich world is an environment tailor-made for America’s big corporations. They’ve capitalised on their vast reserves cash to quickly spread their long, gribbly, money-grabbing tendrils all over the world. That’s not to say the rest of the world has suffered — far from it. We’ve reaped a lot of benefits of such quick world-devouring expansion (though there are plenty of arguments against the culture-destroying aspects of globalisation). We have globalisation to thank for cheap fast food (hooray!), a lot of employment and a huge amount of consumable entertainment. Kudos has to be given to Americans for finding some way to conquer the modern world without nukes.

The first black president!!

Apparently, this is fairly big news. Also, curiously, the USA is the first country to have a dildo shaped like their head of state (pun intended, animated and totally NSFW). I can’t wait for the first British-born Indian-parented Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Thinking about it, I don’t think there’s ever been a black president in any of the European countries… Maybe I should another entry  on why Europeans suck!

A turkey, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a duck. Wrapped in bacon. Perhaps America’s greatest invention: The Turbaconucken, courtesy of thisiswhyyourefat.com.