Wouldn’t it be nice . . .

Wouldn’t it be nice if all of our prejudices were true; if those people we believed to be evil really were and those we believed to be good – our people – were always right.

It would save us from having to consider anything but that which suits and supports our way of thinking. Our failures would be the interference and conspiracy of enemies – agents of the Devil – and our successes would be further proof that our power and authority were appointed by our God.

Blame for our economic problems could be laid at the door of those who hated, and wanted to change, our perfect way of life. Praise for our success would belong to us for placing our trust in our political leaders and the brave Captains of industry who toiled, not for personal gain but for the betterment of all and the glorification of our highly evolved and sophisticated civilization.

History has a great many examples of this type of thinking. The great Empires of the past glorified all that they did and ignored the stories of the downtrodden who were but slaves and serfs in the grand scheme of things. Even when revolution changed the balance of power, the new orders had to seek legitimacy and rewrote history to support their claims to all that was listed above.

A thinking person might despair! So where is hope – that essential aspect of humanity?

Our lives are too short to fully appreciate the circular nature of things. If you are lucky you get to live most of your life in the positive arcs. Too bad if you are born into the end of one of these and are doomed to spend the rest of your days in decline. But any child who has sat alone in the center of a see-saw knows that even the slightest change can affect a tilt.

What to write

 ?

Anybody who has sat down to a blank page has been confronted by the question: what to write?

From adolescence, writing essays in school, I learned that pandering to the teacher’s expectations was the more likely course to a better grade but I had difficulty with that.

Thankfully I was encouraged by those teachers that challenged me to do more – to try to voice my own point of view and to write something ‘outside of the box.’ These good and caring teachers responded to my interest by steering me towards the type of book you might not find in the narrower curriculums.

I soon learned that I preferred the type of writing that jolted, or coaxed, me out of the small existence I occupied and while it is comforting to read like-mindedness, it is often no more than fast-food for the emotions. I developed an appetite for the rich and varied diet of writings that made me reconsider myself and the world around me.

As a child I liked to be led by the hand to a happily-ever-after that proved that good triumphed over bad and that Fate was fair – it was reassuring when the life I was born into was turned on its head.

But after years of wondering why Good avoided me I began to realise that life was not like that. (Blame all of those ‘banned’ novels I consumed as a teenager! Demian, by Hesse, had a profound impact, as did Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.)

From then on I was drawn to books that said: ‘here’s another point of view – try looking at the world this way.’

But that was back in the day when we asked questions and did not accept pre-packaged answers. That was back when people spoke openly of trying to make things better – not unlike today!

Writing Lagan Love gave me an opportunity to show a glimpse of a time and place that could be interpreted as a metaphor for far more than Dublin and the Irish. Too many of us were seduced by delusions and an image of life that we now know to be fantasy.

I, like so many others, do not have answers but I do have questions that I would like to discuss in a civilised and respectful manner. We all need to consider this and turn away from divisive and dismissive rhetoric and writing is as good a way of doing that as any.

The reactions to Lagan Love has been varied. Some embrace it and some reject it and I am okay with all of that. I would worry if everyone agreed! Good writing, is has been said, should not present the author but should offer the reader a chance to meet parts of themselves in the characters.

Some people have said that I have achieved that by their reactions – be they positive or negative – and I am encouraged by that.

This post was published on Jagged Edge Reviews

http://klearsreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/guest-post-with-peter-murphy.html

Before the Deluge

While walking around the 'occupied' streets of Toronto today I had a song running through my head.


Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's heart for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in the moment they were swept before the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by
By and by--
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by
By and by--
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jackson+browne/before+the+deluge_20068553.html ]

The beginning is nigh!

Tomorrow, I am going downtown to take part in the public protests; ‘Occupy the Street’.

I haven’t done anything like this in years. There were a great many reasons; I was busy, apathetic, uninvolved, disinterested and disenchanted.

The reason I am breaking out of that emotional rust is simple. It is time.

I am going down to register my opposition to greed. Greed, despite all that you might have heard, is not good. Wiser people than I have spoken eloquently on the matter and you can find their words for yourself.

What I object to is that we have become dominated by greed and the questionable premises that the pursuit of wealth is our greatest aspiration. We have burdened ourselves with a system that benefits the few at great cost to the rest. We have had to settle for the crumbs from the table – otherwise known as trickle-down economics. I don’t believe that it ever really worked but now that the trickle has been reduced or cut off, I am one with those who seek more equity in how the economic pie is distributed. I am not sure about radical economic change but most of us would have to agree that things could be more fair.

For a few decades real incomes have diminished and, to facilitate our vital role as consumers, we were given access to credit. Now that has become unfashionable and the question is – what’s a poor boy/girl to do?

I don’t have answers – who does? But I think it is time to force the questions to the top of the agenda. It is time to hear all considered opinion and have some serious debate rather the noisy clash of ideologies.

And for those who might claim that things cannot be changed – well!

History is the story of change. It is the story of how we find our way out of dead-ends. And while sometimes we leap from the frying pan into the fire, it is the way of evolution – a part of the real reality we are bound to. We are creatures of change and when things cease to work for us – we change them.

The real test is this.

"The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible?

If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils.

You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black.

Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred."

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Three interviews and a Review

Let's talk virtual books  http://letstalkvirtualbooktours.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/talking-virtual-book-tours-with-lagan-love-peter-murphy/

Blog Critics http://blogcritics.org/books/article/interview-peter-murphy-author-of-lagan/

The Review from here http://reviewfromhere.com/

Live to read
http://livetoread-krystal.blogspot.com/2011/10/lagan-love-by-peter-murphy.html

Lagan Love Book Trailer