The Last Romantic

Last night I wrote an email to a friend of mine who I have spent the last year contemplating religion with. He is a Christian and runs a Bible study group that I attend with a friend. I was however pretty rattled by Thursday’s meeting and it’s been nagging at me since. Below is the core of what I wrote to him about how I was feeling. It was in itself a blog........

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I'm feeling unsettled. At the heart of it is, I think, a rumbling in me that The Bible doesn’t tell the whole story. The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Gnostic Gospels, the original meanings lost in translation, the things left out or needing ‘interpretation’ leave me wondering whether Christ’s story has been manipulated, testimony edited and interpretation increasingly more influenced by generational telling and retelling and I can’t seem to get over it. Maybe I just don’t trust humanity not to manipulate the greatest questions in life ‘where did we come from – how will it end’ to the advantage of a few to control the masses.

Thursday’s session brought me to several things in my head:

· You have to believe that Jesus died on the cross despite all the evidence that he was seen by many for 40 days after his death. I find that harder to believe than the idea that he came back from the dead. That’s a huge issue in my mind because so much rides on it. Every element of the idea of him being seen after and moving amongst the disciples says he didn’t die in the first place, not that he came back to life. As Sarah rightly points out, the obvious evidence is that his side was pierced and split liquid came flooding out. But we only know that because someone wrote it on to a piece of papyrus decades later.

If the disciples can tell elements of the story of Christ’s life differently through the gospels from different angles and create inconsistencies in the process, as source material – does it really seem plausible that one man writing that his side was pierced and he was put in a tomb was indisputable evidence that he died when there is so much evidence to the contrary. The fact that it was recorded that he’d died also doesn’t offer up enough evidence because no doubt he did die at somepoint (and I believe that he did live) but is it more than possible that the handful of people who wanted to believe his teachings so badly that they wrote things that would convince people using elements born as much of imagination as of fact. I know it sounds sceptical but just stop for 30 seconds and think about it again because its not meant as scepticism – it tears me in two because of how important it is.

· The other thing about Thursdays study was that the premise of the resurrection’s message is the idea that Jesus died on the cross, self sacrificing, in order to take away our sins. Jesus was without doubt a martyr and I believe enough of the story of his life to believe he was crucified. The circumstances of that crucifixion trouble me however. If Jesus was aware all along that he was going to be sacrificed by God and that it was his fate - was it really a self made sacrifice? Did Jesus give his life or did God create Jesus as the ONLY human to exist that did not have free will as it was his preordained destiny to be collateral in God’s quest to prove his love for humanity.

And why does this bother me so much? Because again you have to believe that Jesus knew that Pilate would not release Barabbas that the Jews would call for him to be crucified and that all the circumstances that led to his crucifixion were all fixed in place to his knowledge. The role of Judas denying him 3 times and the last supper etc, written down long after the event documents Jesus as seemingly knowing all the pieces in the game with the wonder of hindsight tying events together thanks to the author. I’m less inclined to believe that Jesus knew the outcome and its details than I am to believe that he was crucified for his beliefs and the impact of his teachings. So in this case, you have to believe he was destined for death from the beginning and that he did not have the free will to alter events to save himself rather than the idea that he had free will and chose to sacrifice himself in the knowledge that the series of events that would lead to his crucifixion and prove his point.

So this leaves me thinking that I can believe Jesus of Nazareth was crucified because the Jews predominantly believed he was a false prophet and trouble maker and that during the crucifixion Jesus lost the will to live but not his life and either never made it to the tomb and was nursed enough to sustain his life further by some time until infection or fatigue finally saw him die (explaining the sightings) or that he was removed from the tomb under secrecy in order that several days later his miracle could be witnessed by a larger number of people in order to confirm him as the prophet he was exclaiming himself to be.

Every bone in my body was brought up to believe the ethics and morality of Christ’s story and being both Christened and Confirmed I feel that I will always have an empathy for all things that proclaim God’s existence and Jesus’ story. But I get stuck on the things that seem to be completely against every rational thing I’ve been taught in every other element of my life. The idea that the bible is in places ‘picture language’ leads me to fear that gaps have been filled, stories told and truths left unspoken. The fact that other publications have surfaced through history that were written around the same time but tell other parts of the story from other points of view but are excluded from the canonic texts leads you to ask – why are these stories told with such strict editorial control.

The bible quotes Jesus word for word in so many cases. If these things were written days, weeks, months, years or decades after the event – how certain can we be that they are the words Jesus spoke and that they were not a faithful biblical blogger recounting their memories of teachings of someone they admired. If I watch the news on TV, the editor has the power to show me recorded footage of someone saying ‘Saddam Hussein is harbouring weapons of mass destruction’ but because that editor has chosen to recount that information out of context – I miss the rest of the sentence that started ‘I cannot say with any degree of certainty that .....’ This is the stuff that wars are made of. When people start editing, embellishing stories with picture language and quoting someone decades later out of the context of his literal words – interpretation, fallibility and desire to share ones belief’s can and do amass into truths becoming stories, becoming myths, becoming fantasies, becoming religions and matters of faith.

I do believe that the subtext of the teachings of both the old and new testament are valuable and that it is the greatest story ever told, inspiring the greatest art ever made and that it is a story that defines the human condition. I don’t however yet have the courage to disregard all else I know about life, the Universe and everything and take it on faith that it is the truth.

That is why I’m doing a bible study and also did the Alpha course and weekend and also why I want to debate and discuss it with other people. I do appreciate though that I’m the only one in the group (possibly apart from Kate) that truly wants to break apart all I was brought up to believe in order to start again and work out what I believe now that no one is forcing me to believe in anything anymore. There are times however when I do end up feeling that trying to do that inside a group of people who want to deepen their faith in order to question less rather than question it more is possibly the wrong way of achieving that. The Alpha course was more inclined to open the debate up where as Bible study is more inclined to close the debate down (for obvious reasons and quite rightly!).

I am very aware that we’re not getting through the sessions as quickly as we should, mainly because I probably hold things up by wanting to get underneath some of the assumptions many of the leading questions in the books hint at. I guess its really born of wanting to share with others the experience I have in coming face to face with all I was brought up to believe despite so much of real life being to the contrary.

Someone once said to me when I was looking up at the clouds whilst lying back on the grass one summer in Guildford – ‘when people see faces in the clouds, do you think they just see what they want to see?’. I remember being struck by it as I didn’t really know the answer. I’ve seen faces in the clouds but does that mean they are faces or just clouds?. For those people who want to see truth in Christianity, do they see what they want to see – faces in the heavens, the truths they want to see?. And just because they see truths – does that make it THE truth or just letters on a page?

If I could prove to you that a cloud is not a face yet you still see it, is that faith or imagination in you? If I could prove to you that Jesus was not the son of God and the bible was a story made of some fact and some fiction, would you see it as truth or imagination in someone else?

At the end of the day, I do NOT want to try and stop people from coming to God through Christ or to slow people in the group down from accepting more and more of the bible as truth. As I was trying to point out unsuccessfully on Thursday (with probably a poor analogy) – the Waco event was so tragic because the people that died with the man we have deemed to be a false prophet, believed in him whole heartedly and clearly utterly loved God through him. To them he was the truth – to us he was a complete c*nt. Isn’t this exactly the premise the Jews took with Christ? Isn’t this precisely the scenario that religions are made of. Isn’t it the case that some of those people found total and utter peace with God through him, enough to follow him to the end of their world. To them he was as much the truth as Jesus was for the disciples. To us he was a man, flawed, vindictive and praying on people’s fears. More people have died due to the conflicts caused by belief in who Jesus was than died at Waco. To me, religion still seems a fickle thing and its the consequences of it being the truth that really keep me questioning it I guess.
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Thoughts welcomed.....

I'm watching the Champion's League Final on ITV. (Immediate apology for watching ITV, but hey....).

22 men are currently being watched by a billion people trying to get the ball in one anothers net. Barcelona are leading 1 - 0 against Man United and its the first time I've been bothered enough to watch a football match for a long time.

On Saturday I played football for the first time in about 8 years. Against a 3 year old. In the park. For fun.

I was so much better than him. I could run faster, dribble better, tackle the ball of him every time. I'm 31, he's 3. But despite my obvious silky skills and being regimentally beaten by me ( ) he loved every minute of it.

Sometimes in life it's really easy to forget the things that gave you pleasure when you were a kid. I grew up hugely enjoying playing and watching football but was denied the opportunity to play due to other commitments enforced by my family that took me down the musical route rather than the sporty life.

You can see that, despite the fact they get paid a huge amount, the look on these players faces is no different than the 3 year old I played football with on Saturday. I think we need to keep playing in life. Forgetting how to enjoy yourself and how to play with and against each other is a skill many of us forget as we get older.

Shame really.

I took a risk today. Probably continues to signify my mood a little.

I stayed in bed till 11am today asleep, then almost an hour lounging about. Got up and had a bath. Then lounged some more on the bed followed by a sleep on the sofa until 4pm. That was my risk. Sums up the way I feel.

We're got two friends coming over tonight. They are good fun on most occasions although I manage one of them at work and she causes me to continue to have the divide between work and home up when we meet. This will be the highlight of my day. My other half has spent the whole of this weekend up stairs decorating our smallest room. This room, albeit quite tired in the decoration department, is supposedly the room I'm able to keep all my musical equipment. (For those of you who don't know, once upon a time I used to be a professional musician and have a BMus Honours degree in Music from at UK University).

These days, I mainly play only for my own benefit although I remain in a very successful soul band who play every weekend (apart from this) throughout the summer). The whole weekend therefore, all my instruments have been unplayable as they're shacked up in the other room next door unplugged and unable to be reached.

So, I've been bored. Shitless. Something that comes in waves to me at times like this and brings me so far down I almost hit the deck. No conversation about the world at large, no questioning the greater good in life, no pondering a rich and varied future, no creativity or inspiration. Just me, sat on the sofa, killing time before going back to work - wondering how my life can be so dull, especially when I've taken so much responsibility for trying to enrich it in the last two years through learning, talking and trying to overcome many issues I've had that have potentially held me back.

Why aren't I standing shoulder to shoulder, painting the room? Cos quite frankly I'd rather tear my own eyes out than paint a room from one colour to the next for the sake of it. Precisely I guess what I'm doing.

2 years ago almost to the week, I publically questioned whether I wanted to remain in the current life I've been living with the person I've been with for 9 years, married for 5 of them. It sent the shit flying to the fan. I took the opportunity to believe that it was my fault that I felt the way I did and embarked on two long years of therapy, counselling and couples counselling. I remember that the straw that broke the camels back was sitting in exactly this position having spent a bank holiday weekend 'tiling the bathroom' for 'fun'. After a few hours of initial fun, I realised I could tile and that the other 2500 tiles were not going to be pleasant to place on the wall. It got me thinking that this wasn't the way I wanted to spend my life, my free time caring more about what colour the walls were than what I was going to do with said rooms once they were complete. In the end, the proposition seemed always the same. .... 'then we can invite so and so over for dinner'. Great. Just like the last time and the time before that. It seems our life together consists of feeding ourselves and other people and slightly bettering the environment in order to do exactly the same thing again apart from in slightly nicer surroundings.

I was 11.5 stone when I met my current partner. I'm now 16 stone if not more. I don't need to eat any more dinners. I don't need to sit inside my house for the sake of sitting inside my house. I need the only relationship I am allowed to have in life to inspire me and the person I'm with to leave the house and traverse the world, gorging our minds on the rich experiences of art, culture, philosophy, music, nature and politics not sit in a detached house in cosy Surrey, worrying whether the walls are blue or beige. If I genuinely felt that once the house had been sorted, tidied and coloured that we'd embark on a psychological mele of attuned sexual and philosophical discovery together - the place would be as immaculate as Dr Gillian McKeith's lower intestines. Sadly, here I am, another bank holiday passed, fatter than when I started having added nothing to the world outside my four walls.

In my work life I'm a Director of Marketing & Communications running a team of 55 people on a £4m budget. In my home life I'm a retired old man, with no capacity to seemingly provide enough money, surroundings, incentive for my other half to join me in a quest for the unknown.

I'm tired of the Great Indoors. 19 year olds across the world are travelling as we speak to New Zealand, Australia, America to experience the world and become rich and vibrant people. I chose someone who most enjoys the art of home making. Cooking, putting things in their right place, entertaining guests.

What I would give for one heart felt moment where we both stood back together and said 'you know what, none of this matters - people might judge us on whether the bathroom is green or beige, black or blue - but by the time we die, we actually want people to judge us by the contribution we made with what God / or whatever / has given us in our minds to create new things, change lives, do things differently'.

Lets swap the fuss about the colour of our own back garden and start marvelling at the colour of everything else. You never know, we might fall in love with each other again on the journey....

Maybe its just me. I don't know.

Clearly there is something wrong with my life. It's a bank holiday weekend and so far I've been for a picnic with two friends and their young kids (3 and 0.5), been to Westfield Shopping centre, had lamb shanks, watched the Grand Prix, gutted my music room, including pulling up the carpet, listened to the last football of the season and heard Newcastle go down and scanned every DVD I own into my computer via my iSight to catalogue them and now......I'm bored.

It's only 7ish on Sunday. That's no longer than a normal weekend. But clearly something is wrong with my life that I should be this bored so quickly. I really worry at times that I"m just turning into to some kind of maniac. I can't switch off. When I'm at work I'm always switched on, even if I'm not stretching myself to 100%. But at home, I'm just fat and lazy - however there seems so little of any interest to do.

Why do I get so bored. Fair enough, I've had a cold and cough + antibiotics (for the first time since I was 17) in the last week and as such I've been unable to sing. I've also had to clear out my music room in order for it to be decorated, although decorating is not a pleasurable experience for me - so no ability to play instruments. I could scratch my own face off with frustration that this is how good my bank holidays are.

What can I do to change all this. Surely I shouldn't have to resort to taking myself out for a walk on my own away from my other half just to get some kind of peace of mind.

Grrr. I fucking hate my head at times.

I've just come back from my weekly philosophy/religion discussion group, something I do because I enjoy questioning and was invited by a friend to participate in at a time when I needed something additional in my life.

After two years of going, I've found myself now at the stage of having to ponder the question of 'the end time', the end of the world, 'revelations' and the found myself lost in a maze of disbelief and frustration that I cannot see through spectacles tinted with faith in the same way my peers can.

I know little so far of 'Revelations' despite having grown up with it as a child and as such am a layman in the actual written words describing the time when the world ends and things get really quite bad. For my associates that have reached a point in their lives where the bible seems to 'make sense' without them needing to think about it and brings them a huge amount of peace, I feel the grandest sense of envy and jealousy. The way in which the content of a book authored by so many individuals can harbour the truth of our past and our future and followed unquestionably as having the literal truth impressed into its translation from Hebrew to English fills me with awe and dread at the same time.

I genuinely want to believe and to a degree I feel that I have a sense that the mysteries of the world, though many have been answered by science, still remain beyond our grasp for a reason. The space between you and I, the atomic substructure that has been created by the laws of the Universe are so fantastical that I shudder in trying to comprehend an explanation for its majesty and how I as a concious being am meant to relate to everything that I am not - the Universe and all it contains. But God? In having a relationship to the God of the two testaments, would I truly be able to equate all the bible says as the true word of God, despite the fact that I know all humans to be fallible in someway and therefore the editing of the 'good book' has to be flawed in some way or another.

At a time when I don't trust myself or any motivation that anyone around me may have in life, why or how could the contents of a book written by people whose agenda was so desperate to fulfill a long standing prophecy become for me a certainty? The singular rock of my core?

The way I feel at the moment is bitter. Bitter that the bible can be so ambiguous as to not allow an average man such as me to come to peace due to the simple fact that man has interfered with God through religion. In humanising the 'end of the world', the wrath and rapture, the fractured earth that will see humanity decline into those who have and those who have not got 'faith', I find myself angry at the Universe or God or both for burdening us with such a weapon of mass ambiguity as the bible.

When the world outside my window can test the foundations of religion to such a fundamental level on a daily basis - to what should I attach my life's purpose, sense of direction and beliefs for my future and the rationale behind my past.

I don't want to be one of those people who can only explain the world away through ancient scripture. The wisdom of my forefathers should surely not be greater than the combined wisdom they have left for me to interpret and add to. If the bible is 'it', prohibiting additions to itself or not allow for its core philosophy to benefit from human progress, then on what grounds did humanity deserve to be stifled 2000 years ago by a book that claims the past and future as its own on one thread - Jesus. If the old testament was superceded by the new, when can the new be superceded again. Why can wikipedia not be the third gospel, the facts of Universe - warning us to heed what we were told by revelations - that the end of the world will come and we shuld prepare ourselves to escape this planet and evolve to leave the worst of our species behind. Our self-righteousness as human authors of a allegedly 'godly' work have set us up to forever debate the truth.

If there is any truth in the phrase 'nothing worth knowing can ever be taught', surely the teachings of the bible are not worth knowing because they distract us from marvelling at the Universe and its structure, beauty and elegance - not to allow us to suppose that it was designed by an intelligence beyond our own but God is everything else, no need to reduce it to human terms - God is everything, everything is God. Lets not simplify it to a time bound existence on one planet in the solar system over a few thousands of years.

At what point did having 'faith' become more virtuous than helping people, compassion, the giving of joy, selflessness and the like. Why should having faith give you such greater rewards and why should those who claim to have act in ways less virtuous than many who have been unable to accept it on the terms laid down in the bible?

Our understanding of the passage of time seems hugely limited by language and comprehensibility. I struggle to believe that we're any more in command of things with a bible than we are without it. And the threat of damnation does little to inspire me to thinking that organised religion has any greater credibility in bringing people to harmony with the Universe and its contents than the disorganised agnosticism I seem to have acquired at this point in life.

Rant over.

Night world.

Hi all, just a very quick update to say thanks to all those who have
commented on my blog in the last few weeks. It's great to get such a
wide range of feedback on my thoughts and I value it greatly.

Many thanks!

Ps. If you'd like to follow me on Audioboo, you'll find my profile at
http://audioboo.fm/profile/thelastromantic

Laters...

I grew up in the Church of England.

Most people I know did in one way or another, be that through school assemblies, church going, sunday school or having to attend services at Christmas etc. None of them seemed to want to be there at the time and certainly there are very few (if any) people who I know who still actually go to church or practice their faith regularly. At the time, predominantly between the ages of 7-17, I was in church for 3 reasons:

1) My parents told me I was going / took me there / had no choice
2) I was in the church choir, as was my brother and father
3) I went to a CofE school and it was named after the church we went to as it was in the parish.

Of late, I've been reflecting a lot on what I'm made of and how I've come to be, questioning how probable it is that I could have escaped the first 20 years of my life that was attached to the church and moved on and away from it now that I'm in my 30's.

The truth is for a long while - probably nearly 15 years, I've hated the church. I resented the fact that it left my weekends bound to the church building and the choir for over a decade and that when everyone else was out doing cool stuff, day tripping and playing in football clubs - I was in church, wearing robes and singing like a prize pillock.

Thing is, I was good at it. I was head boy, a very competent soloist and south east finalist for choirboy of the year. But why was I doing it? On reflection (despite being forced) it was because I wanted my parents to be proud of me. And proud of me they were in the context of music and church life.

So, was the whole thing just a load of bollocks? I mean, I resented it all so much that surely I must have hated the whole thing. Wasting my childhood in services with the old grannies at the back who liked the old skool Jesus hits.

To be frank, I think as time has gone by - for all I learnt about music, I also took in more than I'd been able to be aware of from those preaching the liturgy and from the words in the hymns, anthems and motets. How do I know that? Mainly because I seem to have an inherent belief in having a soul and I think I'm pretty much assured of the fact I have a sense of spirituality. Is there a God - be that a being, entity, or reason for everything being without any linked personification? My thoughts are only just crystalising but in short hand, yes. I reckon there are things at work that I don't understand and that things do happen for a reason. That's not to say God is up there pulling strings, but I do genuinely feel like there are things out of our control that we've not been able to explain.

And what of Christianity. I could write for hours. To me, religion is a side tracking away from a direct relationship with the universe. A true relationship to everything 'else' than you seems to me to be something we all strive for, living our lives both inside our selve and outside ourselves. I've never met anyone who doesn't understand what it means to have faith in something other than themselves (be that friends, situations, jobs, hopes, dreams, wishes) even if they won't class it as God. And due to the fact that every religion on the planet can be right, the only thing I'm sure of is that in trusting that we don't know it all yet and that no calculation has been able to provide us with any better moral codes or traditions to pass on than the religions have (as maths can be wrong as frequently as religions are when you add in a new variable), I find myself at 31 looking back on my 13 year old self and realising that the church at least gave me an objectifying eye - where analogous stories help tell truths in life despite their factual unlikeliness.

Do I have faith - yes. I think I do because the opposite of faith (as I overhead last night) is certainty. I am not certain of ANYTHING in life which means I must have faith in it and with that comes the premise that God may exist and in having faith in the world I must also have room for a faith in the idea of God even though I believe religion is a distracting analogy for those who need a simple real world explanation for almost everything.

No doubt I will think more about this over time and having been part of a philosophical/religious discussion group once a week for the last year - I think I'm only now being able to join the dots.

So finally, I leave you with something that someone said to me yesterday. 'Many people want to treat religion as a dip in dip out excercise, where they want to jump from one dot to the next in no sense of order, not understanding the mean behind analogies - assuming they are factual things to be disputed or that come across as non-sensicle.' Like most join the dot puzzles, you have to join the dots in the right order to be able to see the picture at the end and only at the end will be able to appreciate the whole.'

In my first 30 years I do feel like I've been jumping around from dot to dot, trying to draw my own life out without stepping back allowing myself to be guided from the heart more than the head. As Sting said 'Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot (he'll guide you well)'.

I wonder what picture the dots will bring to me in the long run if I just have a little more faith .....

Just watching the news and they've just shown the footage of the US woman who's had the face transplant recently.

My god. What a hell of a situation. They showed three pictures - 1) Her as she was in her early 40's, 2) her just after she had recovered from being shot in the face by 'her husband' who then turned the gun on himself and 3) her new 70% transplanted face 5 months after the surgery.

In this time of mobile communication and an increase in people citing loss of identity in modern life, I can't think of anything more disconcerting than imaging what that woman has been through. Not only has she clearly been shot in the face by a man she married and loved but then she's heard / seen / known that he then shot himself dead and in a split second became unrecognisable to society for the rest of her life. In the last few years she will have had 3 faces, her birth face, damaged face and transplanted face.

What must that do to your brain. I can't even begin to compare my wobbles in identity in comparison to the inner strength she must have simply in order to have survived without going mad.

There are people in the world who shock me, surprise me and overwhelm me with courage on a daily basis. As I get older I'm humbled by those who really know what it means to live when the should by all accounts not be living.

If my biggest worry in life is who I'm living with and who I think I am, I've got nothing to worry about. Will it stop me being introspective - no probably not. But being humbled by real life is a good thing every now and again.

Every now and again I get this overwhelming feeling of sadness about my life.

For some people, growing up in a family environment where you are supported, nurtured, praised and comforted is the norm and to a degree I always thought that I didn't have it that bad. It's only been in my late 20's and early 30's that I've started to realise that all the times I said to myself 'at least I'm not in so & so's situation' or 'i'm making all this up just to get attention' that actually, I was learning to control myself in ways that would later prove to be potentially damaging.

Now before readers think of this as yet another person seeking to bare their soul on blog as a white, middle class male from Surrey - I'd like to point out that my natural disposition is not one of self destruction. Infact on the whole I'm a very positive and progressive and successful person for my age. But more recently, as this blog shows in it's past - I have been on a quest for self knowledge, self love and a sense of composed truth in my life.

For two years flat I've had therapy to try to draw out my inner demons and to dispel them and having over come the fact that therapy and self reflection is not just a tool for the weird, damaged or violated, it's shown me a lot about myself that I knew but didn't know how to objectify over. The long on short of me can be distilled down to this:

" I have never felt part of a loving family, nor was I taught how loving families operated. As such I've always searched for being part of a family that reflect my inner nature only to find that when I get there I'm unable to feel part of it "

So what does this mean in practice? To me, in surviving my childhood unscarred physically but bigger on the inside than on the out, I've become fit for one purpose only - longing. And boy does longing make a prick of me at times as with longing comes a desire in yourself to mislead your life in search of a fantastical heaven-like place known as true relationship.

For someone who is desperate to love, hold, care for and desire - I have to ask myself why I am so totally incapable of it in a way that really works. Both me and my brother suffer from what can only be described as 'Emotional Depravation Syndrome' - an extreme case of being emotionally malnourished as child which wreaks havoc on our abilities to orientate the world in a way that doesn't lead to over investment, disappointment, a sense of duty and detachment from feelings.

I have a highly sensitive emotional capacity - its just not geared towards dealing with the positive things in life, on the negative. I survived my youth by being fit in terms of mind and soul, at least fit enough to withstand the torture of adolescent bullying, maliciousness and under-engagement.

And all of this makes me sad at a level that seems inexpressible. I've always been a big romantic, a writer of songs and poetry to gain self expression, attention or empathy yet to some people they can't see it even if they're looking at it in the face.

As I get nearer 32 and ultimately have to think about Kids, I'm at a loss to know how to survive the march of time and have children without getting it fundamentally wrong on multiple levels. You tend to find the harder you run away from things, the closer you end up coming to repeating the same mistakes.

One day, I hope to wake up and realise that I've come to terms with my past and can look at my future objectively. To love and to be loved. To have and be had. To know and to be known.

Fingers crossed for some peace of mind in my lifetime...

I'm sat in a field in the outskirts of Norwich with about 45 mind to
go before playing a gig in a massive tipi.

Taking this time out I've decided to see if I can get email blog
updates to work. So by way of this post, I'll soon see if I've set it
up right.

Short but sweet.

Sent from my iPhone