worlds

Tim was musing last night about how there must have been some kind of cultural opening-out of late because audiences were noticeably more receptive to bands and performers playing their own material in the pubs and clubs as well as the usual covers.
Well, yes, though it might be your own opening-out rather than theirs. Or as well as theirs--a happy partnership of openness! Certainly things are interesting if you put yourself forward boldly enough to encourage other people to do so--don't know if it was always the case, I didn't have the courage before.
Sometimes I'm tempted to think we live in this bland world where nobody believes anything, nobody deviates from the path laid out for them by businessmen and politicians: be a nice little worker with no opinions, there's a good chap.
But you know what? There's Tim, poet and musician going up to the Isle of Skye today to see Joe Strummer's grave; another person I know is friends with Last Stop Chinatown and knows the woman who used to write all those Black Lace female erotica novels; someone else is a Pagan with all the usual fondness for trees and the courses of nature; someone else is a Christian, but actively, can sense the existence of God--which is much more interesting, to my mind, than believing nothing, like some other people I know who have never examined what they believe (so really they don't even believe nothing). I even know a George Bush-style evangelistic Christian (this is a different one); but as much as I enjoy her company, she scares me. Her mouth is full of apocalypse! Condemns gays (what have they done to everyone to make them so mad?), doesn't drink, chastises friends for getting tattooes or practising yoga (which invokes evil spirits), dismisses Darwin, believes unquestioningly in the Book of Revelations. Whew.
It's a colourful world out there if you look closely enough.