I've been enjoying Youtube clips of Tim Minchin lately. He writes and performs good tragi-comic songs and has a sexy stage presence down pat. It has been fun reading the comments from thousands of besotted teens and twenty somethings. It's amazing what way too much eyeliner and hair gel can do to make a man alluring. Gordon Brown might wish to take note. I don't totally get the image thing, but his work, which attempts to strip away sentiment but is paradoxically sentimental has me hooked. I'm perhaps showing my age by being a bit less keen on the atheist stuff. There seem to be a lot of young comedians God bashing and raving about science. I think it has become as fashionable to the new breed of white liberal intellectuals as homeopathy was to mine, taken up with equal zeal, and with equal ignorance. Do you follow the values of Jesus Christ? No, I follow the values of Dawkins, I like his books better.
It isn't that I'm bothered by this change in fashion. I had abandoned Christian belief before my age reached double figures, spent my teenage years in morning Assemblies refusing to bow my head, justifying this to friends and teachers. I grew out of talking about it though, and feel no desire to bang on about it or debate with anybody. One of Nina's friends turned up a couple of months ago with an Atheist badge. I wore CND badges in the 80's but I don't get that at all. Why would you need to tell people what you don't believe in? There is a whiff of faux superiority to the new atheist movement. As though having a spiritual belief of any kind should be considered childish. In amongst comments on Tim Minchin's work was a debate between two fans, one of whom was strongly denying the existence of the 'soul'. It was a music video, but they weren't talking about David Soul, it was all very earnest and conceptual. Considering the main aim is comedy, I felt the urge to tell them to lighten up. I also felt ever so slightly defensive because in spite of my own rationalities where organised religion is concerned, I do believe in the soul. Without soul, what is sentience, or love, or friendship, or humanity but a few ounces of grey matter and electrical impulses? If that's all it is, then that's too scary for me to get a handle on. I need a bit of mystery.
Closer to home, I had cause to wonder what makes one person like or dislike another. H had a new friend over today. From a brief conversation, I found myself liking her, which is odd, because I'm generally quite reserved and don't really like visitors (that's not the depression talking, that's just me). While I scrubbed up the kitchen I thought about it and concluded that I had taken a liking to her because she had laughed at my jokes. That was enough for me. I think I may indeed be that shallow. Later on in the evening, I told H about this. "Ah", said my kid. "I'll phone all my mates and let them know, then they can all come round tomorrow." Gulp. I shall be sure to make no more jokes to teenage strangers. Just in case. It would be for H's own good. There's nothing worse as a teenager than having your Mum try to ingratiate herself with your mates, now is there?
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