A new post.

Ok first things first, this post title isn't even as good as the last one. I know that, I really do. It just says "A new post", and yeah thats not great. I feel your annoyance. I can even hear some of you exclaming with righteous anger about the unnecessary nature of that full stop. But, allow me this one slip. Hold your cries! Its been so long since I last blogged that I thought it would be better to get at least something down on the page even if I couldn't think of a good title for it. Consider this my adequate response. I'll get better, I promise you.

Well with that understood I can at last turn to the meat of this post. A lot has happened between this one and the last, and here is some of it. Notably, from the 14th-21st I enjoyed an amazing week in Tuscany - beautiful company, weather, food and wine. I needed this. I feel refreshed, less angular and comfortable in London again, and for that Lastminute.com, I thank you. Since returning, I got my priorities right and managed to finish the final H. Potter book without first overhearing the ending. This was some feat. I had to leave public transport on a fair few occaisons because I was worried that other people's conversations were edging towards the Wizard's denouement. My experiences inspired the thought that perhaps I should spend a full day or two riding the tube with a copy of the book open on the last page, in my lap. Then, every ten minutes or so I could shout "Harry's Gay??!!!" with shocked surprise before sitting back to watch the general public's reaction. This plan has not yet come into fruition.

One of the reasons I have been slow to put the Potter plan into action is that I've been fairly busy musicing, both with Johnny Flynn and The Sussex Wit (with whom I go into the Stuido to record the first single for Vertigo Records this week) and Fireworks Night (with whom I had a gig last night). Its not all been playing though, Miriam and I spent Monday evening CD shopping in the newly created Rough Trade shop near Brick Lane. Its pretty exciting, if not fully furnished at the time of writing. Its part of this drive to get people buying CD's again, which is an unremmitingly good thing in my mind. The shop is minimalist, fucking trendy, cleverly thought out and stocks Johnny Flynn and S.W. on 7". Im sold, as you can imagine...

By the way I should say that I am keeping this post theology free because I intend on posting a few thoughts on "orthodoxy and anglicanism" in the next few days and don't want to oversaturate Slightly Indulgent with God talk. Before I finish though I did think that in case anyone is actually reading this I might take the trouble to pose a few music related questions for you to answer. For fun, that is, for fun. Ok? Good. Right, question number one is this: Are there any songs in recent history that contain the lyric "therefore" in them? There are loads with "because", that beatles track is even called "because", but I literally can't think song with "therefore" as part of the verse or the chorus. If you can you get..., well you just win, I can't reward you with anything material. Moving quickly on, here's your second question. Its a more open one this. What english phrases are least likely to become prevalent within US Hip Hop circles? You see for my money "ah bisto" and "bob's your uncle" are unlikely to be found popping up in Snoop Dog's next hot release. I was wondering what other people thought on the matter? Holler at me, please please do.

Keep Safe.

Matty

Radio One and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I still haven't mastered the snappy post title. Please forgive the above as its entirely functional. No doubt snappy post titles are the kind of things that would turn someone like Tom from Myspace into a huge fan of my blog, but still I can't get manage to get my head round them. Actually, having just had the thought that someone like Tom from myspace could in fact like my blog if I had clever post titles, I am now thinking that maybe I'll spend some spare time and thought constructing them. Hmmm, thinking about this new thought in turn, I am even thinking that in the future I will think of clever post titles first and then pursue activities that fall in line with them, rather than the other way round. This will make the whole task easier and will fuck Tom from myspace right up. Yes, Fuck you Tom from Myspace, fuck you.

As it is, however, I have no snappy title and so can only cover the two topics that I have outlined above. Here we are then:

So firstly I played a radio one live session yesterday with my band 'Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit'. It was a really great day. Thanks to everyone who came down to support us, and especially to Tom, Luis, Johnny and Laura for their out-of-place whoops and over-zealous shouts of "Wolfson". The BBC is an amazing place. It smells like any other institution but has loads of hidden extras. While we were there the BBC orchestra, about 100 players in total, were recording in an adjacent room. An amazing sight. Our session, though smaller, wasn't bad itself. We played some of the older stuff - Cold Bread, Brown Trout Blues, Leftovers, Tickle Me Pink and Eyless in Holloway - and it all went down pretty well, even if we were a bit ropey at the start. Part of the whole experience was that we drove down to Maida Vale in our tour bus with our brand new tour manager for the very first time. It was all just pretty exciting basically, even though I had to clear away my drum kit at the end of the day and had a poor tuna sandwich for my lunch.

Secondly, though I will say more on this in a later post, I should briefly mention that I am really enjoying Bonhoeffer's 'Letters and Papers from Prison' at the moment. His critique of Bultmann-led Liberal theology, essentially my own position, is incredibly incisive, radical too. Bonhoeffer's basic objection is the obsession with boundaries that has marked the secularity debate for generations and is still the central concern of theological liberalism. Liberals give ground to the popular philosophical conceptions of the world, says Bonhoeffer, but this very enterprise rises from a mistake in how Christians should speak of God. God is not the answer to a cognitive problem, whether cosmological or existential. If this is the case then liberalism will always be a self-defeating enterprise, he says, an almost continual erosion of God as an increasingly unnecessary explanation corresponding to the rise of human knowledge. Rather, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is not about that which is beyond us, but about that which is in and around us. The significance of the Christ event, central and not on the boundaries, is to be found in human solutions and questions and not in possible resolutions or answers. This is the paradigm shift that is needed, says Bonhoeffer, and not the unnecessary trade off that exists between Christian liberals and secularists - a trade off between where to draw the boundary between the Christian narrative and popular materialism.

I'll blog more about this extraordinary critique as well as Bonhoeffer's ideas of the harmony of man's love for his God and his family, and his understanding of truth as more and less than mere brutal honesty, in the near future. It'll have to wait for at least a week though as I'm off to Italy for a well earned break with my lovely girlfriend on Saturday. Can't wait...

Hope you are all well, oh and Tom from Myspace, I've not forgotten about you....

Hello and sorry for yet another blog

As befits the start of any such internet venture, I must firstly take time to apologise. I am sorry, both to myself - for falling into this particular trap, and to myspace and facebook - for whom the division of my time will be the most costly.

Still, a man has needs and self indulgence is perhaps the neediest. In this space then I will write about theology, misc and music and fill my needy stomach with some well earned blogging pie. I can only hope that you enjoy the products of this essentially selfish enterprise.

Yours,

Matt Edmonds