Paul Chambers

David Bailey once said that the day you take a perfect picture is the day you give up photography. Maybe from within the painfully beautiful silence, in the same way, the day you have a perfect day is the day you stop living…

…life slips through the cracks, looking for now…life is not full of contradictions, it’s overflowing with them…

I Had a dream in the night (and not the kind a certain MLK Jnr had either) that I was a kid again. I was back at my junior school in Rawmarsh, the old mining village in South Yorkshire i grew up in. I remember it well; hard concrete, no grass, no climbing frames, nothing – it was the early 1970’s – the days when British bulldog was the litmus test to who was the hardest…

As I looked around the playground there was a fat kid getting bullied, I recognized both him and those bullying him. He wasn’t beaten up, just bullied, his glasses taken from him, his money, his dignity, even at such a young age, especially at such a young age. I guess we all know now that names and words hurt far more than a kicking…

It reminded me of this poem by my dear friend Stewart.

Stewart is a wonderful bloke who embodies dignity and compassion more than most. He’s both mad and full of grace, a cross between Lily Savage and Kenneth Williams but with the heart of Mother Theresa. His soul is the most gentle i know…
The poetry he crafts is so so moving. Here’s the two of us at Greenbelt a few summers ago, and a gem from the lovely Mr Henderson.

I’d rather not…

I’ve got a bad knee
and I may fall over
and make it badder.

If I could just sit at the back
and read a book or draw.
I’d be so quiet
you wouldn’t know I was there.
…Well obviously if you looked up I would be there,
but if you didn’t, look up that is,
you wouldn’t know I was…there.

I’d rather not go into the playground, Mrs thomas.
No, I don’t think I’m trying to tell you something
but it looks like rain
and it will be such a bother
for you to send me out there 
only to have to bring me back in again.
It hardly seems worth it.
So if I sit over by the radiator
and start drying off now
we’ll be ahead of ourselves, won’t we?
That would be quite good, wouldn’t it?

I’d rather not go into the playground,
Mrs Thomas
No, nothing’s frightening me much…
…My father said you’ve got to stand up for yourself,
so that’s quite good isn’t it, Mrs Thomas?

You’re going to the staff room to some marking…
…can I come with you, please?

I’d rather not go into the playground, Mrs Thomas.
Please don’t make me go into the playground,
Mrs Thomas

(I’d rather not… by Stewart Henderson from his book ‘Who left Grandad at the Chip Shop’ published by Lion)

….your hope when you are down to your last 4 letters, your love when you have none left to give….

A young teenager stands like a stone in a world she can’t rise above. Beside her another minor wonders how he is going to be a father to the Son of God.

 

Dickens once said that , ‘it is a far better thing that i do, than i have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that i go to, than i have ever known.’

 

it reminds me of the mystery that the great tom waits sings…….come on up to the house….. A friend of mine said the other day that; “I need Tom Waits. I need someone who can sing ‘you’re falling down’ in a voice that raises up. Such a ferocious and beautiful voice. How sweet the sound” … how sweet indeed

 

Well the moon is broken

And the sky is cracked

Come on up to the house

The only things that you can see

Is all that you lack

Come on up to the house

 

All your cryin don’t do no good

Come on up to the house

Come down off the cross

We can use the wood

Come on up to the house

 

Come on up to the house

Come on up to the house

The world is not my home

I’m just a passin thru

Come on up to the house

 

There’s no light in the tunnel

No irons in the fire

Come on up to the house

And your singin lead soprano

In a junkman’s choir

You gotta come on up to the house

 

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short

Come on up to the house

The seas are stormy

And you can’t find no port

Come on up to the house

There’s nothin in the world

 

there’s nothin in the world

that you can do

you gotta come on up to the house

and you been whipped by the forces

that are inside you

come on up to the house

well you’re high on top

of your mountain of woe

come on up to the house

well you know you should surrender

but you can’t let go

you gotta come on up to the house

 

if i exorcise my demons my angels just might leave too……

    

Maybe we should wear our broken hearts and battered idealism not like hard-won honours but open, weeping sores…maybe that unlocks the door that leads to freedom…

Maybe it’s the road to belonging…maybe

Normally I know what I want to write about, but if I’m honest, I’m not sure where I’m going with this blog. I have so much stuff, so many issues raging through my head, all vying for position, I’m not sure this will be the most coherent piece of writing I’ve ever accomplished.

But maybe that’s not such a terrible admission. Maybe we should admit a little more than we do, that most of the time our lives are rather confused and a little messy. Lots of recent events have caused me to take a hard look at my life and my faith – generally because they’ve all been messy. Whether it is recent events with fellow humans or the sad programme I watched a while back dealing with the death of Tony Robinson’s (Baldrick) mum, or the crazy homeless guy called Warren I met in London who had stitches all over his face from a knife wound, or whether its just the simple fact that we haven’t got life quite figured out the way we’d hoped we would by now – all of these things – and more importantly how we work through them, are, and will be a little muddled, maybe even chaotic.

And just maybe (I’m using that word a lot at the moment) we should not only start admitting our chaos but also embracing it a little. Let me use one of the above moments as an example. I was sat having a chilled glass of Sauvignon blanc enjoying the sun, when I noticed an unkempt man heading in my direction, he was trying to talk to the other people sat enjoying the sun and their wine, but no-one even looked his way. As he approached me I saw that his face was covered with stitches, I asked him how it had happened – he told me he had asked someone for some money for food, that an argument followed and that a man produced a knife and sliced open his face.

I asked him to sit with me and we talked for a good hour, here he spilled his story (and it was pretty disordered), but more than anything I realised how lonely Warren was, how he longed more than anything for community and belonging. What do I mean? Well, the writer Alain de Botton, in his work often talks about the pleasure of sadness. Now he’s not a manic-depressive who wants us all to be miserable for the sake of it, rather he believes that sometimes our transient state of being, our own griefs and disappointments – however bleak they may seem – may actually console us. Why is it that when we are most sad, sad songs and melancholy works of art are the very things that comfort us? Maybe they invite us to feel empathy with those whose stories are being told in their isolation. For what its worth I think that sensitively saturated works of art serve as an omnipresent symbol of the emotional texture of the person we want to be, and feel deep down, somewhere, we are. It’s a feature of love, overcoming loneliness, and one we should all in whatever way we can, assist with.

There are many Warren’s who wander the streets of big cities around this world who are lonely because no-one notices. Maybe we need to start noticing a little more than we do, or as Marcel Proust suggests, that our lives shouldn’t be about looking for new landscapes, but rather seeing with different eyes.

I have often felt lonely, even when I am not alone, yet my faith has always supported me through some pretty obscure, surreal, lonely and difficult times and actually I am no longer afraid to need it. I am certainly no saint, but I do feel His presence in those quiet moments when I am still enough to listen – and it means the world to me. Perhaps more than ever no matter where we find ourselves in the wild, crazy, painfully beautiful adventure called life, we should all spend a little more time, occasionally, searching for His pleasure…and more importantly giving that pleasure to those who need it most

On an ask of a friend today’s post is a little more light-heated, sorry hearted.

Today is Yorkshire Day and I am a Yorkshireman…see the flat caps!

It was started in 1975 to restore pride in a county undermined by the loss of its traditional industries. It falls on 1 August to mark the date in 1759 when soldiers from Yorkshire regiments placed white roses alongside fallen comrades on the battlefield of Minden in Germany. Events include the reading of the Declaration of Integrity and curiously- haired medium-fast bowlers taking wickets. 

Guess England could do with some of them today…..

I recommend you join me in celebration by doing what Yorkshire men do best – drink bitter!