The School of Life

The picture to the left is the shop-front of a group called 'The School of Life'. 

The describe themselves as "a new social enterprise offering good ideas for everyday living", offering courses, holidays, books, food advice, occasional talks and advice on finding a psychotherapist (among other bits and bobs). 

There is some relationship between these guys and the raggle-taggle bunch behind The Idler.  

There are number of things which I really like about what they are doing, which might take a bit of time to explain, if you would care to indulge me. 

1. They are and they're not, counter-cultural

Last autumn I attended a 'blah...' day at CMS house, in Oxford. The day was lead by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, and centered around their book 'Colossians Remixed'. 

I had the joy of sitting next to Pete Ward for the day, and here I must confess, like Jonny Baker 'I am a disciple of Pete Ward'.  Jonny has a very long pitch as to how and why this is the case, but for me Pete simply taught me to pray in The Spirit and trust my instinct, sound advice indeed. Anyway, I digress. Pete's main beef with Walsh and Keesmaat's reading of Colossians is that it was and is 'anti-culture', meaning they presented a picture of Christ who is against culture. Now, IMHO a lot of this boils down to  Neiburh's models in 'Christ and Culture'. In the current climate for many in the 'emerging/t church' there is much confusion about this, confusion which is not helped by simplistic for-and-against arguments, not something which Pete can be accused of. 

Anyhow, back to 'The School of Life'. This bunch are not simply presenting themselves as anti-culture, which is an impossiblity anyway, but rather applauded what they see as 'best', 'meaningful' and 'beautiful' in culture, and expounded on it. 

2. It's Liquid 

There are different elements of The School which people can buy-into. There is not guilt element, demanding that people buy into everything, there are just lots of helpful points of entry to support people think a bit more about their own lives and what they want from life. 

3. The mundane is to be celebrated

A good example of this is a group which gathered for a 'Heathrow Weekend' (the pictures can be found on the 'School of Life'  facebook page. This group, facilitated by  Alain de Botton, toured terminal 5 of Heathrow airport looking for the unusual and beautiful in the architecture and environment of the space. To me, this is akin to finding God in the everyday. 

Anyhow.. over the past couple of weeks I've found their stuff, and more particularly their approach, quite inspiring. 

The poor also need art

"Today, after more than a year of planning, 2000 square meters of rooftops have been covered with photos of the eyes and faces of the women of Kibera. The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops. The idea being that for the split second the train passes, their eyes will match their smiles and their faces will be complete."

This reminded me of a quote I cam across years ago (18+) in the book 'Original Blessing ' by Matthew Fox.

"The poor need not only bread, the poor also need beauty' Monsignor Hildebrand

A must see...

While lounging around feeling sorry for myself with a cold on Thursday, I remembered a film that I saw last year, which I will have to put as one of my top films of 2008, despite the fact it was released in 2006. 

The film was 'Kenny' and going by the film poster, or DVD cover, you would normally avoid it like the plague. However, a friend of mine, Kelvin (perhaps the best graphic designer I have ever met?), give it to my housemate, Mark, for his Birthday.  So this was enough of a recommendation to give up an evening... 

It is Brilliant... it is a REAL gem of a film. It has more to say about inclusion/exclusion, clean/dirty, hope/hopelessness and lost/saved, than ten thousand films which claim the same pretension. 

As you can tell, I am really quite a fan!

Best collection of the 44th...

Like most people, I suspect, I've been looking at a LOT of photo's from the Presidential Inauguration... But for just one last look... this is the best collection from the Boston Globe.

What makes it especially good is the international perspective.

beauty and practicality... in a mug

I found this post through Len Sweet's twittering. I really, really like nice design pieces which also deliver really sound functionality. The three I liked most were...

The one below is a good example of functionality without form... I like the idea (really helpful for those who belong to the persecuted minority of sugar takers), but the form is not good enough. 

Form and function

At home in bed with a bad cold, and in one of those places where I don't know what to do with myself!!  Perfect condition to explore the world of twitter and figure out it's usefulness or otherwise. 

Rather than try to make an argument for it myself, go to this link to The New York Times, which nicely covers the pro's and con's, along with a few surprising anecdotes. 

Illness brings out the worst in me, so it's best I'm left alone in my own squalor until it passes - unless you're happy to bug me on twitter. 

"It's time to play the music..."

Fantastic post today on the Guardian Film blog. It's about Rowan William's favorite films... Andrei Rublev and The Muppet Christmas Carol apparently?!

Read the whole post here... It explains why I could hear him singing the Muppet Theme Tune on the way to Lambeth this year...




" It's time to play the music
It's time to light the lights
It's time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight.

It's time to put on makeup
It's time to dress up right
It's time to raise the curtain on the Muppet Show tonight.

Why do we always come here
I guess we'll never know
It's like a kind of torture
To have to watch the show "

Stephen Fry posts his 'Wittenberg Protest'

The 'ever perspicacious' Stephen Fry has listed his 15 changes which MUST be taken on board for v3 of the iphone software... the longer post on iphone competitors can be found here.

Fry writes...

But, despite my emotional as well as intellectual belief in Apple there is much wrong, or at the very least deeply unsatisfactory about the iPhone and perhaps about its ‘business model’. When the first generation came out I offered the view, based on my experience of releases and refinements in this field, that iPhone the Third would be The One. I still believe this to be true. Any wishlist for hardware and software improvements in v3.0 would be bound to hope for – nay demand – the following:-

1. Cut and paste. I mean come on!!
2. iPhone version of Safari to be Flash capable.
3. Video recording: iPhone should be like a Flip
4. Upgrade of camera (xenon flash, higher res)
5. Front facing video camera for 3G video calls
6. MMS
7. User file management capabilities
8. Bluetooth that is worthy of the name. File transfers between different phones and platforms is a minimum requirement.
9. A memory card slot.
10. AM/FM radio. (Mobile TV too, why not?)
11. Better (and removable) battery.
12. Built in projector (this prolly won’t come till V4, but you never know)
13. Customisable glossary for Apple’s predictive text input system. BlackBerry has a superb autotext that allows BB units still to outperform iPhone when it comes to input.
14. Email to be widescreen capable.
15. Attachable proprietary or third party peripherals: keyboard, projector (if not built in see wish 12), printer etc. Maybe not necessary if iPhone implementation of Bluetooth gets the kick up the arse it needs.

I started to loose him at point 12... but all in all a pretty good protest!!

Easily among one of the best...

On Thursday night I went to see the Neil Cowley Trio at the Cornmarket in Newbury. It was a truly fantastic gig...

The're a Jazz Trio (Piano, Bass and Drums) which I first came across them on Late Night with Jooles Holland, and immediately bought both of their albums. 

Neil Cowley (frontman) is an artist with an impressive career history, at the age of 10 he performed a Shostakovich piano concerto at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, then went onto play with The Brand New Heavies and Zero 7, among others. 

I find it hard to describe how good they were... the craftsmanship, timing, energy, enthusiasm, were just awe inspiring.... I have a favorite track, His Nibs, which they didn't play... and it didn't matter. They played in a venue which was only a quarter full... it didn't matter (but it was a travesty). Just Brilliant...  I'm starting to gush now... and I don't care.

I know this next suggestion may be a little controversial,  but if you have to sell body parts of your own grandmother to buy tickets , then do it... and do it NOW without regret or reticence.

Tragedy is that Newbury was their last listed Gig, but they are playing around at the London Jazz Festival, and event that finishes tomorrow.

(Someone.... no names mentioned... has pointed out that I may have been a little influenced by alcohol or tiredness when I wrote this post..!!?? You decide?!)

Where is Jim...?

Just added a very cool gadget to my iphone called instamapper. It sends my GPS location to a site and updates a map at the bottom of my blog. So if you ever need to know 'Where's Jim'... you'll be able to find out. 

Here is where I am right now...

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com