Lights, Camera ... Fiction?

I hate having my picture taken. Mum keeps a few in her bottom drawer, like incriminating evidence. Otherwise, it's just my digital experiments or a scary photo taking during a very unhappy time in Jersey where a journalist lined me up against a wall and made me take my glasses off. 'Any last requests', I was thinking. A more recent image shows me standing on the Promenade at Rhos-on-Sea. I look a little older but I like it better. Photos can airbrushed to flatter or deceive but it seemed to me that the Welsh picture was honest in a way that I hadn't expected. It was a contented photo, which said a good deal about how I was feeling. The Jersey scene was revealing too, though not in a way I care to remember.

There’s a good deal in Scripture about how we appear on the outside and what we are on the inside. Samuel is given the unenviable task of recruiting a king (1 Sam 16) but not before God reminds him of the job description. Personal qualities are essential. Brad Pitt lookalike not required. Jesus has some scathing words for religious types with shiny faces like whitewashed tombs and minds that rattle like bones (Matt 23:27). God has simple expectations – reality and appearances should match. The word for this has an old fashioned ring to it these days – ‘integrity’, which comes from the same root as ‘integrate’ and carries much the same meaning. Christians should be integrated people; our inner and outer lives in balance.

Of course, the point of doctoring photos to remove the wrinkles is to avoid people seeing us as we really are. Hypocrisy wouldn’t be tempting if we weren’t convinced there was an advantage to making others think we’re wiser, richer, sexier, holier, more beautiful or less ordinary. But, perhaps we should learn something from our own photographs. They give away more than we realize. We can focus on our ‘best points’ but somehow something in an expression or the way light and shadow falls across a face will tell the real story. ‘Keeping up appearances’ may make a good sitcom but it’s a rotten way to live a life.

Depression and Creativity

I haven't been blogging for weeks but this short post took me more than an hour. Sometimes I am depressed. There's still a stigma around the subject which is one reason why I don't talk about it a great deal. If I'm honest though, the main reason I say so little when I'm down is the way in which depression isolates and stifles creativity. I don't feel like talking or even stepping out of the door, so mostly I don't. Every piece of writing or phone call is such an effort that they dwindle to a trickle. If God is in his heaven and all is right with the world the words flow easily. When God seems deaf and blind I envy Job and the Psalmists their eloquence in suffering. Most of my unease though, when I'm in this frame of mind is not aimed at God but directed inwards. I find it almost impossible to believe that I can be the same buoyant, confident, fluent person of a month ago. It's like cohabiting with a particularly vile and intemperate squatter - namely myself.

I don't know how this squares with the supposed association between melancholy and artistic achievement. The two do seem connected but so much pseudo-scientific waffle comes from people who don't know the internal world of depression. My experience is that when I'm depressed I achieve very little. Depression is a cheat, a liar and an imposter which doesn't deserve respect as the companion of 'troubled poets'.

Is the Crisis 'Economic'?

Today I heard more than one journalist say that G20 leaders had 'risen to the crisis'. A pity it's the wrong one!