Kester Brewin

  “We fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that’s the end.” Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III In the previous post I tried to set out a distinction between death (which can remain beautiful – a frozen moment just beyond life) [...]

I’ve resisted commenting too quickly on the tragedy that’s unfolded in Norway. I think sometimes we need to hold back from immediately pushing views into a space that should simply be reserved for grief and self-examination. But as the nation of Norway itself begins to process what’s happened, I wanted to offer a couple of [...]

Interesting piece in The Independent yesterday, asking why people bother going to festivals when the sound quality is crap, there’s mud everywhere, you can’t sleep, and people push and spill beer all over you. I visited Glastonbury once, many years ago now, and left utterly mystified. Why, I wondered at the time, did so many [...]

  I went to see Michelangelo Frammartino’s new film last night, Le Quattro Volte. This is a very difficult film to do justice to on the page, but I will simply say: try to go and see it. Do all you can to get to see it at the cinema. This is cinema. Not plasma TV [...]

Jeremy Rifkin’s talk about empathy leads us to some interesting conclusions about heaven. Because empathy is about engaging with those who are other, and experiencing some of their pain, heaven – as traditionally seen – must be a place where there is no empathy, because pain cannot be experienced. The typically Christian view of heaven [...]

The story of the Chilean miners has been one of the most incredibly moving events I can remember. There’s something of the two-fingers-up-to-nature which is both exhilarating and troubling, and something of the deeply archetypal and transformative about the rescue… 33 Sliding, encased, through the bowels the earth thirty-three steel turds are evacuated into the [...]

Last weekend saw a really innovative gathering in Toronto called ‘Eighth Letter.’ It asked the simple question: if the writer of revelation had written ‘A Letter to the Church in North America’ what would they have said? A number of people were asked to present their letters – some in person, some virtually. Mine’s now [...]

The furore over the state of the athletes’ accommodation at the forthcoming Commonwealth Games has focused largely on the issue of cleanliness. Putting the issues of security and hygiene aside for a moment – these are separate concerns that require a different reaction – I think the  cleanliness issue is interesting in the way it [...]

Had a fine morning yesterday with Barry Taylor at the Tate Britain. We went round the very wonderful Rude Britannia exhibition, which is a lot deeper and richer than saucy postcards, though there are plenty like this one above to tickle your fancy. Different rooms of exhibition have been co-curated by the likes of Harry Hill, Steve Bell [...]

Violence of Heaven [ 1 ] |  Violence of Heaven [ 2 ] | Violence of Heaven [ 3 ] According to Revelation – the apocalypic birth narrative of our future utopia – “when heaven is established, it will be a bloody business.” I have been trying to argue that any attempt to establish utopia [...]