Freeing the minds, at last

I wish there had been a movement like this one when I was at school. Or when I was studying at a British university and the campus was plagued by the Christian Union. I suspect some of my own students to be creationists (Muslims and Christians), so I can see the necessity and the relevance of such an organisation.

La voix des incroyants

je viens de lire la réaction un peu tardive de Mme Lysiane Gagnon à propos de la campagne des autobus athées lancée à Montréal il n'y a pas si longtemps. Elle m'a mis un peu en colère (la chronique de Lysiane Gagnon, pas la campagne). Cette dame n'y comprend tout simplement rien, pas plus sur les raisons de la campagne londonienne que sur la pertinence de la campagne montréalaise. Le militantisme athée qu'elle déplore est essentiellement une réaction à un militantisme ultra-chrétien (notamment) qui, bien que minoritaire, s'est montré particulièrement bruyant récemment. Ariane Sherine a eu l'idée de cette campagne pour répondre au prosélytisme de certains groupes chrétiens fondamentalistes qui s'affichaient et s'affichent encore dans l'espace publicitaire britannique. On a l'équivalent à Montréal, où j'ai déjà pu lire "le salaire de ton péché, c'est l'Enfer". C'est à cela que la campagne britannique a voulu répondre, c'est cette réponse qu'il fallait afficher à Montréal face à ce même militantisme. La publicité ne dit pas de manquer de solidarité, de manquer de compassion, au contraire elle dit aux gens, croyants ou incroyants, de ne pas avoir peur des menaces parfois à peines voilées des groupes religieux, tout simplement parce que ces menaces sont sans fondement. Voilà ce que la campagne dit, en substance. Louanger la décision de la ville de Vancouver de ne pas avoir accepté la publicité, c'est faire appel à la censure, d'autant plus injuste qu'elle serait sélective.

Cet autobus qui sera à Montréal

"Dieu n'existe probablement pas. Alors cessez de vous inquiéter et profitez de la vie."

Mes "prières" ont été exaucées. Enfin, façon de parler. Donc, l'autobus athée sera à Montréal très bientôt (dès lundi en fait), grâce à l'initiative de l'Association des Humanistes du Québec. Lire l'éditorial de Mario Roy à ce sujet, ma foi plein de bon sens. Après que la campagne publicitaire ait été lâchement (mais momentanément?) interdite de séjour à Ottawa (ce qui me confirme que cette ville est puritaine, froide et ennuyeuse et qu'elle y tient), c'est une excellente nouvelle. Je doute que la nouvelle sera aussi controversée au Québec qu'en Angleterre (déjà l'Église se tait), mais les quelques fanatiques qui nous restent vont sans doute s'étouffer en mangeant leurs bas. Tant mieux.

The story of an epiphany

"Joyce said that the epiphany was the showing-forth of a certain truth in circumstances that were not really conducive to the showing-forth of that truth. The three magi on the Feast of Epiphany arrived at a stable in Bethlehem, and instead of the great revelation of the King of Heaven coming to earth, they found a dirty child in a dirty stable. The epiphany lay in the contrast between the truth and the appearance."

This quote is taken from here (brilliant essay about short narrative, by the way). I know, I quote Anthony Burgess again, but this entry is mainly about him again (and besides, I didn't read James Joyce much). Well, I have been thinking about a blog entry like this one for ages, I simply did not know how to work it out. I still don't know how to write it down. An epiphany is, according to Wikipedia, "the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something". We all reach epiphanies at certain points in our life, sometimes when something happens, something when barely anything happens, but our perception gets something. For men of literature like myself (either writers, wannabe writers, academics or wannabe academics), epiphany is often found in written works.

I had my first beginning of epiphany watching A Clockwork Orange when I was 16, a few weeks (days?) before the beginning of school, in a hot August day of 1993. At first, I just loved, loved, loved that movie. But then again, I had started to be fascinated by other movies at that time, so that was nothing else than another bit of fascination like I was developing so often then. Still, the movie haunted me, enough for me to go and buy the book (in November, the time when the action in the novel was set), which I read in a bit more than 48 hours. I was fascinated by it. There was the language, inventive and wild, there were the almost existentialist themes of freedom and responsibility, there was the moral ideology of the whole book. I loved that book. I also started admiring Anthony Burgess a lot. And something happened on November 22 1993, right after I read A Clockwork Orange (and when I was re-reading it obsessively): Burgess died. I remember learning the news (it must have been on the 23rd) right after lunch time, we were going to school my brother and I and stopped to see the neighbours, the TV was on, and on the news they announced his death. It was a cold and winter November day, it felt appropriate. Then in the next year, I read other Anthony Burgess novels, to see what he had written apart from that. I fell in love with them all, sometimes right away, sometimes slowly. Anthony Burgess made me discover real literature, but more than that, he showed me that one's life could relate to art. I was happily surprised, and yet not so much surprised, that he had written the script of Jesus of Nazareth, one of my childhood's favourite movie.

Burgess writing accompanied me in the transition from teenage through adulthood and, more importantly, shaped it. I gradually renounced my faith, my apostasy echoed his own, as my very irrational Catholic feeling of guilt regarding my rejection of Catholic faith (and ultimately of any faith). I might not have been original, but I knew I was not alone. I also rediscovered classical music and, while it took me a long while to get in contact with other cultures, Anthony Burgess influenced my perception of them (especially the British and Italian one). Reading Honey for the Bears and Earthly Powers got rid of any remnant of homophobia I had. Anthony Burgess did not only make me see literature differently, it made me discover life, the truth underneath the shell of reality. It all started with A Clockwork Orange. Why was it an epiphany? Well, the novel was not even his best one.