Photographically I had the same considerations as on "Attacking amazon". It should be strong colors but also with a good amount of the typical dust and dirt of the city. I don't know if the inclusion of the wall behind the facade adds something. So, any ideas would be very welcome.
As about the subject, well, historical research, and I mean real historical research and not the typical hollow religious beliefs based on thin air of the church, brings more and more evidence and light into this story. And the story has been completely distorted by the countless reproductions of the bible that took place while the time was passing by. You see, the bible, as it is today, is definitely not what it was in its version 1.0. It is the result of alterations, additions, and omissions by each and every incompetent writer that thought he could simply change it "for the better", ignoring what history is supposed to do. Even version 1.0 was not sent from paradise to some apostle via email. And so the real historians dig out much better evidence for what has taken place at those times. (After all it was in the roman empire.) So, there is very strong evidence that Jesus and the guys were a real nice group of young people that questioned much of what was the status quo at those times. They were very interested in philosophical, political, sociological questions, that the pharisees felt uncomfortable with. Replace the word "Jesus and the guys" with "activists", and the word "pharisees" with "then powers that be", and you have exactly the same situation like today, when anybody that dares to really question the status quo gets stigmatized and crucified. And there are really many ways to crucify somebody because he/she is a "rebel". ;-)
That guy from Judaea, according to historical evidence and recorded discussions with his friends, must have really thought, he was son of god, which his friends didn't took so easily. But he was a real rebel, and that's why I like him. I would drink with him anytime - and present him the mathematical proof that there can exist no god at all! ;-) He was crucified for no other reason except that he represented a young rebellion, that wouldn't take it anymore. And this is what the image is about. About that kind of convinction that those who go to the barricades are "the bad people".
Much more than the dull focusing on love alone, Wolf. The whole group to be very interested in ethics, policics, philosophy, etc, etc. It is crucial here to see how those interests have been "overseen" while we get flooded with holywood-like romances about those events. Of course such things sell more, don't they? ;-)
All religions are "borrowed" from other religions, which in tunr borrowed from even former, and even former, until we land at the time when the Cro Magnon had... fear! Fear in front of what he/she couldn't mentally grasp. Now, start from that point and replay the greatest movie of all - history! YOu will see fears to convert to silly interpretations about some kind of interplanetary cop that sits on heavens, watches you, salvages you, etc, etc.
But if you continue to play that tape of human history of mental picture of the world, you will also see that any religion is but a temporary episode. It will sonner or later decay.
As I said to Visar, how long did it help that they arrested Galileo? Did that prevent the truth to come out? No. Nobody knows the idiots that arrested him. Quite the contrary, we are happy to know that the earth is revolving around the sun, etc, etc.
The mediocre representants of religious faith, and I mean *any* religious faith and not only christians, are only for a limited time present on earth. As a species they will be gone sooner or later.
About the set of rules. Religion is not necessary for that. Ethics do nit have to do with religion. Ethics are one of the crowns of human thinking. Instead of going to the church, the temple, the mosque, you just have to go to the next library and read about philosophy. I don't need some "god" to present me two laughable plates of stone with a ridiculous set of rules, in order to know that I don't kill my brother. That's for the mentally crippled.
And so I just sit and wait, to see which way the evolution of human brain scratches off blind beliefs as the time passes by. That's real fun!
Religions are some of the first "models" that humans invented in order to understand something more of this world. They are 90% fear, and some 10% logic, ethics, philosophy. And they will eventually decline to nothing. So I am quite comfortable with that temporary episode of human mind.
The believers of course never take the time to use their brain, which at the end was the same brain that invented "god" and the associated "frame of rules", etc. Even if you present them the facts, they will either negate them, or integrate them in some new, more laughable interpretation, that has nothing to do with anything on the world. But still, we don't believe anymore that the earth is flat, or the center of the universe, or... you name it. Religious faith tried so desperatly to hold cognition, but it was clear that it could never succeed. On that try to "preserve the godly truth", religion has done the biggest crimes ever on this planet. And still does. But time is not on their side.
So, I don't care if some Jihad arrives in front of my door. In the realms of argumentation I can eliminate each and every "religious believer" in three lines. They could even eliminate my body, of course, have me cricified, stoned, bombed, inquisited, whatever. But their are the "victories" of the moment. Mind is stronger in the long run. It will eliminate all religions, no matter what the tempars will say.
They kept Galileo under arrest. For how long did that help them? Nowadays, who remembers his arrestors? Dust in the wind they have become, irrelevant, nonexistent. But Galileo's telescope and spirit you find all over the earth. They may spit foam about that, but it doesn't matter at all. They are less than dust on my shoulders, which I simply brush off.
About meeting some day, that could be easier than you think too. I find also all that unnecessary nonsense with visas and shengen and borders quite a useless nuisance. Same kind of "religious belief", you see. But it can be organized even if it takes so much unnecessary steps. I am completely bounded in Switzera this summer, not because of work and the like, but because of a real blow that came so unexpectedly. I must remain in the land, Visar, though it would be glorious to be with you in Zagreb in a concert.
But hey, if you have the time and the time (second appearance of the word stands for $ ;-)), just visit me. Anytime for as long as you wish. My place is small, but my whisky is big! ;-)
Wow the photo really caught my eye but the write up and comments are right up my alley. Over years I have read countless books describing your views and can't believe christians are so blind. Christianity appears to be a religion borrowed from many others in order to control the many - at least thats what constantine appeared to do. My christian friends are so blind and religion is so engrained in them that they could never be open minded - pity for them - although religion does have a place for some people who NEED a set of rules to live by and believe in even if it's blind belief. Greg
As the Jesus that has *been* perhaps, Wolf! Definitely not as the Jesus we know in the bible. For the bible Jesus was son of god, and sons of god have to salvage everybody else's soul instead of allowing everybody else to live the own dreams ;-)
But this is not a motto of youth and idealism as fundamental qualities. It is a motto of *being*, out of which youth, idealism and anything else can arise.
Man, it is such a surprise that gets refreshed with every passing day, this human blindness!! how cannot they see that the Cross is a pagan sign, how cannot they go a bit further and decode or find a reason as why there are 12 desiples? why, Judah cheated Jesus? how come an Egyptian sait was born by a virgin, on the same date, died in a cross and resurrected after three days! why Jews blow horn, how come Muslims and Christian and Jews have the same names of prophets, Abraham/ Ibrahim; Moses/ Musa... and i am messing up the chronology of things, i know, but that far goes my hypocrisy of religious knowledge! not really ;)- but, who cares!! How could they forget the Inquisition/ knights templar... the bloodshed; and yet worship a puppet like pope!! * * *
But, but, but ... oh what do i say,
ah yes 'God loves us'!! LOL. yes, and he loves the money too!!
ups, i am putting myself in danger here, so i'd rather stop before Jihad hits the fan!
***
Yes Nick, we could meet someday, somewhere- I could also come to Switzera, or France, or wherever in some Shengen country! No, no-- I am at some doomed sh*thole whereof i have to have wings and go away! (ok, ok- it is not that hard as i could get a visa to anywhere but i only hate this visa regime); I will be again in Zagreb on June 3rd for a concert of Nick Cave, we could meet there! if not there, then- well we'll be in touch!
....! You refer to the same literature that I referred to in my last message! What a superbly sharpminded guy! Not Kazantzakis, I mean Visar!
You caught exactly the quintessence of Kazantzakis' "Last Temptation of Christ". It is demystifying, removing all mythology that for some kind of reason seems to be impossible to rip out of the heads of most humans. They need their myths in order to have something to look up to. It's OK up to this point but then: In that need for the mystic they won't hesitate to mercilessly cruficy somebody, in order to *create* the myths that they need. It's like slaughtering for singing hymnes to the slaughtered afterwards, isn't it? All bloody religions base on that too, and it is one of the strongest reasons why billions of people would rather go to the church than to the library for reading some historical evidence. It's like sending soldiers to fight to death, only for crying in full hypocricy on their graves afterwards, and singing about their heroism and their idealism and their whatever. And they were only young guys who would rather run behind some girl. That's all.
But the microbic minds that are so eager to project their wishes for "perfection" onto some other human being, and transfer their hopes and dreams to that human being, should not be as arrogant to stigmatize that being, in case it doesn't conform their wishes, and simply doesn't get crucified. Like our guy on this wall did.
So, if the stignatized accepts the misery put on him/her, then after some decades he/she is a legend, and they sing hymnes for that. If he/she preferes to S**T on such wishes, he is only a bad "rebel". I prefer to be a rebel, and s**t on each and every mystification, glorification, mental mastu****tion!
Jesus was a nice guy, in all his problematic axioms about being son of god. At least, as much as we can say today, he didn't represent that kind of pharisaic mediocracy. You could just sit and drink and smoke one with him, even if you happen to be a greek mathematician! ;-)
The pharisaic hypocrites of today - the politicians in first line - search for the "guilty", the "sinner", the one who has to be crucified. They satisfy their own blood thirst, and that of the microbic minds too.
An easy way for the blind to go A clever path for the fools who know The secret of the hanged man the smile on his lips
I don't think that the maker had any "symbolic" wishes when doing that. In general, such symbols are never produced because of some wish to "be a symbol", but rather because of the total neglecting of any kind of such wishes at all. Wishing to become a symbol produces at the end only kitsch.
hm- strangly enough, i am relating all those last shots of yours (and the ideology of those guys) with books i have read. this brings in my mind the Nikos Kazantzakis (or how do you write that) and his "Last Temptation of Christ"- of which i think an utterly unique work; placing Christ not above us, nor underneath- but prone to our earthly sensations... - thus, demystifying one amongst the most mystical figures, and yet, like you say, never stating the rebelious spirit of his, which for the time living was of no match, and so 'the son of God' label was just good enough, which certainly sprang of some nightmare that had no place to hang the hopes. thus, an awaited prophecy for the people to sleep well was 'needed'(?).
but, yes, this is how i would also portray the Jesus of our days Nick, a punk hair style- a pirate, a rebel, a snatcher, a human being made of flesh and breath and bone, who would make politicians feel so embrrasingly un-intilligent, and whatever question they might ask him, the answer would prove their obesletness, like a feather in oblivion.