30/6/10‏

I picked up the bass guitar for the first time in what felt like a million years yesterday. It was like coming home, but only after being away so long that the details comes through in trickles, as opposed to flooding in. Grooving in the back room of my brother's home reminded me of the strange world that is music, the diversity, the expression, the convolution and union. It made me wonder if this is the world I should be making home. Either way I plan to visit it more occasionally.

I read the distasteful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for the 2nd time around yesterday, and I was just as captured by it's brilliance and creativity as the first time. There is a great deal of genius squeezed into Moore's work, he seems to transcend the shallows that normally pertain to superhero comic books. It is unfortunate that most are put off by the more disturbing scenarios in his arsenal, and I confess too that I find some occasions similarly disturbing, but this comic is not written to indulge us. It's bizarre fantasy explores humanity ruthlessly, it's confronting content denies our dismissiveness, It is his world, not ours in which we immerse, and Moore insists upon it. 'You may take it, or you may leave it' it seems to say.

It is interesting to analyze what our comfort bubbles deny us. It is often easier to ignore situations that upset us. It is more convenient that they do not exist in our world, but as we ignore the undesired so we sacrafice the thrilling contrast of their redemption. We cannot fully appreciate the destruction of the One Ring, unless we endure the pains it inflicted upon Frodo. We cannot fully celebrate Voldemort's demise without empathizing with the murder of Harry's parents. We cannot offer genuine pity to a sexually abused child without trying to understand their suffering. We cannot offer insight to a worldview we refuse to perceive.

Are we not most comforted by those who most understand our anguish? Perhaps this is reason enough to understand depravity, to understand evil, rather than ignore it, and hate it.