Hero(ine)s
on REM Zoe Lara (in India) (India), 13/Aug/2009 15:09, 34 days ago
Please note this is a cached copy of the post and will not include pictures etc. Please visit the blog to view in original context.
My friend Adam once bemoaned the fact that we don't have enough idols at Oxford (I add here that he went on to become an inspiration to all other students). I'm not sure that he was right, as I know that I have tripped over enough in five years here to feel lucky (though I'd be too shy to note them here). Christians - and I'm sure those from other religions, though I haven't been lucky enough to be close to that sort of person yet - have a wonderful top idol, and when they really live by that person, you can see it from the way they behave to the lights shining in their eyes. Since those who are true to the paths of their idols manage so often to achieve such wonderful things (I always think here of wild card Goran Ivanisavec who didn't get at all wobbly at last-round wimbledon - because he believed God meant him to have it), I thought a lot about who has made me tingle in an inspirational way. So - professionally rather than personally, and in no particular order:1. Bertolt Brecht: believed so strongly in the power of his work that he took it all over europe to stage - and thus - to ignite revolution. and wrote beautifully (see the cloud poem below).2. George Orwell: For 1984. For starting fires and igniting imagination, and for demonstrating what it means to turn political writing into an art.3. Jon Snow: for doing what he does, with such panache. and for the ties.4. Philippe Sands: human rights barrister, erudite, intellectual giant that busted the Bush administration and wrote a wonderful book about it at a time when journalism was too frenzied by the shift to online news to do the work he carried out.5. Siri Hustvedt: who writes with clarity, and with wisdom, especially about love. I am bowled over by what she has to say just as much as her talent in the way she expresses it.6. CS Lewis - for the Chronicles of Narnia; and for the Four Loves. Most probably, for all the wonderful debates he would have held with Tolkien, if only somebody in the lamb and flag had the foresight to record them...(to be continued...)
