It became clear from early on that Brian, the owner of an antique bookshop with a great passion for books who we had interviewed, would not el into the structure of the film as much as we would like him to, as he seemed far too much like an odd one out. While filming, one of the places we had arranged to film in, a record store, refused to let us interview them or anyone in the store, and we weren't able to find another person who would be as interesting as the others and provide some company for Brian in the film, and so with regret we had to cut his section from the film.
While editing I tried to instruct the editors on how to give a good rhythm of cutaways along with the interview. Often me and the editor (who did an amazing job) would clash with me wanting more of the footage to be cutaways while she wanted more of it to show the subjects. In the end the balance we have achieved between these two is better than what either of us would have done alone and so I am glad I sat in on all the edit sessions.
Me and the sound editor worked together on the music, as I was the only person in the group with experience of making music. Originally we had wanted music that reflected different religions, however we did not have time to record this, and weren't sure what music we could use to represent atheism, and so took to Garageband to compose the music ourselves. The process of making the music was that I would play a couple of loops, put them together and show them to the sound editor, who would then give feedback, and I would go away and change it. Although I was the one physically composing, since we were working as closely as we were on it I think both of us take equal credit for what was produced.
The edit plan we drew up was this: Editing Plan
- 5 Sections.
- 1 Intro section
- 3 Middle sections
- 1 End section
Title
- Intro: How would they describe religion?
- Annie
- Michael
- Suresh & Veejayra
Bridge with cutaways
- Section A: Who are they & Introduce organisations.
- Annie
- Michael
- Suresh & Veejayra
Bridge with cutaways
- Section B: Founding the Organisation & Why they were needed.
- Annie
- Michael
- Suresh & Veejayra
Bridge with cutaways
- Section C: Effects of Religion.
- Annie
- Michael
- Suresh & Veejayra
Bridge with cutaways
- End Section: Where is religion heading?
- Annie
- Suresh & Veejayra
- Michael
Annies Transcript: Credit, Stef Suggit
Do you want me to look at the camera or look at you?
In another place is a charity we aim to take good news outside church walls in lots of different ways to where people are so we started 10 years ago and we do some big, huge theatrical events like our very first one down here at the beach and we do lots of smaller things as well we have some assembly teams, we have a gospel choir, erm we do lots of paper mashey and doing some cardboard projects at the moment, so a variety of things.
The aim of everything we do within in another place is take jesus’s good news outside outside the church because we feel lots of people are not interested in the church, never step foot in it at all, but we believe what jesus said is still relevant to use today so we need to take that message to places where people will come to so maybe a town centre maybe a crazy production on the beach, maybe too a community fun day, maybe too a school assembly so we will go to wherever there seems to be an opening to take some of that good news.
I first became a Christian when I was 6, in the kitchen. My sister had just become a Christian and she was 8, I did tend to do what my sister did. I was brought up in a Christian home so my parents, my dads a farmer, my parents were very commited Christians, though I have sort of from birth got used to the idea that jesus was there and that we pray to him and read the bible stories, so it was a naturel thing for me. I did have a few doubts a little bit later, secondary school about 12 years old when people start asking you a bit more about your faith and so had a bit of thinking at that time and then I decided at that time yes I definitely still want to follow jesus and be a Christian and then at university actually that was another big time. I studied phycology not many Christians studying phycology , lots of people raises that you’re a bit of a religious nut if you still believe so had quite a lot of questions at that time but again, concluded that actually I felt lots of the people that were the most sceptical about the Christian faith were people that really haven’t read the bible and haven’t really thought about it.
Well, yes I think its important to promote Christianity and to say something about jesus’s teaching because the most basic things about love other people like you love yourself would agree that’s really important, actually society would be a much happy place if we treated other people in the way we want to be treated but unfortunately most of us are not quite kind enough and selfless enough to do that. I think such good news with jesus is he says actually god can help you to change, god can help you to be nicer, to be kinder, to be more patient, to be more gentle, to be just a better person if you ask him to be and his life here on earth gives us an example of what we want to be like. I think its really good news for people, that actually we don’t have to struggle on, on our own trying to find the right job and the right partner and the right way forward in life and that actually gods there to help us and he can make it easier and he can help us even in sickness, in death and in difficult things then he can help us find a way through that aswell.
Well, I drew a bit of a distinction between religion and faith. I think that is someone came to earth and asked what religion was I would say it is a set of ways that you’ve decided to run your life, which includes generally some sort of diaty, some sort of god outside of yourself and that is the structure that you run your life by. I would say faith is a little bit more personal than that, that actually its about you inside yourself feeling that theres is something that is missing from in there, looking at all the different alternatives in other peoples maybe looking at other people that you really admire and respect. Theres something about them that is lovely and maybe peaceful or wholesome or something that they seem to be a good rounded individual and then why are they like that? Whats making them like that? And I would like to discover that and then its also, I suppose looking at the holy book that maybe related to that faith so in our case obviously the bible and saying that is it about this holy book that makes sense for me, today in 2015. Why would I want to follow that? Why would it make a difference to my life?
Well, a lot of people think that faith maybe a bad thing and may feel that you need some sort of a proof by actually most of us have very much understanding about air and breath and how oxygen makes us think why when we turn our light switch off, it actually works and theres a lot of things that even the cleverist scientists only know a certain amount about and probably the most clever ones realise how much they don’t know. The common people that watch telly programmes like us may think that we know more than we do. Theres a lot of things that we just naturally are taking steps of faith in, relationships, friendships, husbands and wives. There is always a step of faith left when your trusting that that person is presenting themselves as the person they are and that your looking carefully at it, you don’t want to be an idiot, you don’t want to get into some sort of a long term relationship with somebody that turns out to be terrible but there will be a step of faith in there somewhere and so that in the same with god you use your brain, you use your interlect, you do look at facts, you do look, I would say look carefully at what jesus is teachings are, look carefully at whats written in the bible and weigh it up for yourselves. Don’t be ignorant, we don’t have to be, theres masses written about him now but then there is somewhere along the line, a step of faith where you know what? I’m going to give it a go and see if it makes a difference and if it doesn’t? I could stop but if it does make a difference, potentially it make a massive difference to my life like these other people hopefully who you can see, well actually will see that god makes things better for them.
Lots of things have straightened my faith over the years, probably the things that have straightened it the most have been things that have been difficult so actually in another place, the very first time that the first production that we did down here was really against the odds, we came to a beach, further down this way which turned out to be a dangerous bit of beach so when we turned out to do our risk assessments and we met the coast guards and the police and the health and safety people and everything and said can we do this big performance here, they said no, theres 30 reasons why not and at that time we’d been rehearsing, we had a whole team, we had a production team, it was a month before, so we were like what do you mean we cant do it at all? And they said no you cant this beach is too dangerous so I then pretty much burst into tears and went off to one side and was praying and they brought into little subgroups and were thinking of a plan B and I believe theres was an answer to prayer at that point and that they then said well actually I suppose if you try this other bit of beach with is a bit safer perhaps that could work and erm they gave us 3 days to get the risk assessments done and they did give us permission and the event went ahead and again lots of things could have gone wrong with the event, it is a bit of a crazy place to run an event but it worked and theres been lots of other things that that. We started the whole process with no money, we believe that god wanted us to put these events on, we believed when the first event, 500 people were coming and we have had enough money to keep going and to employ somebody and so there is lots of things that have made me feel like, well I cant believe that that could’ve happened without god helping.
We called ourselves in another place because antony gormly had put down here on the beach are called “another place” and also because we felt that we were not going to be static that we would be moving around the place, we would go to wherever the openings were so its actually been a really good title because we have a moved to a lot of spaces, lots of different storage places, lots of different performance spaces.
In the current generation I think theres a lot of people who are still aware that there is something else out that, but I think a lot of people aren’t sure what there is. I think that church hasn’t always been a great advertisement for Christian faith, a lot of churches, I think people would see it as old people who go there because they like singing hims and saying prayers and sitting in pews. There are ofcourse some churches that are huge and vibrant and got lots of young people in aswell but I think lots of the younger generation would not have seen those churches or had been in them or have any reason to want to go in them so that’s why I think we need to get out of our churches and say we are just people like you, we love you and we think god loves you as well. I think theres pockets of life and pockets of things that are moving forward and also it’s a funny generation that were in, theres like masses of information everything. Theres the whole internet crazy stuff and I think sometimes theres a temptation for young people to be bombarded with choices to do and what to do with themselves that partly you can just keep busy and not think of bigger issues like who am i? why am I on earth? But ofcourse there are also times when people can feel really lonely and isolated and lots of mental health issues and stuff and erm I think there are a lot of people there that are lost for lots of different reasons, some of them don’t realise it but don’t realise that a faith in god could be an answer to what theyre feeling.
Im sure there are lots of people that feel in other faiths yes. This area that I live in is the white anglo saxon and is not very mixed race at all, some other places are far more mixed and would have far more exposure and would have different faiths and certainly friends ive none over the years that people have had tramendus help from their faith whether as a muslim or a budhist or whatever. I think that there is a lot that we can learn from those other faiths and what people get out of them and what they learn from them. I think there is something still you need to look at about truth and whether there is something that’s true about some faiths and not about others but I think there is some truth in many different things.
Well I think its good to find happiness through anything because its going to make you a better person but I think for me as a Christian the key question is who was jesus? And why does he come to the earth? Because if jesus really was the son of god and he was the way he said im the only way to get to god, then we need to listen to that and we need to think about that because other ways could take us part way there and certainly can make us better people, happy people, kinder people but actually if jesus is saying he came so we could really find god and also know who we are supposed to be on this earth and what we’re supposed to be doing with ourselves then that must be the best solution, it’s a bit like you have a chance of meeting the queen and you meet one of her body guards. That’s great and that’s good and you sort of part way there but if you had a bit of chance to actually meet the queen, wouldn’t you like to meet the queen? And that’s what I believe is we’ve got the choice to meet jesus, the king of kings and we can meet one of these other people that have brought great and good and interesting or find our own little route, that actually if its not meeting the queen, we haven’t quite got there.
Liverpool is a very interesting city for faith, though I wasn’t brought up here and born here, ive lived for 27 years. Its quite a religious city as in probably a higher proportion than the national average would be associated with a church, very roman catholic, I think a third of all catholics in the country live on mersy side so that’s quite unusual, suppose to lots of other cities and the roman catholic faith tends to but a lot of weight on religions, churches being one though being kind, being generous, doing lots of charity stuff so I think there are some people therefore are quite open to Christian ideas because they have been brought up with them so I think that are lots of people that are open to chrisian ideas as theyre familiar with them, having being brought up with them espeicially in this particular area in the north end of Liverpool. However there are some other people that are quite strongly antiet because they were brought up with it and they didn’t like it or they have some bad experiences somewhere down the road so I haven’t lived in many other cities to be honest with you to make any comparisons but I think certainly as far as Liverpool goes the schools seem to be quite open to us coming in and doing assemblies and stories and talking about faith in that way and I gather that some in some cities that would be hard to do. I think there is an openness here and theres Liverpool people are lovely and welcoming and things and I would like to think that’s partly because of the Christian religion that has been here for a very very long time.
Michaels Transcript: Credit Georgia Cook
What is the Merseyside sceptic society?
What is the Merseyside sceptic society?
The Merseyside sceptic society is a community group that I co-founded, round about six years ago, so 2009. And I think really the idea behind why we set up is we wanted a space where people could challenge ideas. So if there are claims that come to you, we all have claims that come to us on a daily basis and we just try to look at whether there is evidence behind it. And the way we always try and talk about it is if you go to buy a second hand car the guy who is selling the car will say “this is an amazing car, its brilliant” but you don’t just take his word for it, you want to take it for a test drive, you want to kick the tyres, you want to lift the bonnet and we kind of believe in doing that to other ideas as well. So when someone says that they’ve seen a ghost or their house is haunted or that their herbal pills will cure their all sorts of ailments, instead of just taking peoples word for it we encourage people to test ideas and see whether they really stack up. Some things do but some things just really don’t.
(1min 8sec) - So where do you meet?
Our meetings – we have a couple of things that we do – so the main thing that we do in terms of a community group is sceptics in the pub and this is something that I think probably started about six years ago/ seven years ago, just a bit before we set up. And we just loved the idea of having these kinds of meetings where you find you get someone who is an expert in an area or who is really passionate about an area and they’ll come and do a 45min presentation and it’s a very nice kind of relaxed atmosphere. And I think the idea behind that really in a way was that one of our founders always says that when you are a person of faith you can go into any city in the world and you know you can walk into a mosque or a church or synagogue and you have there a set of people who share the same ideals the shared values a ready made community and network and support group. But if you don’t ascribe to one of those beliefs there is something missing for the non religious or the a religious or for whom religion isn’t part of their life, there wasn’t that shared network, support network that sense of going somewhere that you will see someone every week or every couple of weeks and have that community. So we really set up as that kind of community and that’s why we set up in a pub because their often-free venues, quite relaxed venues, you can get beer, which is a good thing! Yeah so we’ve been doing that for six years now and we’ll have a lot of monthly talks and we will also have a lot of monthly events where its just people getting together in a pub and enjoying each others company, enjoying the fact that we don’t have to all ascribe to a superstition to be able to get together.
(2min 38Sec) – I know things like the monthly assembly can be compared to an atheist church so would you ever describe it to people in that way or?
I would say that sceptics in the pub is pretty much as far away from being a church as you could get I don’t like the idea of there being an atheist church because its automatically set up atheism as something which it isn’t, a belief system a faith system. Its nothing of the sort, atheism is the absence of a belief system really. Rocks are atheist cause a rock doesn’t believe in a god in the same way I don’t believe in a god, it doesn’t say that I don’t believe in no god that’s a different thing, humanism or something slightly simpler. I think its very important that we are clear in terminology that an atheist simply means not believing in a god. There might be lots of reasons why you don’t believe in a god, some of those might be good, logical reasons and some of those might be daft silly reasons or it might be that you’re a baby who doesn’t know how to believe in anything, babies aren’t religious, they don’t believe In a god, they’re atheists by the definition of atheists. So I get very uncomfortable with the idea of comparing atheist things to churches because it allows people who just want to take a kick at non belief, to say well you’re just another belief system and therefore Richard Dawkings is your pope and you’re all just ascribing to a set of a kind of doctrines just as much as any body else. When fundamentally atheism is just looking at the evidence and saying does this stack up and is it convincing and if it isn’t we don’t have to believe in it just because culture tells us to or just because these figures of authority tell us to we try and look at the evidence and say im going to make my own mind up about this and it just doesn’t seem convincing to me. So I get very uncomfortable with the idea of comparing sceptics in the pub to the church. I see it more as a gathering of enthusiasts for anything really the same way you might get people who are enthusiastic about football who might come together to watch the match or enthusiastic about model trains who might get together and show off their model trains its more that kind of thing really. I think our enthusiasm is for critical thinking and to get our best grasp on the world around us that we are able to given the cognitive tools that we have and the tools of perception that we have and try to use those as effectively as possible. So yeah I’d be very reluctant to compare us to a church. I don’t think its helpful to coorpt the language of religion because it just allows people to dismiss you in the same way.
(5min 3sec) – At what time do you think you became consciously a sceptic?
I’m not sure when I became a sceptic its one of those things that I always remember being the person in my group of friends who didn’t believe in certain things and also cared about it. I don’t think many of my friends believed in astrology for example which is a patent ludicrous idea that the stars can influence our lives, there’s no evidence behind it and actually when you read your 12 astrological signs if you don’t know which sign you’re reading you can make any one of them fit you. I remember being the one who at college would ask people their star sign from the local newspaper and see them go “oh yeah, that’s exactly like me!” and then go actually I read you the different one so turns out its really not very good. I also used to do palm reading when I was at college not because I believed in it but because I kind of taught myself the kinds of things that you can say to people to convince them you have an insight into their lives that you don’t actually have. I think what’s fascinating about them is that its almost a boring answer to say that the reason that we can look at someone’s hand and tell them all about their lives is because the lines say something about your life, its almost a boring answer. What’s much more interesting is the lines of your hand say nothing about your life but you can still say things about people cause we’re all quite similar in certain ways or have similar insecurities, dreams, ambitions, flaws we all care about the same kinds of things and we’re not that different from one another. That’s pretty interesting to me and I think I was always someone who cared about that sort of thing. But I was always around a lot of people who would say well yeah ok that is nonsense but why does it matter why are you bothered about that sort of thing. It was only sort of once I discovered that there was this organised sceptical movement that I kind of found other people who agreed that this matters because it really does matter to me I think as I say I don’t believe, I have no evidence that there is an afterlife. I fundamentally believe that while we are here we owe it to ourselves and too each other to make the best of what we have. It’s really important if I see someone, I’ve been to see psychics as a sort of investigation, psychics who will try and offer you £100 for 5 minutes of reading and they’ll take the money then tell you all these things about how you should live your life. I think that is incredibly damaging and I don’t want the next person to spend £100 on that. I want to try and protect them because just as I’ve only got one life, they have only one life, how could I live with myself If I let someone else’s life be damaged in someway by something I could have prevented. I think that’s when I realised that I was a sceptic with a capital S if you want to call it that as part of an organised movement, so I thought not only do I care about these issues but I also care enough to try and do something about them. And also its when I found out that at that point you’re aloud to make a bit of mischief for these people cause they’ve already broken a sort of contract in some places, whether knowingly or unknowingly they’re selling stuff that doesn’t work and that’s quite annoying or could be damaging to people. But because they’ve already transgressed that sort of social boundary you’re aloud to make their lives a little bit difficult without being nasty but you can bring them to the attention of the media or the attention of people, you can protest them or find interesting ways to point out that their ideas don’t stack up. You get to have fun with it and its like this whole section of society that has already broken the rules before you did so you can kind of have fun with it I find it enormously interesting to do that I think.
(8mins 27sec) – would you say you grew up with any sort of religious background?
In terms of religious background that I grew up with, I grew up with a catholic family, went to a roman catholic school, I think it was quite typically roman catholic in terms of that everyone said they believed in the whole doctrine of it but no one really followed any of it, everyone would still drink and smoke and swear, but then they’ll cling to the idea that they were still following Catholicism, pick the bits that you want and ignore the bits that you don’t want and there’s a kind of my upbringing really. My grandma was probably very catholic, my mum would say she was very catholic but I read the bible way before she ever had in her life. And this is long after I realised I was an atheist, but I don’t think I ever kind of really believed in it but I ascribed to the ideas in the same way that other people did. As a kid I made no distinction between God and Santa, I just assumed it was something people believed in because you get rewards if you do. I remember being about 12 or 13 and being really shocked that people genuinely believed every piece of the Catholic doctrine, that they believed it was human flesh, when really it was just bread. And I don’t think many Catholics actually believe that it was flesh, that seems fairly silly, but it did shock me that people would fundamentally think it was actual flesh and blood. It was at this moment in time I actually realised how un-religious I was, or I’d never been when I compared myself to extreme religion.
(10mins 32sec) So you grew up in a Catholic household, is any of that still relevant to you now?
I don’t think any of the Catholicism I experienced growing up is too relevant to me now. I think in a way I’m quite happy about that, I’ve seen members of my family quite racked with the traditional catholic guilt. The idea that everything you’re doing is being watched at all times is a phenomenally pernicious thing to me. Especially when it causes you to deny what is fundamentally just your human nature. People want to experience their lives, and it might mean that you want to have a few drinks there, or you might stumble into bed with someone. And these are just natural human impulses, and for a large society we do quite well to make sure what we do isn’t detrimental to others. But it seems to me that certainly the catholicises I saw growing up put such constraints and judgement on your natural behaviours that people will who really fundamentally believed in it all, you’d either be at complete odds with your human nature or you’d feel incredibly bad about the fact that you, are just you being naturally you and had transgressed these laws that were written thousands of years ago when civilisations weren't quite as socially cohesive and life was just much harder to live generally so having certain rules in place that meant we could all wear the same colours and be part of the same tribe would be much more useful. But I think living with that guilt can be a very hard thing to do so I'm very happy to have left a lot of that behind and not have to carry around the idea that there is morality external to my own. I don’t do nasty things to people because I think that would be a bad thing to do, I like to be nice to people because I think its a good idea. I dont do it because I think someones judging me or watching me or going to punish me if I do the wrong thing. I think morality is a much more complex idea when its just internal morality that you have to justify to yourself rather than just by the rules of some divinity that you cant see.
(12mins 39sec) If someone came to earth and didn't know what faith was how would you describe that to them?
Faith and religion I think are difficult concepts, I think they’re worth sort of separating out. Im not sure I'm the best person to describe what religion is. I would say that most of the religions that an alien visitor would see would be those that were created thousands of years ago by a society who don't have the sort of social cohesion that we have now and were much more tribal. Having to follow certain even hard to follow rules makes you part of a certain tribe. It does give that sense of tribe which is probably very useful when times are incredibly tough and you’re constantly at war with various different parts of the world, in more realistic ways than the world probably is now. Faith to me is a slightly different thing, faith is to me classed as a virtue. Ive never been into the idea as faith as a virtue because faith is literally believing in something when you have no evidence. Where you have evidence, your belief in that stops being faith and starts being a more standard idea of what belief is. I think faith is a slightly odd idea that you have to believe this because there is no evidence. I don't think that should be a virtue that we espouse or that we put to the central part of what our society should be. I think that is something that should be considered a bad thing, we shouldn't believe in something unless there was evidence because then you might find yourself believing in all sorts of bad things and doing all sorts of bad things because of it. Faith is almost like the biggest PR con there has ever been in that sense. Convincing that that is a good thing when really when you look at the story of jesus’ resurrection they were all enraptured by the fact that he was there apart from Thomas who said I don't believe its really you I want to put my finger in the holes in your hand and he was seen to be a lesser decibel because of it, because he didn't just say I'm going to believe what you’re telling me or believe what my eyes will tell me I'm going to try and gather more evidence on it. That was seen to be a bad thing but I think thats how we should be, if theres anything that you should take from the bible its doubting Thomas, which is doubt ideas until you have a very good reason to believe them. If nothing else you’ll find yourself beleiving less bad ideas, not totally no bad ideas, you’ll still come across some bad ideas because it happens but you might be able to identify the bad ideas from the good slightly better.
(15mins 27seconds) What impact do you think that faith has on someones life?
Its hard to say really what impact faith has on someones life, I think its such a broad area and people vary so much that almost I would say as an atheist that has no faith its a slightly odd question for me to answer. It doesn't feel like a very positive thing, id much rather people find evidence for what they’re believing, id far rather talk about what evidenced based beliefs can have on peoples lives. There are certainly plenty of occasions where faith can lead people to believe in things that are detrimental to them and the people around them. I think a lot of the time faith wont really have a huge negative impact on their life its just a set of rules that people live by. My grandma was a catholic her entire life and she lived by her faith but it never led her to do anything bad, she always thought very positive of people in some ways almost in spite of her catholoism. She would go against her catholic teachings when it would lead her to accept people. Like homosexuals she had no problem with them and that would go against her faith but she would put those things aside to be a better person than she realised or that her faith would lead her to be, if that makes sense. She was applying her own moral code and leaving the parts of her faith out that she found came up in conflict with that moral code. I don't think all faith is bad but I do think its not always necicarily good, I don't think its a virtue or a value I think its something that can be nutruel or detrimental when people put their faith in places when they really aren't worth their effort.
(17mins 27 sec) What do you see faith headed in the future?
Its very hard for me to say where I see faith headed in the future again as a person who has no faith I feel like an outsider on the topic. I would cynically suggest that faith wont go anywhere, that faith will continue to be how its been for the past 5/6 thousand years and beyond that when people had faith in all sorts of greek gods and the idea that the sun god would come up in the morning because we didn't understand how the world worked. I think there will always be faith and there will always be people who see it as a virtue thats so engrained partly in our society and partly in our psychology that we want to externalise the forces in our lives. its very hard to believe that things happen through chance and things happen through the coincidences of people trying to do good things and happening to do bad things along the way. I think they are very difficult concepts to come to terms with and not blame the world for whats happening to you. So I think psychologically this idea that something external to their own control is in charge and that knows right and wrong and we can sort of make influences to our favour by following these rules maybe knowing more right than wrong. The optimist in me says where that will always be true we can always minimise the excess of faith and minimise the detrinebtal effect of faith and move away from this idea where use faith to castogate people. We should only use faith to make ourselves be good, better and better people. That I'm totally happy with. I hope in the future we move away from the idea that faith can make us do wrong and bad things to people. So id like to hope that we all head towards the moderate but I suspect that we will forever adhere to interpretation and people will take it to justify the bad things that they do and that nothing will change but id like to be optimistic.
Brians Transcript: Credit Adam Coburn
D – I'm going to ask you questions, I'd be you if you -
B – Reflect the questions. Okay.D – I'm going to ask you questions, I'd be you if you -
D – So, we are film students, so what is your favourite film?
B – My goodness, you've thrown me already. My favourite film – so when I try to think of a favourite film, there's one called Starman. Starman was about a humanoid alien who comes to Earth, one of those usual things, but it's one of those silly romance type things I suppose - what happens next? But carries all sorts of values and storyline in it which I enjoy.
D – Okay. Will have to see if they have that in the library at Uni.
B – (laughs) 1970's I think.
B – So, this is my shop. We have a shop full of second hand, collectable and antiquarian books - Some people like to use words like vintage or (pause) Sorry, there was a word I was struggling for there. What do you say, vintage and...
D – Unique?
B – Period, when it gets used more contemporary. I'm using some of my own literature and I just can't think of what it is – when you talk about things that have been from a previous period... (interruption) Okay fine! Will it change things if we take that out?
D – No, it's fine.
B – (giving book to customer) There you are, thank you. Rather glorious binding there, and that's just the box. When you go to a sort of clothes event … retro. Sorry about that.
D – Okay, so, how did you get involved in this, then?
B – I first got involved in the world of old books when I had a gap year, and I have to confess that was before the term gap-year was ever invented. So back in the early 1970's I spent a year working for somebody else in my home city of Belfast, and I got quite interested – involved with some Irish poets as-well, and came back to it at a later period after I’d studied, still not expecting to do anything in our own right, but in the mid 1980's we were invited to open our own shop so we though we'd give it a go, and we did, and we've stayed with it ever since.
D – So is this a bit of a passion of your then? Literature and books?>
B – I find the whole world of books, and the people that go with books, to be something that stimulates me a lot. So, what we never know is what's going to come in today by way of books, and who's going to come in today and the challenge is to try and the challenge is to make those match and yes, as long as it pays the bills, that's what keeps us going, yeah. It's great fun, it's something which has an enduring fascination. Each day presents new things – books we've never come across, people we've never met, and I just like the way those two things marry.
D – So has it delivered a sense of community to you, in a way as-well? Brining together people with similar interests.
B – One of the things that strikes me is how people respond to coming into the shop, and frequently people will say that they love coming here because it feels like home, or because they remember things from the past, but also that they will unexpectedly meet up with people they knew from years ago or find themselves in conversation with somebody about a subject, whatever that subject may be. It gets something going and people find things in common and exchange addresses or email address or whatever. I like that sort of community, that sense of network and new possibility. I not only see books as a thing in themselves as being a reflection of the past, but something that feeds into now and can be creative into the future.
D – a lot of people might sense they gain a sense of community through things like religion, like people who go to church, or go to a temple. Would you say that this could fill that sort of gap in people's lives?
B – Okay. I'm aware that for some people that they are probably more passionate about books than I am, and it intrigues me to see where they are coming from and see what drives them, and indeed for some of my colleagues and some of my customers coming into a bookshop is almost like a religions experience. I think for some, it possibly is – and It is connecting to a time line and sort of arriving at a place by were you are invited and are able to get excited about something from a previous generation, at the same time as enjoying it now and things that come with it. So yes, it can be something which can be something very strongly speaking of a passion, engagement, commitment, all sorts of values which one might associate usually with a more religious type structure.
D – Okay, so, when you were growing up, were you quite into reading or where you parents into reading or is this something that only developed later on?
B – I grew up in a house where there were very few books and not because nobody read, but because we usually went down to the central library in Belfast, my dad would take me there on a Saturday. He would go off and choose something for himself and leave me to discover for myself, and I was never very fond of the books that children were meant to read, I'd always wanted to do it differently. I don't have a huge memory of it, but my family tell that I rote a book , in fact the only book I ever wrote before I went to school. I don't know what influenced me because I don't remember reading Beatrice potter , peter rabbit or anything like that but I wrote a little book about rabbits about what happens to them next. I illustrated it as-well, and I put it together from all the pages and made a book from it before I was four. So, there must have something in that. In my teens , falling in love variously, I wrote some poetry and then realised it was terrible, and eventually moved on from that. But book influences where there even though it wasn't a house full of books, and I think the time that I worked with a book seller, who's still a very good friend, had a huge influence on me, and opened my eyes to ways of seeing and understanding history as a living thing.
D – Okay. Well you've actually covered quite a few of the questions in your answers.
B – Sorry. I jumped ahead a little bit.
D – No, no, that's brilliant. So, what impact do you think it can have on someone's life, say, having this passion of yours. Reading books.
B – Certainly there's been a lot of research which shows that people who consistently read books find it easier to engage with and develop their life skills more than those who don't. There's been a lot of research done on that, there's interestingly been in the last few years quite a bit of research done on the significance and impact on reading the traditional paper book and reading an e-book, and the indications are very clear from studies commissioned by the electronic word rather than the traditional book publisher world that more it retained and more is applied well from having read in paper which is an immediate experience, the feel, the smell, the whole engagement with the traditional paper book than the e-book or something on another electronic device. So I certainly think there's a strong future for the book as an instrument as well as a thing of passion. One of the things that particularly fascinates me since we moved our shop over here two years ago from being having been in a seaside town, to coming into a city, is with younger customers. Whether they be students or professionals living in the city centre, and their sense of discovery of the old book as if it's a new thing, and I love that and I think that's fantastic and for me it's quite exciting to see people experiencing something like that for the first time. We will sometimes have people who will say 'may I even pick the book up? Is it okay to hold it? There's almost a sense of the holy and should I go beyond the boundaries – yes, of course, please do. We love that, and seeing people find a new interest that they never knew they had and how they engage in that – it may already reflect something that already existed in their life or they never knew about before, but it increases an awareness, it increases an engagement in something. To me, that's terribly important and a big stimulus for doing what we do.
D – You must have read a lot of books in your life, but of all the books you've read if you had to pick one which would be your favourite, could you? And if so, what would it be?
B – Give me a moment, this is always the worst question.
D – You must get asked that quite a lot.
B- Yeah well, normally I want to go and give you a ten thousand titles sort of thing.
D – Or is there a particular author?
B – It changes from one day to the other, it changes and it's depending on what's happening around us, and so much comes and goes. Okay (pause) sorry, suddenly there's a kind of flood, and I've got to pluck one out of one of those.
D – If you could pick one...
B –...And stick with that?
D – Yeah.
B – (Laughs) If I'm asked what would be my favourite book, it's very very hard to stick to just one book, my mind goes through all sorts of things. I know that in reading poetry, out of all the poets I've read, Seamus Heaney has had a profound influence on me for the way that I wrote reflecting the difficulty and the struggles and the strain of the nation of which he and I grew up in, but putting it in a way which was not necessarily overtly political. The way which words can be sparingly used to talk of something much more profound always amazes me – so things turned into very short form to say big things impress me. There's a wonderful little book, which one can come across, I think we've got a copy of the book in the shop, called the specialist. It's one of those quirky little humorous pieces, and is one which I'll finding picking up and reading again. It's only about thirty of forty pages long and it's about a guy who is trying to find some distraction from family life decides to have a project and builds a toilet in his back garden. It recounts his story of his experience. It's a very dry, humerus thing, it's one of my favourite little books. I love going back with some frequency to some of the mathematical writings of Louis Carrel, obviously known for Alice and Wonderland and all that stuff, and some of his gibberish poetry – the jabberwocky and things like that – which are great fun, but some of the mathematical conundrums which he and others came up with I find fascinating. Things for which there's no answer, they are posed in such a way that you cannot come up with the formula as describes it. I enjoy that sort of thing
D – Out of all the books in here, how much do you think some of the more expensive ones are worth?
B – So in our bookshop, we obviously carry a wide range of different, from books outside the door we'll have books for a pound, a range of books from three pounds to thirty pounds on most of the shelves but occasionally they're tucked away, actually very close to where we are here, which will have higher value. Some books, no necessarily because they're very old sometimes, it is the age and the importance which carries the strength. We did have one recently, i’ve just sold it, it was by Gilbert White the natural history of selborne, and the particular thing about that book that it was the vey first time someone had done a study on one small place, a village, for a number of years back in the 1770’s. He published the book then as a first edition, and he published the book then and we sold the very first edition of it, and we sold that for £1,300 pounds, something like that. Rarely would we have book valued more than that, or even in that territory, but occasionally there are. But a typical range for us, and a roast beaf type range, would be into the £30 to £100 pound bracket.
D - So, do you not really know what the most expensive book in here is? Or have you not got one tucked away in a cabinet at the back?
B - There’s a few things on the shelves around the back (reaches for book) I’m sorry, I’m doing this off camera, just trying to think of something to show to you (finds book) there’s probably some of these things here before our eyes which are… (finds another book) So, the book which we have which are worth three figures variously. There’s a collection of Egyptology come in recently and what is lovely is when you find not on an inscription from the author to somebody of significance, but a letter to come with it too, and this is from the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, and that makes a book quite exciting, and it’s hard to value, but we’ve put £175 pounds on that. From the same collection there’s Wallace Budget’s book of the dead, and it came out in two stages back then, there’s one version that came out in Hieroglyphics, and there’s only Hieroglyphics, and he took only two copies to Britain. Two sets of it, and there’s only two sets in Britain. How do you put a price on that? How do you value on it? That’s always a challenge. As it happens, I’ve chosen to put …where are we… £130 pounds on it. Is that too cheap? Will it sell? Let’s find out. But as to what is the value of a book is probably much more significant in terms of it’s impact into somebody’s life. Prices is one type of value, inheritance and literery value is another.
Suresh and Veejayra transcript: Credit Barney Thomas
My name is Suresh Kumar Tangaraj
And my name is Veejayrani Suresh Kumar
This is a Hindu temple for our local community. We have a large number of Sri Lankans and Indians. People came for either work or studying so we start a temple for those who are our community.
We become Hindu from birth, so my family and my father, grandfather, everyones Hindu, it’s like our family.
I’m the founder/chairman of this trust, a charitable trust also a Hindu temple. We start a little slowly with one statue then we got loads of donations from our community people, one of the families sponsors each gods area, and then we generate local income and we’re running this temple.
I’m his wife, I assist him in all his activities. We started this temple nearly four years ago and its a reflection of our hard work sincerity and our respect to our religion. The place is like a community get together place for our people because there wasn't a place for our people to go or a place to gather around. When the temple was started four years ago it felt like it is a big place to come and share everything. Food has been provided after every pujas so they like to come have food, have puja and go happily after.
Now the religion is actually followed from my family, my mother and our relatives are all Hindu so the religion, as is normal, was taught from when I was young. Because in Sri Lanka we have religious studies, learning the religion from boyhood I carry on learning the religion and follow the guides, whatever we’re taught, do good things and serve your community. We also spend a lot of time for the temple, we have special days. Every year we’ve got about fifteen to twenty festivals, we follow the festivals. Apart from that we have ten days special festival as well, we’re planning it in May this year. 21st to 31st of May this year. Now that is started from villages, if it is a small village people work a whole year. They don’t get any rest or any festivals or functions. So what they did, they start this ten days festival, then during the ten days festival people don’t go to work, they all get together and start in the temple, because say if you’ve got a seaside area you can go for a vacation, for a seaside holiday, its similar, like a holiday min their home town. Everybody comes, everybody works together, everybody celebrates, everybody cooks together, we eat. It’s like a whole community as a family.
It is very valuable because we can pass very good things to children, that is one of my main reasons as well, children need to follow our religion. If we don’t teach them when they are young they never follow the religion, if they grow up without the religion its very very difficult because I learned the religion when I was very very small, I went with my father, I’d stay in the temple, every time after school I’d go to the temple, weekly I’d go to the temple, special days. So our children need to learn like that, need to go to the temple and spend time. Then they can learn very very good things in the temple, we always teach them very very good things.
Yeah the religion is normally a path for following good things. When they come to the temple, when they see the god they think some superior power is there and they give respect to them and then respect to elders, good manners, good habits. Everything has been started from like a base from the building of the child. If they are growing up and we ask them to adapt something its very difficult, if they come along with that its easy to follow for them. So the temple is like the temple of all religion, everything is guiding us to a good path. Thats the main thing of the religion.
Normally religion shouldn't harm anyone, thats the main thing. To have respect for another man or women, and shouldn't harm anyone. Treat like yourself, the others as well. Like if I want something, another person should get the same. It’s like, treat everyone equal and share, try to share whatever you have. Because, a lot of people earning money, because the temple ways, so everyone can’t afford something but some people can afford, and the affordable people give money, and they will share with everyone.
And the temple.
To the temple as well. An example we can say now, after prayer today everyone gets food. The foods served, we don’t charge for the food but somebodys donating their wealth. Because you can see the rice and everything here. These are the donation people. They don’t expect anything. We try to give everyone the food. In an example. Like the same way we can give something prayer, people know. Everyones not happy in life, some people got problems. Some people got something to do. An example, a child wants to study very hard, okay, so she comes to the god saying “I want help, help me to study” believe or not she can say, okay I asked the god, I need to work hard. Its like something you need to grab. Even you don’t see or never believe or anything, but somethings there okay thats a belief. We’re giving the belief through the temple.
Religions like, if you say somebody's not knowing what it is, its a sort of thing guiding a person in a good way, thats the main thing. Wether it is the Hindu religion or Christianity or Muslim. All the religions are teaching the person to be a good person, no religion is telling you to harm somebody or hurt somebody. All religions are teaching something so its making us realise some superior power is there, it can be named as any god. Ganesh, Jesus or Allah, it doesn't matter. The Gods are going to be there to guide us in a good manner. And recently I read an article saying some people say their prayers are not being answered by the god, why I should keep on going to the temple and say the same prayers again again again? And in that article I read a good thing, that when I’m coming to the god to pray, lets say for example I want good money or I need to get good work so my attitude will be toward the work coming for the first prayer, and if I’m coming for the next prayer and I say the same thing “Please God, give me good work” it means my mind, my heart, everything is dedicated towards that attitude. So as I say more prayers I’m getting more positive thought towards it and I’m working more on that. So its like, creating positive energy in ourselves and making us achieve our aim.
In Liverpool, there was more than ten years since my husband moved and there wasn't any Hindu temple. Recently, like four years back, we started this temple. We can see the people when they come to the temple, children born in those ten years, they don’t even try to spend time inside this building. Sometimes they say religion is boring, Puja is boring, we like to sit in the car. Just spend five minutes for their parents sake, they come and go. Only when they grow along with that, or any religion or any belief, they get adapted to it. Now my children or any children born in the last five years, they’re growing along with the temple, along with the religion, everything, along with the community, everything. So they come to know what is our culture, what is our way fo lifestyle, everything. Our food… sort of thing. Here many people say my children don’t eat good at home, when they come to the temple they eat really good. Those sort of things. So if you ask, its really a good motivation in the children aspect, cultivating our culture, our lifestyle, good habits, anything. I like to say even the dresses, because they don’t get used to our dresses anywhere in this country particularly. So when they come to the temple we say that they need to follow this dress code, so they get to wear our dresses a lot now if they come to the temple.
Now a lot of our people actually came to this country very recently so I can see, because of the ethnic problem in Sri Lanka, a lot of Sri Lankans came to this country. A lot of Indians actually came for work like doctors or highly skilled computer software engineers, they came. But this first generation already know about the religion in their home country. But its made a little difficult, the next generation should follow hardly because England is totally different. My daughters studying in a christian school. But she also knows both religions very well. So still, she is learning both religions. So I think if we give them a good mixture of both religions it can help them and what they need to do. I think we have a very good generation we can make. But in my workplace I can see a lot of Atheist, is that right? But still they dont believe this. But I don’t know how to know what the next generation will be like, its a little hard to predict, but they may come back, they may, we don't know that they may come back. Still, we like to take whatever we can because the temple is I think a very good path for good things because if people don’t have anything like this then they will live a different version of life in the community so I think people who follow any religion are a very good thing for the community as well.
Religion is, as we already mentioned, guiding us to follow a good path, as long as it is not going to harm anybody. Because if it is India, if we are talking about religion worldwide, the religion is completely different in India because everybody is going to be a community of people. It’s different here, but nowadays people are treating religion not like something which is going to give them good culture or takes them to good. They are misusing it in many places. its maybe people who are trying to, eerm what is it? they want to show their powers using their religion, its not really a good thing. Say like, I know that person can do something in the name of the religion and they use that religion to see this as because they are doing some harm to your religion so you hurt this person, definitely is going to hurt this person, by making him, inspiring him towards his religion in a bad way. Still we can say, preach it in a good manner. It’s like a few people these days we can say are misusing the religion but many are trying to use the religion for a good purpose and to guide them in good manners because the religion is giving us positive energy. A temple is not like a God or Jesus, if you enter into a temple or a church or a mosque those places are going to give you thats the attitude of religion. it’s not like worshipping any god, its going to inspire us throughout they positive energy in our heart, in our brain, thats it. its not something where we’re going to do any harm to anybody. Even as my husband is saying a no religion person, they are like, following something instead of saying a god, without god they are following a religion. So religions, as long as they are going to do good its worth it.
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