About
The Naked Sunscreen- Our Mission.
We are the oxymorons of our time. A renegade Blab Bahr where pretty much everything is on the house. Or under it. Or someplace between the wood and the trees. And we’ll have no truck with the Blahbarian hordes for whom you are a target for something or other. We are not into hits, or hitting, we are into why people are, why we habitually use the military term “strategy” when considering a plan of action somewhat critically involving our fellow human beings.
We at Naked Sunscreen believe at ground level, that life is an adventure. That this day, is the only day of this day, we are ever going to get, so we might make it good. Our assumption is that we need fear nothing in thought, in mind, in consciousness. To reflect upon a thing, upon any thing, is to increase its availability for choice. And this is freedom. This is a power, not over anything, but with everything. We only judge things, because we do not trust our ability to look only with a will to truth, and find out that which a thing is, for ourselves, and believe it.
And belief is no more than the intersection of our thoughts and actions at their most complete, satisfying and fulfilling. And we owe ourselves, this effort. Surely. Okay, we live in an ethos which might be somewhere on the outer reaches, of perfect. It might also be the very best we can do, right now. Then hey, if it is, then we choose it, wholly, as we never have. And make it sing, like it never has. On the other hand, er…well, there seems to be something deeply wrong around. Wrong in our very selves. And if we only knew, how to right it. Thence we do lurch about a bit, or grow molluscular. Whatever, we can look at it, reflect upon, and ponder it. We can bring all we are, to bear. Emotional, intuitive, intellectual, imaginative, logical, poetical, mathematical, experiential, and experimental, – we can bring every facet into a relationship which focuses the object of attention. And then we may know, that we know something, which while seeking its development, even destruction, needs no approval, or justification beyond its own lived basis. After all, and despite the fact that we are caught up in a legacy which would at every turn, reinforce the habits of obedience, it is all they are: habits. And no, we really do not have to do that. We really don’t. But we can choose to, we can explore and investigate, and find our object right worthy of obedience and the authority of wisdom.
Or, we may find it a most ridiculous piece of egocaemic bullying, worthy of nothing but scorn. Yes, and in the face of as many soundless twitterings, we can know a place apart. A quiet place, embarked upon a stillness. Here we may know our thought like incandescent filaments arced between stars.
Yea, the Naked Sunscreen, screams like Maria Callas. We write for those who might like to think of themselves, of who we are, as the sum of our relationships, with everything. With every person their own unique configuration, wanting its form, and symmetry, just like the scientific petals of a flower. Think of the sky, above you. And below you, and all around you. From where you stand in every direction: space. And this space, that we are a part of, is immense beyond imagining, and if it is confined, and limited, then it must be confined and limited, in a further space. There’s no escaping it. The infinite, in every direction. As the meaning of the infinite best serves to qualify our human capability and desire, and thence encounter that which is not, human. Every measure of things, is our own. Storks have beaks. And doubtless their worlds are storkled through and through.
The me and the you, we are a part of it all, continuous with it, and despite all the propagandas of pessimism, we belong, here. I have just slashed my leg, on the edge of a table. It smarts, and bleeds. Now the bleeding stops, thickened. And if I can leave it alone then it will also heal. My car is not like this.
God is probably an almighty conductor, somewhat electrical, who spends rather too much time waving its arms about to at least one species who just cannot hear the music, and refuse the magic of their instruments. Indeed some rather worthy men, not only in their own estimation, have erected impressive intellectual structures, demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that life is as meaningless as Waiting for Godot. Which attracts a Nobel Prize. But life in a forever dissolving world must end up in a very black hole.
Science, is a way of life. It is the way of passionate enquiry, intellectual adventure, and innovation. How many noticed that the white coat is but the cassock of the new priesthood. And their issue, like the old priesthood, is not truth, but authority. Dogma, must not be questioned, and is the idol of the most idolatrous minds. And just how many young and eager souls, awaken with a shock, to find themselves in the middle of a political arena they had only stumbled into. But so slimy, and people slipping and slopping and slapping all over the place. It’s stuck to us. Accepting an assumption that only if we do as we are told do we get to eat and sleep. But I can do what I’m told, without accepting the assumption. With invisible reluctance.
If we look carefully we may find black thread weaving through all that we have hitherto called civilisation. The black thread of slavery. Forced labour. Under compulsion and threat. Whereas, the hawk stooping to the callow minnow, is not undertaking an extra chore to its otherwise hovering life. And oh the grace!
The birds and fish have their elements, humans have the mind. And it is a creative element, not to be found on the Periodic Table.
Science, must with its impressive emphasis, strike upon its own expressiveness. Mountains of data, do not a meaning make. The scientist must tell a story, which makes sense between the data and experience. And often the most significant stories start as for the poet, with a gratuitous inspiration. A sudden, unexpected and startling clarity, and insight which then charges towards the context of its reality or demise. Oh what fun this is. For an independent mind.
Of the independent mind and the Naked Sunscreen, we shall write more.
Gavin Greenoak
Amanda Foxon-Hill
