So I went to the Intermission fundraising concert for CMS that my sister put on last night, and I had a pretty good time. If you weren't there, well I'm sure you didn't know about it or had something better to do, and if you were there, it was good to see you, and sorry i had to leave early, I would've liked to have chatted longer, but I really needed to get to bed.
So anyway, it was a good night, and sparked several thoughts in my head, one about the paucity of Australian culture, but I'll explore that on in another post one day (hopefully), but mostly about the Karen people. So while I don't actually have any point to make, or even coherence to my thoughts, I wanted to share them anyway. The rest is up to you to read or not, I've done my bit.
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I really liked the way white shirts designated a single woman and black a married woman in the traditional clothes represented in the yesterday section. While I can see how that might be considered restrictive and rather one sided, as men don't seem to have anything to distinguish them, it would make it very convenient for me. Jonny also had the suggestion they could embroider what church they go to on their shirt, to make it even easier for me to follow up on them.
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That rock song rocked. Dude shredding away like he was a youngster, though most of the group were probably over 40. What rocked most was the old guy who just oozed cool. The one on the left with blue acoustic guitar. Nothing fazed him, he looked like he's seen it all before. We ended up calling him the Karen Cucumber, as in, "Cool as a..." He'd look great in a Jonny To or John Woo film. I need to see if he has an agent, try get him in my next film.
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The next song, that was just great. Not the most professional performance, or even the poetic of lyrics, but what it did was a amazing. When we think of the Karen people,we tend to think of them in negative terms, as in a people undergoing a great suffering, and rightly so I'd say. There's no doubt they suffer great persecution, that they're a displaced people, but this song flipped our perceptions. It took those negative labels, and turned them on their head, giving the positive side of the story. What was also great about it was the ownership of it. The song basically broke down into "They say this about the Karen, but we are this instead." It challenged us in our perceptions, it said you may see us as this, but we see ourselves as something better. I'm pretty sure the girl singing it wrote it, and that's why it worked so well, it was just such an honest statement in song, all the more powerful for it. And to turn the worldly suffering into heavenly praise, to take the long view, and not focus on the temporal, it was good stuff. You see us as children of suffering, but we are children of God.
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Lets finish up with the last act, the young guy on some traditional stringed instrument. No idea what he was singing about, but it sounded great.
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I have to wonder though, have any of these guys seen "Rambo", and if they have, I wonder what they think about it?
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