On 6/3/05 12:06 PM, "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Somehow I missed Arni and I'm sorry I did.
Rumours of Arni's death are somewhat exaggerated - though it was a close
thing. He is recovering slowly but strongly from a cerebral haemorrhage
which struck just before Christmas and left him in a coma for two weeks.
Yes, Alaric Sumner's and Doug Oliver's deaths hit me hard - Alaric was UK
editor of Masthead for a time and Doug gave me a piece for Issue 4 (way long
time ago now) just before he died. I never got to meet either of them, and
as I was in the UK at the time had been making plans to.
There's an Alaric retrospective at Masthead 8,
http://www.masthead.net.au/current/contents8.html
if you haven't caught up with it - and Doug's piece, Of Bigotry and
Idealism, is up at http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/issue4/oliver.html
It looks pretty relevant now:
"Now I define "martyrdom" as self-sacrifice in the cause of an ideal that is
shared by a group.
"Martyrdom for what? For what cause, for what definition of the
good? Is the martyrdom of a Commune warrior equal to a Catholic martyrdom
or a Catholic martyrdom equal to that of a pacifist atheist or a pacifist's
martyrdom to that of a Ku Klux Klan member or to that of a Paisleyite or an
IRA terrorist in Northern Ireland? Social judgments come in
here. But they don't get to the quiddity of self-sacrifice.
"People who believe in religious or revolutionary utopias just love martyrs
and they love their graves.
"Therefore, I don't like the idea of martyrdom much. If the
impulse towards martyrdom is utopian or based on Paradise in an after-life,
that already implies a kind of murderousness in the dialectic between
individual and society. We usually achieve better effects through love,
which is calmer. In daily life even, love incurs small "sacrifices" of
a non-pathological kind, as when we let our child finish a dessert we
ourselves want or when we give away money.
"None of us have enough love. Obviously."
Interesting looking back to 2000 - the mag's really evolved since then. But
to blow my own trumpet slightly, it's always had good work.
If I seem to be mentioning MH a little often, it's because Issue 9 is coming
up...and I'm a bit excited.
All the best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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