Kate Wickens's Blog: Celebrate the Human

Atë

When I found Atë, it was after an incredibly long audition.

I was tired.   It felt like I’d been in a school hall for days - the smell of old gym shoes and deodorant lingering in the air; heavy curtains shutting out the daylight.

And I still wasn't done:  hopeful deity after hopeful deity – Mafdet,  Qadesh, Eos, Hedone, Pahket – all doing their stuff upon the stage to convince me they had what it took for the lead role.

They all had commendable star qualities -  and none of them were someone...

Atë

When I found Atë, it was after an incredibly long audition.

I was tired.

It felt like I’d been in a school hall for days - the smell of old gym shoes and deodorant lingering in the air; heavy curtains shutting out the daylight.

And I still wasn't done:  hopeful deity after hopeful deity – Mafdet,  Qadesh, Eos, Hedone, Pahket – all doing their stuff upon the stage to convince me they had what it took for the lead role.

They all had commendable star qualities -  and none of them were someone yo...

We live in weird times. I don’t think there’s any getting away from that.

 A time when a narcissistic windbag is in charge of the most powerful country in the world and treats the whole thing like a domestic spat over who gets to have the TV remote control for the evening.

A time when ‘Great’ Britain becomes internationally laughed at for being the country that got tricked by a bus.

A time when the most comforting thing we can think of to do is to watch a Youtube loop of kittens falling off a ta...

There are 7.4 billion of us and yet somehow it feels like we’re an endangered species at the moment.

Celebrate the Human is a blog that celebrates humans who are especially heartening in these times.

It reminds us of why we will succeed in resisting the meanness, greed and petty-mindedness of the demagogues and corporations who are trying to rule our world.

It reminds us of why, rather than giving up in despair and resignation, the human is actually worth fighting for in all its brave, imaginative, generous, wise, bonkers, brilliant, unruly splendour.

Rowena Cade is up there for her visionary determination and Kurt Vonnegut for his humour and compassion. Others planned for the near future are Maya Angelou for her resilience and openness; Nick Cave for his mythic story-telling; Caitlin Moran for her irreverent determination to make female unsaids mainstream and Alan Watts for his considered embrace of alternative ways of thinking.

On May 10th, we’re launching a massive Celebrate the Human online event in conjunction with the release of my novel Cursed Love Blues – a punk feminist book about an exiled goddess who, albeit grudgingly, learns to appreciate the baffling beauty and strange richness of humans.

The online event on the day itself will be about raising awareness about this project and the book by celebrating and publicising a variety of artists, healers, musicians and writers from all different walks of life.

Essentially it’s about celebrating humans who are making a positive difference.

We’ll be discussing what it means to bring out the best of being human and we’ll be focusing on culture in all its richness, especially where creativity, community, feminism, activism and healing are concerned.

Buy a copy of Cursed Love Blues on the 10th May from Amazon and receive loads of free stuff!

Artwork prints; yoga and meditation audios; playlists of revolutionary music; ground-breaking essays; short films and a manifesto for starting a Culture Club.

You’ll also be entered into a prize draw to win places on writers’ and healing courses; theatre and gig tickets; signed albums, artwork and books

Find out more at www.katewickens.me

 

Okay, I feel like we know each other well enough now so I’m going to be hands-on-heart honest with you.

It wasn’t Maya Angelou who inspired this blog theme.

It wasn’t Nelson Mandela or Malala Yousafzai who made me think that actually the human race is worth saving after all.

 It wasn’t Nina Simone or Freda Kahlo who made me worried that computers, when they finally take over, aren’t going to properly appreciate the human species in all its full dizzying variety.

 No.

It was Isabella Rossellini.

An...

 

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.” 

My ideal man, since you’re asking, would be a combination of Neil Gaiman and Kurt Vonnegut in the body of Michel Huisman.  Of course, my husband already comes very close to this. Certainly on the beard front anyway.

But Kurt Vonnegut.....

 

So, once upon a time (1989 to be precise) they made a film about a man who built a baseball diamond in a field of corn. Yes, that’s right.  And, hard though it may be to imagine from the basic plot alone,  Field of Dreams became one of the biggest films of the year cementing Kevin Costner’s status as the 1980s thinking human’s heart-throb (it was because of his eyes, you see).

 

There were a lot of important life lessons to take away from this film – and chief among them was th...

 

It’s pretty easy to feel gloomy about the world at the moment which is why there’s never been a more urgent time to remind ourselves what an imaginative, brave, generous, thoughtful, bonkers, brilliant species we can be when we put our hearts and minds to it.

 

Just over a year ago, I crouched around a campfire in a field bum-cresting the Atlantic, while a gale that hadn’t let up for forty-eight hours whipped around us. We were two days into a week of camping. There were plenty of reasons to f...