If you are going to drop a name, drop a big one.
A few years ago I was chatting to Ian Rankin at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. It came out that I am a minister and he opined that most of crime fiction had at its heart the Seven Deadly Sins. But then he went on to say, and I am paraphrasing, ‘But that’s all about this life. It’s what happens in the next that really interests me.’ Unfortunately, at that point we were interrupted by someone who wanted their book signed and we didn’t get any further.
I wasn’t too surprised by the author’s comments. I had heard him in radio interviews taking about his belief in ghosts. He has also described the writing process as being a kind of spiritual experience. He sees it as channeling stories from a place where they are all woven together. So, a man open to a reality beyond himself.
It was Ian Rankin that got me interested in crime fiction. I was drawn in by the immediacy of his style, liked his principle character John Rebus, and appreciated the social commentary interspersed throughout the narrative. So I was interested to hear that he had written a Rebus short story as part of the BBC’s ‘Scenes For Survival’ and that the actor Brian Cox had taken on the role in a ‘talking head’ video. It’s called John Rebus: The Lockdown Blues.
I’ve never been entirely happy with the television portrayals of Rebus. Ron Donnachie did well as a radio Rebus - but then he was a friend of mine at Uni. (See this name dropping! Once you start . . . ) Anyway Brian Cox is good as a rather depressed, sometimes anguished Rebus trying hard to cope with the lockdown. Like many others he is ‘under shielding’ because of his age and an underlying health condition, COPD, probably brought on by his heavy smoking habit. He conveys a sense of crushing monotony only relieved by his records, his dog and visits from his former police colleague Siobhan Clarke who delivers his essential groceries and has brief conversations with him from the bottom of the stairs.
Rebus tells us how much he misses ‘the outside world’, the supermarkets, the shops, the pubs, the places where ‘you can hide from yourself.‘ That seems to be his main problem. Painfully he complains about being left with ‘the inside of my head.‘ His only relief really is when Siobhan rings the bell, when he finds his groceries on the doorstep, when he can shout to her down the stairs. He makes up his mind to tell her how much she means to him even if everyone in the close hears him.
It’s not easy viewing but there’s no harm in being reminded that there are people like Rebus out there and for us to realise how much it may be appreciated if we reach out in whatever way we can. And it’s not just about delivering the essentials. Rebus has a problem with the inside of his head. Some relief from that is surely something we all need.
Dion DiMucci was the frontman in Dion and The Belmonts and is sometimes described as a 1960s teen idol. But there must be something more to someone who has influenced Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen to name a few. He is now 80 years of age having come through a period of drug addiction and now firmly established in the Christian faith. He has issued a new album called Blues With Friends. In a recent interview he refers to the blues genre as ‘a form of sacred communion . . . I define it as the naked cry of the human heart, longing to be in union with God. Like the Psalms. King David wrote these songs - if you retitle them, you could call them the blues.’
I would have found Rebus’ Lockdown Blues more satisfying if he had more than just his encounters with Siobhan to lighten the heaviness in his inner life. For the Psalmist no matter his anguish, pain, experience of betrayal and even his sense of abandonment, he always turned to God. Openness to God and His promises brought steadiness, strength and peace.
‘For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock.’ (Psalm 27: 5)
