Faith, hope and FOMO

Missing out on seeing her favourite band's first live gig provides Mica Gray a lesson in doubt and faith.

Mica Gray

Mica Gray is a wellbeing practitioner working in adult mental health. She is training to be a counselling psychologist.

A singer stands beside musical instrument behind pink frosted glass on the front of a stage.

SAULT's first gig.

The morning found me sat upright at my work desk between two tasks. One half of me was talking to my colleague and the other was debating the ticket prices on my computer screen. My favourite music group SAULT had just announced their first ever live show and I was one of the lucky ones who had managed to fight through the ticket queue to get to the point of purchase. The group had put out nine studio albums in the past four years and had never given a single interview nor put out a piece of promotional material that would reveal their identities. I was excited like so many others to finally get a glimpse behind the veil.

The only problem was that the ticket price was high. Yes, it was my favourite band, but they had never done a live show before. How could I be sure it would be worth the expense? Across social media others were expressing similar doubts. SAULT had never played a live show before. The venue they’d chosen was an abandoned IKEA - hardly the Roundhouse or the Royal Albert Hall. There would be no alcohol at the venue, how were gig goers supposed to have fun? Given that the band's lyrics often focus on spiritual themes, and that high ticket price, was this another case of a religious group trying to financially exploit their followers. While SAULT have not professed to be a Christian band, a lot of their lyrics focus on spiritual themes and reference God as Lord. The show itself was called ‘Acts of Faith’ after all. By the time I had deliberated and decided that I would take the chance and get the tickets they were gone. The show had sold out.

Three days later, footage from the show began to circulate online. Videos revealed elaborate stage designs, dance sequences, choir performances, a full orchestra, exhibitions, fashion shows and so much more. Testimonies flooded the timeline with “it was the show of the year” being a common refrain. Many of the doubters came back to say how wrong they were, how the show was worth so much more than the price. How the artists behind SAULT were seasoned professionals and this was anything but an amateur performance. How the venue was perfect, and any other place would not have worked. How the lack of alcohol didn’t matter because there was such a ‘heavenly’ atmosphere.

Scrolling through all the content I realized how perfect the title ‘Acts of Faith’ was for this show. Were there was no assurance that the cost of the show would be worth it, it would have been an act of faith to trust the artists and buy those tickets anyway. It would have been an act of faith to trust their choice of venue, of making it an alcohol-free event. I imagine it would’ve been an act of faith for the artists themselves too - an act of faith to step out and produce such an elaborate show for the first ever live event. An act of faith to pour all their effort into it without any experience to say that it would work out the way it did.

Those SAULT fans who saw the doubts and uncertainties and still decided to act in faith were able to witness something magical.

As I watched this all unfold, I couldn’t help but think of how much courage it takes to step out in faith in these ways. As a trainee psychologist, my studies tell me that faith is a subset of hope. One which is associated with positive mental health and wellbeing, resilience, coping with anxiety and healthy relationships. Faith tends to have an additive impact on our lives.

Doubt on the other hand, is a protective mechanism that helps us to minimize risk so that we can preserve ourselves, others or our resources. Doubt often works by integrating our past experiences into our present. For instance, those who shared their doubt about the quality of SAULT’s first live show did so for good reason. Many first artist shows are underwhelming for fans. Spiritual leaders and groups have exploited followers in the past. An old IKEA hasn’t historically been the best venue for esteemed musicians. On that evidence, attending the show seemed like it would have just been a loss. However, what actually happened was quite the opposite. Those SAULT fans who saw the doubts and uncertainties and still decided to act in faith were able to witness something magical. It reminded me of John, one of the followers of Jesus, who wrote: ‘blessed are they who have believed but not seen’. Sometimes, we want to see the evidence of our faith so that we can believe we have good grounds on which to make a decision, and that is wise. But sometimes, faith asks us to go beyond our wisdom, to go beyond our lived experiences and to be open to something new that we haven’t seen yet.

Of course, not all acts of faith work out the way that SAULT’s first show did. Sometimes we step out in faith and rather than having our hopes realized, we are met with disappointment. We are met with our fears coming true and met with risks that become real losses. Though those moments can be deeply painful, we can at least be glad that we had the courage and ability to hope at all. Those moments remind us that sometimes the act of faith is the end in itself, they remind us that it is not about the reward of faith, but about keeping the flame of hope alive underneath it.

Though I won’t be able to look back years from now and say I was at SAULT’s first show as I would’ve liked to - thanks to the password I couldn’t recall, I can look back and say that morning where I was sat at my desk between the faith and doubt taught me a valuable lesson: faith is not the absence of doubt, but the ability to see beyond it - to choose beyond it. In 2024, I think that’s a lesson worth holding on to.

Review

Culture

Film & TV

Paganism

8 October 2024

5 min read

Kaos shows why we might think twice before inviting the old gods back

The illusory glamour of Olympian gods titillates us once more.

Theodore Brun

Theodore is author of the historical fiction series The Wanderer Chronicles. He previously studied Dark Age archaeology at Cambridge, and afterwards worked in international law.

A mock classical ceiling painting depicts modern version of the classical gods.

Ye gods above.

Netflix.

The old gods are making a comeback all across Western culture. This is a conclusion increasingly reached by a spectrum of culture-watchers; some religious, some not at all. But, if true, the boldest and brashest example of this comeback may well be the new Netflix series KAOS, starring Jeff Goldblum, released last month.

Kaos is a genre-busting mythological dark comedy-drama. One might say a modern re-summoning of the pagan gods.

Charlie Covell, the writer and mastermind behind the show, and a self-confessed mythology geek, has created a colourful, high production, and often funny depiction of what the world might be like if the gods of Olympus still ruled over us. The plot follows several different strands taken from Greek mythology - most obviously Orpheus’s journey into the Underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice - and weaves them together into a larger narrative, retelling the downfall of the gods.

As the show opens, Zeus reigns as king of the gods from his fantastically kitsch mansion atop of Mount Olympus. So long as the sacrifices and adulation of humankind keep rolling in, he is happy. But when he wakes one day to discover a new wrinkle on his forehead, this triggers not only a kind of mid-life crisis, but also possibly - so he fears - the end of the world as he knows it.

Goldblum plays Zeus as, well, Jeff Goldblum: quirky, nervy, paranoid, and not a little menacing in an understated way. In other words, perhaps more “Jeff Goldblum” than you’ve ever seen him on screen before. It is certainly a compelling and sometimes hilarious portrayal.

“A line appears, the order wanes, the family falls, and Kaos reigns.”

This is the prophecy that has haunted Zeus for aeons. What he doesn’t know is that he shares this personalised prophesy with three other mortals in the story - Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau), Caneus (Misia Butler), and Ariadne (Leila Farzad) - all of whom will play an unwitting role in bringing about the overthrow of the world order under the Olympian gods (hence: KAOS). The early episodes establish who these mortals are and begin to draw their disparate stories together.

Counterpoint to Zeus is his brother, Hades, ruler of a literally black-and-white underworld, with David Thewlis brilliantly cast in the role as the world-weary and ailing keeper of the realm of the dead. Something is amiss down there which threatens the whole system of human souls and what happens to them. When he tries to warn his brother, Zeus’s disdain for Hades and his problems only makes matters worse. Also in the frame of this dysfunctional family are Hera (Janet McTeer) and Poseidon (Cliff Curtis) - brother and sister (and wife in Hera’s case) to Zeus, as well as being lovers behind his back, who are poised to put into effect their own betrayals, if Zeus goes too far off the rails.

Last, but not least, since he proves the bridge between the gods and humans is Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), one of Zeus’s many children. (But the only one who comes to visit.) A hedonistic agent of chaos from the outset, Dionysus seems to be the only one of the gods with any genuine interest or admiration for humans. Impressed by rock-star Orpheus’s passionate love for his wife, Eurydice (“Riddy”), it is Dionysus who helps Orpheus break into the Underworld to get her back when she dies, thus triggering the series of events that could let to the fulfilment of the prophesy.

The illusory glamour of the gods of Olympus seem to titillate us once more. We don’t really believe in them, but we’d kind of like to see more of them all the same.

Smart, stylish, twisty and certainly original - (the entrance to the Underworld is through a dumpster bin around the back of a bar) - Kaos is an ambitious multi-stranded epic about power, fate, love, and family. But perhaps above all, it is saying something about the relationship between humanity and the divine. At one point, one mortal tells another that the only good things in life are human. This feels like a statement of underlying intent. And the way the gods (especially Zeus) become more capricious, more sadistic, more vengeful as the story unfolds, the more it feels like we’re encouraged to agree. Defiance of the gods is the real mark of virtue here. Rebellion against the gods, the natural outworking of that defiance.

The irony is that whatever distaste which Kaos succeeds in cultivating in us, the viewer, for pagan forms of the divine may help explain why, historically, Christianity swept aside all the pantheons of pagan worship of the first millennium in the wholesale way that it did. Jesus Christ literally incarnates that bridge between the divine and the human. And what’s more, the message he preached claimed that, far from disdaining humanity, God loves them so much that he was willing to be the sacrifice for their good. And not the other way round, demanding incessant and capricious sacrifice by humans instead.

Now, centuries later, in Western culture, familiarity seems to have bred contempt with that far more hopeful story. Instead, the illusory glamour of the gods of Olympus seem to titillate us once more. We don’t really believe in them, but we’d kind of like to see more of them all the same. And storytellers like Charlie Covell are only too willing to give the public what they want. If the old gods are indeed trying to make a comeback, Kaos shows us why we might think twice before inviting them in.

Does Kaos succeed? It certainly makes a valiant attempt to marshal a large number of plot lines involving a huge cast of characters, unfortunately not all of whom are interesting enough to keep you coming back for more. And an awful lot is riding on there being a Season 2 - that is, if the threads we have followed so far are to lead on into a satisfying and meaningful conclusion.

Without that, I’m afraid the whole thing may be left standing alone as a work of, well… chaos.