Triptych Conversations

The Masterpieces






1. Midnight Mass (Mike Flannagan, 2021)
















Midnight Mass is a 7-part Netflix series that came out in 2021, created by horror aficionado Mike Flanagan. Which, for many of us is not exactly the greatest selling point. But bear with this, since there was method in Sophie’s madness for suggesting we watch this. For the purposes of the episode, we focused just on the first two episodes: Genesis & Psalms (click image right for full list of intriguing episode titles).
A remote island, cut off by weather and failed ferries to the mainland, is the setting, a small community that revolves (for better or worse) around the island’s Catholic Church. This has beeb led by the elderly priest, Monsignor Pruitt, for years, but he is away on sick leave. The compelling but somewhat mysterious Father Paul stands in his place.
This is a beautifully depicted community. But the most striking thing about the whole conception, as we discussed in the pod, is that none of it feels clichéd.













































2. Green Mountain Falls Skyspace (James Turrell, 2022)












James Turrell (1943– , USA) is a brilliant American artist who works with light. Green Mountain Falls is a remote town in Colorado and Turrell’s SKYSPACE was installed there in 2022 as part of a local arts project.
The principle is very simple. A windowless cube of a room, with seating up against each of the four walls up in the mountains. But in the roof, there is a retractable door. Beyond that, only sky. Within the cube, sophisticated lighting can transform the atmosphere at the touch of a programmable button.
Find out more here.






















































3. Who Are We Fooling (Brooke Fraser with Aqualung, 2010)












Brooke Fraser (1983- ) is a singer from New Zealand and, for years, was associated with Hillsong Worship. But she has built a successful global career in her own right. The song Who Are We Fooling? is taken from her Flags album from 2010 and was written with the British singer Aqualung (aka Matt Hales).
As Joel notes in our conversation, the song is unusual in being a genuine duet, rather than just a tune sung together. This is a musical dialogue that cuts right to the heart in the most affecting way.
Here is a live version with a different singer, TEEKS, and the Auckland Philharmonia from 2024.




























Other Mentions






Opening Gambit: Fave Pop Culture Moments

Sophie: John Travolta’s Adele Dazeem

Joel: Jamaica wins 1st, and 2nd equal (Gold and 2 Silvers) at Beijing Olympics

Mark: Boaty McBoatface

The Masterpieces












1. Leif Enger's I CHEERFULLY REFUSE (2025)






We start with a very up-to-date masterpiece this time: Leif Enger’s 2025 novel I Cheerfully Refuse. Enger is perhaps not so well known on this side of the Atlantic, but he deserves to be. His writing is lyrical and evocative, and the world he creates for this novel is fascinating. It falls within the genre of dystopia but it wears that lightly. For example, we never discover the nature of the cataclysm that transforms the world, only that it has occurred at some unspecified moment prior to the story. The fact that Enger wrote it during the Covid lockdowns (a bit like Amor Towles’ A Gentleman In Moscow) is not incidental, however!

Set in the Great Lakes of North America, Enger’s characters wrestle with the challenges of this new environment, struggling to create a sense of order and community against the odds, while constantly trying to preserve their humanity. Recently widowed when his beloved wife Lark dies, Rainy befriends Sol, a young tearaway who joins him on his Orpheus-like journey.

Despite coming from an essentially Christian foundation, the book is far too well-written and brilliantly conceived to descend into crude tub-thumping. Instead it is a moving and ultimately hope-filled testimony to reslience and wonder (not a million miles away from Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven).

For more, listen to the conversation Russell Moore had with Leif Enger soon after the book came out – it’s full of fascinating and intriguing insights into the book and its meanings.












2. J. M. W. Turner's THE FIGHTING TEMERAIRE (1838)












Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was one of Britain’s greatest painters and of all his myriad works, The Fighting Temeraire is perhaps his most beloved. In polls purporting to identify Britain’s greatest/favourite/best (etc) painting, this frequently comes out on top (whatever that means). It is certainly one of the main attractions in the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square.












This is a painting about transition, about the end of one era overlapping with the commencement of a new one. It depicts the final journey of the Temeraire (which had seen glorious service at the Battle of Trafalgar itself), as the ship is towed from Sheerness in Kent along the river Thames to Rotherhithe in south-east London, where it was to be scrapped. For various reasons, this painting is an impossibility, a fiction to portray a greater truth. But it is one of those paintings that mesmerises the viewer, because the more you look, the more you see. Turner adored painting grand landscapes (in the manner of Claude) with the gorgeous wide colour-spectrum so characteristic of dawn and sunset. But it is no accident that this moment of high nostalgia is bathed in a pre-dusk light.

It is unsurprising then that this image means so much to a nation prone to nostalgia about past, so-called glories! And therefore, it was the perfect setting to a James Bond reaching the end of his usefulness…




























3. U2's 3 Songs from NO LINE ON THE HORIZON (2009)












It was only a matter of time. U2 had to make it onto Triptych at some point, for reasons that regulars to my blog will know all too well. I’m only hoping that you were all impressed by my self-restraint in holding it back to this stage in the second season.




































Instead of taking one song, or one album, we’re doing something a little unorthodox but there is actually method in the madness. And no, this is NOT the album U2 foolishly gave away to the world for free if they had an iPod or iPhone or whatever it was at the time. That was definitely a misfire.

This album is the one before that one, and came out in 2009. It’s quite hard to pin down as a whole, but after the opening title track, it does seem to be formed of three little groupings. And this is the first set. They are the most explicitly theological of the album’s tracks, and they each do intriguing things. You can go into a lot more depth if you wish by reading this longer engagement that I wrote this longer engagement that I wrote some years’ back. But for now, read the lyrics (r) and listen to the episode!












































Other Mentions: 3 'Slappable' Characters!














Joel: Yoda from the Star Wars franchise

Sophie: Uriah Heep from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield 

Mark: Kenneth Widmerpool from Antony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time (esp when played by Simon Russell-Beale)

The Masterpieces

1. Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Godzilla Minus One is the latest in Japan’s long-running Godzilla franchise. But dispel all thought of dumb Hollywood monster-pics that revel in cheap thrills and facile redemptive arcs. This film, directed and co-written by Takashi Yamazaki,  is surprisingly arresting. It is characterised by scores of unforgettable images, genuine seriousness in grappling with the legacy of historic horror, and, above all, a rich, affecting narrative.

The protagonist, Kōichi Shikishima, is a survivor of the Second World War despite serving in one of Japan’s notorious Kamikaze squadrons. Consequently, the cloud of suspicion dogs him wherever he goes: did he shirk his duty? But that is nothing to the profound well of shame that plagues his thoughts and dreams. For not only did he fail as a kamikaze, he failed as the only one in a position to save his comrades from their brand new threat: a radioactive beast from the sea.

The film provides a rich vein for discussion and thought.
https://youtu.be/nAYKaslCXPc?si=gbbgr-c4bUCDcSwc
2. Simone Lia’s “Please God, Find Me A Husband!” (2012)

This is our first graphic novel on Triptych, for no reason other than that we’ve not done one before. As good a time as any to start with Please God, Find Me A Husband!.

Simone Lia‘s breakout book is an unputdownable, hilarious, supremely relatable memoir of heartache, faith and humanity. A painful breakup prompts a major reevaluation of life and purpose. Her season of reflection takes her in unexpected directions, via Catholic convents in Britain and Australia, while navigating romance and idealisation.

She is a professional illustrator and artist, born to Maltese parents and growing up in Suffolk, so cartooning is her natural story-telling language.




3. Bruno Catalano’s Les Voyageurs (2013-)

Bruno Catalano seems a restless soul, a man with roots and connections with many places, but has empathy with those in exile or without any roots at all. Born in Morocco to Franco-Italian parents in 1960, he moved with his family to Marseilles in southern France at the age of 10. The city is still his base of operations as a sculptor, but he only discovered an artistic bent later in life. For many years, he worked in the maritime world, including time in France’s SNSM (equivalent to the UK’s RNLI).

These experiences clearly inform his work today, because he has become particularly well known for his many pieces that explore themes of global migration and refuge.

Les Voyageurs is one such sequence, arresting depictions of migrants arriving on docksides carrying perhaps just a holdall or few plastic bags. But each figure is in some way fragmented or missing a significant section. They attract attention initially through apparent physical impossibility; but subsequent concentration arrests the view with a stark challenge to self-examination. How do we see these people? And what burdens or agonies do they bear?

Catalano, Bruno – Les VoyageursCatalano, Bruno – ParisCatalano, Bruno – Voyageurs – Vincent2Catalano, Bruno – VoyageursCatalano, Bruno (1960-) 2024 – The Metaphor of Travel Geneva 5Catalano, Bruno (1960-) 2024 – The Metaphor of Travel Geneva 6Catalano, Bruno (1960-) 2024 – The Metaphor of Travel Geneva 7Catalano, Bruno (1960-) 2024 – The Metaphor of Travel Geneva 8


Other Mentions

The Intro gambit: the unfinished!

Sophie: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy

Joel: Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Mark: George Eliot’s Middlemarch

https://youtu.be/X2bfFBbwGhI

The Masterpieces






1. "Assassins", The Crown ep 1:9 (2016)






Peter Morgan has made his name, despite his explicit republicanism, from dramatising the House of Windsor. First on stage, then in cinema, and more recently in Netflix’s blockbuster monolith, The Crown. The latter’s production values are spectacular, and certainly in the first two seasons (I confess I gave up in season 3 as it seemed to become more tabloidy), the synergy between script, actors and direction was impressive.
Season 1’s penultimate episode (Assassins) was written by Peter Morgan, directed by Benjamin Caron, and was first aired on 4th November 2016. The reason for choosing this one was because of its stellar acting and the dramatic poignancy of the storyline: Winston Churchill (a brilliant John Lithgow) is at last stepping down as Prime Minister to hand over to the desperately impatient Anthony Eden (Jeremy Northam). A portrait has been commissioned from Graham Sutherland (Stephen Dillane) by Parliament and there is going to be a great unveiling. It is the conversations between artist and subject especially that stand out.
It has to be one of the finest hours of television I’ve ever watched, I think.

















































































2. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)












A complete change of tone now. This is a classic satirical novel from the 1930s and on which has brought universal joy and guffaws to all who have spent any time on the farm.

Stella Gibbons (1902-1989) was an English journalist with a remarkable eye for the ridiculous. Cold Comfort Farm was a runaway success that’s never gone out of print; sadly it seems to have been the only one of her many books to have stood the test of time.

Her crosshairs were set on the rural sagas that had apparently been popular in the 1920s, many of which had been inspired by the doom-laden tomes of Thomas Hardy (such as the (IMHO) unbearably bleak Jude the Obscure). By common consensus her targets include the so-called ‘loam and lovechild’ novels (!) like Mary Webb’s Precious Bane (set in Shropshire) and Sheila Kaye-Smith’s Joanna Godden (in Kent).

But you certainly don’t need to have read those books to love this one (none of us had, in fact). Her turn of phrase is sparklingly witty and the pen-portraits of the various characters laugh-out-loud funny. And the greatest joy of all is that we never do discover the precise nature of the “something nasty in the woodshed” that so perplexed the matriarch and protagonist Flora Poste’s Aunt Ada Doom.

It sets imaginations running wild and so that’s perhaps why the phrase has become enshrined in the English language. It even appears in a song by Neil Hannon’s wonderfully arch and rakish band, The Divine Comedy












3. God Says Nothing Back by the Wallflowers (2005)












Rebel, Sweetheart was The Wallflowers fifth studio album. Lead singer, and songwriter of all the tracks, is Jakob Dylan (who is, as you might expect, son of Bob) and while it didn’t make huge chart waves, it’s a gorgeous and provocative album.

The sixth track is our focus: God Says Nothing Back. It’s a haunting song, full of questions and doubts, and fittingly, is hard to pin down.














































Other Mentions






Opening question: what album saved your life?

Joel: Rich Mullins’ Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth

Sophie: Mahler’s 5th Symphony

Mark: Peter Gabriel’s So

What happens when a young man battling Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (Matts Steen aka Ibelin) meets Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451 and the joy riders of Gertler's 1916 painting Merry-Go-Round...