ARE YOU RELIGIOUS?

It's a question I'm often asked. It shouldn't surprise me, given I've created an album filled with Judases, Josephs and Jesuses, but it always strikes me as a weird conversation. What are they actually asking, those post-performance punters?

It seems to me that, more often than not, they are asking if I think like them. Fair enough. Who the hell makes an album about a Bible character anyway?

These conversations, at their most extreme, soon sound as if these punters have erected a fence through the pastures of humanity - like most people do - with Us on one side and Them on the other and they are asking if I'm on their side. They are attempting to categorise me as either in or out, here or there, on this or that side of the fence. They are trying to work out how to relate with me.

More often than not, if it seems to them that we think similarly, the conversation continues and it is as if I am being welcomed into something. There's no secret handshake or anything, but it starts to sound like only we have the truth and those on the other side of the fence do not. We are in, they are out. We are right, they are wrong.

Quaintly enough, these folk are typically adamant about their non- or anti-religiosity. Nevertheless, the conversation always feels to me like one which opens the door to a secret society - or a religion - then slams it shut behind me.