kagablog

when a cocaine dawn starts crumbling
and the heat of Africa snows

only fucking you
can make it all melt

away.

Our next door neighbour is from Nova Scotia. I thought I could hear it when she talked, the way she said somewheres, as in, if you’ve got somewheres else to be, the way she said down home about her hometown. Where you from, I finally asked her this morning. Bridgewater, she said, you know, Lunenburg County. No shit, I said. Beautiful up there. She nodded.

My mom is crazy about the South Shore. She always wanted to get rich and have a cottage up on Mahone Bay. Gorgeous. Yeah, she said, it really is. Boring though, when you’re a teenager.

Yeah, I hear that, I said. I’m from the Valley, from Kentville, in King’s County. Oh I know Kentville, she said. I love the Apple Blossom Festival. You sound like a tourist, I teased her. What are you, a fan of the parade or something? I always hated that stuff growing up, so cheesy. She slapped my arm, but gently. Yeah, but it’s fun. The Valley is beautiful in the fall. Yeah, I guess so, I said.

Holy Shit, you know, I think you’re the first person I’ve met out here from home. She smiled. You too.

She had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen. She kind of looked like she was from the country. She was curvy, with big blue eyes and blond hair. She had big breasts and wore a tight shirt and jean shirts that looked like cut offs, all ripped and worn. She kind of looked like a sexy farmer’s daughter or something, the kind of girl I never would’ve looked at twice growing up, who suddenly seemed so hot to me right then. I leaned in towards her. She had shiny lip glossy lips.

I gotta go soon, she said. My husband is picking me up soon.

Husband? My voice actually squeaked a little as I said the word.

Yeah. I met him when I was living out west, in Calgary. He’s from Ontario. He wanted to try our luck in an even bigger city. I hate it here.

I sighed. Me too, I find myself saying. I really hate it here sometimes too.

Is the girl you live with, the one with the flowing skirts, your wife?

I shuddered. No, God, no, I said, before I could stop myself.

She laughed. She touched the side of my face with her rough fingers. You’ll meet the right person someday, she said.

Yeah, I said to her, thanks. Nice talking to you.

The thing is, I do love Nicki. But can you really love someone you’re always fighting with, that’s always infuriating you, and driving you crazy?

I want to tell her about my past so badly, want to tell her what happened, how the beat the shit out of a guy I barely knew, how I broke his back and put him in a chair, and ruined his life. I want to tell her how I wake up sweating at night about it, ten years later. I want to tell her how badly I want it to be ok, how I want the guy to forgive me, even though he shouldn’t, how I want to forgive myself most of all.

I want to tell her how I can’t travel with her, like she wants. She talks about travel all the time, and I can’t leave the country. Sometimes, when things are good, I want to take her back home with me,

to see my town, and the other towns around it. I want to show her where I came from, how beautiful it is. I want to show her everything, and really tell her the stuff that matters about me.

I miss Nova Scotia really bad sometimes, the open spaces, the pines and spruces, the ocean.

I miss seeing apples in the fall, rows of trees with tiny flashes of red and yellow peeking through leaves. I miss the glacial beauty in winter- frozen streams and brooks with ice frozen in cracked ovals that looks like agate. Even the animals are in your face in Toronto- the raccoons are huge and aggressive, totally not afraid of you. They look you in the eye and hiss, like they know they’re the ones in control. It’s fucked up, I’ve never seen anything like it. The squirrels are big and black or grey, and mangy.

I miss camping and seeing water everywhere I look and knowing where I’m going all the time, when I drive.

There’s things I love about Toronto-the way everything is open twenty four hours, the way if there’s anything you want in the world, you can find it, the way you can just grab a cab or buy a cd or dvd or jewellery or clothes or anything off the street, from some vendor who’s always there, the way everything is cheaper here. In so many ways, life is easier and more exciting.

But if I’m honest, what I like the most about Toronto is the anonymity. I love the way people don’t know me here, I love the fact that I can walk down the street or into my building or onto the subway with no one hassling me, or thinking I’m being rude for not making eye contact or saying hi. I like that I do whatever I feel like doing here- that I can be whoever I want, and no one really cares.

That’s the hardest part about being with Nicki- she always wants to know what I think or feel about everything- she wants to know me, things about me that I don’t feel comfortable or just don’t feel like sharing. I want to be with her, but I want to be able to take my space when I feel like it. She doesn’t know it, but I’m doing it to protect her. I know her, and there’s no way she’d be able to deal with what I’d have to tell her. She doesn’t know it, but I’m doing it for her own good, for both of our good.

It’s better this way, trust me. In every way, it’s easier.

Dear Colleagues,

There are a few points that I would like to address in the comments by professors Lucia and Muller.

Prof. Lucia writes: “hartmann was sympathetic to national socialism and tried (unsuccessfully it seems) to divorce his half-jewish wife in order to retain a high position at the vienna hochschule before he was somehow forced to leave and without too much hassle found his way to sa, where he was immediately appointed as lecturer at rhodes university.”

This is not what I said; I thought my report was more complicated and nuanced than that. What I attempted to demonstrate from the documents was that it SEEMED that Hartmann was planning to divorce his putatively half-Jewish wife in order to retain his position. But Orel had his doubts about Hartmann’s sincerity; furthermore, he - Hartmann - had not provided any proof of having done so. Orel also suspected that Hartmann was NOT truly sympathetic to National Socialism because he had volunteered for a leadership position in the Patriotic Front, which Orel probably rightly claimed showed Hartmann’s true political orientation: Hartmann was an Austro-Fascist, but not a Nazi. As Michael Haas observed, the Austro-fascists were trying to resist German Nazism and retain Austria’s independence. Orel also believed that Hartmann was lying about his intention to divorce his wife and join the Party. Obviously, the new Nazi-controlled Education Ministry also suspected Hartmann of dissimulation, otherwise he might not have been dismissed.

My larger point is that the documents show the lengths to which a person MIGHT go to hold onto his position and avoid exile. In such extreme situations, angels are few and far between. My point was that Hartmann was certainly not lily-white. But in being a shade of gray, he was no exception, certainly among artists and musicians, who, as I suggested, have been all too willing to serve any master, regardless of the circumstances, as long as they could retain their prestige, power, and income. The claim that “Hartmann was sympathetic to National Socialism” is a stretch; better to say that he /appears /to have tried to accommodate with it in order save his job and livelihood. In connection with the Hartmann case, I also mentioned Hindemith and Sibelius. A careful review of the documents shows that Hindemith too wiggled and squirmed mightily in the hope that he might be able to stay in Germany. In retrospect, Hindemith was fortunate that Hitler simply hated him personally and he was kicked out. And, Sibelius, even though by 1943 he was fully aware of the criminal anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, continued to take its money and collaborate in various ways right up to the bitter end.

Hartmann was infinitely fortunate that Prof. Smeath-Thomas of Rhodes University decided to hire him. In Hartmann’s case, no commission composed of Afrikaners or of ex-Nazis or others was involved: Hartmann was hired by Smeath-Jones, the Master of Rhodes University, who saved his career and possibly his life and that of his wife and daughter. Smeath-Jones deserves further investigation. A chemist, he remained at the University of Liverpool after he had obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in 1908 and worked his way up through the ranks until in 1919 he was awarded his Doctorate and appointed Senior Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry. He was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Cape Town in 1923 and held the post until 1938 when he was elected to the Mastership of Rhodes University College, Grahamstown. Thus, Smeath Jones must have come into contact with and hired Hartmann soon after he became Master.

Unfortunately, our knowledge of Hartmann’s biography is still too sketchy to allow a detailed correlation of the life with the music. After the conference, I spent a morning in the archives of the University of Capetown. I discovered that the beautiful fair copy of “Grahamstown Mass,” the great song of atonement and thanksgiving that Hartmann completed shortly after his arrival in South Africa in the summer of 1939, is dedicated to his wife and daughter (the pencil draft bears no dedication). Was this composition somehow connected with Hartmann’s earlier thoughts of abandoning them to save his career? And then another curious fact: among Hartmann’s large-scale works, the “Grahamstown Mass” was the only one never to be performed. Is this because the forces required were simply too large, or were the biographical associations just too painful?

Regarding the affair that seems to be behind “The Song of the Four Winds,” again I learned only after the conference the following: Hartmann did have an affair with his teacher Franz Schmidt’s daughter Emma, apparently a great beauty, who died from complications of childbirth in 1932 (whose child?). Apparently, Schmidt experienced a spiritual and physical breakdown after her death, but achieved an artistic revival in his Fourth Symphony of 1933 (which he inscribed as “Requiem for my Daughter”) and, especially, in his oratorio “The Seven Seals.” Surely, Hartmann must have heard Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony, premiered in Vienna in 1934. Was he present at the premiere of Schmidt’s oratorio on 15 June 1938? This would have taken place not long after the events described in Orel’s report, which is dated March 31, 1938, i.e., during the very difficult period when Hartmann was desperately trying to leave Austria. Is this affair referred to in “The Song of the Four Winds,” or is it a later affair in South Africa? If it is the earlier affair, are there also musical connections between “The Song of the Four Winds” and the related pieces by Schmidt - in addition to those discussed with Joseph Marx (Hartmann’s other composition teacher), Mahler, Puccini, and Bruckner?

I would be in favor of a publication arising out of the conference. I found the level of the presentations high, and the diverse yet related topics fascinating. People will, of course, have the opportunity to refine and expand their presentations, and perhaps the organizers can contribute an introduction addressing some of the excellent points raised by our colleagues.

Best wishes,

Tim Jackson, Ph.D.
Professor of Music Theory
College of Music
University of North Texas

She was strapped into the pilot’s chair, half in, half out of her spacesuit, utterly bored. Her space helmet floated somewhere above, accessorized with stickers she had saved for her machine gun. At first she had tip-toed around the controls, not wanting to upset the delicate balance of any life-support system, but after the fourth week so was so bored she had ceased to care. Perhaps a life-threatening emergency was all she needed to get her mind off the brain-numbing lifelessness of the haunted castle. She was chewing bubblegum, sealing off the pink balloons with her tongue and then spitting them all around the control booth, where they would stick on things. She stabbed randomly at buttons while she did this. Various mundane things occurred with each button combination: monitors changed views, external lights activated, shutters opened and closed etcetera. At one point, she spied a pulsing red button, which seemed vaguely dangerous and pushed it on impulse. A blinding crimson laser beam fired from directly below the control booth, all the way down to the surface of the planet. She jumped in delight and began pressing it repeatedly, discovering a nearby toggle which allowed her to wave it around like a wand, making crazy patterns, as one does with a flashlight at night. She wasn’t watching the surface of the planet with her binoculars, but if she had been, she would have seen the beam cleaving through whatever it touched. At one point, the red line sliced randomly through the clouds above one of the dingy cities, slicing off sections of old decaying buildings and concrete bridges, which crashed to the symbiote infested areas below. Halved cars tumbled while the green creatures observed. The beam did not harm them for some reason. Instead, they seemed to absorb its intense heat drawing strength from it.

She had an idea whilst playing with the high powered laser and scampered down to the retro fridges in the lounge beneath. She was grinning in insane excitement as she pulled out armfuls of paint-filled milk bottles, which she then ferried to the trash ejector. She loaded as many of the rainbow bottles into the trash receptacle as would fit and sealed the hatch. A handle had been placed alongside the containment unit and she jerked it down, watching the coloured bottles flush out into space. As soon as she could see them tumbling outside the glass of the lounge, she bounced back up and buckled herself back in. The bottles had just begun to tumble past the control booth and she chuckled at the sight of the spilling out into space. She rubbed her hands together with glee and began togging the laser at them. The bottles began detonating just as she imagined. Amoeboid forms of vacuum pure color flashed and froze, spreading and extending into one another in delicate sprays of frozen particles, lit brightly against the luminous blackness of outer space. Taty began dancing around with glee screaming ‘Pollock! Pollock!’, utterly overjoyed with her invention of a new form of painting. To celebrate she used a tube of liquid eyeliner to quickly scribble a swirly mustache beneath her nose. She then pulled on a beret and scarf and set about using up almost half of the supply of paint bottles, creating her fauvist jellyfish bonanzas and watching them morph slowly away into the void of orbit, their colours too frozen to mix. She would rig up the external security cameras to track them and take hundreds of holographic snapshots, which she had no idea how to view. All the same, it was the highlight of her week.

She was in the spherical bathroom, switching the floodlights on and off for no reason. She had also been eyeing the red button for some time. She bit her lip. She chewed her finger. Eventually she just pressed it. Somewhere along the scarred underside of the vast megalith, an area of flagstones jettisoned, leaving a space about the width of two cars. A metal surface extended into the sharp light and began to extend down toward the surface of the planet at the end of a collapsible metal tube. It bore an unmistakable resemblance to a vacuum cleaner of some kind and was in fact something of the sort. The segmented tube unreeled, down through the great planes of the upper atmosphere, dropping into the clouds. It trailed through dense formations of vapour and emerged, shining above the ocean. It fell like a comet, crashing magnificently into the waves. Large machine parts activated along its head and the device began to suck up great quantities of water, trawling its load up, beyond the clouds into space. Once beyond the upper atmosphere, the pleats in the tube began glowing red as they superheated the interior. This kept the water from freezing before it reached its destination. It also sterilized it to some degree. If Taty had been up in the control booth she would have been amazed to see the glowing red coils of the pipe, snaking down into the churn of clouds below. The pipe led to a large empty vault in the basement regions. The root of the suction device was located in a large construction site set into the stone floor. This site resembled a large electric generator in some ways, lit by floodlights and surrounded by a halo of floating barbed wire fences. DANGER signs wafted placidly about like tropical fish, in and amongst the loose rubble of the site and one or two stray statues. A klaxon activated, rendered soundless in the vacuum while warning lights began to strobe. Shortly, a vast fountain of heated seawater began to gush into the vault, freezing instantly as it left the pump. Parboiled sharks exploded like balloons in the drift of glacial matter as the boulders of fresh sea ice began to collect, slowly filling up the chamber like an explosion of gigantic polystyrene. Taty meanwhile was turning her head this way and that, looking around the shower sphere, waiting for something dramatic to happen. She hummed to herself. She tapped her foot against the wall. After awhile, she deactivated the red button in disappointment. Down in the ocean, the device abruptly shut down with a clank, retracting quickly up into the sky. By the time she reached the control booth, it was as though nothing had even happened.

A stray combination of buttons and levers accidently opened a secret panel in the control booth. Taty watched with shiny eyes as a glowing pedestal emerged, crowned with a pulsing Smiley Face button. Meanwhile some distance away, the astronaut was completing his one hundred and sixty eighth orbit of the globe. Paradise Discothèque was still only a tiny golden speck and he was ready to put his plan into action. He had to wait until this particular circuit because his orbit was growing steadily more elliptical. Each pass brought him nearer to the stone leviathan, but unless he acted within the next three orbits he would begin to pass beneath the temple, and then drift further and further out. His radio had been broken in the tussle and he was unable to ask for Taty for assistance or reach the computers of his control booth. He was also running out of water, nutri-feed and concentrated oxygen tablets. His suit was able to release vast amounts of oxygen from tiny tablets and he would have been able to survive for another two months had he stocked his suit fully. But, alas, the Boy Scout motto had again not been applied. Now he had to act swiftly if he was to survive his predicament. The plan came about whilst he was cataloguing supplies on his sixty-fourth orbit. He had no fuel, but he did have three vacuum resistant cans of cola. Theoretically, if he were able to open them at precisely the correct vectors, he would be able to use their fizzy outpouring to launch himself back to Paradise Discothèque and thus avoid a tedious death in space. All that was required was a little push to get him on course and this would do the trick if he shook the cans enough. To this effect, he had calculated and recalculated distances and geometries, throwing a wire-frame alignment of his own hands onto the digital display so that he would know exactly where to position the can in relation to the giant stone structure. He also had a countdown clock running, which was ticking down fifteen minutes to cola-launch. Luckily, he had three cans and therefore three chances. Even if he was way off with his first two, they would still make things easier for him on his third try - Unless, of course, he was drastically unlucky and managed to throw himself on an even more disastrous orbit. He was readying himself for this first attempt when he began to notice large nuclear eruptions occurring in and around the vast dark sprawl that was the Outzone. The mushroom clouds swelled beautifully through the cloud layer, blowing circular whirlpools through the vanilla milkshake clouds, annihilating everything around them.

“I wonder how she found that secret button…” he chuckled in amusement.

A flicker of color caught his eye and he turned his head to see a rapidly approaching fauvist painting, spread out in the void like some psychedelic jellyfish.

“Art!” he cried. “What the hell?”

He threw up his arms to protect his visor as he smacked through the warps of colour. The curtains of frozen particles succeeded in instantly spray-painting his dirty white suit. He passed through several successive paintings and emerged, lashed with bright, hazy rainbows and utterly bewildered.

Taty watched in horror as the detonations spread below. She snatched her hand from the button and tried to push the secret button panel back into its niche.

“Oh shit!”

She fumbled for the binoculars and saw buildings and sprawling quadrants of jungle erased by expanding rings of atomic fire. The walkie-talkie crackled and Number Nun’s voice came through.

“I’m registering large scale nuclear impacts on the other side of the globe. Can you see what’s happening?”

“Er! Uh, it’s nothing, I think… Oh shit!”

“Childbride, what have you done?”

“Nothing! Fuck! I have to go!”

She turned off the walkie-talkie and held her head in shock, watching the blast waves spread while Devoid bounced around her in playful obliviousness.

The rainbow sprayed astronaut positioned himself according to his onscreen co-ordinates, aiming his can of salvation cola, looking very much like a prog rock album cover in motion. He waited until the various digital contours aligned themselves before cracking the soft drink. An ejaculation of frozen soda plumed out in a jet of amber crystal, propelling him off on a tangential course, toward the great golden beehive. He had to hold onto the can with magnetic finger pads to avoid it rocketing away, but when the can had spent itself, he released it. It travelled beside him like a pilot fish, carried along at the same velocity. He watched as the great stone walls of the lower courtyards approached, growing immense as they towered before him, dwarfing him with their great height. The spiral terraces loomed above him, their perspective realigning as he felt himself shrinking against the mass of ancient stone. It was so strange, he thought, how so much time in orbit had distorted his sense of scale. He had begun to feel at times that he was gigantic, a titan caught between the glowing plane of the planet and the lightless void of space. Now the shocking immensity of the temple reminded him again of the true state of things. Dark, frozen windows grew larger, like spiracles along the patterned flanks of some monstrous sea creature. Junk floated past at intervals. An entire dining table passed him by as he entered the proximity of the slowly turning building. He shot over the angular walls of the lower courtyard areas and passages, narrowly missing a watchtower and ricocheting off a terrace pillar. The impact was heavy and he rebounded into a wide, colonnade. He entered the edged shadows of the structure, spinning into a far wall and finally coming to rest in a wide statuary niche. He quickly scanned for damage and was relieved to find that he had made it in one piece. He then pulled himself out of the shallow depression and into a nearby archway, activating a line of lights along his helmet. He passed through the shock-void of the passages and rooms, floating up staircases and down long, swooping galleries until he finally reached the first set of airlocks. He entered the sealed corridor and released the PURGE control. The doors sealed while massive fans began to blast oxygen into the passage. Thermal plating kicked in and all the ice began to melt, releasing twists of liquid into the air. The passage depressurized within minutes. He was finally able to reach up and blow the locks around his throat, removing his Smiley Face helmet for the first time in ages.

A tear arched horizontally off Taty’s eye, like the delicate eyestalk of a snail. It reached out into the air, questing off her saturated eyelashes where it swelled and separated into floating globules. She had curled up in a corner of the walk-in closet’s floor, weeping beneath a screwed down bench. Through the blurry bubbles of her tears, she saw the closet open. A pair of spray painted spacesuit legs floated into her field of vision and came slowly into focus. The figure knelt down and gathered her in his arms. She burrowed into the defaced suit, rubbing at her eyes while she sobbed. The shifting, face of Dr Dali gazed down upon her, rearranging constantly like some multi-dimensional painting.

“That’s some rash you got there,” she sniffed, staring at the absurd shifting of his head.

“Inside I’m smiling.”

She broke into a fresh bout of tears, which lifted from her face like the tangled tendrils of a bluebottle.

“I blew up the world!” she exclaimed hoarsely.

“It’s alright, I was planning to do that anyway.”

“But…but why? All those people…”

He sighed, from a mouth that travelled slowly into an inverting cheekbone, only to emerge inside out, from the warping tunnel of an ear.

“It’s the rancid stink of reality, mon cherie. It deviates in, contaminating every secret dream like rotting food in the next room. I grew tired of the twists, all the tiny pockets of dirt, which made up a staggering portrait of filth. I wasn’t vain enough to save the world. I only wanted to make things clean and uncomplicated for a moment. Just a wipe of the window, so that we could see some light again.”

“But everyone’s dead! No one will see the light…”

“You will one day.”

“You’re mad!”

“Oh, we’re all mad here,” he smiled, his teeth flipping and unzipping to reveal a pair of amused eyes, moving slowly up the hairline tunnel of a throat.

She grew still, sniffing occasionally up at him.

“I suppose,” she admitted. “At least those Symbs are nukefood.”

“Au contraire, thy shall be the only things to survive – in a way at least. I designed them that way.”

“What! What do you mean you designed them?”

“You didn’t think they were really from another dimension, did you. I mean the sexual compatibility with humanoids, the carrots…”

“The carrots were your idea?”

“My idea of a joke, yes. I originally thought of genetically encoding them to react to something more arcane and thematically suitable…like a rare, crushed beetle perhaps. But at the end of the day, carrots were far more amusing.”

“But, why? Why!”

“The Symbs are able to absorb vast amounts of heat and transmute this into physical matter, in other words, extreme heat adds to their mass. Once they had enough time to root, I planned to feed them on thermonuclear fodder. Now they will start growing in long lines that will reach into the sky and curve back down in vast arcs, intersecting and meshing with one another to create an emerald city from the ashes. They will decontaminate the soil and air by feeding off the radiation and nature will reclaim itself within a few decades. They are my seeds of Eden.”

“And the Protoverse? A friend of mine found the door…”

“Ah, yes, their navels, the umbilical portal, yes. The Protoverse is where I grew, incubated and cultured my little building blocks of the new world. It is a fluid universe, an amniotic realm capable of supporting any number of experiments which require large scale womb-ing.”

“My friend wants to live there.”

“Mommy’s boy.”

“Don’t make fun of my friends.”

“Sorry, but I’ve always considered that a compliment.”

“You really are fucking mad, aren’t you?”

“As much as I would like to continue this discussion now, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that I haven’t bathed for a month. Be a dear and wait for me upstairs.”

It didn’t take the Doctor long to get things ship-shape. Taty would hover, cuddling her pet god, watching the ex-spaceman flit about adjusting dials and moving things around with a blank expression on her face. It was weird for her to see him without a spacesuit. He was so much smaller and more intense. He would wear white suits beneath an extravagant silk dressing gown and pointed Turkish slippers. His ties were often holographic and he always had on spotless white magician’s gloves. His head was a riot. She wanted to get stoned and just look at his head. He showed her a food store she had not discovered and she started eating candy bars like there was no tomorrow.

“If you keep eating candy bars like that we’ll run out before we reach the moon,” he told her.

“If I keep eating candy bars like this, I’ll probably need to diet by then anyway,” she munched, her mouth full of nuts and chocolate.

After a day or two, things calmed down. He said he needed to recoup his strength before they ‘set sail’ and set about drinking a lot of tea.

Dr Dali was floating upside down in a lotus position, his silk gown all a-swirl, holding a china cup and saucer in his white gloves. An amoeboid tea-form jellied out of the cup and he nibbled delicately at it whenever his mouth slid into view. She was at the window, watching the world in denim shorts and cuddling her little god. A dark cloud of ash now obscured most of the equator, creating a nuclear winter, which was gradually disseminating outward, spreading toward the poles.

“You sure know how to make a mess,” she muttered darkly.

He glanced up absently.

“It took me years to construct and plant all those bombs, moving from city to city in one disguise or another. I often went to the dingiest quarters, vacant districts filled with old shops and tenements, places I knew nobody would suspect. I even composed folk songs on an old guitar.”

She floated grimly, observing the movement of many dark clouds while he continued with his tea.

“How did you meet Alphonse?” she asked out of the blue.

Doctor Dali chewed on a cube of sugar, enjoying the sensation as it crunched through his forehead.

“He was one of the first things I snagged in my inter-dimensional Venus Flytrap,” he replied. “I’m not sure where exactly that imp came from, some strange hole no doubt. I offered to send him back but he said that this reality was too much fun. Now, look at him; butter on the toast of a toasted world.”

“He’s right outside,” Taty confessed quietly.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow – a somewhat ridiculous thing to behold.

“What? Do you mean to say Alphonse Guava is outside? Where?”

“He’s holding hands with the other ghosts,” she said. “Devoid coughed him up like a hairball.”

“Gosh, I wonder who hated him enough to throw him to the gods? I suppose a creature like that accumulates many enemies.”

She frowned miserably and chewed her lip, kicking the glass in inner turmoil.

“Are they really ghosts?” she asked.

“In a way, yes, in a way, no. Devoid over there is not a physical being like you or I. It is a god. Its mass is comprised of a special ectoplasm, which for some reason is corporeal on this plane, as well as others.”

“Huh?”

“It is, for example, just as physical in dreams.”

“Say what!”

“The god is also able to compress and expand its substance at will, so when it ‘eats’ a sno-globe, it is really just storing that person’s consciousness, or soul, in a part of its body. Now when you did what you did to the god, which was very impressive by the way…”

“Gee thanks Doc,”

“Don’t mention it, but when that happened, it shed each sno-globe along with a part of its own substance, which then expanded to mimic the devoured person’s original form.”

“You’re confusing me!”

“Those ghosts out there are physical ectoplasm and maintain all of the characteristics and memories of their old selves, except that their original bodies are dead and these new bodies are really just borrowed fragments of Devoid here - bodies, which are subject to the will of the god - hence the ‘holding hands highway’. Maybe when Devoid has no more need of them it will release them and then they will really be dead. Who knows?”

Taty lifted up the little creature and shook it lovingly, rubbing her nose against its featureless face. It responded by clawing sleepily at her and snuggling under her chin.

“My little super pet,” she cootchi-cooed.

He smiled wryly.

“You were a messiah to the people who built this place you know,” he said. “You fulfilled their racial destiny and released their god from bondage.”

“I should get a reward or something, hay?”

He shook his head and chuckled.

“Devie keeps trying to get out into space,” she mentioned, spinning impulsively into a backflip. “He’s always scratching at the locks.”

“It wants to get onto its highway and begin its fantastic journey to the dark side of the moon. All part of the plan, my dear.”

“Kay.”

“We sail as soon as I’ve got things up to scratch.”

“Hay Doc, listen, my friend Number Nun is down there by the icebergs. Please can you bring her up here? I’ll bust up as many fridges as you want in my swimming costume if you do.”

He blushed heavily and coughed into his glove, suddenly embarrassed.

“I, er, I’m sorry about that, its just that I…damn,” he mumbled.

“Please!” she whined, stamping her foot on the ceiling.

“She’s the one on the walkie-talkie?”

“Yup.”

“I’m not very fond of robot nuns, you know. I’ve had very bad experiences with robot nuns.”

“Pleeeease! She’s my only friend apart from Devie here!”

“Well, I suppose I can always deactivate her if she gets on my nerves. Alright, give me the walkie-talkie and I’ll see what I can do.”

Taty dropped the god and sailed over to the Doctor, throwing her arms around his neck. The impact threw both of them into a mad spin and he flinched to avoid the milky comet of tea.

“Ah! You’re so fucking fab Doc!”

He frowned, disentangling and brushing a spot of liquid from the lapel of his silk dressing gown.

“Now now,” he chided. “I only have three of these fellows left, you know.”

Mokale has performed with some the best known musicians in the country, these include
Sibongile Khumalo, Bheki Khoza Motsumi Makhene, Wendy Mseleku, Phillip Tabane, Gloria Bosman, Khaya Mahlangu and many more.

He has directed musical productions like “Rainbow of Hope” (a dance revue by Nomsa Manaka, Wits Theatre 1991), “Swing High, Sweet Gospel” (Arts Alive, 1993/4), “Sellout” (Grahamstown 1995) and arranged the music of Sibongile Mngoma’s performance at the Grahamstown Festival (1997). Mokale founded the Soweto Youth Jazz Orchestra. He toured England and West Africa. He also toured Canada, USA and Wales as the pianist of Imilonji Ka Ntu Chorale Society.

Mokale is the music director of SDASA CHORALE, a gospel group that released an internationally acclaimed CD “SIMUNYE”, with a British vocal group, I Fagiolini. The two groups toured Europe in May, July 1999, Bermuda Festival, 2001 and April 2006.

Together with Motsumi Makhene, Sibongile Khumalo and Hugh Masekela, Mokale co-composed the music of “Milestones”, a musical by Mandla Langa. The musical premiered at the Grahamstown Festival and had a run at the State Theatre. The musical won 1999 FNB SAMA’s Best Soundtrack Award.

In 2000, he was appointed by the University of Pretoria to conduct the UP Chorale. He held this post till 2005.

Mokale has held workshops and lectures in countries like Sweden, United Kingdom and Finland.

He co-developed a concept called “Intyilo Kantu: Melodies of the Wise”. The concept involved a French solo ensemble Musicatreize and the University of Pretoria Chorale. The performances were held at the Standard Bank National Festival, Grahamstown and Octobre -en-Normandie, Rouen, France in 2001.

Together with the University of Pretoria Chorale and the Eastern Cape Philharmonic, Mokale performed the South African premiere of Stanley Glasser’s cantata; “The Chameleon and the Lizard”. The performance was at the 2003 New Music Indaba Festival in Grahamstown.

He composed and conducted the world premiere of “CANTUS IN MEMORIA ‘76”. This work commemorates the 30th anniversary of events of June 16, 1976. The text of the work is based on poems by Don Mattera and Lesego Rampolokeng.

Mokale has composed music for the following:

1. SIMUNYE “Music for a Harmonious World” SDASA CHORALE and I Fagiloni
2. MILESTONES, Musical by Mandla Langa
3. “UTLWANG LEFOKO LA MORENA” for I Fagiolini
4. “TSHELO BOSHA” for the National Symphony Orchestra
5. “FATLHEGO SA GAGO” for Soloists, Choir and Orchestra for Nation Building massed Choir 2000
6. “KE MOTSHOANA, EMPA KE MOTLE” for UP Chorale and Musicatreize, SBNAF, Grahamstown and ‘Octobre-en-Normandie, France
7. “MALERATO”, String Quartet performed by the Fitzwilliam and Sontonga String Quartets, Grahamstown Festival 2001/2.
8. “KOMENG”, String Quartet performed by the Sontonga String Quartet, Grahamstown Festival 2003. Included in the “Bow Project” CD recorded by the Nightingale String Quartet from Denmark.
9. “MOTSWAKO”, String Quartet, 2003.
10. “ABANTWANA BAMAHEBHERU AND JESU WEN’ ONGITHANDAYO” for Radio Veritas Choir Competitions 2003.
11. “SEDI LAME”, commissioned by the University of Pretoria. Performed by the UP Chamber Singers and Chamber Orchestra 2003.
12. “AFRICAN ENIGMA” for oboe, string trio and djembe. Commissioned by ‘Consonances Festival’ in France. 2005
13. “’GAZI LEMVANA’ co-composed with Roderick Williams for the “Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music” in London, 2005
14. “CANTUS IN MEMORIA ‘76” for choir and orchestra. Commissioned by the National Arts Festival. 2006
15. “KOPANO” for choir and percussion. Commissioned by the Salisbury Community Choir, UK. 2006
16. “ISIJABANE” for orchestra. Commissioned by SAMRO for the South African National Youth Orchestra.

Mokale co-composed an opera, “Earthdiving” for the Spier Festival and it will have its premiere March 2003. The other composers are Martin Phipps(UK) and Peter Louis van Dijk.

Mokale has served as a member of the board of trustees of MIDI Trust (1996-2001), National Arts Festival, Grahamstown (1999 to date) and as vice President and President of NewMusicSA an affiliate of International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM).

He currently teaches music at the University of the Witwatersrand.

“Instead of the stigma of ‘the language of the oppressor’, the speakers of Afrikaans, like those of every other South African language, can aspire to and attain for their mother tongue the halo of a language of liberation and of unification.”
- Neville Alexander

Afrikaaps – The Film is more than a documentary about the history of Afrikaans in Cape Town. It’s a theatre piece within a film. But then, it’s more than that. It’s a journey of a few creative individuals whose task it is to reclaim a language; while at the same time discovering their heritage and putting together a theatre production that is as yet unprecedented in South Africa.

There is a side to the Afrikaans language, the creole birth of the language that has been overlooked in our collective South African consciousness. If Afrikaans is ever to be a language of liberation - it has to be disentangled from its perceived identification with white Afrikaner nationalism.

The Theatre Production

Afrikaaps, the theatre production, is directed by Catherine Henegan, and is a cutting-edge contemporary hip-hopera about the story of Afrikaans, tracing its origins back to 1600’s and its evolution into the 21st century. Featuring an all-star cast (dubbed Die Argitekbekke) including Jitsvinger, Kyle Shepherd, Blaq Pearl, Emile Jansen and Shane Cooper - this musical theatre piece employs glitches, scratches, beats and rhymes to traverse time, whilst also referencing the rich musical landscape of traditional Cape styles like Ghoema and Kaapse Klopse.

Die Argitekbekke set out on a mission of redefinition combining storytelling, poetry, music, video and dance to tell their story. Set in an ever transforming digital landscape, Afrikaaps is an international co-production between the Amsterdam based theatre collective The Glasshouse and The Baxter Theatre in association with ABSA KKNK 2010.

The Film

The film will use the theatre production as a thread running throughout, while profiling the main performers and how they came to participate in the project. It will also explore each performer’s personal narrative within the story of the Afrikaans language.

To get to know each of the characters, we will profile them in personal character vignettes similar in style to the Cuban documentary, Buena Vista Social Club. The interviews will be intimate and informal, and will take place during a walk with each character through their neighbourhood, or in their homes. The camera style will be flowing and smooth, and ideally operated with a steadicam rig to achieve fluid and steady movement, while at the same time allowing the viewer to feel as if they are immersed in the environment on screen.

Through these different character vignettes, we will also uncover the various areas in Cape Town where our performers are from, and in so doing, get a sense of how and where Afrikaans is spoken in Cape Town today.

The film will alternate between these vignettes and crucial interviews and conversations with experts on history and language such as Patrick Tariq Mellet (a passionate “heritage activist”) and Dr Neville Alexander (The Director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa), amongst others. The film will also incorporate the play’s workshop process, as well as the “behind the scenes” material filmed during the creation of the theatre project. We will also film the performances at The Baxter and the KKNK with a minimum of two cameras; one roving camera, and one steady one in theatre, in order to cover all the angles needed to fully capture the performances visually and intimately.

In the film we will also delve into the history of Afrikaans, or rather the version that was never taught to us; from the first Dutch ships in the Cape, carrying slaves of varying descent, where it was birthed as a “mongrel language”; to the first book in Afrikaans which was the Q’uran, and the nationalism of the language in 1875 by the Genootskap van die Regte Afrikaners (The Organisation of True Afrikaners). We will also look at the famous Soweto uprising in 1976, where Afrikaans was labeled the language of apartheid, the great prime evil of our time.

I will also employ my own voice in the film, as a young “coloured” Capetonian whose parents are both Afrikaans speaking and yet I was raised as an English first language speaker. As a result my Afrikaans is very poor today. This is an occurrence which is not unique to my family, and I will interrogate notions of ownership, prosperity and shame in the use of spoken Afrikaans, especially the version of Afrikaans spoken by ‘coloured’ people in the Cape (referred to as Kaaps or Gamtaal), considered by Afrikaner nationalists as “impure”.

Reach and scope

With the film we aim to get this inclusive message to as wide an audience as possible, as it is highly important that the message of the play goes further than the people who will attend the theatre. We are aiming for local and possibly international TV broadcast, DVDs on sale at the theatre performances as well as distribution to libraries and schools. The educational (and transformational) potential of the material should also be utilized fully.

I see this film and this theatre project not as autonomous works, but as part of a bigger movement of efforts to reclaim the Afrikaans language for all who speak it, and in Neville Alexander’s words, to give tramakassie the same value and acknowledgement as dankie (“thank you”).

I believe that if we can all acknowledge the creole histories, and the black/ “coloured” contribution to the language, it would be a great step forward for equality in our country. We need to recognize Afrikaans as part of the heritage of all South Africans, and not only of one particular racial group. Together we can make Afrikaans a language of liberation!

“Fuck art!” I found myself screaming in desperation at a panel discussion late in 2009 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The occasion was the opening of “Remembering Black Consciousness”, a retro exhibition considered representative of Black Consciousness resistance art. The disparaging utterance was directed not to all art forms per se, but more specifically at the failures of the visual medium to speak the ambitious and urgent language our times demand, in order to help crack open the code that leads to paths that will enable a realisation of our presently aborted desires for a different world.

In a sense, fuck art! is a cry for help. Can art help rip open the intestines of a society which is refusing to free itself from a past that traps its black majority in semi servitude whilst feeding it false hope through staging one form of jamboree after the other: (Mandela’s majestic march from the brutal 27 years in jail, the first multiracial elections, the first inauguration, the TRC, the 1995 Rugby world cup and the 1996 African Nations victories). Now all these jamborees of forgetting will culminate into the Fifa 2010 soccer world cup.

Then as we are about to gasp for air, we shall be subjected to another round of electioneering noise which will arouse the nation in “defence” of its hard won “freedoms”. We shall again surrender our responsibility of enacting a rupture to realise true self-governance to (in)different politicians who are the designated custodians of our desires for a responsive polity . In this way the South African racist status quo remains intact. We swirl in the dizzying glee of staged happiness, hanging from a thin thread that promises to break to expose the silly confection of a nation patched together by lies. Can art speak? The Spier Contemporary provides us with a unique window of opportunity to survey the contemporary national artistic voices. In a sense we have a platform here, however imperfect, to evaluate what contemporary art says to us - if indeed, it speaks at all.

The burden of finding “ways of knowing ourselves” through artistic expressions must necessarily be fore-grounded within the larger burden of knowing what our society actually is. These ways of knowing are already subverted by the Manichean truth of a racially divided nation: formal declarations of equality and nationhood notwithstanding. Race obsession in an anti-black world is not therefore a wasted investment, in fact confronting race can’t be avoided because this quest towards knowing ourselves must necessarily march through the burning coals of our horror-branded history.

One approaches the products of the Spier Contemporary with the burden of trying to respond to Cornel West’s invitation that “We must require of ourselves a more ambitious structural analysis of the present cultural situation”, this would in turn help us embrace “… a wholesale inquiry into the personal and institutional operations of power within the academy, mass media and the museums and the gallery networks”. (446). From this vast canvas how do we read the selected pieces? Alternatively what do those pieces not selected tell us about the contemporary state of art and society? How do we penetrate the thick wall of the silent yet blaring world of the visual medium that comes from artists produced by a racist socio-historical reality? Can these divides be bridged? I shall not attempt to answer all these questions, because at times questioning is the most productive method of engagement.

The despair induced by the remembering BC panel was produced by what seemed like the muteness of art, or rather the impotence of art to ignite rebellion instead of simply titillating, amusing and at best, mildly intriguing the old and new accumulating-and-consuming classes in the face of urgent questions that demand answers. How do we move beyond the performative gestures of contemporary art which feign revelation when in fact they are merely part of the superstructure of our racist reality? Reading the great yield of the 2010 Spier selection and all its racial and gendered inequities, one is confronted, not so much by the ritualistic moralistic indignation which is enacted each time we count black against white, and women against men, against the raced and gendered pyramid of our socio-economic structure that defines society; rather what is of more importance is just how impossible it is to leave aside the racial iron cage we have inherited from the past as we try to know and read the contemporary. The racialised diversity of artistic voices should not lull us into the Mandela-esque celebration mantra of “unity in diversity”, because they are not, instead one must not flinch from seeing the deep divide clearly marked on the skin of a society marching in two different directions - one white, one black, the twain meeting at the altar of consumerism for a chosen few. It’s called the fruit of democracy.

It’s hard to shake off the sense that those pieces that lend themselves more readily to being read as delivering an overt political commentary are by and large underpinned by the simple fact that our artists still speak from their racialised realities. How can it be otherwise? Take Stewart Bird’s “states of emergency”, the piece at first strikes one as a devastating critique of the unfinished business of moving beyond the pre-1994 nightmare, what could be read as indictment of the democratic government’s accommodation with white supremacy as represented in our national flag’s perfect symmetry with apartheid symbolisms. There is also the possible referencing of close-mindedness suggested by the heavy steel that constitutes the piece. There is the further tantalising invitation to defile the sacredness of the post-1994 deal through the act of walking on the art piece itself. Stepping upon nationalism.

But there is also the contrasting sense invoked by a different reading of the “states of emergency”. One can see that the piece strives to flatten and then equate the African Nationalism of the ANC with the Afrikaner Nationalism of the Nationalist Party. This drawing of a moral equivalence between the nationalism of those who organised resistance against white supremacy and those who devised and brutally policed white supremacy for the benefit of a few is a very effective mechanism to deny history and therefore divert our attention from demanding justice for the historical atrocities inflicted upon the black body. Both propositions seems ironically true though. Two competing truths. The ANC’s democracy is in bed with white supremacy. Yet to make this point is to provide cover for white culpability. This difficulty is best captured by Rian Malan’s elegant formulation, South Africa, he tells us, is full of contradictions, “ a place where mutually annihilating truths can be simultaneously valid” (220). This is perfect material for engaged artists to slash through these ambiguities to yield a disturbing truth. Whose truth matters?

If we stirred a little bit more this stinking pot of our racial shit then we can’t avoid the conclusion that the motives that drive a white artist are unavoidably different from those that drive a black one. Here we invariably enter the world of the white wine triggered by the perceived lost world, a civilisation based on meritocracy now being squandered by the destructive impulses of the Conradian Heart of darkness.

The black artist on the other hand seems driven by the perennial call for inclusion into the house of privilege through repeatedly pointing at the race balance sheet. The clamour for inclusion is mobilised through the elevation of ‘demographic representativity” discourse into a sacred principle that defines societal good and progress.

What’s going on here? It seems as if art in the final analysis is not able to march too far out of the socio-political matrix set by the larger political stage upon which it is hoisted. The whole post-apartheid moment has by and large been driven by a white wine and a black lament regarding exclusion. One has to face the implication of this observation. The power relations between the black and white remains skewed as Malan tells us, “Apartheid’s great triumph was the creation of a generically Western moonbase on Africa, where whites lived exactly like whites in the capitals of the great white empire” (xi). The black, including the black artist wants in on the racket. Given the historically evolved power dynamics the keys to the “white empire” are in white hands. So the black artist resorts to the method perfected by BEE merchants - just enough emotional blackmail to be noticed then total silence. The post-1994 commercially successful black artists are those who have sold themselves as anti-political. Basically, surrendering to the charms of the money bags. But this is not anti-political at all, it serves the politics of distortion and forgetting in order to render our abnormal society normal.

Then there are the not too helpful artistic productions that seek to represent reality “as it is”. A catalogue of a myriad of ailments that eat up our society. Pointing out without moving beyond the symptoms seem rather a wasted energy. Society is not sick because it’s sick. Artists need to help us plumb the depths of consciousness to lay bare the blood that drips from the corporations’ glossy balance sheets, to help us see the structural violence created and perpetuated by corporate greed. They musty simultaneously see who seats at the bottom of the human debris. Depicting violence against children and women outside of its structural sources is an exercise in mystification. It’s like pointing out the barbarity of a people pressed into a sub-human existence by a civilisation that hypocritically prides itself on being peaceful.

If it’s true that there is something fundamentally wrong with our society which continues to reproduce racism in democracy, a society declared the most unequal on earth, it would seem we can’t help but desire for art to help in the building up of a rebellion against such society. This is not an authoritarian demand for art to forsake its own internal logic and aesthetic integrity in the service of politics. Art that is indifferent to social suffering will continue to be made and celebrated but will not avoid judgement being passed on its undeclared politics of naturalising and beautifying our ugly status quo. For my part I simply value more that art which more or less conforms to the articulation of Dmitry Vilensky, who argues that “ Art is that which disrupts the established order, giving rise to a creative chaos from which utopian forms of a new society can emerge. Culture renews its development when it sets the goal of transforming society as a whole. This goal is revolutionary in essence”.

There is however a huge scepticism as to whether in fact visual art can play this revolutionary role outside of a revolutionary social milieu. It was asked during the BC retro panel that if we took the children of Soweto today and placed them before the BC inspired art pieces which are read as resistance art, would the contemporary reader deduce this resistance from the silent language of these paintings? Basically, it was suggested that there is nothing revolutionary in the artefacts themselves. It was suggested that revolutionary art is born of revolutionary moments and are given revolutionary readings by a philosophically, politically aroused or aware population of readers and art consumers. We come to art with our baggage as defined by our reality at the time. We get nothing from art besides that which we ourselves bring to it. Therefore, outside of a revolutionary milieu (a revolutionary moment of rupture and a conscious reading informed by such a moment), art pieces are just artefacts, which at best become zones of amusement for the highly specialised academic groupscules who are by and large irrelevant to the larger questions facing a people. From this observation its seem justifiable to give contemporary art the middle finger.

This leads to a further question. Can a moment of political imbecility ignite art which is revolutionary, which is counter the dominant culture?
In a moment of political lull as we are in right now. How do you create art that resists cooption and commercialisation? Is it possible or are artists mere workers and mercenaries in times such as these? How do we explain the absence of the ongoing at times very violent social struggles for “services delivery” in our artistic productions? Right now South Africa is amongst those countries considered to have highest volumes of protests in the world. In the past three years it’s said we have seen more than 20 000 such protests. Some of these protest have been sustained and are so deep that they threatened to bring local governments down. Or perhaps there are artistic expressions out there not yet considered art which are inspired by and inspire such mini-rebellions for dignity? In other words, are those of us in search of art to ignite and feed a rebellion looking at the wrong picture?

Once we commit ourselves to engaged art in the South Africa post the 1994 “miracle”, we can’t avoid asking the question what are the minimum conditions prerequisite to return art to rebellion for social justice? As things stand the historical weight falls unfortunately on the shoulders of black artists, because they alone can speak from and for an historically injured majority. To date black art has been mute even when it could speak. How to do we enact Vilensky’s disruptive art “giving rise to a creative chaos”? Our period of silent beautification to lull our senses in the face of democratic injustice is not new. I’m thinking here of the bad idea, an art strike. In 1993 Steward Home initiated an art strike move, it was not the first, his justification was, “The Art Strike proves that doing nothing is often more productive than desperately seeking fame and fortune”.

What would such a bad idea entail? It’s better to quote from the 1993 Art Strike clarion call, “ We call upon artists to put down their tools and cease to make, distribute, sell, exhibit or discuss their work from January 1, 1990 to January 1, 1993”. The same call was extended to art schools, theatres, museums, art galleries etc. Predictably the art strike failed. But the idea was introduced of a possible radical refusal. Reflecting on the strike Sadie Plant argued that the; “Art strike re-introduced a whole range of issues centred around questions of strategy, recuperation and the relation between art and politics”. Nothing short of such drastic act will help us rattle our iron cage of race and help us see afresh.

I am trying to rerail my life with a lonely flight to a 100mile view of Giyani
Nearly half a days drive to get past Tzaneen!
I have Tom Waits-ed myself past the dead dog on the high way through Sandton
And I’m now Pat Metheney-ing past the tripping goat jay-walkers of Limpopo
It’s pink cosmos borders on the road
Maybe left by the gazes of countless backseat children.
The flaring cat-hisses through my window; jousters with no interest in my destination.
They’re helping.
The million zionist pilgrims of Moria.
More pilgrims passing pilgrims in opposite directions.
And all this under a Panama hat with a fold of money in my jeans.
j.f. 2005