Reckoner

One day last week was filled with my people. My far-away people. Somehow it lined up wonderfully and I caught up with various friends and family, hearing about their everyday, chatting about silly and not-so-silly things. These are the moments where I think: hmm, maybe, when the end of this M comes, you should go back. They are all there. You could make something of yourself there.

I should probably get rid of the binary oppositions that I see as 'here' and 'there', as being 'far' or 'near', since they aim at differentiating emotions into clear, definable sets of rules. But this situation is not so clear. It is not so easy. Everything changes, evolves, into a different beast, but the same heart beats at the centre of it all. 

I read Why I’m Moving Back To South Africa by Jonny Steinberg, and could relate very well to some of his reasons for returning to the motherland. South Africa is hands coming from the earth and grounding you, keeping you, irrespective of where you might go. Despite the violence, the corruption, the load shedding, despite everything that is bad and that makes you want to love it less, it always pulls you back in. We leave to build lives in other places, safer places, and yet I feel as though elsewhere it is precisely this safety that frustrates me. 

Of course it is wonderful to walk home by myself at 4 in the morning. Public transport is a blessing. The currency having value equally so. But nothing is risked. Life consists of insuring yourself against the possibility of something bad happening. Everyone has their own hardships to deal with, and I realise that here all I see is the exterior of a house that I did not build, but it seems that people live such comfortable lives. They are afforded the luxury of not having to worry about survival since all the insurances are a bubble wrap for bad times. And yet they still worry, still bicker, still constantly criticize a system that to a foreign eye seems to work despite it being a bureaucratic nightmare. 

Steinberg writes: 

I can take in the washed-out light and the expanse of green and I can feel melancholy or light or get lost in private thoughts. But the people who pass are wafer thin. I cannot imagine who they are. It doesn’t matter enough. There is too little at stake. I am in essence alone.

This is complaining at a higher level, I know this. I know that I am privileged to be able to study here, to receive support from the government, to live unafraid and not be as suspicious of strangers. I know that my friends here are good people; I know that this is a good life. And yet there is an undercurrent of not risking anything. I need risk to know that what I am doing is worth doing. If there is no chance of failure, how will you know to work as hard as possible at something? It is asking "what sort of life is worth living".

 Steinberg concludes:

That is what going home means for me. It is to stand outside myself and watch my bourgeois life prodded and pushed and buffeted around by lives quite unlike my own. It is to surrender myself to a world so much bigger than I am and to the destiny of a nation I cannot control. In this surrender is an expansion, a flowering, of what it means to be alive.

At this moment, I am not returning home. In 6 months, perhaps. Or in 4 years. But at this moment, I also know that not going home is not an option in the search for a life worth living.

(The irony of me posting an ad by an insurance company that exemplifies SA when I complain about Germany being over insured)

All my days

Where to camp?

A while ago I read Where The Music Never Stops: A Sobering Account Of Festival Culture by Joey Power on Thought Catalog, and damnit, I should have heeded his words, but still I went. Where? To Mieliepop festival in Lothair, near the Swaziland border. A friend asked me along because he had a free ticket. After the interesting experience that was Rocking the Daisies, I said yes, although somehow I knew I maybe shouldn't have. Ah. The morning of departure I told my mother that I hate camping, I hate not being able to sleep on that useless excuse for an inflatable camping mattress, I hate the sleeping bag, I hate having to schlep everything around, I hate pitching the tent, I hate always being either too cold or too hot, I hate the portable toilets and 5 minute cold showers. Basically, I hate everything about festivals. Except for the music. The music is what makes me forget all the hates and say 'yes' again, every time.

The whole thing didn't start out well. We left an hour and a half later than we should have, I didn't know the people we were driving with, and all in all I was just being insecure about the next three days. Like Joey Power, I kind of felt as though "I'd probably rather get blowfish poisoning than ever go to one of these things again". Which is not the ideal attitude.

So after a few hours of rock/metal blasting at us, we arrive and pitch the tents, but the wind is howling and it looks like paragliders readying for take-off. I get irritated at the other girl who embraces the stereotype of female helplessness. She didn't want to touch the tent cover because it was filthy, she couldn't stomach the sight of raw meat but was fine with it cooked, and she brought a suitcase. Maybe I need more girly friends to appreciate playing the damsel.

The Uriah Heep singer's boots. Hello!

But the bands that played more than made up for my negativity. I thought Uriah Heep was this group of old men who occasionally escape from the home in order to shuffle around on stage whilst  dancing to some pre-recorded track from the 70s. I was wrong. Terribly wrong. Uriah Heep was without a doubt the most fun band there, because of how much their music rocked and because they looked so kind (And those boots!). I just wanted to sit down for a cup of tea with them afterwards and ask them which one would like to be my substitute grandfather.

Their guitarist, Mick Box, made these fluttering movements with his right hand in between using his guitar like I imagine it sounds when I air-guitar. And now for his website's name: heepstermusic. Ba ha ha ha. Heepster. He has this little blog going, and he wrote about coming to SA and bla bla, but the best part was: "Walking around the site it felt like a sort of ‘Hippy,’ festival, just like the old days. There were however some really good bands, and a couple of those that I really enjoyed listening to in my room were, 'The Tidal Waves,' and 'Dan Patlansky'".

Dan Patlansky moves too much for my camera not to make him look blurrily evil.

Patlansky was supposed to play before Uriah Heep, but somehow the schedule was a few hours late, so he played a short set after them. Most people had left, so it was great standing in the front row and not being pushed constantly by other people. Also, one of the guys in our camp site somehow managed to get one of those white patio chairs and passed out, right there. So he missed the entire performance although he had the best, and only, seat.

Other bands that I had never heard of but that were worth a listen were Naming James, Chiba Fly, The Aidan Martin Band and the Smoking Mojos. Jeremy Loops, whose performance at Daisies was not that great, was outstanding here. Maybe it helps to play in the dark, because by then people have gotten up from lounging on the grass all day and a nice little bunched up crowd develops in front of the stage, instead of being dispersed into diasporic groups.

I could edit that for you, Mieliepop.

Overall, the venue itself is really beautiful and because there were only about 1500 people (compared to I think 18 000 at Koppi), the atmosphere was very relaxed. One never had to queue for showers or toilets (although I managed to always have to shower in ice cold water). It was a good festival. Suggestions for next time? To be there earlier or to get someone to save you a spot next to the river, then you don't have to sleep at an incline. And for the organisers to put up the line-up somewhere, or to have flyers with the line-up on, or to make it available online before the festival in a nice little jpeg or pdf. They only had this hand-drawn board next to the stage which was pretty useless.

If you feel like an Afrikaans review of the festival where everything is described as 'befok', look to Wat kyk jy's article.

Tidal Waves (?)

Sage advice

via Warholian on facebook

What does it mean to do your own thing? Is it when you leave home, finally, and are responsible for yourself, completely? Is it the choices you make, and stick to? Is it waiting for better, thinking that at the end of this year/this degree/this job/this relationship/ this what-ever-it-is, your life will change radically, that you will finally be able to do what you want?

I think it is all not as easy as what photoshopped advice makes it out to be. We all live in a reality of our own choosing, but I think there are many factors that an individual cannot ignore. There are bills to pay and contracts to fulfil and responsibilities in the here-and-now that one cannot just run from. Perhaps this is more sage advice to myself than to anyone else because I always eye a life less ordinary and forget to live the one I have in this moment. I keep wanting more and making plans to leave and "do my own thing", without really knowing what it is at all. I'd like to say, fuck you all, but there is no one I could really say it to because in the end it is always my decision and there is no one to be angry at. There isn't even anything to be angry about. So here is to expecting the best of today and finding what my thing is before I head anywhere. Here is good, for now.