‘Ode to Zef’
I live in Cape Town I was a user
I think I’m rockstar I drive a bakkie
Thank you Jack Parrow, Eminem, Die
Antwoord
Die Antwoord, Eminem, who signed who?
(cue Eminem’s “I’m not afraid to take
a stand”)
Francois Van Coke Jou fokken legend!
Ons sal saam werk enige dag nou nou awe!
(cue “Dance, Dance Dance”)
Just ‘n Vraag bra: what happened with
church? Was it an NG kerk vibe that gave you material to oppose their way of
life or was it actually: “Stuff-off Ambulance” or was it that ambulance that
stuffed off one night when a friend was hurt bad and now you live to oppose
that selfish human which is inside us all. I’m confused. Uninformed. Respek
bra!
I’m not funny.
My default setting is very serious and insecure normally. I’m witty, dark,
sarcastic. But when I find the vine I get my groove it’s true. But Francois and
Phil and Jack Black and Alaistair, it’s that comedy you have, I have, we have
that is unique to us disenfranchised white youths, a peek into us and it’s being
ok and comfy on a sofa with this part of our confused selves which is often the
time we are being most true. Living life?
(cue “I will not run away honey”)
Jack Parrow drops it : “I am
forgiveness”
I have not slept
a wink tonight. I have been up in bed writing these what seem to be ‘amazing’
lyrics and concepts and ideas that keep flowing through my small brain. I
reckon if I just do this then I can make my dreams of becoming rich and famous
really really true... ‘lol’. But in these self-proclaimed moments of midnight
madness I cry out : “Please stop the download now, I’ve been scribbling for two
hours now, Eish!
I guess it’s my
own fault then for pulling an all-nighter in Cape Town city lights the night
before and shifting my body clock. People partying 18 hours through world cup
party SHOULDN’T complain when trying to ‘get back to normal’ sleeping patterns.
Bleh.
(cue “Feel it, it is here”)
Scribbling,
yes scribbling, I’m writing this script in a paper-book journal because I can’t
type it out because of the case of the stolen MAC, my MacBookPro was stolen
last year. And well, here’s the story:
I was making a playlist for a night of
music and scripture as I sat in my car outside an empty house. In my car,
content and using the time productively - as opposed to just sitting and
mellowing-out. So a knock on the window comes and none other than Mr. Poor
asking for money while winking through a skew eye. I asked him what was ‘going
on’ as he presented a piece of paper that showed, legitimately it turns out,
how he needed a certain vapour-rub powder for his one year old as she was
suffering under the symptoms of tight-chestedness and general fatigue. “She
cried all through the night”, he told me and as I read the prescription of what
she needed for better health I felt a real honesty from him. This story turned
out to be true and I, not knowing at the time, had become the person that could
help out. I invited him into the car to sit and wait with me for our third and
final companion -my girlfriend at the time- and so we chatted a bit and I
showed him what I was up to. We spoke a bit about God and life (he wasn’t very
well-versed in English and had told me he had moved to South Africa from
Malawi).
She arrived home from work and after I
had explained the situation to her we set off to the local pharmacy. We parked
and I sat with Mr Poor as she went inside to collect the script. She returned
twenty minutes later (she always took way too long at the store) armed with a
brown pharmacy bag as well as two packets full of the much needed groceries
(milk, bread, rice, chips and maize meal). We planned to drop him at the bus
stop with the fare and, at this point, expected the chivalry to end.
Or so we thought. It was now 8.30pm,
mostly nightfall and the buses, taxis and trains had stopped running in late
autumn. So, we decided to just run Mr Poor down the drag to the closest public
transport area where he could easily commute home from there. We ended up
driving into Athlone central, past the Athlone Sports Stadium and around one
corner into a dead-ended parking lot (which was apparently right across from
where he lived). We said our goodbyes and had prayed for the man in Jesus name.
What then seemed to be an awkward way to step out of a vehicle, was just Mr
Poor’s strange nuance – oh shame the sweet Mr Poor. Unfortunately it was twenty
minutes too late once we had arrived back home and realised that his awkward
manner getting out of the car was a man hiding a lap-top under his coat while
trying to decently and normally get out of the car unnoticed to my
crime-poaching eyes. What a shock shock horror shock! Mr Poor had leaned over
theof the twin backseat and fetched my laptop out from my Cape Town Jazz
Festival sling bag and cleverly hid this move of a smooth criminal from our
good Samaritan smugness. Strange but True! Something that helped his either
pre-meditated or opportunistic plan was him being seated alone in the backseat
of the townie car we were driving, which understandably gave him time and space
to slip his hand back over the seats and into the boot, which containedsome of
my inheritance – gus’ late great macbook pro.
The story doesn’t end there.
That night saw a friend and me return
into the now ‘slums’ of Cape Town in order to retrieve the stolen goods and
restore some pride in myself. It was MTV cops all over again. Girded with a
kitchen knife, a knuckle-buster and ‘Money’ (the ex-Pollsmoor inmate and pseudo-dodgy
taxi driver who had heard our plea for help and offered to drive us into the
community where the now perpetrator Mr Crime lived). Money was a hard-core
crime-fighter come deal-maker having spent the last 3 years on Parole for
shooting a man down. He negotiated with ‘ladies of the night’ and led us to not
one but two alleged drug-dealers houses’ where he would conclude his recon
mission. Sure enough, Mr Poor, who I had met earlier that night, was the very
same one-eyed Malawian who lived in a hokkie on the other side of that same
secluded parking lot. I now thought of him not as a begging father trying to
heal his baby’s tight chest, but as Mr Crime and Mr Asshole.
I must add that at this point I was on
the edge of excitement and history- not really thinking much of Mr Poor’s
decision to take the gold that he saw on my lap earlier that evening because I
thought: “Well, what would I do in that desperate situation?” Mayb I would have
done the same. Probably the same if I had gone beyond that point of loss of
pride and self-respect due to being so so Poor - that I had no other option but
to rent a ‘wendy house’ on the property of another person, inside an informal
settlement, among a community that was not even of my own skin-colour. This
place is a unique place of poverty, within Athlone, and while having these
self-reflective thoughts I realised that my cell phone probably cost more than
his entire house/hokkie. So, as I was moving between two sets of reasoning of
“I understand it and don’t discriminate” and “this idiot just stole my Apple
Mac”, I was neatly fitted into the bucket seats of my friends polo being driven
at gangster speeds, following the ‘pimped out’ taxi which a former criminal
called Money was driving – I guess I was pretty entertained, and at least, well,
living.
This is so much
more fulfilling than wasting the night away in front of a television set and
scrutinising every second advert and channel- i mean i love this feeling of
“it” all coming out and being verbalised on paper. For me, it’s like the
feeling of excitement of an early-morning packing-the-car mission before a long
trip into the country. Like the time when i was so hysterical the night before
I had to leave for Sedgefield and George, that I couldn’t sleep at all and
stayed up till three, and then instead of trying to sleep again I just decided
to get in my car and go. Needless to say it was an incredibly tough drive and
was actually so tough that I will never pull that move again. Which reminds me
of another trip I was taking from Jahannessberg to Cape Town where theS noght
before leaving I had cut my finger right through the tendon while cleaning a
wine glass. So this was 10pm on a Sunday night and i was bound to Krugersdorp
Medi-Clinic where I was told by the nurse that “Yes” I could get stitches in my
finger if I wanted as well as “No” you don’t need to get them. As confused as I
was and after never having been operated on I gave a firm “Well then let’s get
out of this clinic”.
I did need
stitches in fact because the cut was so deep but this was only made known to
me(and in English this time) after having made the drive from JHB to CPT and
after the 24-hour period window that stitches facilitate optimal re-joining.
Wow. Krugerfornia! A little too far west for my likingJ
Anyhow the excitement of this writing business and this MTV COPS business and
the Krugersdorp stitches Yes/No story has really got to be heard although
they’re just random stories.
This energy and
fresh-passion for telling stories and expressing oneself reminds me of a song I
wrote for a friend:
Shoes
I heard you
coming so I had to turn away
It’s not like
you are not the one I’d run away with
If you were
wearing my shoes you’d still fell the ground
These shoes
have holes, and the holes have holes
But there’s
one thing that has got to be heard today
These shoes
are filled with Grace and waiting to be made tread
When the time
is right I’ll show you how
I’ll show you
what I show you
Surely if we
live in a Choice Culture our chances of choosing 'Master' is decreased
intensely? How then did I still choose
my God over everything else that clouds and confuses my ‘post-modern thought’
if it were not for Him choosing me first.
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