kagablog

By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: April 30, 2008

PARIS — Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

Albert Hofmann in 2006.

The cause was a heart attack, said Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a California-based group that in 2005 republished Dr. Hofmann’s 1979 book “LSD: My Problem Child.”

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

Dr. Hofmann was born in Baden, a spa town in northern Switzerland, on Jan. 11, 1906, the eldest of four children. His father, who had no higher education, was a toolmaker in a local factory, and the family lived in a rented apartment. But Dr. Hofmann spent much of his childhood outdoors.

He would wander the hills above the town and play around the ruins of a Hapsburg castle, the Stein. “It was a real paradise up there,” he said in an interview in 2006. “We had no money, but I had a wonderful childhood.”

It was during one of his ambles that he had his epiphany.

“It happened on a May morning — I have forgotten the year — but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden,” he wrote in “LSD: My Problem Child.” “As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light.

“It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness and blissful security.”

Though Dr. Hofmann’s father was a Roman Catholic and his mother a Protestant, Dr. Hofmann, from an early age, felt that organized religion missed the point. When he was 7 or 8, he recalled, he spoke to a friend about whether Jesus was divine. “I said that I didn’t believe, but that there must be a God because there is the world and someone made the world,” he said. “I had this very deep connection with nature.”

Dr. Hofmann went on to study chemistry at Zurich University because, he said, he wanted to explore the natural world at the level where energy and elements combine to create life. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1929, when he was just 23. He then took a job with Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, attracted by a program there that sought to synthesize pharmacological compounds from medicinally important plants.

It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one Friday afternoon in April 1943. Soon he experienced an altered state of consciousness similar to the one he had experienced as a child.

On the following Monday, he deliberately swallowed a dose of LSD and rode his bicycle home as the effects of the drug overwhelmed him. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as “bicycle day.”

Dr. Hofmann, date unknown, with a chemical model of LSD.

Dr. Hofmann’s work produced other important drugs, including methergine, used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. But it was LSD that shaped both his career and his spiritual quest.

“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. “I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”

Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.

But he was also disturbed by the cavalier use of LSD as a drug for entertainment, arguing that it should be treated in the way that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants, which are ingested with care and spiritual intent.

After his discovery of LSD’s properties, Dr. Hofmann spent years researching sacred plants. With his friend R. Gordon Wasson, he participated in psychedelic rituals with Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico. He succeeded in synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. He also isolated the active compound in morning glory seeds, which the Mazatec also used as an intoxicant, and found that its chemical structure was close to that of LSD.

During the psychedelic era, Dr. Hofmann struck up friendships with such outsize personalities as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley, who, nearing death in 1963, asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of throat cancer.

Yet despite his involvement with psychoactive compounds, Dr. Hofmann remained moored in his Swiss chemist identity. He stayed with Sandoz as head of the research department for natural medicines until his retirement in 1971. He wrote more than 100 scientific articles and was the author or co-author of a number of books

He and his wife, Anita, who died recently, reared four children in Basel. A son died of alcoholism at 53. Survivors include several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Though Dr. Hofmann called LSD “medicine for the soul,” by 2006 his hallucinogenic days were long behind him, he said in the interview that year.

“I know LSD; I don’t need to take it anymore,” he said, adding. “Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley.”

But he said LSD had not affected his understanding of death. In death, he said, “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that’s all.”

this obituary first appeared in the new york times

41. The Hold Steady – Boys And Girls In America (Vagrant)

- successfully walking the line between sincerity and contrivance is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s neatest tricks, but one of the hardest to pull off – Thin Lizzy and early Bruce Springsteen are such obvious touchstones for this Brooklyn outfit, with their big city rock sound, their coolly offhand rock gestures and their big, urban mythmaking rock lines, that my first impression was that they better have something to go with that to avoid becoming just a nostalgia act before their time, and it seems they do – they have such an obvious feel for the classic rock history they equally obviously love and respect it’s easy to condone the fact that Phil Lynott’s ghost seems at one point actually to have joined the band

42. Magik Markers – Boss (Ecstatic Peace) / Thurston Moore – Trees Outside The Academy (Ecstatic Peace)

- while it was certainly the Sonic Youth connection that caused me to investigate the Magik Markers in the first place, I don’t think it was the fact that Lee Ranaldo produced this release on Thurston Moore’s label that caused me to make an immediate association between Elisa Ambrogio’s melodically deadpan, slightly bored vocal style and that of Kim Gordon, or between the way the group shifts seamlessly, and in the same piece, between proper songs and sonic experimentation and a younger, more fervent version of the great New Yorkers – the title of Moore’s own album seems to represent the music within particularly well, with relatively plain speaking, elegantly textured acoustic guitar driven and violin decorated songwriting growing organically from the more intellectually rigorous explorations in sound and clamour that still populate the edges (and, in the hands of Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis, some of the centre) of this record

43. Fanfare Ciocarlia – Kings And Queens (Asphalt Tango) / Taraf de Haïdouks – Maskarada (Crammed Discs)

- these genuine bands of gypsies (probably the two bands of Romanian gypsies, in fact) spread their stylistically significantly diverse if geographically related wings to outstanding effect here, and I’m not just talking about the fantastic Fanfare Ciocarlia’s lunatic brass band version of classic rock classic Born To Be Wild that you may have heard in “Borat” – they round up a glittering array of mainly singing but also playing Roma guests from the wider Balkan diaspora (including the astounding Esma Redzepova) for this programme, and then, instead of sitting back and watching what happens, match them stride for melodramatic stride all the way to the finish line – the band of brigands, on the other hand, usually all wild, scratchy fiddles and ancient croaking vocals, tackle a mainly Balkan and generally balkanistically styled classical set (Khatchaturian, de Falla, Albeniz – you know, the real McCoy) with a flair, a flavour and a musicality that not only would have made Bartók proud, but seems not a whit out of place next to the half dozen traditionals or near traditionals that complete the show

44. Tony Cox – Blue Anthem (Instinct Africaine/Sheer Sound)

- Cox’s special skill (setting up tight, intricate, often blindingly dexterous acoustic guitar patterns based on roots music forms) seemed different enough from now demised Cape Town improvisational trio Benguela’s (the slow, patient, development of electric soundscapes out of the bare bones of a groove and a few melodic threads) to make their collaboration intriguing rather than obvious – each must have had to make accommodations, but it works, and sometimes wonderfully, though best when it’s less clearly structured and more interactive

45. The New Pornographers – Challengers (Matador)

- “Challengers” may not deliver quite the immediate power pop rush of its forerunners, at least after the Brian Wilson-ish opener and its vaguely Beatlesque-via-a-more-indie-sussed-Jeff-Lynne successor, yet all of the band’s strengths (the greatest of which is AC Newman’s songwriting gift, whose melodic sense soars so naturally yet so often takes such unexpected turns) are on show again with a few additions (there’s a distinct flavour of early Roxy Music about All The Things That Go To Make Heaven And Earth, for example), maybe just not as obviously – and it can never be a bad thing to have Neko Case as an occasional vocal foil

46. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch)

- whether “Sky Blue Sky” is (as some commentators believe) a return to the rootsy alternative country of “Being There”, or is not (which is what I think – I was going to suggest it’s anything but, but I can see at least some of their point), it’s definitely a departure from the “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”/ “A Ghost Is Born” band that I thought for a moment might be the best in the world – it looks back, and perhaps over its shoulder, at ‘70s singer-songwriter antecedents (and the Beatles, particularly on Hate It Here) and, consequently (again notwithstanding what some of those same commentators believe), sounds more like a Jeff Tweedy (as opposed to a Wilco) album than any of the others – it’s more musically conventional, too, and more comfortable as a result, which may be why, despite its fine songs and obvious general excellence, I still, after many rewarding plays, can’t place it higher than this

47. Steve Earle – Washington Square Serenade (New West)

- Earle recently left Nashville to live in New York City (Tennessee Blues tells a story of leaving that Guitar Town told of arriving twenty odd years earlier – according to the latter everybody told him he wouldn’t get far with 37 dollars and a Jap guitar) and this album focuses, without entirely foregoing songs of the South (Oxycontin Blues) or politics (Red Is The Colour … red, ironically, being the colour allocated to traditionally Republican states, Steve’s Hammer (For Pete) … Seeger, in case you wondered), on his new home (City Of Immigrants) and his new life (Days Aren’t Long Enough) and his new wife (Alison Moorer sings gorgeous back-up) – the sound is a bit newer, too, and the production, by the Dust Brothers’ John King, a bit sharper, though, this being Earle, mandolin and banjo are never far away – it’s the sound of a contented man, for the time being anyway

48. LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver (DFA)

- whether the game you play while listening to LCD Soundsystem’s second album turns out to be Spot The Influence or Spot The Homage (there is a difference, and learning it will keep the fun going for hours after the game is up – others have spotted David Bowie, by the way, along with Joy Division, Kraftwerk and any number of dance producers that operate beyond the crushingly obvious, but there are others, whether deliberate or not), James Murphy’s pretty well seamless co-operation between rock and dance styles displays plenty of originality, too, as well as highly developed songwriting chops

49. Alasdair Roberts – The Amber Gatherers (Drag City) / Chris Wood – Trespasser (RUF)

- with its strong melodies, slightly stylised lyrics and titles like Riddle Me This, The Cruel War and The Calfless Cow, “The Amber Gatherers” sounds very much like an album of traditional songs, like its fine predecessor, “No Earthly Man” - the revelation in the sleeve notes that all songs are by Alasdair Roberts (copyright control) came as a genuine surprise, a testament to how well Roberts, in some ways a vocally more lithe and marginally less fragile Scottish Will Oldham (the producer of “No Earthly Man”), quietly goes about his business – there’s even a point where I’m reminded, obliquely enough to be intrigued, of a young, less bluesy Bert Jansch – I guess Chris Wood might occupy the point where, lyrically, a gentler Billy Bragg meets, musically, a less earthy Nic Jones or Martin Carthy – the songs, again steeped in the tradition and immersed in various contemporary considerations of Englishness, are, except two, Wood originals, with the epic Hugh Lupton co-write, England In Ribbons, nothing short of monumental

50. Dàimh – Crossing Point (Greentrax) / LAU – Lightweights And Gentlemen (Reveal)

- my longstanding passion for rootsy Celtic traditional music was well catered for during the year and, after much soul searching, these two bands seemed the best way to show you that real Celtic music has nothing to do with waterfalls and mist, or even Enya for that matter – Dàimh is a six piece from Ireland, Scotland, Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and the Irish/American music scene that covers all of those bases; LAU is a Scottish trio comprising three of that tradition’s finest young musicians and, in Kris Drever, whose wonderful “Black Water” was an overlooked wonder of the previous year, an outstanding young singer – LAU push the boundaries a little with their use of unusual rhythms and ability to drift off into other cultures, while Dàimh play and sing the good traditional stuff with a fire and distinction you may not have encountered since the glory days of the Bothy Band – it’s simple, really, you’ll have to get them both

she has pretty lips
rosy and soft

she doesn’t use them
primarily to kiss
me or anybody else
or to whistle
at a passing man

she uses them
primarily to nibble
a chicken leg
while talking
at the same time

so this is it?
where it all begins
where it all ends?
this is where it all goes
down?
this little room that smells of shit?
that’s filled with ash
and the bastard-children of past ideals?
this
is what it’s all about?
this place of brokenness
filled with silent boredom and suppressed
angst?

beauty is not always about the dainty or about gorgeous or any of that glitter shit. i use beauty as a metaphor.truth can be beautiful,rawness can be beautiful, forced art is not.. forced writing is not, shock, is not i write my truth and speak or write it as best i can. without paying much attention to beauty or rules of beauty..thats just it..without said awareness of those things.
upstarts always believe that writing should come over as other things.. written as other things. why waste time writing if you can pick up the phone and call and say the same thing.
fuck shit and piss are adjectives that speak frankly but i don’t fucking sit around and say shit so it can come over as some piss beautiful piece.. thats not what i want seen. i want to narrate my own story with my own rules.. simple.
i don’t care what writing should be . its what the writer wants, if its beauty then so be it, if its beauty of truth .. so be it.
some of the most beautiful writing i have read have been raw and ugly in truth. but when narrated is beautiful. simple so good writing should have some touch of truth and beauty in it. who wants to see or feel ugliness the real world has enuff a dat shit already.

Today I actually remember being in school. So many days have been a blur lately, but this afternoon stood out. We were learning about the body in biology. When the teacher asked about the kidneys and their function, I actually put up my hand. Finally something I knew.

I said that they’re bean shaped organs the size of my fist. There are two of them, that they’re reddish brown and they’re located in my upper abdomen. Their function is to filter waste, fluids and extra salt out of my blood. My teacher was impressed with me, for once.
Then she asked me, and the class, what happens when kidney’s fail.
I stared at her blankly, like I didn’t know, except that I guess I did.
You die, she said, harshly, then moved on to the pancreas.
I guess it’s hearing it from someone completely objective, someone who’s just stating the facts.
Someone who doesn’t know it’s you.
It was like a reminder, a loud alarm clock that my organs are rotting. My kidneys are failing.
It feels like I’m being kicked hard and fast by someone wearing soccer cleats.
It makes me feel like I’m not in control of my own body. I have to watch as it ejects food and swells up like a balloon. My eyes get puffy and I feel my body temperature drop by like a million degrees. Everyone I know is worried about me which just makes me feel guilty. They keep telling me I’m going to dehydrate, which would be crazy because it’s the middle of winter.
It’s been raining a lot, and sometimes I wish I could lie down outside, on the pavement, with my mouth open, drinking it all. I wish getting better were that easy.
The doctors have made it clear to my mom that I need more dialysis. I’ve had this condition since I was eight but it got a lot more serious this year. The thing I know for sure is, we can’t afford it, even as my mom denies it. She shouldn’t, I’m too old, I know the truth. I got no more ubuqwebe, my mother yelled at no one in particular this morning. She had no more jewelry left to hawk. We’re officially skepselas, the poor folk.
Not that we were ever exactly fat cats, but we managed, before. My mom made more money, she had a boyfriend who lived with us who helped out. My half brother, who’s older, helped. Now it’s just the two of us. Now we have to do embarrassing things, like show up at the hospital and beg . Half the hospitals around here won’t even look at you if you don’t have a gun shot wound, if you’re not dying on the spot. “You should jola one of the doctors, mom”, I joke as we sit in the taxi on our way to the hospital. You’re still good looking, you could make it happen. Uyabeda, she spat at me, disgusted. You’re talking garbage. What, you think I’m a magosha now? It’s the first time I’ve seen her look really angry in months. It kind of felt good, almost normal.
It’s raining as we get out of the two Rand taxi, a Zola Budd, as they say around here, a Toyota, which is missing its windows and its license plate.
It was a four -four, where you sit with 4 people next to you on each side, and the kid sitting next to me, who was probably five with sticky hands kept grabbing at my hair. I had to control the urge to bite her. It’s 9:30 at night, 45 minutes after my mom got off work, at the nearest one fifteen minutes from our flat. It’s Hillbrow Hospital, the H Hosi, as they call it around here. We walk past a park and a school, plus a bunch of day care centers. I guess all the teenage mothers and gang members have to put their kids somewhere. My mom thinks this side of Hillbrow is a lot safer than where we live but I’m not so sure. I was kicking one of those small coke cans as we were walked in and I nearly stepped on a syringe. It could’ve gone right through my shoe so I kept my mouth shut. She’s got enough shit to worry about as it is.
We live in Highpoint, which actually is a physically high point, on a hill, right in the middle. If the Tsotsis that hang out outside our building smoking all the time are right, our area is the number one place for drug deals in the country. They call it Heroin Heights, but what I’ve seen a lot of is crack and coke.
The streets are lined with one star hotels, street meat vendors and real magoshas getting ready to hlahla any guy stupid enough to pay them. Our apartment is on Claim st, near Kotze, across the road from the infamous Protea Hotel. It’s legendary for the amount of jijis, underage girls, that are there all the time. I can see them without squinting from my window. Sometimes there are moms, like in their forties even. I can see it in the lines in their faces, that dead look in their eyes. They wish they were dead, I can tell. They stand outside, smoking dagga, staring vacantly into the street. At night they’re way younger. Some of them look my age. They all wear the same gold or purple eye shadow, red lipstick and black fishnets, or torn tights. When their legs are bare you can see bruises and sometimes scratches. When they bend over, you can see everything. No underwear, nothing. Every night when I go to bed my room is bathed in orange and green neon from the hotel sign. One of my mom’s friends once offered to make me some curtains, my mom keeps saying I should put up some towels, but I always say no. Orange and green are my favorite colors.
My mom is taking control of the situation now. My legs feel like they’re going to buckle at any second. She’s got this hard look in her eyes, this street look I’ve seen her use with the guy who drives the banana- kaar through our street. He comes by once a week, exchanging our used bottles for bags of popcorn and chips. We spend hours scrounging for stuff, swiping liquor bottles from our neighbors garbage. Then he tries to stiff us, tries to give us half or less of the amount he owes us. Then my mom goes from being friendly and polite, a mam’gobozi, who gossips with them, to
their worst enemy. There’s this moment of disbelief, this palpable look of shock on their faces, before they just give up and give her what she wants. My ouledi is badass.
My eyes begin to well up and I wonder if she notices. A while ago I learned how to cry in public without anyone noticing. I don’t change my facial expression and I let the tears fall individually. I think being quiet is the best way to get away with anything. A couple years ago, at school, I got bullied by some other kids. I once got pushed in front of a door and everyone laughed as it slammed in my face. My lip was swollen and the skin above my nose and under my eyes bulged into hard red bumps. I sat crouching behind it, bleary eyed and blubbering in pain. No one came near me. Guys walked right past me, and this girl that I thought was cool and wanted to be friends with saw me, laughed and kept walking. No one said a word to me. I haven’t
been able to cry in public since.
My mom knows me better than anyone. I cry in front of her all the time. She’s knows I’m about to break down, she can tell, so she steers past the front desk in the emergency room. She finds a single empty chair and I sink into it. It’s made of worn blue leather, and has stuffing coming out of its right arm. There’s a table full of dog eared magazines beside me. I leaf through an old issue of Time, feel disgusted, put it down. They never write about us. They never talk about the people who really struggle, the people in the townships. She leans up against the side of my chair. There’s nowhere for her to sit.
My mom works harder than anyone I know. The best word for it is phithezela-hectic. She cleans houses six days a week. When I get up in the morning she’s already gone, and when I get home she’s still not back yet. She’s hardly ever around, so she can’t take of me when I’m sick. She strokes my hair now. I used to wear it in tight thin braids to make it feel like I had extensions. I felt so weird about having hair that was red and soft to the touch that grows at such a tremendous rate. I thought about cutting it all off at one point and wearing hats and berets like my mom. She never had extensions. I guess I’ve gotten used to it now.
I don’t want her to feel bad about anything. I understand that she needs to work. It could be a lot worse, I say. We could be out on the street. She shakes her head and looks away. Aiiii, she mutters shaking her head. We nearly there, hey. We haven’t had any electricity for three days now. It’s fine during the day, but at night I have to use a torch just to get to the bathroom. I can’t see to do my homework or read, I can’t listen to music and I have a boyfriend and he can’t even call me. She starts filling out the hospital forms for me. She writes out my date of birth and then my age. I’m going to be seventeen next week. It’ll be at least a couple of hours before anyone can see us. I close my eyes. I wish I had something to knock me out. I open my eyes and find my mom filling out her section. Occupation: housekeeper. Nanny. Professional taker of other people’s shit. She gets down on her hands and knees and scrubs their floors for less than a thousand Rand a month. She makes them huge meals with fancy food, and we’re subsisting on fruit loops with milk that’s past its expiry date. Their food would probably make me sick, but the whole thing makes me sick to be honest. They treat her like a sbotho, like a worthless person that they can replace at any time. Which I guess they can. My mom has a grade five education. When I graduate from high school, it’ll be a big deal to her. When I look around me sometimes, at the neighborhood, when I think about my chances, my chances of making anything of my life, I get incredibly depressed. I don’t know what I want to be, or what I want to do except make a lot of money. Enough to buy us a house. Enough to get my mom some nice new things.
Enough for decent food, no more of this township crap. I keep telling my mom that if I eat any more achaar, which is township salad, oily, made of mangoes, that I’ll be sika for the rest of my life. I keep telling her my kidney problems come from eating too much achaar, or chicken dust which is meat, any meat, it could be pigeon for all we know, sold to us by street vendors. Sometimes she laughs, but usually she snaps and tells me I’m being a chizzboy, a spoiled brat.
I like to fantasize about dropping out of school and being a singer or a rapper.
I love kwaito, township hip hop, and African singers. My mom has all the albums, from Miriam Makeba to Brenda Fassie to Bongo Maffin and Mandoza. Kwaito adds color when everything is grey and white- the buildings, the crap burger joints, the wet laundry that hangs out of people’s windows, showing off our underwear, reminding the world that we’re working class, the gun shots at night. It’s too bad that my father was white. I’m a Dushi, a mixed race kid. I’d never be accepted if I wanted to make music like that. As it is, the kids I know from around here call me Coconut- a person who’s brown, kind of black on the outside but totally white on the inside. They hate that I don’t go with them to one of the shit schools in town. I go to an almost all white school in Edenvale that takes me forever to get to. My name is real name is Colleen, which they call me at school, but in Hillbrow everybody calls me Coco. It’s ok. It doesn’t bother me anymore.
A nurse comes to call into another waiting area. She and mom chat. She asks my mom if I have Magama Amathathu, if I have AIDS. She says it because I’m thin, because I haven’t been keeping anything down. I’m about to snap, I’m about to say no lady, not AIDS, just HIV.
It’s the kind of joke my mom wouldn’t find funny. She doesn’t want a phalafala, she tells me, sharply poking me in the leg. It’s true, I know. The last thing we need is a fiasco.
Sometimes when I think about being sika, I think about how many years I’ve had these health problems, I think about how little we have money wise, how my mom has to phanda, to make ends meet, I get so angry. I understand why people deal drugs, why people rob houses, why stupid people get shot. Everyone just wants to get out. Everyone is desperate to get out of this place as soon as they can. And there are so many of us.
My boyfriend is from Zimbabwe. His name is Munya. He’s one of the refugees who hopped the fence, walked and crawled and climbed and possibly killed to get into this country.
He’s eight years older than me. He’s six feet tall, and thin. I can feel his hip bones and his rib bones when I touch him. He’s gentle all the time, at least with me. He’s different than most of the guys I’ve ever met.
If my mom thinks anything bad about him, she doesn’t say it. She knows he’s older, but she thinks he’s twenty five, not twenty eight. She was happy when he got a job in computers, and when he got fired last month, I didn’t tell her. She doesn’t need more to worry about; when he takes me out, she doesn’t need to know where he gets his money. It’s hard to meet a guy around here who doesn’t deal drugs. Munya doesn’t gufa- he doesn’t smoke crack or do coke.
He just deals it, because it moves a lot faster than weed and he makes so much money that if he gets caught he’ll be able to pay his bail. It’s not so bad when you think about it. He doesn’t see Magoshas or have phamakote, which is what they also call AIDS. We have sex, and most of the time we use condoms. It’s hard to remember all the time. When passion grabs you, it grabs you, it’s something intangible, a force that you can’t control. It’s a feeling I’ve always wanted to feel, so if it seizes me I try not to say no. Sometimes when I remember it’s too late. We’re nowhere near a place where we can get some. It would kill the moment, the feeling, the urgency. Sex helps the world goes black, it makes me forget that I’m sick, that I could die, that we have no money, that I might make nothing of my life. There’s a gnawing fear in me that I’m not as good as my classmates; that I can try and struggle and still not end up like them; with two parents, in a nice house, with a nice husband and family, with money, with security.
I can’t tell my mom that I’m having sex. She’ll think that I malunde- that I sleep around. She’ll be scared of me getting pregnant, even though we’re careful most of the time. Most of all, she’ll be scared I’ll never be a makoti, a bride. She’s scared I’ll end up tainted, used and thrown away like her. My mom has never been married. She wants everything to be better for me that it was for her. Sometimes it feels like too much to promise her. Sometimes it feels like too much pressure.
When we get called to the doctor’s rooms, finally, we’re told that we have to pay. The doctor explains to my mom that we have to, that not treating it can be fatal. We panic and talk, pace the passageway, and think. I suggest calling Munya for the money and my mom relents.
She still thinks he’s a stand up guy with a real job, instead of a lova, an unemployed guy who deals drugs and knows all the lyrics on Brenda Fassie’s Memeza album.
Sometimes when Munya is high, and bored, he sculpts things. He sculpts faces from pieces of wood, whole bodies from sticks that are lying around. He has an artist’s soul. Maybe that’s why my mom doesn’t fear him.
She sees his good side too.
It’s his drug money that pays for the dialysis. When he doesn’t have enough he and his friends break into houses. They say they never hurt anyone, just scare them until the job is done.
There’s something exciting about it, about taking life into your own hands, but there’s something scary about it too. When I think about my mom, going to work in a five year old uniform missing its middle button, with a rag tied around her head, stealing sugar from their pantry because she’s afraid to ask for some for tea, going without a lunch so I can eat one- I feel so sad and angry and guilty, guilty for not doing more.
Tomorrow night when he asks me to go with him and his friends to housebreak I think I’ll go with. I want to see what it’s like.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem like I have a choice, or much of a chance anyway of doing anything else. I mean, there’s the future that everyone’s always talking about for me, and then there’s the truth, the one I see everyday. The buildings, the drugs, the pocket knife I wear in the sock of my school shoes. I might do my best and never get out of here, or get away from it anyway.
I have to see what it’s like. I have to try it once, just to know.
I have to figure out if something, anything, makes me feel less angry.

.

1. Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath – Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood Of Breath (Fledg’ling) / Brotherhood (Fledg’ling)

- these reissues of the mighty Brotherhood’s first two early ‘70s albums actually came out in very late 2006, so I wondered, briefly, whether to hide their presence further down the list, but, since they include (make that since they’re saturated with) some of the very best South African music ever made, since they were surely among the greatest big bands ever assembled, since they offer perhaps the most conclusive proof of the galvanising effect the exiled South Africans had on the UK free jazz scene, since Rolling Stone magazine once chose the Clash’s 1979 “London Calling” as its Album of the ‘80s, and since I doubt whether any albums, new or reissued, gave me greater or more lasting pleasure last year, I wondered only very briefly

2. Various - The Very Best Of Ethiopiques (Manteca) / Various – Authenticité: The Syliphone Years (Stern’s Africa)

- the favourable political climates that fuelled the remarkable musical abundance in Ethiopia and Guinea captured on these two double albums overlapped to a significant degree - Ethiopia’s, captured here in 28 totally captivating and astonishingly varied tracks drawn from the marvellous “Ethiopiques” CD series, lasted from the early ‘60s to the mid ‘70s, a joyous interregnum between two separate periods of political repression and consequent artistic recession, with the majority of these songs drawn from a recording explosion that occurred between 1969 and 1975 or shortly thereafter – the sound of Guinea’s, full of exuberance and hope, and coinciding with a policy of authenticité following the country’s independence from France, was primarily captured on the Syliphone label between 1965 and 1980 – if only a few artists on show here made any impression on the outside world, the overall quality is close to miraculous

3. Various - People Take Warning! Murder Ballads And Disaster Songs, 1913-1938 (Tompkins Square)

- superbly packaged three disc set of songs about flood, fire and famine, train, plane and bus wrecks, family slaughters, crimes of passion and the sinking of the Titanic that includes the original recorded version of the Kingston Trio’s 1958 hit tale of the 1868 murder of Laura Foster by Tom Dula in the North Carolina backwoods by the grand nephew of the sheriff (mentioned in the song) who brought him in – mainly old time folk and country and blues, of course, but there’s a traditional prayer for the Titanic dead, sung by a Jewish cantor, that has finally wiped all trace of that Celine Dion abomination from my memory - I can’t resist this sort of thing, and neither should you

4. Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy – Cornell 1964 (Blue Note)

- a recently discovered double disc recording of an all but completely forgotten concert by this amazing outfit turns out to be as good as, if not better than several of the great bandleader’s most celebrated live recordings, with more than a phenomenal hour devoted to just Fables Of Faubus and Meditations and enough brilliance elsewhere to almost justify this placing even without that hour

5. Jim Ford – The Sounds Of Our Time (Bear Family)

- this obscure white country/soul singer’s only album (“Harlan County” from 1969), fleshed out here with singles and unreleased material, proves that, besides being a writer good enough to have attracted the attention of Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack, Nick Lowe and the Temptations, and a personality funky enough to have been one of Sly Stone’s best friends, he was also an artist in the Dan Penn/Eddie Hinton class who might have been more famous had he been more interested, and enjoyed just a little luck

6. Nico – The Frozen Borderline 1968-1970 (Elektra/Reprise/Rhino)

- the Velvet Underground ice princess’s second and third albums, both produced by former bandmate John Cale, the only other musician on show and a perfect artistic foil who said of their non-commerciality, “You can’t sell suicide”, are stark, austere, desolate and intense, their carefully wrought atmosphere utterly uncompromising - yet there is heart here, of a sort, and even soul, as well as an appreciable amount of bitter beauty

7. Arthur Alexander – Lonely Just Like Me: The Final Chapter (HackTone)

- Alexander had a voice that was once described as the sound of heartbreak, and was the only songwriter to have had his songs recorded by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan – by definition, therefore, he should have been a big star, but sometimes life just doesn’t turn out that way – this is an expanded edition of his last album, sweetly melancholy, vastly tuneful, packed to the gills with real soul, and recorded after a two decade long absence from the business during which he beat addiction, drove a bus and found the Lord - it will break your heart, and so will the fact that he died just a few days after its release

8. Michael Rother – Flammende Herzen / Sterntaler / Katzenmusik / Fernwarme (Water) // Harmonia – Live 1974 (Water)

- long overdue CD reissues of the first four solo albums by Krautrock guitar genius Rother, formerly of Neu!, as well as a surprise first time live release by the Harmonia trio he formed with Cluster – where Harmonia’s approach is ascetic and artistically rigorous (more so than on their studio releases), qualities much prized by many of their Krautrock colleagues, Rother’s immediately subsequent playing, on perhaps the greatest guitar albums you’ve never heard, is languid, liquid and hugely melodious, and, especially on “Sterntaler”, it soars ecstatically

9. Moby Grape – Moby Grape / Wow / Grape Jam / Moby Grape ’69 / Truly Fine Citizen (Sundazed)

- in a year that saw excellent and highly recommended reissues of classic albums by Fairport Convention, Sonic Youth, Young Marble Giants, Pink Floyd, David Crosby, Joy Division and the Watersons among others, this fantastic set seemed the most desirable, covering the first incarnation of potentially the least era (or area) bound of the all of the San Francisco Summer of Love bands, each of the albums fleshed out with worthwhile extras and an attractive booklet – the first and third are the places to start, the debut cementing its reputation as one of rock’s greatest, while “‘69” will surprise some with its unsentimental and often gorgeous way with early country-rock – but you’ll want the others as well

10. Various – I’m Not There

- an “original soundtrack” album many of whose songs don’t feature in Todd Haynes’s film “inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan” at all – in fact, Bob’s only on one, but it is the title track, the enigmatic Basement Tape song that was arguably the greatest still in his unreleased catalogue – the rest are covers of Dylan songs by a bewildering array of acts, some of whom (Willie Nelson, Roger McGuinn, Los Lobos, Mark Lanegan) might have been born to sing their choices, while others (Cat Power, Tom Verlaine, Sufjan Stevens) mould the material to their own musical personalities – much of the backing is provided by two fine bands built around Sonic Youth and Calexico respectively, while Joe Henry’s production skills are amply utilised, too

11. Various – The Cosimo Matassa Story (Proper)

- cataloguing, across four CDs and 120 tracks, recording engineer Matassa’s remarkable career as the Crescent City’s record man of choice in those days, this is nothing less than a masterclass in New Orleans R&B and rock ‘n’ roll between 1951 and 1956 – Fats Domino and Little Richard are the big names, of course, but there’s plenty of Lloyd Price, Smiley Lewis, Bobby Charles and even early Art Neville and dozens of others, of differing degrees of fame or obscurity, influence or interest, with every one of them worth at least the space allocated to him (or her – Shirley Goodman’s unusual place in all this is emphasised by her almost exclusively male company)

12. Magnolia Electric Co – Sojourner (Secretly Canadian)

- four short albums of new, old and sometimes re-recorded songs, a similarly short DVD of life on the Canadian road and several other artefacts in a sturdy wooden box constitute the kind of package that fans of independent US rock should find irresistible, especially, if almost incidentally, because Jason Molina and latterly this band supply consistently fine music album after album and throughout this set

ALPHABETICAL RECOMMENDATIONS (the next 25 have asterisks)

Leonard Cohen – Songs Of Leonard Cohen / Songs From A Room / Songs Of Love
And Hate (Columbia/Legacy)
*David Crosby – If I Could Only Remember My Name …. (Atlantic/Rhino)
*Karen Dalton – Cotton Eyed Joe (Megaphone)
*Betty Davis – Betty Davis / They Say I’m Different (Light In The Attic)
*Jack DeJohnette & Bill Frisell – The Elephant Sleeps But Still Remembers (GBP)
*Sandy Denny – Live At The BBC (Universal)
*Dave Douglas – Live At The Jazz Standard (Greenleaf/Koch)
*Gordon Duncan – Just For Gordon (Greentrax)
Bob Dylan – Dylan (Columbia)
Joe Ely – Silver City (Rack ‘Em)
*Fairport Convention – Liege And Lief: Deluxe Edition (Island)
*Aretha Franklin – Rare And Unreleased Recordings From The Golden Reign Of
The Queen Of Soul (Rhino/Atlantic)
Robbie Fulks – Revenge (Yep Roc)
Green On Red – BBC Sessions (Maida Vale)
*Hallelujah Chicken Run Band – Take One 1974-79 (Analog Africa)
*Emmylou Harris – Songbird: Rare Tracks And Forgotten Gems (Rhino)
Dale Hawkins – “LA., Memphis & Tyler, Texas” (Rev-Ola)
*Andrew Hill – Compulsion (Blue Note)
*Robyn Hitchcock – I Wanna Go Backwards (Yep Roc)

*Keith Jarrett / Gary Peacock / Jack DeJohnette – My Foolish Heart: Live At
Montreux (ECM)
“Peerie” Willie Johnson – Willie’s World (Greentrax)
*Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures / Closer / Still (Collector’s Editions) (London)
Bill Knight – Kaapse Mengsel (Self released)
Konono No 1 – Live At Couleur Café (Crammed Discs)
Mahavishnu Orchestra – Original Album Classics (Columbia/Legacy)
*Makgona Tsohle Band – Mathaka Vols 1&2 (Gallo)
John McLaughlin – Original Album Classics (Columbia/Legacy)
Pat Metheny – Secret Story (Nonesuch)
*Mono – Gone: A Collection Of EPs 2000-2007 (Temporary Residence Ltd)
John Moriri – Various reissues (Gallo)
*Gwigwi Mrwebi – Mbaqanga Songs (Honest Jon’s)
*Gram Parsons – Archives Vol 1: With The Flying Burrito Brothers Live At The
Avalon Ballroom 1969 (Amoeba)
*Pink Floyd – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (EMI)
Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys – Jazzfest Live 2007 (Munckmusic)
Jason Ringenberg – Best Tracks And Side Tracks 1979-2007 (Yep Roc)
Tom Russell – Wounded Heart Of America (Hightone)
*Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation: Deluxe Edition (Geffen)
*Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band – Live In Dublin (Columbia)
Ralph Stanley – Mountain Preacher’s Child (Rebel)
Jem Targal – Luckey Guy (Obscure Oxide)
Chip Taylor & Carrie Rodriguez – Live From The Ruhr Triennale (Train Wreck)
Richard & Linda Thompson – In Concert, November 1975 (Island)
Various – BBC Radio 3 Awards For World Music ’07 (Manteca)
Various – Cape Jazz 3: Goema (Mountain)
Various – Classic Old-Time Fiddle (Smithsonian Folkways)
Various – Goin’ Home: A Tribute To Fats Domino (Vanguard)
Various – Jazzfest Live: The 2007 Compilation Album (Munckmusic)
Various – The Rough Guide To North African Café (World Music Network)
Various – Sound Of The World 2007 (Warner)
Various – Summer Records Anthology 1974-1988 (Light In The Attic)
M. Ward – Duet For Guitars #2 (Merge)
Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter & James Cotton – Breakin’ It Up, Breakin’ It Down
(Epic/Legacy)
*The Watersons – Frost And Fire / Sound Sound Your Instruments Of Joy (Topic)
Andre Williams – Movin’ On With Andre Williams: Greasy & Explicit Soul Movers
1956-1970 (Vampisoul)
Wreckless Eric – Big Smash (Stiff)
*Neil Young – Live At Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise)
*Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth & Collected Works (Domino)
Warren Zevon – Preludes: Rare And Unreleased Recordings (New West)
Warren Zevon – Stand In The Fire (Asylum/Rhino)

By LAURA M. HOLSON
Published: April 24, 2008

Who says cellphones are good only for talking? Today they are bringing together two unlikely brand names: Nokia and Spike Lee.

Spike Lee will assess the video, music, photos and text material created by consumers with their cellphones, then help assemble the various snippets into a three-part film.

The director is teaming up with Nokia to make a film using videos created with cellphones.

Mr. Lee, the director, is teaming up with Nokia, the cellphone maker, to direct a short film comprising YouTube-style videos created by teenagers and adults using their mobile phones.

By hiring Mr. Lee for the project, Nokia is seeking to combine the populist appeal of user-generated content with the power of a famous director’s pedigree. The film will have three acts, each three to five minutes long, with the theme loosely based on the concept of humanity.

“I’m interested because it’s a great collaborative effort,” Mr. Lee said. “Within five years, new movies will be made with devices like these.”

He added: “I like working with people who have talent but aren’t in film school.”

The project is an experiment for Mr. Lee, but it is also a way for Nokia to promote its wares. Cellphone companies are all trying to position their products not just as devices for talking, but as multimedia devices that can play music, search the Web and capture video.

Many companies are also preparing for a new wave of mobile entertainment, as social networking on sites like MySpace and Facebook migrates from the Web to cellphones.

Nokia in particular is trying to turn itself into an entertainment-friendly company, much the way Steven P. Jobs has changed Apple’s image with the iPod and iPhone.

Nokia, based in Finland, said it surveyed 9,000 consumers last year and concluded that by 2012 one out of every four consumers will create, edit or share entertainment with friends, instead of getting it from traditional media outlets like television or movie studios.

And that, Nokia executives said, led them to seek out a movie director willing to dabble in mobile video.

“This is not a marketing gimmick,” said Craig Coffey, Nokia’s vice president for North American marketing and a former PepsiCo executive. “The notion of social networking and entertainment is real.”

There have been several other efforts in the realm of films that were shot with or meant to be viewed on phones. Most have involved independent filmmakers or young Steven Spielbergs in training. In 2006 Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute announced a partnership with the largest wireless association in Europe to sponsor five short films for mobile viewers. They were created by, among others, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who directed the Academy Award winner “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Early last year, Paris held its own mobile film festival for novice filmmakers, sponsored by the French mobile operator SFR. Similar festivals have been held in Hong Kong and Yokohama, Japan.

John Stratton, the chief marketing officer of Verizon Communications who works closely with media companies to offer content to customers, said he did not expect films shot on phones to become their own genre. “But the notion of shared media is powerful,” he said.

That is one reason Nokia chose to exploit the social networking possibilities of mobile phones. Contributors can upload material created with their phones — video, music, photos and text — to www.nokiaproductions.com for review by Mr. Lee and assistant directors who will help revise entries. Mr. Coffey said other site visitors will be able to peruse these and combine them with their own material to make something new.

Mr. Lee, who in recent years directed “Inside Man” and the documentary series “When the Levees Broke,” conceded that he will be in unfamiliar technological terrain.

“Me, I’m personally a dinosaur,” he said. “My children have to help me turn on the television.”

During an interview Mr. Lee corrected himself twice, remembering that he was supposed to call the cellphone a “mobile device.”

Mr. Lee said he would assess the submissions to the site and even write a blog giving young filmmakers advice. “We want people to send sounds, music, maybe a baby crying in the park,” he said.

And if thousands of aspiring Spike Lees show up seeking feedback on their work? “I can only do so much; I have a full-time job,” he said. Then he added: “We’ll manage.”

During the months-long project, visitors to the site will be asked to vote for their favorite videos for each of the film’s three acts. After that Mr. Lee will pick a winner for each act and edit them into the final film, which will have its premiere next fall in Los Angeles.

The film will also be available for viewing online, but Nokia has yet to work out one important detail: which carriers will distribute it to viewers on mobile phones. Nokia hasn’t found anyone yet. Sounding like a hopeful Hollywood producer, Mr. Coffey said, “I’m optimistic.”

this article was first published by the new york times

Two years after a near fatal crash Sandile Dikeni shares a laugh with fellow poet Antjie Krog

‘You just don’t want to know how I felt when at first my son did not recognise us at all. I felt like my heart had just been cut by half’

Sandile Dikeni’s excavation of his memory is allowing him to re-imagine his being, writes Bongani Madondo

It’s a full two years since the raconteur, journalist and poet Sandile Dikeni was involved in a car accident that almost claimed his life.

Two years later, nobody quite remembers what really happened. The information is sketchy and the people close to him are testy, at best, whenever one searches for specifics regarding that fateful August night in the Western Cape.

Perhaps his best or worst attribute, Dikeni is the sort of person who arouses passionate reactions among his fellow beings. Those who love him do so blindly; and there are those who are intimidated by his fierce intellect and mastery of language. Those who dislike him do so with rage.

Perhaps that explains why there are varying versions of his accident. This is the closest those disparate groups agree on, also confirmed by his mom, Magdeline Dikeni: the man and a few friends, mostly colleagues from the Ministry of Housing, were returning from a friend’s mother’s funeral in Beaufort West.

Somewhere between the Western Cape and the Free State, their car collided with an oncoming vehicle in that darkest hour. Two of his colleagues and two people in the other car, died on the spot. Dikeni and one of his colleagues, both of whom were passengers, survived, but barely.

He was rushed to Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein, where he fell into a coma for three days. His ex-wife, and still his closest friend, Bronia Dikeni, an air hostess, flew back from Europe and got him — heavily bandaged — transferred to Johannesburg Hospital, where he would take months to recover.

Without being oblivious to those who lost their lives on that August night, the country’s cultural circles were shaken by news of Dikeni’s accident, near death and struggle to recover. Though he was alive, Dikeni had terrible amnesia, and many mourned what they believed would be the death of his mental faculties.

Says one of his closest friends, journalist Ryan Fortune: “At first he could not remember anything, nothing at all, but it did not take too long before he could figure things out. It’s just amazing how it happened. That’s testament to the man’s strength.

“Small things,” says Fortune, “illuminated a past through which Dikeni re-imagined his world. At first it was discomfiting, but powerful, seeing it happen, to a person I have been friends with for a greater part of my adult life.”

Dikeni’s mother gets emotional just thinking about the aftermath of the accident.

“I was overwhelmed with grief. For some time I could not pull myself to go see him, when I heard about the state he was in, but you know, I thought, ‘that’s my son, uSandile wam’. I could not wait any longer. Together with Douglas, his eldest brother, I set out to Johannesburg to be with him.

“You just don’t want to know how I felt when at first my son did not recognise us at all. I felt like my heart had just been cut by half, and then something almost miraculous happened: after some days at his bedside, his brother started singing a tune they were all familiar with. It was the voice, his brother’s singing voice, that brought him back to us: he turned around, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, bra Doug, when did you arrive here?’

“Douglas ran towards me, telling me my son’s memory was coming back. I quickly walked into his ward and asked him, ‘Baby, who am I’, and he responded, quite formally: ‘I know you, I do. You are Mrs Magdeline Dikeni.’

“And that was that. My hope in miracles and belief in his fighting strength were renewed.”

At some stage, Dikeni’s memory would take him back to his journalism school days; he would think he was still a student at Peninsula Technikon.

Much later, Dikeni’s mother would tell me: “You know, I think he gets his strength from his late father. He too was a strong man, an activist, a man whose entire life was defined by his commitment to justice.”

George Dikeni was arrested in 1968 on trumped-up charges that he was a leader of activists with intentions to sabotage.

Oscar Guetirez, a Guatemalan expat who is now Johannesburg’s bohemian photographer of choice, says he is missing his old friend. The old, generous, mad, fun lover who not only enjoyed his drink but could hold court on almost any subject, anywhere on the planet, without making those congregating around and discussing with him feel any less smart.

Guetirez says: “I first met him 10 years ago when he came from the Cape to work for the SABC. The whole encounter, my friend, is still vivid. It was in Rockey Street, some jazz joint. He said to me, ‘Man, I know nobody in this town. I have nobody to speak to, can we go have fun?’ It’s funny, ’cause when I first saw him, he was talking, talking and talking some more with folk encircling, like he was an ancient story teller, but right in the city.

“We spent the following weeks moving from one jazz joint to another: he lives in the night and for the night, and so do I. So we hit it off, pretty swell. By Christmas day, we had both exhausted our money and whatever savings we had when we landed at a bar called Portal, in Troyeville.

“Dog tired and poor, I said to Dikeni, ‘Man, Sandile, do something. You are a poet, just do something. We can’t be so miserable while you are this talented. There was the usual bar noise when he climbed on the counter for an impromptu poetry performance.

“By the second poem everybody was dead quiet, and from then on he owned the house. He was terrific. Terrific. When he did Telegraph to the Sky, I swear I saw some people wiping away tears, but then again, it might have been my mind. Perhaps I was the one wiping away tears. Tears of joy, for soon after that we owned the bar: free drinks, food and more booze sent our way. You should have been there.”

Indeed, if words were bombs, Dikeni would have left many a city, many a country, many a jazz bar, flattened or smashed to smithereens. But also, this is the feeling man’s poet. Recall one of his most emotional jabs in a poem entitled A Long Story:

My comrades and friends killed my granny

With fire

But before that, they sucked her breasts dry

. . . so that she could burn well

Imagine then how devastated Dikeni’s friends were when they realised that the accident had messed with his mind, that it had affected his memory.

I, an all-too-blind fan of his work was devastated too, my thinking numbed and deadened when talk veered towards Dikeni’s health. A few weeks before that accident, I had stated in a television documentary on jazz and poetry that “together with his friend and sometimes mentor Keorapetse Kgositsile, Sandile Dikeni was possibly the closest we have to a blues and jazz poet, that, like the Chilean Pablo Neruda or the free jazz poet laureate Amiri Baraka, Dikeni was the voice that turns anger to music … for Dikeni is an eternal optimist”.

Thus, to undertake a trip to Khayelitsha to look for him was as much a personal journey as it was a labour of love.

HOUSE 86 on Maxama Street, Z Section, Khayelitsha — possibly Cape Town’s and one of the country’s biggest urban sprawls, a township with a history written in both blood and love — is just like any township structure. Until you start shaking its creaking gate and shout: “Anybody home?”

I find Dikeni with his family: mom, brother Douglas and cousins. He speaks slowly, but his fierce mind is undiminished.

“I am still writing, man,” he tells me. “But I am not going to show it to you, or anybody. Right now I am writing for myself.”

He is writing to rediscover himself, to reawaken his memory, which keeps eluding him, playing tricks with him.

He says he feels embarrassed that sometimes he bungles his owns verses and forgets his lines — but not the actual feel of his poem. Today he is not that talkative, only taking time to speak Afrikaans with his friend and fellow poet Antjie Krog, who has accompanied me.

Two days later I see him perform at the launch of his new book, Planting Water, an anthology of previously published work and poems, written early in his recovery. He is the old Dikeni, but, as Krog says, something has left the room — “it was anger that defined him”.

Most poignantly, Dikeni sometimes forgets the most potent anti-apartheid poems he penned; he simply can’t recognise them; he doesn’t remember the apartheid context which gave birth to some of his masterpieces such as Guava Juice.

Maybe another way of looking at this is that the poet is starting on a new slate, writing or rewriting his life, so to speak.

bongani madondo

this article was first published by the sunday times

Eduardo Galeano

APRIL 2008 (IPS) - The world is painting still lifes, forests are
dying, the poles are melting, the air is becoming unbreatheable, and
the water undrinkable and at the same time Ecuador is debating a new
constitution that opens up the possibility for the first time ever of
recognising the rights of nature, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan
writer and journalist and author of The Open Veins of Latin America,
Memories of Fire and Mirrors: An Almost Universal History.

It sounds odd, doesn’t it, that nature could have rights? Yet in 1886
the U.S. Supreme Court extended human rights to private corporations.
They were recognised as having the same rights as people, the right to
life, free expression, privacy, and all the rest.

But there is nothing odd or abnormal about the bill that would include
the rights of nature in the new Constitution of Ecuador. This country
has suffered repeated devastation over its history. To give just one
example, for more than a quarter of a century, until 1992, the Texaco
oil company vomited 18,000 gallons of poison into the rivers, land,
and the people. Once this gesture of beneficence in the Ecuadorean
Amazon was completed, the company, which was born in Texas, was
married to Standard Oil. By then Rockefeller’s Standard Oil had
changed its name to Chevron and was being run by Condoleezza Rice.

i buy injury
white
steam
in air
shake and chant
bullied
electric silence
like flame
but hotter

this morning
i died whilst eating my toast
it was crunchy, a little burnt
i swallowed a bite and choked
wow, i was hoping to go out in flames
in a glorious blaze of glory
this was just kind of…
lame

i woke up in a tunnel
of a new york subway
i crawled along the rails
hoping for a light
an exit sign
any beacon of hope
however small and broken
then i saw a light, bright and white
‘thank you, god.’ i sighed
and got hit by a train
‘thank you,
god’
i sighed

i woke up in a hole
a gutter
there were lights flashing
far far above me
so far out of reach
i thought this must be hell
so cruel to show me the
lights i can never touch
i stood up slowly
no, it’s just hillbrow

i walked over to nigel
the nigerian
i scored three hits of crack
if i could never have the lights
i’d just have to make my own
and make them splutter and burn
and burst and dance and float and sing
all around and in my head
i sat down next to a whore
i mean, lady of the night
(have to be politically correct)

hit one
pull
crackle crackle

hit two
pull
crackle crackle

hit three
pull
crackle…
fade…
away…

and i died on those stairs
sitting next to stacy

i woke up in front of gates
i pushed a button near the entrance
and heard a voice
‘is that you, jesus?’
i asked. man, heaven got
some tight security
‘fok of jou getrekte gomgat
fokop’
said the voice
‘jesus i’m sorry, but
you don’t need to be angry’
‘ag, gaan rape nog ‘n kleuter’
turns out jesus ain’t my homeboy

i kind of wandered through the streets
and got really tired
i went to sit under a street light
but as soon as i was under it
it fused
i moved to the next one
and the same thing happened
and the next
and the one after that
i guess i wasn’t born to be seen

i tried to cross the street
but a car came speeding towards me
doing twice the legal speed of light
they were seventeen and drunk
and daddy was rich enough
the headlights raced towards me
and didn’t fused
i could’ve moved
but it felt so good
to be able to bask in the light
for once in my life

i didn’t wake up
i was too tired

when i saw you on the street the other day
i saw the way you tried to avoid my gaze
you ducked you moved you manouvered
you did everything to avoid
looking me in the eye
i’m not sure what it is about me
that makes it so hard for you to face me
but i would guess that
i forced you to confront things that made you uncomfortable
but were true nonetheless
and that seeing me reminds you of all the things in your life that haven’t changed
you can fool other people but you can’t fool me
(i really knew you then and i tried to connect again when i thought the time was right, my heart was in the right place even if you couldn’t see it)
i don’t feel bad about anything