derms ryg: a critique
Translated literally, the succinctly descriptive Afrikaans term ‘derms ryg’ means ‘to pull out intestines’; figuratively it is taken to mean ‘baring one’s innards/gut’.
When I was a little girl, our family visited a peanut farm in the then West Transvaal during a school holiday. My brother and I were allowed on the back of the bakkie when the farmer and some farmworkers went out on a baboon hunt – naturally baboons were a major problem on a peanut farm.
A large male baboon was shot in the abdomen; he threw his head back, baring his teeth, and made sounds like I’d never heard before or since.
He tore open the bullet hole with humanoid digits and started pulling out his intestines, trying to get to the source of pain.
His innards and organs lay on the red soil before him in a glistening heap, steaming in the early-morning air. He didn’t stop pulling and he didn’t stop howling until one of those fuckers with a gun finally managed to aim true and put a merciful bullet into his head.
It seems that ‘confessional art/expression’ is the mode du jour, and communication technology makes it possible for anyone to ‘bare their all’ to whoever is willing to engage with it. Lamentable then that so many are pulling out their innards only to reveal that they never had a bullet in the gut. The ‘work’ is frequently little more than undisciplined and self-indulgent emotional projectile vomiting without style, substance, or, indeed, sense.
September 21st, 2008 at 5:34 am
baar (excuse the pun) maar waar!