ERICA li lundqvist plays the role of the STATE. She represents AUTHORITY, POWER OF THE STATE OVER THE INDIVIDUAL. She is ruthless and dominant but ultimately her real tone is of yearning.
She yearns for the freedom and individuality that is represented in LINNEA’s role which is of the INDIVIDUAL.
The film is about the epic heroic battle between individuality and CONFORMISM.
SCENE 1
We see the INDIVIDUAL dancing on glass. She is wild, free, sexy, a little bit deranged, a little bit gone. She is ALIVE.
SCENE 2
We see the STATE in close up.
STATE
The evidence is there for all to see. It is clear to anyone who watches this scandalous video that you are out of control. You are a threat to the good order. But more important, you are a threat to YOURSELF!
We see the INDIVIDUAL, she has a tough chick fuck you attitude. She is a classic punk chick, all attitude and impatience. All she wants is to get laid and get high and get the fuck away from this fucking boring bitch in front of her who is a drag! INDIVIDUAL is chewing gum. She blows a bubble gum bubble insolently.
STATE
Your parents have given up on you. They say you are uncontrollable. (pauses) Have you anything to say for yourself young lady?
The STATE and the INDIVIDUAL eyeball each other.
We see the STATE’s FANTASY of what she would really like to be doing with the
INDIVIDUAL:
SCENE 2
The STATE is a VAMPIRE! A bloodsucking evil creature from the unconscious of subterranean hell-spawn desires! EVIL. The INDIVIDUAL is a beautiful VIRGIN dressed in sheer translucent white fabric. She looks pure and innocent. The STATE moves her fingers slowly across the INDIVIDUAL’s face, and then moves in for the first BITE!. The INDIVIDUAL closes her eyes with pure sensual ecstacy.
SCENE 3
We are back in the “reality” of the first scene. Both STATE and INDIVIDUAL are still EYEBALLING each other.
STATE
Well?
We see the FANTASY of how the INDIVIDUAL perceives the STATE
SCENE 4
The INDIVIDUAL is slapping the buttocks of the STATE who is kneeled over a TOILET with her head inside the bowl. The INDIVIDUAL flushes the toilet. The STATE screams!
SCENE 5
We are back in the “reality” scene.
INDIVIDUAL
Yes I’ve got something to say.
STATE
And?
INDIVIDUAL
Kiss my cunt you ugly old bitch!
The STATE explodes in extreme violence, her “nice” act exposed for the act that it is. She attacks the INDIVIDUAL physically,
STATE
And now you will volunteer for the sterilization! It’s for your own best will. You will sign the paper and volunteer! You will volunteer.
INDIVIDUAL
No!!!!!!!
They struggle violently. Eventually the INDIVIDUAL is physically subdued and signs her signature. She is sobbing and broken.
The STATE kisses the INDIVIDUAL very very tenderly on the lips, as if kissing a lover.
it was a cruel evening, yes
you had a poster in your
toilet, of a play by a
german playwrite,
i can’t remember
his name, a
brilliant
playwrite,
a man whose
plays were always
cruel and true, and i
think you were rehearsing
for a play of his? maybe the
same play that was in the poster
and i kept on thinking throughout all
of that night (as your boyfriend would
phone, or come up in conversation) that
you were using the situation for your character
you were rehearsing through reality, so to speak,
i think it was werner schwab, the playwrite’s name
and for this reason i did not really like you, or fall for you
but at the same time i was completely mesmerized by your breasts
you had the most beautiful, most perfectly weighted and balanced
most utterly delicious breasts that i had ever seen or tasted
perfect nipples, everything about your breasts was from
the realm of the gods and i was a much younger man
then and against my intuition about the situation,
against my better judgement that told me to
get out of there immediately, i kept on
trying to climb back into your body
and you kept on resisting and
then not resisting.
i suppose the situation
was perfectly schwabbian
and maybe did help your character?
but don’t think that i think ill of you – not
at all, quite the contrary, but i do believe in
getting to the bottom of things and that evening
really has haunted me all this time
i very often think about it
about the strange twist
of fate that made it
impossible for me
to have anything
with you
despite being
so attracted to you
and yes i did like the
fact that you were sorrowful
i always found women in pain so
much more interesting than happy women
i think that was because i did not love myself
enough then to be with happy women
thank god that has changed!
oh i remember now, you also had
beautiful feet and especially your ankles
were incredibly sexy, great ankles – but most
of what your said i found idiotic and i thought that
you really were up to tricks – i suspected you of something,
i don’t know what
i did not trust
you, i did
not feel
safe
with you
interesting
how a few hours
spent with a total stranger
can imprint themselves on one’s
consciousness, so that they appear
to be a metaphor for everything that ever
went wrong in all one’s relationships with women
a metaphor for the complete impossibility of having
a relationship with a woman one is sexually in love with
i will never forget the look of absolute disgust you gave me
when your boyfriend called and i asked you “why are you answering
the phone?” and you snarled “because i love him!”
then you continued talking to him in the kitchen
while i put on my clothes and made my way
downstairs. it was a very long walk back
from east to the civilized part of town
where i had a little pied a terre
all the way along that walk i
was remembering every
detail of your breasts
trying my best to
forget that glint
in your eyes
i was
probably
being over-
sensitive and
that makes sense
because i think you
were also over-sensitive,
to the point of mild hysteria
probably that made you a good
actress (at least for schwab’s stuff)
Teenhood is a strange place, twilit and melancholy, filled with slow mists of lament, nightmares in the mirror, and the heady whiff of future sex. It is an awkward space in which we begin to invent our future selves. It is also intrinsically mythic, with more than a touch of magic in the air. This, perhaps, is why Pop music is so obsessed with the place, why it haunts literature and above all poetry. It is a space of giant romance and infinite kitsch, cliche’ as big as the sky and every bit as subtle and touching.
Highly respected playwright, musician and all-round man of words, Anton Krueger, has written an ode to a friend, and to a friendship which which took shape in this peculiar, rambling kingdom of teenhood. ‘Sunnyside Sal’ perfectly captures the mystical innocence and arbitrary mythologies, the silly and immensely important codes and secret languages of the best of teenage friendships. Beginning in South Africa’s Eighties, the crude giant of Apartheid approaching its fall, it is also a bazaar of loud cultural clashes – above all that between the sensitively personal and the mass-produced social. Dope and Khaki, bright freedom and obtuse suppression, the disrupting gift which is the discovery of girls. A slim, elegantly written thing, ‘Sunnyside Sal’ is a labour of love honed by fine craftsmanship. It is also, in a more distant way, a study of how relationships and lives ebb, how people sometimes lose themselves in themselves, never to return – roughly two-thirds along, Mr. Krueger becomes more explicit in his gaze, and for a disruptive period seeks to analyse his friend, and uneasily drags brute life into the supplety of his fiction. His reasons for doing so are deserved, and, indeed, his own, but it does detract from an otherwise gracefully woven fiction. Time well spent between pages.
“They say the darkest hour comes right before the dawn,” Bob Dylan once sang, quoting an old proverb.
“THE EXHIBITION OF VANDALISM” is a film documenting a healing ceremony performed by Zim Ngqawana and his former pupil Kyle Shepherd in the ravaged body of The Zimology Institute for Higher Learning in January 2010.
The film was directed, shot and edited by Aryan Kaganof of African Noise Foundation, as a springboard to a further improvisation, VANDALIZM, that took place live in Johannesburg’s Gallery MOMO on March 7, 2010. The event was a fundraising effort towards rebuilding the Zimology Institute, desecrated by vandals earlier that month.
With Kaganof’s film, the live duet of Kyle Shepherd (on piano and violin) and Zim Ngqawana (on woodwinds) was mediated into a unique quartet, playing impossible combinations backwards and forwards through space and time. As a standalone document the film remains powerful.
The Zimology Institute of Higher Learning is located on Zim Ngqawana’s farm, half an hour outside Johannesburg. It’s a project that the internationally renowned flute, tenor and soprano saxophone improviser established in 2001 to nurture younger musicians, inspired by his own mentoring in similar environments by such luminaries as Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp. Their enduring influence is evident in Ngqawana’s profoundly spiritual, yet politically conscious approach to pedagogy.
The Institute aims “to produce leaders within the jazz community – not just musicians, but thinkers, who will be able to sustain this art form. We have to go back to the mentorship system, and expose students to the spiritual aspects of music … And we have to go beyond music itself and talk about all aspects of life.” The Zimology Institute has many notable alumni, including pianist/violinist Kyle Shepherd, recently nominated for two SAMA awards for Best Newcomer and Best Traditional Jazz Album, the youngest jazz musician ever to be recognised in these categories.
The vandals’ attack on Zim’s Institute left two grand pianos in ruins. Furniture was smashed to pieces and the building was stripped of all electrical connections and plumbing. However, despite the vicious physical damage, the unknown perpetrators could not destroy the core of Ngqawana’s work: in fact, the incident is propelling him to broaden Zimology’s vision. “We are turning something negative into something positive, doing something creative in order to raise funds and rebuild.”
Ngqawana speaks of how this destructive act has brought him misery, but also a great opportunity to further the cause of the Institute. He says he is grateful to the vandals for providing the inspiration to do the impossible, quoting Sun Ra: “The possible has been tried and failed. Now it’s time to try the impossible.”
“Jazz is all about moving into the unknown. This is a wonderful opportunity to improvise and go beyond the beyond, to expand our vocabulary with instruments that are not known…” He jokes wryly, speaking in the third person of himself and Shepherd in the run-up to this performance, “Don’t worry, whatever is there, they will play it.” In the film, the two pianos are played as they were found in their broken condition on the scene. Other items, including a violin and pieces of the headstock of a double bass damaged during the vandalism are also incorporated into the performance.
Kaganof’s lens captures the healing ceremony with rhythmic empathy, the chaotic intensity of the camera work and profound darkness of much of the film emphasizing the disorder, the dark violence of the crime, the sparkling pain in Zim’s eyes, the seeming senselessness of what has happened… as well as the inextinguishable light of creativity and compassion that banishes the darkness as the film progresses.
Ngqawana’s breath is a vacuum puncturing the dusty silence, pierced again by his solitary saxophone, squeals and yelps of acute, frenzied pain, an exorcism which gradually finds a more measured groove, continuing in a smoky tango with Shepherd, sombre on the overturned grand piano.
Kaganof’s camera leads a tour though the devastated premises, blurred in places, as if through tears, now jerking and whipping around in disbelief, now staring in wonder as the artists move through the building, reinhabiting each room, exploring the sounds they can coax from the wreckage.
A three stringed violin keens in the kitchen, Ngqawana and his horn reflected in the oven door by light filtering through jagged glass and violated burglar guards… A flute graces the denuded bathroom, the acoustics of the room unperturbed by any contents… The buzz and twang of snapped, raw wires, the harsh grating of what looks like a double bass headstock as Shepherd scrapes it across the floor… The two musicians, with intense focus and feeling, are gradually working these broken pieces back into coherence. A ripped out orange plastic plumbing part becomes a multi-tonal vuvuzela with zim’s lips to it, a cracked toilet cistern holds his chanting voice, gleams back his thrumming hands in the oblique rays of sun as he warms it into a new role as the rhythmic backdrop for a new music… an exquisite, jarring cacophony that carves out strange, alien planes of expression, gradually taming their emotive chaos into musical shapes that hold. The sound fills the gutted space defiantly.
Zim speaks of improvisation as total freedom from fear, spontaneity, and a willingness to go beyond the self to selflessness. Performing this music here is thus therapeutic: it recuperates the violated space and those connected to it spiritually, allowing them to move beyond fear, anger and blame. In his understanding of the incident, Ngqawana demonstrates a great well of compassion and a sense of urgency to take this healing beyond the walls of the Institute and out into wider society.
Ngqawana maintains that the full meaning of freedom, which includes freedom for humanitarian and artistic reasons, has not been realized up until now, neither globally nor, palpably, in the specific context of South Africa. He contends that superficial “independence” has confused people into believing they are free, when in reality they are still living under a “barbaric system of ignorance and prejudice” that vandalizes their hearts, souls and minds.
Zim understands the destruction wreaked on the Zimology Institute by the vandals as being the result of multiple levels of systematic impoverishment. The perpetrators’ actions are the immediate socio-economic effect of living in a unequal society dominated by materialism and money: local unemployed people are desperate to generate income by any means, which has led to the ripping out of all electrical connections, plumbing and other items saleable for scrap. However, Zim argues that the gratuitous destruction of the musical instruments hints at a deeper dimension to the malaise on a psycho-spiritual plane: the moral and spiritual bereavement of the perpetrators.
Society’s focus on discussing petty crime should be shifted to a consideration of the bigger structures at work in producing the circumstances that lead to incidents like this, Zim believes. He holds that the particularly violent nature of the crime prevalent in South Africa is the result of the sick systems of education, religion and politics that govern our lives, and that the havoc wreaked on his farm and the Institute is just one manifestation of how this dysfunctional culture breeds illness, crime and insanity. Vandalism of the soul is the most serious crime of all, he declares.
The revival of the spirit has always been central to the mandate of the Zimology Institute. “We will recover. We will be back… I sing with a sword in my hand… I sing with a sword in my hand.” Zim intones these blues by the light of a small paraffin lamp. As the words repeat, the flame is enlarging in Kaganof’s lens until it’s burning up the entire screen.
The film draws to a quietly contemplative close out in the veld, with the soft rhythm of Kyle’s traditional uhadi symbolically resuturing spirit to natural order as the morning sun creeps up toward the horizon.
we had a fine situation
you used to visit me in my caravan
drinking carlsbergs from those long tins
that you bought from the night shop
we’d make love
like there was no tomorrrow
then you went and left your husband
girl what were you thinking?
next thing i knew
i was helping you paint your new apartment
carrying your grocery bags
looking after your son
that wasn’t my dream i was on
it was your show
you had me kidnapped
i couldn’t say no
i was too green
then you went and got yourself all surprised
that i was cheating
But Tom Waits ain’t most people. When Tom Waits ‘sings’, when he croaks his growllabyes, he’s clearing his soul. And his soul’s more rusty than most. A magnificence of rust.
“Mixture between a scary clown and a cherry bomb”, a young girl once appraised his vocal texture. A quirk wrapped in sandpaper tucked in shards of God’s tears, to misquote Winston Churchill. Mr. Waits. Sir. Where does one begin?
*My father was an exhaust manifold and my mother was a tree.*
Tom Waits doesn’t really ‘do’ press interviews, doesn’t really humour commercial handshakes and back-pats. On his appropriately modest and mischievously gifted website www.tomwaits.com(no trixy titles required) you will find a video of Waits’ last press junket, a pitch-perfect theatre of conceit. The site was launched around November of 2009 – his first official website, it is a tellingly unhurried response to the demands of the digital age (don’t hold your breath to enfriend him on Facebook).
The unfortunate fact that it is a website aside (as opposed to, say, a cobweb-dripping pawn shop cluttered with obscenely dated artifacts & objects vaguely alien in structure and intent, with magnificent books and scrolls unceremoniously dumped in dust-whorled corners, and the guy from Eraserhead behind the counter, ignoring you,) it is, as I say, gifted – there’s a generous pictorial catalogue which elaborately captures the man’s intrinsic Otherness and wayward cool, from the young cat with the mule jawline and slicked hair rolling down the streets drawling a cigarette circa the 70′s (Ricky Lee Jones always somehow reflected in the mute gleam of his eyes..), right on through to the stately 60yr old trixter, his face etched with the ragged wrinkles of his bluesiest songs. There’s the bizarrely hip video-collection (weird-eyed little movies every one); there are lyrics to make mortal wordsmiths flinch and weep (and Bukowski smile); and prettiest of all – ‘pretty’ here spelt with smudged oil and tobacco, and the depthless strain of whiskey, and a whiff of redlight districts, and gipsies and all the crudest glories of Life with its dog-eared pages and black-out epiphanies – there is the little nook transparently entitled ‘The wit & wisdom of Tom Waits’, a merrily festering collection of quips from the man who once shrugged “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy” in response to some silly question by some pesky interviewer.
*The piano has been drinking, not me.*
In keeping with his essence – upside-down and inside-out as a matter of simple fact – Mr Waits prefers to coax his music from un/imaginable instruments. A loyal devotee of the rare philosophy that every scrapyard is an orchestra-in-waiting.
The man’s last studio album (‘Orphans’ aside), the aptly titled ‘Real Gone’, was partly recorded in a bathroom – who needs Fender Strats and Zildjian drum-kits and neatly gleaming piano’s when you’ve got a fully operational bath, prosperous tubes of tooth-paste, four tile-sprained walls, a mouldy saw and a warp-stained mirror? Not Waits. A most peculiar trajectory sees Mr Waits become more curiously exotic the deeper he digs through time. Starting off as a gifted, folksily bluesy songwriter with a beatnick knack for capturing the restless essence of midnight patrons in lost bars, as time marched him on (and with significant nudges from wifely muse Kathleen Brennan) Waits increasingly shrugged off traditional influences for the more perversely lucid influence of the unknown – his music started to slip and stumble where before it tipsily marched, jazzy musical backdrops were crumpled up and now blown from strange horns, with demented marimbas and hallucinogenic tangos entering the fray.. You could say that, from the carnivale punk of 1983′s ‘Swordfishtrombones’, Waits started stroking the Looking Glass. And the Glass stroked right back. This twofold Waits – the eerie Ringleader with his broken bullhorn, and the 1000yr old Blues belter, is masterfully represented, distortedly reflected in 2003′s duo release ‘Alice’ and ‘Bloodmoney’, a melancholy trip and a grotesque hangover respectively.
Tom Waits knows that there is really only one tune – that song that slurs of death and love and god and the unqueanchable thirst, and roaring failure, and blushing success, and love and love and love. Why, and indeed how, restrict the instrumentation of such fare to the silly boundaries of prescribed instruments?
*The moon ain’t romantic, it’s intimidating as Hell.*
Mr Waits possesses, and is possessed by, a textural howl that does not exist. His voice is myth. It is a craggedly royal mountain in one verse, a gentlest croon in the next. This might begin to explain the casual schizophreny of Waits’ songs – His mysterious vocal gift is that he can stutter and weep and growl and whisper and swoon in the blink of an ear. He is his bestest orchestra. An orchestra of voice.
“It’s interesting writing on instruments you don’t understand.”
Who needs to understand the man that wrote a play with William Burroughs, voiced ‘Tommy the Cat’ for the flexible bass-spastica of Primus, and signs autographs in junkyards rather than concert halls?
Cough-splatter-POW.
The live majesty of his latest card-trick, ‘Glitter & Doom’ is out now.
Let me begin by saying: my notions concerning voice in Autophysiopsychic music, to some, may border on the realm of speculation; however, I am suggesting that the door for research is open. To be specific: one researcher, Mr. Walter J. Ong, a University Professor of Humanities and Professor of Humanities in Psychiatry at Saint Louis University, Missouri, has said, and I quote:
“In various parts of the world, new methods of analysis have been developed whose conclusions reveal the limitations of the Anglo-American outlook we inherit”–end of quote.
I once asked the late Joe Jones the question:
“What was Lester Young’s philosophy concerning Autophysiopsychic music?” He promptly replied with four words:
“Lester played his philosophy.”
Now, frequently when musicians, who play Autophysiopsychic music, are talked about, they and their music are described in various terms. Some of the expressions, written off as metaphors, used to describe them are as follows: “he/she was cooking, they were burning last night, they had the pots on, he was intensely F-U-N-K-Y, his chops were together and so on.”
Now, it is difficult to know the intentions of the people who use these expressions; however, intentionally or unintentionally, in many instances these descriptions are vulgar to say the least, inadequate and in fact, it is an injustice. It is conceivable, as it is, that some people use these terms due to their environmental conditioning, so consequently they are unaware that these expressions are inappropriate. At best, these kinds of expressions are a way of saying that the musician and his music be given no aesthetic or intellectual admiration. It could be that these expressions are inventions as the late James Baldwin has written, and I quote:
“Be careful of inventions; the invention describes you, and will certainly betray you.”
On another level, in discussing a musician’s Autophysiopsychic presentation, we can, although it is not speech, talk about it as though it were a voice also, we can talk about “the individual” and about what we “hear” his/her music “saying”.
Some listeners, those who are aware, even refer to some individuals as having “found their voice.”
Though the musician’s voice has become an unclear and controversial notion, I will try to show that we need the term. Voice will become a useful critical concept for the study of solos once we build up a foundation of analysis and application — a foundation I seek to work on in this paper. I can make the term serviceable by distinguishing three kinds of voice: (1) AUDIBLE VOICE: how much do we hear the person as we listen to it (or how much does the person demand our attention as we listen)? (2) DRAMATIC VOICE: what kind of musician is implied in the music (and how vividly)? (3) ONE’S OWN VOICE: what is the relation of the music to the actual musician? Let me attempt to describe these senses of voice.
(1st) AUDIBLE VOICE: How much do we hear the person?
The distinguishing mark of good music is “the unique sound quality of voice somehow entangled in the tones and transmitted from the instrument for the ear of the imagination. Though music is literally sound, some sounds make us hear someone’s character. Sounds with audible voice give us the sense of a sound coming from the whole being of the musician–; and they touch us–they seem to give us energy, or a sensation, rather than requiring energy to listen.
Perhaps the best example of audible voice is the absence of it. The classic examples tend to be music which does not hold your attention, i.e., inaudible voice. Although we hear it, it has no meaning. The best impression it can make on the ear, which includes the ear of the presenter and the listener is: “Wow! Listen to how much technique I have.” Technique, no matter what its limitations, is to project the ethos, the personal character of the presenter. Valid presenters use their technique only to project their character, their vast array of experiences, thoughts, feelings, concerns and ideas that are entombed in their brain’s memory–and more than that–I will say: they speak with their heart. It has been said that the heart is the seat of the intellect. And in the Bible we read:
“for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (MATTHEW 12:34). And in the Holy Quran we read: “Aye! It is in the remembrance of God that hearts can find comfort” (Cha 13, 29th verse).
You see, there is a relationship between the valid presenter and his/her presentations . The unique factor is that these particular musicians are able to transform the events of their mind and heart into sound. They are able to manifest into sound that which is meaningful to themselves. They are not unlike elegant rational scientists–they only operate with deeply different grammars.
(2nd) DRAMATIC VOICE: What kind of musician is implied in the presenter (and how vividly)?
The sound of the music seems to tell us what kind of person is playing. We feel that we can hear their character or personality in that which they are presenting.
Obviously this dramatic dimension of the music usually comes from the qualities of the music. In such situations the music implies a character who produces those sounds. Just as there is no life without death, however unpredictable, so there is no music without implied character, however nondescript.
(3rd) ONE’S OWN VOICE: What is the relation of the music to the actual musician?
Some people speak of instrumentalist as having found their own voice. People use this common phraseology to mean that the musician has attained a distinctive profile that sets him/her off from others. We must remember that to attain one’s own profile is not easy. Miles Davis has said that it takes years to sound like yourself. This could be because the musical language we think of and experience as private ideas are in fact constituted through the voices of other musicians that echo in our listening experiences. Nevertheless, when some other musician’s ideological concept is internally persuasive for us and acknowledged by us, entirely different possibilities open up. Consequently, when a musician finds a profile that seems hers/his they often take on a certain added assurance or authority.
As well, they are poetic–they are, through music, able to express their thoughts and feelings–and if they have lofty character and their thoughts are filled with appreciation and love for all–their music reflects their love, and if the listener listens intently they will hear and feel that love. The listener, moved to a frame of mind by the music, senses the character of the musician. The result is that the listener, in listening to the music, experiences a sense of pleasure which is only the musician’s character being communicated to the listener through the language of sound.
What I have postulated in the above is that even though Autophysiopsychic music is a grammar, which is not words, it serves as a voice which denotes character, which is the dramatic dimension of Autophysiopsychic music.
For example: the implied character in the music of the late Lester Young tells us that he was a person of humanistic aspirations and values. He expressed and brought joy to thousands of listeners throughout the world. When listening to his music your ear will tell you that his character was warm and sensitive. Trombonist, Dicky Wells, a Count Basie alumnus, maintained that Pres, as he was called, was a “beautiful person, full of (love), harmless. (He) did not bother anybody, loved everybody.”
Those who knew him will tell you that he was essentially a gentle soul, and I can verify that–he was a gentle soul. Pianist, Billy Taylor, claimed that Young’s “approach to everything he did in life was concerned with beauty.” Of course I recognized the kind of person he was long before I met him in person. Through recordings, the sound of his told me what kind of person was performing. I could hear his character or personality in his message.
It seems that early in life he found a musical voice, which remained with him throughout his life. The point I am trying to make here is that the pathos–the way he caused you to feel when you listened to his music–was the way he really was–if you felt joy–he felt joy–if you felt sadness–he felt sadness, etc. In other words, his music voice could never be divorced from his character.
Equally important were the timing and quality in his musical language, sometimes referred to as terminal junctures or intonation patterns. Above all, in this area, he was impeccable. He could treat notes so as to indicate assurance, by rapidly dropping the pitch, or indicate incompleteness by leveling the pitch in a manner which would suggest continuation, or when he thought it appropriate he would avoid traditional tones, by applying innovative fingerings, whereby he produced a new genre of sound textures. In conjunction with the sound textures that he introduced, let me say that as a tone language uses changes in pitch to indicate differences in the meanings of words, Lester used changes of texture, pitch and nuance, tempered by his immaterial self, to indicate differences in feelings or to put the audience into a certain frame of mind.
Another unique aspect of his music-voice was the way he voiced silence. It was powerful. (Listen to his recording of D.B. Blues and you will hear the powerful silence that I am referring to.)
His silence was powerful because what he choose to present as sound was free of prattling. I never heard him produce idle or meaningless sounds. The elements of music, from his position, were only important when they contributed to his own feelings. His music-voice like his personality revealed his poetic and lyrical qualities to the listener. Those qualities of genius, which seem so natural, which seldom surface in the Autophysiopsychic music community, he produced and emphasized consistently during his life time. He never sounded as though he was confronted with an ambivalence in deciding what was central to his message–always convincing, authentic, and the logos, the proof, or apparent proof of his artistry was always there, provided by the sound of his music itself, nurtured by the gentle soul that he was.
Finally, Lester found much more than a profile that seemed to be his. He was the purveyor of a theory, tradition, or discipline in which other tenor saxophonists have, in their turn, found a place. That is to say, he is in a position which we call transdiscursive, i.e., he produced the possibilities and the rules for the formation of other Lester Young’s, like: Charles Parker, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Zut Sims, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Ike Quebec, Wayne Shorter, Archie Shepp, Hidehiko Matsomoto etc.–all who were inspired and motivated–who followed the notion or qualities in his voice of music–those who sensed character, warmth, love, meaning, truth and deep feeling in his voice.
__
WORKS CITED
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen Press, 1987
Baldwin, James. Proceedings from the Twelfth & Thirteenth Annual Black Musicians’ Conferences. Amherst, Massachusetts: Fine Arts Center, Number 2, 1984- 1985
Elbow, Peter. What is “Voice” in a Text. Amberst, Massachusetts: Copycat Print Shop, 1988.
James, King. Holy Bible. London: Cambridge University Press.
Jazzforschung. Alcademische druck-U Verlagsanstalt. Austria: Notensatz, 1984.
Quran, Holy. Pub. Under the auspices of Hadrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad,
Edited by Malik Ghulam Farid, Islam International Publications LTD. 1994.
“Autophysiopsychic Music” (Music from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self).
SOURCE: http://www.yuseflateef.com/index.php/read-yusef-lateefs-essays
The Sandton venue for the Joburg Fringe VIDEOart is a terrific one, OPPOSITE THE SANDTON CONVENTION CENTRE (where the Joburg Art Fair is being held) .
The screening will BEAM OUT from the Maraschino’s Restaurant corner of 5th and Maude Street, (opposite the Sandton Convention Centre main entrance) after sundown on Thursday evening 25th March 2010. (Opening night of the art fair)
Het is merkwaardig dat in een mediawerkelijkheid die zozeer door persoonlijkheden wordt bepaald er op de persoonlijke leefomstandigheden van Geert Wilders in relatie tot zijn politieke denkbeelden een taboe lijkt te rusten. En dat terwijl zoveel bij dit fenomeen door persoonlijke omstandigheden lijkt te zijn geinspireerd.
Een van de opvallendste, maar ook weer niet geheel onverwachtte, aspecten van de PVV is de aandacht voor dierenleed.
Op de website staat een artikel waarin aandacht wordt gevraagd voor het beklagenswaardige lot van de 42 jarige Aziatische olifant Annabel uit het Noorder Dierenpark in Emmen. “PVV roept minister ter verantwoording na dood olifant.”
De olifant was in de droge gracht die om haar verblijf loopt gevallen en moest afgemaakt worden. Tijd om de minister ter verantwoording te roepen.
“Iedereen herinnert zich vast nog het incident met het tien maanden jonge baby olifantje Bo Gyi, dat hetzelfde lot onderging. Diepe, droge grachten vormen een onnodig gevaar voor de dieren en zijn niet meer van deze tijd,” aldus kamerlid Dion Graus, die ook vind dat “dierenbeulen” gevangenisstraffen moeten krijgen. Baby olifantjes en dierenbeulen: niet het eerste dat je verwacht van een partij die beloofd de bestaande politiek ‘helemaal gek’ te maken, maar het zijn in ieder geval haalbare doelen. Wat van de andere maintarget, de westerse cultuur te bevijden van vreemde smetten, niet gezegd kan worden. Maar het gaat de PVV er ook niet om om iets te bereiken. De PVV wil eigenlijk, op het dempen van droge grachten na, helemaal niets veranderen. Er is geen ideologie, geen wereldbeeld, enkel een verzameling al dan niet verklaarbare, als politiek vermomde, persoonlijke fobieën, waarvan de liefde voor het gekooide dier uiteraard een van de mooiste symbolen is.
Deze afwezigheid van concrete en haalbare politieke doelen is de reden van het in kille cijfers marginale succes bij de kiezer, en ook de reden waarom haar tegenstrevers, die wel enigzins haalbare politiek voorstaan, zich geen raad met het fenomeen weten. Wie Geert Wilders en zijn partij probeert te begrijpen vanuit een politiek gedachtegoed loopt op tegen een muur van oorlogstaal die niet voor rede vatbaar is, en ook niet voor rede vatbaar wil zijn.
De kinderlijke verongelijkheid waarmee wordt geconstateerd dat men met omgerekend 10% van de stemmen en 90% van de media-aandacht niet alleen zou mogen regeren, is niet een teken van gebrekkig rekentalent, maar van een diep gevoel van miskenning, eenzaamheid en vervreemding. Niets is politiek, alles is persoonlijk. In de droom van Geert Wilders hebben alle olifanten stemrecht en zijn ze allemaal voor de PVV. Zoiets. Het zijn ideeën en conclusies die rechtstreeks voortkomen uit het fysieke en mentale isolement waarin Geert Wilders dagelijks leeft.
Beschouw de wereld vanuit zijn ogen, opgejaagd wild, dag en nacht omringt door beveiliging, van schuiladres naar schuiladres, veroordeelt tot een abstracte werkelijkheid, en het is eigenlijk verbazingwekkend dat de man nog Nederlands spreekt.
Zoals gezegd worden de omstandigheden in het persoonlijk leven van de politicus Wilders zelden meegewogen in de beoordeling van zijn ideeën. Het is de paradox van de digitale hufterigheid: iedereen die iets beweert wordt serieus genomen. Een bewijs van deskundigheid of gezond verstand is niet vereist. Daarnaast speelt misschien een fout soort beleefdheid. Men houdt het persoonlijke van het politieke gescheiden. In algemene zin is dit de correcte houding, maar in het geval van Wilders is het schutterig vluchtgedrag en in in zekere zin onverwantwoordelijk handelen. Hier is namelijk geen politiek streven werkzaam, maar een groot persoonlijk drama.
Wilders leeft in extreme omstandigheden. Hij floreert daar zo wonderbaarlijk onder, dat het er alle schijn van heeft dat hij zich bewust (of bewust onbewust) in deze situatie heeft gemanouvreerd. Dat is een ernstige constatering, maar in de psychologie zijn wel vreemdere cases beschreven.
Net als de individuen die hij het felst bestrijd lijkt ook Geert Wilders in een typische radicaliserings spiraal terecht gekomen. Zijn overspannen wereldbeeld wordt elke ochtend bij het ontbijt bevestigd door de aanwezigheid van body guards, zoals dat voor die Afghaanse tiener in Bora Bora de raketaanvallen zullen zijn. En wanneer wij ons in deze persoon aan het ontbijt verplaatsen, een persoon die zich als een nomade door een anonieme wereld beweegt, terwijl hij zijn eigen hoofd en woorden bijna dagelijks in veelvoud in de media ziet, zodat hij kijkend naar zichzelf op televisie zijn eigen doelgroep is, dan is het logisch dat de gedachten vooruitschieten naar een aantal jaren na nu, en de vraag weerklinkt: waarom heeft niemand iets gedaan toen het nog kon?
Zou het enkel het ideaal van cultuur absolutisme zijn dat hem drijft, of zijn het andere driften die maken dat hij niet opgeeft, sterker nog, steeds harder om zich heen gaat slaan en met omgerekend 10% van de Nederlandse bevolking achter zich, over zichzelf spreekt als de toekomstig leider van het land.
En dan wat? Vraag je je af.
Want dit is niet zoals het verhaal zal gaan. Regeringsmacht is niet het streven.
Wat iedereen weet maar wat niet wordt uitgesproken is dat dit maar op een manier af kan lopen. Uiteindelijk zal hij geslachtofferd worden of bezwijken onder de druk, zodat hij tenslotte altijd zijn gelijk zal hebben. Na de Marokkanen moeten nu ook de Turken er als bevolkinsggroep aan geloven. Er is maar een conclusie mogelijk. Hier is iemand bezig om op een zeer complexe manier een einde aan zijn leven te maken. Het martelaarschap van Geert Wilders is dramatisch en persoonlijk onvermijdelijk en wordt misschien nog wel meer verlangd door zijn aanhang, dan door zijn tegenstrevers.
i have notebooks that i’ve kept for more than 20 years
occasionally i dip in, extract a line or two
or even a simple juxtaposition of words
that suddenly becomes meaningful
two words sitting next to each
other at the right angle
they’re finally ripe
for each other
or maybe
i’m
finally
ripe for
both of them
and the act of placing
them in the context of the poem
is a wedding
a marriage
it’s a very
solemn
act
SCENE 84 EXT. NIGHT. X.S. CLUB FRONT DOOR
Patrons begin filing into the growing queue. Patrons in the queue meet and greet each other, the excitement is beginning to boil. Arthur is still pacing…
ARTHUR
When we going to open?
FLASH
They still need time in there. I’ll
let you know. Now if anyone tells
you he has a weapon you tell Lot
you need a safety. Here is the list.
Flash hands Arthur a piece of paper with a guest list on it. Everyone in the queue is staring at Arthur. Arthur awkwardly struts around at the front of the queue. He is drowning a little in Flash’s jacket.
SCENE 85 INT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB-BATHROOM
Flash opens the door and approaches the urinal. As he Unzips, he hears deep breathing.
THE NIECE (offscreen)
That hurts.
GECKO (offscreen)
Just relax. Sniff some of this.
The unmistakable sound of two people sniffing poppers. Flash listens carefully. Finishes his business and turns toward the stalls.
FLASH
GECKO!
Flash can hear a scramble in one of the stalls.
FLASH (CONT’D)
I’m waiting outside.
Gecko and the “niece” step out of the bathroom and try make an escape.
GECKO (placating)
Flash…
Flash grabs Gecko up with both hands and holds the smaller man up in the air with his face an inch away from Gecko’s.
FLASH
No more warnings. No more second
chances. If I ever see you in my
club again you’re a dead lizard.
Flash drops Gecko to the ground and slaps him very hard across the face in one powerful motion. Gecko falls to the floor, humiliated. Flash kicks Gecko in the seat of his pants.
FLASH
Out!
SCENE 86 SPINNING DISCOBALL
The shot of Flash ejecting Gecko is digitally morphed into one of the small mirror frames on the spinning discoball. We see that the entire discoball is filled with the characters from our film, at various points in their journey. The discoball is telling all their stories at once. We digitally morph into the next scene.
TITLE ON BLACK: 9:30
SCENE 87 EXT. NIGHT. LONG STREET
Cube has caught up with Moratiwa. The Twins hover in the background.
CUBE
I can forgive you.
MORATIWA
It’s too late for that Cube. I don’t
love you anymore.
CUBE
But I love you Moratiwa. Please let’s
go home and put this behind us.
MORATIWA
I can’t. I’m sorry.
CUBE
What happened to you?
MORATIWA
Well, last night the DJ…
CUBE
Didn’t do me any favors.
MORATIWA
Have a good life Cube.
Moratiwa kisses Cube on the cheek. She removes her engagement ring and gives it to him. She rejoins the Twins and they walk up Long Street leaving Cube standing as alone as if he was on a deserted island even though there are a lot of revellers around him enjoying themselves on Long Street.
SCENE 88 EXT. NIGHT X.S. NIGHTCLUB ENTRANCE
Arthur stands looking in front of him. We see what he’s looking at: The queue has started to form, Arthur scans the crowd in front of him. He spots Moratiwa and the twins.
ARTHUR (shyly)
Excuse me.
No one even registers, so meek is Arthur.
ARTHUR (more assertively)
Excuse me Ladies.
Moratiwa snaps to attention. Arthur calls them over. Moratiwa and the twins walk to the front of the queue. Everyone stares at them in envy. Arthur pulls back the red rope and allows them in.
ARTHUR
Evening ladies. How are we this
evening?
The girls GIGGLE as they pass the threshold and enter the club. The crowd and the rest of the queue start WHISTLING. ‘X.S’ In roman numerals is stamped on Moratiwa and the Twins’ hands.
SCENE 89 INT. NIGHT. X.S. NIGHTCLUB
The club is empty. Moratiwa and The Twins head to a corner. Khanya, Neo and Rian stare at them. They stare back. Lot comes out and notices there’s no music playing.
SCENE 90 INT. NIGHT X.S. CLUB FLASH’S OFFICE-BACKROOM
Flash is taking stock. Lot enters.
LOT
You said something to Gecko?
Flash is quiet.
LOT
You said something to Gecko?
Flash is quiet.
LOT
What is with you man?
Flash explodes.
FLASH
That freak of yours was taking
advantage of an underage child on
my premises. I don’t allow that man!
LOT
Flash you have to sort yourself out.
We are in the clubbing business man.
That is a business associated with
dancing and alcohol and sex. And it’s
the little girls who are attracted to
the clubs precisly because they know
they gonna find booze, drugs, dancin’
and sex here. It’s what they come here
for. Girls just wanna have fun, right?
We provide a space for all of the sinnin’
to take place. We are service providers
Flash. For the Devil to do her business.
That’s what’s gonna make us rich Flash.
You can’t be a Priest and a Service Provider
at the same time man. You have to choose.
FLASH
It’s got to be on my terms Lot.
I’m not gonna compromise my principles.
LOT
What fucking principles man?
Look around you Flash. What is this
man? Don’t be such a hypocrite. This
isn’t Sunday school.. This is where the
girls come to lose their cherry. It’s
the fucking Underworld.
SCENE 91 INT. NIGHT. DARKNERO’S PARLOUR
Darknero’s face is shrouded in shadow. His voice comes as if from the bowels of the earth.
DARKNERO
Whyfor you come here again Gecko?
GECKO
My enemy hath provoked me.
DARKNERO
Y’waan revenge?
GECKO
Destiny leaves me no alternative.
DARKNERO
What’s in it for me this time?
Gecko pulls his “Niece” forward, she is cowering with fear.
when you’re a winner you always know the ending because there’s only one ending and it’s always the same ending: you win. it’s the losers that don’t know the ending.
