kagablog

Language, to Man: “Do not take me literally..”

All
worlds
want

is to be
opened
up,

inhaled.

Gasp eight: Pretty birdy

Lillith saw a bird. No, wait, that’s incorrectly structured: From out that sacred space termed nowhere, an avial plopped into Lillith’s vision. Strutted into corneac awe - veritably blushing in crisply seperated colours..
Rich brown. Crimson black. Frightening white. Gleeful red (see its tail proudly flit).
For no reason at all Mz Fairbrush slipped her index into pink swish.

That bird was darem pretty!

Some folks just have that shine. Syd Kitchen’s been a significant presence in South African music since the Seventies – over time he’s been hailed a South African treasure. Instantly recognizable to most anyone who’s been to more than one acoustic/folk music festival - his jet-black hair spilling down from a mad-hatter hat, that mischievous grin and twinkly eyes. But for all that Syd’s given to South African arts (innumerable gigs, several acclaimed albums, volumes of poetry,) his appreciation has remained mostly critical – as he puts it, all his albums “gooi zinc” (make next to nothing), despite his live popularity. Not that this ever hampered his rich development as a guitarist’s guitarist for the people - if I may mix notions - or his eclectic output. Syd’s the eternal busker, making his bread – for a lifetime now!- from perpetual live gigs, and his guitar-teaching. But it seems things are finally promising to change – a confluence of events are on the horizon, ready to bring Syd to a long-deserved wider audience, and greater recognition.

Born in Durban (his fond home ever since) in 1951, Syd’s musical aspirations started as a kid singing along to the radio, and later making novelty guest-appearances for groups playing at socials, which led to his first ‘band’ at age 15 – singing covers of The Beatles, The Stones et al. It was during conscription, however, that Syd met his musical soulmate, the guitar, in 1969. Back home, younger brother Peter had also discovered the guitar, and on Syd’s return they formed Strawberry Fields with Mark Maingard, soon paring down to the duo of The Kitchen Brothers. Distinct from most debut bands, the pair played strictly original compositions, and were soon invited to various concerts and music fests, rubbing shoulders with contemporary greats – in 1975 they opened for Magna Carta, an early high in Syd’s epic career. Following brother Peter’s departure from music, culling the band from The Kitchen Brothers to, well, Syd, the latter began expanding his original employment of the guitar as accompaniment, to centre-stage instrument. Syd’s subsequent growth as guitarist was amazing – effortlessly absorbing an array of influences (“everything influences me..”), his talents are such that Syd can basically drop into any musical context and contribute something unique without missing a beat – on being asked what allows him this chameleonic gift, he replies in typical down-to-earth, yet sly fashion: “I try to leave my ego at the door……..this helps, I listen to see where I can contribute…….humility……..but then there’s also my nimble fingers and stunning blue eyes.”

The last two decades have seen Syd deliver note-for-note excellence, be it with his electric outfit AmaKooLogic, the musicultural interplay of Bafo Bafo (alongside Zulu-guitar great Madala Kunene), the improvisational virtuosics of fretboard All-Stars ‘The Aquarian Quartet’, or his ever-playful and energetic solo romps. The only artist to have attended every Splashy Fen festival since its inception 20 yrs back (one of Splashy’s roads is named after him), and having tirelessly graced clubs and fests across SA, Syd’s only started touring abroad in the last couple of years, where he’s been making subtle splashes all along Europe and the Americas, from the UK’s Glastonbury Festival to folk/acoustic shrine McCabe’s in Santa Monica.
A chance meeting with NY-based independent film maker Joshua Sternlicht at 2007’s ‘Poetry Africa’, where he was a featured poet, enticed the director into launching a feature-length documentary on Syd’s tings and chimes, entitled ‘Africa is not for Sissies’ (check www.africaisnotforsissies.com for more). His warmly received concerts in the States have led to an international recording session. On this much-touted forthcoming album, recorded in NY and featuring band-members from Paul Simon’s legendary Graceland band, Syd says:
“Simply my best……..worked with some of the giants in this world……Bakhiti Khumalo on bass, Paul Nowinski on upright bass, Anton Fig [of The Late Show with David Letterman] on drums, Tony Cedras on accordion and keyboards, Morris Goldberg on sax, clarinet and pennywhistle, Steve Holly on percussion, with the inimitable Keith Lentin producing as well as contributing to the bass and guitar work………befok musicians.”

It’s high time the world receive greater exposure to Syd’s musical wealth, and, after three decades of loyally, innovatively, and humbly following the Muse - it’s about time Syd Kitchen gets his dues.

[First published in Muse magazine]

Chris Clark presents the conclusion to his sonic trilogy which kicked off with the much-praised ‘Body Riddle’ [2006], followed up by the near anti-melody assault of 2008’s ‘Turning Dragon’, which vehemently ditched its predecessor’s emotional texturals. ‘Totems Flare’ collects elements of both ambient, flexable detail and potently building riddim, as exemplified in opener ‘Outside Plume’s royal flourishes and ‘Rainbow Voodoos’ frantically evolving beats. While Drum’n'Bass is a key muse, Clark takes grim delight in randomly sabotaging a track’s momentum, then flexing it into round-the-corner directions, or just letting it shimmer and fade. The latter half shines, ‘Future Daniel’s sinuous thumps coalescing into unexpected electro-oriental tinklings; ‘Primary balloon landings’ rises out of nowhere into gentle diagonal ambience, before ‘Talis’ seeps into a quirky industrial ballad. Closer ‘Absence’ signs off with simple, reverbed acoustic geet. Niiice.

[first published in BPM magazine]

Gasp eighteen: Where the fevers grow

“You will become a woman of rich complexity..” Lillith honed in on the eloquent slur of his words, did her blessed best to blot out the tepid grotesquity emitting them. “Could you, erm, push your posterior farther out?” Lillith grimaces, indulgently, and proceeds to voluptuate her Gluteus maximally. She was enjoying the somewhat sociopathic compartmentalization of the whole experiment. Her upper body sheathed in cool darkness, where her thoughts, appropriately, were scampering about, making mischief… and then, all the while, that fond heat that spoke of the concentrated illumination basking, cupping, her ass.. with the old man yammering on in the backdrop, the world’s most grateful audience of one.
Unless the video-cassette recording device counts as audience.

In a sense, Lillith now realised, that machine of his was much more than an audience - it was a box containing several wormholes snapping into alignment with tactile future audiences.. the sinister magic box of Dr. White. “Aah yess. Perfect. You are a gorgeous specimen.”

**

“For Academic purposes,” he continued. “A selection of shots of various parts of the female body, for the purposes of examination by students of psychology specializing in sexual behaviour in human males and females. It will, of course be ‘moving’ images, as I explained - like the documentaries in the Bioscope. But strictly for Academic use.”
She agreed to it because she knew he was lying. She enjoyed the idea of unknown persons admiring her form while she, conveniently, was absent.

Lillith blinked her eyes, the pale rambling was much closer now.. “Please..”, she snatched the key word from the others that got away. Out of the darkness she flashes him a look that could sink a thousand ships. Dr. White stammers back, falling through the burning gold planes of light, hits the table, actually clutching at his heart. Lillith responds with a gentle smile. Turns over, exaggerating her movements, slowly spreads her legs while White struggles with consciousness.
This is all interrupted by the fact that creepy Dr. White doesn’t snap out of his gurgling spell, forcing Lillith to jump up and establish whether he would live to see Tuesday.
“Sorry, yes I’m.. errh..” She hands him the glass of water. Neutrally feminine now, sub-maternal.

“Alright Dr. White, call me when you want to continue your documentary.” She shuts his front door and skips down the corridor - This one she’ll have to share with Jill - strictly in the interest of intellectual dispute.

“Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood.”

Gasp ten: A Hum

By the time he came, her entire torso was rippling.
Lillith rarely came through penetrative interrogation alone, but when she did..
It was less concentrated than clitoral orgasm. Less intense. More profound. Rippling through her ripples the ecstasy of Flesh.
His voluptual drizzles ambushed her in bright flashes of sensation
For several, relentless moments Lillith elevated
And the world a-hum

Gasp thirty-three: Know thyself.

Lillith was emancipated, her skin purring at the gift of bright freedom, wide kinky space. Not that she had been trapped, not at all. But, for the first time in her sexual life, Lillith became an agent of her own sexuality. Previously her sexuality had been confined to orbit around localized lovers - the spaces between were silent until charged by some new protagonist. If Henry had heaved sex from the bed down the blushing corridor sprawling over the sofa crashing through the door and into the streets, the outside was neutered in his absence; the trills she had felt when she and Jill brushed hands and grazed waists and snatched skimming kisses in public were mute when she shopped alone. Until now.

Lillith was claiming the world for herself, was inventing new species of attraction and eros.. even the masculine pull was democratized (if perversely) - the ever-present teenage gawking was no longer just a neutral, vague irritant, but intriguing.. the fat man studying her with unexpected brashness, was he a secret keeper of incongruous vigour? But it was the females who presented a richest new plethora for Lillith’s subtle new hungers.

Lillith arched into herself at these images. She was rediscovering her auto-anatomy; not in the innocent melancholy that had directed her teenage fingers - but in an expansive thrill of agency. Lillith was creating sex, charging atmospheres with burning self. No-one would be safe.. (Lillith’s eyes fluttering dangerously)

Gasp twenty-five: A perfect storm

Brooding skies made Lillith wet, the simplicity of the mechanism was almost Pavlovian. Storms meant cock. She had no idea why. If she happened to be at Jill’s when her body smelled the skies collecting, she explained that she had to leave, Jill’s face already tilting woefully. She could imagine Henry’s grin when he looked up at the gathering, knowing that somewhere she was sliding through traffic, drawn inexorably to his flat. When he arrived (for, unless he happened already to be home, she was always already there, waiting), and he made sure to add a touch of dramatic masculinity - slamming the door open, and such - she would be huddled on the sofa, fingernails disappearing into working mouth, eyes intent on the window. She would not greet him with a smile, she would climb out of her jeans, or, if frocked, slip off her panties, and walk over to the windowsill, throwing him a single glance - always the same one.

And they would howl with the thunder. Lillith displaced to some place of primacy, a place of crashes and booms and wild, flashing dark.

Gasp twenty-six: Footsie.

Mr. Green became a mute beast moving in some other zone of sentience, some ether of pre-consciousness. Lillith’s physical soul reacted with instant, primitive recognition to his slow, concentrated trance; her skin already sheening. Let us, for a moment, consider the brute’s throbbing, swaying perspective: The moment he saw Lillith slip her shoes off - those sharp, inquisitorial eyes of hers flashing across his features to spy the transformation, the becoming - a new he took shape out of he; his musculature twitched; his throat swelled shut (he dumbly, distractedly scratched at it), and all of his arteries began swelling with gush.
>From a scientific point of view, from Dr. White’s frame then, the effect was essentially a crippling one. Were Green to be placed, in his present stupor, in any other social or functional context, he would blindly collapse about like some moon-shone zombie. Imagine, as Dr. White does, expecting of this sub-human form to execute some childishly simple task - like making Milo, or tying his shoes (see the porceline smash into the wall, the shoes torn in tway, gutted; dead).

Mr. Green gasped hoarsely, sending a flutterby through Lillith’s tummy-tum, and staggered forward through gelatinous air - all of his radia of sense trained on three mistily beating loci: her slow twirling feet, trailing maroon tails of warmth (upon her now, his face was already deeply buried - paraplegically nourished - by the complex valley of her left instep; soon he is slow gorging on her toes, Lillith flailing), and beyond them - demoniacally linked to these twin hearts, her shimmering centre.. the cradle of profound release.
But first he has to consume her feet. The process was strict - agonizingly ritualistic in ascension.
Lillith, hyper-sympathetic erotic being that she was, had long slipped along and was gasping and slashing in the same tumultous air as he, kicking him involuntarily, harshly, to deeper access his hunger, her feet tingling like the extensions of clitori they had become..

When (pausing alarmingly to sup on her calves, from where he wielded her like a quaint doll,) at last, he plunged forward and applied his delirium to her wet heat, she flickered in and out of consciousness.
Her reality - sober and crisp no more than three minutes earlier - a liquid crush of colour.

Gasp forty-five: A chance of light showers.

He touched her like a fascination, with slow, wide open fingers, questing sense. His mouth was so focused, so obsessed with her seemingly matchless, unprecedented shapes and scapes, that at times Lillith wanted to say, “up here, I’m up here..”, in part to remind herself that they were still human, had not slipped into some decadent new embrionic state where the very air pulses sexual heat and all are blind, concentrated to the tactile and olfactorial, the palatic..
Lillith was beginning to feel that telltale contra-echo that whispers of slow rising orgasmhood, and Stephen had barely passed her waist (her fanny, to be sure, was quietly howling by now, wet and very much a foot-tapping..) Lillith reached out and put her hand on his head, to steady herself, she was entering involuntary country (Stephen was breaching merry cuntry); staccato undulations.
“Ste phen?”
He didn’t answer, he had slipped. Sound was only sound now, curling inflections, an intrigue of tones and ascensions. Lillith closed her eyes, mouth open in swooning shock. The world folded away.

Gasp four: Piel innie Keel.

‘Deep Throat’. She was watching it with Jill, who was waxing apoplectic next to her… Baudrillard this, De Bouvoir the other.
All things considered, Lillith decided, it must be - at the very least - incredibly awkward having a clitoris for an uvula. The poor girl probably can’t bring herself to chew her food. Swallows everything whole (”Don’t you Dare trim those crusts!”) - then does a Meg Ryan in the middle of the restaurant, or worse, in the once-quiet corner.
“…ideological inversion of the entire - previously negative - structure, leading…”

Lillith slipped her two favourite fingers into her lilly-whites.

Gasp fifteen: Shimmer

Lillith found it to be quite wonderful. Unexpectedly, there was no politics - she’d secretly thought, due to Jill’s retrospectively gleaned crush on her, that she would be able to manipulate her; just, you know, in small ways. But that dynamic was entirely absent. And she enjoyed it. They were two lovely mirrors appreciating oneother in distinct light - as if they were the same reflection spun into unique presence.. Their relating was a dance. Jill would still occasionally go off on her passionate missives about Masculine ideology, while Lillith no longer purred her tales of sexual pounce and pounced-upon - it was an unwritten law, do not let the outside in. Their erogenous relating was entirely liquid, there were no distinct levels of inter-appreciation: From the moment Jill lilted “Hii” out of the intercom, they were stroking each other - it was as if the shifts in intensity were gracefully smoothed out to mediate their entire interaction. Orgasm was reflected in the eyes passing tea, and the gleaming lower lip onto which that sugary crumb had crumbled.

She loved watching Jill’s face as she explored her interia with slender, loving finger.. adored the way her face would shimmer.

Gasp seven: A disagreeable conclusion.

Lilly’s best friends were Saartjie, Annie, and Janneman. Janneman was part of a gang, ‘Die Stroppers’, but, exasperatingly, Lillith was always forbidden access to their games, and gang den, the contents and goings-on of which were the only - and frequent - topics to disrupt the conspirational girls’ endless doll scenarios. The youngest Stropper, Daantjie, stayed in a house neighbouring Lillith’s home, and would sometimes hop over the wall for an illicit (or, when apprehended, sanctioned) swim in their pool. His uniform was always the same - a tired red Speedo. Hers was always different. After gravely nodding and assenting, “Ja, Daantjie, jy mag maar swem”, Daantjie’s eyes rolling dramatically at being busted - again, Lillith would slowly walk into the house, and then hurry into her room and pick out the least recently seen bathing costume. Outside again, she would carefully lay out her towel (she tanned, he swam).

“Puts it in your mouth,” Daantjie said (God knows where he’d gotten that idea). They were standing behind the big Protea bush, and, as was tradition, one of them showed the other their publicly veiled anatomy. But this was new. “Hoekom,” she stated. Daantjie insisted on speaking to her in attempted English, even though he knew she was fluent in both his and her tongue. “Ek weet nie.” A telling, unprecedented slip of code. Lillith knelt down and, still unsure of exactly how to proceed and why, put her mouth around his penis. And so they waited. Lillith, though her overriding sensation was confusion, was mildly alarmed - some archetypal structure was crunching into place - when her mouth presently erupted in stinging urine. Daantjie backed away, horrified, and scrambled back over the wall, his right foot trailing a red Speedo.
Lillith sat there, quite still, for several moments. Before wandering, shocked, into the house.

I have always had a passionately fractured relation with my so-called race. The pale children of science, the fathers of nihilistic religions.. But, in a sense, the betrayal of my genes equips me to wage a more intricate war. Amen to the blessing. Amen to the curse.

The very first time I thought I had sex
I had no knowledge of the word
nor its roaring golds of heat
nor its aqueatic shades of
after-ripple..

I knew only
some abstract scent
of stink-gogga
- a burst which
dismayed my bumble-berried mouth -
I had lifted her into the tree
awkward,
desperately swooned her into secret branches
dripping
with shiny blacks
and lustrous purple

Snorting and violently shaking my
head I
realised
the stink-gogga had sacrificed itself
to alarm my senses to her naked belly

She too had a belly-button
gentler
it soft-sloped inward

pretty complement to my gently
vulgar one, jutting out shily and
proud all at once

We once, standing tall and awkward
in a miniature forest of grass
me bow-legged, her flushed on tip-toe
fit them into tickling couplet
mine in hers
bellies blushing with foreign hungers

That night strange colours kept peaced sleep at bay,
‘One day’, they whispered in
queer scapes and boiling shades,
‘You will taste the violence of magic..’

knersh

Let us take this pale
infant already struggling
so with this trick called breath
faint heart bare training its rhythms
crumpled pink of
hands weakly clenching and un
clenching let us take this
weak mammal yes and wrap its weakness
in cities and vast machineries
and undulating technology
and thermo-regulated blankets
lest it learn to grow strong
and healthy
and hungry embrace the
hulking splendour
of this too-wild cosmos.
Yes let’s.

Freshly kissed and fondled, nicked and coated by a dozen bold poisons,
welts and contusions and bright flames,
my derma glows with itchy and flushed rebirth
(a phoenix of littler deaths)
as I emerge, still drunk and dazzled from our concentrate season
of violent, brash discoveries -
leaping too hungrily
(the gasp of blind faith!)
over cliffs and into
strange trees humming with dangers and delights
and tumbled and rolled and tickled and squirmed
and thrust and snortle-howled like
children born of incurable laughters

I scratch quickly here
inspect amorous swellings there
-the generous snarls of your hands-
and patiently
unbearably
swell with new futures
impossible thirsts!

Hunger carves shape. (POEM TITLE)

Subtle, dripping shock -
skin and flesh
composed yet
yearning
unfurls self from
mute, black canvas

Her appearance
a gentle
mysterious flux
of curve
and scent
trickles
naked
moist

coyly whispering growth
into hungered space…

WORDS BY: MICK RAUBENHEIMER

After this I would voyage for more than an hour through the dark of my bed, arching the bedclothes over myself, so as to form a cavern, at whose distant exit I glimpsed a bit of oblique bluish light that had nothing in common with my bedroom, with the Neva night, with the rich, darkly translucent flounces of the window curtains. The cave I was exploring held in its folds and fissures such a dreamy reality, brimmed with such oppressive mystery, that a throbbing, as of a muted drum, would begin in my chest and in my ears; in there, in its depths, where my father had discovered a new species of bat, I could make out the high cheekbones of an idol hewn from the rock; and, when I finally dozed off, a dozen strong hands would overturn me and, with an awful silk-ripping sound, someone would unstitch me from top to bottom, after which an agile hand would slip inside me and powerfully squeeze my heart. Or else I would be turned into a horse, screaming in a Mongolian voice: shamans yanked at its hocks and lassos, so that its legs would break with a crunch and collapse at right angles to the body – my body – which lay with its chest pressed against the yellow ground, and, as a sign of extreme agony, the horse’s tail would rise fountain-like; it dropped back, and I awoke.

Time to get up. The stove-heater pats
The glistening facings
Of the stove to determine
If the fire has grown to the top.
It has. And to its hot hum
The morning responds with the silence of snow,
Pink-shaded azure,
And immaculate whiteness.

Father? Is it wrong that I
want to split her
in tway?

“I..”

If she wants it too?
Wet

“Erm”

Roasting
begging the bursting?

“I..”

Her various operas of
scent
exploding

the very air
into erogeny?

Father?

SA’s most beloveded trio of Trixters, our merriest triangle of pranksters are back (is it a trix?)!! Confoundingly having disappeared in a tall Pow of neon smoke around 2003, at the height of their cheekiness, already lassooing in European legions to add to their slavering Seffrican contingent, Boo! left us scratching our noggins, twirling our ears, left with the vague scent of spaceships and wayward musical notes. Poor, sad, slippery musical notes, bright and abandoned amidst still-twirling hoola-hoops on the broken disco floor. “Princess?… Ampie.?” a lost fan mumbles..
But whatever it was that had dropped them onto our shores, in a squirmfest of dresses and C-grade Special FX, and upside/down crooning hiccups, and orange synths and alien love songs, had beamed them back up again.

Genesis: “Then we phoned Ampie because he wasn’t fat..”

I remember well the firstest time I sensationed the skirted three. It was during my first, free-wheeling experience of Cape Town, think it was at some now-defunct fest like Houtstok. Wandering around in what had turned into a festival of dust-storms I was drawn through a sudden parting in the dust air. Strange, bubbly sounds were thumping from up ahead. I saw a twirling frock; fat, slinky bass drummed my ears. And lo the dust-war settled to reveal what seemed to be a psychotically chirpy, transgender ladyperson, with a crazy-blonde-locked dude pacing disconcertedly around to the left of him/her, and a proudly frocked drummer. Casually unveiling they were, gleefully unleashing, the most magnificently Different concoctions of music. Venusian, stuttering ballads met disco-Primus bass and the delicious kitsch of Omo’s trumpets and synthetic delights.

When I interviewed rainbow-voiced Chameleon some years ago, following his understated, ridiculously beaut sonic rendering of Ingrid Jonker’s poetry, ‘Ek Herhaal Jou’, his anecdote on the origins of the extra-dimensional Boo! is an appropriate collision of the banal, and divine intervention..
Chris: “I was flipping burgers at McDonalds, when Leon (Princess Leonie) came in as a customer. He heard me sing in the kitchen and said he could make me famous. Then we phoned Ampie (Omo) because he wasn’t fat, and one thing Leon was always adamant about was that the band mustn’t be fat.” Just like that, unassumingly, yet somehow brashly, South Africa’s music scene was turned upside in, if only for a merry gasp of time.

Dotty polkas: Triumph and return.

Make no mistake, one gets to experience many flashes of brilliance in any music scene, many unexpected starts and booms, but Boo! were a phenomenon. And that was, I venture, somehow their point - a sudden, confusaloid, BURST. Extra met Terrestrial and melancholy kissed merriment; bass slapped trumpet and spells seduced logic. Boo! was an enigma. And now Boo! be an enigma again! An enigma wrapped in a polkadot exploding through a tune..

Nov 2009. Following tinkly rumours of the return of dem Boo!dists, I bump into the kaleidoscopic Chameleon, in the apt quantum of the InterWebplace.

Me: “What cosmic ripple led to the re-Boo!ing?”
Chris: “With Boo! there is something we can say that can’t be said in any other way, and, obviously, it also means that there’s something to be heard from Boo! that can’t be heard in any other way. We’ve had something to say ever since Boo! stopped saying something, and having not had it said has caused much of the sort of anguish one gets from leaving things unsaid. If, similarly, the desire to hear that which can only be said by Boo!ing is equally intense, it should be a happy outcome for all concerned. If not a cosmic ripple, perhaps it is merely a cognitive ripple.”

The new Boo! bounces its return at next year’s Ramfest. Grab your kokies, tear your rokkies, shine up the sky!
Chris asserts: “A reunion implies we get together tonight and then go our separate ways again. It’s not a reunion. Boo! is just getting back to playing.”

*********
[first published in Muse magazine]