So on this one random Thursday night, through a series of unfortunate events, I found myself at Bonza Bay beach with an acquaintance of mine who was surrounded by about 13 beautiful women. It seemed that he had recruited me on his little escapade to occupy 12 of these lovely creatures whilst he focused on his one girlfriend.
I, being the cynic I am, bordering on mild schizophrenia, was rather unsettled by this whole setup. It was at night, it was chilly and there was just way too much booze flowing for anything constructive to come out of the evening’s activities. So I played Mr Shy Guy and decided to observe…
Anyway, back to the subject, it seemed that he had noticed that I was keeping to myself that evening so he decided to be accommodating. I appreciated that until he started his 15 minute monologue about himself, his money and his adventures. After those 15 minutes lapsed he went further, showing off his masculinity by the amount of noise his customized sound system could fart out of his Citi Golf 1.4. I couldn’t help but laugh at the clash of ironies that presented themselves to me as he aroused and stimulated himself with descriptions of his sonic grandeur: A very unusual ratio (2:13) of women to men; 12 of them were black and one was white who happened to be his girlfriend and, also, the only one who seemed to know how to dance; this seemingly educated gentleman with whom I was having a ‘conversation’ boasting about his sound system.
I know that ‘boys love their toys’ as is evident in my own lifestyle. I have a liking for chic, slick motorcars. I have a fetish for leather boots (as feminine as that may be). I have also recently acquired a mysterious fascination with beautiful cutlery and cooking utensils but that’s all just me. But what is it about guys and loud sound systems?
By loud, I don’t mean just upping the volume on any stereo – I’m talking about chaps who pay tens of thousands of Rands on amplifiers, tweeters, sub-woofers and all other things needed to make enemies of your white, dog-walking neighbours and that is not the end of it. You see, most of the affordable yet trendy cars like the Citi Golfs cannot accommodate such heavy vibrations so they have to be modified somewhat. The suspension needs to be altered to sustain the load, the windows need to be somehow reinforced so that they don’t fly away whilst you’re playing Metro Fm and, usually, the entire backseat is taken up by this monstrosity.
I don’t get it. I’ve tried, though, but I cannot derive any sense of satisfaction in getting a headache and mutilating my eardrums all in the name of fun or whatever you want to call it.
With most of these vehicles, you’d have to stand approximately 20 – 30 paces from the vehicle for you to actually enjoy the sound without sustaining injuries. Though, why would you want to do that, if you could lower the volume slightly and sit inside the car and maybe even drive whilst you’re listening to music?
Back to our conversation, I also realised that whilst his car was playing music, he had to keep the engine running otherwise the battery would be flat after about 30 minutes. That got me thinking. If, for example, we were having one of those typical all-night parties he’d have to be playing from his car for about 5 -7 hours straight whilst running his engine, revving it periodically. This would amount to about 10 – 15 litres of petrol consumed, which is the equivalent of about 120km of driving in the average Golf. If you then changed this into currency, you’d be looking at about R75 – R112.50 just to keep music playing for a few hours. I wouldn’t call myself a full-time cheapskate but would that be absolutely necessary?
My argument goes beyond racial divides.
I know that certain race groups from Durban and Cape Town tend to exaggerate my point for me and then go even beyond that so much so that the arm of the law has had to intervene by instilling decibel limits that could not be exceeded – and you thought that speeding was enough of a problem.
I once refused to board a taxi in Durban’s Point. Not because of the impressive graffiti art that decorated it and not because of the occupants. The real reason was that I heard and felt it approaching before I even saw it – it was no longer sonic, it was seismic. What bothered me even more was that there were some older folks who were obliged to board, for lack of better options, and bear all that madness. Of course, I would’ve boarded the taxi had the conductor offered me a sterilized pair of earplugs. Well, I would’ve thought about it, at least.
Since the creation of records or LP’s, I gathered that the point was to recreate a sound very similar to music being played live without the static or any ‘airy’ sounds in the background. Hence the development CD audio and MP3’s with varying bitrates. Alas, it seems that this is not the case. Sound clarity is no longer the commodity it once was with my people. The beauty of music without a destructive bass is no longer and we have to watch the chaps spending so much money on things that do not appreciate in value – but that is not a new concept as we still spend so much money on accessorizing so many other things that we see as extension of our selves.
This is still a learning process for me, part of my quest to understand my fellow man and maybe even understand myself better. Perhaps one day someone will help me understand and even convince me to cash in my retirement fund to build my own little monster so I can walk with my legs far apart as a man well-endowed should.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Big Minded Small Town-edness
So after all the drama of living in my nation’s capital for a decade or so, and deciding to leave for smaller (greener?) pastures where the animal fat has been chewed and the supposedly greener grass has been smoked, the romance of the ideal has settled.
The truth is not much has changed. The same people are still the same people or perhaps different people are still different people.
The nomad, who is myself (with a recently acquired hunter-gatherer spirit) has decided to settle in a town which smells of nothing in particular, but faint traces of sea-spray and complacency that can be detected by a very analytical snout.
In retrospect, there are still things I miss about My Nation’s Capital.
The serious-looking lawyers and barristers with huge briefcases oozing a post-modern kind intellectual testosterone on Schoeman Street in the mornings walking past Pretoria News head office with their wigs, the taxi ranks; my ‘magwinya and loose-cigarette mall’.
The petite TUT students in their naïve afro centricities with their portfolio bags and weed pouches and body piercings. The public transport system which, I’ve now realised, is seriously advanced. Busses that take you anywhere where the name Pretoria still applies.
The young professionals and job market stock in their Corsa Lites and Citi Golfs smoking Peter Stuyvesants and recalling, yet another, Sundowns’ fluke of a victory and the chaos that followed.
The Rastafarians, the fake Rastafarians and the genuine Trustafarians. The Asian Marabastad community. The astounded and dazed feeling I’d get after having spent, yet another night in Sunnyside.
The heritage-rich skyline with haunted Edwardian-styled buildings now inhabited by ‘fatcat’ city officials whose gravy-enriched farts feed decades of apartheid’s ghosts of corruption.
So I am this man, still possessed by the contradictory yet authoritative charms of My Nation’s Capital but somehow bedding this simple virgin with round cheeks who obtains the greatest pleasure from missionary positions and grilled porkchops by the seaside. She, besides her name, has absolutely nothing to do with the advertised spontaneity of London.
Though, I must admit, I’m content in her complacent arms. This is the city of my upbringing of which I have very little memory of. It’s like meeting someone for the first time again, this time in the waking life.
That confuses the natives though.
“Khanyo, where are you from?” one asks.
I reply “I’m from Pretoria”.
“So how is it that you speak xhosa?”
“..because I’m actually from here”
That usually ends the conversation as I feel the label of “Madman” sticking to my oily forehead.
Sometimes to the contrary:
“..so how’s that dude?” they continue, to my dismay
“I grew up here then I left for Witbank when I was a laaitie…long story..”
“aw, cool. I want to also go to Joburg. Apparently it’s quite happening there.”
“Well, the thing is, Pretoria and Joburg are not the same place..” I add in futile ‘patriotism’.
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean..”
With that, I concede. I’d then be followed by a barrage of questions about celebrities and concerts and the party scene and fashion and all things glamorous to a small minded bumpkin in a small town.
So all in all, I guess the real lesson I’m learning from all of this is Humility. It’s funny how life’s situations can force you out of one ideal into another. And the manifestations of each ideal can be even more interesting.
The manifestation of my kind of humility is solitude. And by solitude I’m not referring to being a recluse. Solitude, by my definition, is freedom from any tangible association with acquaintances. So that’s what I’m trying to maintain.
This came to me whilst I was sitting in a pub aptly named Brittania (?) with an unidentified cousin of mine and his entourage. So over a dozen milk stouts or so, I listened to their conversations drifting between their former headmaster’s new house and Sarah Comley’s new drug habit. She, in actual fact, was no-one they’d met personally or even went to school with but she was known. A questionable reputation followed her, I presume.
By the end of that night I was perplexed, disoriented and frustrated; I found nothing enriching the personality or even the brain in a whole night’s drinking. Instead I felt as if I was going insane and that something had been taken from me!
You see, it is the solitude that now helps me to detach myself. If I wanna go for a beer, company is not a prerequisite. If I wanna go to the beach, I’m happier doing it alone. It keeps my brewing narcissism in check. It dissipates the urge to enlighten, to rise above what I diagnose to be chronic small-mindedness in the people I’ve met.
But is this not narcissism on it’s own? I mean it is somewhat judgemental – not everyone can be the same right?
I guess that’s how we are as human beings with our left-brained logic. You take a sample from a certain number of people from different parts of a controlled area and divide the results per capita in that area. What you get is a representation of the general populace obtained by a ratio.
In that, regard, I may be a little bit judgemental. But may I remind you that prejudice is merely a survival instinct we all have. It’s built into our formulae as heirs to this savage kingdom.
What makes me laugh is, historically, this region is the birthplace of some of our nation’s greatest thinkers and, yet, I am just not finding their legacy as much is I’d hoped. Maybe they were fed up for the same reasons and took their legacies to the Apartheid Museums, Jozi poetry sessions, street names in Soweto, State Libraries or Freedom Day celebrations funded by the inefficiencies of basic service delivery.
Maybe it’s just me.
The truth is not much has changed. The same people are still the same people or perhaps different people are still different people.
The nomad, who is myself (with a recently acquired hunter-gatherer spirit) has decided to settle in a town which smells of nothing in particular, but faint traces of sea-spray and complacency that can be detected by a very analytical snout.
In retrospect, there are still things I miss about My Nation’s Capital.
The serious-looking lawyers and barristers with huge briefcases oozing a post-modern kind intellectual testosterone on Schoeman Street in the mornings walking past Pretoria News head office with their wigs, the taxi ranks; my ‘magwinya and loose-cigarette mall’.
The petite TUT students in their naïve afro centricities with their portfolio bags and weed pouches and body piercings. The public transport system which, I’ve now realised, is seriously advanced. Busses that take you anywhere where the name Pretoria still applies.
The young professionals and job market stock in their Corsa Lites and Citi Golfs smoking Peter Stuyvesants and recalling, yet another, Sundowns’ fluke of a victory and the chaos that followed.
The Rastafarians, the fake Rastafarians and the genuine Trustafarians. The Asian Marabastad community. The astounded and dazed feeling I’d get after having spent, yet another night in Sunnyside.
The heritage-rich skyline with haunted Edwardian-styled buildings now inhabited by ‘fatcat’ city officials whose gravy-enriched farts feed decades of apartheid’s ghosts of corruption.
So I am this man, still possessed by the contradictory yet authoritative charms of My Nation’s Capital but somehow bedding this simple virgin with round cheeks who obtains the greatest pleasure from missionary positions and grilled porkchops by the seaside. She, besides her name, has absolutely nothing to do with the advertised spontaneity of London.
Though, I must admit, I’m content in her complacent arms. This is the city of my upbringing of which I have very little memory of. It’s like meeting someone for the first time again, this time in the waking life.
That confuses the natives though.
“Khanyo, where are you from?” one asks.
I reply “I’m from Pretoria”.
“So how is it that you speak xhosa?”
“..because I’m actually from here”
That usually ends the conversation as I feel the label of “Madman” sticking to my oily forehead.
Sometimes to the contrary:
“..so how’s that dude?” they continue, to my dismay
“I grew up here then I left for Witbank when I was a laaitie…long story..”
“aw, cool. I want to also go to Joburg. Apparently it’s quite happening there.”
“Well, the thing is, Pretoria and Joburg are not the same place..” I add in futile ‘patriotism’.
“Yeah, well, you know what I mean..”
With that, I concede. I’d then be followed by a barrage of questions about celebrities and concerts and the party scene and fashion and all things glamorous to a small minded bumpkin in a small town.
So all in all, I guess the real lesson I’m learning from all of this is Humility. It’s funny how life’s situations can force you out of one ideal into another. And the manifestations of each ideal can be even more interesting.
The manifestation of my kind of humility is solitude. And by solitude I’m not referring to being a recluse. Solitude, by my definition, is freedom from any tangible association with acquaintances. So that’s what I’m trying to maintain.
This came to me whilst I was sitting in a pub aptly named Brittania (?) with an unidentified cousin of mine and his entourage. So over a dozen milk stouts or so, I listened to their conversations drifting between their former headmaster’s new house and Sarah Comley’s new drug habit. She, in actual fact, was no-one they’d met personally or even went to school with but she was known. A questionable reputation followed her, I presume.
By the end of that night I was perplexed, disoriented and frustrated; I found nothing enriching the personality or even the brain in a whole night’s drinking. Instead I felt as if I was going insane and that something had been taken from me!
You see, it is the solitude that now helps me to detach myself. If I wanna go for a beer, company is not a prerequisite. If I wanna go to the beach, I’m happier doing it alone. It keeps my brewing narcissism in check. It dissipates the urge to enlighten, to rise above what I diagnose to be chronic small-mindedness in the people I’ve met.
But is this not narcissism on it’s own? I mean it is somewhat judgemental – not everyone can be the same right?
I guess that’s how we are as human beings with our left-brained logic. You take a sample from a certain number of people from different parts of a controlled area and divide the results per capita in that area. What you get is a representation of the general populace obtained by a ratio.
In that, regard, I may be a little bit judgemental. But may I remind you that prejudice is merely a survival instinct we all have. It’s built into our formulae as heirs to this savage kingdom.
What makes me laugh is, historically, this region is the birthplace of some of our nation’s greatest thinkers and, yet, I am just not finding their legacy as much is I’d hoped. Maybe they were fed up for the same reasons and took their legacies to the Apartheid Museums, Jozi poetry sessions, street names in Soweto, State Libraries or Freedom Day celebrations funded by the inefficiencies of basic service delivery.
Maybe it’s just me.
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