Better to be happy today than wait for a better tomorrow

8 December 2008

I spoke to a man this week, who owes his life to a broomstick. Now he’s entertaining people by performing Elvis impersonations — and he’s very good at them. Had it not been for the broomstick, and the handle of a mop which he used to wedge closed the door behind which he was hiding, Gordon would be dead, shot by the gunmen who walked into his shop to steal from him.

In common with most people who have been threatened by dull-eyed criminals intent on killing them, facing death has given Gordon new sense of life.

I feel the same after I was attacked in my home then a few months later hijacked by three men with pistols. Now, it seems to me that what we, the victims of crime share, is not only the mind-numbing trauma of the incident itself but also a new will to live. And we all appear to have developed a kind of freeze frame perspective of things.

I notice that more often colours are brighter, my vision is more clear, I have increased levels of energy but most of all I seem to have a fresh sense of wonder about the world and my place in it. This is not to say that I don’t bump into everyday life and get bounced, shaken and given whacks on the side of the head from time-to-time. I do.

But the difference is that I bounce back more quickly, brush the irrelevance of petty issues aside more easily, hold on to negative things people say to me with less vigour and look instead to finding stuff to enrich my life and make me happy.

It’s as if I have stopped being a bystander in my own life and begun to live it. And that’s what Gordon re-affirmed. “If something is worth doing I do it now,” he says. “There may not be a tomorrow.” To quote Lennon, the dead Beatle not Lenin, the dead communist, life is what happens to you “while you are busy making other plans.” But we all know that. Why then, I wonder, are we all so busy making plans to be happy tomorrow or some other time in the future.

Lately I notice that almost everyone is busy. “Hi” I say to people what about …? “I’m busy” they retort cutting me short, then spend the next ten minutes giving me intimate details of busy they are. Busy will still be there tomorrow I think no matter how busy we are today. And sadly more often than not busy today, won’t make busy tomorrow go away. So why not just put busy down for a minute or two and go for a walk on the beach, watch the sunset, or take the time to step away from busy to go outside and look at the crescent moon, for instance, sharing space in the sky in perfect formation with Jupiter and Venus.

That happened this week. It won’t happen again for over 1 000 years. And I saw it, and it was beautiful. So, I am extremely pleased that I was not left bleeding to death in a doorway in Rondebosch, Gordon is delighted that he did not get a bullet in his head in his shop that morning.

They take our power away these people who prey on us with their violence. But the good news is that we get it back and we are more powerful because we are alive and we can see and we can feel and we can hear and we can touch and we can put busy down, every now and again, to dance to the music of who we really — and celebrate that are alive and living.

This column appeared in the Cape Times on 8 December 2008.

Suburban Elvis survives gunmen to revive the King of Rock

by Evelyn Holtzhausen

A year ago all that stood between Gordon Epstein and death was a thin single door that he held tightly closed against the two gunmen who wanted to kill him and steal money from the till in his CD exchange shop.
Today he is rebuilding his life as a popular Elvis impersonator and solo rock and roll singer at live music venues throughout Cape Town, South Africa. And for a shy guy, who normally stays in the background he makes a very good Elvis indeed.
Southern suburbs lovers of popular music will remember Gordon as the owner of the CD Spot in Wynberg where people went to exchange CDs and DVD’s.
It was a thriving well-stocked shop that took Gordon years to establish. It was certainly a long way from the time he spent running his CD exchange business from a cardboard box on the pavement near Cavendish shopping centre.
“I was just beginning to make money, the shop was thriving, and I was happy,” says Gordon. Then early one morning one man came to the gate and I let him in and then another came to the gate about 10 minutes later. At first I didn't know they knew each other."
Gordon dismissed the unease of suspicion that swept over him and went back behind his counter. They walked to the back of the shop to browse an among the CDs on sale. He suspected nothing when they called him to the back of the shop, pretending to ask about a horror DVD. Suddenly one produced a pistol and told Gordon to hand over the money in the shop. They took Gordon to the toilet, at the back, in the shop saying they would shoot him. One man stood just outside the toilet door to guard it while the man with the gun turned around and went to look for money in the shop. Gordon saw an opportunity to save his life and in one motion slammed the toilet door shut and placed the broomsticks and mopsticks in the toilet between the wall and the door to jam the door. The robbers tried to bash the door in and kept jumping against the door. "I thought I they might shoot me through the door and I started screaming for help,” he recalls.
Gordon’s screams were heard in the kitchen of the small café next door to his shop. The owner called the Wynberg Police whose charge office is a few hundred metres from the shop. The police arrived in minutes but could not get into the shop because of the locked security gate. Eventually they managed to break the gate down. Even when the police were in the shop, Gordon kept the door jammed with the broomsticks and his legs wedged between the wall and the door until one of the policemen smashed the toilet door in and found Gordon there.
The police were not fooled even though the “ suspects “ had no weapons on them. At Gordon’s insistence they held the men in the shop until a pistol was eventually found. Then they took Gordon’s attackers off to the police station.
Although he was free of the imminent threat to his life, the ordeal for Gordon had just begun. And the fear grew. He hired a guard to stand at the door to his shop. Still the fear remained. He asked a friend to help him in the shop. Still the fear remained. Eventually he simply could not go back. Each time someone sounded the buzzer to be let in Gordon’s heart stopped with fear that it would be another attack. Eventually he decided to close the shop. A friend sold off all his stock and Gordon was left without an income.
“I was a nervous wreck. Even today when I hear a car backfire I dive to the floor and heart pounds with fear,” he says.
Strangely he does not experience that fear when he goes onstage dressed in a white jumpsuit to bring Elvis back to life or when he does his solo performing.
"I realised I was good at impersonating Elvis when I was at primary school “ says Gordon. Later at school in Robertson he formed a band and carried on singing Elvis songs. After his matric as a conscript into the SA Army he played in the SA army Band. After ding discharged he performed as a solo singer at venues in Knysna and later Namibia with guest appearances at nightclubs and at private functions.
“I enjoyed the life of a musician,” he says, “But it was a hard life. The shop took the pressure off. It allowed me to make a reasonable living although I did still perform on special occasions – by invitation.”
Since closing his shop Gordon has been painstakingly trying to piece his life together and to learning to live without fear.
“I have spoken to other victims of violence crime he said. We all share a new sense of life –and we have to live each moment. That is why I have returned to my Elvis impersonations. Its something I love doing.
“I also know that if you are to succeed you have to feel like doing what you are doing. There is no time for half measures. We have one life.
“I feel now more than ever that if there is something I really want to do I must do it now. There may not be a tomorrow.”
When he is not preparing for another Elvis impersonation or solo rock n roll show Gordon is studying accounting and business management.
“Its taken time to get my confidence back: he says. But now I look for the positive wherever I can. I miss the shop. But I will never forget being in that small room expecting to be killed . I have my life and I am determined to make a success of the time I have left to live it.
“In the meantime I hope that if ever I get All Shook Up, again it is only when am on stage doing a rock n roll show.
* Gordon is currently performing on Sundays at Guzzler's in Milnerton. (from 12:30 till 4:30pm; weather permitting. It is a bring and braai)

A classic and so much more fitting of Neil Diamond’s talent

Home Before Dark

Neil Diamond
Sony BMG

Review by Evelyn Holtzhausen

Those people who have preferred to remain in the closet rather than tell the world that they actually like Neil Diamond can come out now, thanks to the amazing collection of songs by the man who gave us Hot August Night, and some of the most enduring anthems of the ‘60s.

Like he did for the late great Johnny Cash, with the American Recordings, Rick Rubin has taken Diamond by the scruff of his neck and wrung from him a CD full of songs which are good enough to put Diamond back at the top of the charts.

“No-one ever put me in a studio and asked me to sing the songs I want to,” Johnny Cash said of Rubin. This allowed Cash to deliver the best music he had ever recorded. Well, the same must be said of Diamond who in his liner notes describes the year of agony he went through to produce this album.

Track 12, Home before Dark is what the sticker on the CD promotes as the winning, chart-topping track, but I had difficulty getting past track one, If I Don’t See You Again.

This is such a great song, a wonderful love song in fact sung about a short relationship in the mould of the best Diamond has ever done from Sweet Caroline to I Am I Said, Holy Holy and any other Diamond hit you care to name. Diamond has a lot to thank Rick Rubin for.

This CD is a classic and so much more fitting of a song-writing man of Neil Diamond’s talent than that failure of a comeback attempt – ’12 Songs’ – released a year or so ago. Welcome back Mr Diamond. EJH

We need peace and quiet to appreciate the sounds of silence

Have you noticed how common is has become for people to say how much they long for peace and quiet? I know I do.

Silence, I have long believed, would be a lot better than the cacophony of noise I experience as wallpaper to my world. It’s there wherever you go; taxis hooting, discordant music in shops, advertising on radio and TV, cars with sub woofers pounding waves of sub-sonic wrap into your ears, police and ambulance sirens, dogs barking, people shouting into cell phones, microwave ovens, washing machines, dishwashers all firing short, sharp beeps at you, demanding instant attention.

“Silence.” I have said, “Just give me silence!”

In fact I wrote a speculative poem some time ago inviting those who read it to share my silence — even although, in retrospect I have never experienced real silence. The poem went; I, who claim to need nothing, need you, within myself to share the silence.

These days there is so much noise about the place, except perhaps when we go into the country — that achieving any form of quiet is almost as difficult as landing on Mars and it will take as long to get there. Yet we continue to say to people here and there, more often than not, “ I must get away, I need some peace and quiet.”

The truth is, however, that in reality, I have not given much thought to exactly how it would be had I the silence I claim to want. This was brought home to me while reading a book on the Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya, a master of 19th century who lost his hearing after a bout of illness when he was 47 years old.

The book titled Old Man Goya was written by Julia Blackburn a writer with an uncanny ability to imagine, then describe, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. I met her in an extraordinary book titled the Emperors’ Last Island about Napoleon. In the book she imagines what he must have been thinking as he stood, at the edge of a cliff, his hands clasped together behind his back looking, with melancholy eyes from St Helena, north towards his beloved France from which he had been exiled.

A book of Goya’s etchings was given to Blackburn when she was young. Now, after visiting places he frequented studying his art and reading about Goya she has written this biography of his deafness in an attempt to capture in words, his energy, his passion and his genius.

Here is what she says after he went deaf. “(Goya) had entered a place without birdsong or music, without footsteps approaching or dogs barking in the distance.” “Deafness”, she writes, “is said to be the most shocking of all sensory deprivations.

It locks you inside a cage and, since you can’t share the communication of language, it threatens to turn you into an idiot. “The real world becomes strangely two dimensional and empty because nothing exists beyond your own immediate field of vision. “The silence that envelops you becomes terrifying. People appear and disappear like so many gesticulating phantoms.

Then all you can do is withdraw into the privacy of your own being and wait for the storm to pass. “Do the deaf dream the sound of the rush and hiss of waves breaking?” she asks, “Do they dream of dogs barking or piano music playing? Do they listen to voices speaking to them and wake with the belief that the power of hearing has been miraculously returned? Or do they wake …..crying to dream again”.

Since reading the book, instead of longing for silence as I once did, I now lie in bed for a while after I have woken and listen to the first sounds of the new day.

I hear the nasal trumpeting of flock of Egyptian Geese as they flap overhead, I hear the low rumble of the train taking the early birds to work, the rustle of the wind in the leaves on the tree outside my bedroom window, the squeak of the wheel on the bicycle pedalled by the man who delivers my newspaper, the sound of rain on my roof, turtle doves cooing, “work harder, work harder .“

And I yearn no more for silence but rather for quiet, that I may hear more of life around me and know the joy that there is in being alive — and listening.

Where have all the keys gone, and all those single socks

I have a very good idea of exactly how my friend, who shall remain nameless for reasons which will become obvious in due course, felt when the front door of the house into which he was moving slammed shut.

This is of course not as good as he felt laughing at me when I walked into a tree on a hiking trail some time ago but that’s another story.

I wasn’t there when the door slammed so sadly, I could not get revenge by laughing back at him while he cursed but I can imagine how he felt, weary after a long day of moving from one country home to another three hours drive away, carrying the last boxful of stuff towards the house when suddenly: slam. Then that sinking feeling as he realised he was locked out.

I imagine he looked at the snow-capped mountains around him, felt the chill of the early evening breeze then ran frantically around the house looking for an open window, or one not sealed by burglar bars then resigned himself to the fact that he would have to break in to spend his first night in his new house.

That’s when he went into 'Chuck Norris on a drug bust mode' and kicked the back door open. But unlike Chuck who never gets hurt, my friend injured his leg in the process..

I know this because I have been there standing this side of a locked door, that is, while the keys were on the other side.

I have also had long engagements with coat hanger wire trying to open locked car doors and I have tried squeezing my aging body into small spaces to wriggle my way into places I have locked myself out of.

So now armed now with the wisdom of years, I secrete keys everywhere. I have even hidden keys in places I can’t remember. Like under my car for instance, wired to the frame somewhere. And many’s the day I have crawled around under the chassis out in the sticks somewhere looking for keys I have not lost.

And that’s the really annoying bit. I never lose things; I just can’t remember where I’ve put them. Except that is, all the spare keys in that box on that shelf somewhere. The really frustrating thing is that they never fit any the locked locks.

Keys I have also discovered are like socks and plastic container lids. Like most people I know, I have a lot of single socks and a lot of containers with no lids and also lots of keys that fit no locks.

Maybe Pete Seger could be inspired to write another song. Never mind where the flowers might have gone what about the keys, socks, lids, and locks (long time passing, long time ago!)

Later this week my friend called to say he had repaired the broken door and was sitting comfortably, nursing his bruised leg, while a log fire warmed him inside his new home.

The municipality which had earlier forgotten to connect him to the power grid had finally empowered him with light and Telkom had, after hours of frustrating cell phone calls, eventually delivered the squiggly little piece of wire, with the big ADSL connection, he needed to connect his computer to the little white plastic box they had glued precariously to the wall.

Eish! Country living, it seems, is not so relaxing after all.

It’s a workout maintaining gym etiquette in presence of poise

A slim and trim young lady vacuum packed into a bright pink leotard stretching her lithe body through contortions that one should really only attempt alone and in the privacy of one’s own home, rather than in full view of the crowds in a public gym, was a high point of a rain-soaked week.

It was, however, not the pink panther so much, as the reactions of her fellow “gymnicks” which, for a while at least, dispelled the gloom of rising interest rates, fuel price hikes and the consistently depressing performances of presidents, politicians and public servants.

The thing with gyms is that you don’t really want to look at anyone while you are exercising — not for too long anyway.

Convention has it that if you stare at the ladies exercising they may take you for some kind or creep or for a voyeur with predatory intent.

And, if you are a man, you might not want to be caught looking for too long at another man and running the risk of either being hit, or, especially in Cape Town, being hit on.

So people in gyms, tend, whenever possible, to avoid eye contact with one other. A nod here, a grunt there — never a wink anywhere — is about all that’s permissible as with lowered glance you walk briskly from one machine to another to sweat your stuff.

And that’s the way it’s been until the advent of the pink lady.

Never in all my years in gyms of cycling nowhere, in all the hours of picking up heavy weights and putting them down again, bending backwards and forwards and over and under have I ever seen so many people trying so hard not to look someone.

There she was, as I said cling-wrapped in pink, one second legs in the air, then legs down on the ground, sit-ups, sit downs, body twists like a koeksuster, jogging on the spot while everyone in the gym found something else fascinating to do, anything, in fact, rather than be caught looking.

A lot of men I noticed suddenly found a lot of time to stare at the clock above her head although all the other clocks on all the walls in the gym were working perfectly well.

Many men, I also noticed, suddenly found that stretching on the mats on the polished floor near where she was, had instant appeal.

And there they all were, rolling about, with eyes studiously averted, stretching tugging, and pulling at their limbs as if their lives depended on it.

Everyone still looking everywhere except at the pink lady.

Some were looking so hard away in fact that they didn’t see where they were going and bumped into each other or the machines as they walked. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that.

It’s amazing how cool and uninterested you can pretend to be when all your being is strained to the edge of endurance to be interested.

In the end it was the lady in pink who was most cool. She remained flexible and aloof; with just the hint of a flick of her blonde pony-tailed hair to her audience, every now and then, to let us all know that she knew that we all only had eyes for her.

What poise, what style! Thanks to her amazing performance, I am sure that I can assume without much fear of contradiction that pink, at least for those in the gym that day, is from now on the new black.