“Get lost.” That’s what people used to say to me when I irritated them with one thing or another. “Just! Get! Lost!”
Sometimes, I may have taken umbrage at the remark. At other times not. I can’t really remember. So many people say so many things.
But attending a gathering, in her memory, of her friends, following the death of a colleague this week, I found myself, as I looked up at the poster-size picture of her, wishing that I had taken that advice and got lost.
Instead I have spent my life being found. At 55-years-old it was too late for Di to have been lost or found. She is simply not here anymore – thanks to cancer. But she did by all accounts live her life to the hilt. And apparently got lost from time to time.
Instead of being lost, I have spent my life being found. Found hopeless at sport, I turned to writing and literature and was found to be quite good at it. Later I was found to be a good journalist, found to be a reliable employee, found responsible and promoted. I am found by some to be trustworthy as a friend, found to reliable on a cloudy day.
And it, one day, may well be said of me “he was found to have been OK”.
None of that helps I guess when it comes to the end, when it’s all over.
Which makes me regret in some ways that I never got lost. Had I taken that advice imagine the adventures that I might have enjoyed. Not that I have not had my fair share. I have, but there could have been more.
I have been to the Middle East, Europe, Scandinavia and on the North Sea perched on the shuddering steel platforms of rigs pumping oil from under the seabed to Norway. I have been to North America, the Grand Canyon, New York, Washington and San Francisco and to South America, Sao Paulo, the Amazon, Rio. Closer to home I have been to the Comoros, Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Namibia and Swaziland. And I have been rover, I have walked alone, hiked a hundred highways *but I have never ever been lost.
Once in Venice I ducked down an alleyway and for a while, could not find my way back through the maze of canals. And then there was that time in Athens when I was so excited to be there that I dumped my backpack in a youth hostel headed for the ancient hills, then could, not for the life of me, find my way home.
There were a couple of minutes of sheer panic, then street by street I managed to find my way back, seizing on vague landmarks like handholds on a vertical face. I was too panicked, (my passport, my money, my tickets all in my backpack at the hostel ) to abandon myself, like Socrates, to my fate.
Now days, according to an article in the Cape Times you need technology to get lost. All you have to do, apparently, is be Swedish and type Carpi instead of Capri into your GPS and travel on oblivious. But that not it. Perhaps abandonment, rather than lost is the term I ought to use.
Those who abandon themselves to life, thrilling to the living of it, are those who thrive while those of us who are content to be found standing at the sidelines watching, are voyeurs each one, living our lives vicariously. Why else the crowds drawn to the gladiators, to the bullfights to the rugby, to rock concerts, or staring up at a man on a wire dancing between twin towers a mile high while New York stretches and yawns at dawn.
Is it because we thrive on how they abandon themselves, thrill at how they are totally lost in what they are doing to the exclusion of everything else; abandoned to life itself? Maybe. So then get lost!
* I have been rover, I have walked alone, and hiked a hundred highways credit Frank Sinatra, Love’s Been Good To Me.”
This column appeared in the Cape Times on 3 August 2009.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Alzheimer’s light
Alzheimer’s light is what I’ve heard it called. The ability that is, to forget where things are, when things are and even what things are.
My particular specialty is to spend an inordinate amount of time looking for things that are not lost. I have simply just temporarily forgotten where they are, where I put them or to whom it is that I have lent them.
This week for example I have spent fruitless, frustrating hours trying to track down a number of DVD’s that I have collected over the years that were borrowed from me and never returned. “Why don’t you keep list?” people ask when I try to track down borrowed items that have not been returned. I did once but I lost the list, so that clearly is not the solution.
The problem is trust. We don’t really, in the polite chattering classes, want to admit that we don’t trust our friends and acquaintances. Even though we may not. It’s somehow a bit off to offer to lend a book, CD or DVD to someone then imply that you don’t trust them to return it so you are going to write their name down with a list of the items they have borrowed so you can stalk them even unto their graves until they, or their estate, returns them to you.
It’s far more acceptable to say, with a happy laugh, “of course you will return them won’t you,” and they say, “yes of course we will” and the conversation moves on even as they slide your treasured items into their possession.
A friend told me this week of a prominent media personality who used to steal CD’s from him by “borrowing” them when he was not looking — and never returning them. His solution was simply to visit the offending party and steal his own CD’s back.
He could do that because he knew who had taken them. With Alzheimer’s Light, that’s not an option.
Also my trouble is that I like to share. If I have bought a great DVD, or CD or book, I want my friends to watch it, listen to it or to read it and I want to discuss it with them. So when they visit I reach up to my shelves and say, “Here, read this, watch this, or listen to this… yes of course you can take it home I know you will give it back.”
And it’s my loss that I don’t have the courage, upon their receipt of the said article, to whip out a pen and paper and catalogue their name and contact number like cop writing out a fine.
I trust my friends and by default their friends but I wish I had listened to my mother. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”, she said. That advice, sadly, like so many other applications our parents taught, to smooth our way from tottler to toppie, went in one ear and out the next.
* By the way, thanks to my fellow Boomers who e-mailed me the titles of the books that graced the sagging shelves of their youth. In addition to those mentioned in my last column such as the Art of Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance, the Whole Earth Catalogue etc, were Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (thanks John) the Little Prince, the Prophet, Kahlil Gibran, Knots by RD Laing, Games People play by Eric Berne, MD, Hawaii by James A. Michener, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Linda Goodman's Love Signs and not to forget, the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. Yes?
Sadly I don’t have any of them anymore. I must have lent them to someone I trusted. (Sigh)
My particular specialty is to spend an inordinate amount of time looking for things that are not lost. I have simply just temporarily forgotten where they are, where I put them or to whom it is that I have lent them.
This week for example I have spent fruitless, frustrating hours trying to track down a number of DVD’s that I have collected over the years that were borrowed from me and never returned. “Why don’t you keep list?” people ask when I try to track down borrowed items that have not been returned. I did once but I lost the list, so that clearly is not the solution.
The problem is trust. We don’t really, in the polite chattering classes, want to admit that we don’t trust our friends and acquaintances. Even though we may not. It’s somehow a bit off to offer to lend a book, CD or DVD to someone then imply that you don’t trust them to return it so you are going to write their name down with a list of the items they have borrowed so you can stalk them even unto their graves until they, or their estate, returns them to you.
It’s far more acceptable to say, with a happy laugh, “of course you will return them won’t you,” and they say, “yes of course we will” and the conversation moves on even as they slide your treasured items into their possession.
A friend told me this week of a prominent media personality who used to steal CD’s from him by “borrowing” them when he was not looking — and never returning them. His solution was simply to visit the offending party and steal his own CD’s back.
He could do that because he knew who had taken them. With Alzheimer’s Light, that’s not an option.
Also my trouble is that I like to share. If I have bought a great DVD, or CD or book, I want my friends to watch it, listen to it or to read it and I want to discuss it with them. So when they visit I reach up to my shelves and say, “Here, read this, watch this, or listen to this… yes of course you can take it home I know you will give it back.”
And it’s my loss that I don’t have the courage, upon their receipt of the said article, to whip out a pen and paper and catalogue their name and contact number like cop writing out a fine.
I trust my friends and by default their friends but I wish I had listened to my mother. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”, she said. That advice, sadly, like so many other applications our parents taught, to smooth our way from tottler to toppie, went in one ear and out the next.
* By the way, thanks to my fellow Boomers who e-mailed me the titles of the books that graced the sagging shelves of their youth. In addition to those mentioned in my last column such as the Art of Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance, the Whole Earth Catalogue etc, were Jonathan Livingstone Seagull (thanks John) the Little Prince, the Prophet, Kahlil Gibran, Knots by RD Laing, Games People play by Eric Berne, MD, Hawaii by James A. Michener, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Linda Goodman's Love Signs and not to forget, the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. Yes?
Sadly I don’t have any of them anymore. I must have lent them to someone I trusted. (Sigh)
Suburban Elvis survives gunmen to revive the King of Rock.
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 as a solo rock and roll singer and songwriter at live music venues throughout the city. 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, let them in then re-locked the security gate behind them 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. "It was really like your worst horror movie and I was sure it would end with me being either badly injured or killed.
“I thought I they might shoot me through the door.” he recalled. “ But still I held on.”
“Gordon’s screams were heard in the kitchen of the small café next door to his shop. And 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. They carted Gordon’s attackers off.
Although he was fee 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. 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 he played as a conscript in the SA army Band and 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 – which 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 show 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 at any second. 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."
Today he is rebuilding his life as a popular Elvis impersonator and as a solo rock and roll singer and songwriter at live music venues throughout the city. 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, let them in then re-locked the security gate behind them 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. "It was really like your worst horror movie and I was sure it would end with me being either badly injured or killed.
“I thought I they might shoot me through the door.” he recalled. “ But still I held on.”
“Gordon’s screams were heard in the kitchen of the small café next door to his shop. And 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. They carted Gordon’s attackers off.
Although he was fee 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. 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 he played as a conscript in the SA army Band and 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 – which 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 show 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 at any second. 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."
You can stay safe at home, and never taste the world’s wonders
That’s the thing about travel. It expands the mind, excites the senses, gives us a sense of place and puts things in perspective.
At least it does so for me. Years ago I worked in a pub in London as a barman. George, the elderly geezer who managed the pub, turned to me in surprise one day after I had told him that I intended going from Hammersmith to Piccadilly Circus on my day off. “What on earth do you want to do that for? ” he asked. “ I have never left ‘ammersmiff.” I was born here, I went to school here and I have worked in this pub since the day I left school. Everything I need is here why on earth would I want to go to anywhere else?”
Months earlier I had traveled from South Africa to Luxembourg — with only R750 in traveller’s cheques to my name — caught a bus to Calais, then a train to Dover, then hitched my way to the top of the country. I touched the sea at John o’ Groats in Scotland then zigzagged back from coast to coast until I arrived in London, a month or so later, short of money so took a job in a pub.
I was astounded at George. Piccadilly Circus was just around the corner in a manner of speaking but he had never been curious enough to stray more than a few kilometres from his home. On the positive side his remark made me feel like a brave and intrepid explorer traveling to the corners of the earth.
“But you have always had ants in your pants,” said my mother, Cynthia, recently when we were talking my need to be out and about.
Indeed I have, but they don’t call it that anymore. These days we have important names and alphabet soup for everything. What were then ants in your pants is now Attention Deficit Syndrome (ADS). There is apparently also Nature Deprivation Syndrome (NDS) and then we all have ETV and DSTV and that you get from too much Multichoice. And lets not forget the new ASDL which if you are lucky you may just get from Telkom.
Be that as it may, the reason I have been raving on about the mind-expanding advantages of travel is as a result of reading an article in a magazine I happened upon recently in which there was a story about a rock duo who call themselves the White Stripes.
The story was about their concert-playing trip to Brazil and it began by describing their travels on the Amazon River. It went on to describe their performance at Manaus Opera House or the Amazon Theatre (Teatro Amazonas).
In two seconds flat I was back in Manaus, on the river again, walking in the rainforest and recalling the sight of that opera house with is tiled dome glittering in the sun. Built in 1881 at a time when fortunes were made in the rubber boom, it was to be a jewel in the heart of the Amazonian rain forest and make Manaus one of the great centers of civilization.
Had I not traveled there my enjoyment of the article and my ability to picture what was being said would have been diminished.
Music does much the same for me. I remember arriving in London in the “hippy age” excited to be breathing the same air as the Rolling Stones. I went to Ireland, to Dublin just to walk down Cypress Avenue, made famous by Van Morrison with a song of the same name. And yes, I felt a cold shiver snake down my spine at the news of the Airbus that plunged into the Atlantic off the northern tip of Brazil last week. Not too long ago I boarded a flight at Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo that also flew over the Atlantic.
George, happy as he was in “ammersmif” would never have died in an air crash I guess, but neither would he have smelt the smoke of a wood fire in winter in the Karoo, swam in a lake during a lightning storm in Norway nor for that matter have been able to close his eyes and imagine the White Stripes on stage under tile-domed Teatro Amazonas.
This column appeared in the Cape Times on 8 June 2
At least it does so for me. Years ago I worked in a pub in London as a barman. George, the elderly geezer who managed the pub, turned to me in surprise one day after I had told him that I intended going from Hammersmith to Piccadilly Circus on my day off. “What on earth do you want to do that for? ” he asked. “ I have never left ‘ammersmiff.” I was born here, I went to school here and I have worked in this pub since the day I left school. Everything I need is here why on earth would I want to go to anywhere else?”
Months earlier I had traveled from South Africa to Luxembourg — with only R750 in traveller’s cheques to my name — caught a bus to Calais, then a train to Dover, then hitched my way to the top of the country. I touched the sea at John o’ Groats in Scotland then zigzagged back from coast to coast until I arrived in London, a month or so later, short of money so took a job in a pub.
I was astounded at George. Piccadilly Circus was just around the corner in a manner of speaking but he had never been curious enough to stray more than a few kilometres from his home. On the positive side his remark made me feel like a brave and intrepid explorer traveling to the corners of the earth.
“But you have always had ants in your pants,” said my mother, Cynthia, recently when we were talking my need to be out and about.
Indeed I have, but they don’t call it that anymore. These days we have important names and alphabet soup for everything. What were then ants in your pants is now Attention Deficit Syndrome (ADS). There is apparently also Nature Deprivation Syndrome (NDS) and then we all have ETV and DSTV and that you get from too much Multichoice. And lets not forget the new ASDL which if you are lucky you may just get from Telkom.
Be that as it may, the reason I have been raving on about the mind-expanding advantages of travel is as a result of reading an article in a magazine I happened upon recently in which there was a story about a rock duo who call themselves the White Stripes.
The story was about their concert-playing trip to Brazil and it began by describing their travels on the Amazon River. It went on to describe their performance at Manaus Opera House or the Amazon Theatre (Teatro Amazonas).
In two seconds flat I was back in Manaus, on the river again, walking in the rainforest and recalling the sight of that opera house with is tiled dome glittering in the sun. Built in 1881 at a time when fortunes were made in the rubber boom, it was to be a jewel in the heart of the Amazonian rain forest and make Manaus one of the great centers of civilization.
Had I not traveled there my enjoyment of the article and my ability to picture what was being said would have been diminished.
Music does much the same for me. I remember arriving in London in the “hippy age” excited to be breathing the same air as the Rolling Stones. I went to Ireland, to Dublin just to walk down Cypress Avenue, made famous by Van Morrison with a song of the same name. And yes, I felt a cold shiver snake down my spine at the news of the Airbus that plunged into the Atlantic off the northern tip of Brazil last week. Not too long ago I boarded a flight at Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo that also flew over the Atlantic.
George, happy as he was in “ammersmif” would never have died in an air crash I guess, but neither would he have smelt the smoke of a wood fire in winter in the Karoo, swam in a lake during a lightning storm in Norway nor for that matter have been able to close his eyes and imagine the White Stripes on stage under tile-domed Teatro Amazonas.
This column appeared in the Cape Times on 8 June 2
Mr Lucky Chris Isaak
It’s great to have him back, singing his songs of love lost, love found, cheating hearts, happiness and loneliness. It’s been seven long years since his last studio album here he is again, on form, doing the heartbreak blues as only Mr Isaak can.
So let me point you to the tracks of the tears on this album in which celebrates just how lucky his is to be alive, and singing the songs he loves to sing.
That’s right. Lucky! He’s lucky he says in an interview, to be able live to sing and sing to live. And we, I suggest, are lucky that he has decided to stick to what he does best without any embellishment or attempt to be trendy, with remixes, overdubs and as Bo Diddley said “all that kinda stuff”.
So what do we have here? Well there’s track one, Cheaters Town, “ I’ve got a broken heart, torn in two and I don’t when I don’t know if I am ever coming home…. yeah baby you lied to me, you lied to me /you stood there you smiled you opened your heart and you lied (and) I don’t know when, I don’t know if, I'm ever comin home, “
Then there’s track 5, the wonderful Breaking Apart, done here in duet with Trisha Yearwood. It’s better then the original! Heartrending stuff. You feel the pain from the opening bars.
As far as the technical stuff goes Chris did much of the production himself assisted by Eric Rosse, who produces Tori Amos and Lisa Marie Presley, John Shanks who has produced for Sheryl Crow, Michelle Branch and Rod Stewart as well as his longtime mixer and collaborator Mark Needham. And apart from collaborating with Trisha Yearwood there’s Michelle Branch with whom he shares a lovely harmony on “I Lose My Heart” and “Baby, Baby.”
What more could any Chris Isaac fan want? Off you go then: buy it, rush home and pay it with your squeeze or play it alone you’ll love it. And if you don’t? Well baby you must have a heart of stone. EJH
So let me point you to the tracks of the tears on this album in which celebrates just how lucky his is to be alive, and singing the songs he loves to sing.
That’s right. Lucky! He’s lucky he says in an interview, to be able live to sing and sing to live. And we, I suggest, are lucky that he has decided to stick to what he does best without any embellishment or attempt to be trendy, with remixes, overdubs and as Bo Diddley said “all that kinda stuff”.
So what do we have here? Well there’s track one, Cheaters Town, “ I’ve got a broken heart, torn in two and I don’t when I don’t know if I am ever coming home…. yeah baby you lied to me, you lied to me /you stood there you smiled you opened your heart and you lied (and) I don’t know when, I don’t know if, I'm ever comin home, “
Then there’s track 5, the wonderful Breaking Apart, done here in duet with Trisha Yearwood. It’s better then the original! Heartrending stuff. You feel the pain from the opening bars.
As far as the technical stuff goes Chris did much of the production himself assisted by Eric Rosse, who produces Tori Amos and Lisa Marie Presley, John Shanks who has produced for Sheryl Crow, Michelle Branch and Rod Stewart as well as his longtime mixer and collaborator Mark Needham. And apart from collaborating with Trisha Yearwood there’s Michelle Branch with whom he shares a lovely harmony on “I Lose My Heart” and “Baby, Baby.”
What more could any Chris Isaac fan want? Off you go then: buy it, rush home and pay it with your squeeze or play it alone you’ll love it. And if you don’t? Well baby you must have a heart of stone. EJH
Sounds of the Universe
Depeche Mode
Frankly I liked In Chains, the opening track of this CD so much, with its kick-ass snarling guitarwork, that I found it hard to get to track two, so I asked a die-hard Depech Mode fan to give it a listen. And his is what Lieb Venter had to say.
“One minute, 24 seconds worth of patient expectation, as I wait for Depeche Mode’s opening track, In Chains, off their new album to kick off! As I turn onto the N1 north, Dave Gahan’s baritone voice fills my car, and a smile crosses my face. Expectation exceeded!
“From their earliest album, Speak and Spell, released in 1981 to their latest offering, Depeche Mode has always captivated their audience with unique and innovative sounds. Sounds of the Universe, is not any different, it delivers from start to finish with great vocals backed by hypnotic beats and guitar rhythms.
“Three decades of experience shines through on this album, I would happily drive to the end of the universe, and back, listening to this.
So there you are. But it you are still not sure, even All Music reviewer Ned Raggett loved it. “On the whole,” he writes “Sounds of the Universe is a grower and it shows Depeche Mode are still able to combine pop-hook accessibility and their own take on "roots" music for an electronic age with sonic experimentation and recombination — not bad for a band with almost three decades under its collective belt.”
As for me, I am still listening to track one and after all the raves looking forward to the rest. EJH
Depeche Mode
Frankly I liked In Chains, the opening track of this CD so much, with its kick-ass snarling guitarwork, that I found it hard to get to track two, so I asked a die-hard Depech Mode fan to give it a listen. And his is what Lieb Venter had to say.
“One minute, 24 seconds worth of patient expectation, as I wait for Depeche Mode’s opening track, In Chains, off their new album to kick off! As I turn onto the N1 north, Dave Gahan’s baritone voice fills my car, and a smile crosses my face. Expectation exceeded!
“From their earliest album, Speak and Spell, released in 1981 to their latest offering, Depeche Mode has always captivated their audience with unique and innovative sounds. Sounds of the Universe, is not any different, it delivers from start to finish with great vocals backed by hypnotic beats and guitar rhythms.
“Three decades of experience shines through on this album, I would happily drive to the end of the universe, and back, listening to this.
So there you are. But it you are still not sure, even All Music reviewer Ned Raggett loved it. “On the whole,” he writes “Sounds of the Universe is a grower and it shows Depeche Mode are still able to combine pop-hook accessibility and their own take on "roots" music for an electronic age with sonic experimentation and recombination — not bad for a band with almost three decades under its collective belt.”
As for me, I am still listening to track one and after all the raves looking forward to the rest. EJH
Review Clapton Winwood DVD
Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood
Live from Madison Square Garden
Reprise/Warner Music Group
At one stage in this mesmerising DVD, during a jam between himself and Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton drops his “professional musician at work mask” gets over himself and begins to play as if he is really having fun and enjoying every minute of it.
And there is no reason why he should not be having fun after all he’s up there on stage with an old mate and the world is at his fingertips.
Clearly Clapton is the more accomplished of the two, but Winwood adds a raw edge that makes the magic between these two palpable.
Clapton and Winwood go back to the early days when Briit pop was just beginning to look at the US Blues scene. They shared a flat and spent hours hunched over their guitars listening to blues records learning the notes one by one. Then Clapton went off to join John Mayall and Winwood joined the Spencer Davis group which had a hit with Gimme some Lovin’ before he went on to form Traffic.
Then at the height of the hippie era (now more than 40 years ago) they came together as Blind Faith, forming the first ever supergroup. They delivered one incredible album then broke up.
In an interview featured here, Clapton takes the blame for that. He was “unfaithful” he says. Went off with another band. So at last the truth has emerged. Apparently Steve took a long time to forgive him and they recently became friends again.
Now we have these two giants on the same stage jamming and having a lot of fun together.
In 20 recorded tracks they play the Blind Faith classic Presence of the Lord, some JJ Cale, some Jimi Hendrix (Voodoo Child) some Traffic, Glad from Cream but mostly they jam, swapping notes, singing off and on key and pushing each other to the limit.
For those who weren’t there then and wonder what music was like when musicians such as these were at the top of the pile this is it. And it’s as astounding to watch, as it is to listen to. EJH
Live from Madison Square Garden
Reprise/Warner Music Group
At one stage in this mesmerising DVD, during a jam between himself and Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton drops his “professional musician at work mask” gets over himself and begins to play as if he is really having fun and enjoying every minute of it.
And there is no reason why he should not be having fun after all he’s up there on stage with an old mate and the world is at his fingertips.
Clearly Clapton is the more accomplished of the two, but Winwood adds a raw edge that makes the magic between these two palpable.
Clapton and Winwood go back to the early days when Briit pop was just beginning to look at the US Blues scene. They shared a flat and spent hours hunched over their guitars listening to blues records learning the notes one by one. Then Clapton went off to join John Mayall and Winwood joined the Spencer Davis group which had a hit with Gimme some Lovin’ before he went on to form Traffic.
Then at the height of the hippie era (now more than 40 years ago) they came together as Blind Faith, forming the first ever supergroup. They delivered one incredible album then broke up.
In an interview featured here, Clapton takes the blame for that. He was “unfaithful” he says. Went off with another band. So at last the truth has emerged. Apparently Steve took a long time to forgive him and they recently became friends again.
Now we have these two giants on the same stage jamming and having a lot of fun together.
In 20 recorded tracks they play the Blind Faith classic Presence of the Lord, some JJ Cale, some Jimi Hendrix (Voodoo Child) some Traffic, Glad from Cream but mostly they jam, swapping notes, singing off and on key and pushing each other to the limit.
For those who weren’t there then and wonder what music was like when musicians such as these were at the top of the pile this is it. And it’s as astounding to watch, as it is to listen to. EJH
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Humility of truly great people shows the way to contentment
Reading stories, as hyped as they may be, about people who overcome tremendous odds to achieve great personal goals has always fascinated me. These are people such as Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to climb to the top of Mount Everest; Heinrich Harrer, who was a member of the first climbing party to conquer the North Face of the Eiger (the Death Wall) and who later wrote Seven Years in Tibet; Sir Ernest Shackleton, who survived an epic to rescue his men trapped on a rocky beach in the Antarctic and even Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier.
What unites all these adventurers, in mountaineering, ocean-going yachting, space flight or whatever, is not their arrogance about being winners, nor their conceit in their achievements but their humility. It’s as if they have been to the edge of their lives, and come back free of the need to prove anything to anyone.
I know, I sat next to local Everest hero Andre Bredenkamp recently. You’d never have guessed that he’s been to the top of the world and back, and successfully climbed to highest peaks on seven continents. He didn't have to prove anything, not even to the waiter.
What a contrast these honourable people were the arrogant spike-hair-gelled twit, for example, in the fast lane at Hospital Bend this week hooting like a banshee at anyone trying to cross from one lane to another.
What is it I wonder, that defaults us to arrogance rather than kindness? I know how often I have fumed at someone trying to “sneak” in front of me, as if one more car in front of me in the snarl-up will make any difference at all.
This is what happened to me around about Christmas time. Every morning during my walks on the beach opposite Sunrise Circle, I noticed a group of about five of six women walking back and forth from the shoreline to the dunes trailing long tubes of kelp behind them clearing the section reserved for swimming.
They appeared to be a rather sulky bunch resigned to their work. One morning I walked up to one and said, “Thank you for cleaning the beach. You are doing a really great job and I would like you to know it’s appreciated.”
Well you can’t imagine how surprised, how happy and how animated she suddenly became. It was as if her world had changed. She giggled, shrugged her shoulders and replied that it was a pleasure or words to that effect. And she looked a lot happier a than she had been a few minutes earlier.
Since then I have done the same to a number of invisible people, those we choose not to see; people such as the garbage collectors, the traffic police, and a policeman I saw in gym the other day. What an amazing reaction I get every time.
Not once has anyone barked back any snarky comment, or given me the finger as they might were they being criticised. Instead I get a radiant smile, “It’s what we do. Thank you.” They say.
So, to make my life happier, I have decided to let people into the traffic ahead of me, say “with pleasure” to the person in the shopping queue who wants to dart back to a shelf to get something without losing a place in the queue, and I will, as often as I can, in the words of a wise person I know, not let other people and their, rudeness or arrogance “steal my happiness”.
It works for me. It’s about how we care and what we care about, that’s important, not what we achieve. Had Tensing got stuck within reach of the Everest summit, would Hillary have stepped over him on his selfish way to the top? No. He would have given up his goal to save a friend. In his description of that climb, answering to the argument of who was first at the top, Tensing wrote. “ ..then he stepped up and I stepped up after him….’
And that’s about as humble as it gets.
What unites all these adventurers, in mountaineering, ocean-going yachting, space flight or whatever, is not their arrogance about being winners, nor their conceit in their achievements but their humility. It’s as if they have been to the edge of their lives, and come back free of the need to prove anything to anyone.
I know, I sat next to local Everest hero Andre Bredenkamp recently. You’d never have guessed that he’s been to the top of the world and back, and successfully climbed to highest peaks on seven continents. He didn't have to prove anything, not even to the waiter.
What a contrast these honourable people were the arrogant spike-hair-gelled twit, for example, in the fast lane at Hospital Bend this week hooting like a banshee at anyone trying to cross from one lane to another.
What is it I wonder, that defaults us to arrogance rather than kindness? I know how often I have fumed at someone trying to “sneak” in front of me, as if one more car in front of me in the snarl-up will make any difference at all.
This is what happened to me around about Christmas time. Every morning during my walks on the beach opposite Sunrise Circle, I noticed a group of about five of six women walking back and forth from the shoreline to the dunes trailing long tubes of kelp behind them clearing the section reserved for swimming.
They appeared to be a rather sulky bunch resigned to their work. One morning I walked up to one and said, “Thank you for cleaning the beach. You are doing a really great job and I would like you to know it’s appreciated.”
Well you can’t imagine how surprised, how happy and how animated she suddenly became. It was as if her world had changed. She giggled, shrugged her shoulders and replied that it was a pleasure or words to that effect. And she looked a lot happier a than she had been a few minutes earlier.
Since then I have done the same to a number of invisible people, those we choose not to see; people such as the garbage collectors, the traffic police, and a policeman I saw in gym the other day. What an amazing reaction I get every time.
Not once has anyone barked back any snarky comment, or given me the finger as they might were they being criticised. Instead I get a radiant smile, “It’s what we do. Thank you.” They say.
So, to make my life happier, I have decided to let people into the traffic ahead of me, say “with pleasure” to the person in the shopping queue who wants to dart back to a shelf to get something without losing a place in the queue, and I will, as often as I can, in the words of a wise person I know, not let other people and their, rudeness or arrogance “steal my happiness”.
It works for me. It’s about how we care and what we care about, that’s important, not what we achieve. Had Tensing got stuck within reach of the Everest summit, would Hillary have stepped over him on his selfish way to the top? No. He would have given up his goal to save a friend. In his description of that climb, answering to the argument of who was first at the top, Tensing wrote. “ ..then he stepped up and I stepped up after him….’
And that’s about as humble as it gets.
Save us from the tyranny of the idiots with aerosol paints
Out for a duck, I suppose might be the appropriate wording on a tombstone to mark the end of a rare species of duck threatened with extinction thanks to a same-sex love affair.
According to a report in the Cape Times, keepers at a West Sussex bird sanctuary had high hopes that their last Blue Duck might mate with either of their two drakes.
But alas, the drakes fell in love with each other leaving the duck, in feathery language, cuckolded. Now there are no fertilized eggs, no pending ducks and I guess not much to quack about at that particular zoo.
Here in Cape Town on the other hand I believe we have a lot about which we can preen our feathers. The best news of all being the ways in which the City of Cape Town is living up to its vision to be a 'city that works for you'.
For me, brought up to believe that cleanliness is next to Godliness, so the increased activity by city parks people in keeping the city’s public lawns mowed, gardens trim and parks relatively free of litter, is heartening as is the progress made by the Copperheads who seem to have seriously dented the destructive activities of the copper thieves.
But best of all, is the news earlier this month of the imminent clampdown on the louts who are fouling our city with their mindless marks and graffiti. I agree that hunting down and prosecuting the single cell brain-dead numbskulls responsible is small potatoes to, say, mounting campaigns against the abuse of drugs, and alcohol, violence against women crime, graft and corruption, but it’s all related.
I know the anger I feel each time I see another building defaced, another street sign obliterated, another wall smeared. When we begin not to care about the environment in which we live, then we begin not to care about nor for each. And the more rundown, the more neglected, the filthier the environment the easier it is for crime and lawlessness to thrive.
This is where I repeat the legend of New York. There they prosecuted even the most petty criminal, resulting, in the end, in a massive reduction of all crime. New Yorkers gained a new sense of pride in their city, the impact of which is still there today. Ask me, I know, I’ve been there. So all strength I say to the graffiti squad as they go about cleaning up the city and the suburbs and freeing us from the tyranny of idiots with aerosols.
On a happier note, I managed to duck out of work early this week to hike with a group of friendly people, along the pipe track up (and up and up and up) Woody Ravine, (the pain, the pain, the pain) across the Back Table and down Disa Gorge to the Hoerikwaggo Trail’s Orange Kloof tented camp, where after a cold swim and a hot shower followed by a braai and some fine wine, we spent the night, on clean sheets, on soft beds, under the stars. Now there’s a lot to quack about.
According to a report in the Cape Times, keepers at a West Sussex bird sanctuary had high hopes that their last Blue Duck might mate with either of their two drakes.
But alas, the drakes fell in love with each other leaving the duck, in feathery language, cuckolded. Now there are no fertilized eggs, no pending ducks and I guess not much to quack about at that particular zoo.
Here in Cape Town on the other hand I believe we have a lot about which we can preen our feathers. The best news of all being the ways in which the City of Cape Town is living up to its vision to be a 'city that works for you'.
For me, brought up to believe that cleanliness is next to Godliness, so the increased activity by city parks people in keeping the city’s public lawns mowed, gardens trim and parks relatively free of litter, is heartening as is the progress made by the Copperheads who seem to have seriously dented the destructive activities of the copper thieves.
But best of all, is the news earlier this month of the imminent clampdown on the louts who are fouling our city with their mindless marks and graffiti. I agree that hunting down and prosecuting the single cell brain-dead numbskulls responsible is small potatoes to, say, mounting campaigns against the abuse of drugs, and alcohol, violence against women crime, graft and corruption, but it’s all related.
I know the anger I feel each time I see another building defaced, another street sign obliterated, another wall smeared. When we begin not to care about the environment in which we live, then we begin not to care about nor for each. And the more rundown, the more neglected, the filthier the environment the easier it is for crime and lawlessness to thrive.
This is where I repeat the legend of New York. There they prosecuted even the most petty criminal, resulting, in the end, in a massive reduction of all crime. New Yorkers gained a new sense of pride in their city, the impact of which is still there today. Ask me, I know, I’ve been there. So all strength I say to the graffiti squad as they go about cleaning up the city and the suburbs and freeing us from the tyranny of idiots with aerosols.
On a happier note, I managed to duck out of work early this week to hike with a group of friendly people, along the pipe track up (and up and up and up) Woody Ravine, (the pain, the pain, the pain) across the Back Table and down Disa Gorge to the Hoerikwaggo Trail’s Orange Kloof tented camp, where after a cold swim and a hot shower followed by a braai and some fine wine, we spent the night, on clean sheets, on soft beds, under the stars. Now there’s a lot to quack about.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Information overload makes it hard to get round to real life
The trouble is that we get far too much information pouring into our brains day after day. And at least 99 percent of it is of absolutely no use at all. Mostly what it does is provoke stress and anxiety and more often than not a feeling of helplessness in a world out about which we can do nothing.
How does it help us to make it through our days knowing, for instance, from Sky TV that there is a gridlock of traffic on the M5 into London, that yet another child has been abused and murdered in a quaint little English village, that more people have been blown to smithereens in a car bomb or by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan or Pakistan or for that matter to hear on a local radio stations in Cape Town that the traffic lights at an intersection of Umbilo Road and Gale Street in Durban are not working or, that male chimps prefer to have sex after eating meat.
And exactly what am I supposed to do after reading one of those a bright yellow stickers on cars that proclaim “Baby on Board.” Applaud!
Mark Twain, a former editor and author of Huckleberry Finn said that the invention of the telegraph signaled the end of news that mattered. It meant, he asserted that instead of receiving local news about community events the reading public would receive more useless information of absolutely no use to them at all.
I recall the direction given to me by the former editor of the Cape Times when I was appointed night editor of this newspaper more years ago than I care to recall.
“Your job, “ said Koos Viviers, “is to take all the news pouring into this building from all over the world, and filter it to deliver only what is important and relevant to the lives of the people of Cape Town, to help them make decisions about their day.”
Then there was no Sky TV, no internet, no websites, no blogging, no Twitter, no Facebook, no streaming, no cell phones and no nothing except newspapers, radio and local TV.
Then came the big switch on and now we are bombarded with useless information every second of every day. It pours in via e-mail, via cell phones, via the internet, via radio and via TV.
It’s got to the point that hardly anyone does any work anymore all we all do is e-mail, and SMS mostly useless information to one another day after day, at work and stare at TVs or DVD’s night after night at home.
How sad it is to drive past a DVD shop on yet another beautiful day in Cape Town where we are spoiled for choice of natural wonder, to see one family after another carrying a piles of rented DVDs to watch in curtained darkened rooms behind barbed wire and electric fences. A far better time is to be had, I believe, by switching it all off as often as possible and slipping out from under the rubble of useless information to enjoy a day in the sun.
How does it help us to make it through our days knowing, for instance, from Sky TV that there is a gridlock of traffic on the M5 into London, that yet another child has been abused and murdered in a quaint little English village, that more people have been blown to smithereens in a car bomb or by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan or Pakistan or for that matter to hear on a local radio stations in Cape Town that the traffic lights at an intersection of Umbilo Road and Gale Street in Durban are not working or, that male chimps prefer to have sex after eating meat.
And exactly what am I supposed to do after reading one of those a bright yellow stickers on cars that proclaim “Baby on Board.” Applaud!
Mark Twain, a former editor and author of Huckleberry Finn said that the invention of the telegraph signaled the end of news that mattered. It meant, he asserted that instead of receiving local news about community events the reading public would receive more useless information of absolutely no use to them at all.
I recall the direction given to me by the former editor of the Cape Times when I was appointed night editor of this newspaper more years ago than I care to recall.
“Your job, “ said Koos Viviers, “is to take all the news pouring into this building from all over the world, and filter it to deliver only what is important and relevant to the lives of the people of Cape Town, to help them make decisions about their day.”
Then there was no Sky TV, no internet, no websites, no blogging, no Twitter, no Facebook, no streaming, no cell phones and no nothing except newspapers, radio and local TV.
Then came the big switch on and now we are bombarded with useless information every second of every day. It pours in via e-mail, via cell phones, via the internet, via radio and via TV.
It’s got to the point that hardly anyone does any work anymore all we all do is e-mail, and SMS mostly useless information to one another day after day, at work and stare at TVs or DVD’s night after night at home.
How sad it is to drive past a DVD shop on yet another beautiful day in Cape Town where we are spoiled for choice of natural wonder, to see one family after another carrying a piles of rented DVDs to watch in curtained darkened rooms behind barbed wire and electric fences. A far better time is to be had, I believe, by switching it all off as often as possible and slipping out from under the rubble of useless information to enjoy a day in the sun.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Urban Edge Monday, July 06
Speeches may inspire people but they don’t get things done
There is a Buddhist writer named Ram Das, who in the flower-powered 60 and 70s wrote a best selling book, titled Be Here Now.
It was one of those books that seemed to be everywhere but was mostly in student digs on bookshelves made from sagging lengths of timber stretched precariously between wobbly piles of face bricks.
Also on those makeshift shelves were, more often than not, titles such as Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Hobbit, Herman Hess’s, Siddhartha, and probably a volume of poetry by Leonard Cohen, with pages yellowed by leftover sticks of burned incense.
Somewhere, on the floor probably, would be a copy of the Whole Earth Catalogue, which was like the internet in print.
It gave longhaired hippies food to fuel their impossible dreams of living an idyllic life in a wattle and daub shelter, growing vegetables, milking goats they knew by name and generally being at one with nature not to forget the universe. Live for today, be here now, tomorrow will never come.
This came to mind this week while reading Business Report columnist Nontyatambo Petros, who called on President Zuma eradicate poverty as he said he would in his State of the Nation Address.She cited hawkers as an example of a group of people who ought to be encouraged rather than harassed. If they were not vending she wrote, hawkers would be consigned to an abyss of joblessness, poverty and misery. (and probably resort to crime to survive.) She ended the column quoting Zuma. “For as long as there are South Africans who die from preventable disease; For as long as there are workers who struggle to feed their families and who battle to find work; For as long as there are communities without clean water, decent shelter or proper sanitation; For as long as there are rural dwellers unable to make a decent living from the land on which they live; For as long as there are women who are subjected to discrimination, exploitation or abuse; For as long as there are children who do not have the means nor the opportunity to receive a decent education; We shall not rest, and we dare not falter, in our drive to eradicate poverty. “
I am sure President Zuma meant every word of it. But nothing tangible will happen. The hawkers will continue to hawk and the harassers will continue to harass, the poor will continue to be poor and rural dwellers will not be able to make a decent living on the land on which they live.
Within hours of his speech, I bet, people were already faltering, and faltering all over the place in celebration of their political victory. But that’s beside the point.
There were equally uplifting moments in US president, Barak Obama’s inauguration speech. “Yes we can,” he said and “Yes we can,” replied the throng But they can’t really, can they? Nor will they ever.
Which gets me back to Ram Das. There is a great divide between what people on public platforms say and what actually happens. Speeches exist only at the time that they are spoken; they do not to get the work done. They are here and now things; speakers speak, we feel good, then we all go home and nothing really gets done. That’s the way it is. President Zuma will not eradicate poverty. Poor people who find a way to make a living will eradicate the poverty in which they live and no one else will. That’s the way it has been, that’s the way it is and that’s they way it will always be. At best all speeches can do is inspire. Even Churchill, one of the greatest speechmakers of all time, never fought anyone on any beach. The British soldiers inspired by his speech did.
By-the-way, I have never read that Zen motorcycle book. The pretentious title irritated me then and it still irritates now. I haven’t read the Hobbit either. But I was inspired by Siddhartha, and left melancholy reading Cohen, and I was there then but I am here now.
evelyn@hwb.co.za
Speeches may inspire people but they don’t get things done
There is a Buddhist writer named Ram Das, who in the flower-powered 60 and 70s wrote a best selling book, titled Be Here Now.
It was one of those books that seemed to be everywhere but was mostly in student digs on bookshelves made from sagging lengths of timber stretched precariously between wobbly piles of face bricks.
Also on those makeshift shelves were, more often than not, titles such as Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Hobbit, Herman Hess’s, Siddhartha, and probably a volume of poetry by Leonard Cohen, with pages yellowed by leftover sticks of burned incense.
Somewhere, on the floor probably, would be a copy of the Whole Earth Catalogue, which was like the internet in print.
It gave longhaired hippies food to fuel their impossible dreams of living an idyllic life in a wattle and daub shelter, growing vegetables, milking goats they knew by name and generally being at one with nature not to forget the universe. Live for today, be here now, tomorrow will never come.
This came to mind this week while reading Business Report columnist Nontyatambo Petros, who called on President Zuma eradicate poverty as he said he would in his State of the Nation Address.She cited hawkers as an example of a group of people who ought to be encouraged rather than harassed. If they were not vending she wrote, hawkers would be consigned to an abyss of joblessness, poverty and misery. (and probably resort to crime to survive.) She ended the column quoting Zuma. “For as long as there are South Africans who die from preventable disease; For as long as there are workers who struggle to feed their families and who battle to find work; For as long as there are communities without clean water, decent shelter or proper sanitation; For as long as there are rural dwellers unable to make a decent living from the land on which they live; For as long as there are women who are subjected to discrimination, exploitation or abuse; For as long as there are children who do not have the means nor the opportunity to receive a decent education; We shall not rest, and we dare not falter, in our drive to eradicate poverty. “
I am sure President Zuma meant every word of it. But nothing tangible will happen. The hawkers will continue to hawk and the harassers will continue to harass, the poor will continue to be poor and rural dwellers will not be able to make a decent living on the land on which they live.
Within hours of his speech, I bet, people were already faltering, and faltering all over the place in celebration of their political victory. But that’s beside the point.
There were equally uplifting moments in US president, Barak Obama’s inauguration speech. “Yes we can,” he said and “Yes we can,” replied the throng But they can’t really, can they? Nor will they ever.
Which gets me back to Ram Das. There is a great divide between what people on public platforms say and what actually happens. Speeches exist only at the time that they are spoken; they do not to get the work done. They are here and now things; speakers speak, we feel good, then we all go home and nothing really gets done. That’s the way it is. President Zuma will not eradicate poverty. Poor people who find a way to make a living will eradicate the poverty in which they live and no one else will. That’s the way it has been, that’s the way it is and that’s they way it will always be. At best all speeches can do is inspire. Even Churchill, one of the greatest speechmakers of all time, never fought anyone on any beach. The British soldiers inspired by his speech did.
By-the-way, I have never read that Zen motorcycle book. The pretentious title irritated me then and it still irritates now. I haven’t read the Hobbit either. But I was inspired by Siddhartha, and left melancholy reading Cohen, and I was there then but I am here now.
evelyn@hwb.co.za
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
I discover I’m a twit and that twitching isn’t for the birds
I really noticed the obsessive hoopla around birds for the first time a number of years ago in the mist on a wet and slippery path high above the Victoria Falls. I was with a group of journalists among whom was Kate Turkington, the charming and well-traveled journalist and broadcaster who is also a renowned twitterer.
The enthusiastic twits around her, pecked at every description she offered, keen to be recognised for their ability as twits — or is it for twitching? Whatever!
As Kate identified one little black or brown job (LBJ) after another they chirped in delightful recognition. Lagging behind the gaggle was the former editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. He glanced across at me, cocked an eyebrow at the twittering among the twitches and said with disdain: “I know penguins.” That summed it up for me.
But of course I knew birds. There were the Indian Mynahs (Acridotheres tristis) at the shopping centre in Broadway, Durban North were I grew up making such a racket in the trees that you could not hear yourself think.
Then there was a trip to an ostrich farm, so I got to know what an ostrich looked like and of course there were all those black birds in that scary Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. From my longhair hippie days, before I became short, bald and slightly podgy I recall the depressive Leonard Cohen signing about being a bird on a wire, but he never named the kind of bird that he was nor wanted to be. He was just happy to be a bird on a wire like a drunk in a midnight choir trying in his way to be free.
I also know vultures. They were in that animated Disney version of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Modeled on the Beatles, they were very funny wondering what to do with themselves not at all like the real vultures that I saw near Kruger Park who knew exactly what they were doing as they shredded what was left of a bambi that had been killed earlier that morning.
Of course I was also aware of the kind of “birds” pursued by Michael Caine in Alfie and I am pleased that I never stooped so low so as to refer to a girlfriend, even in my Brylcream days as “my goose.” But I digress. There were also seagulls those grey birds flapping around, pecking for scraps on the beach while we were bleaching our hair with peroxide, tuning our 50 cc buzzies for more speed or, on good surf days, hanging ten in the tubes off Battery Bbeach. Then I read a book about Cape Point, where the seagulls are apparently terns and there are so many of them that the authors of the book claimed that no stone in the area remains unterned.
I also know doves. I tried to kill some a few years ago by throwing stones at them when I was trying to get some sleep in the afternoons so I could survive night shift. Their constant cooing kept me wide awake. Eventually I strapped a sad-looking teddy bear to the chimney in the hope that the glare from his glass eye would scare them off.
But my indifference to birds has changed now thanks to a recent trip to the Richtersveld with friends Sara and John who know their birds. Now I too have a hunger to be a twit. So I page through bird books with the same intense interest that I once devoted to Scope in the hope that I too can get to the point where to see them is to know them
The enthusiastic twits around her, pecked at every description she offered, keen to be recognised for their ability as twits — or is it for twitching? Whatever!
As Kate identified one little black or brown job (LBJ) after another they chirped in delightful recognition. Lagging behind the gaggle was the former editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. He glanced across at me, cocked an eyebrow at the twittering among the twitches and said with disdain: “I know penguins.” That summed it up for me.
But of course I knew birds. There were the Indian Mynahs (Acridotheres tristis) at the shopping centre in Broadway, Durban North were I grew up making such a racket in the trees that you could not hear yourself think.
Then there was a trip to an ostrich farm, so I got to know what an ostrich looked like and of course there were all those black birds in that scary Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. From my longhair hippie days, before I became short, bald and slightly podgy I recall the depressive Leonard Cohen signing about being a bird on a wire, but he never named the kind of bird that he was nor wanted to be. He was just happy to be a bird on a wire like a drunk in a midnight choir trying in his way to be free.
I also know vultures. They were in that animated Disney version of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. Modeled on the Beatles, they were very funny wondering what to do with themselves not at all like the real vultures that I saw near Kruger Park who knew exactly what they were doing as they shredded what was left of a bambi that had been killed earlier that morning.
Of course I was also aware of the kind of “birds” pursued by Michael Caine in Alfie and I am pleased that I never stooped so low so as to refer to a girlfriend, even in my Brylcream days as “my goose.” But I digress. There were also seagulls those grey birds flapping around, pecking for scraps on the beach while we were bleaching our hair with peroxide, tuning our 50 cc buzzies for more speed or, on good surf days, hanging ten in the tubes off Battery Bbeach. Then I read a book about Cape Point, where the seagulls are apparently terns and there are so many of them that the authors of the book claimed that no stone in the area remains unterned.
I also know doves. I tried to kill some a few years ago by throwing stones at them when I was trying to get some sleep in the afternoons so I could survive night shift. Their constant cooing kept me wide awake. Eventually I strapped a sad-looking teddy bear to the chimney in the hope that the glare from his glass eye would scare them off.
But my indifference to birds has changed now thanks to a recent trip to the Richtersveld with friends Sara and John who know their birds. Now I too have a hunger to be a twit. So I page through bird books with the same intense interest that I once devoted to Scope in the hope that I too can get to the point where to see them is to know them
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Seeing more police would help us not to fear the unseen
One day soon, I hope an anthropologist will look into life at the southern tip of this continent and explain the reasons for the undercurrent of violence that has come to permeate almost everything we do.
That study may show that contrary to walking a long road to freedom, we have stepped into lager where life is edged, to quote Hunter S Thompson, by fear and loathing.
This struck me (an appropriate pun I think) recently when I stopped, last week, on my way home late one afternoon to give two young hitchhikers a lift.
I don’t normally stop to give people lifts after reading so many horror stories of hitchhikers becoming hijackers. This fear was heightened some time ago when I stopped to give a young man standing at the foot of Ou Kaapse Weg a lift. He was going to Ocean View he said. Then he told me, on the most desolate stretch of road through Silvermine, that he was on his way home on parole after serving 10 years of a 15-year sentence for murder.
I was very happy when he asked me to stop at the Long Beach Mall to let him out.
Anyway, that was then and this is now, so last week when I saw a young couple running along the side of the road near UCT, I assumed they were late for an appointment, threw caution to the wind and stopped to help them on their a way. Not long after they had settled into my car the ear-ringed man in the passenger seat told me that they had just escaped from a notorious drug rehab centre in the north.
My hand dropped to the side of my seat, where I keep a wooden axe handle, just in case he decided to jab a knife in my ribs and relieve me of my car. Being hijacked once a lifetime is enough. But once I had listened to their story – over the thumping of my heart driving with one hand while the other held on to the axe handle – it appeared innocent enough. They were out for the weekend, fully intended to return and they turned out to be, well, peaceful. Although I was relieved when we arrived at their destination and I was able to travel on, unharmed.
After surviving two threatening thugs in my back garden, I venture out these days gingerly, eyes like a chameleon, scanning for tikked-out creepy crawlies slithering over the walls – especially after my neighbours woke at 3am a few weeks ago to find two men in their lounge. Now they have a home ring-fenced with barbed wire.
Yes, I am happy that the muggers, who attacked hikers at Silvermine where I go for relaxing walks, were arrested but I can’t really walk there again without constantly looking over my shoulder. And last weekend during a gap in the rain I walked nervously with Sara on a dirt road above Sandy Bay, until I saw other hikers walking on the road then felt safer.
What we don’t see here are lots of police everywhere. In the southern suburbs we see hundreds of them at Newlands when there is a game of rugby or cricket but otherwise none at all.
In Brazil or at least in Sao Paulo, Manaus and Rio, where I was recently they also used to have a lot of creepy crawlies preying left right and centre on frightened citizens. Now they don’t because there are police everywhere. Police on the beach, police on street corners, police standing outside the shops, police on buses police in cars. All of them steely eyed, stern and foreboding hands resting on the pistols holstered at their hips.
You’d be quite stupid, I imagine, to mug anyone in those cities without expecting to be caught and thrown in jail. Visible policing seems to work. I never got mugged once. Not that I missed be it. But I did notice my guard begin to drop, my sense of fear dissipates and I closed the eyes in the back of my head for a while. So I am not sure why we don’t do that here. Maybe we should play more sport on our street corners or games of rugby and cricket in our back yards. Then there’d be cops everywhere and we’d be safe.
That study may show that contrary to walking a long road to freedom, we have stepped into lager where life is edged, to quote Hunter S Thompson, by fear and loathing.
This struck me (an appropriate pun I think) recently when I stopped, last week, on my way home late one afternoon to give two young hitchhikers a lift.
I don’t normally stop to give people lifts after reading so many horror stories of hitchhikers becoming hijackers. This fear was heightened some time ago when I stopped to give a young man standing at the foot of Ou Kaapse Weg a lift. He was going to Ocean View he said. Then he told me, on the most desolate stretch of road through Silvermine, that he was on his way home on parole after serving 10 years of a 15-year sentence for murder.
I was very happy when he asked me to stop at the Long Beach Mall to let him out.
Anyway, that was then and this is now, so last week when I saw a young couple running along the side of the road near UCT, I assumed they were late for an appointment, threw caution to the wind and stopped to help them on their a way. Not long after they had settled into my car the ear-ringed man in the passenger seat told me that they had just escaped from a notorious drug rehab centre in the north.
My hand dropped to the side of my seat, where I keep a wooden axe handle, just in case he decided to jab a knife in my ribs and relieve me of my car. Being hijacked once a lifetime is enough. But once I had listened to their story – over the thumping of my heart driving with one hand while the other held on to the axe handle – it appeared innocent enough. They were out for the weekend, fully intended to return and they turned out to be, well, peaceful. Although I was relieved when we arrived at their destination and I was able to travel on, unharmed.
After surviving two threatening thugs in my back garden, I venture out these days gingerly, eyes like a chameleon, scanning for tikked-out creepy crawlies slithering over the walls – especially after my neighbours woke at 3am a few weeks ago to find two men in their lounge. Now they have a home ring-fenced with barbed wire.
Yes, I am happy that the muggers, who attacked hikers at Silvermine where I go for relaxing walks, were arrested but I can’t really walk there again without constantly looking over my shoulder. And last weekend during a gap in the rain I walked nervously with Sara on a dirt road above Sandy Bay, until I saw other hikers walking on the road then felt safer.
What we don’t see here are lots of police everywhere. In the southern suburbs we see hundreds of them at Newlands when there is a game of rugby or cricket but otherwise none at all.
In Brazil or at least in Sao Paulo, Manaus and Rio, where I was recently they also used to have a lot of creepy crawlies preying left right and centre on frightened citizens. Now they don’t because there are police everywhere. Police on the beach, police on street corners, police standing outside the shops, police on buses police in cars. All of them steely eyed, stern and foreboding hands resting on the pistols holstered at their hips.
You’d be quite stupid, I imagine, to mug anyone in those cities without expecting to be caught and thrown in jail. Visible policing seems to work. I never got mugged once. Not that I missed be it. But I did notice my guard begin to drop, my sense of fear dissipates and I closed the eyes in the back of my head for a while. So I am not sure why we don’t do that here. Maybe we should play more sport on our street corners or games of rugby and cricket in our back yards. Then there’d be cops everywhere and we’d be safe.
A classic and so much more fitting of Neil Diamond’s talent
Home Before Dark
Neil Diamond
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
Neil Diamond
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
I didn’t wrestle an anaconda, but I turned the tables on a piranha
Manaus, Brazil: As it turned out, I ate a piranha and did not get eaten by one of those nasty little fish with the sharp teeth, as I feared when I planned to swim in the Amazon.
Here piranhas are as common as guppies. They suffer, it appears, mostly from a bad press thanks to visit to the region by a former US President and an early James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, in which one of the baddies was shredded after being thrown into a pool of hungry piranha.
According to Wikipedia, to guarantee a good show for Roosevelt during his visit to Brazil, local fishermen blocked off a portion of the Amazon with nets and dumped hordes of starving piranhas into the pool that had thus been created.
Then they sliced up a cow and tossed it into the river, setting off a wild feeding frenzy and a leaving a skeleton in their wake. Roosevelt declared the fish evil, and the journalists traveling with him spread the word.
Pira-nia, as Amazonians pronounce the name, do not generally eat people except when they are really, really hungry. Otherwise they swim around much like other fish, underwater not bothering anyone.
What was more worrying to me were huge iguanas. They kept dropping off the trees and plopping into the water around and about the canoe from which I was fishing. I am not into reptiles at the best of times so this was rather disconcerting; piranha below and iguanas above.
I did not swim in the river where I caught the piranha, as they were obviously hungry and taking what bait they could. So once I had dropped my line into the water and caught my fish I was paddled in my canoe to a nearby riverbank in a completely different section of the river for a swim.
The day before our party of nine had been taken deep into an estuary, our canoe had been run aground and we had been marched off the front end into the Amazon rainforest.
I was not too happy seeing the canoe disappear back downstream while our forlorn group, dripping wet in the tropical rain, stood on the bank, as our guide later described - like wet chickens.
Then suddenly we were alone in the rainforest, nine gringos, one Peruvian and one Amazonian with a nasty looking panga in his hand. I stood there recalling scenes from a film I saw about a crazy Brazilian slicing and dicing tourists to stock his trade in body parts.
But our guide was quite friendly. He taught me how to make poisoned arrows and shoot them from a blowpipe and how to tempt tarantula spiders out of their holes in the ground while I wondered why I would want to that.
I am not particularly fond of anything with lots of hairy legs that creeps and crawls, particularly when I am in the Amazon rainforest on the lookout for Anacondas three days away by boat from help at the Amazonian capital of Manaus.
Not that being in Manaus would have helped. It’s just the kind of Grahame Greene place from which people disappear. It feels like the end of the earth, from where, if you took one more step, you might plunge off the edge of the world; the kind of place you get to when you are on the run from the Federales and there is nowhere left to hide.
Mind you, it was there where I saw my first piranha — at the fishmarket where they were piled in sharp edged little pyramids. Little did I know that a week later I would be eating one, grilled! And what a bony little fish they are; mostly skeleton in fact which was all that was left of the piranha on my plate after it provided a meal for me.
Here piranhas are as common as guppies. They suffer, it appears, mostly from a bad press thanks to visit to the region by a former US President and an early James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, in which one of the baddies was shredded after being thrown into a pool of hungry piranha.
According to Wikipedia, to guarantee a good show for Roosevelt during his visit to Brazil, local fishermen blocked off a portion of the Amazon with nets and dumped hordes of starving piranhas into the pool that had thus been created.
Then they sliced up a cow and tossed it into the river, setting off a wild feeding frenzy and a leaving a skeleton in their wake. Roosevelt declared the fish evil, and the journalists traveling with him spread the word.
Pira-nia, as Amazonians pronounce the name, do not generally eat people except when they are really, really hungry. Otherwise they swim around much like other fish, underwater not bothering anyone.
What was more worrying to me were huge iguanas. They kept dropping off the trees and plopping into the water around and about the canoe from which I was fishing. I am not into reptiles at the best of times so this was rather disconcerting; piranha below and iguanas above.
I did not swim in the river where I caught the piranha, as they were obviously hungry and taking what bait they could. So once I had dropped my line into the water and caught my fish I was paddled in my canoe to a nearby riverbank in a completely different section of the river for a swim.
The day before our party of nine had been taken deep into an estuary, our canoe had been run aground and we had been marched off the front end into the Amazon rainforest.
I was not too happy seeing the canoe disappear back downstream while our forlorn group, dripping wet in the tropical rain, stood on the bank, as our guide later described - like wet chickens.
Then suddenly we were alone in the rainforest, nine gringos, one Peruvian and one Amazonian with a nasty looking panga in his hand. I stood there recalling scenes from a film I saw about a crazy Brazilian slicing and dicing tourists to stock his trade in body parts.
But our guide was quite friendly. He taught me how to make poisoned arrows and shoot them from a blowpipe and how to tempt tarantula spiders out of their holes in the ground while I wondered why I would want to that.
I am not particularly fond of anything with lots of hairy legs that creeps and crawls, particularly when I am in the Amazon rainforest on the lookout for Anacondas three days away by boat from help at the Amazonian capital of Manaus.
Not that being in Manaus would have helped. It’s just the kind of Grahame Greene place from which people disappear. It feels like the end of the earth, from where, if you took one more step, you might plunge off the edge of the world; the kind of place you get to when you are on the run from the Federales and there is nowhere left to hide.
Mind you, it was there where I saw my first piranha — at the fishmarket where they were piled in sharp edged little pyramids. Little did I know that a week later I would be eating one, grilled! And what a bony little fish they are; mostly skeleton in fact which was all that was left of the piranha on my plate after it provided a meal for me.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Alternative network allows cell phone users to pooosh down costs by half.
Cell phone users are in for a treat with free e-mail, lower airtime bills, instant messaging and improved access to chatrooms, thanks to new services being offered by a leading alternative network.
pooosh, an already trusted European concept, used globally, is downloaded free using the internet onto your cellphone. This mobile service, in competition with other networks, allows users to buy pooosh airtime at lower rates.
“With pooosh you’ll find your monthly cellphone bill plummets” said Don Tredoux, CEO of pooosh Cellular (Pty) Ltd.
Once the user has downloaded and registered their pooosh account, the user is given free, unlimited access to a personalised pooosh email address, instant messaging, and access to chat rooms. Apart from all these free functions pooosh also offers cheaper rates on sms’s, international calls, and a unique voice chat feature.
Another important feature is that pooosh offers parental control. “Safety for our users is one of our top priorities and we empower parents with a parental control feature on chatrooms to supervise what their children have access to when using the application” said Tredoux.
Starting a pooosh community by getting friends to download the application allows users to stretch their budget and cut back on traditional airtime.
“Calls to about eight of your friends or family make up 80% of your phone bill. Once they are communicating using pooosh you’ll see the difference in your phone bill” said Tredoux.
pooosh airtime is available at Shoprite and Checkers and will be available from January 2009 at Edgars, Jet and the rest of the stores within the Edcon group.
To start poooshing go to www.pooosh.mobi to download the free application and follow the instructions to register.
pooosh, an already trusted European concept, used globally, is downloaded free using the internet onto your cellphone. This mobile service, in competition with other networks, allows users to buy pooosh airtime at lower rates.
“With pooosh you’ll find your monthly cellphone bill plummets” said Don Tredoux, CEO of pooosh Cellular (Pty) Ltd.
Once the user has downloaded and registered their pooosh account, the user is given free, unlimited access to a personalised pooosh email address, instant messaging, and access to chat rooms. Apart from all these free functions pooosh also offers cheaper rates on sms’s, international calls, and a unique voice chat feature.
Another important feature is that pooosh offers parental control. “Safety for our users is one of our top priorities and we empower parents with a parental control feature on chatrooms to supervise what their children have access to when using the application” said Tredoux.
Starting a pooosh community by getting friends to download the application allows users to stretch their budget and cut back on traditional airtime.
“Calls to about eight of your friends or family make up 80% of your phone bill. Once they are communicating using pooosh you’ll see the difference in your phone bill” said Tredoux.
pooosh airtime is available at Shoprite and Checkers and will be available from January 2009 at Edgars, Jet and the rest of the stores within the Edcon group.
To start poooshing go to www.pooosh.mobi to download the free application and follow the instructions to register.
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