The photograph moves me; not because it is sad, not because it shows something horrific, or how the world is a bad place, but because it shows dead people dressed in the clothing of an era which is no longer. They are famous people, people who took art and what it means to be an artist to a different height, a zenith, some would say, in that they said nothing at all.

The photograph shows artefacts of life that do not breathe, they do not smell; it is a replica of life. And because they are in the photograph they are an imitation, and so you want to fill them with meaning. Art must have meaning, you think, and so while they are impassive these people in the photograph, you believe that they are also filled with wistfulness, they are dreaming. No matter how hard they try to be hard, how they try to be the artefact of their own creation, they are unable to do this because they really are wistful, they must dream of something other than themselves. (continue reading…)

QUEER AFRICA 2

Ma Thokos Books, 2017: Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action Trust (GALA)

Phillip swivels his neck so that he can look over his shoulder; his neck is thick, a short pillar of saturated salt, it gleams with sweat. He looks for his father in the crowd. It is not a big crowd, a gathering of people, a social gathering. Phillip cannot find his father; he cannot see him by just turning his head, he is unable to turn his neck more than twenty degrees (he is not an owl, moreover he is fat), so he moves, or rather heaves, his whole body into another position. Phillip is fat (in a polite narrative the euphemisms overweight, chubby, rotund will be used, he will not be a fat label, fat is a brand, an unhealthy brand), and fat means no prospects. If Phillip was chubby, there may be hope that he could have prospects, the prospects that his father wants fulfilled. But sometimes there is no space for a gentle words; his face is fat, his legs are fat, his arse is fat (he never has a problem sitting on a hard bench, only on a narrow seat), his arms are fat, even his fingers are fat (he does not have long slim piano playing fingers), and if he takes off his shoes, which are a size 7, (this is the only part of him that is small), his toes on his small feet are fat.

Phillip is a fat homosexual (can there ever be any prospects?). (continue reading…)

It is a very hot day. Johannesburg does not known this heat (that is if a city can know anything); it is so hot that only the old remember that fifty years ago it was hot, as hot as it is today. Memory atrophies, but the old still validate breathing the air of the young with stories of the memories that they will never have.

Remember

Jodie sits at a computer. (continue reading…)

Is it impossible to be you if I do not accept myself in the cities terms?

You are a brand, you say, a stereotype, we are all special, and no-one is special, let the logic happen itself.

On the corner of 97^th street and Broadway, New York City, is a Starbucks coffee shop. But maybe it is not on this corner, I say to you, it is on the corner of 103^rd and Broadway? This is a coffee shop in a big city, you say, one coffee shop is the same as another; hey, coffee to sit or to go, one coffee is the same as another, one brand, the city is a brand, the neon lights up the buildings of Time Square, Calvin Klein, Gorgio Armani, one name, my name, what’s in a name, you say, I am the same as you are. Are the lights too bright, I say? (continue reading…)

AN AMERICAN (MAYBE JACK KEROUAC) IN AFRICA (POSSIBLY KENYA)

NB:

In 2006 Binyavanga Wainaina gave a few tips to Americans on how to write about Africa – some tips: sunsets and starvation are good.

So Go!

Let’s fly; with the poor for they are in heaven, they live in the blackest of all darkness, in moon shadows and wide open skies where the sunset signify today and bygone tomorrows. Let’s fly (in a Cessna 182, made in America) to God’s primordial spaces.

Where am I going?

AFRICA …… AFRIKA ….. AFRICA (continue reading…)