This is how it went...
This is for the creatives.
For those who strive to make something from nothing - from blank screens and CMYK, to covers of magazines; from blank film and digital prints, to landscapes hanging in national galleries; from uncomfortable silence to beautiful melody; from blank paper to scribbles, then poetry. This is for those who rely on the ordinary to inspire the extraordinary. This is for their work and for what they believe – as well as for everything else in between.
This realises why a tired eye glares at a printer that’s run out of ink. It realises the frustration for a voice that goes hoarse in the middle of a verse. It realises the patience for that perfect shot and the disappointment thereafter for the price of a print. It realises that writers get writer's.........and just can’t find the words. It realises the worry that the work might not be best, and that it cannot be judged on the basis of a test. It realises when “realises” is being overused.
This understands the frustration and feeling of doubt, but also understands that there’s passion throughout. It’s passion that controls our thin thread of sanity and sets us apart. Without creativity the world would be flat. It would be black and white and Times New Roman; accounts, stats and the horizon much closer. It needs the graffiti and open-mike nights; it needs the tattoos and outer box in sight. It needs your pen and your pad, your mouse and your thumb. It needs your lens and your trigger, your guitar and your drum. It needs the world to see what you do. So put up your dukes, it’s your turn to prove.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I once wrote a story called, "Should I stay or should I go?"
This is how it went...
I don’t know.
From my perspective, there’s regret in that sentence. As if a decision to stay or not influences an outcome - that if one choses the one over the other (which is inevitable) the other would or could have been the better one.
If you’re now confused, it’s ok. Confusion makes peoples faces look funny. Like skin coloured crinkle paper. I bet your face looks hilarious right now.
Regret is a strange thing though. If you ask me, it’s a feeling made up in your mind. In reality, it shouldn’t exist. Think about it…I can’t regret not doing something because I didn’t do it. So, I therefore have no frame of reference for whether it would or wouldn’t have been a better choice, had I chosen it over what I did do. So, whether we decide to stay or decide to go doesn’t really matter. It’s what happens in between that’s more interesting and more likely to make your face crinkle with confusion.
I had to make a decision to stay or go a few months back. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I had gone but I decided to stay and got beaten up, sworn at and robbed by a 13-year-old girl.
I was somewhere in between the sidelines of an amateur rugby field in London, watching amateur rugby players trying their best to look as professional as they could, and hunched over in a pink leather chair in my living room when I experienced my first teenage assault. In socio-economic terms, I experienced first-hand proof of how Western society has, in many cases, failed dismally in its attempt to raise and nurture a generation of eager and ambitious adolescents.
It was on this Sunday morning, around 3am, that my definition of ‘chav’ finally made perfect sense. Now I believe, under normal circumstances, the ability to describe something is made a lot easier and clearer when writing it down, with enough time to think about it. But unless you’ve seen or had an experience with a chav yourself, you’ll never really know – and these circumstances were certainly not normal either. However, for the sake of this story, think of the word as describing uneducated, lower class scum with bad attitudes and worse teeth. These vermin, who shouldn’t be entitled any interaction with well-bred, well-cultured human beings on any sort of level, are so devoid of any half decent behaviour that I have decided, without any exception, that their collective noun should never be written with a capital letter.
From 12pm in London, trains and tubes stop running, busses are few and far between and cabs take precedence. At the time, I was new there and made the mistake of waiting for a bus instead of using my last ten quid to pay for a taxi home. Quid, for those of you who have never had the opportunity of experiencing London (or Mud Island, as the rest of the world affectionately refers to it), is a colloquial term used for pound, as in British currency.
This mistake and it’s magnitude unbeknownst to me at the time would later reaffirm my belief in questioning whether the mindless dregs of society are, in fact, needed in this often fucked up world we live in. It would also tighten my own understanding of the importance and value of money, and more specifically, ten pounds (quid).
Despite the hour of the morning and the sharp iciness in the air, strangers were walking past me in both directions - just like most places it seems, humans everywhere. No matter what time of the day, there always seem to be people meandering toward their own personal destinations; some in the search of something meaningful along the way or at least aiming in a certain direction and others who really couldn’t give a shit. At the time, it wasn’t surprising or something I took note of, as I was one of them and with my own reasons for being there. However, when two drunken 13-year-old girls came bouncing up to the bus stop I quickly became very aware of just how dark and cold that morning actually was. Classically speaking there is no way two 13-year-old-girls should have been out on their own so early on a Sunday morning. If anything they should have been fast asleep under pink barbie duvets and dreaming about rose petals and Sunday school. But not these girls – they were not only far too energetic for 3am, but they were also chavs. So, only three assumptions made sense to me; either their mothers were not much more than half a dozen years older than them, or they were on crack, or both.
The one girl was chanting lyrics to a song I assume she’d composed about the other (who was now skipping circles around the bus stop). From what it sounded like, the song was about her just having had sex with some guy. The name of the guy (who I can only assume was also a chav), or the colour of his eyes, or his hair, or any other trait that I thought a teenage girl might dwell on had no influence on the lyrics. She had chosen rather to create a graphic sing-along-song, telling those close enough to hear, the exact details of how and where what part of his anatomy had been in which part of hers. [I instinctively choose to neglect the fact that this guy had most likely just committed a statutory sex crime, since these are chavs we’re talking about. Chavs with only a little more culture, moral belief and education than a Cambodian street dog making Cambodian street dog babies on the steps of the Angkor Watt].
I’ve been in a few situations, as I would think we all have, when I’ve had to adopt my most convincing uninterested, pretending to pay no attention demeanor. And most times I’ve managed to divert any sort of attention that could have come my way, thankful for not having to find out how I may have dealt with it. But not this time.
This time, I became the poor bastard that would have to deal with abuse from Satan’s offspring.
The one skipping turned her attention to skipping circles around me instead, in time and to the beat of her accomplice’s song. The vulnerability I was feeling while being intimidated by two young females made it that much harder for me to filter my options on how to handle my new fans and I’m sure (just like those Cambodian street dogs) they could smell the fear too. In my defence though, I didn’t have many options since these were girls and unfortunately still entitled to the correct gentlemanly treatment I’d grown up to believe to be very black and white – up until that point in my life at least.
Half way around her fifth rotation she whipped the hat I was wearing off my head, stuffed it down her tracksuit pants and ran across the road. My first reaction, given the lyrics of that goddamn song, had been the wish for a black cab en route to its own destination to be speeding past at the exact time she set foot into the street. However, upon returning from the chav side I would much later think of it rather as good subject matter for a retold experience and the best reason I’ll ever have for washing my hat.
The hat is my favourite and one that I bought in a small backward town called Glenwood Springs in Colorado, so I wasn’t about to laugh it off and run away with my tail between my legs. I started off shouting at her to give it back, then telling her, then asking nicely and just before I began begging she asked for money in exchange. I only had 10 quid on me, which seemed unreasonable to give away so easily - being an unemployed rookie in London. However, the hat has a lot of sentimental value so I compromised and decided that I’d hold the note out and do the whole OK-count-to-three-then-swap thing. In an effort to regain some dignity and come out better than her, my plan was to grab the hat, pocket the money and turn around and walk away. But the fact that that’s the most clichéd strategy in primary school politics meant she was thinking the exact same thing and combined with her junkie ferret-like instincts she snatched the tenner, put my hat back in her pants and ran away again. Fuck!
Now with my bottom lip very close to being trodden on I was £10 down, hatless and hastily turning from intimidated and vulnerable to angry and extremely caddish - all the while having those fucking lyrics waft around me like the stench of an ineffective toilet spray.
Since she had stolen my best means of ammunition against any chav, money, all I had to rely on was my vocabulary and choice of words therein. I can’t remember exactly what I said but she eventually held up her end of the deal and removed my hat from her pants and put it back on my head (yup, pretty siff).
Although I had managed to retrieve my precious headgear, the thought of its own journey (and respective destinations) as well as the fact that I’d paid over R150 to reroute it home, did nothing to simmer my rapidly boiling blood. The little reptiles continued their skipping and signing, clearly aware of my frustration because little Miss inbred kept asking me what was wrong and why I was angry. Surprisingly, she managed to dig deep enough through her layers of bad upbringing and offer to give me my money back. But the heat of my blood and disappointment with humanity had fueled my obstinacy and poisoned my tongue, to the point that all I managed to muster was, “No! Keep the fucking money and use it to get your teeth fixed you little brat.”
I think the world stopped spinning for a millisecond in reaction to the look that she spat at me and in reaction to the world, her leg and foot set off on their own journey – their destination, my crotch.
Finally the bus arrived while I was crouched over in a man’s most vulnerable pose with my hands on my balls feeling all kinds of pain coursing through my stomach. Even though I had no physical ache in my mind, something in there definitely hurt too.
Who knows what else might have happened that night if I had used the £10 to get home in a cab, bringing my destination closer quicker and in less agony? But the fact that I decided to stay and wait for the bus left me £10 down anyway and with first hand insight (and foot for that matter) into the direction the world is headed and perhaps a sneak preview of it’s own possible destination.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
From my perspective, there’s regret in that sentence. As if a decision to stay or not influences an outcome - that if one choses the one over the other (which is inevitable) the other would or could have been the better one.
If you’re now confused, it’s ok. Confusion makes peoples faces look funny. Like skin coloured crinkle paper. I bet your face looks hilarious right now.
Regret is a strange thing though. If you ask me, it’s a feeling made up in your mind. In reality, it shouldn’t exist. Think about it…I can’t regret not doing something because I didn’t do it. So, I therefore have no frame of reference for whether it would or wouldn’t have been a better choice, had I chosen it over what I did do. So, whether we decide to stay or decide to go doesn’t really matter. It’s what happens in between that’s more interesting and more likely to make your face crinkle with confusion.
I had to make a decision to stay or go a few months back. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I had gone but I decided to stay and got beaten up, sworn at and robbed by a 13-year-old girl.
I was somewhere in between the sidelines of an amateur rugby field in London, watching amateur rugby players trying their best to look as professional as they could, and hunched over in a pink leather chair in my living room when I experienced my first teenage assault. In socio-economic terms, I experienced first-hand proof of how Western society has, in many cases, failed dismally in its attempt to raise and nurture a generation of eager and ambitious adolescents.
It was on this Sunday morning, around 3am, that my definition of ‘chav’ finally made perfect sense. Now I believe, under normal circumstances, the ability to describe something is made a lot easier and clearer when writing it down, with enough time to think about it. But unless you’ve seen or had an experience with a chav yourself, you’ll never really know – and these circumstances were certainly not normal either. However, for the sake of this story, think of the word as describing uneducated, lower class scum with bad attitudes and worse teeth. These vermin, who shouldn’t be entitled any interaction with well-bred, well-cultured human beings on any sort of level, are so devoid of any half decent behaviour that I have decided, without any exception, that their collective noun should never be written with a capital letter.
From 12pm in London, trains and tubes stop running, busses are few and far between and cabs take precedence. At the time, I was new there and made the mistake of waiting for a bus instead of using my last ten quid to pay for a taxi home. Quid, for those of you who have never had the opportunity of experiencing London (or Mud Island, as the rest of the world affectionately refers to it), is a colloquial term used for pound, as in British currency.
This mistake and it’s magnitude unbeknownst to me at the time would later reaffirm my belief in questioning whether the mindless dregs of society are, in fact, needed in this often fucked up world we live in. It would also tighten my own understanding of the importance and value of money, and more specifically, ten pounds (quid).
Despite the hour of the morning and the sharp iciness in the air, strangers were walking past me in both directions - just like most places it seems, humans everywhere. No matter what time of the day, there always seem to be people meandering toward their own personal destinations; some in the search of something meaningful along the way or at least aiming in a certain direction and others who really couldn’t give a shit. At the time, it wasn’t surprising or something I took note of, as I was one of them and with my own reasons for being there. However, when two drunken 13-year-old girls came bouncing up to the bus stop I quickly became very aware of just how dark and cold that morning actually was. Classically speaking there is no way two 13-year-old-girls should have been out on their own so early on a Sunday morning. If anything they should have been fast asleep under pink barbie duvets and dreaming about rose petals and Sunday school. But not these girls – they were not only far too energetic for 3am, but they were also chavs. So, only three assumptions made sense to me; either their mothers were not much more than half a dozen years older than them, or they were on crack, or both.
The one girl was chanting lyrics to a song I assume she’d composed about the other (who was now skipping circles around the bus stop). From what it sounded like, the song was about her just having had sex with some guy. The name of the guy (who I can only assume was also a chav), or the colour of his eyes, or his hair, or any other trait that I thought a teenage girl might dwell on had no influence on the lyrics. She had chosen rather to create a graphic sing-along-song, telling those close enough to hear, the exact details of how and where what part of his anatomy had been in which part of hers. [I instinctively choose to neglect the fact that this guy had most likely just committed a statutory sex crime, since these are chavs we’re talking about. Chavs with only a little more culture, moral belief and education than a Cambodian street dog making Cambodian street dog babies on the steps of the Angkor Watt].
I’ve been in a few situations, as I would think we all have, when I’ve had to adopt my most convincing uninterested, pretending to pay no attention demeanor. And most times I’ve managed to divert any sort of attention that could have come my way, thankful for not having to find out how I may have dealt with it. But not this time.
This time, I became the poor bastard that would have to deal with abuse from Satan’s offspring.
The one skipping turned her attention to skipping circles around me instead, in time and to the beat of her accomplice’s song. The vulnerability I was feeling while being intimidated by two young females made it that much harder for me to filter my options on how to handle my new fans and I’m sure (just like those Cambodian street dogs) they could smell the fear too. In my defence though, I didn’t have many options since these were girls and unfortunately still entitled to the correct gentlemanly treatment I’d grown up to believe to be very black and white – up until that point in my life at least.
Half way around her fifth rotation she whipped the hat I was wearing off my head, stuffed it down her tracksuit pants and ran across the road. My first reaction, given the lyrics of that goddamn song, had been the wish for a black cab en route to its own destination to be speeding past at the exact time she set foot into the street. However, upon returning from the chav side I would much later think of it rather as good subject matter for a retold experience and the best reason I’ll ever have for washing my hat.
The hat is my favourite and one that I bought in a small backward town called Glenwood Springs in Colorado, so I wasn’t about to laugh it off and run away with my tail between my legs. I started off shouting at her to give it back, then telling her, then asking nicely and just before I began begging she asked for money in exchange. I only had 10 quid on me, which seemed unreasonable to give away so easily - being an unemployed rookie in London. However, the hat has a lot of sentimental value so I compromised and decided that I’d hold the note out and do the whole OK-count-to-three-then-swap thing. In an effort to regain some dignity and come out better than her, my plan was to grab the hat, pocket the money and turn around and walk away. But the fact that that’s the most clichéd strategy in primary school politics meant she was thinking the exact same thing and combined with her junkie ferret-like instincts she snatched the tenner, put my hat back in her pants and ran away again. Fuck!
Now with my bottom lip very close to being trodden on I was £10 down, hatless and hastily turning from intimidated and vulnerable to angry and extremely caddish - all the while having those fucking lyrics waft around me like the stench of an ineffective toilet spray.
Since she had stolen my best means of ammunition against any chav, money, all I had to rely on was my vocabulary and choice of words therein. I can’t remember exactly what I said but she eventually held up her end of the deal and removed my hat from her pants and put it back on my head (yup, pretty siff).
Although I had managed to retrieve my precious headgear, the thought of its own journey (and respective destinations) as well as the fact that I’d paid over R150 to reroute it home, did nothing to simmer my rapidly boiling blood. The little reptiles continued their skipping and signing, clearly aware of my frustration because little Miss inbred kept asking me what was wrong and why I was angry. Surprisingly, she managed to dig deep enough through her layers of bad upbringing and offer to give me my money back. But the heat of my blood and disappointment with humanity had fueled my obstinacy and poisoned my tongue, to the point that all I managed to muster was, “No! Keep the fucking money and use it to get your teeth fixed you little brat.”
I think the world stopped spinning for a millisecond in reaction to the look that she spat at me and in reaction to the world, her leg and foot set off on their own journey – their destination, my crotch.
Finally the bus arrived while I was crouched over in a man’s most vulnerable pose with my hands on my balls feeling all kinds of pain coursing through my stomach. Even though I had no physical ache in my mind, something in there definitely hurt too.
Who knows what else might have happened that night if I had used the £10 to get home in a cab, bringing my destination closer quicker and in less agony? But the fact that I decided to stay and wait for the bus left me £10 down anyway and with first hand insight (and foot for that matter) into the direction the world is headed and perhaps a sneak preview of it’s own possible destination.
I don’t know.
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