For a cchange I have chosen to write through what is deemed as free writing. Here I am just mumbling about a phenomenon I have been contemplating about for couple weeks now. In fact, this very notion has been stuck in my head, not knowing how to best articulate it…

My emptiness and desire to spew bile, some rancous disturbing thoughts that need to be spitted out has triggered the need to pen this down. At this present moment, writing about my thoughts and not a book review is a bit discomforting and comforting at the same time because the meeting point is carelessness that is driven by the gravitas of the two points of departure.

In not so many words, my intention is to invite the readers to what I deem as obscurity. Something mundane yet necessarily to share, not for purposes of instilling fear (whatever that fear may look like) or to create a particular fascade about one’s writing. More than anything the point is simply to display the obscurity of writing, and writing as a form of obscurity. If you question my charge, my answer is in front of that very thought of yours – there is no formula. In other words, this is an obsolete charge, there are no grey areas. It’s all obscure, mundane and unorthodox period.

Following the rules is boring, especially when writing carefreely. Every author deserves to write their “fvck you” kinda book, text or lmpiece something like Americanah. Something so carefree.

Without mumbling and bumbling here, I want to cut to the chase. This piece was prompted by a short clip I encountered earlier today from Toni Morrison wherein she describes the loneliness of writing. The loneliness that potentially drives one to create their own world through creative writing. Creating the familiar and the disfamiliar, the usual and the unsual, myth and fact. What was more striking in her charge as I continued listening to that clip, she kept emphasising how her first novel, The bluest eye (sadly my copy disappeared at work, and I loath the day I misplaced the only copy I had of that novel), alas what MS Morrison said about that iconic novel about Picola is that pockets of what transpired in the novel was to some degree biographical. She mentioned the geography, location, time and place so to speak. This meana that what was biographical in thag novel wqs the setting of the novel. It was her assertion about loneliness that sparked the desire for me to pen down this piece.

Essentially, my meditation is about the obscurity of love. Basically it is mostly difficult to explain what it means to love, to be in love and being loved. And quite often our definitions of these varient categories is imperfect, at certain junctures, quite obscure and far from the truth.

Quite frankly, even truth itself exists not when it comes to the question of love. It is only when one is in time of solitude and solace that the ideation of admiration becomes more prominent. In times of solitary, in times of aloness. That is truely synonymous to the art of writing. A very lonely journey. It’s just you, your pen, your thoughts and the ‘subconscious’, the imaginary reader. You do not know how he or she will receive your work but for some weird reason you only hope that they will receive the work in good faith.

They will appreciate both your intricate fallacies and silent modulation of your voice, tone and style of writing. Last but not least what heightens this obscurity even further is the harsh reality that not everyone will receive your artistic work in the same way but the beauty lies in not caring. The carelessness thereof should not be mistaken with arrogance but viewed as assertiveness. The only exception to this front is when receiving an informed, brutal confrontation from your peers who are as “not so brilliant as you are” . Otherwise, keep insisting in the obscurity. The mess, confusion and complexity. The less linear you are, the more proportionally you are close to prowess.

Here one has to channel some serious dexterity of those who have walked the path before. The less spoken about: the poets who wrote for Staffrider, the writers who wrote when no one was bold enough to do so.

What is more fascinating in general about instances of war, combat and unprecedented times of tyranny and turmoil is that as a common thread, is disappearance. Not only is disappearance reducible to the ideation of people migrating from one City to the other, one town to another, or in the worst case scenario “honyelela” (as is in death). Previously, I have already touched about this notion of disappearance when I reviewed Ngozi’s Half of the yellow sun. It’s one thing that is most striking about that novel, especially toward the end of the novel. Better yet when one watches the movie, that very phenomenon becomes more palatable then when reading about it. As to why maybe when one engages that film as a text, one can be able to reach the consensus to, at the very least, comes to terms with the point driven home here.

In this next inscription the focus is not the idea of disappearance as it occurred in Ngozi’s work. Far from that. Here, the idea of disappearance is largely focused in the painstaking reality of many black woman households whom have to bare the brunt of brutally. As we usher into the 16days of activity, #NotInMyName #SayNOToGBV – the disappearance here relates to migration.

The Coal Train, iStimela (the song by Minkie tells it all). Quite frankly, this appears to have been a tragedy that Mama Barbara had witness in her upbringing. Not only a witness but at times a victim as pointed out in her offering, Poli poli. We are often told that the danger or rather the risk of memoir writing is that it can lead one to retraumatise oneself or those close to them, and it is without question that perhaps this could have been the case, but we can never know because paradoxically the opposite of that is the feeling of insurgent repulsion to no longer withhold feelings of trauma, to use the pen as form of a catharsis, to unleash all the emotions into an intellectually woven text in order to spark a long-lasting conversation. By no means does Mme Barbara paint her family, both maternalistic and parternalistic family into any “angelic or saint-like imagery” she tells it all.

As I follow a very unintelligible way to read this book, I present three pressing issues about memoir writing and not so much the mechanics of the family life reflected here. I say this because previously I have written about Ntate Hughie. Here I want to emphasise into family dynamics. The first being that of locality – upbringing and context. As one would imagine, it can never really be an easy thing for any child to be raised in a tavern. All sorts of dangers come with the territory, it is just the nature of the business. However, given that the Bower family found itself caught up in estranged relations with the government of the time, a form of resistance was to sell bjala as a form of resistance, but to also make ends meet, sell bjala to the mineworkers, many of whom as we are told in the book came from different regions of the Southern hinterland (surely by now, the song Istimela resonates with you as it does with me while penning this piece).

The disappearance that is most striking is that of her grandparents, because of racial mixing. Secondly, the disappearance of the children. Each following their passion or rather their wishes. Thirdly, the disappearance of family ties. Family ties in the form of unity. Most families go through these kinds of disentanglements, in one shape or form. The book Poli Poli explores this dilemma in the most intricate manner, reason being, these are issues that Mme Barbara had to relive as she kept writing her book.

It is particularly the chapter Alexandra that brings everything into context. Precisely because this was at the time that she and her siblings were in their teen years. They had to leave their grandmother and move into their parents’ household in Alexandra, Gomora. Obviously, this was a change of scenery because they Middleburg, Mpumalanga to leave in the City of Dust, of Mine Dumps (eMgababa, ‘Egoli Kwandonga asipheyeli’). Literally, that chapter paints the gruesome brutality of apartheid South Africa in how it tormented black families. Obviously today we live in different times. But one can just imagine what it took for people of mixed race to face the harsh realities of mingling with darkies. Not too black not too white – a difficult situation. In this same chapter, the book explains expansively where the phenomenon of coloured stems from. And there is no one consensus about this identity. There are always differing views based on a number of issues including the nature of upbringing.

In this case, the Masekelas grew up as the middle-class children, only because of their parents’ involvement with umzabalazo became very much integrated into the world of the Mandelas, the Sisulus etc. The continuous social work activitivism that her mother was involved in, her own form of cultural activism is what kept the sanity of the nuclear family into strong ties. Sadly though, there were no guarantees. Distant relatives as it is explained in the book had different agenda, and it is telling in how some of the cousins collided to bring about pain into the family by means of killing their own. It is for this reason that the ideation of disappearance is most fascinating in the book, because it aptly speaks to the idea struggle. Many exiles, often painstakingly touch on this issue – be it in the form of losing loved ones or losing their own lives to alcoholism and other forms of isms.

Logically, one can read this book as a way for Mama Barbara to unearth the history of her own family, to tell those of us who know more about her brother, and not really the other siblings, that appear to be constantly in the backdrop of Hughie’s success story. In fact, their parents were educated, and this is one point quite emphasised sharply in the book, not as a form to boast but more so as a means to indicate that she has lived a life of resilience. Having been in movement and the congress, she led with a fist. Similar to how the song, Wathinta abafazi, wathintha iimbokodo.In the congress movement, it is a tradition to indeed lead with a spearhead. The congress movement over centuries and time in memorium, has always been at the forefront of the mass democratic revolution.

The most intriguing aspect of this particular memoir, as a form of remembrance, memoir stems from the ideation of writing about one’s self story, a notion based in writing for generations to come to understand the story. Barbara tells a story about her son, Selema who she also named after her own father. Selema was raised as we are told in the book by his uncle (infamously also referred to as Minkie). That is a name only his sibling called, no one else used that name except for his beloved sister. The tragic situation as she describe it was her parents’ divorce, it led to serious turmoil within the household. As her mother would often complain about her father’s visit to his peers and ‘associates’.

But that is besides the point, the matter that is indeed a point of departure, in as far as the contour of critical thought is the description she mentions about the so-called South African War. Historians often debase the notion that the Brits were mostly supported by indigenous nationalities. In fact, she correctly explains that “Even a cursory look at the events that occurred in the Eastern Transvaal from the arrival of the Voortkekers until the conquest of the Ndebele and Pedi kingdom reveals veritable messages assemblage of nationalities (not ethnicities, as that is often tends to create a misguided notion of tribalism) were involved in the mixed bag of incursions, raids, ambushes, battles and hunts that took place between the settlers and the indigenous groups”

This is a book that is truly recommendable. Read it and enjoy.

Read more. (a republication).

Craig Higgingson an internationally acclaimed writer and literary scholar opens a short story entitled, That Famous Winter Brown Day, and this marvelously written short story is part of an anthology of short stories titled: Hair: Weaving & unpacking stories of identity woven. It is a collection that in one’s view really tap into the tapestry of literary works since they are able to encapsulate the deep emotions that allow one to relate to what the characters are going through.

In his short story, Higginson writes about the following characters, there is a sick mother whose name is not provided and the narration takes place in first person, also when we read the ongoing story it is as if the author is writing about what is almost true. The opening line is quite deeply catching and it draws the readers mind immediately to what is about to happen in the unfolding story that follows. “His mother died on his birthday. He was in the story room at the television studio when his wife called”. That is how this story opens, as a reader you cannot help but ponder, and question yourself what else is going to transpire in this story. The story basically without giving too much detail takes us through a journey of a young man who has not seen his sister in ages, she went to work in the United Kingdom (UK), and the grandmother had two cats, she loved them dearly so the son came to take care of his mother, only for him to arrive with her already body already perished.

This young man whose name we are not told whom he is arrives at at scathing, disgusting and very mellow situation wherein his mother is laying in the bathroom all alone with no one to take of her, only the two cats she loved dearly, Orange and Blue.

He gets to hear the saddening news that his mother is late from his beloved wife “Your mother has collapsed” when you read That Famous Winter Brown, the story does not necessarily state these words are coming straight from the wife’s mouth since the author deliberately chose to scribe the narration in first person, so as a reader you may assume that it is him who is saying these words whereas they are said by his wife, but the actually conversation is not recorded in the prose.

So as the story goes on, and this young fellow upon hearing the sad news rushed going by driving with an enormous speed, one in which was not the usual “He drove home more deliberately biding his time. He arrived to find his mother on the bathroom floor on her garden cottage. She had been living with them for nine months. She was lying under an old blue blanket with her feet sticking out one end and her hair out the other”. it is for this reason that in the same anthology, Craig Higginson uses the artwork of a famous photographer called Sue Greef and we are told that “from art historical references, iconography from borrowed from popular culture…” Sue Greef’s work (this is the photograph that Craig Higginson used to align his short story with the same short story he wrote, and the nice thing is that the two really align in as the depiction of the imagery used, one call really align the two and note the relatedness of two.

Needless to say, in the That Famous Brown Winter, the wife and the sister were seemingly not seeing eye, we are not sure whether it’s because the wife of the main character whose name is not mentioned was honestly allergic to the cats or rather, she was just not entirely sure about his brother’s wive, however, what remains to be true is that the young fellow loved his mother. Also, the sister assured her sister-in-law that “it was the saliva on the hair people were allergic to, not the hair itself”.

Through this lens one may in one way or other bring forth the argumentation that indeed the way some folks live with their families, as this short story shows us they may not entirely in unison but in the main, as the young fellow was the leader in the household, he was able to show skills of leadership, and did not pay too much attention on what was entirely happening in this household, all he was worried about was to ensure that he showed his mother appreciation at all given times.

In closing, as a way to juxtapose the poem written in this short story, with another poem by Pablo Neruda, Neruda writes “Alturas de Macchu Picchu” (translated into English The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Irresistible death invited me many times:
it was like salt occulted in the waves
and what its invisible fragrance suggested
was fragments of wrecks and heights
or vast structures of wind and snowdrift

Similarly, in the The Famous Brown Winter the writer speaks about the great appreciate he had toward his mother, now these two poems do not speak about death, however the juxtaposition lies in how Pablo Neruda’s poem speaks about death, his own deaths that he suffered from given that he was also a revolutionary in his own, the character from this short story we are told write about:

“From her body, she gave me a body to live in she same her a sister, who is also my friend”

These two poems as you read the two stories, you will note that there is similarity, another literary scholar, speaks about familiarisation – meaning familiarising oneself with literary works is all about. It requires one to continously read texts beyond just reading the written word, to also focus on the unspoken, what the text says and what it does not say. In this instance, Craig Higgisons fails to take us through the deeply enrooted emotions of his main characters. What would of great importance in his following edition of this beautiful yet shallow short story is to actually narrate what transpires through dialogue, yes he is a playwright and he has written extensively and directed shows globally, but what would be of great importance would be for him to actually take us through what really transpires in the story similar to how he managed to convert his play, The dream of the dog into a novel he could channel his energies into translating this into a whole book.

References:

Neruda, P. (2012). Selected poems. [Translated by Nathaniel Tarn]. London: Vintage Books.

They faced and continue to face
the whip of squirming consequences
caused by the consistent silencing
and policing of their voices,
their bodies and their entire
existence continue to be neglected.

They face erasure in all its forms
and manifold manifestations
disguised as
tradition, culture, and heritage.

Their being
is reduced to the zone of non-being,
their needs and aspirations are displaced
and ignored as if their lives matters not.

Women, black women in particular
face erasure in all spheres of life,
be it in the history books, in the arts,
in the economy, in geopolitics and everything-in-between.

Women, black women in particular
are the main victims of this quagmire.
It will only take women
to dismantle this monster
by writing, singing, painting and sculpturing
their names into existence
like Zenzile Makeba did.

Lucid Lies

Ingane ishelwa ngamanga
To win the love of a beautiful queen,
You have to tell her
lucid lies.

Build her a castle that she
cannot refuse to live in with your words,
choose them carefully and be deliberate in how you say them.

Sometimes it is not what you have that matters to your queen,
but how you do and say certain things,
I use the word “certain things” carefully here
because I am not here to prescribe, but to suggest.

Lucid lies are best understood
when energies are aligned.
If you are her yin and her
your yang, then these
lucid lies will all make sense.

It might not make sense now, but
Remember that:
ingane ishelwa ngamanga
to win the love of a beautiful queen,
you have to tell her
lucid lies.

These are my poems that I have written which grapple with the idea of love, a force that I believe to be the most revolutionary of all. The world would certainly be meaningless if it had not been for the existence of love, even beautiful things like flowers, the stars, rivers and oceans would absolutely have no sentimental value whatsoever; had it not been for the existence of love. Love makes us appreciate beauty in inexplicable ways and that is the beauty of love.

So without further ado here are two poems:

I long for

I long for 
a sense of belonging,
for being affirmed, nurtured and reassured. 
I long for our rants,
mischievous acts of lunacy, frank talks,
and pillow talks. 

I long for the crazy times 
we spent with each other,
the long crazy hours we would spend over the phone
talking about nothing and everything.

I long for the irrationality that characterised our 
passion and compassion for each other.  
You made me complete,
sane and insane 
all at the same time.  

I long for the moments I missed
to be there for you, 
to show up for you 
and reveal my true love for you…

Artwork by @levy_pooe titled: Motho le motho wa gagwe, 2021 
Acrylic on canvas.

Porgy  

My dear Porgy,
Magic is what is written in your eyes, 
the gaze is luring, my thoughts are numbed by your precious eyes. 

You are the book that is magical in my world.
I so wish I was the character
in this book that rescues you 
from despair. 

Sadly, the plot for this book
is betrayed by our long lasting friendship, 
perhaps my sin was not being upfront with you,
that I have always wanted to be more than friends with you,
from the very first day we met.  

Maybe this will be possible in the next lifetime, 
but I remain hopeful. 
Porgy, I love you dearly, 
always remember that my dear porgy.  

NB: These two poems will also be featured in my upcoming debut anthology of poems like the previous two from the last blog post.

Recently on twitter, my dear comrade and brother, Mpho Ndaba (via @manofcolor_) tweeted that poetry matters and I could not agree with him more. As result, I saw it fit to share a few of my poems that I have written over a couple of years ago. Some of these pieces I have shared before, some not – please do indulge in any case.

When poetry meets jazz

When poetry meets jazz, 
jazz becomes poetry
with dense metaphors
whose grammar, syntax and style 
shapes the world with its melodic timeless textures.

When jazz meets poetry
poems compose poignant musings 
whose sound quell emotions
of bondage, and the brutality of racial violence
– lamenting about black subjectivity. 

The improvisation forces the composer 
to drown in the imaginative world,  
to paint images with colours and illustrations
that take his audiences on a trance, 
I’m speaking here
of transcendental musings 
and meditations. 

When jazz meets poetry 
the poet becomes the composer
composing songs of solitude,
solidarity and serenity.

When jazz meets poetry
poetry becomes jazz 
and jazz becomes poetry. 
when poetry meets jazz
jazz becomes poetry 
and poetry becomes jazz

Grazing 

Still grazing 
in the plantation that the master has built
with the hope to dismember the black folk. 

The situation is scathingly unbearable, 
but the black folk
found ways to subvert the oppression 
by making compelling music
to numb the pain. 
The trumpet blows loud in the misty 
winds of a cloudy Mississippi morning 
in the fields. 

The whip carries no power anymore, 
the song keeps reverberating the uncompromising
sense of hope and resilience   
That is inherently 
BLACK. 

Still grazing 
in the plantation that the master has built, 
only the songs of Solomon carry 
the resilient hope of the 
slaves in the fields of Mississippi. 

I close off by reminding you folks that poetry matters, and the purpose of poetry is to: “…express an imaginative-emotional-intellectual experience of the writer’s… in such a way that it creates a similar experience in the mind of his reader or listener” as Clive Sansom puts it succinctly.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights of the songs featured. Also, these two poems will soon be featured in my upcoming debut anthology of poems.