the internet

So I haven't had an Internet connection at home for a while (cause I moved in with my boyfriend and away from the wonderful almost endless campus Internet connection) and my blog posts have therefore been non-existent.  I invested in a blackberry to be able to at least read my e-mails and get onto facebook (but only theoretically-jeez blackberry facebook is Horrible) but the blogger app, wait, there isn't one.  So I have been out of contact.

To be completely honest, I am getting more and more twitchy about being online.  I don't like seeing carefully chosen advertisements from words in my e-mails and in what I have "liked" on facebook.  A case in point is The Little Prince.  I love this book: it moves me almost to tears every time I read it.  So I said I liked it on Facebook and now I have a feed full of items with "Little Prince" on them that I will presumably want to buy.  There is a music box, a duvet cover with matching pillow slip, a watch and endless other things that clearly (?) have equal importance to me as my friends' news as it all streams over the same page.

Facebook even looks different: now I have a timeline with a cute little cube with pictures of my friends and a list of places I have studied or lived in the past.  I can practically feel the marketers and other creepy people who follow your every move closing in...(I have just caught up on my friend Zoe's blog: she (rightly) complains that white people love to panic.  This is me, panicking.  But I suppose if I (kind of) know I'm panicking? Then...)

But I have missed seeing everyone's faces: Amy wandering around London in all her fabulousness; Indra and Thomas smiling out at me from Belgium; all the music department people in their graduation gowns and smiles; and Beatrice with her husband-to-be (nine more days today!) celebrating Easter in typically wacky fashion (picture the chocolate rabbits peering over the rocks towards a waterfall).

I could go off facebook, but then I would expect everyone to...send me letters?  Call me from overseas?  E-mailing is difficult enough.  I do savour an old-fashioned e-mail myself, but not everyone has the gift (or curse) of the endless words that flow from my fingers once I get writing.  I would miss you all too much.

So despite my paranoia about people being able to follow my every move (catch me "tagging in" somewhere I go!) I will stay here, in this online space.

Hello everyone!  It's great to see you all again.

on Coldplay

Coldplay’s latest music video (“Paradise”) contains scenes of my very own Johannesburg, the Johannesburg that is within walking distance of where I live.  As a journalist recently remarked, the elephant (that is really Chris Martin) does not even get mugged or end up getting his unicycle stolen.  “Paradise” is a pretty, catchy tune.  I even find it moving, though perhaps that has a lot to do with my patriotic little heart being swept up in the familiar panoramas.  It also contains scenes of Coldplay’s very recent Johannesburg concert, and somewhere in those crowd shots are multitudes of my friends, all thrilled and thoroughly enjoying themselves.  I was not there, however.

This is because my appreciation of “Paradise” (or almost any of their songs released since “Rush of Blood to the Head”, their second album) fades when I listen to “Parachutes”, their first album.  It came out when I was fourteen.  My brother bought a copy when he was visiting from London, and played it almost perpetually when he stayed with us.  After he left, taking the CD with him, I went off to the nearest Musica and bought my own.  Up until then, I had invested almost purely in compilations and soundtracks, as many of the artists I knew about or had access to at the time only produced one or two songs that I liked.  Coldplay was different from the start.

My favourite song on “Parachutes” back then was “Shiver”, the second song on the album.  It is about unrequited love, rejection and yet desperate devotion and longing.  The song has an incredible momentum, chords crashing and early stirrings of the arpeggios on which they have come so heavily to rely.  Martin’s voice is unbelievably expressive: his falsetto is soaring and his lower notes are occasionally breathy and always raw with emotion.  It was the perfect song for an awkward yet imaginative teenager.  Its passionate statement of constant love from afar thrilled me and while I am not so awkward or filled with desperate love longings anymore, it is still one of my favourite songs to sing along to.

The next songs to become my favourites came in a pair, mainly because they were hits, but also because they were a little literary.  “Yellow” and “Trouble” are the only two songs most Coldplay fans (or people who say they are Coldplay songs, humph!) know from the album.  “Yellow” is unbearably sweet and borders on synaesthesia, reminding me years later of Gatsby’s “yellow” cocktail music.   “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you and all the things that you do”.  The infinite appreciation of small intimacies are seldom so simply and beautifully expressed in popular music.

“Trouble” was always wonderfully melancholic.  The small hesitations in the piano line and the nuanced differences they made to each repetition of the verse give the song the power of a dramatic monologue.  The sliding, mournful guitar chords at the end still jolt me.

My next favourite, and perhaps, the eternal favourite of my heart, is “Sparks”.  It is a slow-moving song and the gentle, almost lazy-sounding guitar chords seem to bring a physical warmth to my innards when I hear them.  When I think of the chorus, “I saw Sparks”: my literal interpretation is of magical golden sparks showering over the landscape against a deep, velvety night.  The metaphorical implications shift every time I listen to it.  The lyrics are again, very simple but also personal and acknowledge fallibility.  “My heart is yours, it’s you that I hold onto.  I know I was wrong, I won’t let you down, oh yeah I will yeah I will”.

The song I under-appreciated for a long time was the opening song, “Don’t Panic”, a kind of fragment of apocalyptic pessimism in the verses, “Bones sinking like stones, all that we’ve fought for...” contrasted with the chorus: “We live in a beautiful world”.  The melody line swells and ripples, and the rhythm section drives the very meaning onwards.

 “High Speed” does not move me.  “Spies” is a little obscure (what is this song about?) but it is atmospheric and the instrumentation is exciting.  The eponymous song, “Parachutes” is a beautiful sliver and “We Never Change” is relatively abstractedly cheerful.  While they may never be favourites, they soothe me and I feel uplifted after the final chords of the album have faded away.

“Rush of Blood to the Head” was more polished, you can hear the band all went out and got some extra music lessons.  The emotions are still mostly there.

It is almost everything since then that makes me sad.  I am not some hipster that got upset when everyone else discovered “their band”.  I can appreciate the waves of electronics, catchy tunes, endlessly repeating arpeggios and hallmark physcho-babble of their recent offerings that may have roots in interesting concepts.  They cannot, however, match the raw brilliance of the earlier songs.  Rather than feeling uplifted after hearing their swathes of feel-good pop-inspired tunes, I feel a little depressed and like I have been offered something that feels (to me at any rate) cheap, shiny and packaged.  So I couldn’t bring myself to go to their concert.  I went home and skyped a friend instead.

NaNoWriMo: Day One

A short two years ago, I too was asking, "What the heck is that?".  Well, "NaNoWriMo" stands for National Novel-Writing Month.  It started in the United States, but unlike so many of their compatriots, they wanted to share this great idea with the world, so perhaps it should be renamed InNoWriMo (you can guess why).

On the first of November all over the world, writers begin writing a novel (of minimum 50 000 words) that they have to finish on or before the 30th November.  I have never been really interested before, mainly because I thought that that was no way to write a novel.  Maturity has brought reason, however, or perhaps just the bitter realisation that I can never carry my novels further than their opening descriptions because I am a complete perfectionist (read: "egotistical coward").

I am terrified to write something, my brain goes into a freeze and won't come up with more than a striking opening image or situation.  I write a page or so, feel dreadfully proud at the quality of my own writing, and begin to dream dreams of writing a truly brilliant novel.  Then I read it the next day and realise it is trite and the images are cliched.  I fiddle with what I have, I wrack my brains for some more plot, squirm at my inadequate direct speech and then, ooh, what's that?  A movie that I haven't seen for at least a week.  I had better watch that, get some inspiration.

Needless to say, my novels never develop to anything more complex than a sapling.

I procrastinated (a little) before starting this evening, but I wrote the required 1666 words without the wave of crushing inadequacy I usually feel hovering above my head.  It's really late now, which will come back to bite me tomorrow, but for now, I feel just the teeniest stirrings of something like euphoria.  I have begun.

Free Jazz

Last night, Zwe took me to this great little corner restaurant in Melville, Jozi called "Wish!". It was not great for the awe-inspiring food (it was good, but not amazing), nor the decor, which is actually really pleasant and suitably artsy. They have abstract paintings that are awash with colour on the walls, and red chairs that look like they come from an alternate time that never actually existed. If that makes sense. And our waiter was more than a little distracted as a famous DJ was sitting at the table behind us.
The reason it was such a gorgeous evening was because there was a live jazz band playing there that you could listen to...for free. Not just any jazz band, a jazz band consisting of Marcus Wyatt on trumpet and fugal horn, Afrika Mkhize on keyboard, someone called Clement Benny on drums and Thembi Nkosi on a huge, gleaming double bass (in my next life, I will be a bassist. No question). Benny is a drummer who seems to make the rhythm section melodic, and Mkhize is prone to flights of incredible, fragile beauty on the piano. Nkosi thrilled me down to my toes with his masterful handling of his bass throughout, and Wyatt is, well, there's a reason he is such a famous musician.

They played a standard or two, but their real strength last night seemed to lie in the music they had worked on together. After a particular passage, several listeners (including my own dear boyfriend) actually shouted with joy.
Being able to sit a few feet away and listen to such great music is something we all experience too rarely in these days of widespread recordings and such easy access to the music of almost any band one could wish to hear. Seeing a band live in such an intimate setting is really exciting. You can hear the scatting Mkhize sometimes does to accompany his playing, and Benny's zen-like expression that seems to be completely unaware but is actually taking in all the subtleties of his fellow musicians. You can tell when someone has lost their place because of the sheepish smile that creeps over their face, and you could watch Wyatt pacing and soloing nonchalantly from the door, or taking his place as frontman.
The four players achieved excellent balance last night, not something I have often been fortunate enough to hear. Each note of each instrument contributed to a seething Jazz whole (jazz music can never simply be "whole": that implies some kind of completeness. Jazz is never complete) and I enjoyed being able to hear the bass in particular, which is often drowned out in live performances.
I was particularly pleased to see that there is free jazz at "Wish!" every Wednesday night. Whether or not next Wednesday brings the same excellent quartet or another band, I am looking forward to returning.

Tutoring: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Working with students is an education.

I have been receiving essays on the English Renaissance sonnet and lyric over the past two days from my tutorial groups and I have seldom ever experienced such disorganisation and misunderstanding.  I have clearly over-estimated our country's school system and it ability to teach students anything about poetry, and about the ability to learn new things.  I discovered on Friday that several of my students had never done poetry at school.  More than this, after almost an entire year at University (three-quarters of which involved two tutorial sessions a week on various poems) a student had no idea what I meant when I had talked in class about abab rhyme scheme.  She said none of her friends had been able to explain what it meant either.  Her previous tutors had told her not to worry about it if she didn't understand it.  Anyone who has ever studied Renaissance poetry (even if it was just a Shakespeare sonnet in high school) will know that the rhyme scheme is an important component.

Once I had explained the concept to her (it took less than three minutes) she caught on immediately and was able to apply the principle to another poem.  She is not stupid, she had just never been taught about it, and was obviously too terrified of something which seemed so abstract to work it out.

Since all the essays have been handed in, I have had one essay comparing two sonnets from the Harlem Renaissance (from the wrong century and the wrong continent) and another that is not an English essay, but a history essay: handed in a day late to the wrong place.

I have had two essays, however, where students have taken their own initiative to do relevant extra reading and have drawn parallels that surprised and pleased me.

There is much (or at least some) that is not yet lost.

On re-reading "Pride and Prejudice"

I was rereading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice the other day.  It was strange to re-read because I can still remember the last time I read it so clearly.  I was fourteen and living in Durban on the Berea.  I was sleeping in my sister's room because we had a guest staying with us, which always meant I had to move out of mine.  Sarah and I would argue quite a lot: mainly about mess, always mine.  I stayed up until 2am to finish it, and was really tired at Sunday School the next day but I felt really proud that I had stayed up so late to finish something I considered to be high literature.I had already read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and I considered Pride and Prejudice to be my next foray into the world of really adult literature.

That was the first year I'd had boy friends since I was nine years old.  Going to an all girls' school and it only being my sister and I at home meant I never spoke to boys, never mind made friends with them.  It was also around this time that our parents would take us to see the strange, wizard-like house next to the ocean on the South Coast and everything would change when we moved there.  And then everything would change again when I left small-town South Coast for the smaller Grahamstown and Rhodes, and then again for Pretoria and finally when I landed in Johannesburg for Wits.  Starting over again in a new place again four times over will change things, never mind the change in years and situations.

Yet some things don't change that should have.  I had a strange sense of travelling back in time reading this book.  I have found, over and over again that though I considered myself to be pretty advanced when I read classics at relatively young ages, I understood very little more than what I had garnered from their movie versions.  While I have watched the BBC Pride and Prejudice many times, for the excellent Jennifer Ehle as Lizzie as much for the sublime Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy (did anyone else notice they were both in The King's Speech as well?), this is the first time I have re-read the book since my raw fourteen year old self finished it in the wee hours of the morning.

I still appreciated the charming romances and brilliantly drawn characters.  The jealous Caroline Bingley is a treat,  as is Mr. Bennet who is far shrewder and funnier on the page.  The relationship between Jane and Lizzie is also an inspiration to me.  I love my sister dearly, and can appreciate the celebration of sisterly support.

What really intrigued me about the book was its unexpected wisdom.   Jane Austen is very astute about human nature and, as I discovered re-reading this book, human failings.  I don't mean the kind of human failings that mean you lose your sports match, are missed for promotion or fail to make it into the course you want to do.  I mean moral human failings.  I found her exploration of the "pride" and "prejudice" of the title nuanced and engrossing, and her portrait of the effect of a selfish, indolent mother and self-involved father and their unhappy marriage on the family was, as always, quite astounding.  What really moved me, however, was Lizzie's own regret at her gossiping about Mr. Darcy.

The one thing that has not changed about me since I was a self-important fourteen year old is my penchant for a gossip, and for simultaneously holding grudges.  I have often deeply regretted what I have said (always after the event) when both friend and foe alike have been at the mercy of my occasionally vicious tongue, and could not understand why I enjoyed indulging in either more often than I want to.  When I read Lizzie's own reason for gossiping about Mr. Darcy, I realised why:

"And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason.  It is a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit, to have dislike of that kind.  One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty"

I have always treasured my intelligence (perhaps too much) and holding a grudge and gossiping about someone is an easy way to show it off.

So from now on: an undertaking to be humble about what intelligence I have, and so avoid other dangerous pastimes.

And to read more Jane Austen instead.

my favourite things

One of the few songs I still know off by heart is "My Favourite Things" from "The Sound of Music". In fact, musical songs, a few old hymns (and Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears gar!) stick in my head, when everything else cooler (think opera arias and Radiohead ballads) seem to leak out somehow. But what makes knowing those particular songs (barring Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne) one of my "favourite things" is singing them with my friends whenever I go back to KZN. Somehow, in the course of hanging out together, usually at someone's house, or out at Oribi Gorge, or even sitting 'round a kitchen table, we will sing together, different people taking the lead according to whoever knows the song best. There's something about the sound of all our voices raised together - even in the wholesome tones of Julie Andrews - that warms my heart every time it happens, re-establishes a connection.

So I want to write about the little things - like spontaneous singing together - that warm me. Big things are great: going overseas, meeting famous people I have admired for years, getting awarded a degree, going to a wedding or seeing the nation united in a sea of yellow. But there are little things too, the proverbial "snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes" - just like the song people! - that also make my life silly and sweet.

So here, in no particular order, are my favourite things:

1.) Popcorn and cheese
When I have had a particularly long day (usually a particularly long few days), I curl up on my narrow residence bed under my north-facing window in the sunshine or the pink cast of the sunset, and have a few bowls of popcorn and cheese. Zama (my boyfriend's sister) first told me about this, and I thought it sounded a little odd. Until I popped myself a pot of kernels (I make things the old fashioned way) and cut a few slices of cheddar cheese and discovered it was my ideal comfort food. I suppose ideally the cheese would be grated, but I don't own one (the student life) so a nibble of cheese with a few popcorn kernels and I am all set to unwind.

2.) My Kindle
When I am curled up on my bed with popcorn and cheese in one hand to unwind, I always have a book clutched in the other. That is, until I acquired my *Kindle*. Every time I pick it up, I marvel at its brilliance. I hold it lovingly, I treasure and baby it in case anything happens to it and I take it EVERYWHERE (except Central Joburg. That would be silly). I read it in shopping queues, in the car, aloud to my boyfriend, and I marvel at its light weight. Everyone who experienced the horror of my bag this holiday will appreciate how many books I usually carry with me. Now, I can carry hundreds. If I were Jerusha, I would write an adoring, rhyming poem to it.

3.) Flossing
I only started flossing in earnest last year and I am never going back. My teeth got whiter, my breath got fresher everything just feels so much cleaner. If you don't like flossing, you haven't tried the right floss. Oral B is great, and so is Jordan. The others are distinctly unpleasant. Now go forth and try it yourself...You'll thank me when you're sixty-six and you don't lose your front teeth.

4.) Grilled Sardines on Toast
I recently became a pescetarian, and somehow, I really crave the oily fish. This is a Dad thing, as my father has had grilled sardines on toast at least once a week since forever. I used to turn up my nose at it, but now I relish the crunchy, oily deliciousness. Mmmm...

5.) Psalm 107 (King James Version)
Even if you aren't Christian or even religious, you can appreciate the music in these lines.
Psalm 107:9
For he satisfieth the longing soul,
and filleth the hungry soul with
goodness

6.) Long, juicy phone calls (skype or otherwise)
I believe birthdays should be celebrated, just so that you can hear from all your friends. The best presents I receive are the phone calls: chatty, joyful with a good dose of catch-up thrown in. Of course phone calls any other time of year are always welcome (I feel as though the thirst of my very soul is slaked) and - y'all know who you are - thank-you for every phone call I have ever received. It was special.

7.) Making cards and wrapping presents
This is a Mum thing. All the years I was at Rhodes, my Mum would send me parcels (wrapped up like a fortress) full to the brim with goodies. Whether it was food, clothes, books, an interesting card or newspaper article scrap, all the little bits and piece (and fights I had with the post office people) really enriched my time in Grahamstown. When my friend Marco made me a card last year for my birthday, I was so touched I decided to do a little spoiling of my own. It's a really rewarding kind of art, because it is the kind that you give.

8.) Napping in the sun
I read recently about a philosophy professor who believes that an afternoon siesta should be compulsory. Apart from renewing all one's senses, he says that it is a form of independence and rebellion against a mechanised society that, if it could, would squeeze every drop of blood from one. I don't often get the chance, but when I do, it does feel extremely luxurious. Perhaps even more so because I feel like I am emulating Hobbes (as in Calvin and).

I often think if we all listened to Hobbes (and all other sensible tigers and cats) life would feel a lot more luxurious. Especially in the little things.