the sourcerer: beloved swing gang

Showing posts with label beloved swing gang. Show all posts

Sunday, September 1, 2013

A life in boxes.

I have just completed an interesting little exercise... I jotted down all of the places I have lived and how many times I have moved house.

Twenty-one times.

Luckily, a large part of my work consists of moving stuff around, so I have learnt to do it fast. But it was rather challenging on Friday. Icy cold, intermittent rain, snow on Table Mountain.

Five times of the twenty-one was when I was still a child, living with my parents. Contrary to my mother's best intentions, I turned out to be a magpie. Moving my chattels is an epic production. My beloved swing gang were there to help me - Sam arrived with his trusty old truck and Julius and Roger laughed every time I warned them of a particularly heavy trunk or box. Being the ex wrestling champion of Cameroon, Roger lifts a washing machine with two fingers.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi

We finished the job in five hours. My worldly goods are now in storage and I have a few months to find a new place to live. This is what happens when your rent unexpectedly - shockingly, is to go up by fifty percent. This is what happens when you rent from friends, without ever signing a contract. It's also a city bowl problem, with rents sky-rocketing and people willing to pay anything to live there. I am not. So, for now, I am on the peninsula, with my batterie de cuisine, two bags of clothes and the one I love, in his snug house. A fire in the grate, birds gorging themselves on a peanut-butter-filled pine cone in the garden, key lime pie and coffee.

Driving over the mountain pass yesterday, all misty and sparkling, the waterfalls cascaded down the cliffs, ending in billows of foam. And I remembered something that I forgot to tell you about: the sound of thousands of bees when you stand on the edge of a canola field.

So loud the air vibrates.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Sine Qua Non.

Julius Ngoh Etah

24 years old.

Born in Kumba, Southwest Province of Cameroon.

Bafaw Tribe.

In Cameroon, at the technical school, Julius did his Probatoire, or Preliminary course in Electricity. When he couldn't find a job, his father helped him to buy a taxi and that is how he made a living before coming to Cape Town. Here he worked at the Hotel School in Mouille Point, but the pay was minimal.

"I want to move forward, always forward" always with a smile.

Julius dreams of further study and of owning his own Electrical company.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Sine Qua Non.

Touenke Djami Roger

36 years old.

Born in Minta, Central Province of Cameroon.

Bamileke Tribe.

The strong man. He comes from a family of big people. At home he trained in graphics and screen printing. During the course of our talks, he told me a story Shakespearian in it's twists and turns. He left that life behind and came here to discover more, to know more. Ex Judo champion of Cameroon, Roger dreams of starting a school where he can teach homeless children martial arts and soccer.

"You throw a stone, you don't know where it will land."

Monday, March 26, 2012

Sine Qua Non.

Raoul Miessan
31 years old.

Born in the coastal town of Bonoua, Côte d'Ivoire.

His sister arranged his move to Cape Town and helped him to get together the money to go to the Language School in Green Point. He arrived with a tog bag full of cash, undertook a six month intensive course - and from not understanding one word, now speaks the most beautiful English - softly.

Back in Abidjan he trained and worked as an IT Specialist.
Here he has been a waiter and a barman and an extra on commercials - which fortuitously led him to us.
He tells me that in his home town, one is so marked by your religion - Muslim or Christian - that it became very limiting for him.

I asked Raoul if he has a dream.* He said: "Yes, like anyone, I do have a dream." He explained that it is a dream of such magnitude that he is almost ashamed to tell me about it. Funnily enough, he is the only one I told about my dream - and that it is also very big. The only way I can imagine it as a truth is to try to reach it by taking it to pieces and doing them one by one.
He nodded and said: "Yes! That is what I am doing..."

*I've been inspired to ask this question by Chris Arnade's wonderful photographs and stories about the people on the streets of New York City. The most heartening thing about it is that everyone I have asked so far answers YES.

I am writing about the swing gang because I admire them greatly. They are modern day explorers.

You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.