These Creases

Vodacan’t: The Ball-Numbing Black Hole of Vodacom Customer Service

2011-07-18T10:38:00.006+02:00

So, I’ll be the first to admit that I sit on the bottom rung when it comes to mobile gadgetry. Shiny things entice me, but my need to reaffirm my existence and temporarily stave off those pesky thanatic impulses via the wanton purchases of things that go ‘beep’ is constantly at odds with my more basic and all-together more irritating need for constant sustenance. And since bread is so expensive these days, my desire for upper echelon mobile devices is repeatedly snubbed in favour of a yummy pint at Rafiki’s and maybe some chips.

I will freely admit that I am at the mercy of my Vodacom contract. If it ain’t free, it ain’t mine. To illustrate my point, I give you this: in the world of iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android, I am currently Tweeting my way across the Information Super highway on a Nokia Navigator.

Justin Bieber will Destroy You, and Probably Me Too

2011-06-23T11:55:00.002+02:00

Ok, so I came across this article a little late, but the terrifying implications are in no way lessened by the passage of a few days.

The hammer has been struck, the herald has tweeted, the sacrificial emo virgin has been set alight atop Island Def Jam studios.

The Biebette army has cast its first stone.

It looked like this

So, boring story short, Miss Kevin Kristopik hacked into the Twitter account of Miss Bieber’s super bestest friend; let’s call him Miss Susie Sparklepants. My guess is that Miss Kristopik was just so SOOP XcItED 2 be lyk LOLZing wit USHA that she lost all her boy juices and face-planted her keyboard, which, by pure coincidence, is exactly how anyone even vaguely related to the Biebster enters their personal password.

Platypus 'Duos'

2011-06-03T17:04:00.005+02:00

What are the chances? A day after I post my epic ode to the Platypus and I stumble upon the most irrefutable proof of their superiority, published by an organization only slightly less reputable than myself.

As it turns out, the platypus has the capacity for both blood curdling violence and merciful healing.

Yea, for with his webbed, venomous paw doth he both giveth and taketh away.

“Amen, bitches.”

It seems that the heart-stopping awesomeness of the platypus extends not just to its ability to singlehandedly bring the human race crumbling down to a jabbering mass of structureless, gurgling amoeboids, but to the unique cells and particles that make up its other-worldly body. To be more specific, its ‘platypus proteins’.

F*ck You, I'm a Platypus!

2011-06-01T09:35:00.001+02:00

Let me begin again, in a fashion that I am becoming quite comfortable with, by asking a rhetorical question: how can I fully and successfully relate to you the sheer, nut-blasting awesomeness of that most radical of monotremes, that patch-quilt of insanity and super powers, the mother-fucking platypus?!

If the animal kingdom was the X-Men, then the platypus would be Wolverine. If Australia was the DC universe, he’d be Batman. If nature was a bunch of kids playing cops and robbers in the 30s, he’d be the little dickhead claiming he’s wrapped in a force field, waving around an imaginary laser-gun and screaming, “You can’t kill me!”

The platypus’s physical and biological makeup makes God look like Dr Frankenstein if Dr Frankenstein had played too many video games as a kid – or that, conversely, while under a sudden, unexpected and completely misguided desire to bond (an affliction that has been known to strike many a father without warning) God tossed a few DIY packs Old Nick’s way, chiming; “Come on, son. Let’s see if you and the old man don’t share a keen interest in taxidermy.”

Grow a Pair. Vote, Damnit.

2011-05-17T17:55:00.002+02:00

Ok, here it comes; a super-quick post about voting.

Do it.

Yes, 99% of the time, it’s a waste of a perfectly good holiday. There is always a gigantic list of things we’d rather be up to, often beginning and ending with ‘be hung-over’. It’s a veritable all-star list of the least pleasant things to be doing and/or suffering simultaneously: headaches, queuing, people, standing, early mornings and, inevitably, children. Why people bring their kids along to vote will always be a mystery to me. It benefits no one. The kid cares a little bit less than fuck-all and, as the screaming of a spoilt toddler that can’t understand why its mother isn’t currently shoveling sugar-coated cereal into its face is in the top five list of ‘worst-things-to-endure-with-a-hangover’, the experience is ironically detrimental to its future. The responsible parents are, in a very real way, endangering the life of their child, a deed of such colossal irresponsibility that the only just punishment should be for said folks to be held upon the ground and Five-Knuckle Shuffled by each and every voter under the age of thirty.

Seinfeld VS Stephen King

2011-04-26T12:07:00.004+02:00

Ok, let’s get something straight right off the bat: Stephen King is the greatest author alive today. At any point in time, if people writing books coincides with Stephen King being alive, he is automatically better at it than anyone else. This is irrelevant of age or incarnation. Due to the cyclical nature of time, be he five, forty-five, or a porpoise-fern hybrid re-incarnated in an Eco-Soviet lab one-hundred and thirty years from now, the inevitable fact that the slowly spiralling millennia will eventually have him putting pen to paper once again makes him unbeatable. Why his name isn’t an adjective for awesome yet, only the gods – and possibly Stephen King – know.

Those of you who disagree are wrong. I can only imagine that you, A: haven’t read him, B: are illiterate, or C: are an amorphous, bacterial blob slowly circling the crater of an underwater vent, deep in an ocean trench where the crushing weight of the black water severs all chance that the warm touch of the sun’s rays will ever bring any life to the tiny, cold, sputtering spark that may or may not be called your soul.

For those of you who prefer Dean Koontz... well, I guess I should be happy you can read at all.

May I suggest a few more equally scintillating reads?

The Glitzy World of Blogging, Online STDs and Minkie’s Bum

2011-03-30T09:39:00.007+02:00

Waily waily, whatever shall I do? The call of fame, fortune, loose women and celebrity gambling is calling me, yet how much of myself am I willing to sacrifice to become a stumbling part of this A-list parade?

Seeing as how this blog has now been (relatively) functional for close to a year, I figure that my celebrity status is but a few scant months in my future.

I can smell the Crystal and Caviar from here.

Don’t forget the hookers.

Being the unforgivable blogging n00b that I still am, finding my footing took a while. I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me to work out how to attach a Twitter and Facebook link to each post (an effort that I am almost positive permanently corrupted my blog’s code).

To coin a phrase; I’ve been going about this like a very nervous bull in a china shop trying really hard not to break anything. ‘Trial and Error’ has been the name of the game, as I copy, paste, cut and load my way towards social godhood, using my template’s code like a cork board and my refresh button like a bottomless bottle of digital correction fluid.

RAM Fest[ation] 2011

2011-03-11T10:36:00.006+02:00

I’m going to be honest; it is unlikely that this article is going to be anything more than a blurry summation of my recent experiences at that festival of festivals, that alternative jamboree, that Voltron of teenage angst and masked ball of sub-genres, the ever-popular RAM Fest.

For those of you who don’t know, Ram Fest is what happens when you take a fourteen year old boy from Durbanville, place him in a dusty Converse shoebox with a Klingon, shake it up in a dustpan just arse-wise of Worcester and then sit back and watch them write poetry together. It’s a unique experience. It’s the sort of festival where you wake up each morning feeling like you’ve been roofied by the sun and tea-bagged by a character from peanuts.

This dick.

War of the Worlds: Time lapse video by Rafael Asquith (Snide comments optional)

2011-01-26T17:53:00.002+02:00

Just came across this fantastic video by Rafael Asquith at The Curious Brain.

None of the usual snide remarks on my part, just a really cool video.

Beautiful imagery combined with a stirring soundtrack (Kinda. It sounds like something one would describe as stirring. Of course, that would depend on one's definition of stirring. Both the intro to Apocalypse Now and the opening sequence of Undressed and Over Sexed were considerably stirring, but in dramatically different ways. I'm beginning to suspect that 'stirring' a misleading and altogether crap word')

Stirring: That feeling you get when your brain is balanced somewhere between ‘awesome’ and ‘upsetting’.

Right, I may have lied about the snide comments.

The Long Finger of the Law

2011-01-21T09:30:00.004+02:00

Do you know what I love the most about Cape Town (aside from the barely contained social angst lurking behind the tanned smiles, bleached teeth and carefully lined eyes)? Everything works. I’m not suggesting that the city is a super-streamlined machine, devoid of kinks, functioning at optimal... um... functionality. It’s no utopia, but it beats the hell out of hiking three kilometres up a mountain to fetch your drinking water (Grahamstown) and at least our Home Affairs has shelves (P.E.)

Granted, both my examples are set in the Eastern Cape, and one could argue that they have a valid reason behind their slip in services.

Makana Municipality recently set up a multimillion-Rand government-funded research department to investigate and analyse what is being tagged as ‘The Event’. Two city councillors were sitting by the highway, throwing rocks at cars, when one accidently dropped his speckled stone. There was a flash of light and the surrounding grass began to glow a bright orange and yellow. Almost immediately, the grass began to crackle and turn black. To their surprise, the councillors discovered the strange radiance to be incredibly hot when they burnt their hands trying to pick it up, and inedible, when they burnt their mouths.

Officials believe that this curious energy could be the key to vastly increased production and a drastic change in lifestyle for all South Africans. To this end, the majority of Eastern Cape developmental funding is being channelled into the study and attempted reproduction of this event, what has become dubbed as the “Ow-wi Orange Shoo-Shoo.”

All other provincial services have subsequently been put on hold.

The Eastern Cape Premier takes science seriously.

Other provinces, however, have little to no excuse. Xenophobia in Gauteng, the elderly in the Northern Cape and pronunciation in Kwazulu Natal; all of these are rampant problems that have yet to be correctly addressed.

The Vampire Diaries - like punching kids for lunch money

2011-01-18T10:07:00.003+02:00

I actually had another post planned for this week, but last night changed that.

I did a bad, bad thing.

Throwing caution and my own trepidation to the wind, I succumbed to social pressure and, in a terribly misguided attempt to get the cool kids to like me, double-clicked season one, episode one of The Vampire Diaries.

What a fool I was.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting. Twilight? More pasty-faced cheerleaders pretending to be Goths, forced teenage angst and inappropriately drawn out silences that would have Woody Allen gnawing through his own wrists. (Ah yes, and shots of wrists. Lots of shots of pale, pulsing wrists and necks because, you know, they’re like boobs to vampires.)

At worst, I suspected, it would be another mediocre retelling of the nerd romance myth. The different, troubled, introspective, unquestionably brilliant yet vastly misunderstood, loner girl (who, by a wonderful, convenient fluke, is also smoking hot) becomes the romantic obsession of a several-century old geezer with the face of a Hugo Boss model and the body of Kate Moss.

Seriously, which one is the vampire?

Oh, and she loves art. Did we mention that she loves art? She really… fucking… loves… art. And poetry. And sunsets. And she cares about Darfur, and she knows where it is! And she doesn’t drink. And she plays instruments… like, four. And she can name every single classical composer and identify their most obscure works after hearing only a spilt second snippet of oboe solo while tied up, submerged in jam, with a howling cat stapled to her forehead.

Also, she probably wears glasses.

She is Hipster God.

Organs on the outside. Conform with that, bitches.

Cheetah Relieves Itself Through Goofy Game Ranger's Sunroof - Just... I mean... wow...

2010-12-09T15:24:00.010+02:00

I had to deliberate with myself carefully before deciding to post this. I couldn’t quite decided if this was just crass toilet humour or if it was legitimately funny. The base side of my brain – the half responsible for sexual impulses, fetishes, spontaneous bouts of violence, binge drinking and an inexplicable appreciation of SABC 1 and 2 – screamed, “Yes, damnit! It’s a cheetah pooping on a game ranger!”

The right half – responsible for logical reasoning, witty comebacks, bohemian waffling and my right index finger – said, “Oh FUCK! That’s a cheetah pooping on a game ranger!”

In the end, I didn’t have to deliberate for too long.

I’ll justify it thus, however: for centuries upon centuries, mankind has been shitting all over nature. It’s only fair that nature gets to shit al over us.

One–nil, Nature. Our move…

PETA Kills Animals - There, i said it

2010-12-08T17:32:00.006+02:00

Why am I posting this, when I know I’ll get flack for it? Because I firmly believe that companies like PETA and Greenpeace are the devil.

I don’t doubt for a second that the following facts are true. Biasly presented, maybe, but true non-the-less.

People often seem to forget that the majority of these giant NGOs are multinational corporations, operating annual advertising and P.R. campaigns across multiple continents. Now, anyone involved in advertising knows that these campaigns cost a fortune; we’re talking tens of millions of dollars each year, possibly close to or into the hundreds even (collectively). In order to accomplish the mammoth task of making every single child on the planet feel guilty simultaneously for buying a puppy rather than adopting one (and, in the process, engendering life-long guilt and a subconsciously seated bitterness towards said new pet for all the innocent puppies that had to die for it to find a comfy home) PETA needs a crap load of money.

Guess who gives it to them?

Wrong

Cheating the Car Guard and Losing - a hilarious spectator sport

2010-12-07T18:48:00.002+02:00

How do I fully express, in simple words, what I witnessed at the intersection of Long and Buitensingel St. yesterday afternoon? How can I relate how this single event seems to have made all the trials I have experienced up ‘till this point seem entirely worth it? (Although, there are still a few hazy encounters on the early morning streets of Grahamstown I could probably do without. And Observatory. And Russell Road, Port Elizabeth. But, perhaps, I digress…)

Have you ever come to the complete end of you’re tether and just decided, “Fuck it!”?

Let's Get 80s Animated - on Facebook!

2010-12-03T17:29:00.008+02:00

Ok, so this isn't the usual thing I post about (even slightly) and, as a rule, I hate causes. I have enough of my own problems without having to worry about starving children in Yugoslavia or bread shortages on Tatooine (actually, that one might upset me). But there is a nugget of awesome here that I can't ignore. The possibility of a united Book of Faces populated entirely by Cartoons! And not just any cartoons... 80s CARTOONS!

F*CK yeah!

The Idea? To show global support for the fight against child abuse by changing you profile pic on FB to that of your favorite, old school cartoon character.

The Goal? By the 6^th of December, to have a Facebook populated entirely by cartoons.

If you don’t think that’s noble, kill yourself.

Passive Aggression and the Cape Town Douche

2010-10-05T18:12:00.010+02:00

If Cape Town drivers were just open about their dickness, it would be better. If the bimbo were to brazenly flip you the bird while cutting you off, you could at least yell and curse AT her, rather than towards her retreating back. Instead, she pretends like she doesn't see you as she forces you off the road and through a playground of preschoolers. She is distracted. By her cell phone. Which is also illegal. But how was she to know?

"Who's gonna pay to get this powder-paint off my windshield?"

Cape Town has got to be the drama-queen capitol of SA. It also has, by far and large, the worst drivers in the Southen Hemisphere, a fact that is indubitably linked to the prior.

Sometimes, it feels like I’m living in the world’s biggest girls-only high-school. Someone always has a problem with someone else – someone has always said the wrong thing, spoken to the wrong person, worn the wrong shoes with the wrong pants or boned the wrong ex on the dance floor of Tin Roof. And the condemnations are always so vehement, so pointed and, often time, so face-slappingly biased that the implication that you even slightly empathise with the pouting whiner is enough to make you want to stomp off and whine about it to someone else, then come back and stab the offending douche in the eye with a fork, because they so vehemently and so pointedly complained so quietly.

Why Freehand is Like a Dead Guy in Traffic

2010-08-25T15:52:00.002+02:00

Having Freehand operating on a machine in an up to date agency is like being stuck behind a geriatric who's just suffered a fatal heart attack doing 40 in the fast lane. Initially, he just slows people down and pisses them off. The car cruises down the road, to all appearances harmless, all other commuters unaware that there is a corpse behind the wheel. This is until traffic makes a sudden turn, and the 'harmless' vehicle, propelled by software that is slowly beginning to bloat in the hot sun, plows into a roadside cafe, killing women, children and unemployed actors alike.

Using Illustrator to then try and fix this mess is like harvesting grandpa’s blasted organs to try and bring Little Jimmy (table 12, Cream-Soda Float, R12.50) back from the dead.

Global Warming: Once Liars, Always Liars.

2010-03-16T12:47:00.006+02:00

From

News 24

3/15/2010 5:10:30 PM Sydney - Australia's top scientists on Monday released a "State of the Climate" report at a time of growing scepticism over climate change as a result of revelations of errors in some global scientific reports.

The scientists said their monitoring and research of the world's driest inhabited continent for 100 years "clearly demonstrate that climate change is real".

"We are seeing significant evidence of a changing climate. We are warming in every part of the country during every season and as each decade goes by, the records are being broken," said Megan Clark, head of Australia's state-backed Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged in January its 2007 report had exaggerated the pace of Himalayan glaciers melting, and in February said the report also had overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level.

The 2007 report is based on the work of thousands of scientists and is the main policy guide for governments looking to act on climate change. Sceptics have leapt on the errors, saying they undermine the science of climate change but the IPCC, which has announced a review, has defended its work.

--------------

This article was sent to me recently and i couldn't help responding.

When i tell people that i don't believe in the hype of Global Warming, they automatically take it to mean that i don't believe in Climate Change. This is rubbish. not believing in Climate Change is like not believing in the moon. It's everywhere and has been for forever, certainly long before our or any species was around to notice. It's an integral part of the chaotically fluctuating system that makes up our world - hell, our universe, for that matter. I'd happily bet money - if i thought i'd live long enough to see it pay out - that when we eventually find ourselves a new planet to colonize, we'll eventually end up having the same problems over there. Why? Because it's nature, and it's our phenomenally arrogant assumption that it's all our fault that i find mind-boggling. I don't deny that we may have helped it on it's way, but when you consider that we're approximately 2500 years overdue for a new Ice Age, it's hard to imagine we've helped it by much.

Anyway, go ahead and read the rest of the above article if you're interested (especially if you live in Australia). It's nothing new, though.

Here's my response:

------------------------------------------

Read more »

To All You Cyclists...

2010-03-08T09:01:00.004+02:00

To all you Cyclists: You are not cars. This may surprise you, but it is the truth. You are not encased in a metal frame, surrounded by airbags and securely buckled in. You are decidedly squishy (crunchy in places). You ARE, however, required to follow the same rules as cars. Now, these rule were invented to aid people driving around in giant, aluminum contraptions designed to keep them alive. You do not have this luxury. Why then, one must ask, do you insist on flouting these rules? Your size and dexterity on the road does not preclude you from grievous bodily damage or general squishing when, say, you decide to ignore the robot at a busy fourway. If a man were to go strolling down the highway on stilts during rush hour traffic, we would call him an idiot, If not a raging mad-man, yet you attempt a similar balancing act on a daily basis, but at potentially fatal speeds. Now, when the man on stilts gets turned to putty by a passing meat truck, everyone says he had it coming, but when a cyclist comes short, a thousand lycra-clad arms are thrown up in protest, denouncing motorists as blind, ignorant, blundering fools, ignoring the fact that said cyclist was popping a wheelie at 90kmph down St Louries in the oncoming lane (for example). I mention this because the Cape Argus is coming up and near on a trillion cyclists are about to descend upon a city notorious for it’s traffic. As a motorist, you can’t help but be aware of you brightly coloured fellows and fellowettes. You’re everywhere. It’s like trying to drive through a spandex-sporting, eco-friendly swarm of giant locusts, settling on our fair city and moving, en masse, from coffee shop to coffee shop, devouring our resources as you go and making our favourite booths smell faintly of ammonia and baked rubber. Ignoring your presence is, unfortunately, not an option. As motorists, we have no choice but to pay you attention. I only ask that, when you are flying down Settlers Way with no mirrors, no seat-belts, in-adequate brakes (essentially on a vehicle that, if it had an engine – but was still doing the same speed regardless – would be considered un-roadworthy), shiny new Oakley’s and a wonton disregard for blind spots, you pay us the same courtesy. Because, when a cyclist gets into an accident, he’s not the only one who gets hurt. Sometimes our cars get dinged.

Jekyll and Hyde Online

2009-06-09T12:28:00.004+02:00

So this is pretty much a bit of a rage on my part. Wrote my first angry letter earlier today to a data recovery software producer (was actually my second, but my real first one got sent to a German guy who couldn't read it, I discovered, so that doesn't count).

I finally became fed up with seemingly reliable companies saying something on their website and then not living up to it.

Not to sound too naive or anything, but does everyone on the internet lie? The nicest people resort to shit-talking the second they get online. And I’m not here to ponder the psychology behind it or the pros and cons of this digital freedom - most of it is pretty matter of fact - but I must wonder when seemingly reputable companies jump on this bandwagon.

Do ethics and standards not translate onto the internet? You find companies that, in person, engage with their customers in a very professional fashion, but put them online and suddenly they’re swindling and tricking with the best scammers. It’s as though some companies see the internet as that wide open, liminal space where you can say and promise anything without threat of moral or legal repercussion.

And they may be right.

When was the last time you saw a headline such as “Nigerian Scammer Syndicate Brought to Justice” or “Online Instant Acne Cure Company Tried for Fraud”. Companies seem to have free reign to say and do whatever they want online and, so long as people are making money and those being taken in by these fraudster are across the oceans, well out of earshot, no-one seems to mind.

Sometimes you simply wish that you could put your hand through your computer screen and hit the chump grinning on the other side.

Anyway, the affore-mentioned company I targeted with my letter wasn’t as bad as the scammers I just mentioned, but I was at the end of my tether.

Maybe I was too harsh and maybe I wasn’t, but I’ll tell you what; I certainly feel a bit better.

Here it is:

----------------------------------------

A long awaited post and a little more fiction

2009-05-26T00:06:00.005+02:00

So it has been a long time since i posted anything.

I've been incredibly busy with my studies, with the occasional bit of freelance work to keep my free hours occupied. I haven't done much in the way of comic illustration in quite a while now, but i still got a few ideas up my sleeve.

What i have been doing a fair amount of recently is writing. My shorts are coming along well, and the newest plan is to have enough completed to my satisfaction by the end of next year to self-publish a small anthology (designed and laid out by myself, of course).

What is odd is how a number of my stories have begun shifting away from pulp horror to more dramatic intensity. That's not to say that they're becoming poignant or anything - heaven forbid - but more and more they've begun focusing on the characters rather than the action.

Hmmm... hope this doesn't mean i'm growing up.

Never fear though, there's still a decent smattering of gristle and gore, in between the occasional bouts of self-realisation and existential epiphanies.

Here's a bit of flash writing i did as a fun exercise.

It's actually a bit long to be considered flash fiction - around 800 words, i think - but my take out was the same. Trying to successfully condense a story into a single page is trickier than one would imagine. You eventually end up staring at the screen for two hours trying to decide exactly which last two words you should take out and whether you really need that last 'and'.

Anyway, here it is:

(P.S. it would'nt let me cut and paste from the origional doc, so have had to jerry-rig it. if there's a spelling mistake or a bit that should have been italisized and isn't, i'm sorry, but eh...)

(P.P.S. This story has since been edited for a reading at the Bloody Parchment reading - 28/10/2011.)

A Crowd Gathered

The bullet took him just below his left eye. The socket crumbled inwards as his cheek-bone disintegrated under the force of the .45 caliber slug.

His sight doubled. He blinked and his left lid refused to respond.

This isn't what I expected, he thought as he dropped to his knees, This isn't how it's supposed to be.

A spasm ran through his body and he realised he couldn't feel his legs. He felt a tickling in his gut and thought that, very soon, his bowels were going to let go.

A cop's salary is worth more than this, he thought. The left side of his face was turning warm and a spreading section of his white, collared shirt began to cling to his breast. The stubble on his jaw tickled as thin, delicate waves washed over his cheek and slid affectionately down his neck and he thought of how embarrassing it would be to soil himself in front of all these people.

At least a cop has a pension.

Around him, people were screaming.

Colourful streamers still hung in the air.

He slowly raised his hand to his face. When he brought it away, a slick of red coated his palm. He held it up to his eyes and watched as thick droplets began to roll slowly down the inside of his wrist. His vision blurred then snapped into sharp contrast. Everything flashed white then suddenly went grey. He was struck by a momentary panic at the loss of his sight before realising that he had fallen over - that the left side of his face now lay against the pavement. A sucking sensation tugged at his scalp as something thick and warm slid out of his skull, followed by an even more alien feeling: the cool touch of a breeze on the inside of his head.

It passed through. I can't believe it.

Shadows flicked past the edge of his vision. He tried rolling his eyes in their direction. His right eye twitched only slightly. From his left there was no movement at all. The corresponding ear heard nothing but a high-pitched ringing. The sound filtering through his right was muddy and the hurried thumping of the footsteps around him seemed out of sync with the quickly passing shadows.

Where are you running? he tried to ask.

He felt hands on his back and was gently rolled over. The sudden, harsh light sent a painful jolt through his head but not even his right eye would blink this time. His left eye was dead. Through his dimming vision he recognised the uniform above him - all red and green with shining yellow - but try as he might he couldn't bring the name to mind. The person's face was a blur.

Behind his helper, more colourful uniforms flickered past, while darker silhouettes rushed in every direction. From a thousand miles away, walkie-talkies squawked. As his vision dimmed, he could see the last of the confetti as it drifted down from the sky to settle around him. From inside his chest, his lungs began to bubble as they slowly filled with blood.

Where are they running? he asked again, but from the lone figure above him there was no response as he cut open his jacket and shirt. Be careful of my badge, he nearly asked, but then remembered; he didn't have that badge anymore.

His vision was now a collection of white and grey silhouettes, but he felt he was thinking more clearly.

It won't be that bad. Isn't it better that it passed right through?

Yes, he was sure. There was less chance of infection.

His vision faded to white, but that was okay. He was a little sleepy and he deserved some rest.

What a stroke of luck that it passed right through, he thought as the lone figure above him worked in vain and, along side them, a far greater crowd had gathered; their attention elsewhere.

-end-

Brett Rex Bruton

26-10-11

Lectcha Sketch 14 - Patience

2009-02-03T13:36:00.002+02:00

Lectcha Sketch 13

2008-10-06T16:33:00.004+02:00

OK, I've made the font a little bigger in number 12, so should be easier to read now (I just can't get a good save-for-web setting when it comes to fonts). Without further ado, though, here is Lectcha Sketch number 13!!! "Rain Dance..."

Lectcha Sketch 12

2008-09-18T11:26:00.004+02:00

The next Lectcha Sketch! Yay. Been a while coming. Oddly enough, I've posted this one now, even though I've been working on another for a while. It just so happened that this one popped up and got finished before the one that raised it's head earlier. Oh, well, them's the breaks... I've decided to become a little more professional about these comix. I've started thinking that maybe, with just a little more effort, I can turn them into something - just what though I'm not yet sure. You may notice that I'm starting to draw some colour inspiration from other comic artists. Otherwise, I'm gonna start refining my style - maybe spend more than five minutes drawing them; little things like that.

Perry Bible Fellowship

2008-08-26T13:07:00.006+02:00

Ok, so i now that it's been ages since my last post, but life's been helluva busy the last few weeks. Got a bunch of ideas but no time to see them to fruition. As a quick post, i thought i'd do something i've been meaning to for a while. Some of you may have noticed that i have a link to something called The Perry Bible Fellowship. No, i'm not a weird, religious nutter. The site is the home page for the comic work by the illustrator Nicholas Gurewitch. He's had a pretty cool career, and if want to know more about it... well, you fingers work and god invented Wikipedia for a reason (a point of topic for a later post, by the way). All i'll say is the guy is brilliant. His comics are just about as off-beat as they can get without going too much over the line (although some might debate that... but they're wrong). So here's an example. If it tickles your prostate in just the right way, check out his site here. Careful though, first time i visited i got stuck for hours trying to get through them all. Thanks Nic P.S. i've decided that capital i's are for losers. Dot, no dot - come on! it's the same thing. It's that flipping lower-case L that's got the problem.

Lectcha Sketch #11 1/2

2008-08-12T23:13:00.002+02:00

So I'm posting two comics for a good reason: I had this brief moment when I thought that no-one would get the first one and so hastened into a second one (hastened being the operative word). Posting them together because the second isn't really... um... good. As it is though, I might enjoy it more.

Lectcha Sketch #10

2008-08-07T20:16:00.002+02:00

This is one of the best examples of the mentality behind Lectcha Sketch. I have NO idea where this came from. My brain had melted. Marketing was winning. I don't even know if I knew that I was drawing. Then my friend made some comment and something clicked..

Impatient Cops

2008-08-05T15:26:00.004+02:00

I've eventually had it. (Warning, this is probably going to turn into a rant.) Like everyone else in this city, I've become accustomed to pulling over to allow the regular flow of police and traffic officers right of way during the worst of rush hour traffic. We don't just do this to be polite, of course. Aside from the potential loss of life that may occur as the result of preventing a police car or ambulance from arrive at a scene on time (yes, we care, damnit!), I believe that this bit of road etiquette is in fact law; one of the few bits of road legislation that the majority of the motorists in this country adhere to. What apt irony it is then that this, one of the few upstanding habits still remaining on our motorways, is being so blatantly abused by our local authority figures. Now, I'm all for abusing ones position every now and then - that's one of the unofficial perks of being in any position of authority or power. Everyone expects it and would be liars if they said that they wouldn't like to themselves. There is an unspoken rule, however, that you do your best not to look like you're doing it. In most cases, it's easy enough to say that no-one likes a smart-arse, but when it comes to police or medical vehicles slipping through busy traffic the scenario is a little different. People aren't letting you through because you're the boss - it's not because of respect or fear - it's because they believe that you are off to save a person's life and that any delay may have potentially grave consequences. It's no secret, of course, that the thumb may, on occasion, "accidentally" find the siren button, or that the "emergency call" may be suddenly resolved, conveniently as you pass you home. These transgressions are tolerated, if not acceptable. But the days of subtle manipulation of the bounds of ones authority are long gone, it appears. The officers of today may as well be speeding down the white line with their sirens blaring and the bird out the window, flipping off other motorists as they pass, for all the discretion they are using. I realize that it is more likely that accidents will occur during rush hour, but lets be serious: I see more police vehicles flying past me on the highway between five and six than I see throughout the rest of the week during normal hours. I was even passed by a blaring Casper a few weeks ago. Where could he be going? I'm doubting that his passengers are in any rush. The final straw for me was early last week when I watched a police van on the M3 leapfrogging between cars. He would put on his siren, pull out between traffic, pass a car or two and then pull back in. A few minutes later and he'd do it again. And again. And again. It became so frustrating to watch that some motorists hooted, yet still the unknowing drivers up ahead continued to let him pass, unaware of how absurdly blatant his insult was. I have to imagine that some were suspicious though, with the stop, start, stop, start of his warbling siren periodically punctuating the noise of traffic. I say final straw, but what is there to do? Report them? Ha ha. Fat load of good that'll do. Besides, there's always the chance, however slim, that they turn out to be one of the good guys doing their job. Sometimes I depress myself.

2008-07-18T13:13:00.003+02:00

This is an earlier post from my other portfolio blog; Poorboy Illustration. I just realised how silly it was that I posted a little history on Lectcha Sketch there and not here, where the majority of the Lectcha Sketch action happens. Nothing too exciting, just relevant: Lectcha Sketch is ancient. It's been going for about seven years, I think - in an unofficial capacity - which is more time that I've put into just about anything besides life. It was born out of boredom; out of sitting for hours through various lectures at Rhodes university, doodling on my writing pad as a way of whittling away the hours before The Rat and Parrot opened it's door (which was usually around eleven/twelve AM, but we won't go into that now). Many an English poetry lecture was spent idly sketching with a ballpoint pen, watching the clock and letting my imagination flop around on the desk like a dying fish. English lectures were the worst. You'd think that a course dedicated to the creative literary expression of our language would hold some element of intrigue, but nay, it was not to be. Rather, historical, creative giants such as Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney were dissected and disseminated with as much emotion as one would a laboratory rat: "Here is the heart, here are the lungs, this is what makes it tick, write a thousand words on the Yeats' central nervous system, wash your hands and don't let the swing door hit you in the arse". It's ironic that those student who were truly interested in the works and literature had to take separate language courses such as Modern Fiction and Afikaans and Nederlandic Studies (pretty sure that's spelt wrong) in order to get a little stimulating discussion. I ended up with the opinion that all English writers are kak and that, for decent, rousing literature, you need to go elsewhere (Italy and South America are my preferred countries). I digress heavily though. Boredom wasn't always the main impetus behind the comics. Every now and then I would find myself inspired by some interesting kernel or theory, for what ever reason, and put pen to paper in a way that wasn't particularly academic but definitely amusing (to me at least). For this reason, some of my comics are terribly specific, and often won't be caught by anyone who doesn't know exactly what I'm talking about. I like to think that the people who do get them feel quite appreciative though - that someone with an Art Theory background will laugh a little bit harder at a certain comic because it feel like an in-joke. I'm all for in-jokes. You other sods can take it as it comes. ;) Oddly enough, it is my other blog - These Creases - that has become the home page for my Lectcha Sketch comics. Maybe it's because of their randomness and offbeat style, but it just felt right to post them there first. I guess it's because they're doodles and don't really speak volumes about my illustrative style. For whatever reason though, if you enjoy them and like a little bit of background on each (when there is some) that's the place to go.

Lectcha Sketch #9

2008-07-18T00:09:00.003+02:00

This fellow earned my respect. There's something to be said for a man who, although paralyzed from the neck down, still manages to get it up regularly enough to pleasure his wife. Also, he spun the world backwards and turned back time. That was pretty cool too.

The Creative Breakdown: A Week in the Life Of

2008-06-24T14:58:00.010+02:00

So I'm on holiday, and i can tell you that it's about time too.

The last few weeks (it was heading towards months actually) have been ridiculous.

Every night has been a late night, every morning an early morning, and with really only one day a week off to catch my breath. Granted, some might argue that the weekend is two days long, but those people are stupid.

Here's a breakdown of a week in the life of a creative:

Monday: Just make it to work on time. Growl disagreeably at co-workers for six to eight hours before going home, then spend the rest of the night preparing the work for Tuesday that should have been done six to eight hours ago.

Tuesday: Throw out everything you did on Monday night and start again. Work studiously throughout the day and try to leave a little early so that you can beat traffic, relax a bit and sort out your head-space for the rest of the week.

Wednesday: Quickly realise that your few moments of valuable mental detox the day before have cost you valuable hours and that the presentation that you are supposed to make hasn't progressed much beyond the black-line marker scamp scratched between dozens of other "inspirational" doodles that you knew weren't going to work but which you spend hours drawing anyway because you were taught that it stimulates the "creative process". Smoke too much (optional). Drink incalculable amounts of coffee (non-optional). Get home late with more work than you started the day with. Work through the night and early morning, repeatedly cursing the fact that there's no beer in the fridge. Detox is forgotten under a barrage of caffine and nicotine.

Thursday: Arrive late for work, not having slept. An aggressive sense of doom permiates you mood. You hate the world, your work and your alarm clock. You can't imagine how you're going to get everything done in the next twenty-four hours. You don't leave you desk for the next nine hours except to answer nature's incessant prodding. You go home miserable. By midnight, however, most of your problems seemed to have worked themselves out. The work looks suitably profesional and it begins to look like all your hard work and stress have paid off. You risk loosing a bit more sleep in order to check for and sort out any final layout problems. You go to bed confident that, even if a few little things go wrong, you should have no problem at all getting them sorted out before deadline.

Friday: Everything goes wrong. Most likely you have woken up late. You have just had a small error pointed out to you that you would never have noticed but which apparently glares like a shining becon to everyone else. Normally it would have taken only minutes to fix, but in your overconfidence the night before and unaware of the effects that several days of lost sleep and your quickly growing coffee addiction have had on you, you command-S saved over you original file. You attempt to cram a day's worth of work into a few hours. Halfway through this you experience a moment of clarity wherein you realise that your idea is rubbish and that you should have stuck with the one you tossed out on Tuesday. You sneek into deadline with only moments to spare, swearing blind that you're happy with the work when in actual fact you believe that a quadraplegic chimpanzee with a dyslexic catfish sitting by it's side could have done better. You stop at the pub in order to miss traffic on the way home.

Saturday: You arrive home sometime around sunrise, successfully having missed traffic. You climb into bed and sleep untill late afternoon, then watch movies from a horizontal possition on the couch while thinking of excuses why you can't meet your friends out tonight. For reasons unexplainable you still don't get to bed before one-thirty AM.

Sunday: You try and enjoy your morning as much as possible. Maybe you stand in the sun for a few minutes. Then you drink a mug of coffee and begin prepairing for Monday, wishing that you had a longer weekend.

And that pretty much sums it up. But i'm out! (at least for a few weeks)

As it is, I doubt that I'm gonna get many chances to post stuff. I'll be flying off to Mauritius in a week or so for a familiy holiday, so it'll be complately dead over that time. I'm sure you can imagine how disapointed I am...

I'll post when I post. Hell, maybe I'll be totally lame and put up some pictures - but I wouldn't hold my breath.

A Chamber of One - a little preview

2008-06-18T14:13:00.005+02:00

Okay, so the novel is back on the table - sort of. I realised that, after so much time, there's so much of my own story that I'm no longer sure of myself that jumping straight back into it was impossible without risking leaving some gigantic hole. Now, trying to edit 150 pages off a computers screen is too horrible to think of, and lugging around a ring-binder file everywhere I go so that I can grab a bit of editing here and there is ridiculously impractical (seriously - experience talking. Don't even try it.) I considered my predicament and thought that the best way to get the show on the road was to try and insert it into my routine, a greater portion of which is constantly being on the look-out for opportunities when I can bounce out of work for a little read by myself. I can put away a stranger's novel in a few days in this fashion, surely I can put a dent in my own? The only thing I was lacking was the necessary format... So guess what? I am now in the possession of a printed and bound copy of my own novel (part 1). It was a surprisingly cool sensation. I expected it would be a bit of a gas, but when the printer handed me a fully printed and bound copy of my own work, the strangest thing happened: I felt like a real author. Crazy, I know. It just looked so much like a book - like something you'd pick up off the selves at Exclusive Books or Fogarty's - that it was hard not to feel exceedingly chuffed. I couldn't wait for someone to ask me what I was reading, just so that I could flip them the cover and reply; "Oh, nothing really." Hasn't happened yet, but there's still time... So here's the cover and a little excerpt from the first half of my book; A Chamber of One. The text has been unedited so far, so there are probably a few spelling mistakes, and there's a good chance that some of the text might be changed before it's done (I haven't gotten this far into the editing yet) but hey, enough people have read it so far that I'm not overly concerned. Think of this as similar to when bands release rough, preview tracks online. The final result will be more streamlined and refined. But until then...

(An excerpt from Chapter 2 - Friday: Dreams and Monsters)

Rebecca shifted uncomfortably in her sleep. Back and forth she turned as she tried to escape a troubling dream that would soon be lost from her memory for ever. She was trapped in a world of shifting shadows and darkness where there really were monsters in your closet. It didn’t matter that you knew that the black shapes drifting just beyond the cracked open door were nothing more than hung clothes, strung up jackets and pants, because it wasn’t the clothes that you had to worry about. No, what you really had to worry about were the shapes themselves, the dark silhouettes of your wardrobe, because, in the dark, these shadows grew. They joined and blended, wrapped together and grew tooth and claw. And then, as you slept, the cupboard door would creek open and the dark would step into your room. A thing begot of the darkness of everything normal and safe in your world; monstrous and foreign in its entirety.

Rebecca heard the door creek. Her eyes and mouth sprang open as she sucked in a lungful of predawn darkness. The hair beside her ears and high up on her neck bristled as her skin contracted and her heart pounded in her skull. She nearly panicked when all that met her was a muddled blur of black and gray. Her eyes darted back and forth in search of something recognizable in the sleep addled mess around her, but slowly, as reality began to assert its self, her room began to swim into focus.

She tried to force herself to relax. She lay in her bed and concentrated on slowing her breathing. She hoped that she hadn’t cried out in her sleep and woken anyone.

What a dream, she thought even as the images faded from her memory. She blinked sleep out of her eyes and thought to herself how difficult it was going to be to nod off again after such a humdinger of a nightmare. She groaned silently to herself. Shit, she thought, it’s not even light out yet.

She rolled onto her side to reach for the glass of water beside her bed. Or she tried to. All that shifted towards the bedside table were her eyes. Panic once again began to well up in Rebecca’s breast. What’s happening? she cried inside her own head as she desperately tried to move her paralyzed arms and legs, but the duvet had her trapped. It wrapped around her legs and torso, had managed to slither around her arms, and even its cover had seemed to snake its way between her fingers. And, as she lay there, her body bound and nothing but her head sticking out from beneath the covers, Rebecca was sure that she could feel them pulling tighter.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod, she whimpered to herself, but not a sound escaped her lips, Something is not right. Oh god, something is going terribly wrong. And as she stared at the room around her – as the covers pulled tighter and as the fabric pulled harder and harder against her throat, her breath beginning to come in short, sharp gasps – she began to see that something was indeed terribly wrong. This wasn’t her room. It looked like it, but it wasn’t. Everything was similar, but certain things just weren’t quite right. Her dresser looked too short, almost stumpy, as if it had been stunted somehow and her chest of drawers seemed constructed at impossible angels; its mere existence as a standing, solid object seeming to buck all natural laws. And everything was too gray. The ceiling, the walls, the stuffed animals on her shelves – all of which seemed turned in her direction, their small, black, plastic eyes staring at her deadly and their fur all matted and dirty as if they’d dug their way out from deep in the earth, paw-full by paw-full out of their graves – everything was tinged with the dull gray of the indescribable; the corpse.

And then something moved.

Rebecca’s eyes shot to the door, her breath short and rasping. What was that? A slight, gray aura of light shone around the door, turning it into a dark silhouette; a pitch-black portal, a door in a door. The light that slanted out struck the toys on her shelf, bringing them to monstrous life. Wicked eyes danced in an evil light and fur writhed over moulding stuffing. As the light moved the shadow grew and with it grew teeth and talons. Small stitched mouths began to widen and split and furry lips squirmed as needle fangs grew from stuffing gums. Rebecca could swear that she heard the soft pop, fwip, pop, fwip of threads breaking and unthreading in the dark and oh god the faces were moving; crawling over newly formed bone and stretching and pulling the eyes wider until she could see pink. Oh god almighty she could see pink around those tiny black orbs and they were moist; wet and gungy and dancing in the moving light and why was the light moving?

Rebecca’s eyes flew back to the door. She couldn’t help it. They were as much under her control by now as the rest of her petrified body. Sweat ran down her face and back, burning her eyes and soaking the creeping blankets so that they clung to her like a second, malformed skin. Her neck felt raw as the fabric rubbed against it and her chest burned from her sharp, desperate breaths. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her nose had begun to run and as the mucus slid down her throat she felt the need to cough, to cough and scream, but she could do neither. She heard the door creak again.

There’s no one there. The door hasn’t moved. It’s still closed. There’s no one here to open it. I know there isn’t. There can’t be! Oh god let it be closed!

But it wasn’t. It stood wide. Oh so very wide. And into its light stepped a figure so immense that it blocked out the dull luminescence of what ever was beyond the frame. For a moment it paused and then it raised one giant foot and stepped into the room. Slowly it moved towards the foot of her bed and with every step a sickening, rasping noise could be heard, like a blade cutting through thick carpet. And as it moved forward, one arm held behind it, the darkness behind it grew thicker. A skittering sound could be heard from inside of it. Shapes moved, and Rebecca knew that the creatures were climbing off their shelves and skittering down the walls – her toys, her presents, her tormentors – and hiding just beyond the light.

This can’t be happening, she thought as the monstrous silhouette came to a stand by her feet. This is not real and I am dreaming. I’m dreaming and I have to wake up! The thing’s arm came around from behind it and gripped in its hand was a shape long and flat and with an edge at its end that glistened sharply in the light. You have to wake up. You have to wake up now. Please let me open my eyes. Please let this all vanish. Sweat covered her face and ran into her mouth, its salty taste sitting like blood on a tongue that had gone dry. Every muscle in her body was pulled taught. Her neck was as stiff as a tree trunk. Her jaws were clenched with her lips pulled back in a sneer and she knew that she was going to die. The figure lifted its other hand to grip the handle of its weapon. She had stopped breathing entirely. Wake up! she said, Wake up, wake up, wake up! Her eyes bulged as they desperately tried to open. Everything told them that they already were but still they tried. They burned as Rebecca frantically pushed to see through the horror that was happening before her.

“Rebecca,” said the monster. And then she woke up.

It wasn’t as though anything changed, really. Everything still seemed to be in the same place. But everything seemed back to normal. And she could breathe again. Her toys were back on the self and her furniture looked the way that it always did. Even the light seemed better – more real and vital, with a volume that had been missing in that dark place, even though it shone in from the passage, dulled by the half open door. She didn’t even think that she had opened her eyes, but rather that they had been open the whole time with her unable to see through them. When the change had come, it was as though reality had simply drifted into the dream, erasing everything that shouldn’t have been there – everything but one, and for that she was no less terrified.

The figure still loomed above her, both arms still twisted and taught up above its right shoulder.

“Rebecca,” it said again, and this time she recognised what was held in its hands high up above its head, its sharpened edge almost touching the ceiling. It was the garden spade; the great, black Lasher spade that hung in the shed out back in the garden and that her dad had sharpened weekly until he had hired someone else to do it for him.

“Coleman?” she replied with her first breath. Her lips quivered out of her control, making his name bounce with staccatoed hiccups. She sucked in with her nose and whimpered, confused and terrified. But I woke up…

“You’ve been dreaming, little Rebecca,” said the giant gardener, “You’ve been dreaming for a very long time.” Rebecca heard the squeaking sound of skin on wood as Coleman tightened his grip on the handle. “But you’ve dreamed enough now and you need to wake up. You thought you were, but you weren’t. And now you must. You must wake up.” The giant flat of the spade inched higher until the point of its edge touched the ceiling.

“This isn’t real,” said Rebecca.

“Wake up, Rebecca,” said the giant.

The blade fell. Rebecca screamed. And the window beside her bed exploded inwards as a part of the night leapt into her room.

Lectcha Sketch #8

2008-06-11T21:22:00.004+02:00

A good long time has passed since my last post; lots of time to think, observe and consider the things that are going on around us and to try and come up with intelligent, communicable opinions and suggestions that I can impart, served up with some prime-cut cynicism and a ladle full of bias and belligerency. Yeah, I got nothing. I've been living in a hole for the last ten days (almost a joke - my room is only about 2.5 x 3 metres). If I mentioned how busy I was earlier then multiply it ten-fold and put a gun to my head. So instead of a glowing nugget of perception, I'll just leave you with the next Lectha Sketch. Maybe I'll offend someone - at least then I'll have accomplished something today. P.S. Trivium - good band. Just putting it out there...

Even MORE fun at Brett's funeral!!!

It's not all Bad...

2008-06-01T13:58:00.002+02:00

I'm feeling that, with all these xenophobia related posts, this blog might be getting a little negative (hilarious comics aside ;) ). I think that I'm gonna try and find something a little more positive to post about next time. We may be going through some rough times, but not everything is in the crapper. Anyway, I'll get back to you on that...

"It's not my problem" - Xenophobia and our government

2008-06-01T13:05:00.008+02:00

It's been a while since my last post, but life's been hectic lately and I'm sure that you'll get over it. These are some photos of protest graffiti that has begun popping up around Cape Town. These shots are from a wall near Orange Street and were shot early last week. This is both good and bad, in my opinion. I appreciated how graffiti can be used as a potent and successful protest medium, but unfortunately it also tends to become heavily biased and misleading, as it is in these examples. Although I don't dispute that the impetus behind this work may have been driven by the best of intentions, it has been executed thoughtlessly and, as a consequence, has become an inflammatory gesture itself rather than an intelligent and provoking act of protest. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't feel that portraying all ANC members as trigger-happy, xenophobic monkeys is the best way to go about solving the explosive racial situation that we are facing in our country at the moment. The violent xenophobic acts are not being perpetrated by the ANC. They are acts fueled by fear, anxiety and misunderstanding being perpetrated by the underprivileged and often uneducated. They are people who feel that they have come up against a brink wall - that they have been let down by their country and government - and have been left with little or no other option but to lash out. Unfortunately, as is often the case in such situations, theses violent actions become directed towards those that are perceived as different or "alien". That is not to say that the ANC government shouldn't be held accountable for the event that have gone amiss. Mis-governance, an ignorance towards the needs of their country's people and what amounts to a policy of non-accountability have all fueled the events that have taken place. It came to light last week that the government was aware of the quickly growing xenophobic problems as long as three years ago and yet, as is more often than not the case, did nothing. The inaction of our ruling peoples make them at least partially accountable for the violence of the past few weeks. One might imagine though that now, with previous errors make evident and the need for carefully orchestrated efforts to quell this violence peacefully more dire than ever, the government might decide to pull up it's sock and get it's head in the ring. But nay, 'tis not to be. Rather than working to solve this problem, our esteemed heads of state are still arguing over who's responsibility it is to solve this problem. Our Minister of Home Affairs - the person being most leant on to try and "fix" this situation - has stated that: "It's not [her] problem." As if anything of this magnitude can be dropped at the feet of any one person. It strikes me as absurd that, even in the midst of this trouble, people are still squabbling to save face rather than working together to try and solve the crisis. It almost seems as though the prospect of actually having to do their job for a change is so alien that they would put more effort into passing the buck - risk the deaths of more innocent people - than admit to the people of their country that they have no idea what they're doing. At least we are now being spared the claims that this was all the work of a mysterious and malicious third party (well, mostly - our good ol' Minister of HA seems reluctant to put down her guns, still adamant that this is all the work of some malevolent, shadowy enemy-in-hiding, but this sort of nonsense is something that w are becoming accustomed to in our ruling "elite") and it seems less likely that a wave of imperialist dogs are going to sweep over our country at any second. What is distressing though is how many local businessmen (and women , I assume) are trying to use this violence to their advantage. There are numerous stories of local business owners collecting and arming groups of people and setting them loose on foreign owned stores in an attempt to eradicate the competition while having it blamed on xenophobic violence.

One must wonder whether this is going to get much worse before it gets any better. All we can really hope is that, sometime in the near future, someone is eventually going to do the right thing. So many people and businesses have lent themselves to aid the plight of those affected and displaced by the violence, but until we get some solid, honest action by the government, I fear that the battle to correct the upsetting course that our country has taken will be hard and unrewarding.

Let’s try and forget about laying blame for a moment and work towards lending our help to those really need it.

We can argue about whose fault it is later.

Oh well, I've ranted myself out. Studies demand that I sign off now, but I still have a little to say on the subject and will probably find more as the events progress, so pop around some other time and I'll be happy to bludgeon you a little more with my waffle. Peace and microphones.

Kudo's to Zapairo

2008-05-27T00:25:00.002+02:00

Our premier political cartoonist, the ever-inspiring Zapiro, has once again managed to capture the emotion and sentiment felt my so many South Africans at the moment. So many people worked so hard and sacrificed so much - oftentimes their lives - to give our country hope. So many inspirational leaders and ordinary people bent their wills and hearts towards turning South Africa into a country to be proud of. After all this, how can so many people whom others have fought and died for be so quickly willing to tear it all down again in one great, violent wave of greed, envy, mistrust and fear. People are stupid. P.S. For the very few out there who don't know, the two characters are Ex-President Nelson Mandela and Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu. I'm sure that most would agree that in our world of fading hero's, these are two that you can still feel proud to look up to. Wise men who were once strong leaders, but whom many have now chosen to ignore - sometimes publicly - in favour of political and financial gain.

After the Weekend - mini xenophobic update and new Lectcha Sketch

2008-05-26T23:41:00.004+02:00

Any-who... so the last news I heard was that another person has been murdered during xenophobic violence over the weekend, along with over a thousand more people displaced. As to the sudden spike in race related rapes, I can't make any specific, well informed comments but, if popular media is to believed, they are disturbingly high. I was quite perturbed by my own reaction on hearing about the latest death - my first thought was; Thank heavens it wasn't more! Horrible, I know. But also an unfortunate reality. I can't claim to have my facts straight - the weekend isn't the best time for me and intelligent consideration - but things could have been a lot worse. Terrible abuses of personal rights and freedom were committed, and the violent actions perpetrated by those concerned cannot be forgiven or justly explained, but at least the death toll wasn't any higher - something that was expected after the sudden spike in violence over the two days preceding the weekend. But hey, the country's still standing for now. I'll make a more informed update in a day or two once my workload has died down. 'Till then, here 's another Lectcha Sketch: More fun at Brett's Funeral! (Here's hoping that's not a dramatic pun in the making...)

Xenophobic Violence in South Africa

2008-05-23T15:47:00.004+02:00

I feel the need to follow up that ridiculous bit of nonsense with a far more serious post.

Over the last eleven days, xenophobic violence has erupted in several spots across South Africa, focused mostly in the settlement of Alexandria and at certain areas surrounding Gauteng, although violence broke out in Cape Town as well last night along with looting and vandalism.

The media has been commenting on how the actions and captured footage are like flask-backs to the Apartheid era. Personally, I wouldn’t know. I was nine when apartheid crumbled. When black children started arriving at our school, most of us didn’t even bat an eyelid. Why should we? Kids came to a school every day.

Ironically, it was our teachers’ and parents’ pointing out to us that drew attention to the past atrocities. Now, I know all the arguments for studying and understanding the wrongs of the past, but I can’t help but want to think that maybe, if the generation before us had just kept their mouths shut, we’d be living in a far friendlier country because none of us would have known any better.

Yay ignorance.

While I’m at it, I’m going to wish for a pony.

I digress though.

What troubled me the most about these xenophobic attacks (and I can’t help but notice how everyone is doing their damnedest to avoid using the word “racist”) is the complete lack of action by our government. Neither our belligerent ex-vice president and president of the ANC, the ruling party, Jacob Zuma, nor our timid president, Mr Thabo Mbeki, have ventured anywhere ear the conflict fraught areas – surprising especially considering that many of the perpetrators have been heard singing the song Lethu Mshini Wami, Bring Me MY Machine Gun; a favoured song of the struggle and personal theme-song to the presidential hopeful, Mr Zuma himself.

Even the Zimbabwean presidential hopeful and leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, has managed to take time away from his country and political conflict with the embittered (maybe ex-) president, Robert Mugabe to address the people of Alexandria in an attempt to curb the violence at least.

Apparently Mr Mbeki is overseas at the moment. Again. One wonders if he is ever planning on coming back?

I brought up apartheid so as to make a point. People outside of South Africa assume, because of the rampant crime in our country and the sins of our past, that we are all familiar with violent crime. I think that they look at the rest of war-torn Africa and find it hard, as foreigners, to separate the open atrocities of the central and northern half of the continent from the violence and crime in South Africa. This may sound absurd – after all, violence is violence – but the crux is that, although so very prevalent in South Africa, it is still considered a serious crime as opposed to just another part of the wan and wane of everyday living, such as theft and mugging. Almost every South African has experienced crime, and has or is connected to someone who has suffered a violent crime – murder, assault, rape and even police brutality are things that I, through others, have become acquainted with – but the violence stills horrifies us. It is not yet, thank heavens, a part of our everyday lives.

So yes, crime we know, but this open aggression and wide-spread violence is something that my generation has never properly been exposed to (I make no such suggestion regarding township and informal settlement life, however – to myself an others like me, that is another world and I could never make any honest claim regarding it).

The first ten years of my life was spent in the pink haze of childhood worries and luckily I was never touched by the troubles that surrounded me during that tumulus time. As it is, I entered my adult life a free South African; no different to any of the other young adults around me; Black, White or other. The violence of the past was something that I had read and been taught about – there was nothing tangible to connect me to it.

Now, to see people being attacked and murdered for what amounts to no reason at all, I think that I can begin to understand the horror of the years that slipped by me as I was playing in my sandbox.

Forty-two xenophobic related deaths have been confirmed in the last twelve days – a number that was half as high two days ago – and with the weekend upon us and the shabeens fully stocked, who knows what news awaits us Monday morning.

And only twenty eight violence specific arrest. The mind boggles.

We’ve grown up in a world where the inefficiency of our government has become a running joke, but the more that this sort of violence escalates, the faster this joke becomes a dangerous inadequacy. In a country whose leaders are more concerned with their international profiles and more likely to lay the blame at the foot and a mysterious, malevolent third party, where do we turn when their political impotency eventually comes to a head? And what are the far reaching consequences of this inaction? Because of our own internal conflict, the media has had little to report on the violence and political squabbling that has been happening just across our border in Zimbabwe, but it’s still there, I assure you. The worries and dangers of that precarious affair have not gone away; rather, they’ve been buried under newer, more prevalent worries, to swell and fester and add to the ever present anxieties that seem to dominate the South African condition.

This new violence has been an eye-opener as to how political inefficacy is not just an inconvenience, but a danger to the lives of the people who live within that country’s boundaries.

I’m going to leave you with a link to a slide show hosted on the Times multimedia website entitled Flames of Hate. Sometimes it helps to see what’s happening rather than read or listen to it. To (miss-) quote a war photographer whose name eludes me: “I take these photos so that my mom won’t think that war is something that happens on TV.”

We’re not at war – I don’t think – but you get the picture.

Lectcha Sketch #6

2008-05-22T18:22:00.003+02:00

So this one is seriously lame, but that's never stopped me before :) I was just thinking about funerals and how seriously bored kids get. Kids automatically concider old people dull, and when I eventually peg it I don't want this stigma following me beyond the grave : "Golly gosh gee, do you remember that old geezer, Brett? Wow, he had a kak boring funeral" or something like that. So how do you entertain kids at a funeral? Easy, you give them candy - and there's so many fun, exciting and surprising ways to go about it... The reason that it is so badly drawn is that I was joking about it with a mate of mine during class and he was getting quite creeped out by the whole idea - heaven knows why - so I rustled up a visual as quickly as possible to lend emphasis to my inane ramblings. Have a few similar, more detailed ones on the way. God-damn, I'm gonna be an awesome granddad...

Lectcha Sketch #5

2008-05-20T19:38:00.003+02:00

Second post for today, but I realised that I had not posted a comic for a few days and thought that I'd make up for it. This one is far more recent than the last few and the first one to be posted from Cape Town (which makes it from a Marketing lecture). You can see how my illustration style has changed, even when I'm drawing quick, non-detailed works. It's probably because of all the scamping that we have to do. Someone mentioned celebrities - that's pretty much all it took...

Tom Fee Illustration

2008-05-20T10:12:00.005+02:00

Marker rendering is not known for coming across as particularly original. No matter how much effort someone puts into a work, inevitably it comes out looking like a glorified scamp. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for marker work. I'm a fan of the rough, scamping style in general, although I do my best to keep it to as few colours as possible (for some reason, colour subtlety seems to have alluded a generous portion of the marker-artist world for generations). The problem is that there seems so little possible variation when it comes to markers: a marker work aways looks like a marker work (even when done very successfully, as with the work above). What really caught my eye when i visited Tom Fee's website was one image and one image only. I can't fault the rest of his work, except that I feel he has fallen into the same colour trap that most marker artists do, making it feel quite expected. The image that captured my attention, however, did so because of the sheer originality of it. Now, maybe someone has done something like this before (seems plausible I guess) but I've sure as hell never come across it. Squint your eyes until the two images overlap, then try and focus on the combined faces (similar to how you would view those three-dimensional pattern things) and see what happens. Pretty impressive for a marker work.

Lectcha Sketch #4

2008-05-16T12:29:00.004+02:00

Who says that puns are dead? In many respects, I find that I have a very specific sense of humour. I wouldn't be able to put my finger on it, but I am one of those people who cans himself in the cinema and then nervously wonders why no-one else is laughing. We are the few and are between. There's probably a whole thesis just waiting to be written about us. Who knows, maybe I'll get around to writing it one day, just as soon as I stop giggling every time I watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre and some one get klapped in the head with a hammer. Rare as we are though, we're our own best friends. Finding someone with a similar sense of humour as you is easy enough (and it's always fascinated me how a specific sense of humour can bridge cliques and social gaps where nothing else could) but finding someone with an almost exact sense of humour is nigh on impossible. When you encounter one of these people, as friend or lover, it's best to hang on to them, because these days a good sense of humour is rare. (We suggest a six-pack of man-cans and a copy of Eyes Wide Shut. Hysterical.) As far as the comic is concerned, you all might notice that I'm trying to use colour a bit more. this is for two reasons. The first is that, seeing as how all these pics were drawn while I was supposed to be paying attention to my lecturers, I didn't really bother with much in the way of detail. The second is that it's fun. Oh, I also need to apologise for the crappy spelling. Apologise, not correct. If it bugs you then you should probably stop reading now, because on a good day I can put a fifth-grader to shame and that's never going to stop - I can almost guarantee it. At the age of twenty-five, I still compulsively spell project with a 'd' - as in prodject - don't ask me why. And if any Americans are going to get bleak about the way that I spell humour, colour or apologise for that matter, all I can say is; we made it, you broke it. Maybe I'll post entirely in Ebonics one day. That ought to make them happy.

Lectcha Sketch #3

2008-05-14T16:53:00.002+02:00

Lectcha Sketch

2008-05-13T15:05:00.003+02:00

I'm going to be posting one of these comics a day, unless something else comes up that I'd rather write on. Basically they are space fillers. Think no less of them though; I've been meaning to post them for ages now and this gives me an excuse to (I didn't want to just randomly drop them onto the site.) So if you like them, keep on stopping by.

Lectcha Sketch

2008-05-12T21:51:00.003+02:00

During my time at Rhodes, I developed a habit of doodling during lectures, often drawing inspiration from whatever topic we were discussing. This was either Fine Arts or English - but hell, where Barthes is concerned, does it matter?

What the Heck Is Emo?

2008-05-08T15:56:00.003+02:00

Here are two emo sites I found (without much tying though, i must admit). I have to say, if you're an emo kid looking for some good resources, your a bit strapped for choice. What the Heck Is Emo : This one isn't so bad, and the guy is obviously trying to be objective. Quite a nice little History of Emo, but I have no way of knowing how accurate it is. The Emo Corner : Now this site is special. It would have us believe that dudes making out is the pinnacle of emo hotness. think I'll pass. Also, it makes the amazing claim; "Emo hair becoming Very Popular with Emo Kids". Who woulda thunk it? Luv-Emo : Apparently emo kids are persecuted because they have a condition...

The Emo Debate - A Mini Article

2008-05-08T15:30:00.009+02:00

It’s become a joke now that Emo is the new scourge of the music and fashion world; black and neon kaifs, skinny jeans and mascara abound and the same three chords have never in the history of radio been played so frequently on air. But why does this new fashion seem to upset so many people? For the jocks and coo-girls of this world, emo kids are just another target for ridicule, but for the goths and metal-heads these stripy, skinny-legged little munchkins seem to have instilled an all-permeating loathing. Why would these two old alternative factions, after having learned to coexist with each other for so many years, suddenly decide to turn on this fledgling fashion, rather than embrace it?

Now, I tend to think of myself as an open-minded person and have always opted for the more alternative turn when it comes to fashion, music and, most specifically, mindsets. I’ve spent my whole life bouncing between cliques – with many friends in the goth, metal-head and jock camps (although my foot is probably slightly firmer on gothic ground) – and I’m just as at home in the mosh-pit as I am writhing to Type O Negative, and yet even I am irked by this new trend.

I know my own reasons for my distaste, and I imagine that they are similar to those of others.

We need to travel back several years to when Emo first started to blossom. Back then, before the term emo had been termed, we of the gothic persuasion had names for these kids: wannabes, neo-goths and weekend goths. They were the kids who wanted to test the waters at the metal and alternative parties – where the drinks specials were cheaper – and still be able to save face at the cocktail clubs and Bourbon Street bars that they usually frequented. They were the kids who thought that Nickelback was a metal band and that Enter Sandman was the only song that Metallica ever released. They had never heard of Alice In Chains or Type O Negative, Kurt Cobain was a ghost to them and every one of them thought that Nevermind was the real title of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Some had even been known to vehemently argue this point…

Essentially, they were in it for the fashion. Metal and alternative evenings for them were like dress up parties, where they could try on all the clothes and fashions that they had often observed, often admired but never had the guts to try for themselves. You could always tell the weekenders from the second they entered the room – they were the ones wearing neon coloured, plastic spikes. Unfortunately, nothing much has changed since then. They got a new name, some new hairstyles and the dudes are talented enough now that they don’t have to ask their girlfriends to do their make-up for them, but the crux remains the same: it’s more about looking good than the mindset that it represents. Now, I’m aware how strongly many emo kids would argue this, and I realise how unlikely it is that all of them really are little more than narcissistic, pseudo-alternative, socialite fops. For this I shall allow them one chance at exemption from my generalization above: that they were born just a few years too late. I myself often feel that I was born just shy in years to fully appreciate the golden days of goth, grunge and metal – when sounding under-produced was a sign of how hard you were struggling to make it rather than that your producer had told you it sells better.

(Hell, most of the original heroes were dead of overdoses before the kids of today could tie their own corsets.)

Now, if I managed to miss the boat, these kids haven’t even seen the ocean. My point is that they don’t know any better. They wear black just like any other person of a particular mindset feels compelled to, and then they get caught up in a popular fashion culture that is as anti their ideals as rugby jerseys and stilettos. The true gothic culture has dwindled so far and become so obscure in some areas that emo kids have little other choice. The metal world isn’t much better either these days. So many metal cliques have become so intense that if you mention the name Def Leppard you’re liable to get thrown out or smacked. In this sort of sink-or swim socializing arena, it’s no wonder that kids are clinging to the next best thing.

I’d like to offer a solution to this trend, but of course that’s impossible. Like any other fashion it’s going to have to run its course and, much like after the eighties, people are going to look back in ten years time and think, “What the hell was I thinking?” but hey, that’s their cross to bear.

There are still a few places left to go for that old-school feel – Gotham in Cape Town, The Eye of Horus in Bellville and the Red Room in Jo’burg – but they are few and far between. They world just isn’t the space of free-roaming sub-cultures that it used to be and that’s sad. But it’s no excuse for that stupid hair.

The Emo Debate

2008-05-05T19:25:00.002+02:00

This is just a reminder to myself to write this :) I have a bit to say on the Emo vs Metal-heal vs Goth debate, but i don't have the time to write it now, so please drop by in a day or so if you're interested. peace.

The Writer Returns

2008-05-05T18:15:00.005+02:00

In the last few weeks I have decided, for the second time in my life, to take up writing quite seriously.

My first attempt at this was a little less than successful, for several reason: 1. I was almost straight out of school. 2. I had what amounted to no real writing experience beyond a personal ramblings - certainly nothing published - which compounded the next point. 3. I leapt straight into a full blown novel. Apparently I felt, at the time, that a few shorts written in school, a few tattery and painfully Emo poems and a book full of lyrics - some of which were performed, some of which weren't - were enough to prepare me for the slog that lay ahead. Hum... That isn't to say that I'm not proud of what I accomplished; I had a good story, interesting characters and over 50 000 words - about 145 pages - and in my humble opinion it is a good read. I lay the blame almost entirely at the foot of my own inexperience and hence a lack of knowledge of my own capabilities at the time. I went from a few tiny, 2000 word shorts straight into a fully fledged novel (which, by my approximation, would have reached completion at around 400 - 500 pages), three main characters - each with an individual storyline - and a deadline of one year. Yeah. The novel has now taken a back seat - or, more correctly, has been tightly buckled there and told not to open the windows or talk too loud - and receives a few hours of consideration a year; five to ten pages is my guess. My focus has now turned to short stories. After the (arguable) failure of the novel, my interest in writing took a sturdy knock, and it wasn't until two years later that I found myself reading a Something Wicked: Quarterly Horror Magazine off the shelves of CNA. In it I found a request for writers to make horror/sci-fi submissions for a short story competition. The prize was R1000 and getting published in the mag and I thought to myslef; "Why not?" The dry spell was over and i felt inspired again. My first story in almost two years was titled Birth One 1. As it turned out, four finalist were all published, including mine, and the winner was left up to public vote and has yet to be decided. I did, however, get to meet the editor of the magazine, the wonderful Mr. Joe Vas, and he expressed a strong interest in my writing and requested that i make further submissions in the future, which I certainly shall. And that's where it began. Since then I have begun several new stories, one of which is very near completion, and joined the Cape Town Writers Guild - something that I am especially excited about. I am also, obviously, still doing my photography and illustration and am busy considering ideas for a new, definitely longer stop-motion film. I even have my puppet (assuming i can rescue him from an old lecturer). And as for the novel... well, watch the shelves - in maybe four or five years time ;)

The Shift

2008-03-26T11:07:00.003+02:00

OK, so here's how things stand: the initial impetus behind this blog so far has run it's course, so it's time now for a little change. Seeing as how I am loath to let this site slip into the blog graveyard that seems to make up a huge part of the World Wide Web, I'm introducing a bit of a shift. This blog is to become a sort-of online journal of experiences. Don't worry, I'm not going to start pouring my heart out online or anything. Rather, I'm going to use this space to try and comment critically on the world that I encounter daily. The conceptual drive of the site isn't changing, I'm simply broadening its horizons - shifting those boundaries, you might say. Considering all that I've dealt with so far, it actually makes sense that this site should make a shift into a different direction. After all, that's pretty much what I've been writing about this whole time. Perhaps you could look at this as a way of searching for new inspiration.

The Truth

2008-03-05T22:54:00.004+02:00

For the sake of truth, I have decided to post a bird's eye picture of what my room REALLY looks like. Some of the time. For truth and because no-one I know would ever believe that that room in the video is my room. What's a little honesty between two billion strangers?

It's the little things...

2008-03-05T21:54:00.010+02:00

I've included this as a bit of an afterthought.

When I started this, it was all about me. Now with the video done, the "me" in it has become just another metaphor in the proverbial greater scheme. This is inevitable, of course. The point of creating a work is to communicate a concept to others and too much arrogance gets in the way of that. What's nice though is when the concept that you're trying so hard to convey appears to you one day in its purest simplicity, as it did to me earlier today. When i was younger, and smoked a lot more, I picked up the habit of selecting a virgin cigarette out of the pack. This cigarette would be removed and then returned to the pack upside down before any other cig was smoked and would remain in there 'till the last. This has followed me throughout the years until, it appears, I am the only one left doing it. I caught sight of this lone cigarette today - stark and white amidst the cork filters of those around it - and I knew that I had been there.

The Work

2008-03-05T21:34:00.003+02:00

My idea behind the video is to document the creases created by me nightly in and on the bed where I sleep.

A problem I encountered in the conceptual phase was how to remove myself from the work but not loose that sense of presence usually imbued by a visible subject. My answer came in the form of stop-motion. Stop-motion allowed me to create the feel of a false present subject while not distracting from the true subject – the traces on the bed and blankets; the whole room, really.

Not only do the rippling creases act as a symbolic way of attempting to reconcile the missing subject (who, through a beautiful act of allegory, becomes the viewer) with the lost experience, but they also, through our understanding, point to the events and experiences of the day. The creases of the bed become metaphors for the traces that are left on and by the body, and as they shift and change, constantly reshaping each other through their connection, they can be seen as an allegory for that constantly shifting and fluctuating semiotic framework that make up our selves.

Re-enter that invisible subject in the bed.

I love circles.

No Traces - A Peripheral

2008-03-05T20:58:00.008+02:00

A little peripheral while I'm at it. I found this photography site - No Traces - while browsing around for inspiration. The name I find quite ironic because - amidst zillions of adorable photos of his wife, child, dog and clouds - he's happened to catch some very compelling images, many of which seem to speak volumes about traces, experience and memory. I thought it would be worth a look.

The Inspiration

2008-03-05T20:41:00.005+02:00

So inevitably, this change that came over me worked its way into my work.

My medium of self expression changed from sculpture to illustration and photography (you can check out some of this on my other blog, Poorboy Illustration, at poorboyillustratin.blogspot.com, or follow my link on the left).

This change was obviously greatly influenced by my change of studies to Arts Direction and Graphic Design, but the core of the shift lies slightly deeper. This graphic medium just seemed more suited to Cape Town; more in tune with the ebb and flow of popular culture that wasn’t nearly as prevalent in Grahamstown.

Also, clay costs too much.

My predominant theme in my earlier works dealt with relationships between people and the unspoken narratives that both connects and isolates us. After my move, this shifted towards a more predominant focus on our relationships with our environments. This is what eventually led me to what you are looking at now.

I tried to think of a way that I could trace my life over the last year and a bit. The simple, most obvious suggestion occurred to me in the form the photograph, but was rejected for the same reason – too simple; too obvious. Also, it suffers from the same, immediate process of dissemination that I was discussing earlier. When you look at a photograph, you aren’t really seeing what happened. You’re seeing a bubble of time, yanked out of context, always just out of your grasp and constantly slipping further and further away. Simply by looking at a photograph, you’re forced to admit that those few moments of exposure are forever lost to you and the closer you examine it, the further away it is ironically pushed.

So any sort of direct representation was out of the question.

Then I got to thinking about all that I’ve written so far and about those creases that I’ve worn into the world around me; those traces that point to my past experiences, even when I’ll never be able to truly experience them myself. Surely they’d make for a far more provoking subject matter. But where to begin? What single scenario could be used to successfully represent the last year (and a bit) of my life?

When it came to me, the answer seemed quite simple: that single act that I had been repeating almost every night since I had arrived in Cape Town – sleeping in my bed.

The Experiment

2008-03-03T20:12:00.009+02:00

The blog is going somewhere, i promise. This is just an experiment to see if it'll be able to get to where it's headed. I've always been a fan of stop motion. I feel that it, as a video medium, has a powerful sense of tangibility and, because of this, lends itself well to conveying certain ideas or concepts - certainly with far greater effect than CGI could ever hope to achieve. This mini-vid is my first real attempt at stop motion and is a test run for a larger project I am currently working on. It was done on the fly, so i apologize for the shoddieness, but it's a means to an end.

The Move

2008-03-03T18:49:00.002+02:00

Just over a year ago, I left the Eastern Cape to live in Cape Town.

Now, I don’t pretend that this is a drastic or unexpected move. People leave the Eastern Cape all the time. It’s one of those things. Some hypothesize that the prospect of leaving the Eastern Cape is the only reason that anyone moves there to begin with, but I digress.

The real crux of the move was that it was the first time in twenty-three years that I had lived anywhere besides the good ol’ E.C. - either growing up with the folks in Port Elizabeth or bumming around in the student/settler town of Grahamstown; a gorgeously buzzing little town of equal parts academic intellectualism and hedonistic nihilism.

The move brought with it the inevitable changes. The small town awe was eventually swallowed up by the everyday humdrum of sitting in traffic (something Western Capers and Josie Goers would tell us stories about like scout masters telling urban legends around a campfire) overpriced drinks and rolling blackouts. The esoteric life of Fine Arts and red wine exhibition openings was replaced by the fast paced world of advertising; all early mornings, late nights and cut-throat deadlines.

And inevitably I changed.

Not in any drastic, personal way, in so far as I can tell, but the basic make up of my day was altered significantly. Something as previously foreign as waking up at seven each morning to beat traffic became routine and in that subtle but significant way I became changed. The way I viewed the day shifted – mornings were now for work and late afternoons were for driving, sweating, swearing, hooting and screaming obscenities at the BMW yuppie and his store-bought license.

For neither better nor worse, Cape Town has marked me. I walk its streets, I drive on its roads, I greet its people and I breathe its air. I wear its traces on my clothes and on my skin and in my head and the crease that I’ve worn into its fabric grows more pronounced each day.

These Creases cont.

2008-03-03T18:38:00.002+02:00

Haruo Shirane writes in his book Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural memory and the Poetry of Basho that, in the Edo culture; "the ability to create the new out of the old was generally a more highly regarded form of newness than the ability to be unique or individual". Of course, most of today’s scholars of the postmodern ilk would argue that being unique is impossible from the get go - that any text is only ever conceived, created, interpreted and understood via the previous experiences of both the author and the viewer and that the intentions of the author as to the meaning of the text are tenuous at best (the poor fellow is only just recovering after a vicious thesis bludgeoning by a certain Mr. Roland Barthés).

The point that i’m trying to make is that it is not the new or the unique that matters, but rather what remains. Experiencing the present is impossible for us. We live our lives through our memories and it is with our memories that we construct an identity for ourselves - minute fragments of experience that weave together throughout our lives, constantly building and reshaping that abstract concept we call the self.

Our present is constantly belated - in the minute amount of time that it takes for our eyes to collect the light from the outside world, send it to our brains for interpretation and the eventual image that appears in our mind to form, that instant has already come and passed and we are presented with a glimpse of a world that is already lost to us.

We live in our memories and it is our memories that make us who we are.

How then do we document this lost world? How do we begin to successfully map something that seems as simple to us as our own lives when, under scrutiny, we realise that so much of it is already lost to us; that even our most present experience has already fallen victim to the passage of time? The truth is that we can't. And yet, perhaps there are other ways of considering it.

Just as the experience of the world leaves its traces upon us, so do we leave echoes of our passage on the world around us. Like the crease on the blanket, these traces point to our space in the world. Like the negative space of a letter form, they give us our shape.

Through the experience of memory, these traces represent that part of ourselves that is always present, and though an examination of them we can maybe begin to understand, if not experience, that part of ourselves that is always lost to us.

These Creases

2008-03-02T16:58:00.001+02:00

We touch the world and the world touches us. With every instant that goes by, we leave echoes of ourselves on the world around us and the world in turn leaves its marks upon us. Our lives are a myriad of infinite, constantly shifting experiences ranging from the very tangible hello-goodbye handshake to the constant reorganization of the semiotic framework that forms the foundation of who we are, and with every experience, traces of its passing become embedded in the fabric of our world.

The thing about traces is that they are everywhere and everything. The creases in the blanket may point to the person that lay there, but the blanket itself is an index of the cotton plants from which its material was gathered and of the processes by which the cotton was refined, spun and woven, bleached and dyed, packaged and sold so that it may one day end up on the bed to be slept upon. The blanket becomes a text to be read; to be deciphered and interpreted. It has imbedded upon it the traces of all that has come before it, both physically and symbolically, and through our most often unconscious consideration of this blanket we in turn imbue it with new possibilities, just as it does us. Having considered this blanket, even unconsciously, we now carry its trace with us, to shift and subtly alter all our perceptions to come.

As for the person who once slept there; he’ll come soon.

Because nothing exists in isolation.