die Vuur, die Wind & die Water - part 2

Launch details to follow...

Cover art by Donovan Ward

From A Tale of Extra Ordinary Madness

(By Mana Neyestani)

Then the singing starts; wordless, sweet harmonies as if in the presence of an impromptu, choral ensemble drowning out all other sounds and thoughts with its beatific song of ethereal delight; but with a barely discernable undertone of culpable discord.

I am swept away on the turbulent night breeze, away from my misery; away from the misery of others, the misery of the city veiled by bright neon signs flashing its deceptive welcome to those who can afford its vituperative charms. The decaying buildings which once housed the depraved and the masters, painted in fashionable, muted colours, with sand blasted glass and aged wood and shining chrome façades: home to the obliviously hip and happening.

The once impervious mountain mother, the majestic Hoerikwaggo, brought to its knees under the interrogator’s harsh, relentlessly brilliant white light despoiling the beautiful face of the city.

The electrified grid of streetlights stretches away across the flats to darker corners where a more blatant misery roams the alleys. Undisguised and often unacknowledged within the bustling, thumping conurbation where the blind reign supreme.

The driving bass beats are replaced by gunshots and screams and cries; the raging, manic silences that can no longer be penetrated or dispelled; the unvarying misery of the hopeless and the perpetually downtrodden.

 The sound of babies wailing and children sobbing, hungry mouths feeding on mucous and craving for a more substantial repast. 

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2nd Edition

To those who didn't get a copy the first time 'round, the 2nd print of A Love Letter for the Epoch will be available soon! Hope to see you at one of the future readings...

Simplicity - a thought inspired by Voltairine de Cleyre.

One day I will die.

Hopefully

as I have strived to live:

a free spirit.

An anarchist,

owing no allegiance

to rulers

in heaven

or on earth.

Day four - filming 'Boytjie'...

The more we explore, the more we discover...

Every day of filming sees another young mind light up as the pieces fall into place and the creative vision evolves and roles blur because everyone begins to assume all of the roles; as every one becomes the director, producer, DOP... As each one becomes everyone...

The Opening of WASTED...

(By Blu)

(MUMBLING TO HIMSELF AS HE ENTERS, SHUFFLING WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING THE AUDIENCE. HE IS DRESSED IN COPIOUS LAYERS OF CLOTHING. HE TAKES HIS TIME UNTYING THE TRAILER) Consciousness, context, content, contempt … conscience! What a waste? Just words without form, but with a definite function! Consciousness, context, content, contempt, conscience… All conveying nothing of substance to the unconscious! Such fools; such idiots! But I must talk last because I am the biggest fool of all; I am the original idiot! Sweet words and passion and noble ideals – enough to enlist my bleeding heart in this hair-brained scheme! (HE POSITIONS THE TRAILER SPECIFICALLY) Such irony; raising consciousness about waste and at the end of the day, all of the effort will more than likely be wasted! Why would anyone care? Its just waste after all: rubbish, dirt, refuse! I should have refused. (HE CHUCKLES TO HIMSELF) Fucking fartists! Trying to make a statement: turning all this kak into art! If this is art then art is kak! (HE HANGS THE BIKE IN POSITION AND A LIGHT GOES ON AND A FAN BEGINS TO OSCILLATE. AS HE TURNS, TO THE AUDIENCE) Good evening and welcome to this wasted journey…

Mana Neyestani

HERE...

I think about the million moments, some forever burned into my memory, others – so many others – forgotten, lost forever in the general anarchy. The endless journey, the infinite paths down which I wandered in search of the next picture; the people who shared their joy and misery and the last morsel of food with me; the many lovers who shared their beds and mine; the endless nights and interminable days that led me here...
(From A Tale of Extra Ordinary Madness)

FEAR

Sometimes being in this cell is a comfort. I am afforded the space to be fearlessly lucid; to see things with a clarity that details what the dominant reality truly is: as opposed to the intriguing, deceptively beguiling veneer and the fear that stops us from seeing things as they really are.

Inside these four walls I do not have to compromise my perception because I am compromised by my actions.

I do nothing therefore I can think everything through with a clarity and honesty that penetrates the often self imposed haze of preconception and dogma; the recitations detailing right and wrong and morals and values and views and opinions. And if you ever wake up you realize that your identity was handed to you as a puzzle in a box and you put it together incorrectly: squashing pieces into spaces where different parts were supposed to go.

Out there the frenetic pace of living becomes a distraction and when people can become anything they want, they choose to be one of those gaudy, clay garden gnomes.

For all of the supposed sophistication and nouveau-cultured civilization there are very few trees left in the forest of humanity: mostly it’s just shrubs and weeds and creepers trying to cling onto the exposed roots of the few giants who once stood tall, or those who remain towering for now; mostly untainted by the malignant rot.

We become too afraid to be!

Too afraid to observe or even contemplate the irony and contradiction and the unthinking, unquestioning mindlessness that we’ve been convinced is the only way for us to be within the fragmented collective of our species-defined humanity.

Inside these four walls I am forced to befriend my demons even after they have been gauging deep scars in my flesh; I have to rip the scabs of fear from all of the wounds that have never healed.

My dignity pillaged; humiliated; denied my physical freedom; prodded and probed and dissected; stripped of my humanity I am finally able to observe through an untainted, pristine lens: finally I am the observer I have always aspired to be, and I have no camera.
(From A TALE OF EXTRA ORDINARY MADNESS)

GRAND EVENTS & LITTLE ACHIEVEMENTS

(By Blu)

I sometimes think about the things I took for granted: little things that in the moment are insignificant: until they are denied.
And then the inconsequential little nothings of days gone by take on a magnified import that makes me realise that I actually wasn't present in the act of my own living.

So many years are wasted going through the motions: years that are marked by grand events and little achievements that account for mere days or sometimes even hours and no matter how hard I try, I cannot piece together what I did with the rest of the time. 

I remember how sometimes after I was paid for a big job I would withdraw a budget from the bank with which I would go out and party. The next morning after I awoke, I would check my wallet and work out where I had spent the money and for the most part I would be able to figure out almost exactly how much I had spent on what; but now I’ve discovered that I cannot do the same with time.

Huge chunks of the budget have disappeared. And not through a loss of memory, but simply because I didn’t think that what I was doing at the time was memorable enough to remember.

And another second fades away and is gone, without a backward glance and no goodbye; forever.

(From 'A Tale Of Extra Ordinary Madness')