Lebeleka Takawilila(Kalanga)
By Peter Handley
‘Now you’re wanting a translation of a bastard language into a bastard language you understand.
Yet you think yourselves legitimate.’ (Epicurus)
Us poets, writers, artists, painters, fictional film-makers (I don’t include the cut & paste documentary types here), culture-makers and hopefully, one day, Wisdom Keepers and sharers are fickle people. We are fickle people. Your sniffing for a political correctness will not land hereabouts. S’listen Up before you cancel me Out.
Oftentimes we will only ever conform to our own mostly miserable standards and learnt intuition because we choose to be dissatisfied with what we produce and that, we say, is what makes art and allows us the considerable human indulgence of calling ourselves ‘artists’. Remember you’ve t’promote and sell this shit an’ keep living the dream.
We may go about a day job resenting it because we’re continually trying to aspire to higher things and then sometimes we meet together in a kind of confederacy of truth and lies and sometimes that is good. Sometimes though, for example, a bricklayer after being busy on his site, does not want to talk to another bricklayer about his cement or the straightness of his wall. How the plumb-line failed a bit. Or how the runs of his (… or hers mate) ladder are broken. The Homes he (… or her, mate) is trying to build. Anyway, sooner or later the bricklayers come together. Have a convention. Talk about their walls. The homes they’re endeavouring to build. We do. The stories walls tell.
Via a circuitous route of fellow social-media poet alliance and an old student’s family connection and casual conversation I was invited to participate in a literature festival in Harare, Zimbabwe. I particularly remember one poem I read, from my invitee – a rather mundane and beautiful description of a ladies hair salon. A politician’s wife was having her hair done. She paid cash Ahmerican dollars. It was a well dressed hair–do. It was a well crafted poem. The author was reluctant to have it published because of what it would say about her, not the politician’s wife, when the local hospitals were finding it hard to procure medications for their patients and she paid a pittance for teaching children whilst other teachers in that government sector didn’t give a flying f*ck fer teaching young minds. A teacher as cattle prod or stick fer crowd control. I’m not picking, jus’ sayin’. The politician’s wife was ebullient about her coiffure, her driver told her as much and more. Young children, leaving school with empty minds. A little prodded, a touch more blunt.
So, that old familiar refrain in the song:
‘It’s the same the whole world over, it’s the poor that gets the blame, it’s the rich that get the pickings, ‘aint it all a bloomin’ shame.’ In Bethnal Green, Bradford and Bellevue.
I remember Zadie Smith, the n … orth London novelist, reflecting on the twenty fifth anniversary of a Tracy Chapman album. In her admiration she thought they were protest songs. I laughed at that. A lot, across the lines. What else must one do. White teeth smiled less bright tonight Zadie.
We exchange e-mails and I accept the invitation, promising to deliver a couple of ‘creative workshops’. In the social media outpour I am described as a ‘creative veteran’, for the first time. More usually, understanding the his and her story of the place I’m sitting in, I associate the word ‘veteran’ as a person who has passed through battles and struggles to retire, maybe a little injured through the fray to an independent retirement after a job well fought and done. A couple of scars and a pension. Today, as I sit listening to the thunder gathering in the rain clouds in the highlands of Zimbabwe next to Mozambique I guess I am that veteran, although I never thought s’much. In the valley below me some Chinese people are digging away for value much t’the displeasure of a local group of, what do people say – ‘indigenous people’ unhappy with the disappearance of their village. Next to a beauty spot Doris Lessing cussed for it being called ‘Bridal Veil Falls’. Across the hillside, planted with pine and spruce for the profit of local bigwigs and minor politicians, men from the national parks reserve are sent to protect illegal goldmining extraction from the prying lenses of tourists in the remains of the game reserve. The scars on the hillside. Our natives stabbing the tyres of JCB’s. Altruism for Gaia. There’s so much to defend. Shanghaied.
We continue to deliver. Outcomes. Sustainability. Return on investment. Yada f*cking yada. D’yer mind, I’ve work t’do, but you’ll not notice ‘til it’s on a gallery wall or you’re sniffing the grease paint from four rows back in a theatre. When the battle’s done, or’s in progress. You’ll make an appreciative claim t’the paint adorning the fireplace and clap politely at the first night. Bless you. We can eat. Nobody enjoyed it when Joe Orton, the playwright said ‘The old whore society lifted up her skirt and left a terrible stink.’ They skulled his head in. The play right. That ramshackle day parade. The one you missed whilst grinding the morning’s coffee, pouring that freshly squeezed orange juice from a freshly squeezed labourer. A friend suggested I was a ‘bitter old c*nt’. Not the most discerning language from a BAFTA panellist. I’ll return to that. He’s wrong.
Yep, I’m that veteran metaphorically picking away at the old bones of Cecil Rhodes buried still amidst more sacred bones of older chieftains. Let’s leave him there. Oh Cecil, what did you do.
I’m heartened to have interacted with young Zimbabweans half my age who do not share our collective trauma from the past and are happy, happy and smile effortlessly into the future not knowing. Aware but gladly not knowing. I have a hope they don’t leave home forever after enduring a wonderful education in diasporic universities. It’s a privilege still. Stay home young guns.
A couple of years ago, as fast as they go by, a friend of mine, now retired, was working by happenstance remotely for the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office of the British (sic) Government. He had rented a holiday cottage in that small country Wales and invited me to join him. I had belatedly been reviewing some of my old poetry and thought it a good idea to escape my everyday domesticity and take the opportunity to look at another landscape for inspiration. It works occasionally. That old drunk D. Thomas ringing in my ears – ‘Coal black, dark black, blah bla blah.’
‘Most poetry ignores most people because most people ignore most poetry’ one old, now deceased poet once said t’me. He was doing a job of Spanish translation in a theatre I was then working in. ‘Fuente Ovejuna’ originally by a chap called Lope de Vega. And that’s true, in any translation. A towering figure then, doing a hard job. The day job. And so for some of mine. Some poetry stands a test of time, most of it falls like rainwater into the dike that runs by the wayside of poor literature but at that time one poem was standing out for me. ‘The History of Truth’. Here it is – a kind of ‘Jabberwocky’, if you know what that is. A sort of nonsense. Out of nonsense comes sense one hopes. In the Welsh landscape this was on my mind. As it was when it was written originally in south India some time ago. It stands up as nonsense and whatever else your imagination can imbue it with.
The History of Truth.
Truth was the most of many credibles,
More first, more always, than a bat-winged lion,
A fish-tailed dog or eagle headed fish,
The least like mortals, doubted by their deaths.
Truth was their model as they strove to build
a world in that ago when being was believing,
of lasting objects to believe in,
Without believing earthenware or legend,
Archway and song, were truthful or untruthful:
The Truth was there already to be true.
This while when then, practical like paper-dishes,
Truth is convertible to kilowatts,
Our last to do by is an anti-model,
Some untruth anyone can give a lie to
a nothing no one need believe is there.
In my perfect retreat of a lent solitary writer’s room overlooking an estuary that some other drunken Welsh poet and forebear had looked and reflected upon I intended to create a piece of written theatre based upon my nonsense written then, which today with all of Our talk and jibber-jabber about truth and post-truth and information overload – the advent of large computer language models to supercede the good books of morality we have historically used to shed some light for our right doing along our weary human way – seemed to hold a certain relevance. I got so far and realised ‘no white bloke’ could’ve written this. My civil servant friend suggested I use a pseudonym. Ad nauseam I’ll leave it there until a bright spark in a producing house is willing enough to pass a buck into a commission and their season’s repertoire. Returning from a long stint in India one time, I tried the same at a Royal Court Theatre workshop. They never mentioned the word ‘c*nt’, but it was definitely on their mind. It’s the rub that got Orton’s head caved in, drove Osborne t’the bottle or kept Larkin behind his frustrated library desk. It’s becoming a very fashionable word in an English lexicon to assuage a correctness spilling out of the academies. ’You never see a black man blush, it’s a white lie’. (Hit me up if you’d like me t’explain.) Don’t troll me, spit yer venom or cast a spell somewhere in a social-media soup. Talk. Be nice for common sense. I translated the history of truth in several languages for my actors to perform. Theatre.
My civil servant friend, recently returned from expending a lot of time, effort and taxpayer’s money inspecting the good practice and enhanced sanitation of a pig-rearing unit in Ethiopia, was busy in conversation in a multi-platform zoom meeting with fellow associates across the world. One young African lady, noteable by the perfection of her cut glass privately educated english accent – emulating the very best of a Cheltenham Ladies College, was most excited to be joining these conversations for the first time. Very grateful to participate. After the meeting I was privy to ended, my friend the senior civil servant remarked upon another African person in the bottom left hand corner of his screen who had said little but listened intently. I could tell, observing with his ears. ‘He didn’t say much’ my friend remarked. ‘No’, I said, ‘He was blind, he could not use the keyboard.’ ‘Oh, I didn’t notice.’ my friend replied. I suppose in the country of the blind the one eyed man is King.
A Mexico based friend and film maker is putting the finishing touches to a long project I might describe as comedic surrealism. Atopia. He demands, in his opus, there are no truths, only fictions. A London based film maker in response to my home truth further described me as an old working class communist. Words and images can wound. Words can heal. A truth is I’m neither blind nor a c*nt nor neither working class. Coming from poverty in my adolescence and all the unattended problems and consequences that creates it felt very good to be described historically as working class. Being bumped so liberally up the social rankings of a United Kingdom. It made me wonder, not for the first time, about the real global majority. Against the odds and training for six years to feel confident enough to work in what some call ‘ the industry’ of the arts I almost always assumed that I had just about managed to eschew the barriers of class and identity to be free in those fought for moments of creation. Like Billy Casper in that film ‘Kes’ really did grow up and open a falconry centre in Yorkshire. ‘Hands off cocks, on socks’ I can quote. In equality supported.
This embarrassed veteran delivered a couple of well prepared workshops based around the history of truth to a gathered assemblage of arts and media practitioners at The Theatre in the Park in Harare. Someone rambled something about a lack of critical thinking, not mine, and they maybe missing a point. A blogged review came out faster than a seasonally digested brussel sprout soup. It really was a rare privilege, given my historic understanding of that place. It sits under the eaves of a very old mahogany tree the roots of which push up at the back of the auditorium breaking the tiled floor in such a way as to make the sculptures of Andy Goldsworthy look like a school project. We might all look t’that tree. We wrote some poetry in duplicate I can’t publish here without permission. Attached labels to ourselves so we were all the same. With some African marigold seeds from my garden that customs failed t’notice. Starting and finishing on the same footing because that’s how it should be. At the water tap installed by the theatre for the local community one man shouted ‘Pastor!’ at me. We laughed. We’ve a wassap group. I’m still working on that piece of theatre because I know little else. One of those labels read –
P : poetry
art for our sake.
There was only one person in the audience
It was all for them
We didn’t know, in the light,
if it was a man or a woman,
We never found out.
They applauded and left.
It was the best show we’d done in ages
we all agreed.
( words are seeds, sow them wisely)
Later, at the festival for real, hosted by The Alliance Francais, remerciment an’ jog on British Council you couldn’t push a moss balled stone up a hill. I’m sitting with a philosopher a comedienne and a fool. The fool’s the festival director’s son. Prince Hal with Falstaff and someone tells me Jimmy Cliff’s died and a toothless Rastafarian sings me ‘Redemption Song’. Someone’s expecting me on a stage to talk about something or other amongst an international literary illuminati. One bloke I sit with is Salman Rushdie in another skin, not giving a shit about anything I can offer. I push a lit candle onto the stage I’m speaking on t’say ‘right, now we’re all sitting ‘round the fire.’ I don’t know if it landed, the candle burnt and a small fire is still a fire. There’s a lady on the third row that understands. I can see.
The comedienne is eager, she’s Buji’, they tell me. Fancy people from Bulawayo, come all this way t’impart. I tell her a joke she might use in her gig. An elephant, a giraffe and a donkey walk into a bar. The barperson says ‘What will you have?’ The elephant says ’l’ll have a pint of water for myself, a large whiskey for the giraffe and a gin and tonic for the donkey, thanks.’ The barperson asks ‘And what will the goldfish have?’ Buji Bulawayo’s looking a bit perplexed. I know, I saw her act last night. The smart arsed African philosopher is smirking at me when two matriarchal Kenyan poets approach our table. ‘Hey, comedienne’, I say – ‘tell her the joke I just told you.’ She did, in her best Buji’ Bulawayo way, and nothing. Stollid Kenyan Matriachs. Buji’ shrugs.The Kenyans walk off because they’ve better more high fallutin’ things t’talk about, having come this far. ‘Why did I do that?’ I say,’Well, he told it to me, I tell it to you and you tell it to someone else. That’s how stories go.’ I later learn the Kenyan representation write books for children and rant on about the remnants of colonisation. Buji’ laughed.
Try the history of truth. Dance a little more this year.
Try it. Happy New Year!
Peter (Dombo) Handley.
(absurdarts@yahoo.com)
****
Coming next is a review of a thought-provoking short story anthology and more about writers and writing unclipping your wings of the imagination!
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