I'll have an M.T. on the rocks. And make it a double.

I like news. I never thought I did. But somehow as age gathers like a wedgie, world events seem to matter and you stop paying attention to the bartender and more attention to the screen behind him. This week in world news is pretty interesting stuff.  Very public figures are doing kooky things..Kim Jong Un is doing what he does, the Pope is washing ladies feet and of course Margaret Thatcher dying on us leaving many British people without someone to hate.

Other things Kim Jong Un do.

Now I don't know about you, but my association with Margaret is totally different.  Whenever I think of M.T., I end up thinking about one thing..

Meryl Streep

That's right I think about Meryl Streep. And how she did that jumping split in Mamma Mia.

I want to call her up and ask her how she feels about M.T. now that she's no longer of this world and as  it turns out I am not the only one who is curious. In fact Michael Shulman posted this little article in what I like to call The world wonders about Meryl and Margaret and even includes part of Meryl's press release in regards to M.T.'s life and death.   Darn tooten! I have taken the liberty to add a quote from said release as it contains such interesting words to describe a woman I knew nothing about prior to the screening of the "Iron Lady".  (In a way it is frightening to learn history from cinema. But that is a discussion all by itself).

 "But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. ... To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas—wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now—without corruption—I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle."

As I am not British and can only observe the love and loathing the people of England are displaying I did a bit more delving into M.T. and her policies. The Guardian posted a pretty helpful article in this regard For M.T. doubt was for WIMPS! so I understand why so many of the blue collar folk of the Isles have only bad things to say about her.

Extra Extra! Read all about it. M.T. still fucking us over post-mortem!

She certainly had a way of making the poor feel like their poverty was a failure of character in some way (a reference to Hendrik Hertzberg's Thatcherist). It still is remarkable that she was re-elected three times and ran as Prime Minister for 11 years.  In a world where poor Hilary Clinton gets kicked in the ovaries every time she gets close to the important podiums, it is a testament to her strength of character that she held onto that position for as long as she did. And that she passed so many unfair policies uncompromisingly and definitively. She was quite a character to hate, but then we have many of them in politics. None that I would go to a "death party" for, but still. Here's the thing about figureheads in the past..history has proven that given enough time, even the worst of them may end up the icon of a t-shirt spawning "Liberty, Freedom and Coolness", or perhaps in M.T.'s case "Resolve and Propriety". You just never know what time does to an "icon's" reputation and how it could shift to become a symbol of something entirely different.

R.I.P MeryImeanMargaret..

Now as I last posted about the role of artists as mediators of the history they are making, I would like to add this homage of portraits of and about M.T. as they appeared in a recent edtion of Art Times.

Benjamin Shine, Margaret Thatcher, Eyelet Portrait

Karine Percheron-Daniels, Margaret Thatcher Nude

Kristin Halldorsdottir Eyefeels, Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister UK

Lola Dupré, Margaret Thatcher

Matt McLaren, Bow to Me Fixed

Vivienne Westwood's Tattler

Pete Mason, Margaret Thatcher

Richard Stone, Margaret Thatcher

Baroness Thatcher unveils her portrait by Richard Stone at No 10

Neil Simmons, Baroness Thatcher by sculptor

Textportraits, Margaret Thatcher

To end, I'll let you in on a funny little fact that a Taiwanese TV channel confused Margaret Thatcher with the Queen of England and broadcast images of the dead "Queen" instead of M.T. And just like me, Thailand posted images of Meryl instead of Thatcher in their broadcast of the story. God bless Asia.

What the heart is full of..

Recently I started investigating going back to school. Yes. Hence the  process of tenderizing my scholastic mind by marinating in other scholars' words and reflections in research, is well on its exhausting way. By accident, I came across a bit of writing done by Evette Weyers, the wife of a prominent and popular South African actor, Marius Weyers. 

The Weyers.

 As a sculptor and writer, her reflections on what it means to be an ARTIST in the world and the roles we take on, made me feel emphatically about the importance of Fine Artists, Actors, Musicians, Dancers, Poets, and Writers  as the necessary witnesses of live. It's not new news, but its really nice to reflect on it and I wanted to share this bit of insight she offered. 

Starting by looking at what roles artists can take in society, either by choice or by accident.

 Most artists hope fervently  that their work would be a source of inspiration. Sometimes this happens by accident and sometimes it is just that time in History and society for that catalyst to appear in our collective psyche.  Take for example the landscape artist Strijdom van der Merwe or Wolgang Mozart. Others choose to hold a mirror up to the world around them like William Kentridge, Sue Williams and Willie Bester, which inspires understanding of its own.

http://www.strijdom.co.za

So Mr. Van der Merwe is the reason Hipsters in Vancouver have taken to knitting coverings for  trees. Who knew?

Other choose the value of shock to convey their meaning . The famous Dutch producer, Dieter Reible promoted the idea that theatre should be dangerous and that the State should fear it. “ The role of theatre is to shock people out of their bourgeois selfness.” As Frans Kafka said:

 “ A book has to be like an axe that shatters frozen sea within.”

Maybe the clam chowder for dinner was a mistake.

An obvious example of this is Salmon Rushdie's exile over the “ Satanic Verses” which the whole religious sector of his country took personally and issued a death warrant over. Hectic.

That in itself becomes a query into the freedom of speech within the arts, but we won't open that can of beans just yet. 

Tough review. 

Artists can also effectively fall into the category of the jester; the bold-headed clowns who entertain us through satire, like our local comic satirist Sapiro and Pieter Dirk Uys's Evita.

Who were you expecting? Madonna?

Then there are those who like to focus our attention on our blindspots..make us guiltily aware of the fakeness of the Emperors’ new cloak by bringing into focus a lie or the hypocrisy of religious convictions. These artists want to cause panic and dissertion in culture. I volunteer Die Antwoord for this one..especially with their latest music video "Fatty Boom Boom".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXUgtNC4Kc

Through the ages the human race has shows is perclevity for going of course. How many times can we see people doing REALLY bad things in the name of God? Jesus and His was the mascot for the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades.The Jihad was declared in service of Mohammed, and let's not forget when The Church burned women as witches in the Puritan times. Murder is still murder.

Makes you feel uncomfortable don't it?

http://brandingironworldwide.com/journal/2012/01/jill-greenberg-a-strange-new-world/

Here is what the Russian writer Alexandr Solzhenitsin had to say when he received the Nobel prize  for Literature in 1970, about the role literature could play in the merciless onslaught of violence in the world.

"Let us not forget that violence does not exist alone and cannot survive in isolation; it is inevitably bound up wit the lie. Let the lie come into the world, even dominate the world, but not through me. Moreover, writers and artists can do something more, they can vanquish the lie. Wherever else it fails, Art has always won its fight against lies, and it always will win. Its victory will be obvious, irrevocably obvious to all men. The lie can withstand a great deal in the world, but it cannot withstand Art." 

This truth shines in nominal fiction such as Solzhenitsin's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and locally in "Die swerfjare van Poppie Nongena"  (The wander years of Poppie Nongena) by Elsa Joubert.

And this same truth can just as easily be hidden in the following ironic account:

When the government in the USA gathered to announce their declaration of war on Irac to the press in 2001, they were in a large room that had an embroidered replica of Picasso's Guernica on the wall. When they noticed this they quickly covered it with a large blue cloth. The truths about the violence of war Picasso's work reflected was quickly swept under the carpet. Would it have reminded these important men that war's inhumanities isn't all Fox news broadcasts and flying banners of judgement. Lives are lost on both sides.  One wonders if they felt their decision might be judged or sound false in the presence of work that showed the inhumanity of what they were about to undertake. 

Evil  flourishes when good men do nothing.

A philosopher once said a Culture is only as big as its dreams, and the dreams are dreamt by its Artists. I like that. God bless all artists.

For more information on Evette Weyers and her book  "Wat die hart van vol is.." (What the heart is full of) check out http://hemelensee.co.za/documents/hemeensee_blog.php?entry_id=1333903199 and http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2012/05/09/evette-weyers-gesels-oor-haar-boek-wat-die-hart-van-vol-is-plus-uittreksel/

Two vultures were in the desert eating a clown...

Waking up today, I could not have foreseen the immeasurable will of my Father to gather the scraggle of female home bodies, the almost sing-a-long day "road trip" or the sentimentality of the sun setting on a day of peek-a-boo window shopping in touristy spots along one of the largest dams, nestled between two mountain ranges. Hence a very pleasant day driving around with my folks in the Magaliesburgs and the Hartbeespoortdam.

Some noteworthy things came to my attention today; my Mother overpacks for everything (not that I didn't notice, but hearing my Father tease her about it, made me realize he had noticed also, and that she laughed meant that she was after all a good sport.. mmmm!!),  beware sticky tables in restaurants, especially if the waiter explains they were recently varnished ( really, like this morning?). 

I also discovered you get PURPLE snap peas (but you have to eat them fast or they mould?), that South Africa built an atomic bomb in secret and then detonated it in an abandoned mine shaft somewhere in the 80's (!!) and that the House of the Rising Sun was my Uncle Wallie's favourite LP, and potentially his only one, as he forced my Mum to listen to it whenever she came to visit in their youth.

Is he a fan of this too I wonder?

And lastly that one of the largest vulture colonies is nestled in this mountain range. Exciting stuff! Vultures aye? Seen lots of cartoon vultures and on 50/50 and other gruesome wild life programs. But my knowledge of vultures as a species was spotty at best: ugly, grey, sinister looking, big, necky birds? Eats the meats of the dead..birds of carnage right? Cool, bring on these bad ass mothers.

You might know me by my work?

First rule of looking at birds? Bring binoculars.

The only way to look at chicks.

Damn. Oh well. We'll just find them manually.
Luckily these birds tend to colonize in one spot, so spotting them was not too difficult. The fact that LARGE quantities of white bird poo covered the mountain in patches was also pretty much a tell-tale sign that they were indeed nesting up there.

'Follow the signs! You'll figure it out!

In the sky above us I counted 23 large birds gliding about. Excited I found out there were loads of them up there! What like thousands? Yes..No. To my dismay it turned out that these unpopular birds were in the numbers closer to the hundreds. The low hundreds. Ahem. Whatever, its not like they're cute or anything. Who cares? So what if they sometimes they eat the meat of poisoned animals (farmers lay out poison to curb pests like jackals) and end up dying by accident too..  Stupid bird, you should know better. Keep flying out of your territory to hunt and ending up electrocuting yourself on those electrical wires of factories? Esh, don't you have like bird radar? Come on.

We almost got the Angry birds contract. I guess we weren't angry enough?

Noting I hadn't heard before. But the worst was yet to come... the shocker: Bodies of these vultures were found at the bottom of the range as they were slaughtered by some of the indigenous folk. Turns out that because it is known that vultures fly high in the sky, they must see into the future. Obviously. So if you kill a vulture and consume part of it in some tribal medicine you will have better luck at predicting your lotto numbers. That's right you heard me. The LOTTERY. You will have a better chance of PICKING THE WINNING LOTTERY NUMBERS if you CATCH, MAIME and KILL this endangered bird.

 I don't know, this just seems so old school to me.

All of these things combined, made me feel pretty sick to my stomach and extremely shitty about the whole vulture situation. And shitty about people. Stupid people and ignorant people and superstitious people were really the cause of me loosing my purple peas breakfast. How could people still believe things like that in this day and age? Such ignorance and fear that rule so many people that it breaks the heart. And I know full well that it isn't an isolated experience. For years poachers have slaughtered rhino's and elephants for their horns and tusks - not only in the value of the ivory but the supposed medicinal value of "Rhino horn". Sharks get their fins chopped up for a healthy broth and a tiger's balls is considered an expensive delicacy to boost male fertility, in high end restaurants of Beijing and other parts of China.  Superstitious violence towards animals for the gain of a human desire/attributes/luck is not new nor should it be so surprising. 

Sorry but its true, you have a face only a mother could love. But I am trying to like you more.

And yet I can't shake the feeling of general wrongness of it all and to feel a sense of sadness for this  ugly bird that's dying out because some idiot thinks eating its heart will give him seven lucky numbers.

If this was a movie we would come back and haunt that schmuck.
Or give him totally wrong numbers and some sort of venereal disease for eating our insides. Your Welcome.

After coming home, I researched the vultures of the region (I know, I told you I felt sad), and am happy to report that there are in fact organizations out there keeping an eye on 'em vultures. They may not be the poster animal for the WWE but another conservation program all to itself called VULPRO is looking out for them. Nice people in khaki clothes and with tranquilizer guns and tracking devices. Phew, GOOD. And they check on them by going up in hot air balloons. Hallo! That's pretty cool. You go khaki rangers!! Admittedly, I am not the khaki wearing type, but I am one hell of a sharer and can tell a good story at a party like nobody's business. So don't worry vultures, I can't stop people from hurting you for incredibly stupid reasons, but I can tell as many people within earshot about it. 

Starting with today, on this blog. 

Word.

Here is a link to the Vulpro website: http://www.vulpro.com