See the full gallery on Posterous

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Nadine Hutton's vision deconstructed and besmirched. Never mind #lesfolies reputation. You can also smear someone you adore at www.smearofthenation.co.za if they don't plagiarise and defame and damn you first.

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#lesfolies went with The Bandit, The Beautiful Distraction & The Germaine to the Troyeville Hotel just now to listen to an acoustic set featuring 88kg of Sunshine, Nechama Brodie and Matthew van der Want. We planned it an age ago. Just after she started her delicious prawns curry, an emergency call came in from the most beautiful man on the western side of the reserve. He said the police were arresting two of the artists for doing their job on the wall on the corner of Appollonia and Bezuidenhout, right on our turf, and asked #lesfolies if she would don her super-hero outfit and come with speed.

#lesfolies was thinking that she had most unfortunately left General Anasthetic's quick-change uniform at home and was looking more like Puss in Boots. She was wondering how that would go down with the good folk at Jeppe Police when she collided with the most loved man on the eastern side of the reserve. Inbetween half-finishing conversations with each other, he kindly offered to accompany #lesfolies to the station.

At Jeppe, #lesfolies talked her own hind leg off a very nice Constable lady including saying important names and international relations with top trading partners from Europe. She promised that next time she would first arrange everything with the right forms and stamps of certication from the Station Commander and then she emptied her wallet for the loitering bail.

In the courtyard outside Jeppe Poiice the most beautiful and the most loved man conferred about the dog while #lesfolies wrote a letter to the artists who were already inside the dungeon and had to be registered before they could be deregistered which was arranged with honour.

It's been a week and a half you can say that again. The artists will be out again tonight. 

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#lesfolies loves this. also toulouse l'autrec. the kiss, 1892.

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Jesus. Sacred Heart College, Observatory, Jhb, Ascension Day, 17 May 2012 B.D.*

The Miracle Observed II. Jesus, Sacred Heart College, Observatory, Jhb, 18 May 2012 B.D.*

The Second Ascension. Jesus, Sacred Heart College, Observatory,  Jhb, 18 May 2012 A.D.*

* B.D. Before #lesbin A.D. After #lesbin

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1. aside: the artist's rights are not important anymore. shut up about the artist. this is a national project now.

2. you don't understand how government works.

3. you are right. i don't understand how it does not work. 

4. either.

5. for art? are you mad. note: no question mark.

6. i will be arrested. how many disadvantaged rural woman will benefit? from art? what is this art? they will be put me and the DG in jail.

7. brown is the colour of poverty.

8. but no one will see it if it is brown. it's supposed to be bright blue. like the sea. just like poverty, it will be invisible if it is brown.

9. don't interrupt me young lady. brown is the colour of poverty.

10. and my hair.

11. and your beautiful assistant's skin.

12. i don't know why you are at this meeting. who asked you?

13. i think we should get together in the premier business lounge so i can explain to you how government works.

14. no. she can't come in here. she is not a member.

15. whispers aside. ok. give her one biscuit.

16. you must fly here right now so we can shout at you.

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A year since our brilliant neighbour and friend Zim Ngqawana left us too soon, and his friends Ernest Dawkins (Chicago!) and Feya Faku (Home!) get together with more home chinas to play the heart out of Sarah's Garage in Troyeville. 

Joined by Ayanda Sikade on Drums, Thembi I Can't Find His Surname Help! on Bass and the one and only Nduduzo Makhatini on some serious keyboard. These guys went ballistic.

While the young and beautiful Mr Thokozane Mhlambi played his cello so lovingly the bow was in shreds by the time he finished .... 

And that's our Phillippa Yaa de Villiers doing the skattisha. Did we dance. Nevermind the special openings and the big events, this gig in Sarah's Troyeville garage did it for us. Myesha Jenkins poetry worked like a deep-voice charm with the sound and afterwards she made us laugh because she became The Goddess of Exuberance with a hairstyle to match ~ which #lesfolies loves every curl of. She did not get a good picture of Sarah about which she is a bit very sad because we held hands and thought of Zim and Michael and how they would have loved to have seen the garage yesterday. Indeed in the midst of the jazz, #lesmiserables come out for a brief but heartfelt sobbing session which ended quite soon after it began thank goodness.

Here's Myesha talking to her friend Nduduzo who had all the girls doing that thing with their jackets when the aesthetic quotient is high.

You can listen to a snippet the loving les recorded for you in case you didn't show up, right here:

FeyaFakuErnestRankinThe_Garage.m4a Listen on Posterous

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we need to spend most of our country's money on the military so that we can defend ourselves from any other country that might declare war against us because they need to use their armaments because their military industry factories are so full they have to use the stuff so that they can get most of their country's money for the miltary so that they can make more so that they can defend themselves in case another country declares war against them because some motherfucker somewhere who does not care needs another cigar.

Image Source: Commons Wikimedia. Genuine Havana. Lithograph, 1868

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Moral: This is why so many people tend to frame their affirmations.

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1. you will be pleased to know

2. the bedtime story has been given a gift that will soon make it wireless 

3. on the corner of bezuidenhout & viljoen in troyeville, a webcam

4. will broadcast you hanging out in the park 

5. by invisible threads to my fingers, from which to the wuwuwu ha

5. if you go there, take a picnic if it is warm or a blanket if it is winter

6. we, the whole parliament*, interrupt this list to bring you a seasonal advertisement

7. for old brown sherry with chilli in it

8. raw, fresh chilli, cut, carefully, with a sharp knife

9. strained out the next day, or to taste

10. in a small thin crystal glass 

11. for winter is upon us

12. music

13. fades

13. and in the latest news

14. despite having recently failed her annual inspection

15. dismally

16. i might add

17. #lesmiserables remains banished

*phrase coined by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, credited also here with apologies to Nadine Hutton for stealing Free Sushi For All in the interests of sloganeering around town though there is really no excuse. Recipe by Jacqueline Perkules unless she got it from someone else I do not have a clue.

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i am learning pantsulering on the rea vaya line

when the city is my sprung floor

i like it when my friends are happy

when they can't stop smiling i like it more

when i see something

when something sees me

when the ghost lion comes out to look out for us

and when the big guy Joseph Hannes Burg brings the dog in case.

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You never know if you are going to crack it or not. The thing you want to crack. But I can tell you that even though I might be a bit very sad if I don't make it to the grand main TED stage which is yet to be known, the audition for them was a lesson in becoming a diver and worth every moment of the hold your breath and swim.

I gave it all I got I can tell you that. Afterwards I felt tired and shy. It was nice. Very nice. I wish you were there.

The image above is of Ludwick Marishane auditioning with his invention DryBathTM, which he has made to 'save the lives of over 2 million destitute people' with no access to clean water. He invented it because he did not want to bath. He is a funny, young and charming genius and I am following his act. Not that I did on the day: I went straight after Steve Barnett, my friend and The World's Most Famous International Non-Speaker - who had the whole audience up on their feet making beautiful music together with simple percussion instruments, ululating and dancing. It was some act to follow ... deep breathing under deep water.

Here's a bit of a diary:

Day before yesterday we started with the rehearsals at the Miagi Centre in Soweto, with the founder and curator of TED, Chris Anderson his own self, who coached us with some few gentle ideas, together with TED's sharp Kelly Stoetzel who is the Director of TED Content. The approach was unexpected. We didn't stand on the main stage practising and being daunted, but rather did an intimate run-through in a small room, each of us with a few other speakers there and the two above main TEDsters, together with Sean Gannet who is the Technical Producer for #TEDtalentsearch - he did not look up once from his computer until the gig was over the next day. He was good at concentration and reminded me of the tall blonde man with one black shoe only his hair is black. I was most surprised to see what big eyes he had when he lifted his head upwards off his neck.

These good people are flying between countries so fast they don't know what hotel they're staying in - but they really used the time they had with each of us - in a way that made me feel like they were taking time. Slow Good. I learned. They really wanted us to do our best.

Next day (yesterday) was the big audition. I can't say I was nervewracked but I was definitely not normal, ha, not in my right mind, ha ha ha, and the shakes gave me a special gees. It felt like it worked. 

What is worked? #lesfolies is thinking about this. Usually it (thinking) goes from #lesfolies mind to #lesmots pen with some interference not too often anymore but with certainty, by #lesmiserables. 

Every speaker on the shortlist had something precious and I have come away feeling like it would be something else to go to California with any or all of them. Holding thumbs.

This is Robyn Grobler. She made some of us cry by telling us what it is like to cope as an intern at a public hospital in South Africa. The woman puts on something called A Felicity Suit I swear, and she is full power: finding reserves of patience and fancifulness for her patients - in an impatient, tragic and dysfunctional war zone. A hero kind of person with legs to match I kid you not.

And speaking of hot legs, here is the Barefoot Astronomer. One Simon Ratcliffe, a geek who does not officially look for aliens, and who made us gasp at the potential of radio telescopes in the southern hemisphere. He has the eyes for astronomy I tell you, glinting stars they are, and I am sure his family galish and die for him. The audience sure did. Nevermind his shins though, nevermind those cute bones, the dude is a brain.

And Toby Shapshak - the Man: His talk made us all look at the cheapest kind of cellphone and internet technologies - sms, please call me's, mixit and the like, in a completely new light - something he calls 'over the edge technology'. He says there are 650 million sim cards in Africa, offering a new way of transferring money and getting critical information, even if you don't have the change to pay for a call. Toby knows his oats.

Yes it's yours truly with Toby himself - and here I am again, explaining how encyclopedias of forms to complete tend to get in the way of imaginative action. Pouring out my whole heart to go to California ... with my lesbin. 

And here's Jodi Bieber's opening slide about how we got everything right here at home anyway. So there.

Jodi's photographic project in Soweto reflects a beautiful community in a vast, complicated and enchanting place. I'm happy the TED auditions were there and not at the North Pole to which Lee Swan, who blew me right away almost to the South Pole, because she walked there in some style.

Ms Swan has more courage in her left finger than even us who like to think of ourselves as gritty. 

Lee put her hand on the ice by accident for about 15 seconds last year in April and she is still getting feelings back in her brilliant fingers. Minus 70 degrees she is lucky she is not a freezer. She says the tent was stinky as anything and made us laugh and showed us images of overwhelming glacial mountains of ice, an ocean that terrified her - as she claimed it. To have an extraordinarilee beautiful life says Ms Swan about what she did. Damn straight.

There are still others. Andrea Marshall on Manta's in Mozambique who looks like the magnificent Mantas she loves and whose lives she researches and whose meaningless deaths for mutis she mourns and crusades against; Josh Ginsburg who archives his life in images and texts that he can then see in patterns no one would have dreamed of, a poem of a life; and the youngster, 15 year old Luke Taylor, who is teaching robots to speak English. A boykie. I am following his act too.

There's no more space. The post is long. I am going to sleep soon. In my dreams California. Or Soweto. Here I come.

P.S. The when in deep water title line is from the Runes I drew with Nadine Hutton the night before the audition much to her complete indifference. She had other things to say about where to dive. It was her birthday yesterday. She is going to Los Angeles in three days to reccie the place for me. 

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Thanks to the Fairy Godfather Steve for the bench and the compost and the extra hosepipe you took to the Mphuti Street Neighbourhood Collective in Soweto. This is not a picture of Steve, who is camera shy. This picture is of a passing entrepreneur, seen on the site watching the Collective who are seriously busy with their sidewalk. They say they are getting ready for a launch party to which they are going to invite the women. #lesfolies always did like watching men in the garden and there are also woman walking past happy to see these guys making themselves useful.

There is some kind of growing rock sculpture going on and much more of the sidewalk has been annexed by the Collective ... who have realised they own it already.

Today I heard they bought grass for about 100 square metres for a total of R200 delivered. We had a quote for over R2000 for exactly the same delivery. On a similar note a soda water can costs R3.50 in the kasie and R17.50 from that restaurant in Los Sandtos whose name is disqualified from #lesfolies memory.

There are about ten volunteers now working the Collective, ranging in age from maybe 18 to 70. All of them are very interested in why they did not do this before and they are smiling and talking about creativity while they get their hands dirty.A woman from the Miagi Centre called justnow and told us she is very glad because she was under the impression the mess was being made by the same people who are now making the place beautiful.

#lesfolies doesn't care what is true. #lesmiserables cares but she's been banished again. At least for a week. Her exile is better than serotonin. Here's one image of the site on Day 3.

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if i only had eggs

red bulls give you i don't give a fuck before they charge you

as he went charging past

if i only had tomatoes. johannes says i can get red ones with black florist paint.

and here we are. freedom day. sponsored by coca cola. opposite the morris isaacson school in soweto where we find:

as a consequence to that decision (to use it as the anniversary poster child), for one week prior, city parks pulled in with the roads authority and paved the entire road frontage of the land that had been a park once and literally stuck up whatever other even vaguely related artworks they could find in about seven days of spending plenty six figures so that the president, then mbeki, could come and not notice the mess and unveil the sculpture with a black cloth and johannes (phokela) stayed home and said fuck them he was going to sleep late because he knew and on the seventh day they rested and then they forgot about it and then it got vandalised and never fixed and then the weeds grew around it and now it has been kind of repaired though the back is all wrong - no plaque and no red binding on the black hardcover book. and then the fence

freedom day. my heart. soweto. tsietsie mashinini. who speaks of him?

this tree-sculpture was one of the ones that came there suddenly and by accident. i never saw it today. johannes did. (dreyer who took these photographs). it looks so beautiful. here's another view. how could i miss this?

instead i saw this. the protester. another accident sculpture of that week. now standing in the paving stones that not so long ago were installed all over this park so the president could walk here without getting his shoes dusty. the grass round here needs water and a cut. 

if i am not mistaken this granite plinth thing was used as the platform for a lifesize bronze of tsietsie. in military uniform i think. he went north to an anc training camp they say. and all i ever managed to find out was he never came back. people start whispering or looking somewhere else when you say his name. try it in polite circles. or they go hmpf.

on the site we met a woman by the name of rachel who pointed to some construction works down the road in the land adjacent to what used to be the park and said there's a big new project coming.

i know what she means.

a better life for all.

on the way home we saw soweto in the sky.

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There is a National Exotic Fruit Fly Surveillance Programme taking place immediately above our beloved bed in Troyeville, Joburg. In other words, in the tree above the Troyeville Bedtime Story. We agree: This is indeed the perfect proximity in which to survey all kinds of fruits and exotica.

We wonder what the Deparment of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries are finding out with this bucket. A google revealed many interestingly-named pdf files from www.daff.gov.za that went exactly nowhere and then #lesmots got bored with that and stopped.

Dear Johannes did not see the DO NOT TOUCH POISON sign until he had inspected the surveillance equipment which you can see his hands doing right here and which same precious hands he used immediately thereafter to return said bucket to its perch. He says he further then proceeded to immediately forget to wash those same hands straight afterwards.

#lesmiserables is pleased to report that the most aesthetically pleasing man on the Western Edge of the Reserve is not dead. On the contrary. He is doing a good imitation of an Exotic Fruit Fly Himself and she is considering reporting him to the Same Surveillance Programme so that they can get him in their bucket for a close-up view.

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Yesterday we went to see what the neighbourhood around the Miagi Music Centre in Central Western Jabavu in Soweto is like these days because #lesfolies is doing her Ted Audition there on Thursday the 3rd of May - and the talk is about neighbourhood in a targeted manner of speaking.

Inevitably the left side of the entrance to the centre is just fine and kind of looked after, but the right side (which is all wrong) looks like this (above).

So #lesmiserables was taking pictures of the site for sore eyes, when she hears a dude asking the redhead something. Turns out he needs work of course like all of us and he lives exactly and precisely opposite the offending site and his name is Major Poro as in General and he has these two eager sidekicks, Tiiso Mbuli and Katleho Lebusa, also from the neighbourhood, who for the life of them can't work out why they never thought of fixing up this mess before today. 

Inspired, the three men have started work this morning on not asking for permission to use their own imagination and limited resources to create a beautiful place where this whole lot of rubbish used to be. They have their own water and power from Major's house, they have a spade and a fork and they have muscles you have to see.

Tomorrow morning we are taking one bucket, one wheelbarrow, one hosepipe, 3 bags of compost and loads of aloes that the redhead (the smaller bigger one *coughs*) is getting from her garden which is quite near Leeukop Prison on the other other side of Joburg by the way, on which site she has set her own targets for another day and which is a big story that will undoubtedly unfold one of these years. It is important for #lesfolies nearest and dearest to note that these aloes were originally grown by Michael Kier on Level 27 of the Troyeville Tea Garden and plucked personally by his own missed self and given with hyperbolic enthusiasm to the redhead in return for her trading her old boyfriend in at The Reception Area of the Troyeville Wild Life Society for a new one that was first thoroughly inspected and who can cook.

SO: if any of my most darling of blog readers (who are hereby declared online neighbours to Mphuti Street), would like to give the good people of Central Western Jabavu, a sculpture of a musical instrument or a bench or something nice that works in the space, please contact #lesfolies forthwith and without delay, because we are helping Major to make sure the job is completed by Tuesday latest with a full maintenance plan in place.

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Jon's painting of Lautrec's painting, "Dans le lit", weathered a little on the dustbin down by the bed so he and Johannes went and did what they did and have sealed what they did with something. He may have told me and I am distracted by what is forgotten.

I remember though that Rafael the Legendary Carpenter from up the road is making a frame which craftsmanship considering the curve of the canvas is proving to be an untold chapter, one worth its wait in fool's gold.

There is no deadline. Today, David The Famous Photographer phoned to say our sculpture was giving him problems. He said he had to interfere with the tree branches that hang over the bed so that he could shoot it one night not so long ago, with a big light on his head. David told us, when he first called some weeks back, that the bed had triggered something in him.

In me too.

We knew he'd been there: we read it in an sms version of the Troyeville Bedtime Story. Indeed, the same media also recorded an incident in which the same David was spotted at the Kentucky Fried Chicken over the road, and I told him about that too when he called today. He was laughing.

Memory spreads itself out in the night and dreams us here.

Johannes came this afternoon and left this photograph of the restored painting on my desk a few minutes after I had left the office to meet a tall ghost with white shoes who, himself, left soon after.

And then we came home in the dark. Too dark to go and look at the dustbin, too dark to see Martha walking home from Spar on Bezuidenhout Street, no power in all of Joburg's eastern edge and it is quiet here now, candle flames on the kitchen table and slow traffic. 

#lesfolies' heart is made of pure fools' gold.

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Throughout the park, men with one shoe and no socks, dirty clothes and fucked up lives sleep it off (or wait to die) on the precious, shat-on, littered lawn. Some hang out in groups wondering what to do next. Others look like they know and they are a bit very scary. There are few women, though I did see one man, as we left, carrying a woman on his back like a baby. They were having fun like it's normal.

The chess players play chess. Not far off, it looks like the old beautiful greenhouse that I love, that is shattered, no longer home to luminous air plants, forest ferns and plants that eat whole flies where I could stay for hours with the smell and the flowers and the sound of running water, is finally getting repaired. It has a cheap building operations' fence around it that is falling over and which may crash into the greenhouse one of these days.

Two guys painting the roof waved at us.

Joubert Park is a big place with a big history for Joburgers. Its dereliction is a symptom of who is worrying about what, and who is taking what leisurely around here. Or who is just taking what and how little is left over for encouraging the mindful folk.

Or who is talking too much in meetings. So it goes.

The dudes were all ages. They laughed when Dear Johannes and I went to watch the game and he teased them about what's left of their pieces.

When we left, they asked us to get them pieces. New pieces. We said we would try. I think we look like magicians.

So: we don't ask anyone permission and we just make them, maybe even by hand, or maybe with an existing mould because that might be practical  ... but maybe easier is not as interesting. We will see. I will be in touch with you about this. I think I'm going to ask everyone I know and can connect with if they want to play and raise the funds that way.

So don't be shy to enquire. 

When something appears to be a zugzwang but it's really a checkmate you have to act fast. 

We also found this in the park even though today was foggy. I'm sure you will agree: Just because it says it is gone does not mean it is gone.

* If you don't know what a zugzwang is go here: http://lesfolies.posterous.com/zugzwangs

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*written on the occasion of reading about Aurora Empowerment in Johannesburg in the year of 2012 while noticing the current incumbent’s indices.

mr president

your finger

is pw botha’s finger

and

your nephew grave dances

like jimmy kruger

blood is thick

your finger,

mr president

if I may,

extends

a marked distance  

if I bite it off

you will grow another

as did those philistines before you

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