Tranquility

“time goes by so slowly” ~Madonna

Due to many circumstances, one being covid restrictions in China, I haven’t been able to attend any live performances. Let’s all take a moment of silence and sadness for me.

I appreciate the moment

Live performance/Theatre is peaceful. It’ really is a place were you tend to forget reality and be transported into that moment. This ofcourse dawned to be today when I watching a student talent show. I found myself absorbed in the moment, I found myself reminiscing about my days in theatre whether during rehearsals or performance.

I miss that space

In theatre time moves differently in both literal and figurative terms. You are taken in a different world, into the moment or lives of people you are watching, and suddenly reality falls at the back of your mind. Days and months can pass in theatre yet it’s just minutes on your clock, but for that moment, if you are absorbed, you transport yourself to that time, and suddenly you forget the world outside.

The theatre itself is warm, the lights are bright or it’s dark depending on what the work is about. However these effects play with the mind, either making you believe it’s day/night.

How it can it not be therapeutic, it’s a form of meditation for real.

If you come across live theatre performance, even if you’re not a fan, go in there, agree with yourself to get lost in whatever world is being presented to you. Agree that your eyes will believe the light that exist, the period being presented. When you agree to all these, answer the question.

Did you not experience tranquillity?

What makes you experience a state of peacefulness?

The Male Spec-actor

Def. : one who looks on or watches |One who pretends, but secretly watches.

Welcome to 2022 on this blog were we still talk intellectual bullshit. Oh I’m kicking the year off with an intense topic. Should men not be involved in solving issues that women face?

You know I am here to collect your perspective so after reading, please leave a comment.

Ideas are started by individuals, and then further perpetuated by those (social masses) who agree with the individual. This is not to say the social mass was not thinking this all along, no, it is to say, someone made a point they agreed with all along, and it’s refreshing and releasing when someone does that. So you form/ join the social league.

So, can you take away an individual thought in a big idea? You can’t really. In huge social movements there exists individuals. We resonate with these individuals.

So, let’s agree.

Yes, there are problems. These problems are someone’s fault, we technically know who’s fault it is, but the aim is not to point fingers, because we know pointing fingers leads to some fingers being pointed back.

How do we solve the problem? This problem of men treating women certain ways that are wrong! How do we solve these socially constructed ideas about women either their looks, intelligent and their worth? I don’t know really, but I know including the people who are part of the problem is definitely a good start. Making statements that “they don’t have knowledge to understand” the problens, that won’t solve it. Instead it’s a fire being built by a group of people, and it’s not warming everyone up to new ideas/thinking.

I understand people who shut Asian/White people down when it comes to conversation about race as we note “they won’t understand the problem” I do it too really, I’m guilty, but being guilty though I don’t shut it down completely. I go back to throw a few jabs again to see if they understand, if they don’t I get off the ring and maybe wait I don’t know until when.

I have been a witness of so many ill events/actions caused by men unto women yet it doesn’t give me enough knowledge because I am not in the body, I am viewing it from the other side and that makes it complicated.

I can never be women, it’s hard to even imagine being one. I am guilty that even when I imagine being one, I childishly think of having breasts.

Everyone needs lecturing, of course men need to stop being spec-actors of the multiple issues occurring; Women on the other have to know they can’t come into that battle alone, without some “men” on their sides. Yes, but who are these “men”

My problem is I don’t know where I stand, I am a man, I am probably guilty of many inappropriate acts towards women, some aware of, others not, I just need to be put in a circle of men that need to be educated.

So ultimately here are some questions.

1. Can men, us be trusted to listen without reaction?
2. Are we dumb that we don’t understand women’s problems? Like are we thinking they don’t exist?
3. When the fuck are we going to fix “Black/Coloured people” issues? Why is the race issue always being pushed backwards
4. I’ve said too much

Remember leave your intellectual bullshit, I want to here your thoughts. A link that was shared to me. It was interesting to listen to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmqq9_XTelM

Multiple Personalities

This post is about friendship(s)

In the movie Split the main character suffers from what psychology terms “multiple personality disorder” I tell you right now if the disorder was like that, it would definitely be more interesting.

I want it!!

I want to use the analogy of the movie as basis to this post. None of my friends are the same, as a reader you can attest to this by looking at your friends and seeing how different they are to each other. Although we are all friends together, and resonate on the same frequency, we very much differ; We differ on how we approach certain things or life itself, I think it’s why my friends have their own friends as do I.

This comes to me in how I saw my friends reacting to something I had sent them. Each found a different aspects of it..in one scenario, I didn’t send a joke to a certain friend because I knew it was not their type of joke, this of course doesn’t mean friendship over.

This phenomenon if I can call it that is clearly visible in my own emotional needs to them “friends” as well.

I never approach a certain friend with a certain problem, because I know they will not get the whole picture of the issue, they will offer support yes, but it won’t be the kind I’d need.

I have a friend I always approach if I have women problems, not because he has a lot of women problem surrounding him, no, because he has a certain understanding that I can resonate with… he also has lot of women problem, please help him!

I have a friend I can approach if I have family problems or thinking about future prospect. I have friends I can talk about artistic work, some of my friends get repeated in different loops.

Friends to talk dumb and serious shit with you know!

These friends in a way tap into different personalities that exist within me. I can listen to my friends music but not all their playlists, gosh I’d die.

I am not sure they’d be able to listen to my playlist, I got too many love songs, Taylor Swift ringing in my ears, what can I say Teardrops on my guitar is my shit!!

Anyway, friends are dynamic, some of them you can’t call to be honest because they’ll tell a joke to get you into unnecessary trouble, some you can’t call to speak “the truth” because they will really speak honest truth, bitch read between my lies.

Yeah I learned that lesson the hard way, that’s a story for another day.

I have a few circle of friends, I mean the people I can really tell my shit too. The ones that know I am really shy and quiet, the ones that know I am smart in certain fields and totally clueless in others, but that won’t stop me from listening to them rant about their shit.

Most my friends and I support the same teams, except Fiddy, he’s a bitch, he supports Arsenal, I don’t get that.

Friends, countrymen, people of earth, what are your friends like? Drop me some comments, let me laugh at your shit.

Theatre Work On Sale

See this as a review.

‘Idyllic Lives’

You can walk out of a show not liking how it happened, ‘the structure’, but you can fall in love with so many aspects.

The wonderful dancers that move so well they make your muscle orgasm, no, truly my muscles still have a shaking spasm for how well the performers could move.

The design, oh, what a design it was, like sex for the eyes, not everyone loves sex, so replace sex with whatever you desire and be charmed by that image, yes, that’s the stage design.

The music, I suddenly wished the live musicians were the show but I understand how without bodies dancing, the music would have been useless.

The work as beautiful as I have described it lacked a certain structure. In the world of comedians, its something they dub “Callback” the work began a certain way, a very beautiful way I might add, it lied to me really, it drew me in with the opening, dancers rolling like hay on stage but so hypnotic, I was caught in their web but after that it was filled with “moments” rather than a line structure, I was left saying ‘Oh wow that piece is nice’

Yes, it didn’t really connect together, the movements/dance although very wonderful there didn’t connect to the concept of the work, there were so many movements but they didn’t feedback to the concept at all, I felt again I was left watching how these performers could move wonderfully but not necessarily how they are creating a working narrative.

I want to defend it and say perhaps if I was Chinese, I would have gotten it more, but the audience around me although enjoyed it, I felt they too sensed the disconnect.

Can I go back to talk about the design? I get jealous, perhaps it’s because I hardly get to work with designers on my works. The design was something to feast your eyes on, it wasn’t like the best stuff in the world but I envisioned so many ways it could have been utilized, I felt all types of emotions.

Sand falling from the sky, something I’ve seen before, but totally worth re-seeing, animation, it could have been used more, it really could have. Bamboo sticks, OMG, they used those sticks for just a short moment but I screamed no, you are using them wrong, bring them back here in this moment, so it connects with what you did earlier.

I walked out content, I walked out understanding that we create differently, we work in certain ways, while some of us work in imagery others work in narrative, I am the latter, I want to connect my work to a certain line that when it ends you understand how it began even more.

I walked out wanting to create again, to build that connecting story, now I wish I could steal those performers.

What work have you seen and connected with lately or disconnected?

Cut/Crop/Save

So often we put ourselves in positions were we want people to know that we did something or we feel a certain way about something, to in a certain way prove ourselves to “them”

I find myself in a weird/strange position of shouldn’t it be enough that I know were I stand? Aren’t I enough to self to know that my position is here, that I don’t need to defend it because I know it?!

There are very much places designed for you to defend yourself, like court. In court you have to no matter what defend or prove your innocence, even if you know 100% that you didn’t do something but by the standards that someone said you did it, places you in a difficult position of defending yourself.

This is a very different situation if someone says you are racist/homophobic/sexist etc. If someone blames you for being any of these things and you know that you aren’t, what reason do you have to prove yourself to them that you are telling the truth?

I don’t think there is really; there are things we don’t need to prove because proving them makes them not real, it makes you look as if you are justifying your own truth.

I am not racist because I have black friends! Having black friends doesn’t make you not racist, lack of respect/empathy, belittling black people makes you one, and you can really still be one in that position of having black friends, that’s just an example.

The pictures of food we take & post showing we are eating healthy! Who are we taking them for? You already know you’re eating healthy, for you and your body that is prove enough that you are doing what you tended to do, informing others about it isn’t necessary a need.

A part of the reason I am thinking about this is that I’ve been walking quite a lot lately, at times I’d forget to wear my watch which usually calculates the steps I take. It rattles me a bit to not have the steps counted, but then I started thinking, wait, who am I doing it for, am I walking to calculate steps so others can see or what?! I mean I know I walked a lot, shouldn’t that be efficient? Who needs to see that I walked so much today and why?

Proving or disproving certain things isn’t necessarily, but we are trapped in this reality of if people know were I stand, I can be liked more or can be relevant or I will be acknowledged.

It’s sad we live in this reality, even I. I dance and I take videos of me dancing naturally because I want others to see that I dance and made something beautiful or interesting.

It’s the world we live in, I think we need to re-evaluate certain things, try to understand what really is significant in the world we live in

In essence it comes down to a few things, one being I understand how the world is structured now. The world is built in a way that fame or entertainment can happen at any time, that a simple video or image that you took can become an instant hit. That’s the type of world we are in.

However the other part takes me back to something that comedian Dave Chappelle does which is he take people’s phones away during live performances; for some I am sure it’s like taking them to rehab, taking away an addiction they have, but I think that’s precisely the aim.

People can’t seem to live in the moment anymore, to be satisfied with experiencing things in that moment and be fulfilled with the idea that it’s all in your head/heart, you didn’t capture it with any device.

It’s totally okay for your film recording to be your brain, yeah sure likely no one will believe you, that you met who you said you met, but you know it happened, that should be proof enough.

We are stuck in a forever changing world, a complicated world that is asking us to think too much, to forget human feelings and emotions, making us react to each other in a delayed manner because we are so busy caught up on being relevant.

It’s a scary world out there people, but it’s still a fun world.

What is your take, talk to me, I am all ears

A love letter to my lover

As everyone in life I’ve had to deal with a lot of crazy, funny, and hurtful things that life has to offer. In recent years none have managed to bruise me; you tend to build up thick skin for things that can hurt you in life, as everyone else does.

In those things I have felt none have been more hurtful than being blamed for not loving you.

I could be taking it into heart too much, I can be sensitive but you saying the words “I didn’t care”… no let me use love you, has been a thorn in my chest.

I don’t blame you in any sense. You are an amazing person, with flaws and all, but flaws I love. I began to question a lot of things being in love with you. I started to wonder if I’ve ever actually liked talking to a female person more than I loved talking to you.

I started to wonder if a girl has ever made me laugh like you do, or if I’ve ever went so deep in my own memories, digging stories so I can feel so close to you.

I wondered all these things and I smiled at the thoughts, nay I laughed because it seemed so untrue yet there I was loving without feeling any type of consequences

I must be a silly boy, but silly has driven me across a lot of bridges and so far, I’ve lived an entirely exceptional life.

I am sorry I didn’t love you the way you wanted to be loved. I guess I need to re-invent myself in the field of love, although I don’t question how I love, I got plenty of that, an entire ocean, all I have to question is how to love more, to go further into this deep sea that is me, there’s hope for me yet.

I hope you find someone who loves you more, the way you yearned to be loved. If I was a believer I’d pray for it, if I were a singer I’d hold a concert for it, if I was rain I’d pour it down on you in waves, but there’s no need for that, because you will; for loving you in this moment in time has been the best feeling I’ve felt in a long while.

Loving you is or rather was the best thing I looked for each day, to love you more was becoming an acquired taste, now I am stuck with the worse part of all, trying to forget you.

W.T.F or (What The Future)

Again we come to that point were we realize there’s too much pressure on kids, not just by their own parents/guardians but by society itself.

Kids, I am also including young adults; I’m not sure if I can count myself as a young adult anymore, but it does say via the great vine that young adulthood ends at around 35 years so, I can reshuffle the statement and say there’s still too much pressure on us.

We have been constantly being prepared for “the better future” I can always recall those words being used either at home or in an education sector, that what I am learning is building me, so I can create a better future.

There seems to be an issue because I am an adult now yet these same words are still being used and engrained in the younger generation; So what da fuck??

What da fuck indeed? Where is the data? Is there any improvement from when I was younger to now that at least shows there’s change or is everything getting fucking worse. Someone show me an excellent form, numbers people ? Yeah sure a little bit more awareness is being shown about certain socio-political issues, political issues, economical etc etcetera.

Are we getting any closer to this future that I was so being prepared for, that I didn’t have time to live fully, or are we still kind of a fucked up world?

Well my thoughts are gravitating towards the latter. We’re still kinda fucked maybe this time there’s lube at least?

Listen my point is not necessary to focus on how to solve the World problems, I am just a speck in a huge vast world, I mean technically according to Carl Sagan, the world is a tiny speck of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

 

The fucking lunacy of it all.

 We should stop preparing kids for the future, wait, listen before you conclude on that statement. We should stop; We need to let kids, nay, we need to let ourselves live in the present.

We are busy teaching each other, or preparing our kids for the future that no one seems to be living in present? Why are we all in limbo, living in a destination we have no fucking idea what it looks like, it could perhaps be even worse and when that happens you say ‘fuck, I wish I had lived a fuller life earlier’

Do I sound negative? Let me clear that up

Yeah of course I am working, saving my money so I can do this and that, better future, but I’m going to be old by that time and that’s the scary shit for me, to have all his money and knowledge but I’m old.

Benjamin Button syndrome sounds so interesting right now

I don’t want to live on regret, I kinda have much already.

Let’s stop preparing kids for the future, let’s let kids live in the present, hell you need to live in the present.

Like WTF for real. Write me. Be in the present with me.

Pink is not my favorite color

You are often told not to judge a book by its cover, neither can you judge this reading by it’s title too, it may not be what you think it is.

It’s true though, pink is not my favorite, neither do I hate it, in fact it’s the opposite, I adore pink.

Pink is a color that slaps well on me, it’s colorful but not really bright colorful. Yet as a person of certain gender, I am still looked at with squinted eyes.

I was oddly very pink today, hence the writing of this post; pink watch and pink shirt, however my students saw a pink watch and went haywire

“Teacher, you’re wearing a pink watch”

‘Well yes, I am, thanks for noticing, it’s nice right!? ‘

No, teacher, it’s pink!

So. what?

Pink is for girls.

I knew that’s were it was going, I was waiting for them to say that, so I could ask who said that? Well I wasn’t going to get an answer because they just knew only that, they had no idea why they thought it, they had been told throughout life that pink is for girls.

Which in my opinion kinda sucks, more so that I don’t like blue as the color representing men. Who on this god damn earth chose blue as the color, why not black? or grey, something dark and mysterious!!

I’ve never been a fan of social classification or gender roles; that one thing should be done by one gender or another the other, in this case that one color belongs to a certain gender.

I like pink, it’s a freaking, nay, fucking good color, no it is, if you feel a type of way about that, it could be because of all the social madness that has clouded your intellect, but here I am suggesting you try out some pink color, I promise it won’t make you suddenly “change”

Pink, it slaps real nice. That sounds like a good slogan.

Nobody ever died from Listening

Why listening is great for writers

Okay the title might be wrong a bit, I’m sure someone there died from listening, heard the wrong shit and then boom.

Uhmm yeah of course listening is significant for everyone, it’s such a great skill to have, a skill that most people don’t possess; it’s not necessarily a crime, however if you are a bad Listener, I can tell you that you’re missing out on quite a lot.

So, why is listening an important tool or rather skill to have? Well, as writers we have the ability to transport people from a seat to a world they’ve never been into before, I mean in a sense that’s an artists job, we live and thrive on the idea that we take people to this reality that may or may not have existed.

As a writer you have so much you go through, in one lifetime you cannot experience all the emotions needed to write all these different emotionally driven characters, I mean damn, you also have your own personality, when do you get time to party like Van Wilder if you’re always stuck at home watching Harry Potter because you think it’s a great piece of work.

So then how do you write all these eccentric characters if you can’t experience their livelihood, well the best way is to live vicariously. To listen; listen to those that have experienced all these intriguing adventures, and live vicariously; that’s basically it, just sitting across different humans and listening to all their stories.

I recently found out information about Ramadan that I didn’the know, an emotional and psychological level that people who go through it, what they feel like. It was amazing really.

Listening takes patience, it takes interest, anybody can listen but also not everyone can be a great listener. One of my favorite South African writers Kgebetli Moele known for Room 207 and Book of the dead (favorite novel) in an interview said “My stories are mostly based on the character around my community, based is really an understatement, but my community doesn’t want me sitting around them anymore, because they say “ahh you, you will write about us in those books of yours” he laughs. I was there in the interview so I know he laughed.

While he was sharing this event, I could imagine him being outcasted in laughter by community, so in turn, I laughed at that thought. These characters we write, most come from reality, people that exist, only way you can write what an arsehole is like is if you’very been around one; same goes for depressed, wild, socially aware etc. you can’t experience all these things so, it’s not to say hang around these people but listen to them when you get the chance use it.

I sit quietly around strangers at most times, just vanish while sitting among them, what I am doing most time is writing character descriptions in my head, yeah of course to the viewer I am the quiet weirdo, but bare with me, I am at work.

There are a lot of videos out there teaching you how to listen better, as stated, a really important skill to have, Celeste Headlee probably still amongst my favorite talks on listening. So as an artist, as a writer, listen a bit more, just shut up and listen, respond of course but absorb it all in.

The high 5

It’s such a simple and mundane gesture isn’t it, a high 5, yet it carries so much weight, no it really does, ever hear the statement “come on bro, are you going to just leave me hanging?”

It’s kinda of a rule, you can’t leave a bro hanging from receiving a high 5 it’s there in the social rules, it should be in the testament too

As a teacher to young students, a high 5 is synonymous to a reward, perhaps can be considered to be more important than stars/money/gifts or whatever rewarding system you might use; A high 5 goes beyond the logic of being a “reward” it’s praise that includes [physical contact]

I once wrote a short “poem” about the significance of hand holding, honestly I’ve written about hand holding a bunch of times, it’s just a simple gesture but yet carries so much weight and meaning in relationships.

For a child, a high 5 has that kind of sense, I mean not just for the child but for the teacher and the parent as well.

Let me explain

I like kids, nay, I love kids; kids are like an empty canvas waiting to be painted on; their world is almost blank, and we “adults” fill it with all these experiences, sometimes I wish we didn’t, some experiencesvmore bad than others but experiences none the less.

Being a foreign teacher, one of the things the kids struggle to grasp is this strange fellow with very different skin than their own; worse if this child has already had their blank canvas painted on that this skin should be feared.

Yet, we proceed none the less, and the initial, the first step is perhaps to try break the contact barrier. I have learned that if you can break the contact barrier (high 5) with the child, the journey becomes more smooth.

We all know how awful it can momentarily feel when a child refuses to give you a high 5 or maybe it’s just me; this little bastard is basically leaving you hanging, s/he should really read the social rules…you don’t leave a brother hanging!!

I once had a student like that in a demo, only one who refused to give me a high 5, I smiled at the notion, told him, I’ll break you  soon.

And then it happens, you break the barrier, the little guy gives you a high 5 and it’s rewarding for both of you, and the parents; everyone is joyous and all cheer hooray‼ Yeah that actually happened everyone clapped so loud.

Somehow once that barrier has been broken, the stakes reverse

“Mwahahaha” that’s my evil laugh.

The stakes reverse that you as a teacher are now in power; this simple gesture of high 5 has now become Thanos’s gauntlet, if you refuse to give the high 5 to the student, it hurts them.

“Mwahahaha, yeah, told you never leave a brother hanging, how does it feel now?!”

By giving this high 5 it is like you are giving a gift; You are uttering well done, I’m proud of you, without even saying a word.

This gesture, the high 5 has a lot of power that perhaps as teachers we don’t pay attention to, perhaps we do, I can see the eager anticipation from students waiting to give an answer after they saw others receiving a high 5 for giving an answer too

Probably saying I want one of those.

There are some questions: Should you use the high 5 as punishment? Refuse to give it to a student who is naughty/misbehaving/didn’t get the correct answer? It’s debatable, not to say that I haven’t done it before, yeah, I’ve left some little suckers hanging…syke

You got to earn this high 5, I definitely feel like I worked hard to earn it from you (student) as well, especially in the start of our relationship.

So, from teacher to teachers, let’s use our gauntlets wisely, don’t be Oprah, don’t be snapping high 5s all over the place.

You get a high 5! You get a high 5 everybody’ gets a high 5!!