Friday, April 29, 2011

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Toast Coetzer On Die Plesier Parade

"Right now my favourite South African album is Die Plesier Parade's Vonkvioole & Wasem. It's not afraid. It's about religion, depression and darkness -- a kind of forced expression of life's hardest puzzles. It breaks your head in two. It makes you think. Not everything works, but when it does, the soundscapes created take you on a tour of troubled-mind country. The closer, 15-minute-long Daar Is Net Een is spectacular -- a creepy, whispered nightmare in equal parts melancholic and frightening. When the CD player stops, you will be silent. Maritz van den Berg is the man behind it -- all the lyrics are his and sometimes the vocals too. But he rustles up a small army of other voices and musicians to help craft Die Plesier Parade's albums (the self-titled debut is possibly even better than Vonkvioole & Wasem)."

First published in the Mail&Guardian.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Max Moodley: 0054

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Congratulations!


Congratulations to V. Williams on 100 posts!

Victoria Williams: 0100

I said, ‘Our love is one in a hundred.’ He said, ‘A hundred! This does not speak well of your character.’ Then he lit his pipe and stroked his beard just like in the movies. He was 22 years old. Later, in the summer, when I was also 22, I’d gotten used to sitting up by the lamplight waiting for him, sometimes until the moths had settled in my hair. The first sign of him would be the silhouette of his pitchfork passing by the window. Of course by this time our love was one in a hundred and three.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Thighs

She wraps her thighs around compromise.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Max Moodley: 0053

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Victoria Williams: 0099

What do you have great poet?
I have a pain in my head.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Max Moodley: 0052

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Victoria Williams: 0098

Love Letters: My Darling, let us not allow the Rimbaud/Rambo argument to overshadow our entire honeymoon.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

One-Eyed

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is the designated driver.

~ Danielle Naidoo

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Max Moodley: 0051

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Victoria Williams: 0097

I don’t want your pity. Unless it’s in the form of financial compensation.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Scruffy

For his tenth birthday, John Coetzee's grandfather, a senile CERN physicist, FedExed him a black hole. John's parents, who were both employed as logicians at the University of Durban's Philosophy Department, were, naturally, concerned that this shirt-button-sized hole - which their son had christened Scruffy - would grow
larger and, eventually, suck up the city of Durban. They pleaded with John to send it back to his grandfather or, at very least, donate it to the Durban Museum of Modern Art, whose most recent exhibition the Coetzees had declared to be "the beginning of the end." The ten-year old, accustomed to robust and extremely rational dinner conversation, put his foot down: "It's utterly irrational to ask me to return nothingness.” Suitably chastised, John's parents allowed him to keep Scruffy. Two days later, Detective Xolani Hlongwe, standing above the void where Durban had once stood, coughed, tossed his cigarette into the abyss, then turned to his colleague, Detective Craig Naidoo, and opined: "This is why logicians shouldn't have children."

Friday, April 1, 2011