Compact Disk 01 02

The man who lived in himself

Here Barry, Levi, Matoti, Martin and Horsburgh discuss going through keyholes in time. This is also the last track on the first FLAT CD compilation.

B: …what each song means though because the whole tradition is really being lost. As much as the recording is actually capturing the tradition, it actually signifies the…
H: disintegration.
B: Ja, the disintegration.
M: Fuck. Did you hear stories about black magic?
H: Tell us about some.
L: Ja, tell us some stories.
M: You know things about witchcraft? It is very strange that people can […].
TM:What kind of things are you thinking of?
M: Well like… actual realities that people can go through holes. Keyholes.
H: Ja, I’ve heard of that.
M: You know, like vanish…vanish in front of the eyes of the people.
L: So do you believe them?
M: Ja… and I think I’ve seen a ghost. It’s strange.
H: Ja I have to, when did you see a ghost?
M: A few years ago. It was at night. We were sitting at my dad’s place. And there was this huge mountain. There was this light. I know that… because I didn’t confront the whole situation…
L: […] go into that walk.
M: What I’ve heard from people in very distant places. Apparently these guys were ready for circumcision… This dude told me it was like this sun like shoes that dragged him on the ground. It was really like it was going after him…
L: There is such a fine line between what people call hallucination… and reality.
M: I don’t think so Aliza…

At this point Barry puts on the “Kenya and Tanzanian Witchcraft & Ritual Music” CD and begins to read from the CD cover. Horsburgh, reading from a cigarette box, joins in and another “Miracle Filter” commences. Sections of this recording also appear on FLAT CD 1. Regular conversation continues after a few minutes, however some texts are read randomly throughout the entire interaction.

B: The illnesses are expelled from the bodies in a dramatic finale heard here
H: and founded New York in 1653. King-size, rich choice tobaccos, and the miracle filter, make Peter Styvesant the international passport to smoking pleasure.

B: The initiation of a Taita girl into the tribe includes a secret ritual at night, during which the girl expects to be eaten alive by an animal in front of the elders; she has been led to believe that her remains will be reassembled at dawn by sacred crows who come down from the Taita hills. In the morning, the uninitiated are shown the girl's “remains”, which are simply bones that the elders have thrown out during the night after feasting. Thus is the mystery of the ceremony kept alive through generations. The "animal" is very realistic: as “secret” songs are sung, an elder, dressed up in skins and chained to a man, crawls along the ground and approaches the terrified girl. An instrument, which is supposed to sound like the hungry animal thirsting after the flesh of the initiate, is played by another elder hidden behind a blanket in the gloom of the hut. The elder rubs his fingers up and down a stick resting upon a pot which has a skin drawn tightly across it: the vibrations that result produce a sinister tone. The Mwari rite has now almost entirely died out.
H: Thomas, where is that from?

B: In a way the true function is still there. But that doesn’t mean that its not working - that the function isn’t happening. Because even if it were happening, you wouldn’t know. You can take a rugby ball if you don’t know what it is supposed to do. You don’t know what you supposed to do with it and you can use it for the wrong reasons.
M: Thomas, do you know when you are going to get married?
B: No, never.
M: Don’t you ever think about that?
B: No, I don’t really think about marriage.
M: Do you know when you are going to get what you want - what you have chosen as your destiny?
B: Probably after death.
M: Because you seem like this whole certain creature.
B: Do you know what “umkundwabenta” means?
M: What?
B: Umkundwabena. It’s “dog-face”, “dog hair”. What is that? What is your perception of it?
M: Othlogo genjani…
B: What is you perception? What does it mean to you? It means “the bare-footed one”. It’s the spirit of the city. It’s the spirit of the city.
M: You can call it like in many ways.
B: You can call it anything. I know that but what does it mean to you? It’s the one with the ragged clothes.
M: Ragged clothes?
B: Ja.
M: Hay, have you seen that dude.
B: name… I’ve given him a name… He’s the man who lives in himself.
M: Have you seen that dude? Have you spoken to him?
B: Ja, he keeps a dead cat around. Its so that the lizards don’t crawl into his body when he is sleeping.
M: He eats raw eggs.
B: He lives in himself. He doesn’t need the city. He doesn’t need anything. All he needs is himself.
M: It’s strange. The other day I met him and he can’t feel any pain you know. He’s got like this ring stuck onto his finger. And the rest of his finger is swollen. It seems sore, painful. But he’s stuck into that.
B: Because it doesn’t matter.
M: But to me, to my eyes…
B: Because you are on the one side of reality and he is on the other side of reality. You can’t understand his reality and he can’t understand your reality because you are too removed, you are too far away.
M: But still…
B: When he gets hungry and you get hungry, he doesn’t eat food.
M: […] He thinks of himself as these bells above, from the bible…
B: He lives in himself.
M: No, I’m talking in terms of how he goes about…
B: He’s our shadow.
M: Our shadow. To me he’s like you.
B: Yes. But the fact is that you still recognize him apart from everyone else.
M: To me, he is like that dude I saw in Hillbrow. Like something that is not supposed to exist within my circles.
B: Because he lives in himself. He is his own entity. He needn’t exist for us. But he also doesn’t need us to exist. He’s removed.