Broke and famous - a musician's headaches

Last week, I had the worst headaches of my life and I had all kinds of tests done, including a brain scan. Also went to an optometrist to make sure the headaches weren't caused by a change in my spectacles' prescription. All of these tests said I was healthy.

After all the consultations - thousands of rands later - I was helped by a nasal decongestant which costs about R20. I got immediate relief!

Now, did I demand my money back? No, that's not how life works, right? (Topic for another day!)

Why am I telling you this? Well, I got thinking about artists. There've been reports of Zola 7 being broke and later that he's making a comeback. Stories of rags-to-riches-to-rags aren't new. But I digress....

So all this payment could have been for a musician's services,right? If I hired a band, whether they play 5 songs or 50, I'm meant to respect their craft and PAY them their fee without trying to negotiate discounts or any such insulting stints. That's just how life works, isn't it?

Well, if only. I need to keep this article short so I'll wrap up with this call to action: next time you do hire musicians, pay them - and pay them upfront if you can, out of respect for their craft. I won't go into the comparison with how much more AMERICAN musicians get paid to appear here. No, the difference is not necessarily qualitative. Our musicians are better respected outside of SA. We just suck at supporting our own because we believe that consuming anything foreign makes us better. I'll actually just stop here.

Yea, I said it.

How does a blind programmer program?

Around 2004, I worked with a blind programmer, David, who was just amazing as a person, a programmer, and I later discovered he's part of a rock band where he plays a few instruments (including piano and guitar), singer, songwriter, and studio engineer.

Except for having a Braille printer attached to his PC, and text-to-speech software that read stuff out to him when he so chose, here's a few things about David:

• Amazing memory. Shortly after I met him, he and I had to attend a meeting in the Johannesburg CBD (17 KM away from our Randburg office). Johannesburg is a very busy city with many one-way streets. I drove and he guided me thru the most efficient routes (from the passenger seat). He knew Joburg really well so he directed me from Randburg, all the way into the basement parking lot's entrance. Probably not a big deal but I was blown away.
• He knew himself really well: We were late for that meeting so we had to hurry. When we got off the car, I unwittingly wanted to hold his hand and patiently lead the way. He politely asked to rather hold on to MY hand and told me to walk as I normally do. When we got to the security reception (where everyone's required to sign in) I knew what I was gonna do: slip a pen into his right hand and guide it to the dotted line. David politely asked me to place his LEFT thumb on the dotted line and he did the rest.

David was a senior programmer and really wasn't disabled. We worked for a bank and he was allocated to projects as one of the senior developers. You never felt like you needed to treat him with kids' gloves or anything like that - he was a solid programmer. He knew his stuff really well and most importantly (for me), he was a hell of a kind guy who was patient with junior guys, had a great sense of humour, and was totally self-reliant. 

Hell, this guy gave me an impression that he was more able-bodied than most sighted people. Taught me a hell of a lot in a short space of time.

Music career: fame, fortune, or both? You choose!

As technology continues its onslaught on job security, musicians/artists need one of these:

• A complementary second career; preferably in IT. Not as a fallback plan, but as a necessary mind expader to help you think outside the traditional musicians' mindset of thinking that spending yourself perfecting your craft is limited to singing/playing an instrument. IT is particularly lucrative because if you can't beat it - if you continue to be out-thought and sacrificed at the altar of piracy - you had better join this revolution.  It will help you navigate the broader landscape. Better yet, it can position you as a fierce competitor for traditional record companies.
• Budget to pay a technologist like me to halp them navigate the technology landscape. (Yea, I had to throw in the shameless self-promotion)
• An ability to roll up your sleeves, grit your teeth, and accept the traditional recording contract's terms, conditions, gigs, chronic brokeness, warts, and all.

Choose or you get the third option by default.

New driver's tips

Dear newly licensed driver. Forget what they taught u. Here are the actual rules of the road. You won't get a ticket or fine and your driving experience will improve.

• Go easy on the hand break. Don't use it at stop signs and traffic lights. Just use the foot brake. When u stop, get ready for the next take-off,don't only think of it when the light turns green. Clumsy drivers are a criminal's preferred target. But always use it when the car is parked,of course
• Minimize the need to change lanes. Prefer the middle lane, the fast lane attracts hooters and middle fingers that paralyze u into making mistakes.
• There is such a thing as driving too slowly. Flow with the traffic's average speed. This will save you from unnecessary stress and accidents.
• Sit comfortably. Don't religiously keep both hands on the steering wheel and your nose up (did they teach u that too?!?) Relax,your right foot makes the car move faster,not your hands - you don't push the car forward by the steering wheel with your whole body.
• Don't observe mirrors every 8 seconds anymore. But do pay attention to which car follows u for longer than 5 minutes and be aware of the nearest police station so u can go there if it's hijackers.
• When a large truck is in the next lane,keep calm and stay in your lane. Go faster or slower to keep away from the unnerving effect.
• I know everyone uses phones and all kinds of stuff while driving;don't give in to that peer pressure. You're fine without that.
• Strap baby in the back seat! No child stands between seats! Don't take this personally,just do it. Accidents happen to all of us and you don't want the guilt of what happens to unstrapped kids.
• Never drive without your safety belt on and your license with u,and diarize your license disk renewal - you WILL forget it. When u fill up, do let the guys check your oil and tyre pressure (u have to know what this must be). Before long trips,get a pre-trip inspection.
• If in an accident,don't own up even if you're wrong but don't be impolite. Exchange insurance details, and get the cops. Get details of witnesses. Take pictures of the scene. Secretly put on your cellphone recorder in case u need evidence (I didn't tell you this!)
• Observe this and you'll never be requested to buy any strange cool drinks for any traffic cop.

It's a pleasure.

Are townships a deserted wreckage?

Source: forbesindia.com

My home town(ship), Sebokeng, in the Vaal Triangle... What a timid place I came from! From an outside vantage point, It seems ok. But internally, Sebokeng is structurally fear mongering, at best.

• We respect people particularly because they're from out of town - they must be better, we subconsciously believe.
• We believe we are destined for marriage, a four-roomed house, kids, and maybe a second hand car; and then we wait for the pension payout to extend the house (or fit "big windows", a  proper red stoep, a decorative steel fence, and get the house roughcast plastered). Until then, we settle squarely in our routine of socializing and going to earn a salary (any job that lets you pay the loan shark, bank loan, stokvel, friends you owe, etc...)
• We are Christians via our parents or some family member(s). Someone's got to keep the tithe payment account going so we get buried when we die.
• Talking about accounts, everything we own is acquired via a rent-to-buy account: Edgars, Jet, etc; Joshua Doore (yes we believe we've got an uncle in him). Banks are there for the purpose of home/vehicle Finance and personal loans. Then there are the loan shark accounts...
• Of course, we fit in. We're afraid to be different and we practically never leave the Vaal Triangle.
• The highlights? They have something to do with booze. Bashes, shisanyamas, freshers' balls, etc. SA Breweries really doesn't have to advertize there. We do it for them for free. Many of their products are a status symbol we boast, anyway. The rest of the region's economy is driven by the factories we fantasize about working for all our formative years.
• This cycle is set. Kids are born into this and grow up to raise more such kids. Very few people escape it and its role models
• If we ever do leave the Vaal and discover that the boundaries were only imaginary, our chance of flourishing suddenly multiply and we never go back to the Vaal.

This system has a very firm grip on the locals. You can't live in the Vaal and escape it. All this talk of purpose, potential, passion, careers... That's rhetoric we throw around when we're drunk or when chatting up anyone who sounds smarter than us. In the Vaal, we're too busy keeping up with the latest dance moves, songs (y-tshukutsha), alcoholic beverages (I see my Facebook friends posting about a certain guarana drink. I'm guessing it's booze), and very expensive clothing brands. If we can't afford expensive clothes, we diss those who wear them as being vain and doomed for a bleak future.

This is not entirely unique to the Vaal though. It's just our local flavour of the structural dysfunction that we don't necessarily link to apartheid. We don't think that far unless we're sitting at a local tavern or Shisanyama on a Sunday morning drinking the previous day's hangover away; or of course, if we're chatting up the clever folks that we tell about "passion" and "purpose", and all things intellectual. But that's just our rhetoric.

Our townships are gravely dysfunctional. The 'best' of us - the role models - escape the system and flock into affluent suburbs, in pursuit of the greener pastures. And they drop in for brief visits and then back out of there. We're still township folks at heart though. We continue our drive for status: expensive cars and clothes. Home ownership isn't that big a deal. Well, that's a story for another post. I'm sure you can add your own observations about township life if you hail from one.

Question is: are townships a deserted wreckage we return to for burying our remaining loved ones and subliminally show off our success to everyone there since they didn't believe we'd make it?

Live intentionally

Sometimes I walk through the valley of the shadow of death;
And I start quietly wondering if this is the end.

Then suddenly, I see the sunshine again;
But I still quietly wonder if the real end is not lying in wait;
Somewhere nearby, taking aim at me;
Readying itself for that final pounce...

Yea, I Doubt You sometimes.
I get quick to think I was wrong about You;
That You are not, in fact, with me.

Worse yet, in the counsel of fear, I fix my gaze on the imagined peril.
I am consumed by the imagination of how it will feel to finally succumb.
I die many deaths before my time.

But even in my meanderings, the dream lives on!
It kindles the imaginings of victory;
It reminds me how the future looks, feels, smells.
The dream whispers: it is all a happy ending testimony.

When all is said and done,
It will be said that, indeed,
Courage was not the absence of fear,
But the memory of triumph

Winning, therefore, is but the battle of obsessions;
It is in the absence of intentioned meditations that I die.
Unless I believe, I fear;
Unless I plant flowers, weeds grow;
I die because I stop living.

So look up, mind!
Those thoughts won't think themselves;
Nor will those dreams dream themselves!
Self: live intentionally.