They don't really care about us.

Garissa.

I’d always planned on doing a post about this, figuring I’d wait for the dust to settle, victims laid to rest, fear subsiding and grief taking on a more reflective perspective.  But as with all the tragedies that occur up in the north, in that region we consider not Kenya (not Nairobi), Garissa faded away into yet another statistic.  148(?) lives lost in most brutal fashion.  And life went on.  As it should, I guess, the world doesn’t stop turning for anyone.  Back in...I couldn’t remember when exactly the attack happened, had to do a quick google (it says something about the sheer amount of bad news that floods our headlines every day if I can’t remember when exactly Garissa happened, either that or it speaks to my apathy, then and now, but more on that later)...back in April, I saved a photo of the massacre on my phone, the shot of the courtyard.  I kept the photo as a reminder to write this, but also as a reminder that security, life, is not a given in this country, not in any country the way things are going.

Before I get into it, we need to talk about these pictures of dead people.  I meant to use the photo in this post, but the constant stream of dead bodies on the internet has finally convinced me that these pictures add no value.  If anything, they detract from what value there could possibly be in the lurid description of violence.  Those gory images often reduce complex situations to simple images, stripping the nuance away and replacing it with our most basic emotions, fear, disgust, hate.  Now there’s a difference between photojournalism, which is telling a story through pictures, and simply putting up shocking pictures.  What we tend to do, us purveyors of internet outrage, is use gruesome images to grab your attention, attention we should actually be grabbing with our arguments.  It’s a trick, see, sleight of hand, done to distract you from the fact that I, we, don’t have the words to convince you.

The one time I used a photo of dead people on the blog was the murder of the teachers in Mandera.  My logic then was that people who were not actively on social media, people relying on mainstream media for their news, these people would never see the horror of that attack, or any of the other attacks that happen with frightening frequency in the frontier districts.  I thought, misguidedly I now think, that everyone needed to see a skull split open, because that would get everyone suitably enraged, because outrage would somehow spark some sort of change.  I didn’t elaborate on said change, mine was simply to trigger something, anything.  The arrogance of the self righteous, no?  I don’t need to see people who look like me lying dead in a pool of blood to feel sympathy, or fear, and I’m pretty sure you don’t either.  More to the point, we shouldn’t need to see pictures of dead kids to believe the kids are dead, or should we?  Are we that accustomed to death?  I’m not, and I hope I never am.  No more photos of dead people, tafadhali.

Living in the capital, it’s easy to forget that we’re in the middle of a dirty war and there are Kenyans out there on the frontlines, dying.  Only they’re not soldiers, are they?  After Westgate, I was eager to resume my normal routine, finding a sense of calm in the irrepressible spirit of a city that never truly sleeps.  Nairobi may appear to shut down, but those of us who wander about after dark know it never does, not really.  There was a certain pride I felt when the city kept going, despite the horror (terror?), but even then I was always cognisant of my good fortune, that I didn’t lose anyone, that I could pick up and move on virtually unscathed.  Garissa was even more removed.  These were random students far away in a distant town.  Some of them were from Nairobi, for all I know one or two may have been from my shags up the highway.  But the college was, is, unfamiliar to me.  Garissa town is unfamiliar to me.  Even the surrounding landscape is unfamiliar to my Kiambu born and bred ass.  It might as well have been Bamako.

How shitty is it that I can say that without much shame?  I’ll be completely honest with you, partly because of the (vitriolic) bickering between the pro and anti government types, partly because of the ‘watch me grieve more than the bereaved’ hand wringing from the activist set, partly because of the dodgy press coverage on TV, partly because of never ending stream of grim news from the frontier districts, and partly because of my own apathy, I was oddly removed from Garissa.  Odd, considering I’m otherwise concerned about kids dying.  I consider these students kids, too young to die at the hands of delusional idiots fighting a misguided war that can never be won.  It’s not that older people deserve to die, but there’s something about burying nineteen, twenty year olds, or god forbid younger...  It’s not right, no matter the cause.

Which is what made my government’s reaction to this massacre all the more surprising.  To say Kamwana and co. dropped the ball would be an understatement.  I’m not going to launch into a tirade about their inability to keep us safe, everything has already been said, and by people far better informed than me.  My concern has more to do with what appeared to be the executive’s callous lack of concern.  No memorial service, no days of mourning, no obligatory trip to Garissa by dear leader to condole with the shell shocked town.  To the best of my recollection, I don’t think Kamwana even gave us one of his ‘Fellow Kenyans’ speeches.  How now?  We’ve since found out the attackers were Kenyan, which means it’s no longer about Somalia, or foreigners, or refugees, or whomever the government and it’s mafans like to blame for all bad things.  We know one of the attackers was well educated, arguably a child of privilege, seeing as how he was the son of a chief or such like, which in turn means the old ‘poverty makes terrorists’ argument us left-leaning types like to make is no longer valid.  That they killed mostly non Muslims speaks to the anti Christian propaganda Al Shabaab likes to throw about, but it also speaks to the inequalities of this country, being that they were ‘foreigners’ in a largely Muslim region.  Nothing about Garissa was simple or straightforward.  Perhaps that’s why serikali was so eager to wish it away.

148 dead Kenyans are hard to wish away.

This is the thing.  Al Shabaab, contrary to claims in the press and slick PR videos from State House, is not finished.  Diminished, in some parts, at best.  We’re not safe yet, not here in the capital or out in the less Kenyan parts of Kenya.  You’re not safe in France, for that matter, and you’re not safe in California.  You’re sure as hell not safe in Syria, or Libya, or Mali, or Somalia, or Egypt, or CAR, or Nigeria.  You’re not even safe in China these days, what with their knife wielding ‘terrorists’ (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, especially in China).

Slight detour.  Mass knife attacks?  Am I the only one who’s picturing old Kung Fu movies?  No?  Just me then.  Moving right along.

We’re living in the age of terror.  That sounds melodramatic, no?  I can’t think of another word to describe what these idiots are doing to us.  We try to get on with our lives, acting like everything is normal, then we go through numerous security checks to get into a mall, or to board an airplane.  We hold our vigils and mourn the dead and we move on, thinking that we’re fine, and then a student jumps out of a fourth floor window during a security drill.  We thank our gods that we’re safe in our homes, but we still jump when fireworks go off unexpectedly, thinking for a moment that we are under attack again.  We’re traumatised.  We’re tired.  We are, for lack of a better word, terrified.

I’m convinced we all have a mild case of PTSD.

And as well we should.

This is what happens when we refuse to deal with our violence.  Our eagerness to accept and move on has us pretending everything is fine, when deep down we know it isn’t.  We know this, we can feel it in our bones.  That we’re only one shitty election, one large scale attack away from disintergration.  I’m not saying we’re about to fall apart from the country, I’m saying we’re about to fall apart as individuals.  I hate to admit it, but we need therapy, all of us.  We need people in charge of the numerous security failures we endure to be held to account.  We need answers to why, and how, these atrocities happened, everything from clashes in the Rift Valley, through to PEV and Mpeketoni.  We need a collective, public reckoning of biblical proportions, destruction of Babylon type of reckoning.  We need to sing kumbaya (and mean it) when said reckoning is done, so that we can truly move on.  We need...  We need a fucking Kagame is what we need.  I may have gone too far there, but you get my point, we need a leadership that not only shares our hopes and dreams, but our darkness and fears as well.  We need leaders that understand that we don’t all have 24 hour personal police guards at our disposal, and that we sometimes get scared as we’re out perambulating aimlessly trying to pay our taxes.

That’s my biggest issue with my president and his government of thieving imbeciles, and the bloody useless opposition.  These idiots don’t know or don’t remember what it feels like to feel unprotected.  I see the cops on patrol as I walk around the city, but given that they’re usually harassing innocent people, they inspire little confidence in me.  I walk into a supermarket that looks eerily like the supermarket where a man was shot while hiding under an elephant, and I do not feel safe.  I watch the news and hear these idiot politicians talk smack, and I have flashbacks of machete wielding thugs, thugs who kinda look like me (well, my cousins).  I’m thinking, neither Kamwana nor Raila understands this, not if their bullshit proclamations are anything to go by.

Listen, I’ve made my peace with the possibility that some idiot may kill me while trying to steal my car, this while I drive home from the karaoke bar at 2 am on a loose Thursday night.  It’s not right, but it is what it is.  I’m not entirely paranoid, I don’t worry about someone stealing my wallet when I get into the bus to town, for the most part I choose not to obsess about these things, because crime is a part of life no matter where you are.  But an idiot spraying his AK47 in the supermarket or a college hostel?  That’s not regular crime, that’s ‘point at the government’ crime, they’re fighting against the government, not us.  That’s why we call it terrorism.  Worst part about it, there’s not much we can do but grin and bear it, such is our lot in life, us little people with no say in geopolitics and such like fancy nonsense.

I apologise.  This was supposed to be a post remembering the victims of Garissa.  For those who lost their lives, we grieve.  You are not forgotten, despite all evidence to the contrary.

38 (and a half).

Yup, my lack of mojo was so great I let my birthday pass with no fanfare.  I also let the four year anniversary of the blog slide on by, but given that I wasn’t blogging that seemed only right, no?  We shall all nod sagely and get back to the birthday storo.  I didn’t do much of anything for my birthday this year, no elaborate meal with the clan, nothing but another day at work with a surprise chocolates from a friend far away and the lack of a not surprise dinner from a friend much closer.  That’s what I best remember from the day, the disappointment at a request I made being blithely ignored by someone I thought knew better than to ignore me.  See, in my old age, I know better than to be vague or coy.  I told this pal o’ mine that I wanted to go out for a meal and maybe some dancing.  I stated it clearly, with reminders leading up to the day.  Then the day came and not so much as an sms.  And when I reminded said pal two weeks later, when he stopped by my house unannounced for a loose meal, I was brushed off like a pesky child asking for sweets I shouldn’t have, reminding me that some people will never get it, get me.  Said pal has since been relegated to the ranks of people I will never rely on, not even for simple shit like a phone call.

People will let you down.  People close to you will let you down.  That’s just the way life goes, everyone’s so busy looking out for themselves that they forget, or are simply unable, to look out for you.  We all do it, and then we feel bad about it and vow to change our ways, until we do it again.  If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my 38 (and a half) years of life, it’s to stop making promises I can’t keep, and to keep promises I do make.  You don’t want to be the idiot no one relies on, trust me when I tell you that’s a lonely way to live.

As odd as this will sound, coming after that grand declaration, I’ve also learnt to look out for myself, selfishly.  I learnt this years ago, but it’s always a good lesson to learn again, as and when necessary.  Jisort.  Always.  If you’re lucky, you’ll always have a few people around you who are there for you no matter what foolishness you get up to, but sometimes you have to be your own survival mechanism, self preservation and such like.  Sometimes, we have to get our heads out our own asses and figure shit out for ourselves.  The hidden bonus in that Deepak Chopra-esque self help nonsense, in figuring out our own shit, we’re better equipped to handle other people’s.  Being self sufficient makes you a better friend, or lover.  Go figure.

Which then makes this next bit even odder.  You can’t be too self sufficient.  I know, it makes no sense, but that’s why I’m not selling this dodgy wisdom (yet).  If you’re not self sufficient enough, you become a drag on the people around you.  Too self sufficient, you become their mule, carrying all their loads, because you do it so well.  You’re looking for the goldilocks sweet spot; good, but not too good.  I know, it’s a bit of a crap shoot, but isn’t that what life is all about, shooting crap and trying to make sure none of it ends up on your shoes?

I am no philosopher, clearly.

This year is the first time in a long time I’ve felt my age.  It’s partly because of the younglings I keep reading on Twitter (still the work of the devil that one), partly because of the people I’ve buried this year, partly because of the aches and pains my body has been subjecting me to lately as it contemplates the second half of it’s stint on this planet.  Whatever the reason, this year, a few months ago more than now, I felt 38 years old.  And it scared me.  This year, I’ve felt more mortal, fragile, than ever before.  It also made me more impatient.  We forget how truly short life is, convinced that we’ll be young forever, 18 till we die and whatnot.  'Ha!' she scoffs.  If only.  Thing is, along with my newfound fear of death came the urge not to waste any more time, which is a fancy way of saying I have no time for foolishness any more.  Lately I find myself speaking more frankly, with less time for niceties, and given how blunt I sometimes get that’s saying something, no?  You do know I see you nodding?  You buggers are so disloyal.  Nkt!  My lovelies, I’m disinclined to entertain foolishness, not even mine, having learnt to speak less and listen more, sometimes even listening better.  I’m finally learning not to waste time listening to every opinion, under the misguided hope that it may prove magically helpful even when I'm pretty sure it won't.  I now know enough to dismiss the bullshit immediately, sometimes with eloquently expressed malice and forethought to ensure it never comes back (you’d be surprised how well that works).

This is the thing about getting older, you start to understand the irritation with which older people used to treat us when we were younglings.  There’s no point trying to explain this, if you’re older than me you already know this.  If you’re younger you won’t get it until you do, and when you do you’ll say the exact same thing to those behind you.  This is one of those ‘you have to go through it yourself’ things, time has a way of showing you that there’s really nothing new under the sun.

I sound like one of those characters in Grumpy Old Men or Golden Girls, don’t I?  I do.  I’m not a cranky old crone, yet, but cross me on the wrong day with some bullshit and I can be.  For the record, any day is the wrong day.  For further record, some bullshit is basically anything that seems to be poorly thought out and/or otherwise foolish, or anything that maligns the good name of (insert my current favourite singer of tacky pop songs).  Best you can hope for is that I have enough sugar/caffeine/nicotine/alcohol in my system, mellowing me out long enough for you to make a quick getaway before I slap you.  On the upside, 38 (and a half) year old me is pretty easy to ignore so...fuck it, yes?

Live long and prosper sounds like an appropriate way to sign off, but then Spock went and died this year, bless his pointy eared soul.  Granted, he died after living long and prospering, but still...maybe not.  I say this all the time, but this year may be the year it makes most sense, my lovelies, life is too short.

Live, love, lust, linger, lick (ideally someone else).  The 5 L’s to live by, no?

Knocking on Heaven's Door.

I don’t handle grief well.  I'm not sure anyone does, but I am particularly bad at it.  I alternate between wallowing in sadness for a few minutes, then I forget all about it for days, blocking it out completely.  It's not conscious, I think, I suspect it's how I process loss, putting it off until I'm finally ready to deal with it.  Problem is, I'm never ready to deal with it, and I don’t think I ever will be.

Mama, take this badge off of me,
I can't use it any more,
It's getting dark, too dark to see,
I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door...

I've been working like a dog for the past couple of months.  Long days, working weekends, working nights, the works.  I haven’t had too much time to sit and think too much about everything that's been going on, and while part of me was happy for the distraction, part of me knew it was temporary.  Eventually, Francis was going to catch up with me.  That's his name.  Francis.  An old friend, brother almost.  Our relationship was one of crass humour, brutal honesty and more alcohol than is considered wise by saner (read, sober) people.  He was my brother's friend, which would make him my brother by extension, except Francis wasn’t, how do I say this, very brotherly.  He was that smooth pal your brother has, the one who you were always warned to stay well away from, because he was a bit of a ladies' man (read, man whore).  Stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.  Listen here, every woman has that friend of her brother's she crushed on hopelessly when she was a teenager, the hot one who had loads of girls.  Usually said friend didn’t know you existed, being that he was older and unconcerned with the little girl making doe eyes at him, but as you got older, young adult rather than teenager, these boys/men started to eye you back, but only eye, because the bro code and such barred them from making moves on baby sisters.  Didn’t stop them from flirting, that alleged code, but it almost never became more than that, did it?  Wait, did it?  Maybe it's just that my brother's friends that were restrained that way.  Or maybe they weren't really flirting?  Oh my...

I'm laughing and crying right now, picturing him laughing at my nonsense.  He got my nonsense, Francis, he understood me.  Yes, I am mocking myself, and he would too, if he was reading this shit.

Francis was my brother's sexy pal, the one I crushed on as an awkward 18 year old, then got to know better, properly, as a 30 something year old.  He become that friend I could talk to, really talk to.  He was family, but not family, close enough that I didn’t have to pretend to be anything more than I was, but removed enough that I could talk about the more intimate bits without blushing.  We could talk about our personal drama in a way you simply can't with family, or even close friends; family don't need to know about the sex you had last night, no?  He did.  He knew about my errant escapades and my deep, dark secrets, some of them anyhow (no one knows it all, not even me).  And it was the same for him, he'd talk to me about the shit going on with him, things he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, talk about with those closest to him.  Like I said, he was family, but not family.

And now he's gone.

I'm getting to that part of life where we start to bury our friends, our parents, our siblings.  In the past five months I've been to four funerals, three in one month.  Thing is, before Francis', his was the last, the other deaths were somewhat removed from me.  I was sad, but I wasn't grieving, the people close to me were.  I moved on, life continuing with barely any change apart from the occasional woiyee in my head, when I remembered someone else's loss.  The arrogance with which we think life happens to everyone else but us.  After Francis, I continued as before, the occasional woiyee to myself, brief failed attempts at talking about it with friends who didn’t, couldn’t, understand my ramblings.  I was rambling, struggling to put this strange, vague feeling into language someone else could understand, something I could label neatly and file away, a picture I could frame to look at later on when life wasn’t quite so hectic and the wound wasn’t quite so fresh.  That's how I process, I file shit away, neatly.

As it turns out, grief has its own rules.  

And it is seldom neat.

Fast forward a couple of months.  

OGAO and my big sister have me hooked on The Voice, an American TV talent show with amateur singers and whatnot (like Idol, but without the irritating British dude in a tight t-shirt).  These two evil women have slowly but surely managed to turn me into a country music...I was going to say fan, but that would be too strong...admirer.  Stop judging me, country music has its charms.  I'm still trying to figure out what exactly they are, but at least now I know they're there, so, progress.  One afternoon a couple of weeks back, I went off in search of Blake Shelton's music (he's one of the judges on the show), this after OGAO sent me in search of his version of 'Footloose', a cover that is possibly the happiest song I've heard this year (watch it and tell me you weren't tapping your foot and grinning.  I did 'The Carlton', that's how happy it made me...).  Being quite impressionable and suitably smitten by Mr Shelton, and calling OGAO bad names in the process, I found a playlist of his older albums and set it on loop in the background as I pottered around the house, picking up clutter and randomly cleaning dusty surfaces, until a song came on that stopped me dead in my tracks.

You know when you hear something that cuts through all the noise in your head?  It's like someone suddenly muted everything but this one noise, a voice, a melody, an instrument...  I don’t have moments like this very often these days, a lot of the 'new' music I've been listening to is quite old, or a remake of something old, or something deliberately made to sound old and thus not new to my ears, not really.  These days I tend to get that 'Fuck me sideways!' feeling only when I listen to unfamiliar musicians in genres that are alien to me, like metal, or rap, sometimes pop, or, as was the case that afternoon, country.

I already knew the man has a gorgeous voice, I'd been listening to him for close to an hour, but something about the lyrics slapped me still.  Something about the longing, the loneliness...the sadness is almost tangible.   It took me back to a conversation I had with Francis, towards the end of last year.  We were in the bar up the road from my house, a ka nyama choma joint with old men watching news at the counter, and he was trying to convince me to get into country music.  He absolutely loved the stuff, as does any self respecting Meru man, and to make matters worse, he lived in Texas for 10 or so years.  “Country,” he drunkenly declared, “is in my blood.”  He then insisted I YouTube a Kenny Chesney (or someone such like) song, proceeding to narrate the song to me, using the video, explaining the 'great emotion' (his words) in country music.  We were in a bar, remember, at around midnight (it may have been closer to 2:00 am, but that’s beside the point).  We argued about country until he wrote me off as a useless philistine, making me promise to go learn more the following day.  I never bothered, for the record, I was content to hang on to my proud (read, ignorant) anti-country stance, partly to spite him.  I don’t know what exactly it is about this song that took me back to that particular conversation, but in those three minutes all the things I'd been carefully filing away started popping out of their neat little boxes.  I thought I was done grieving for Francis.  I thought, for some absurd and likely arrogant reason, that I had come to terms with the fact that he was no longer here.  But standing in my living room, listening to a song that eerily mimicked one of the last conversations I had with him, in said living room, well...

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life,
Its like I just stepped outside,
When everything was going right,
And I know just why you could not come along with me,
This was not your dream,
But you always believed in me...

Last year we were both in transition, coming to terms with this age that sneaked up on us.  Our individual issues were completely different, but the underlying sentiment was almost identical.  The thing with getting older, in as much as you're proud of what you've achieved, most of us seem unable to shake off that picture we had of ourselves when we were young and idealistic, dreaming of a shiny happy life where our hair would never turn grey, our backs would never ache and we would never have to take jobs we detested to pay bills, hell, we would never have to pay bills period.  In your 20's the world is your oyster.  In your 30's the world could still be your oyster, if only (insert your choice excuse here...).  In your 40's the world is an oyster, but it's definitely not yours, and it never will be.  I'm not sure what the 50's bring, but from the wazees at the counter in the aforementioned bar, I suspect it has something to do with telling the oysters to go fuck themselves.  I can barely wait.  I'm swiftly headed out of my 30's and into my 40's and Francis was in his early 40's.  We were suitably morose at our prospects, which is to say we were fond of drowning our (real and perceived) sorrows with Jack and Freddie Jackson.

Slight detour.  This idiot pal of mine loved to taunt me with the fact that my Freddie is not a tall man.  Useless bugger.  Francis, not Freddie, Freddie is a small god in my eyes, quite literally now thanks to Francis, evil little shit.  Francis, not Freddie.  Ah!  Do you see what he havoc he wreaked?  Bloody nkt!  The moral of this story, don’t fuck with my small gods, yes?  Yes.  Detour over.

Another winter day has come and gone away,
In even Paris and Rome,
And I wanna go home,
Let me go home,

And I'm surrounded by a million people, I still feel alone and I wanna go home,
Oh, I miss you, you know...

I was growing old with Francis.   Those of you of a certain age will understand that vague statement.  Friends are harder to make and keep as you get older, friends who know who you used to be, and who you are, and who you want to be.  Who you've always wanted to be.  Those friends are damn near impossible to find later on in life.  He was one of too few friends who was willing to see all sides of me, especially the fragile, sometimes broken, always mending side of myself, the side I try my damnedest not to show.  And he was one of too few friends comfortable showing me that side of himself, making me feel better about my stumbles, if only because I no longer felt alone.  I miss him terribly.  More than I realised.  More than I can explain, despite my best efforts.

Mama, put my guns in the ground,
I can't shoot them any more,
That long black cloud is coming down,
I feel I'm knocking on Heaven's door...

Today's soundtrack, and the title of this post, is Bob Dylan's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'. This is what got me talking about Blake Shelton.  A couple of his contestants did a duet of the song on The Voice, a stunning rendition of a classic I thought I knew so well.  Now I'm a bit of a weepy bastard when it comes to watching things on the TV (don’t laugh, its a genetic trait. I get it from my pa, the old man cries at the drop of a hat. For real...), but even I was surprised at my reaction to this particular performance.  It was like they were singing to me, specifically.  At the time I didn’t think much of it, blaming my tears (yes, I cried, and no, I am not ashamed) on my father's dodgy influence and the brilliance of the two voices I was listening to.  It wasn’t until later that I realised this was the song that cracked the dam, put me in a grief frame of mind, so to speak.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door...

Francis is possibly the least likely candidate for heaven I have ever known, but I figure if any misguided deviant has the balls to knock on that particular door, knowing full well he has no business up in all of that (points heaven-ward), it would be him, bless his irreverent ass.

Day 1: Mea Culpa.

It's a brand new day...

Last year was a strange year.  Two parts tragic, one part horrific, three parts infuriating and six parts just plain ol' insane.  It got to the point I stopped reading the papers, stopped watching the news, turned off the radio and sunk into a brainless abyss of...and I say this with great shame...'Keeping up with the Kardashians'.  That's right, I, (not) Alex, was a slave to reality TV.  For kendo 5 months.  You know you've lost your way when you know who French Montana is.  You don’t know who that is?  Thank your gods.  It was a scary spiral into lethargy the likes of which I haven’t seen since I was in my mid 20's, fresh out of college and at a loss as to what to do next.  Throw in the completely unrelated fact that I was on a misguided crusade to grow an afro, because it occurred to me that it was time to liberate my wallet from the clutches of the evil beauty industry, and the 'lost at sea' look was complete.  I felt ragged, I looked somewhat ragged (combing natural hair sans moisturiser is not easy, at all, and these buggers don’t tell you...), my thought process was ragged and, as you probably noticed, my blogging was most ragged.  I felt adrift, yet motionless, melancholy seeping out of every pore like salty sweat on a hot January day...

And I have no idea why.

Well, I do, sort of.

Work was slow.  My personal life was, shall we say, odd.  My president was, is, visibly angry.  Things were shitty all around.  But that wasn’t what got me lethargic.  I think it was simply that I got off the hamster wheel that is this rat race we live.  I didn’t mean to get off mind, at least not for that long, I got off it for World Cup back in June and I just never got back on.  True story.  I took those four weeks off to watch football and in the process I somehow lost the urge to get back to the grind.  Work hard?  For what?  I went on an unofficial go slow.  No one noticed.  Once I realised I could wade through life with a bare minimum of effort, well, everything else was promptly ditched.  Write maybe?   Because that worked out so well in the past, she said sarcastically, as she detangled her 'fro.  Why not get my hair done, that always puts a spring in my step, right?  Bitch please, I'm on a go slow, no?  Read a few books then.  Again I ask, for what?  You know how much I love to read, but the thought of picking up a book filled me with dread.  If it wasn’t for the reading I kept doing online, I would be illiterate by now.  Why not get laid more often, at the very least?  The complexities of getting laid at my age are astounding.  Yes, I will tell you about it one day.   No, wait, I already have.  Which brings me back to, write maybe?  And on and on and on.  All with the chattering Kardashians in the background, flipping hair and flicking blackberries, all while delivering the most useless monologues in the history of television.  I tell you, there are afternoons I could feel my brain decay, one numb cell at a time...

Fuck me, it was absolute bliss.

I know, I know, how dare I call such nothingness bliss?   How dare I be happy about doing nothing?  My lovelies, it really was fucking bliss, once I realised it couldn’t possibly kill me.  The way I figured, sometimes there's nothing to be done.  Sometimes the endless running around chasing the next deal is meaningless motion without movement, an elaborate pretence at being busy rather than actually being productive.  Sometimes we just need to sit down and stare at a TV screen for way too many hours, without engaging in any form of meaningful thought.  Sometimes, its worth your own sanity to stop shouting into the wind and just shut the fuck up, if for no other reason than to rest your tired voice, and maybe rest other people's tired ears.  Sometimes, but only sometimes, its better to get yourself off, rather than spend countless chasing that elusive shag, chasing and chasing.  Sometimes you gotta let go...

I find myself just a little bit stronger, got the weight up off my shoulders,

Feeling fine cause I'm in a new way...

Ladies and gentlemen, Rahsaan Patterson, also known as he that would father my babies if he wasn't gay (dammit!).  This song was my 'you're ok now' song about four years ago, I was going through a 'Neo Soul, in touch with my inner spirit, wooosaaaa' phase as I adjusted to being alone (read lonely) in a new house.  'Sometimes' was that song I'd blast at obscenely loud volume on Sunday morning, on loop, singing along like he was singing my truth.  At the time he was, I think.  I stumbled across the CD in early December as I was doing my annual clearing of accumulated junk (I am a reformed hoarder), I set it aside for a listen and promptly forgot about it.  Then I thought of it on Christmas Day morning for some odd reason, stuck it in as I was getting ready to drive to the village to cook for the clan...

A broken heart can mend in a day,

Long as you're travellin' in thunder rain,

I'm clear of the storm, now I feel some joy,

its a blessing, a blessing, I don’t hurt no more,

Nowadays...

Find myself just a little bit warmer, got the weight up off my shoulders,

Feeling fine cause I'm in a new day...

This is the thing about music, and it's why music is such a huge part of this blog, these songs are tied to memories.  Memories of people and places, events and mishaps, feelings and frames of mind.  This song takes me back to a boozy dinner (aren't they all?) with my almost baby brothers on a hot evening not unlike this one, dirty dishes shoved to the side as we sat around the table arguing the merits of whatever music one of us was newly obsessed with (for the record, they didn’t much care for this song, useless philistines...).  Maybe that's why I thought of it on the day I was going to have another boozy meal with my somewhat philistine clan (my brother has been talking shit about The Expendables.  'Eh?' I asked him, aghast, 'How is that even acceptable that a grown idiot of right mind doesn’t get Stallone, Statham and co.?  Shameful!'  I have digressed...).  This song takes me back to a happy place, even as it reminds me of a particularly lonely, yet liberating, time in my life.

As it turned out, this song became the bookend to a lovely period of bleh, a period that had to end, some might say fortunately, if only so I could wash the stain of reality TV off my body and re-enter the world of intelligent conversation and productivity.  Four days later I was back at work, soon thereafter the TV was turned off and a book was picked up.  It was inevitable, once I had no random voices in my house to distract me, that I would return to tell you all about my many issues, such as I do, and to warn you about French Montana...

Sometimes you gotta let go, although its not easy,

Sometimes you gotta let go, of a love that ain’t so pleasing,

Sometimes you gotta say no,

Sometimes you gotta give it up, baby let it all go...

It's a brand new day...

Happy new year, my lovelies.  May this year be kinder to us than the last.

In recognition of my tardiness last year, I want to try something different this week.  I've signed up for the #YourTurnChallenge, kinda. inspired by the always lovely Ms Malaka (I’m participating in the #YourTurnChallenge …Yikes!).  The idea is 7 posts in 7 days, on pretty much anything, starting today.  I figure the best way to get back into to swing of things is to get back into the swing of things, yes?  Good plan, no?  Stop shaking your heads, that means six more posts for you this week.  I can't vouch for their quality, but hey, they're free.  Minus internet charges.  And the cost of your time.  But otherwise free.  And probably short.

37, or something like it.

37.

Three tens and seven.

Three shy of two score.

Three dozen, plus one.

Thelathini na saba.

There is no way to make 37 sound good, is there?  It feels like a transition number, the number between 36 (product of 3 and therefore all kinds of meaning attached) and 40 (the point at which I really must stop drinking cask wine in the bar.  What?  Don't judge me, I am nothing if not cheap...).  37 sounds like a knock-off, right? In college we had Club 36 (everyone reading this who was in Main Campus back in the day just smiled, yes?), and then some idiot came along and set up Club 37 and we were like, 'No, no, no! Don’t fuck with the original, man...'  37 doesn’t even roll off the tongue proper, especially for an idiot like me with MTI (mother tongue interference).  I keep getting the urge to drop the 'ven' at the end but 'thaate seeeee' makes no sense.  This number is not working for me.  I propose to remain at 36 until I get to 39, or just jump right ahead to 39 and kill this vibe for the next three years.  All in favour say aye...

Then again (yes, there's always a then again), 37 degrees Celsius is the normal body temperature, which in theory makes it a significant number, no?  No, not really.  It's still a dubious number, but at least now I know it serves a purpose.  Next time someone asks me how old I am, I'll tell them I'm as old as I am hot.  Then I'll watch them struggle to decipher my riddle, hoping that they (a he in this case) don’t say something silly like, 'You're so hot you must be really old, baibee...'  On second thoughts, I won't use that line.

Listen to me, baby
Hear ev'ry word I say
No one could love you the way I do
'Cause they don't know how to love you my way
You give me fever

37, huh?

I have only one grey hair still.  Save for the 'laugh lines' around my eyes, aka wrinkles, I don’t see that age in the mirror.  I know I keep saying this, but I really don’t feel as old as I am.  I sound my age when I speak out loud, although that has more to do with peculiar reading habits and a lifetime of overindulgence in, shall we say, legal drugs, but I suspect I don’t really look it, seeing as how I'm in dodgy jeans pretty much always, and not those expensive designer jeans mature women with serious jobs wear, the ones that are always pressed and never faded, I mean regular jeans, always wrinkled and sometimes frayed.  A couple of months back, I was going through photos from around 1999 with a friend from college and he remarked, 'You haven't changed at all!'  My first response was a big grin, because I was somewhat smaller back then, but not by much (don’t worry, I'm not saying I'm skinny now, I'm saying I was not much skinnier back then...).   Then I looked at the picture again and frowned. In the photo I was wearing random jeans and a shirt, tackies, hair pulled back into what would be a pig tail if I was white, and a quick glance in the mirror told me I was wearing almost the exact same ensemble, except the tackies have since been replaced with flip flops.  Now either I have a distinct sense of style that is timeless...I shall pause to give you time to laugh at me...or I am stuck in a time warp, and I do not look my age.  I don’t look like I've grown up.

Is this a bad thing?

When we're kids we keep being told, 'When you grow up...'  When we're in our misguided 20's, 'You need to grow up...'  In your 30's, 'You've grown up now...'  I assume in our 40's and beyond it becomes, 'You're too grown up for that now...'  Thing is, who decides what's grown up?  I think men who drink all weekend haven’t grown up, but I know many older, grown men who do exactly that.  I think women obsessed with the car their date drives need to grow up, but I have older friends who call me to tell me their hubby has a new car.  I lie, I don’t have friends like that, but my friends do and they tell me it happens so...  I think people who believe, believe I tell you, that their employer truly cares for their well-being are naïve idiots in need of a serious reality check, the likes of which you can only get from living a few more years.  Then I meet a 50 something year old career bureaucrat who thinks his employer has taken such exemplary care of him for so many years, he can't imagine working for anyone else, ever.  Old age and wisdom are not synonymous, is my point, and growing up is not nearly as essential as they make it sound.

I think it's a ruse.

I think 'grow up' is used to get us to conform to whatever acceptable standards someone else thinks we should meet.  You don’t want to settle down and get married?   Grow up, you won't be young forever. You don’t want kids?  Grow up, stop being selfish.  You don’t want a stable 9 to 5 job with a secure income?  Grow up, you need to buy a house.  You want to party like it's 1999, every year? You really need to grow up, your liver won't last much longer.  You want to keep reading Harry Potter novels, or watching The Expendables?  Grow up, get some interests that suit your age.  (Slight detour.  Expendables 3.  Fuck yes!  Detour over.)  You want to take time off for a month and see the world, or something like it? Grow up, you have a family to take care of.  Grow up, grow up, grow the fuck up.

Or not.

I went for karaoke, my pre birthday ritual for three years now.  I didn’t tell anyone of this brilliant plan, even as I was meeting a pal I am proud to say I have converted to the dubious exercise of singing off key in front of strangers.  Hang on, this pal deserves special mention.  This lovely gentleman has featured on these here pages previously.  Remember Obadiah?  He of the romantic sensibilities quite unlike my own.  I first took him to the almost local last year, and despite his continued insistence that he was unwilling and unable to sing, at round about 3 a.m. I recall him doing a stirring rendition of 'Gangsta's Paradise'.  He's reading this right now and frowning, worried that I’m about to mulika him further.  You damn skippy I'll mulika your ass, my friend, you need to tell that 'very good friend' of yours you dragged along that you penda her ass like a nonsense.  Useless bugger pretending he's not smitten...nkt!  And then you both need to come back to the bar, 'twas a good night, no?  And there you have it folks, this is what happens when you go drinking with a blogger, you end up on the interwebs.  

Where was I?

I went out singing, such as I do, and because this year I was feeling like a boss (not really, but I'm a firm believer in the 'fake it till you make it' mantra), I had my friend John with me.  Not too much John mind you, I am now reluctantly cognisant of the fact that my ageing body can no longer tolerate the alcohol the way it used to, which is to say these days tequila shots are not an option.  And water is bought by the litre.  I had some John, and I also had my heels on, because nothing says 'do not fuck with me tonight' better than heels, yes?  Yes.  Incidentally, I've seen the flaw in this plan, heels put your bosom and ass at just the right height for the wrong man sitting on a bar stool.  Stand just so and the man can grab ass and boob at the same time.  What the hell, man?  I'm all for grabbing, but it is never the man you want to grab who grabs, is it?  True story.

I should point out that I have John with me here right now.  I am booze blogging, kinda.  Don’t look at me like that.  I assume that you always have a drink in hand when you read me.  Trust me, I sound much better when you're tipsy.  I put that in as a joke, but I fear I may be right.  Ah well...

So I was sitting at the counter, looking at the people around me, new friends and old friends, bar BFF's and random strangers, a barman who knows more about my bank account than my accountant and a DJ who knows to play Bobby Brown at 2 am, just because.  That was my birthday celebration, with people who had no clue it was a celebration of anything other than the fact it was Thursday.  I had a fancy lunch thing with the family on the actual day, and it was brilliant, but that night, the random midweek plan, that was when I came to terms with 37.  Always with the bloody 37...

Today's soundtrack is a song I absolutely love to, and I use this term most loosely, sing, partly because it's short, but mostly because it's easy to use and abuse.  You can sing 'Fever' pretty much however you want, and it will still sound good, that's how good a song it is.  I've heard June Gachui do a jazzy version that brings tears to my eyes.  I remember the house/dance Madonna version from the 90's and the classic Ella version I first heard in the early noughties.  Sometime last year, the Wolf sent me the Buddy Guy version, waxing lyrical about the man, and after listening it's hard to deny that it really is a most excellent cover.  But when all is said and done, the 'original' by Peggy Lee, that's the shit.  Yes people, the 'original' is not the original.  Damn you google, damn you to hell!  I've put up the Peggy Lee version, that's the version almost everyone has covered, and understandably so, she did a version with modified lyrics and a laid back sound, sultry yet not.  It's quite restrained when you think about it.  Thing is, and this should have been a dead give-away that this was not her song, a song about someone giving you fever should be anything but laid back.  It needs to be kinda hot, no?  (I do not mean to pun, and yet I do.)  The original by Little Willie John is...well, it's fever, no?  Listen to it.  It's a smidgen faster, a little less fluffy (no Pocahantas nonsense story) and a lot more swing...  If that's not fever, then I don’t know what is.

When you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever (fever, burn through) in the mornin'
An' fever all through the night...

I think part of the reason I don’t feel 37 is because I've refused to 'grow up'.  I'm not immature, not really, I do have my moments, but don’t we all?  I'm no longer naïve, if anything I'm too cynical.  What it is is I reject the notion that my age should dictate the decisions I make.  I figure, if I am old enough to vote, drive, fuck, reproduce, pay rent, pay tax, pay my bloody bill at the bar (for real though, young girls, pay your bloody tab, you're making us all look bad...), pay for my hair and my jeans and my flip flops, if I am old enough to be responsible for people other than myself, be they employees or ageing parents or friends with more issues than I care to deal with most days, then I am old enough to say to hell with all the bullshit standards and limits they, whoever they are, try to impose on me.  I'm not refusing to grow up, I'm simply asking, 'And then?'  Say I wake up tomorrow the model of grown perfection, how will that change the price of your bread?

Anyone?

I didn’t think so.

I realise that at my age birthdays usually aren’t a cause for celebration, what with the encroaching middle aged status of over 40 fast approaching.  That combined with the lack of the requisite house in the leafy suburbs with husband and 2.5 children to match; and the ka-plot in shags with 5 cows, 25 chicken and 3 goats; and the lifetime membership of Women's Guild; and the successful business and/or career that takes me around the country/world; and the alleged peace of mind that comes from having everything you've ever wanted, save for the house by the beach.  At 37, as a single woman with next to no prospects and next to no inclination to look for any, one might say my life is somewhat unfulfilled.  At 37, one might say that I am fast approaching the point of no return, the point at which the promise of youth gives way to the meaningless obscurity of old age.

One might say that, but I wouldn’t.

I would say that 37 is the time you stop counting the years, because it's such a silly sounding number you can't help but ignore it, normal body temperature notwithstanding...

Bless my soul, I love you
Take this heart away
Take these arms I'll never use
An' just believe in what my lips have to say
You give me fever...

Little Willie John.  Go figure.

Detour.

I've been gone too long.  Apologies, but the combination of World Cup distractions, low temperatures and general lethargy have combined to keep me away longer than I intended.  I shall attempt to make up for my errant behaviour over the next couple of weeks, but for tonight allow me to clear some cobwebs, get my fingers up to speed, my brain ticking over as it should.  Bear with me, I need to get into the right frame of mind to write the posts that need to be written.  I can't do sewer when I'm pissed off at the government, not unless I'm writing about sodomy with a foreign object (hint: things I want to do to someone with a broom handle).  I can't get fluffy when all I want to do is slap the idiot press for pretty much everything they've done over the past month (I'mma start with KBC, the idiots who thought to ringa with their signal, bloody nkt!).  I can't even indulge in my bullshit alien conspiracies, now that I am convinced they walk amongst us (CORD, I'm looking at you...).  I need to detour a bit, and then resume normal service over the weekend.  Yes?

Disclaimer: This post shall be vague, and rambling, and shall have absolutely no moral whatsoever.  I'm just having a bit of a chat is all, such as I do, and playing you a couple of tunes.  On the up side, this is all about random music.  That’s always fun, right?  Right?  Just nod.

I've ended up following a couple of music junkies on twitter (it's still the work of the devil that one), because I consider myself quite the aficionado and I was looking to meet kindred spirits.  Shock on me when I keep getting taken to school.  These fellas, they're the real deal, the depth and breadth of their playlists is frightening.  No really, real fear.  I'm too scared to tell anyone what I'm listening too, lest I am mocked for my gauche taste in pop ballads.  But that's over there.  Here, in my house, I can play all the nonsense I want, and you must love it.  To wit, I need to tell you about my dirty little secret love.  Well, its not so much a secret as it is a well concealed fact. I know I'm quite the oversharer, constantly subjecting you to way too much TMI, but this one even I am too shy to tell you about, until now. This man, walalalala...

I'm in love with a man.  An older man.  A man who should not be sexy, but dammit he is.  A man who has been accused, but never convicted mind you, of theft.  A man whose hair was slightly questionable, for way too long.  A man who wears his shirts a tad too unbuttoned even for my lascivious ass.  Aaaahhh...  Lovely Michael Bolton.  I'm grinning stupidly at my screen, watching one of his oh so romantic videos, with the ubiquitous beautiful people making lovely even as they pine for love...

I'm swaying and ef'thing...

What?

Don’t look at me like that, I love the man and I am okay with it.  Scratch that, I am most proud of my love for a 61 year old (yes, he is 61, that's how old we are) white man best known for ripping off black soul artistes, and winning Grammys for his effort.  Now ordinarily, a man like this would be on my list of men I plan to one day kidnap and torture in my basement, but Mr Bolton came into my life when I was young and impressionable.  Stop judging me, I first heard the man when I was in kendo Standard 8, back when my music tastes were dictated by John Karani, John Obongo Jnr and Jeff Mwangemi.  If none of those names means anything to you, this post is not for you.  KBC (ptuh!) had such a serious hard-on for this man, he was played all day; Lunchtime Music, Sundowner, Late Date...  There is no one in my age set who is unfamiliar with 'Soul Provider'.  Admittedly, most don’t much care for the man, in public, but you belt out one of Mr Bolton's many ballads at karaoke and watch the geriatric bastards sing along (fellow lovers of easy listening pop/rock, I see you...).  I have known this man for 24 plus years.  That's longer than I have known any of my close friends, longer than I have owned any one pair of shoes, hell, as long as I have been menstruating.  That last one was too much, yes?   Yes.  (Sewer gear...check!)  Michael and I go back, way back, talk smack about him at your own peril.  

There I am, happily singing along to a random playlist helpfully provided by the lovely geniuses at YouTube (they who seem to have me pegged as someone who is in dire need of sanitary towels, if the Always ads they insist on showing me are anything to go by), and I stumble upon one of my favourite songs...

Now this particular song is the reason my black passport will be confiscated, for real.   I am ashamed to say this, but I've always considered his cover much better than the 'original'.  Wait, don’t lynch me, let me explain. The first time I heard the song, it was this cover, to my mind, this was the original.  You can imagine my dismay when I heard Ray Charles sing it.  Why now?  He was so...throaty.  And there was no Kenny G, dammit!  Again, don't lynch me.  Yes, I loved Kenny G too, but not too much.  I've lied, I thought that curly haired bugger was the shit, up until I grew up and got some education as to what real jazz sounded like, which then took me back to Ray Charles, but with a greater appreciation for his genius.  Ray is brilliant, but, truth be told, I still prefer Mr Bolton's vocals.  Before you revoke my negro credentials, listen and tell me what you think.

The sumptuous orchestra on this track makes his a completely different song; less 'woe is me' love song and more gentle serenade.  I don't think I should even compare the two, they're like chalk and cheese.  This is how I get out of my self created awkward corner, yes?  Yes.    

Detour.  I keep saying 'original' because I have recently learned that Ray Charles covered the real original, written in 1930, by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorell.  Yup, all you Bolton haters, he didn’t steal this one from our people (that I can tell), so there.  It gets better, the song was written for Hoagy's sister, Georgia, which explains the lyrics.  Why would someone talk about smiling tenderly when singing about a place, especially in America?  I'm not being mean, I'm just saying, it's the South, Jim Crow and shit, smiling tenderly is not what comes to mind, not in 1930.  Don’t look at me like that, I watched Roots, and Malcolm X.  (Conspiracy theory gear...check!)  Singing about the state is odd, but singing about a woman, now that’s just about right.  The best part of this little nugget I stumbled upon, the original is bloody spectacular, jazz orchestra the works.  Again, listen before you slap me...

It's good, no?  No?  I don’t know why I bother with you ungrateful Philistines.  Detour over.

Scrolling down the Ray Charles playlist, I came upon this lovely gem...

Sound vaguely familiar?  Rap being rap, they took one random line and spun it into that most addictive hook from 'Gold Digger', 'She take my money...'.  I came across the song some time last year, on Treme, the TV show.  It was one of those moments when you hear a song and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you think, 'Fuck me sideways!'  Odd thing is, that show is so fucking brilliant, those moments come along roughly 5 times per episode, at least.  I know you think I'm off on one of my misguided tangents, but listen to this and tell me I lie...

Detour.  If you like this, go out and get the TV show, then get the music.  This is the only show I know with several sites dedicated specifically to the soundtrack, episode by episode over four seasons.  It's a music junkie's heaven, plus it has some of the best writing and acting I've seen in a good long while.  As with all things brilliant, it has, however, since ended, HBO saw fit to kill that story.  I blame Obama, I blame him for everything these days, him and el presidente, just because.  (Ranting gear...no check, trying to disengage...)  Detour over.

While googling for the Treme version I wanted to revisit, I stumbled upon a live performance of the same by Stevie Wonder.  Being that I am loose like a langa, and Stevie is, well, Stevie, I clicked play, and thus began another walk down memory lane.  This man is the voice of my childhood, him and MJ and Lionel.  'Part Time Lovers' was the song, no?  Scrolling down his playlist takes me back to the first time I watched a colour television.  I have no idea why.  Issues.  Listen to this man sing...

This song though.  I'm not sure there's anything I can say about it.  His voice is most fascinating, in some ways its an instrument in its own right.  R&B these days is all woowoowoo bullshit, but this is what it should be about.  Clear voice, control, lyrics that make sense, music that did not come out of a computer.  It's art, is what it is.  Now I'm guessing there's a youngling who'll listen to this and think, this guy sounds like John Legend.  I see you nodding, you poor soul.  There's nothing new under the sun, my lovely, now you know.  All of me isn’t all that new, is all I'm saying.  Yes, I am laughing an evil laugh.  I googled the two, hoping to find a clip of the them on the same stage, and I did, kinda.

My people, when Mr Wonder introduces someone as 'overwhelmingly incredible', you need to listen.  You don’t have to agree, just listen.  In one of those creepy coincidences that tend to happen when you're online way too long, someone put three songs I absolutely love in one performance, thereby rendering me speechless for 10 minutes.  I watched this clip in awe, 'hand in the air, hallelujah!' awe...

Ms Corinne Bailey Rae should need no introduction, but she's so brilliantly eclectic she's often overlooked when we talk about good music.  Watch this concert and tell me she hasn’t won you over...

Isn't she just the most gorgeous creature?  Come on...  If this doesn't move you, then you are a cold heartless bastard unworthy of good music.

John Legend on the other hand is a staple, whether you like him or not, Kenyan FM has decided he is the man they will play until our ears bleed.  'Coming Home' is...fitting.  As much as we hate to admit it, us and our langa government, we are at war, most of the time with ourselves, and trying to come home.

We'll make it home again

Back where we belong again
We're holding on to when
We used to dare to dream

We pray, we live to see
Another day in history
Yes, we still believe...

Detour. These two artistes do a mean duet.  Their cover of 'Where is the love', off his live album, almost outdoes the original.  Almost.  For all their brilliance, Donny Hathaway cannot be beaten, and because I know you don’t believe me (you never do, do you?), here's the original with Roberta Flack.  Further detour, as I was wandering through Mr Hathaway's playlist, I found a live version of 'Someday we'll all be free'.  I'd explain my obsession with the man, but it's easier to let you figure it out for yourself...

Keep your self-respect, your man, the pride

Get yourself in gear, keep your stride
Never mind your fears
Brighter days will soon be here

Take it from me someday, we'll all be free, yeah...

If you do nothing else this week, get yourself one of his albums, the man was true genius, the likes of which we rarely see these days.  You shall thank me later.  It was inevitable that this song would lead me to his live cover of 'What's Going On', which in turn could only lead to Marvin Gaye himself, he that was shot by his father, useless twit, the father, that is.  Wait, both of them were equally foolish, no?  This album is described as the seminal album for black conscious music, yaani he sang about more than pretty women, unheard of for an Motown musician at the time, or so they say.  I wasn't born yet, so don't quote me.

Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying

You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, yeah...

Lakini, if I need to tell you about Marvin, then we cannot have a discussion.  If you don’t like him, that’s another story, I'll fight with your dodgy ass later.  Detour over.

The last of the trio on that Stevie Wonder clip, John Mayer, now he is a truly special bastard.  Honestly, I'm not entirely sure he's sane.  Any man who refers to his dick as racist, well, he's a star.  I absolutely love his no-filter mouth, and I love his music more.  I know a man who is about to send me a strongly worded email tukana-ing me for that statement, but fuck it, this man plays blues guitar like someone three decades older and several skin tones darker.  'Gravity' is moody music, just what you need when you're in a funk and unwilling to climb out.  Strange thing is, this is just what I needed to get me out of my funk.  Go figure.

Oh, twice as much ain't twice as good

And can't sustain like one half could
It's wanting more that's gonna send me to my knees

Whoa gravity, stay the hell away from me
Whoa gravity has taken better men than me
How can that be?

And to wrap up this random walkabout, we return to (almost) the beginning, with my 'strange white man with a penchant for covering black man classics' fixation.  The beginning of 'Gravity' has a riff off this beauty...

I still want you to stay

I still love you anyway
I don't want you to ever leave
Girl, you just satisfy me, me...

Possibly related, I now have the title for my next post.  Chitty chitty, bang bang.  Bang here refers to...

Fellow Kenyans...

Sometimes I'm right and I can be wrong
My own beliefs are in my song
The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then

Makes no difference what group I'm in
I am everyday people
Oh sha sha...

I am everyday people

Oh sha sha...

Our president got jokes. No really, jokes. 

As always, he began by condoling with us, all sad and sombre like.  Thing is, if he expresses shock and outrage one more time, so help me I will find the words for him, bloody woiyee president.  Nkt!  These meaningless platitudes are the same ones he gives us every time something bad happens.

The rest of the speech however...

Reckless leaders propagate the unlawful message that some are more or less Kenyan than others. Dangerous leaders preach the insidious message that some people are holy whilst others are evil. The sum total of these campaigns is to portray certain people as less human, and therefore less deserving of compassion and consideration, and perhaps, fair game for brutality and abuse. Such leaders divide instead of unite, scatter where they should gather, and destroy where they should build. They also make it easy for terrorists to operate comfortably among us, and to inflict murder and mayhem on innocent Kenyans.

The attack in Lamu was well planned, orchestrated, and politically motivated ethnic violence against a Kenyan community, with the intention of profiling and evicting them for political reasons. This therefore, was not an Al Shabaab terrorist attack [emphasis mine]. Evidence indicates that local political networks were involved in the planning and execution of the heinous attacks. This also played into the opportunist networks of other criminal gangs.

So, no terrorists.

It was politics.

Right.

Wait, what?

But didn't the terrorists say they did it?  Why, in the name of all that's good and right, would you not blame the evil idiots who want to be blamed?  I know you have an obsession with Raila, and you do like to spin, but come on...

Our president continued...

Kenyans and the Government in particular, have, over the last several weeks, observed frenzied political rhetoric laced with ethnic profiling of some Kenyan communities and obvious acts of incitement to lawlessness and possible violence. The inciters have also given examples of other countries where thousands of citizens have died and been maimed in similar circumstances. This rhetoric is unacceptable and will not be condoned. My Deputy and I undertook to make sure that the country will never go the route of ethnic division and political violence. I reiterate that Kenya will not go that route again! We will not allow Kenya to go down this violent path again.

Ummm, sir, your government has recently engaged in a wee bit of ethnic profiling, rounding up a couple of Somalis in Eastleigh.  Just thought to point that out, now that you asked me to be vigilant and shit. You've also thrown in some pretty frenzied rhetoric right here, talking about obvious acts and such like inflammatory nonsense.  Besides, you and your deputy are currently charged with crimes against humanity over at the Hague.  You remember the Hague, yes?  Ti kwa nyina...

This is the problem with the spin idiots at State House, they are not clever, and they have no memory, and they think we are equally not clever, with no memory.  Giving us silly speeches that make no damn sense.  What the fuck kind of crack are these idiots smoking?  Hang on, that's completely wrong.  They are smoking the herb, yes?  Yes.  You idiots, you cant keep reworking the same condolences, pledges to beef up security (which just for the record should be a pretty fat cow right now, ripe for slaughter and ef'thing. Oh my...), and then throwing in the Raila bogeyman, just because.  

I'm curious, who do you think comes up with these theories?  If it was just prezzo talking smack, such as he does, I wouldn’t pay him any mind, but this is across his government.  Listen to our, well, his, secretary for internal things...

This incitement story is the government line. Witnesses are saying, "There were around 50 attackers, heavily armed in three vehicles, and they were flying the Shabaab flag. They were shouting in Somali and shouting Allahu Akbar..." but the government is insisting this was political, which is their fancy way of saying this was Raila.  Tell me, how would Raila, he that can't even rig an election when he's PM, get 50 or so armed youth from Somalia to go conduct a massacre in Lamu County?  No, seriously, this bugger can't even organise a party worth a damn and you think he's a criminal mastermind, plotting attacks in the back of beyond?  Really?  And how is it, pray tell, the government with all its beefy security can't seem to stop him?  Ah yes, he has American money, and we all know American money is evil.  Quick question, where did you go to sell that bond thingi?

Am I the only one who's afraid?  These buggers are starting to exhibit delusional tendencies, seeing Agwambo where there is none.

I am everyday people...

There is a long hair
That doesn't like the short hair
For being such a rich one
That will not help the poor one
Different strokes
For different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby
Oh sha sha
Now we got to live together
Oh sha sha

Now, I'm not saying there is no ethnic dimension to these attacks, as we have since found out Mpeketoni is not the peaceful little hamlet as they would have us believe it was.  From a man who has more knowledge in these things than I do, in an interview conducted in February, this year...

The Ndovu (Elephant) in the Room (warning, GRAPHIC IMAGES)

“What you have in Lamu is a question of internal colonialism. Lamu people, even though they are Kenyans have long been treated as second class citizens in their own country. All the powerful government people- the PCs, the DCs, the DOs all the powerful public officers, especially those handling land matters have never been local, they all come from Nairobi. Land in Lamu was declared government land, unlike other areas of Kenya. Most Lamu peasant and small farmers do not have title deeds. And then the ultimate monstrosity: in the 1970s, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta opted to tackle the burning land question in Central Province by importing thousands of Agikuyu into Lamu, creating the Lake Kenyatta Settlement scheme in what is today Lamu West This was done in total disregard to the interests of the Bajuni, Swahili, Orma, Awer and other indigenous Lamu people, many of whom had been evicted from their ancestral land earlier. Jomo Kenyatta and his acolytes like the former Coast PC were in power when local, politically connected elites from Nairobi grabbed a lot of land in Lamu County. All these issues planted the seeds of simmering conflict that will explode in the region if local grievances are not dealt with.”

What Professor Bujra is saying is Lamu is complicated, as is the rest of the coast.  Bwana Oloo continues...

When I pressed on, playing devil’s advocate to tease out the details I uncovered that the elephant in Lamu was the huge influx of Gikuyu migrants and settlers making Mpeketoni what some locals considered a second GEMA homeland. As raw and as uncomfortable and as politically incorrect the conversation unfolded it is clear that there is a lot of seething rage in Lamu today over the unresolved land issues in contemporary Lamu and the continued influx of Kenyans who are considered “outsiders” from up country into the archipelago.

“We Lamu and Coastal people have for centuries welcomed and embraced visitors into our midst. Many people have come to Lamu, Mokowe, Hongwe, Mpeketoni, Manda-you name it. Some have become Muslim; intermarried, made Lamu their home, speak in the Amu dialect- you cannot tell they came from Kirinyaga, Machakos, Meru, Kisumu, Bungoma. They have become part of us; they are our neighbours our friends. But how do you go to someone’s home; grab their land; kick them out; bring your own family members, recreate and rename the neighbourhoods after your own villages up country. On top of that you come into the local elections and attempt to usurp power! A significant percentage of the ward representatives of the Lamu County Assembly are from one ethnic group! The Member of the National Assembly is called Ndegwa for crying out loud! Be more respectful of us! At least give us the courtesy to run the affairs of our own county! Already only two tribes are dominating the national government! Can’t the Lamu people govern Lamu? We fear that this LAPSSET project which requires a population of one million will make us, the indigenous people of Lamu, lose our cultural, religious and ethnic identity forever. We are only 100,000 right now in the whole of Lamu!”

Question is, was Mpeketoni a target because of these 'outsiders'?   And if so, were the attackers locals?   And are these locals members of Al Shabaab?  See, its easy to blame Somalia for all our woes, but what if the enemy is within, one of us?  Does a Kenyan still qualify as Al Shabaab or it that a strictly Somali thing?  As silly as that question sounds, that is what the spin doctors would have us believe, hence Operation Usalama Watch (the clumsiest name ever given to an operation, hands down. And the site is down, if it was ever up that is...).  

Everyday, everyday, everyday people...

Government would have us believe this attack was nothing but politics.  Government would have us believe that a bunch of disgruntled Kenyans inflicted carnage on their fellow Kenyans with the aim of 'destabilising' the country.  My president is telling me that a bunch of politicians who are running around aimlessly, and carelessly, screaming dialogue and inclusion, whatever the fuck that means, are actively planning acts of violence, and he cannot, or will not, stop them.  That's your president too, by the way.

For the record, witnesses make no such claims.

Residents of Mpeketoni, the town in Lamu that was raided by gunmen on Sunday night, described the attackers as an organised group that took its time and was methodical.

The armed men had the time to take bags of rice, sugar, packets of spaghetti, maize flour, cooking oil, bottles of juice, soda and water from their victims’ shops. They then set the shops on fire and destroyed most vehicles in the town - pick-ups, tractors and lorries. They selected their victims, separating men from women and children. At one point, the Nation was told, an adolescent boy who had joined the men was ordered back to where his mother and sisters were standing.

Most of those who saw the attackers said they were dressed in military fatigue, with black scarves around their heads covering their faces such that only the eyes could be seen. They are also reported to have had a coordinator with a communication radio, while one man recorded videos as they attacked.

Mpeketoni attack: They killed men and took our food

This is the attack the government claims is politically motivated. By Raila.

Am I the only one who is afraid?

I am everyday people...

The song is 'Everyday People', originally done by Sly & The Family Stone, a beautiful piece of psychedelic funk.  That's not what you're listening to, if you hit play.  I felt compelled to put up a most brilliant cover, off the soundtrack to Sons of Anarchy, The Forest Rangers featuring Audra Mae, Billy Valentine, Curtis Stigers, Franky Perez and Katey Sagal. I don’t get to say this very often, but in slowing the song down, this bunch of country musicians made this song better (how now, right?), more soulful, and because I know you don’t believe me, I've put up both.  Done in the late 60's, it was all about race and what not, but as with all timeless classics, it works just as well almost fifty years later, in our country of peculiar 'ethnic' issues and petty politics.  I'm hoping that one day soon we will realise...

I am no better and neither are you
We are the same, whatever we do
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then
You can't figure out the bag I'm in

I am everyday people
I am everyday people

Oh sha sha...

63 victims, that we know of, thus far.  63 plus men who were guaranteed, nay, owed the same protection as that given to the government fat cats and slimy opposition politicians, sitting in their cushy offices in the capital spewing all manner of bile.  These 63 men, everyday people, died in the most gruesome of ways, and all the government does is talk shit.  And beef, sometimes up, security.

Our president...

Fellow Kenyans, I am satisfied that, for the most part, our security agencies have performed well and thwarted innumerable terrorist and other criminal conspiracies and attempts. Security is a vital national requirement; everyone living in Kenya has a right to expect the security of their persons and property as well as those of their loved ones.

Fellow Kenyans, we have been victims of terrorism in the past and the threat of terror continues to hang over us.

Fellow Kenyans, as we mourn the dead, condole with the bereaved and comfort the injured, I ask every one of us to reflect deeply on what each must do to keep our country safe, and to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper. I also urge every Kenyan to revisit our core values and remember who we are. Fear and helplessness are not, and will never be our way of life. Together, we shall grow and keep rising. Let us not give space for those who want us to be afraid, or divided.

I also take this opportunity to assure every Kenyan that no matter the challenges assailing us, my Government stands with the people and works for all Kenyans wherever they are.

Mr President, kindly kiss my fat black ass.  

Fellow Kenyans, my lovelies, we are everyday people.

Be safe.