No, Minister

Dear Minister

Many of my blogmates have taken to letter writing as a quiet form of protest lately. For example, Shiny, who writes to correct certain undesirable forces in her universe, or Mud, who gently questions the strange things she finds in her new home.

I too have decided to take up this form. I have a few things to say to you. Actually they are quite serious things and I do hope you are listening.

Dear Ms Xingwana, you have been appointed as the Minister of Arts and Culture. Clearly they didn't brief you properly. Your job is not to censor artists. Your job is not to take your petty puritan morality and project it onto the works of art that cause you discomfort.

Minister, your job is to take the pair of scissors and cut the ribbon, to open the exhibition. Not pass your judgement and tell artists that their work is 'against nation building.' I may have to check my facts here, but I think another aspect of your job may be to protect our constitution. Remember? The one so many people died trying to uphold. I don't think they gave you licence to decide that some people were more free than others to express themselves. That would be going backwards a bit.

Minister, we artists have a rule of thumb to ascertain whether our work is effective or not. Its to do with the function of art in society. If a work has the effect of making people talk, or causing a little discomfort, (I know this will seem strange to you) we generally see that as a good thing. It means we have made people think about an aspect of society that needs thinking about. There is a word for works of art that confirm or impose ideologies espoused by powerful ruling agenda. That word is propaganda. Mostly, artists are not so comfortable being a mouthpiece for the state. They like to interpret the world around them for themselves. They like to create and celebrate beauty, or turn the mirror on ugliness when necessary, so that they can provide a balance against the misery they see in the world around them.

Minister, perhaps you are concerned about the high rates of rape, sexual abuse against children and women in this country. For this reason you are uncomfortable about public exhibitions of pornography. This is what you have said. Minister, allow me to explain how to recognise pornography. Usually, it is an image where there is an uncomfortable level of dominance or a power imbalance in the sexual act. Minister, tell me, in the images below - do you see anything violent? Do you see anything other than love, tenderness, sensuality?




Minister, is it because, as some have suggested, there are black African women displaying love and tenderness towards one another? Dare we use the word, lesbian? Minister, I know this may come as a shock to you but there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that lesbianism has been alive and well on this continent for centuries, and that it was the coming of the white man, bearing Queen Victoria's flag and the Christian Church's moralities, that brought this prurience and intolerance to your continent.

Minister, allow me to draw to your attention some real concerns that you can get busy with. It is 100 days until we become the Fiefdom of the World Cup. Artists, theatre-makers, musicians and cultural activists are wondering why there has been so little invitation to share their works on public platforms so the world can see how talented we are. And what of those rumours about the R150 million that kind of disappeared, that was supposed to be for World Cup arts projects?

Minister, a friend of mine, a well respected choreographer received a grant from the National Arts Council recently. Two weeks before her work was due to be showcased, she still had not received the money in her bank account. This was a great threat to the integrity of her work. When artists get grants, generally they need the money before the work, you see, because unlike government officials they are not using that money to reward themselves or buy nice cars, they are using it to actually buy materials in order to make the work. I can't quite understand why it took the administrators of this important national institution so long to process a small bit of paperwork. Its not like there was a very long list of grantees. Please could you facilitate some sort of forum so that we the artists can communicate to those the bureaucrats what our needs actually are? We really don't want to fight with you.

Minister, every year we lose a national treasure, an artist of great talent and brilliance. We are losing these people not to old age, but to common preventable diseases of poverty, or to crime. We have actors and musicians who have worked their entire lives listening to the Muse, unmotivated by wealth or fame, who cannot afford medical care, who have no form of unemployment insurance. Make no mistake Minister, these are real 'nation builders.' We have graduates with artistic training, young people of great promise who are working as administrators and car guards because there is no vision from your department on how these creative minds could feed into the economy.

Minister, while I am at it, and I know I am going on a bit now, would you consider talking to the Ministers of Education (both of them, please) about how to improve creativity training in schools. I know there is an Arts and Culture lesson in the curriculum, but do you know how many teachers use this period to clean their classroom? I know maths and science are important, but consider the value of enabling young minds to be creative and literate as well. It has been well documented that this kind of education is essential in producing well rounded learners, and even in helping them to develop that much vaunted sense of morality that your people keep talking about. Let's not go back there.

Minister, audiences in Paris, Oregon, London, New York, are being wowed by South African artists. When these artists return to theatres in their home country, they struggle to cover their costs. Please, help to build an environment in which artists can just do their jobs. Don't tell them what they should be creating.

There is that small matter of the Constitution to uphold.

Thank you, Minister, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this. If you would like any other reading matter that could point you in the right direction and help you carry out your public duty, please let me know, I would be happy to assist.

yours sincerely concerned,

Hungry Nation Builder.

Multiple career disorder

When I was a little girl, quite a little girl, I wanted to be a child pyschologist. I remember it clearly - some kindly grown-up asked me, so what d'you want to be when you are big, Tammy? We were standing outside the creosote-coated wooden structure that I called home.
"A child psychologist" I answered, without missing a beat. Then wondered, why the chuckle?

I'm not sure where I got this from - or what I thought it meant. Was there someone who was that and I admired them? Did I read it in a book? Who knows.

The other thing I wanted to be, apart from a vet, a biologist and a motorbike racer, was a writer. This from as early as I remember.

Someone else asking me that ol question and I remember saying,
"I'm going to be a writer." Made sense. Granny had written books. So had Grandfather.
"Ah, said the person (one of many visitors that came and went through our lives)
"What kind of writer? Like a sign writer? Or a calligrapher?"
No stupid. A writer. The kind that writes books with stories in them. I wonder if I gave her a withering look. Patronising sort, she was.

The words and the bees
Back to the biologist part - actually more of an entomologist. I loved insects. Words and insects. At eight I knew the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist. Duh. I was quite convinced that I would discover a new species of moth, termite, or glow in the dark mosquito. I studied harvester ant nests and intimately understood their social structures and movement patterns. Perhaps I was Eugene Marais in a previous life. I remember being quite shocked when I pulled a copy of Soul of the White Ant off my mother's bookshelf and realised that someone else had been there, done that which I had fervently planned. This was before I went to Proper School, and discovered there was a weird separation between arts and science and apparently you couldn't be a poet-biologist.

The last bullet was plugged into that hope at high school. I adored my biology teacher (Mr Sherry, wherever you are, you rocked). But Chemistry? The teacher was a perv who liked looking down the girls' school blouses. Physics? A cold war that started when he walked into class and caught me drawing a devastatingly accurate caricature of him on the overhead projector.

Without Physics and Chem, Biology A-level wasn't going to happen and by 16 I was firmly on an arts course, for better or worse. The fact that I grew up around bottles of turpentine and pigment can't have helped. Two hippy artist parents? I didn't stand a chance.

A cunning plan
Then I went to Varsity - headlong into more confusion. I started off with that chrystalline logic you have when you are 19. I would major in English Literature, obviously. And I would do Drama for two years only. To learn about character from the inside, you see. And then I would choose Philosophy or something clever so that I would be able to write books that answered all the really important questions about the outer frontiers of reality and consciousness (what can I say - I'm Sag/Scorpio). I think that was the plan, anyway.

Something to fall back on?
At the back of all this, the persistent ring of my grandfather's voice - "you can't make money from this artsy fartsy stuff. You need something to fall back on. A secretarial course. For God's sake don't become a safari guide."

Was drama my thing to fall back on? Or just into, the way one falls into a rich chocolaty mudpatch, sliding stiff-kneed at first (oh no, I don't wanna get my clothes dirty) and then gleefully (wheee! this is fuuun!) and then you sling your first mudball at someone and you're done for, hooked, wallowing forevermore. Inadvertantly calling everyone dahling and using words like emoting. And projecting.

But still, I have career A.D.D.
Let's see. I have been a perfume spritzer, jewellery seller, a costume and set designer, a drama teacher, a waitress, a potter, a proof reader (I suck at that), an industrial theatre scriptwriter-actress-director, a fundraiser (I suck at that too), a proposal writer (I'm good at that), a facilitator and a radio operations communications control officer (aka ROCCO. I'm really good at that). And every now and then, someone pays me to write a play.

No wonder I'm exhausted.

Its eclipse season, and its time to shed some dead wood. Its time to bloody well focus. I "twist and turn like a -- twisty turny thing", to quote Blackadder. Or was it Baldrick. Yep, even this post is making me yawn and squirm and stare out the window.

Really though, it should have been obvious a long time ago. Writing, making plays, whatever. Living in the deadly serious world of what if - that's the place where you can be any damn thing you want. Even - (duh! It should have been obvious!) Even (of course) - a child psychologist.