While my guitar gently weeps

The Beatles again – and then of course, who can forget Eric Clapton’s version in the tribute concert for George Harrison? An absolute classic. (I’ve always said that’s the soundtrack I want at my funeral – “Concert for George”. No-one could possibly stay sad listening to that music.)

The lyrics of the song seemed pretty meaningless at first, as was the case with so many of the songs in those days – look at “Hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease” from ‘Come Together’, or my favourite, “Someone left the cake out in the rain, I don’t think that I can take it, ‘Cause it took so long to bake it, And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo” from ‘Macarthur Park’!

But George Harrison said that he wrote ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ based on the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, which says that “whatever happens is all meant to be and there’s no such thing as coincidence – every thing that’s going down has a purpose[1]”.

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning

While my guitar gently weeps

So, just as the song had a meaning to him, so it does to me. I majored in Speech and Drama at university – Screech and Trauma to the always-annoying yobbo Agriculture students there at the same time (never let it be said that we don’t all have our stereotypes and prejudices). In our third year we had to choreograph a movement set to contemporary music for a dance and this was mine.

Hearing the song now brings back no memories at all of that particular dance, but it does remind me of a host of other experiences. Arriving at university for the first time after a two-day train trip from Bulawayo, being in a hostel for my whole three years of undergraduate study, early morning lectures, late night parties, coping or cramming for exams and either passing or repeating! Writing about a time is really good for evoking memories and as I write now, I can even smell the canteen and taste the fresh white bread with peanut butter and syrup that we got every Thursday!

Everything was different for me because it seemed as if life in Rhodesia had been rolled in cotton wool – I had lived 18 years inside a bubble and the early 70’s exploded onto my consciousness when I started university in South Africa.

I loved it but years on, also thought how much more I could have made of it. Too late and regrets are pointless I always think, and there is still more than enough to remember.

I was chosen as a drummie but gave up because you had to get up too early to practice, I took part in beauty contests, wet T-shirt boat races in Durban harbour, screamed at rugby matches, went out with both the buff and bony.

I had my moments of what I remember as brilliance – organising a float for one Rag procession with the theme of Movies, called ‘Gone with the Wind’ so we needed to do absolutely nothing except drive around on an empty flat-bed truck – and disaster – failing Introduction to Roman Dutch Law, touted as being the easiest first-year course on campus. And I changed.

After two years I finally came to understand politics in South Africa and what apartheid really meant. I met student leaders and activists. I read more deeply and listened to different music. Rugby parties turned to endless discussions on the differences between Communism and Socialism, Marxism, Leninism or Trotskyism. Red wine instead of beer. Clean-cut body builders became hairy, bearded hippies. It was all still fun but different fun.

So all in all, why change anything?

Every mistake, we must surely be learning

Still my guitar gently weeps

[1] Beatles, The (2000). The Beatles anthology. Michigan: Chronicle Books

There’s a kind of hush

I had no idea what unconditional love was until I had a child. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? But honestly, someone once asked me that ridiculous question “would you throw yourself under an oncoming car to save someone?” I mean, really. Why on earth would you if they were stupid enough to run into the road in the first place? But, if it is your child? Then it’s completely different. Yup, I would. No question.

I had my daughter when I was a bit older. 34, which doesn’t sound too old now as so many woman wait to have babies much later in life, but there’s always more of a risk. So I was pregnant in the summer of a very hot 1986 and spent most of my days over Christmas that year wallowing in a pool like a very large hippopotamus.

Then one night in early January my waters broke – honestly, all I felt was relief because it was cool! – and off I went to hospital. Four hours later and I was induced. Ha. I had taken meditation classes during my pregnancy (remnants of my hippie days) and set off with a book, determined to breathe through it all and come out the other end glowing and unscathed but with a beautiful bundle to show off. Ha again. It was agony. My husband fainted and was rushed out and offered tea by the nurses. No tea for me. I simply pushed on (literally) and was finally delivered of a little girl.

I wrote a diary while in the hospital and it tells of my first breath of Katrine. A warm, musty smell and a whimper from a scrunched up little face, and that was it. I was in, for life.

All though her early years I would sing her to sleep. I knew every word of the song …

There’s a kind of hush all over the world tonight

All over the world you can hear the sounds of lovers in love

You know what I mean

Just the two of us and nobody else in sight

There’s nobody else and I’m feelin’ good just holdin’ you tight

And that really does say it. It was just so good holding her. Over the years she grew and I hated it. I loved holding her body and feeling her skin. Now she’s 28 and taller than me but still has the most incredible soft, silky skin. I put it down to her rich and fertile breeding ground and the sheer force of my love for her!

So listen very carefully

Closer now and you will see what I mean

It isn’t a dream

The only sound that you will hear

Is when I whisper in your ear

“I love you forever and ever”

 

I wonder

I wonder how many times you’ve been had

And I wonder how many plans have gone bad

I wonder how many times you had sex

I wonder do you know who’ll be next

Do you remember the 70’s? Were you even born then? Amazing days – probably should have been 60’s if you lived in America or the UK but we were always a few years behind here. I was already 10 in then-Rhodesia when we got out first black and white TV. 1963! Britain had had TV since the mid-1930’s and we were only catching up nearly 30 years on. We only got colour television in 1984. And the shows – who remembers Dr Kildare, The Flintstones, The Dick van Dyk Show, Dr Finlay’s Casebook – and Dr Who! Who knew that he too wasn’t a ‘real’ doctor!

Can one even admit to having some affinity with Rodriguez’s lines these days? University days seem so long ago now but I know every word of this song and it never seemed inappropriate then. Woodstock eventually rolled onto our shores in 1970 and with it came free love. So cool. All at once I was introduced to dagga, political activism, sex, rock n’ roll, red wine … being part of a counter-culture and riding a wave of change. I wasn’t a true hippie but still felt like a part of a community. I loved the idea of shocking my parents (even if I had to do it quietly in case they stopped my allowance or brought me home) and reveled in the feeling of being able to make my own decisions and choices.

In South Africa, as we now know, I was definitely on the outer edge of the revolution but it still felt important, and the odd nights when you drank too much and woke the next morning not really remembering why your door was no longer to the right of ‘your’ bed were all part of those times.

When people ask me today if I was “in the struggle”, I have to say no, as you can’t count being chased by police dogs for taking place in a protest march to the Town Hall, or having my phone tapped because I was friends with someone who had been banned for being a member of ARM. There were so many bigger issues and bigger players in the field and I am just grateful to them today for making me so much more proud to say I am South African. Not however when I live through yet another xenophobic attack though, and then

I wonder about the tears in children’s eyes

And I wonder about the soldier that dies

I wonder will this hatred ever end

I wonder and worry my friend

And in the end you carry on your life, with good memories and bad, good experiences and not. It was an incredible time and I am inextricably part of that revolution. Some serious partying was had, and some important lessons learnt.

Perfect 10

The body beautiful. Just the words evoke such a range of responses. What is, what isn’t, who is, who isn’t, the best, the worst … All really so subjective. That’s why I love this song ..

She could be sweet 16, bustin’ out at the seams

It’s still love in the first degree ….

The anorexic chicks, the model 6

They don’t hold no weight with me

Well 8 or 9, well that’s just fine

But I like to hold something I can see

Of course, it helps that I am definitely no size 6 and struggle to get back to a 14 most days, but am also fairly middle of the road, average, in weight and looks. But I am still really aware of size, despite trying my utmost to not pass on my feelings and paranoias  to anyone else, especially my daughter. I’ve talked about body image with almost everyone I know at some stage, whether about a new diet, a comment on someone passing, a revelation, an admission or an apology. Man or woman, old or young, there are very few people I know who don’t have a preference for appearance. Some are open about what they like, others will say they are not concerned about the outside “it’s what’s inside that counts”, but when push comes to shove and you’re on a dance floor or in a pub with someone standing in front of you asking you to dance or go out, you can’t tell me that there isn’t a little part of you that assesses appearance? Surely?

Maybe you do but put that aside to get to know the real person first. Well, good for you. I can’t. I have no doubt this has made me miss out on some experiences but I’ve accepted over time that I am hot-wired to like a certain type. One has to know one’s limitations (despite yearning for just one more close-up look at a washboard stomach!) but I’ll always go for what I deem to be a general ok-ish type.

I am fascinated by the differences that the human body is capable of generating. Just think of it – two eyes, one nose, one mouth – and it can be put together in literally millions of ways, Identical just isn’t a word in the language of looks. One of my musings involves the possibility of a ‘twin’ somewhere in the world. I simply can’t believe that there are just so many variations. And the fantasy goes further. If there is someone just like me, how different would their life be? Would just the face be the same? Would she (he??) too have aches and pains and cheeks that slip in the night?

Would she have someone who loves her unconditionally?

‘Cause we love our love,

in different sizes

I love her body, especially the lies

Time takes it’s toll, but not on the eyes

Promise me this, take me tonight

When I’m 64

This seemed so far away once upon a time and is now just around the corner. So difficult to believe that so much of my life has already passed. A friend recently made the disturbing analogy of one’s life as a metre stick and if I were to ‘place’ myself on it, I’d be well past two thirds of a way along! How depressing is that?!

But with advancing age comes memories and there are a lot of them. Starting with the actual memories of an incredible era of music – who can forget The Beatles with their weird hairstyles and indefatigable pop-py sound? And who would have thought they’d be so popular? I know the words to almost every song they did and still own one of the original LPs: The Big Beat of the Beatles.

I remember going to church socials in halls and church basements where nothing at all churchy went on. Short skirts, black eye make up, teased hair laden with sticky hair spray. Boys on one side and girls on the other until a song came on you all liked and then you’d move into the middle and dance until someone appeared before you and suddenly became your partner. Slow dancing at the end with lights dimmed and everyone shuffling around and around, swaying to the last songs before your parents came to fetch you. 64 seemed impossibly far away. Even your grandparents weren’t that old!

Ageing is a strange thing though. You don’t feel much older for a long time and then suddenly it seems as if a whole host of things start happening. Your body aches more – where did the new pain in your finger come from? Why can’t you turn the lid to open a new bottle of marmalade? How come kneeling down to garden is so much more difficult? Why do you have to make a three-point turn to get up off the bed in the morning? Why, when do you look in the mirror in the morning, does it look as if your face is made of wax and bits have slipped in the night?

And also, it seems as if it is suddenly time to start making sensible plans. Will you keep on working after 63? (And if so, who will have you??) Will you stay in your same lovely but now a bit empty house? Do you want to keep on living in a vibrant but big, busy, sometimes violent, city? Who will you spend your time with when you move? And what on earth are my hobbies supposed to be? Who ever had time for hobbies when you’ve worked for over 40 years?!

So, what’s next? They’re still there – the hopes and wishes. I still want but maybe it should be when I’m 84!

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?