The flame in your temple

My mother loved going to concerts. One of her motivations here had little, or only obliquely, to do with the music. Rather it was that, as she confessed, "I like to fall in love with the soloist." She was capable of falling, and did fall, in love with painters, sculptors, filmmakers - so long as they were celebrated. So Dalí and Picasso were "geniuses" [speak the word with terrifying reverence] and, as far as I am aware, to this day she wishes for none other than Ludwig von Beethoven to welcome her personally when she arrives on the other side.

The human love of human 'stars' has, probably, everything to do with being overcome momentarily with the feeling that you've champagne, or even the cosmos itself, in your veins, rather than blood. However, I do wonder whether this feeling is aroused by the artwork you're apparently appreciating, rather than by the contiguity you find yourself in, beside awestruck fellow humans, all of them in a thoroughly heightened state. Mob mentality does not kick in only when it comes to demagoguery, violence and war.

In the arts, rock concerts have exploited this human weakness - the deliciousness, the necessity, even, of losing the self - to an extreme. The Dionysian frenzy that fans whip up in their orgasmic surrender, to whoever it is they are united in worshipping at that moment, has been obligatory for at least as long as we have had electricity - though several millennia back, thousands of ancient Greeks would apparently weep and tear their hair in unison on seeing Oedipus Rex or the Medea, performed live in their amphitheatres. The very word 'fan', used in this sense, derives from 'fanatic', which originally meant a "mad, enthusiastic person inspired by a god" and, even nowadays, is not imbued with wholesome meaning. 

It is naturally cathartic to self-forget, to lose oneself to something that is blissful or terrible, overwhelming and literally awesome. What worries me when it comes to fanship, however, beyond the excessive enthusiasm it can stoke, is the one-way-street of stardom.

At times, it feels to me as if we've lost touch with our primitive (wholesome) worship of the sun, stars, moon and planets, because we've put human beings in the place of the heavenly bodies - sacrificing how many new Prometheuses to be daily divested of their livers? For, as everybody knows, the industry of fame can be a gory one indeed.

What worries me, perhaps most, about that industry, is that it transactionalises love. The lovers are turned into a clientèle, whose hunger is fanned by their own fanship, which is by definition a state of being in which you do not inhabit yourself. Indeed, who remembers to nourish their own flame when super-ignited by spectacle and sound effects, heated by a fired up crowd? Nowadays, this kind of experience is available 24/7 via video footage with shrieking applause and mind-numbing lighting aerobics.

There is naturally a place for (harmless) madness in this world, and music fests are a cheery way of allowing us to express that madness. I share reverence for a particularly good phrase or piece of writing, or piece of art or music and, along with other poets and performers, I do love mesmerising an audience with my voice at times. But what matters ultimately is surely what is stirred in you, rather than what is happening outside of you? A resonance, a flame that continues burning even when the lights dim down and everything is quiet again.

The Latin word fanum, whence 'fanatic' comes, meant 'temple', 'shrine' or 'consecrated place'. If my work should enjoy devotees, I would hope that it's because I've managed to introduce you to a consecrated place inside your own precious soul - helping you to remember, rather than forget, your dear self.

Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

'Lovelight' (ceramic by Silke Heiss)

An imaginary maiming

It came to me yesterday that it would be instructive to have all human beings' vocal chords removed and all human beings' hands cut off, or bound - temporarily. For a week, say.

Imagine a world where, for a brief moment in time, no human is able either to speak or to type, or write, or to manipulate any thing, least of all language.

If we all, but all, had voiceless, handless bodies, for a short period of time. (Those without sight, and those on crutches or in wheelchairs, could still use their hands for mobility, but not for communication.)

What kind of experience would that provide for our species?

Would we hear the fish singing? Could we sense the sap oozing up through wood into the leaves of trees? Would we perhaps flutter in natural sympathy with the fan of a seahorse's dorsal fin and shudder in bliss, with the feel of such fragility? We might grimace with rocks weathering salt winds, or totter with tiny calves looking for their mothers, who are crossing busy roads in dust storms.

I believe that such an experience could make the human heart become terrifically palpable inside each of our bodies. 

Pumping so much more than our own blood!

PS. Probably many of us would begin to dance.

PPS. Bullies and teasers would become identifiable pretty fast.

Loss of enchantment: an exercise in self-editing (in real time)

On 3rd August, I hiked up Muizenberg Peak on the Cape Peninsula, in the company of my son and his friend. The period of deluges in that part of the country had given way to a splendid sunny day and there were several other people about, who had had the same idea. 

This included a number of people who had not come to hike, but who, once reaching a chosen altitude or particular spot on the mountain, prayed aloud in a language I do not understand, nor did I, for discretion's sake, pay any attention to them or to what they might be saying. They had not grouped together, but were separately absorbed, at distances to one another. 

Water was running plentifully down the mountain, whose slopes still partially bore traces of some of the ravages of the previous summer's hectic fires. From the heights of a perfectly blue sky, sunrays pierced and lit the tanniny brown hue that is typical of water in fynbos regions, turning it to gold. All in all, the scene, and all the physical activity in it, conspired to enchant me utterly and, in that state, I created this poem:

Going up Muizenberg Peak

We see prayerful Xhosas,

dotted alongside the stream

that's hurrying down

the mountain slope.

Between, and upon, rocks,

beside the tannin-gilded brook,

they sit or crouch or sway, 

eyes closed, worshipping aloud,

at distances from one another.

One man, at a far off cliff,

holding onto a ledge,

bends and straightens his knees rhythmically,

vocalising passionate pleas

that echo across the valley.

Another, higher up, close to us,

immerses himself

under a small, golden waterfall's fresh, icy water,

and his lean body shivers gladly in the sun,

as his friend holds up a hand in greeting,

and we three step

further up the superbly chiselled path,

built by unknown ancestors, 

Italian prisoners, perhaps.

While these select people claim the body

of the earth and its waters,

chanting it into their bones, 

and into mine.

- Silke Heiss, 4th August 2024 

A few days later, I met a friend and told her of my experience and she educated me: things may not have been as they seemed. I had to face the fact that, as Robert Frost put it so memorably in his poem: Nothing Gold Can Stay. I realised that I was obliged to revisit my enchanted poem, which I had allowed to gush out of me in a state of ignorance, which I now felt shamed me. I spent a few days rearranging my disenchantment. This is the result:

Firebreak poem

Going up Muizenberg Peak revisited

 

i. My friend says

 

My friend says, the worshippers on the mountain

are likely not locals. She says, as a part of their rituals,

they’re sometimes known to make fires,

which they don’t always fully extinguish.

She says, she’s not saying they weren’t Xhosas,

or that these particular people made fires,

but she’s heard there are Malawians,

who practise religious rites above St James,

and on other slopes of the Table Mountain Chain.

 

But, she adds, there are also many homeless people,

living in the mountains, who make fires,

who use the buchus and heathers and proteas,

sometimes forgetting to kill the coals.

She says she’s come across little, glimmering hearths

she’s had to put out herself, to protect the mountain,

its plants and animals and people’s houses,

because a single gust can fan a blaze,

as we know.

 

ii. Incendiary property

 

And I think how dangerous a little knowledge is,

how lethal it can be: not to know.

What did I know, what do I know,

about the folk whose voices touched my soul the other day?

Do they – Xhosas or Malawians or the homeless –

know the incendiary property of fynbos in the Cape winds?

 

iii. Next door neighbours

 

And I think about the ‘homeless’,

whose shelter is the mountain,

whose roofs are rock overhangs,

whose stoves and heaters are fuelled

by the vegetation they are helping themselves to

indiscriminately – without knowing.

Whose beds are enclaves of soft bush and dry sand,

whose showers are waterfalls,

whose society are dassies, caracal, snakes and tortoises,

and other small wildlife, which we value (unlike the homeless)

as our next door neighbours.

 

iv. Consideration

 

And I think, who are we? Who is we?

I buckle, language buckles, crackles.

Language, too, fans fires

in people’s hearts and minds.

 

Look at yourself, reading these lines, and ask:

Where’s my heated mind leaping,

what glowering feelings

are fuelled by these dry twigs of grammar,

what burning thought does this brush of questing words feed?

 

Ask, ask, and perhaps we (who is we?) can find

a little golden water, some sunlit pool of calm,

along this rough attempt at a firebreak poem

 

– in consideration of all

we (who?) don’t know.

 

– Silke Heiss, 6^th – 9^th August 2024

There is one overarching aspect that brings these two poems together of necessity, and that is the somewhat painful self-editing process, requiring a degree of honesty that is not at all pleasant to the ego. My main cringe is that I could not even identify the language, which the praying people were speaking. While it is true that I 'switched off', and did not tune into either their faces or voices, because I feared to intrude on them with my conscious interest, I judge that timidity or fear, in hindsight, to have been a deliberate stupidification I committed on myself.

The second poem, however, allows me to redeem myself in my own eyes, in that I dive into that place I feel I know best: the English language, using it to affirm one of my dearest values: Know Thyself.

One's self is, after all, perhaps the only phenomenon that is vaguely knowable in this life.

To live happily ever after

They were born into Hitler's Germany in the first years of the Second World War. They spent their early childhood being ushered into bunkers to hide from the Allies' bombs. As they grew older, they experienced the occupation of their streets and neighbourhoods by French and American troops respectively. They were divided from family by the Berlin Wall. They were taught by teachers, some of whom had been dug out of ruins. They experienced the 'Wiederaufbau' - the re-building - of an utterly traumatised society and totally broken country.

When the counter-culture movement blossomed, they met and fell immediately in love. Within months, they married - on 1st August 1964. Nine months to the day later, on 1st May 1965, their first child was born. Two years later, they were given the blessing of twins. He provided for their physical needs, she became a full-time mother and housewife.

They adventured to South Africa and, against all initial intentions, remained provisionally, becoming permanent residents and intrepidly exploring the southern continent with their three small children in a VW station wagon, later replaced by a Combi. Life was flow and they rowed the currents and torrents as well as they knew how.

When their 40th wedding anniversary came along, he asked his eldest daughter, the only one of their children who was then still in the country, "Do you want to celebrate our forty-year war with us?"

The quip was to the point. The depths and heights, the joys and horrors, the tedium and adventures, the truth and the lies, the heat and the ice I'd witnessed during their marriage gave me an education as rounded as anyone could wish for.

Today, 60 years on, vulnerable, but fortunately well-cared-for, neither of them is mentally or physically independent anymore. Still, they recognise everyone present in their wedding photographs.

"You are so cute!" my mother exclaims, gazing at the tall, blond 25-year-old in the album, "I would marry you again."

"Oh, I'd go along with that," retorts my white-haired father, adding, "We loved each other then and we love each other now."

When love outlives all pettiness.

Amen.