Эндрю Миллер (ЮАР) - Dub Steps

So, while I find the manifestation disturbing in too many ways to describe, I do appreciate that there are reasons behind those pink little asses humping up and down in the near distance.

Still, I ask myself, do they really need a god?

Do these kids, young and frisky and free as they are, really need to tap into a higher power? Are they not capable of living and fucking and breeding on their own?

I cannot answer.

The parties have drawn deeply from the source created by my father and his kin. The DJ is pre-eminent, as one would expect, high up in his booth. All beats are, of course, underpinned by the 4/4 thump of the pre-dawn trance rhythm, a universal drive we all understand.

They (who? I’m not sure – some young thing, pert as a button, together with her stringy, flushed boyfriend) have asked me to do a set at the next party. Mthakathi has developed, by all accounts, a mystical reputation as a beat archivist as well as a general knowledge collector, and while they seem completely unconcerned with the ideas and facts I have at my disposal, the music they slobber for.

I have agreed, but with conditions. I want the pre-dawn slot. The April clouds are rolling in and the sky is darkening, so that means four to seven a.m. This will be, I suspect, my one and only headline gig and I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a small river of excitement running through me. There are things these kids have missed and have been denied. Things they are actually not allowed (I think of Matron), and I intend to bring them, to open that horizon just a tiny bit. DJ Mthakathi. Aged ninety-something. On the decks at… at what, exactly? I don’t know. There are no names for these things. No one is making posters.

There are too many of them and they’re too smart. That’s what it comes down to.

After all my work. After that fucking statue. After all the talk about knowledge and saving and information hierarchies, they want none of it. They need none of it. The information is irrelevant. What they need is the story. The design.

Nine strangers. Picked out by the holy master. By the lord our god. The nine who would redesign. All they need of us, of what we did and what we reached so long for, is our images. The outlines. Inside they have coloured their god. Or he has coloured them – whatever.

Once they put the statues out in front of the expo and gave them our names. Once the prayers and the statues and lectures began to merge… Gerald left. While my jaw dropped closer to my chin, he looked north. Eventually he turned the ignition, and went.

He would come back every now and again, this year or that year, looking all the more each time like he had stumbled across us accidentally. His eyes were wider. Slower to refocus. The words took longer to leave his tongue. He spoke only in short snatches, an abrupt two-way radio.

He took guns – many guns. He wanted the Zambians. The dub Zambians. Revenge for English. Justice for English. For himself. Some way to restore the innocence of a simple idea. A simple bloody camping trip.

Occasionally, he said he heard the bass, far off in the bush. He followed. Dub people, he said. Definitely dub people. And not in a good way.

Sthembiso debriefed him more thoroughly each time, gathering Roy Jnr and little collections of older kids together in theatrical corners, imitating a military court. Each session was longer and resulted in more tittering, more talk, more sharpening of already sharp things.

And me? Well, really, I am empty. Hollow. They may or may not be a threat. They may or may not be dub people. I find it hard to care.

I am captured, rather, in my most reflective times, by the thought of all those books stacked in such precise order. Those noble old publications. The fresh young ones. Rotting away, deprived of oxygen, of the laughter and anger, the dirty hands of life. I walk through my shelves every now and again, running my fingers across the spines, feeling the ripple of light as my touch passes, and then the disappointment, dark in the gut.

Sthembiso is a strapping man, confident in his walk and his body. He maintains a chiskop at all times, the bald scalpiness of his skin all business and action. Never has he moved even slightly towards dreads or free growth, a reflection of his singular nature and his complete, overwhelming focus on whatever it is he is focusing on.

We maintain a respectful distance.

I display many of the obvious symptoms of jealousy and resentment in the way I interact with him. I resent what he is doing and has done with the farm, and I am jealous of… well, everything. I want that small eager boy back.

I expected something different. His aggression represents all my disappointments for what could or should have been. His presence marks the loss of my own dreams, the full and final shutdown of my own ambitions.

I make sure not to fall too gratefully into the calming impact of his presence when he decides to bestow it on me. I know – because Babalwa, his mother, told me, often – that I am remote and removed from him. That I am pointedly absent. Distant enough for it to be a matter of common cause across the farm, within my generation and among all the kids. Roy and Sthembiso have issues.

Which is fair enough, I suppose. He and I are both aware of the deeper forces that have set the trajectory of our society. The others may hail the miracles and the luck, the striking of fortune against the flint, they may hail their god, but Sthembiso and I are very aware that these have not been purely fortunate stumblings.

Still, our distance is not absolute. We have managed to find small spaces to fill out on our own. Every now and again, maybe once or twice a year, he will come and sit with Camille and me, his heavy frame sinking into one of my small stoep chairs, which buckles and breathes audibly at the weight of him.

‘Roy,’ he said the last time, about three or four months ago, ‘do you believe in fate and God and life after death and aliens and all that?’ His accent crisp, clean. The Queen’s language. It’s one of the ways he keeps his authority, wielding the power of his formality against his progeny. The rest may talk like lost grammatical orphans, when they use English at all, but Sthembiso is word-perfect. His prompts. The exhortations and motivations of the interface, these are perfect too – perfection the sign of power. Great power. Remote and decisive.

‘Jesus, boy, you’re bundling a lot into one basket there.’

He smiled. ‘Well, you know what I mean. I’m referring to—’

‘Yes, I know. You mean the spiritual. Do I pray? Do I believe there is a larger force and/or forces that have influence over the course of my life? Do I believe this waking moment is all there is, or do I believe that other forces are at play in corners I cannot see? Yes?’

He peered at me carefully and approximated a nod.

‘I’m not sure. I never have been. I can tell you this though – we are bundles of complex energy. We are combinations of circuits and neurons and cells, and we are very sensitive as a result. We are easily influenced by electricity, by energy, so I don’t see any reason why there aren’t lots of different kinds of energy out there – many that we aren’t even aware of – guiding and shaping what we do and how we do it, et cetera, et cetera.’

‘Do you dream?’

‘Of course. We all do. Depends on how many joints I’ve smoked whether I can remember them or whether they take over my entire night, but that’s just a matter of degree. Do you dream, Sthembiso?’

He leaned his elbows onto his knees, his enormous muscled body purring with potential energy. ‘God speaks to me every night.’