#PoBo #2

V. Old Bill says we are mere actors.

True. But he never says we cannot be writers and directors too

VI. It is meaningful to seek…

The artist’s primary duties are to his art and his politics. To find that equilibrium point where the politics don’t get in the way of the story and vice versa is what I consider most meaningful to seek. There are no Big-Bang moments when stories come into existence- they simmer through our everyday experiences. And because our everyday is, broadly speaking, inherently political then how can the artist ditch the political? You can spend all your ‘apolitical’ life carving zebras by day and as a dancing Maasai by night but bottom line is there is a political discourse- someone else idea of ‘art’- that not only underpays you but also orders your life. For me the difference between a Kitschden and a creative studio is the ability of one to feed off the politics while subverting it. One carves better and better giraffes while the other still carves giraffes but ones with albinism; with diamonds (that no one in Africa has ever seen) on the soles of their feet. …I don’t know, the dancing Maasai who fucks the mzungu and writes the book.


VII. The White Girl and the Savage?

Dude, that book doesn’t exist. Well, there were some 15,000 words or so. A focus group… and, uhm… auditions. Yeah, no white girls were harmed in the making of this film. I mean, of course that is the kind of thing I would say if I ever wrote such a film. But, frankly, with the text you imagine connections. What if somewhat the Savage never, really, wins? Is there a poetic justice ring to that ‘no white girls were harmed’ for the Hip Hop scholar meaning to compare your angst to that of Tupac? When it is all filtered through the discourses of Africa and development what are you: a poster boy for safe sex or yet another way to ‘other’ black masculinity? In the end, there could be something in there, digitally archived on the net that reveals the antagonism of our time. One jaundiced and probably ignorant view but a view expressed, nevertheless. …and somewhat, for me, that is the beauty of the internet.

Oh, but in the long run… long before he is dead, the artist is getting paid. He is after all still painting giraffes by day and working as a dancing Maasai by night. He remembers the face-off between Mahina and Patterson, in The Ghost and the Darkness, as one of the most poignant and political moments in Hollywood’s Africa. The last outing for a kind of African who power and its whitewash over history, rubbed off the face of the earth with a derisive noble savage. It is a scene after, Colonel Patterson, being in African for only a day and having never seen a lion before kills a lion with one shot and brings order to the place of killing that is Tsavo.

“You know, I also have killed a lion,” Mahina tells Patterson, recently Christened One Shot, “I used my hands.” Later on Mahina is killed by a lion. But Patterson kills all the lions are builds the bridge to the British exploitation of the East African mainland.

The lions are now at the Field Museum in Chicago, Colonel Patterson is celebrated in film and literature and the kind of African that declared him One shot, tamer of the African wild rules in place of the Brits. Mahina’s spirit, one hopes, still lives and though it carves giraffes to eke out a living, in the evening- before the wardrobe change into a dancing Maasai- he takes a little time off to carve gay giraffes.


VII. Who is the Ghost and who is the Darkness?

Don’t know… there are all Africa types in that film, mercenaries, collaborators, fools, conquistadors {…}