In his cut-up and complex world, electronica savant Felix Laband's burdens are also his freedoms: television advertising, drugs, a trail of fragmented relationships, and the ambient kwaito protest album that refuses to complete itself.

Words by ROGER YOUNG
Photograph by Justin McGee

---

“Everyone is all, like, just let it go, let it go, let it go. It can't just be let go.” Felix Laband is chain-smoking and laying out notebooks on the parquet floor of his one-bedroom Jo'burg flat that's mostly studio space. Spliced images from Seventies National Geographics and Nineties porn magazines are scrawled over, teeth blacked out, words written around bodies, encasing the Breitz-like figures in some kind of Burroughs cut-up nightmare spiral. Stacks of vinyls, magazines, CDs and books — predominantly first-person accounts of African wars, genocides, atrocities — spill off the windowsills. I'm here to listen to his new album Deaf Safari. It's been nearly finished for about three years. Laband has been up for days working on a song, tweaking but being unable to complete it. The windows are blacked out with blankets for soundproofing. Coffee cups and ashtrays litter the space. He looks up from the floor. “What all those fuckers don't understand is that I know the feeling, and I know I'll be able to recognise it when it's done. It's not something that eludes you once it's there.”

It's nearly seven years since Laband's Dark Days Exit carved a hole in South African electronica, and the path from there to here is littered with all kinds of disappointment, no-shows, sightings and conjecture — Laband's disastrous Fiction night, Laband at some after-party in 2008, Laband late for another gig, Laband and the unfinishable album, Laband asleep at the wheel of his incredible talent.

Recently, a different kind of conjecture has been bubbling to the surface. DJ Snakehips (Laband's DJ alter ego) started popping up in mid-2011, playing a mix of his own tracks from previous albums, odd electronica and kwaito just out of date. Professor's “Jezebel” seemed to be his favourite. Occasionally, in the middle of all of this, a new Felix Laband tune. After a few months, DJ Snakehips gave way to Laband playing as Laband and trying out new material. The album that would never be finished had poked its head out of the ground. At the Cape Town Electronic Music Festival earlier this year, Laband said that Deaf Safari would be out before the end of the year. Everyone connected to the business end of South African electronica shook their heads like weary veterans of some undocumented war. “He's been promising it for ages,” they said. So-and-so has heard it and it's finished, so-and-so has heard that it's no good, so-and-so says Laband has given up on it.

“I used to have a KISS cover band.” Laband is going through a box of old photographs, dug out from under a record crate of electronic detritus. He shows me a picture of three boys in their early teens clutching cardboard guitars. “I was pulled into the headmaster's office and accused of being a Satanist. I had to publicly burn all my KISS records. The other kids' moms wouldn't let me play with them any more.” He shrugs it off: “So I got into skateboarding.”

Getting Laband just to play the new material for me is proving to be more difficult than I imagined. It's not that he doesn't want to, but he's an ADD magpie and there is always something else to be enthusiastic about. None of the chaos in here is detritus to him.

---

Day Four in Johannesburg for the interview. Laband has already postponed more than a few times, because he was either finishing a commercial or a new track or having his car fixed or just needed to sleep. But now he is finally about to play me something. And then his keyboard fucks out.

“How much is a new keyboard?” he asks me, banging it against his desk. Then the doorbell rings. It's someone he works with, or for, making music for commercials. They want him to come to a brief tomorrow for a new job. He says he'll have to play the album for me another time.

I ask him about working in advertising, how it affects his music. “Commercial work has funded my entire new studio.” He indicates the trestle table covered in desks, pads, battered PCs, guitars, and turntables with a certain weariness. “But it affects me more than you can imagine. It's why I fucked out so much, because I hate it. They'll hire me to do an advert where they will literally get me to copy, note for note, some piece of shit music.” His frustration rises and he begins to pace. “They won't give me the opportunity to try my own thing. And I wonder, why are you hiring me? Because it's their opportunity to stick their cock in my face.

“And then — I get this a lot — you hear people saying, 'It's so sad seeing Felix like that, I feel so bad.' Well, whatever, bru! It's sad seeing you. You're the guy who's still doing adverts and paying off your big car. All those dreams you had, all those films you were going to make. All gone.”

He pauses for a second — you can see him searching in his head — and then he breaks into that gap-toothed grin. “You must promise me that you put that in,” he says with a wink in his voice, a child anticipating a future scolding.

But Laband is not paying off a big car. Laband is trying to finish his long-overdue ambient kwaito protest album. Laband is dealing with a chronic drug addiction. Compost, his German record company, is nervous. He's touring Germany soon. He needs to stay clean. The evidence that he's trying is there. A pamphlet on Suboxone, a buprenorphine (the methadone replacement that Kurt Cobain was rumoured to be on when he killed himself), is on his work desk. Throughout the days I'm with him, on and off, we constantly return to the subject of “getting clean”. The drug does work for some, but it's a long road out, fraught with relapse and personal disappointment. It might be the only way out that works for Laband, though: he's fiercely against rehabs and Narcotics Anonymous. “I don't think I like to admit that the daily grind of doing drugs becomes part of the identity, but I'm trying to work out how to shed that identity,” he says.

“This is the thing, I had this kind of realisation. I hate feeling like a victim. I'm proud of who I am and what I do. And I'm tired of being like this… this whole 'Oooh I'm so bad, I'm so sorry.' I obviously choose to get high. I like to get high. I must just accept the consequences of my choices.” At this moment Laband is defiant with self-destructive pride, but it's quickly followed by a sadness. “But it's ridiculous, all everyone ever wants to talk about, all everyone ever writes about is the drugs.”

---

Laband's studio feels isolated from the present, like a lair of a historian or ethnographer of the recent past. I am with him on the day Brett Murray's Zuma penis scandal explodes in the press, and suggest to him we go to the exhibition. The Goodman Gallery is about five blocks from his house. He suggests we go to Spur instead. On the way up to Rosebank Mall, through its leafy streets and slasto flat blocks, we talk about the Angolan War, Koevoet and Vlakplaas. He's tired, been up all night working on a commercial.

“I'm doing a lot of reading on the ANC/Inkatha clashes. Stuff that happened when I was at school that I didn't understand. I remember fearing it without knowing it,” he says. We discover the escalators are broken, we climb and wheeze. “Even the guy who took the fall for everyone, Eugene de Kock… At the end of the day, the only guy who visited him was a black guy from his unit at Koevoet, a guy who named his son Eugene de Kock.” Laband stops short to light a cigarette. “I think there is something in that, in that aspect, something I'm trying to understand. And it comes down to this: who are the guys who speak the African languages? The Dutchmen, the farmers. They're supposed to be the racists, but they're the ones who learn the languages. Not us English speakers.”

At the Spur entrance, we wait as Laband finishes his smoke. “As children of liberals, it's our opportunity to speak now, and if we don't do that then we are cowards. We weren't old enough or wise enough to do our thing then, because, well, my parents voted PFP [Progressive Federal Party], but they never said to me, 'What's happening, it's terrible.' They kept us in the dark.” He orders a burger and a lime milkshake and goes into the smoking cubicle for a cigarette.

Laband's father is Dr John Laband, a professor in African history, now based in Canada. He is the author of Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present, among other books, and a recipient of the Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Gold Medal for Service to the Zulu People. Laband's mother is an English teacher. There is a specific type of English emotional withholding among the liberals of old Natal, and I imagine this might be what Laband is talking about, that this is what's led to his insecurities and isolation.

When he comes out of the smoking room, he qualifies: “I've got wonderful parents, but they're not hippies, they're quite conservative. Aside from all the crap I put them through, we get on pretty well.” He pauses for a second, reaching. “I used to phone my mother at four in the morning, to ask for money. At the age of 30. It's so embarrassing.”

So would he want to live in another country, to escape the politics? “Whenever I go anywhere else, I want to come back. I can't be gone for more than four months.” Again I suggest we go to the Brett Murray exhibition, but Laband says no. It's time we heard some of the new album.

“Cambodia,” he says, snapping to attention. He had zoned out briefly at an ATM. “Lauren has a friend there. We can go stay, just to get away from this shit for a while, get some perspective after the album launch.” I am reminded of Melanie, the character in the hidden track on Laband's album 4/4 Down the Stairs. “It is not drugs Melanie seeks. It is purpose, reason for existence,” implores a woman's voice over the up-pulsing sequence.

Lauren (pronounced Loren) is Laband's partner of 10 years. A day or so before, while letting me listen to the samples of charismatic preachers she's sourced for him, he said, “Eventually, I want The Felix Laband Show to be tied to the visual. I hate common DJ-style visuals. I find it so obvious and crap, just a mishmash of stuff. I want to approach it almost like Kentridge uses life. But I also need someone to work with me, and I've realised that the best person is Lauren. She's the only person I trust. Artistically. I'm never sceptical of anything she makes.” In these moments, Laband has a penetrating honesty, something you can't but totally believe in.

---

Laband fell in love with kwaito at an early age, while growing up in Pietermaritzburg. “When I was at school, my girlfriend at the time, Janine, her maid's son gave me this Brothers of Peace album, Traffic Cop, you know? That was my first. And I just fell in love with it. I've been buying it ever since. The only music I buy is kwaito. All the white people's music I just download.”

Janine Tilley was Laband's first love while at school, and ostensibly the reason he moved to Jo'burg after a brief stint at art school in Durban. “One of the big reasons he wanted to move to Jo'burg was because of his deep respect and love for kwaito,” she tells me. “He used to listen to Brothers of Peace a lot. But in Durban, musicians are very thin on the ground. I think that was one of his dreams, to not just be this isolated rich white, but to actually work with what he loved.

“Felix was never happy with his physical appearance. He didn't like his big nose and his big lips, the gap in his teeth. He never found himself to be attractive.”

When Tilley speaks of Laband's formative years, it becomes easier to understand not only his insecurities but his unease with the legitimacy of the white man's take on kwaito. “It was apartheid, so it was still safe,” Tilley continues. “So we just ran around and hung out on the fields all night, and did fridge gas. It was another world that we don't really have today. He had strong relationships with amazing people, like Len Cockcroft [now of The Wild Eyes, and sometime part of Fingerhead], [artist] James Beckett and [artist and electronic musician] Dean Henning. And we used to have these incredible parties, largely initiated by our love for industrial music. We'd build smoke with fires and we'd have strobes and we'd listen to Skinny Puppy really loud and Fingerhead would jam. We just banded around Felix. People are drawn to him because he's down-to-earth and he's funny, you know? He's quite self-effacing, and he's quite, well, he's intensely romantic.”

Young and ambitious, Tilley moved to Jo'burg to work in film. Laband followed. Soon the relationship was over and Laband moved back to Durban, where he found himself making music for television adverts and honing his production talent. He started on his first solo album. He also began working with a kwaito performer.

“The only music I buy is kwaito. All the white people's music I just download.”

“There was this guy, Pappi.” Laband hands me a CD. It is a typical late-Nineties kwaito album cover, all bright colours, simple text, a dude flossing. “I made a bunch of stuff with him and none of it was released.” He takes the CD back, keeps it in his hand. “The problem was that they used to come to my house every day. Every day. Him and all of his mates, while I was trying to finish Thin Shoes. And that's part of the reason I left Durban. I just left. I couldn't face having to tell them. So I went to Cape Town.”

I'm taken aback by this. Here was the very thing that he was seeking, the opportunity to produce real KZN kwaito, and he walked away from it? Laband registers my scepticism. “Just after I got to Cape Town, he got my number from somewhere and we spoke. It was great. I'd love to get hold of him now, see what he's doing. We were actually quite close; they started to take me to a lot of their parties. I was the only whitey there. I think they liked me.”

Laband has a crippling awareness of the accepted place of a white person in the field of kwaito. It's part of why he shies away from the task. “There is nothing worse,” he tells me, “than those Danny K and Mandoza things; they make me want to puke. It's like the advert with the one black guy, and they're all up in the yacht or something? Ja, right. Or there's the one white guy just sitting there, looking transformed. It's a joke.” And he would like nothing more than to change this. It is his defining mission; one he hasn't figured out a strategy for yet.

“I've always loved the rhythms, and the vocal rhythms. I just hate the way I can't understand, I can't speak the fucking language, you know?” Laband places the Pappi CD back on his bookshelf. “It's basically, if you understand maskandi, you would understand why all those guys from Durban are so good, because it's in their blood. Maskandi is now what kwaito is today.”

And there it is. Laband adores the music but doesn't speak the language. He is on the outside and it embarrasses him, yet he hasn't taken the step to learn Zulu. “I think it's a subconscious imperial fucking thing – we've been taught that if we speak English we are superior, and that they must speak to us [in English].”

So is this why he hasn't continued his quest for collaboration? “There are guys who I really respect and want to work with, but I'm nervous of it,” he replies. “It's kind of like wanting to ask the cheerleader out and being nervous of rejection. And I've been away from the scene so long that I don't really have a name. No one knows who I am any more. I'm waiting to release this album so they take me seriously.” He points at his kwaito collection. “I want to work with the older guys like Spikiri. I really want to work with Professor but I've heard he's quite difficult. Who knows? But I guess I'm difficult too.”

Laband is in the grip of a dilemma, leaning forward on his chair and punctuating his sentences by pointing at me. In an attempt to cut the tension, I affirm that he has a reputation for being difficult. I mean it as a joke. He is visibly cut by this.

“Do people still think of me as a dick?” He gets quite anxious, starts pacing around his studio space, stubbing out his cigarette. “It's when I'm insecure that I put other people down. I don't have any apologies because I don't feel I need to make any. When I was younger, yes, but not now. My motives are more clear. I had a stint when it was about ego, but that's not what I want. I can't stand the failure from building myself up so high.”

---

It might be true that a few of the older kwaito musicians don't know Laband's work. But that's not to say he's been forgotten, or unknown. Witness the crowd response at any of his recent gigs, the immense draw he has at festivals. And hear the awe in the voices of musicians who become fanboys the moment you mention his name.

“Well,” says BLK JKS guitarist Mpumi Mcata, “I think he had a substantial influence over that whole heavy bass era of kwaito production: the Yizo-Yizo, 'Donkey Rattle' generation, if you will. His music is really open, vulnerable, not trapped in itself. It's ready and honest, which is rare in the world of electronic music!”

Warrick Sony, of The Kalahari Surfers, who has worked with Laband over the years, agrees. “More interesting, though, is his usage of kwaito. It's a funny subtlety, the way that's seeped in, even in his earlier stuff,” says Sony. “His music always had that ethereal heroin thing about it, that 'thin' sound. That Thin Shoes sound. I don't know what it is. You can hear it in The Velvet Underground, you know. It's a trance-y thing, a dronal thing, but it's also a frequency thing. It's more Indian and it's avoiding aggression too.”

Laband's former label boss from African Dope, Hilton “Roach” Roth, says it best. “There is a scene in a Bond movie, where the villain says, 'The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.' That's Felix for me.”

When Laband asks me what people are saying about him “out there”, I tell him. “They want you to release this album already.” He's blunt about its delay. “I've created this pressure. I am aware of the fact that I'm not just another electronic musician, I know I'm doing something special. And I've been rewarded in the sense that I have listeners far afield. And so often people tell me that my albums have meant so much to them, that I don't want to let them down.” A pause, a drag on his Aspen. “I don't want to become another Goldfish in stonewashed jeans just doing a tour. I mean, I could have already been on a whole different path, if I had moved to Europe and not gotten caught up in all this crap over here. Although, I don't know how much I really…” He looks at me, to make sure I understand. “Do you know what I mean? It's almost been cool for me.”

When he finally plays me nearly two hours of what will eventually become Deaf Safari, what is revealed is this: he's angry. He's built worlds of rhythm, but this time with the vocal clicks of South African languages, discarding meaning for rhythm. And he has an incredible, mystifying singing voice. “I think I can sing,” he says, “I mean I used to be in bands.”

So when did he decide to go electronic? “The problem was that I was always the leader of the band. And I suppose every band needs somebody but it's a bit crap, always telling everyone what to do,” he says. “Then after school you actually have to make a living out of it. To be in a real band, other people need to be as committed as you are. The best time to be in a band is during school. You've got nothing else to do, and you can play in someone's garage. Poor parents. Jesus, it was so loud. You've got no idea how loud it is to be in a band.” He selects more of the album to play for me and shuffles off to make coffee, apologising for the chaos of his kitchen.

“Anyway,” he says, returning, “these days I have to work pretty fucking quietly because I can't afford to have a studio as well. I like the comfort of my own space. But it doesn't really work because I can't play loud and I think it's been affecting my music in some ways. When you play through a big sound system, one sound without much else has a lot more impact than a whole bunch of sounds. I tend to be overcrowding my new stuff a little bit.” He selects another track, abruptly stopping in the middle of a mesmerising song that may or may not be called “Bag of Bones”.

“Anyway, I'm not happy with it yet. It's cool, but it's not ready. I'm missing a layer, the last part, which is normally the easiest for me. It's usually the part I struggle with least, the melodies, the vocal, the guitar. But it's the stuff I'm struggling with most. I'm maybe scared that I don't have those melodies any more.” From what I have just heard, he's wrong.

Laband is moving into protest electronica, utilising politically incorrect and polarising samples of political rallies and religious sermons. And it's not surprising, given his liberal upbringing, punk roots and all the time spent hanging out with sonic terrorists such as Jan Welter, Syd Kitchen and Live Jimi Presley in the early Nineties. But how does just using a sample of something say anything about it?

“It used to work around… A song would begin with a sample, I would use that to create a key, or whatnot,” he replies. “But these days it's been more an idea, like I want to try this or try that. I've always liked the way you can take a sample of someone crying and, with the right music and the right context, you can make it sound like they're having sex. I like using samples that are quite hard, taking someone who is saying something hectic and then making the music beautiful. It gives it a lot of power. Controlling the way the statement is consumed. I've got this song called 'Kill the Boer'. It's all these samples of people singing dubhula ibhunu.”

He stops for a second, wondering if he got the phrase right. “I'm turning it into what is hopefully quite a cool song. I have to. It's a statement on how we are playing with fire. If we look at history in all the instances where it was socially acceptable to say such hectic things and get away with it, like Nazi Germany or Rwanda before the genocide, where people could actually get away with saying 'kill these people'… It's quite a heavy thing to get away with and I don't think we should take it lightly.”

He pauses. Inhales, exhales, shrugs. “A lot of it is going to be political. This is not going to be an album you can put on and take a bubble bath to. I'm tired of that. I grew up on punk music. My poor mother had to listen to it in the car.

“I used to purposefully not listen to any other electronica, and that was good for me – I've been exposed to the world of mp3s, I've been given entire record collections from a variety of musicians and DJs, just ridiculous amounts of music. And it frightened me.” He takes a moment, trying to place the fear. “I think, subconsciously, it's affected how I've been doing things without me realising it. I don't even know if people will hear all the stuff I'm putting in. Because no doubt it will be listened to the way I now listen to music, with my mouse, in five seconds…” His voice rises, his thoughts speeding up.

“The thing I'm struggling with the most at this stage is finding anything to hold onto that makes me feel good or excites me about the world, or music as a whole. Or what it means to be an artist. Or like, the respect that you should have created by being an artist your whole life, instead of this from zero to hero in 10 seconds new world order. It upsets me quite a lot. These days everything is so attainable. To get to a sound that is considered a song can take two minutes with pre-settings. It doesn't require much skill. When I started this, we had to have more equipment; now you can do everything inside the computer. I prefer to use equipment; it gives you your own sound and your own thing. Analogue synths and desks and stuff.”

He's gone back to his workspace, intensely staring into the graffitied CRT [old-style] monitor. “But what's irritating me the most about the album is the polishedness of it. It's started to become how I imagine creating a stop-frame animation. To create a minute of music will take three weeks. I've started recording endless options. When you have no limitations you end up with crap.”

He pauses to do some mental arithmetic. “But yes, there are about 150 titles in progress. I think I've narrowed it down to 25 or 30 that I think are cool. My idea is that the ones that finish themselves are the ones that are supposed to be finished. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Something bad, I know. I have this feeling it's all going to come together in a stroke of lightning. And I'll just finish everything down in one go. I want it to be this punk recording and that's it.”

Scattered around his workspace — mixed in with the pads, desks and guitars — are scrapbooks, notebooks, cut up magazines, glue and pens. “I'm quite fluent with scissors,” he says. “This album, it's been a process, almost to ease my mind a little bit. With cutting things up, it's kind of a release for me. I suppose some people would go for a run. I make my books. The process where I get ready for a three-, four-, five-day non-stop session with a song… I begin that with a new page that I stick things on, write ideas on, stuff like that. It started off being more fun, porn, noise, mess stuff.”

He pulls out the box of notebooks, starts piling them onto the floor. He begins flipping through them maniacally, past images of women cut up, spliced, heels and hands trimmed to sharp points, giant mouths, text. “It started off more of just a mess. I collect and dismember old National Geographics. I'm very into the qualities of the print; if you use a magazine from the Seventies it's so different. I'm very much into the different textures.”

Like the textures of samples? “It's a way of using crap source material. With music and art it's the same thing; it's the context that you place it in that gives it relevance. I like doing it by hand; you're forced to work with the size, and you can't shrink or cheat.”

There are pages of porn images where he has cut the genitalia out, leaving negative white spaces of cock. I remark on them. “Trasi Henen copied that, the bitch,” he says and then quickly moves on. “And now it's not so much as punk, it's more thought about, as my own spacing. I'm enjoying cutting shapes out of things that don't exist, working with stuff I can't resize.”

He's got his scissors out now and is cutting up something. He zones out on the blades cutting through the paper, slows down, puts it on the page, moves it around, cigarette dangling from his lips. Sticks it down, scribbles “Deaf Safari” on it, then black spirals.

“It's fucking me up,” he blurts out. “I never really understood MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface], so all my synths and shit I would record as audio, and it's the same as collaging. You can chop it up and shit and do what you want, but you can't change its DNA. And now, well, the rabbit hole, I haven't got out.”

He stands up and goes to get another box of notebooks, mumbling, “Millions of these damn things, these small books, more notes. The Prestik marks, coming through here.”

I remark on how all the teeth in the cut-out images are blacked out. “Maybe it's due to the fact that my own teeth are barely there any more. I've basically destroyed them.”

And as you destroy your own teeth, you destroy other people's? “I've never thought of it like that,” he says. “I mean, I've always grown up with a gap. Which I've sort of grown to like, because it gives you a naughty sort of thing. But now I've got a gap at the bottom.” He pulls back his gums. “Look at that, dude.” His gums have receded; his teeth bare the rot of years of drug use. “All these gaps, all from the drugs, it's bad, bad, bad.”

Laband has said in the past that he's afraid to come off the drugs, because he's worried that he will lose his ability to make music. He's in this half-lit world now, where he knows his dark days must come to an end, either way. He has a cocky pride in the extremes he has gone to. He is reaching towards emergence, while fearing it. Scared of not measuring up. It's exactly the same Felix Laband I met in Durban back when he was making Thin Shoes, before the drugs took hold. He was as scattered, as manic; a hoarder of sounds who felt unsure of his legitimacy. He hasn't changed, and the drugs have very little to do with his genius. This is not something I can explain to him. His life is a reflection of the agonies of our time.

He dumps another box of notebooks on the rickety faded couch. I start flipping through them. “Are these lyrics?” I ask. “No, they're the things I thought I would complete that day. Lists. I should call this album Lists. Unfinished Lists.”

---

Recently, Laband had an incident with the ANC. He had posted a picture on Facebook of himself at six years old, playing horsey with another boy, riding on this kid's back. The other boy was black, the son of a farm hand. He tagged a friend of his in the picture, who, Laband tells me, was enraged by the implication and accused him of being a “typical Natal Midlands little boertjie boy”. Then in 2011 it was used, without permission, in the ANC election campaign with the slogan: “See if they won't do it again.” A minor blog storm erupted: enraged white people asked how could it be that such an innocent childhood game could be framed as racism. When I ask him about it, he just says, “I don't really want to talk about it yet. It's going to resurface and I don't know how to explain how I feel about it.”

This is what you hear on Deaf Safari, this struggle. Laband is trying to work out the strange politics of this land, while doubting his legitimacy as an English-only-speaking son of liberals. You can hear him lurching through the twilight, disturbing the silt of the recent past, trying to escape with his soul intact.

The photographer arrives. Laband jokes around with him about the state of the studio and starts unhooking the blankets to let more light in, the heaviness of what we've been talking about dissipated by the unfamiliarity of a new person in the studio.

There is one question I haven't asked him yet, about an unreleased album, from back in Cape Town, called Guavarama.

He stops with the blankets. “It's an electro-punk thing, I made it the same time as Dark Days Exit. It was a product of me and Mark van Niekerk playing together. He is the greatest musician I've ever worked with and I ruined our relationship.” Then Laband breaks off to pose on the couch. “Please, I'm old,” he says to the photographer, laughing. “Try not to make me look too damaged.”

As we're getting ready to leave, he steers the conversation back to Van Niekerk. “Honestly, he's a genius. He's the one musician I'm most comfortable with. He ended up having to be my mother. I pushed his friendship to the limits. He made up his mind to stay clear of me. I have to prove myself to him; hopefully I can win him back. I've let a lot of people down. My honesty buys me leeway to behave badly.” And then, like someone who knows his purpose, his reason for existence, Laband says: “The only thing that will be enough will be for me to follow through. To do everything I promised I would do.”

---

Rolling Stone South Africa — August 2012
Photograph by David Southwood

Words and photography by ROGER YOUNG

---

“Can you go to other countries if you have a criminal record?” Isaac Mutant leans toward me on the way back from a park jam in Paarl Valley. Depends on the crime, I shrug him off. I don't press for details because, over the last few weeks, while he's been upfront about everything else, Mutant has been non-committal on only two subjects: his relationship with his ex-wife and the mother of his daughter, and his ties with Flats gangs.

When I ask him straight up if he'd ever gone to prison he replies, “No comment,” and pauses. “I want you to put that in, that I said 'no comment' to that question.” I promise him that I will. “Duidelik,” he says, “Duidelik. Now, next question.” The information, I guess, would be easily obtainable. But what Isaac's real name is, I never think to ask; this is the one thing I keep losing sight of. Isaac Mutant is a fiction, yet he's the realest motherfucker I've ever met.

It's typical early summer weather in the PV ghetto. The pink and grey stacks of Magnolia Flats are vibrating in the heat and an old truck is pulled up as a stage. People are on the outside stairs, their lawn chairs, in the boots of their cars, drinking quarts, drinking hot nips, drinking in the ebb and flow of the levels of skill jumping up on the truck.

They're putting their fears out there — their hopes, their need to be seen, guided by the old heads and their clipboards, the Caravelle as the sound desk, as the backstage, as the place where the women sit. Children and dogs and rhymes running about — innocent, hungry, dissatisfied and proud.

In the middle of it all scowls Isaac Mutant, aka Ike Deny, aka DJ Brooke Squirter, formerly Rebel MC, formerly Yucky Stuff, formerly of Bad Influence and Trampled Multitude, one-time part of Plein Madness, once Planet Base B-boy, major contributor to the first Die Antwoord album, and all-around pissed-off and frustrated Kaapse rapper. He's tired of the boom-bap beats and the calls to consciousness. “For me personally, the hip-hop industry, the rap industry in South Africa is kak boring,” he tells me. “It's poes boring, nobody comes up with edgy fucken ideas and gets kakked out and get fucken thrown out of the club. I want to have bergies on stage with me and they must sommer just take a shit, right there, on the stage.”

But Mutant himself would be the last to diss the togetherness of the park jam scene. “Brasse are actually hooking up people from this side and that side. It's always gonna be this whole gang mentality; tribe mentality is always gonna be there. But people don't fight anymore. People are actually squashing beef,” he tells me. His frustration lies with the fact that dropping tracks hasn't, in the 20 years he's been a part of the scene, ever presented a viable way to survive — not really, and not for anyone he knows.

When he arrives here in the PV, he's greeted with acquiescence. Brasse in snap backs do the head dip, give him reverence, get him drinks, want to know what he's up to; will he perhaps drop a rhyme or two? The younger MCs standing off to the sides are just looking at him, just checking him the fuck out. Later in the afternoon, a young MC asks him what his rate is. “Why even ask me?” Mutant says to me later. “After Die Antwoord, he [the young MC] can't afford me. I tell him, 'rather tell me what you got and I'll see if I can do you a favour. But don't ask for my rate. You can't afford my rate.' “

Mutant is equal parts braggadocio and frustrated artist. He just doesn't want to work within the old parameters of hip-hop. At the moment, his greatest challenge is figuring out how to communicate his mythical post-Flats hip-hop land of freedom to his many collaborators (actual, potential or otherwise).

He's on the verge of recording his third album, or rather, Mutant is on the edge of discovery, lurching toward his third album. All he really knows is that he wants to piss people off and get paid. He's been working with SAMA-winning producer Ghalik Jacobs on a few tracks. Len Cockcroft of Tannhauser Gate has been laying down some beats for him. So has Dplanet of Pioneer Unit, as well as DJ Big Space. He's also mentioned a track with Soul Candi and a possible collaboration with Jay. How many of these will come to fruition is hard to say, for, combined with the usual trials of being a musician are Mutant's frequent black moods and occasional crippling bouts of ennui.

“These guys they call me and they want to offer me a deal.” Mutant is talking about trying to get this album made. “They say 'come, we'll give you sixty grand. We'll give it to you now.' They say 'come, forty grand today, just sign this. Twenty when the album is done.' For what? They think because I'm from the Flats I'm stupid? I tell them, buy me a fucking house! Then we can talk.” Mutant lives on a spare bed at his sister's place. He hustles every day — how tempting that sixty grand must have been… He's holding out for a bigger prize though. He doesn't tell me who “these guys” are.

But why has it taken so long to start recording again, just over six years now since he recorded The Unreleased Vol. 1? “Personally, I wrote my third album like fucking probably seven times, eight times, and I just never felt it. It was gonna be called 'A Freak New Evil', the subtitle would be 'Armageddon: The Musical'. I never felt it. Few tracks was dope. I was never satisfied with it. I refused to put something out that I don't feel, that's not good enough for the people… And my whole fucken book, my third album, I think got stolen, but let's just say I lost it a week before I was supposed to go into studio.”

---

In the darkness of a mid-morning bar in Plumstead, Isaac sits with DJ Roach, his sidekick and beat-dropper. They're here for some tattoo business at Kanasashi and because their dealer lives nearby. “You see, especially Afrikaans MCs have got this problem — we're too technical, lyrically. Jack Parow is easy, easy lyrics. How can I put this? I don't wanna rap for rappers. My lyrics are extremely coded and layered and whatnot, it's not easy enough, but now I'm tryna…” he searches, shrugs a bit. Roach interjects, “Dumb it down a bit.” Isaac jumps straight back in: “But still be clever. Catchy, catchy. That 'Doos Dronk' is a clever fucking track. You check 'Enter the Ninja', I dig that fucking track because it can compete with the world market according to the fucking formula.” It's the first time that Die Antwoord comes up, and it won't be the last. “Ja look, my first album was a concept album. It was very arty. I made it for me. The second album is where Cape Town hip-hop is today. It's too boom-bap, it's too hip-hop. You shouldn't have to stand still in a club and listen to the lyric … that's my problem. Because since I've been with him,” he motions to Roach, “I've been clubbing. So I kind of dig jolling, I dig the jol. I'm always on the dance floor my bru.”

Roach pulls out a bag of compacted marijuana and shows it to me. “We can break this up and double our money.” So this is the hustle? “You know who I appreciate?” asks Mutant. “Walter White [from Breaking Bad]. I got three tik recipes in case this rap thing doesn't work out.”

Two men with clipboards enter and start pointing out fire extinguishers and inspecting basins. Health inspectors. Roach, who looks like a hip-hop panda, leans back in his chair, rolling a joint on his stomach. “You won't believe the feedback that Isaac's been getting from the States, people asking him to translate his songs for them,” he says. “And this is the fucken thing with kak like Die Antwoord,” Mutant jumps in. “It's that no one here paid any attention to it until like someone picked up on it overseas. But it's cool because for me, like the whole world is now zoning on this.”

Roach puts the joint behind his ear. Isaac takes a swig of his beer. “Every night I have to learn this one American bra from Seattle Afrikaans. I have to teach him Afrikaans on Facebook. Like, what does 'poes' mean? 'Jou ma se poes', what does that mean? I have to teach him slang. Everybody says 'you the dude to speak to'. I googled it. 'You the bra, you the fucken rudest coloured bra.' This naai's from Seattle. OK cool, first thing you need to learn is 'jou ma se poes'. Then there's this white chick who actually studies Afrikaans as a subject in the States. She speaks Afrikaans to me; very clumsy though. Not even white South African clumsy, like black South African clumsy.” Roach interjects: “It's a lot of fun because she actually phoned Isaac one day and he usually gives out my number 'cos his phone is kak unreliable. So I answer the phone like, 'Yo, who is this?' and then she says, 'Baie dankie.' I was like, what the fuck … in a New York accent, my bru!” Isaac busts out laughing, covering his mouth in the loose hip-hop fist of disbelief.

“The idea was … to make fun of this whole bling thing, while at the same time trying to sound bling or glamorous.”

Open mic night at Purple Turtle, the everlasting dodgy alternative bar near Greenmarket Square, has become the only fixed regular inner city hip-hop hangout since DJ Real Rozzano's iBuyambo (an arts centre in Cape Town) burnt down a few months back. Roach and Mutant are just hanging out, checking out the new blood, the new talent. A couple of mini-skirted girls come out of the Grandslots area, loaded with cheap bling. They flirt with Mutant and then vanish out the front door. The crowd here is a curious mix of young hip-hoppers and bar trash. A trickle of battle-weary sex workers pass through from some back stairs. “Prostitutes,” Mutant says to me, the glow of the UV trance décor highlighting his creasing forehead. “Prostitutes are the answer to everything.”

A young girl gets on stage. “Check out this chick, bra, this girl is the future.” Her name is Andy Leigh and she's self-effacing with an off-beat flow, a mix of Uhuru smarts and the excitement of youth. “We need more females to do their shit,” Mutant nods his head enthusiastically in agreement with himself. “Men need to be put in their place, ou bra, because it's becoming an egotistical thing, opposing to merit. And who's got the biggest dick and the thickest voice. Now, if a small little girl, chick or woman, whatever, if a female come up with the maddest, like, you know, Lady of Rage fucking skills and blow everybody the fuck up, then it will change the game.”

A young dude jumps up and raps in a mixture of vernac and American phrasing, liberally peppered with “yo-yo-yo”s. Mutant's mood changes in a flash. “Brasse like these are the ones that are always saying, 'Keep it real'. How can you keep it real with an American accent? It's like that Youngsta guy; he's not good, he just drops a fuckload of mixtapes, quantity not quality. Ag, man, hip-hop is dead. Globally. And I've watched it die.”

He seems weary of it all, but then climbs on stage and rips hip-hop a new asshole. Full of fire and dexterity, he delivers one of his new tracks, “Mapuza”. The tiny crowd goes apeshit as he spits, “Ek is moeg van praat van revolution man/Fok die revolution/Ons maak soos Saddam Hussein/Elke woord, elke letter, soos'ie lood van Baretta/Idioot, hardheaded/Ek is daai soort wat sal quit, voor ek quit.”

He's on and then off-stage in an instant, but the energy in the room has been electrified. “The blacks like me because I sing 'fuck the cops',” he says, wiping his forehead as the whores from upstairs waddle past, leaving pools of cheap perfume in the air, dirty stares at our pants, a wake of disdain.

Mutant often refers to himself as “Third Generation Base Scene”. He's talking about a golden era in Cape hip-hop, the tail-end of the '80s where the heads revolved around Planet Base (also known as The Base) in Shortmarket Street in Cape Town. This was the place where Ready D cut his teeth, where Public Enemy albums that had been sneaked into the country were first dropped, where Black Noise and Prophets of Da City (POC) rose to prominence, where the seeds of African Hip-Hop Movement and King Jamo's Zulu Hip Hop Movement were sown; where young kids hung around in high-tops, full of rage and idealism and hope, flexing the first muscles of graf and B-boying in South Africa.

DJ Real Rozzano puts it thus: “Heads were connected, had beefs but still partied together because of the common interest in hip-hop. It was apartheid years and hip-hop united black, brown and white youths. We were moving between the townships of Mitchells Plain, Gugulethu, the Strand, Sea Point and Tamboerskloof. Songs were big at The Base on the dance floor, but emptied the dance floors in other clubs!”

Mutant was part of this scene, B-boying, beatboxing, laying down graf and, by 1988, rapping at The Base and the community events organised by Ready D and Rozzano. On “Mixtapes”, off his first album, you can practically feel the afterglow. “'Mixtapes' was actually influenced by a track that POC did back in the day. They had a track about the same thing. How it used to be back in the day: 'Oupa Jimmy, Oupa Jimmy kom oor die brug,' so I'm like, 'Yoh, fucking yarre, ou pel.' “ You can sense the longing while he talks, the frustration melted away by nostalgia. “It was closely-knit, number one,” Mutant tells me.

“We didn't even have all those luxuries [they had]. I wouldn't even blame those things but we kind of had a goal at that time. That time was a beautiful time. It was a brilliant time for people that was in hip-hop, because it was apartheid, bra. You know, fucking apartheid was a moerse fucking … it was a battle to fight, my bru. You didn't have time to think about ego and bullshit, it's like make or break. It's a war, bru.

“And what we were aiming at was fighting this war peacefully — that was the core of hip-hop that time. Gandhi-type of a principle. And this generation was there, they didn't belong anywhere, you know. Either you gonna be a gangsta or you gonna be this or you gonna be that. Then what happened was — I don't know if you know about this — but then the punk nation was in at that time. I was a punk at that time, also. People were rebelling against stuff. It was an anti-establishment thing. So I think majority of the hip-hoppers of that time became punk rockers just for that thing. It was gangster without being gangster. At the same time we used other vehicles like comradeship fighting apartheid, but with that came other shit … fighting gangsterism, or negativity rather, and camaraderie and that kind of a thing. And those codes are disappearing today.”

When Mutant considers, he looks at the ground, thinking, his brow knotting, puzzling it through. “That's actually one of the reasons why I wrote that track, because something fucking went wrong. I personally think the ouens didn't have anything to fight for anymore. I don't know, the old school, the old brasse grew up, reality kicked in, a majority of the brasse went to go work, not hip-hoppers anymore, but they went on with their lives. So they kind of lost that thing … reality kicked in. We kind of lack purpose right now.”

So does hip-hop need a power to fight? “People are realising something. I don't know what, whatever it is. I think it is getting there again. Every empire have to fall. People are looking at each other like 'Who's gonna say shit first? Who's gonna say this first.' Look man, it's like a kettle that boils, bra. People are getting more angry now; we are identifying an enemy or fighting towards something.”

---

We're walking to a shebeen just down the road from where Mutant lives. As we get to a crossroads, he hesitates and then we make a right. He doesn't want to go down that road, he tells me. It's a long story … something to do with his sister's nephew, something to do with him not wanting to get involved, something about it not being his place. Something about not wanting to get gemung for fucking some brasse up. We walk past a school. A kid on a BMX rides past and drops a small package through the window of a parked car. “Just like the movies,” says Mutant.

Back up in his sister's apartment, above a spares shop on Belgravia Road in Athlone, the beers are cracked open. “This is what you hear in the ghetto the whole time: 'Yoh Isaac, djy rap so kwaai, djy moet vorentoe gan.' What the fuck does that mean? Basically, they trying to say, I think, 'Bru, you must just get up and you will be successful.' Then my next question is: 'Define success.' People actually fucking listen to what the fuck I'm saying. So for me, I'm successful.”

But when it comes down to it, Mutant is a realist. “I'm a moerse fan of Bob Marley, you know, the greats: Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain. Bob Marley, that bra fucking touches, he converts, he makes Rastas still today and he's dead how many years, you check? You leave a mark that fucking big on the world, ou bra, nobody can ever touch that kak. I still do have those kind of principles but then the reality kicks in. Look man, it's cool, but you need to eat.”

I ask Mutant if he's got a message, if he's talking to a flock. “Nobody likes to be preached to. The moment you try become a hero or a preacher, it leaves too much open spaces.” He takes a long draw on his beer, pours another glass. “So, what do you do? You become a villain. Everyone loves a villain in a movie. That's why everyone remembers Castor Troy [a character in Face/Off]. Satan in a movie. I'm not in a position to preach to anybody. I'm fucked up. I've been a gangster, you know. Currently, I'm a Satanist apparently, but it's cool. Never be fucking boring.”

---

For Isaac, it's all part of the same connected story. “Those brasse taught me respect and disipline. You have to go back to the ghetto to see how these brasse hustle for something small. These brasse hustle for potatoes, my bru. You don't have time to sleep late because you fucking hungry — where the fuck is your lunch gonna come from? You don't even need lunch; lunch is a fucking luxury. Plus I do deal in some shit, time and again when I'm kak broke so I do need those brasse as well.”

While getting a gatsby somewhere in the ghetto, an old man (possibly handicapped) hovers near us, anxious for scraps. Roach collects all our unfinished chips while Mutant goes outside to smoke. Across the road is a derelict second-storey nightclub called The Point. He points it out. “I always thought that would be a kwaai name for a band, because The Point is Sabela [a word he describes as 'an extremely secretive language, or supposed to be, from jail']. So most people will just think it's just another name but brasse that know, will know. And all the other dwankies will be in the dark.”

“Dwankie” is a word I've only encountered on Die Antwoord's Tension album. “Ja, dwankie,” says Mutant shaking his head. “Ninja must have got that from Kim. My ex-wife. She's Ninja's assistant now.”

So, does Mutant think Ninja used him? “Kykie, Ninja is my bra, my tjommie. He helped me, I helped him.” But people have said that Die Antwoord should have taken you with them. “I'm not a sidekick. People who say that are actually being disrespectful of me. Die Antwoord raised the game, and because hip-hop is in a sensitive spot, people don't know what to do. So Die Antwoord really fuck people's idea of what is hip-hop; they've shown what you can do. So obviously people feel they have to try break them down and make out that they've done something kak because all those brasse been doing is sitting at home complaining.” He wrestles the last drag out of his cigarette and throws it to the kerb. “I shouldn't even tell you this, but me and Ninja have a project. I was going to change my name to Kaffir. Maybe we'll still do it one day.”

---

Out in Grassy Park, Mutant is playing Nas to Ghalik Jacobs. Ghalik responds with Little Dragon and something “from West Africa”. Ghalik is an old gent in a fading cardigan, whose garden is overflowing with the detritus of a DIY hoarder: rusted bathtubs, fucked aquariums, fucked cars, dog shit and other landmines. The studio itself is in construction, or deconstruction. The mic room is an old bedroom replete with open empty cupboards. “It gives the sound of the room a nice feel.” Ghalik is clearly a pro of the old-school variety. He's discussing the intricacies of recording a live band instead of laying down beats, his giant mixing desk covered in felt. Roach takes care of the joint and soon the room is filled with a lazy smoke while Ghalik talks about slow jazz. Mutant is getting edgy, he just wants to lay down a track. Finally when it happens, Ike blazing down a track that centres around the line “You mustn't push me”, but pronounced “Jou ma se poes, me”. Ghalik just shakes his head. “Isaac, man, the things you say, man.” It's an unlikely combination, these two working together, and you have to wonder if Mutant has chosen to work with Ghalik out of want or need. Listening to the playback, Ghalik says: “Isaac, you must understand, we have to do this slowly. It might take a year or so, just work on it track by track. I'm thinking this one would be nice with some piano.”

---

Driving back to Plumstead, Mutant is tired, not even pissed off. “It's kak frustrating. I'm kak intense when I work, when I record and when I write and I'm kak fast about shit. I'm the asshole in the industry, that kind of personality.” Is he difficult to work with? “Personally for me, no, I don't think I'm difficult to work with. People tend to think that I'm difficult to work with because I just wanna be right.” He's in a listless space. “Whatever happens, happens. If it takes six months it's cool. I'll allow it, it's cool. Ghalik is the most professional sound engineer I've ever worked with. His know-how and my know-how. Die Antwoord and Jack Parow raised the bar, so I need to raise my bar. To answer your question, is it frustrating? Everything is frustrating to me, and it's cool. I feed off frustration. I'm fucking angry all the time.”

It feels like the response of someone who has long since given up on any of his dreams coming true, but has been fighting for his place in the sun so long he doesn't know any other way of being.

“I hear a lot, like on the street you know, or Facebook. Facebook is now the newspaper. So I hear a lot about 'Yoh, they bumped your tracks last night, they bumped this, they bumped that'. Bush Radio, they bump my shit all the time. The Cipher Session; Ready D's doing that kinda thing right now. And then it's mos now internet radio; Hemelbesem's got a thing, RickLo got a thing so they bumping our shit all the time. I realised – jy my bru, people are digging this track.”

Back in his sister's flat, Mutant is talking about his underground hit, “Sorry Girl”. “What I did was, I made CDs, almost like mixtapes of my shit, then I went to taxi ranks, shebeens, smokkelhuise. I just distributed there for free.”

He takes in the scope of the song's reach. “So, I travel a lot, right, so I go to PV, to Paarl, I go to Ocean View, everywhere. I went to Vredendal. Me and Scally went to perform there and those people were fucking 'Yoh Isaac, “Sorry Girl”, “Sorry Girl” '. I fucking hate that song, but everybody's just raving about it. People mail me right over South Africa about that song. I recorded that track in 2005, I think. Since then till now, 2012, everybody's just fucking talking about that.”

It's clear that the track's popularity is a bit of a mystery to him, as well as a source of pride: “So Antjie Krog hired me for some poetry besigheid a few years back.”

We're down to the last of the beer.

“She wanted me specifically to do that track 'Sorry Girl' and another song, I think ''n Hoender wat nie kekkel nie' (a chicken that doesn't cackle) or some bullshit. Ja, fuck my bru — whaaat? I used to be a moerse Antjie Krog fan but I'm not gonna go into the politics of that day.”

I'm taken by surprise by this, but getting any detail about the Antjie Krog beef proves useless.

“The funny thing about that track is I wrote it for this chick, not for marketing or sales purposes and whatnot. I just gave it to somebody after I recorded it, two or three people, 'What do you think about this song?' Because I wanted to send it to this chick. But then it leaked from there.”

He leans back, and kinda shrugs it off: “I didn't write it as an MC. I know how to rhyme in any case. Just tell the story my bru, just maak toe jou oë (close your eyes). Just tell the story, not rap. That's kind of how I do mixtapes and I didn't care whether it was successful or not. I don't dig being too technical about MC-ing. Just fucking tell the story. The story is an extension of you.”

Mutant mixes languages and slangs when he raps, and the result is hard on the ears to those who don't speak Afrikaans.

“I'm just naturally a fucken aggressive person. I'm loud and I look like I look all the time. To answer your question: no. It's just another language. It is extremely aggressive, but it's just another language. Like, Cape Flats slang is just another tool. Language, words are just tools you need to bring this story across. Because the background and the language that I speak and express myself in don't define Isaac Mutant.”

But, as he has said, there are so many things to balance off each other; it's not just about teaching Afrikaans to Americans. Mutant is really more concerned with speaking to his own people. “The coloured culture is extremely unique and Sabela – the way we talk – is extremely unique. Only a few people know how to Sabela properly,” he explains. “Not everybody back in the day could've said 'Hosh!' and 'Aweh!'. It's not as secretive as it used to be. I just need to understand what is allowed and what is not allowed and why. What was the point of the Nommer [the “Number” refers to rival prison gangs] in the first place? So I can respect their shit.”

It comes back to the message, to the medium. The way Mutant communicates is what he is communicating. The combination of languages, slangs and styles is actually greater than the content of the individual tracks. Isaac Mutant is an old-school head, but he's futuristic as fuck.

“There was this one incident,” he recalls. “My crew is called Koloured Ass Krooks — KAK. But now, when Afrikaans hip-hop was starting to bud and more crews were being born, people misunderstand what this Koloured Ass thing and Isaac Mutant stand for. Especially Afrikaans coloured brasse, rappers.”

He sees I'm not quite understanding.

“Let me put it to you like this,” he says. “It was on Myspace, that was before Facebook. I got this one email: 'Isaac Mutant, you're the Moses of the coloureds.' I'm like, 'Thanks man.' And the vraag comes straight back: 'Yo bru, what are these darkies about … “new South Africa”.' So I'm like, 'Hold the fuck up, bra!' And then I got a vrag emails after that from different people: 'Yo, what is these whities about – hulle kan sien onse Chappies [tattoos] en wat-wat [and what-what],' and I'm like, 'Bra, it's not even like that.'

“That kind of changed my perception for shit. I'm just proudly coloured. I'm not anti-anything. So I'm like, 'Kykie man, you need to understand something. I come from an era where hip-hop knows no colour. We never saw colour, we never saw religion. It wasn't like that. We saw entities. The moment you call yourself a “head”, you're different from society.' That's the core of things.”

So where's the land of milk and honey? I joke with him. But it's no laughing matter.

“I watched Tupac's documentary, my bru,” says Mutant. “He said when he went to jail, everybody in jail was like 'So, Pac what's your orders?' He's like, 'Fuck, what you mean what's my order? I'm just another nigger from the ghetto doing my thing.' These naaiers also want orders from me. 'Isaac, my bru, we need to strengthen this whole coloured nation. What's your orders?'

“It's a scary thing. It's fucking hectic, bru. That's like Jesus and everybody now expects some fucking miracles from you.” He's not happy with this; it's a heavy load. It's a load he doesn't know whether he should pick up at all. “Look, I'm a freak amongst freaks … millions, gazillions. There's one thing I am. I might've been a bad son, a bad dad, even a bad colleague to my brasse [but] I know this for a fact – I am good where hip-hop is concerned. I just have to watch this movie, finish this movie, take this journey out.”

What's clear above everything else is that Isaac Mutant thinks too fucking much and he isn't making enough music. What's staring him in the face is the fact that all the songs he's known for – “Coloured Affairs”, “Sorry Girl” and “None Nwattas” – are the tracks he tossed off without thinking. He needs to get this shit out, but it's all blocked up. It could be because he's under-resourced, or just so fucking nihilistic that it doesn't matter anymore, but Mutant has discovered himself at a very specific place in hip-hop, a place only he could have arrived at, and now he's uncertain whether he wants to be there.

On “Str8 Talk” from 2006's The Unreleased Album, Mutant is the Sméagol of Rap, pointing fingers and laughing. Besides “Sorry Girl”, it's the track he's most Flats-famous for. It reveals his cynical yet loving eye on his own culture. This duality, this distance and closeness surfaces again on “Double Story”, the title track of his collab album with Hemelbesem.

“The idea was basically to make fun of this whole bling thing, while at the same time trying to sound bling or glamorous,” he explains. “The position I'm taking on that nommer is, you know these stalltjie brasse, that fruit-and-veg-on-the-corner type of brasse? I wanna take gam Cape Flats (coloured stereotype) to the world, but dudes in Sweden must still understand what I'm saying. We South Africans, we need to be proud of who the fuck we are. But I love challenges. It actually shouldn't be difficult. I'm a coloured.”

What tracks like “Str8 Talk”, “Double Story”, and even “Rymklets” show off most of all is Mutant's left-field sense of humour, his Lenny Bruce-like ability to make fun of himself while invoking real empathy; he's kak gevaarlik but he's also a sweetheart. One day Mutant wants to kill the world, the next, he just wants to kill himself.

“One moment I'm depressed, one moment I'm trying not to be depressed. I'm always depressed, I'm depressed all the fucking time. Even to the point of suicidal.” If you follow Mutant on Facebook, you'll know he's not kidding; when he gets into a bad space, the suicide jokes and references flow.

“Me and my ex, we lost everything at one stage. All that we had was the clothes that we were wearing. Shit like that happens to me all the time. So at one stage I was like, what the fuck? I'm always depressed right now, sometimes I'm more depressed than other times. I never used to be like that before my moms died. I'm just more emotional after that kak.” He realises that he's going down a black hole here, and he tries to dismiss it.

“All these fucking things in the pot. You realise you've got a lot of emotions you didn't know you had. From an artist's point of view, that kind of emotion is cool because you can tap into that easy, you know, tap into emotion befok. All these fucking classic brasse are all emotional brasse. Ups and downs, the erratic brasse.

“I kind of dig what Kurt Cobain did. I read his suicide note, kak hectic. He said he looked at his daughter's face. It kind of reminded him of who he used to be as an artist, no ego or something of this affect, very untainted and just like love for anybody that's willing to accept that love.

“And he used to be as an artist like that and he's not like that anymore, that's why he killed himself. That kind of brought me back. I want to make an entertaining album, educational music, but like powerful music that fucking touches people.”

Is this why he sticks with it? Is this why Isaac Mutant is in this game? To touch people? Is he not the hard case he makes himself out to be?

“Look now,” he corrects me. “It's like this: I know every dad think his daughter's the shit or son is the shit. Lyric, my daughter, is an MC. She's an artist's fucking dream laaitie. She's kak clever, poes clever. She thinks like me, like out of the box, and I know she's gonna get kak in this society for the way she thinks as well; she's like the Super Saiyan version of me. I see myself in her; the only reason I want to be there for her is like just for guidance, even if I'm a bad guy or a bad dad. Just to let her know there is somebody that understands you. Nobody out of the box, that thinks differently, was there for me.”

He doesn't quite say it, but because Mutant doesn't have access to his daughter, he's left with leaving her messages in his music, and it weighs heavy on his soul. As we're leaving the park jam, Mutant gets into a conversation with some full-on Rastas. “Ike,” they tell him. “We really dig you, man, but you got to keep it real. What's with all the swearing and the perversion?”

“Keep it real?” says Mutant, confused. “What's keeping it real ever got me?”

In the car later, approaching Cape Town after a long silence, he says: “Sorry bra, I'm just depressed at the moment. There's all this other shit going on. I just found out Kim's got another laaitie off me, just now. My laaitie was born last month. I don't know what gender it is, I don't know what its name is. And that kinda fucks with me. I got another laaitie and I don't know their name. And I got a restraining order against me so I can't find out. This is why we had to take another way when we went for those beers. I just can't afford to go mung right now. I'm being a pussy, but it's cool.”

He slumps back in his seat, looking out of the window as we pass the Castle. He changes the subject: “That's one place I've never been.” I tell him I don't believe him. “I'm scared of soldiers, man. Anyway, there's three places I'd like to go in my life: that place, Robben Island and the pyramids.”

We arrive where Isaac is working that night as a stage hand for comedienne Simmi Issacs. But he doesn't make a move, still and contemplating for a second. He wants to clarify something. “The thing about those Rastas is they were drinking. They want me to keep it real, but they were gesyp. I was born into Rasta. My dad and them was all Rastas, so I grew up as one of them. The aunt that is actually a Rasta right now was the one who first took me to The Base. The truth is Rastas are not holy anymore, black people are not black anymore and coloureds are out of excuses.” With that, he gets out the car.

---

Rolling Stone South Africa — January 2013

Both my wife and I grew up in normal modern houses hooked to the grid. All of our married life we’ve been hooked to the grid and in a typical apartment or house. Three houses back, counting the one we are currently in, was a long distance from where we are now. We had a friend that gave us access to a couple of cabins in the woods where we would take the family to go and vacation, it was a home away from home. One of the cabins did not have electricity and the other had a couple outlets and a light wired from a nearby barn, we never turned that on when we stayed the night. We loved it, it was very peaceful and quite. We had one of our children born in one of the cabins, it was a wonderful experience. My wife is a powerful woman.

We don’t have exactly zero electricity in our current house, but pretty close to it. Our house is powered by our bodies, wood fuel, some batteries, and in the summer a little propane for cooking. We are both adamant about not hooking back into the grid, we don’t like it – it makes us dependents to a power company with a perpetual monthly bill. We both really don’t want a “smart home” and love our dumb little house – we’re old school. Overall we both quite enjoy being disconnected from the grid and not having our solar system tapped into the house. We may do a little solar on our next home but that isn’t decided. The main thing I’d like is a pump for our water (right now we hand pump and we’ll keep that as an option either way), a few basic lights, and to be able to power things in the home instead of going to the shop. We have a solar system in our shop right now which is elaborated on more fully in the “DIY Solar System Crash Course” writeup. That system is about 100 feet away from our house in our shop with no wires running into the house. We charge things in there and bring them into the house. Primarily a couple lanterns, power tool batteries, a couple laptops, and some Nintendo DS handheld consoles. We are thinking of getting a single 50-100 AH LiFePO4 battery to bring into the house for winter use. It would be nice to be able to skip walking in the cold to the shop for longer periods and to save our power tool batteries for the power tools. Now and then we go up to my parents’ empty double wide trailer home to do a few odds and ends in the summer (laundry, showers, baths, canning). It’s pretty remarkable how loud that thing is compared to our cob and straw bale home. I’ve started this writeup in the trailer, I’m making some bone broth with their propane stove from two sheep recently butchered while catching up on laundry. And it’s insanely loud. The laundry is shaking around, the dryer is humming, and the refrigerator and A/C kicks on regularly. Now that I’m thinking about it mildly it is very distracting…

I’ll describe a little bit on how we function without electricity for anyone interested.

First of all we are not in a very comfortable climate, it gets very cold and very hot. I’ll start with the house temperature regulation since that’s a biggie for many. The house doesn’t do too bad really all things considered. We have had some days over 110 degrees this summer with a lot of days over 100 in a row and the highest it gets in the main part of the house is about 82. Not super comfy but not terrible, feels pretty great when you first come in from the hot day. We’ve been using a fan that runs on our power tool batteries pointed directly at us when we really want it. I did the math and it costs about $0.20 per day of 24h use on the wear of the battery, that’s if you buy the battery at full price which we’ve never done – not too shabby. In the morning on the hottest days we wake up to about 78 degrees on these hot days which shouldn’t last too long. The house really shines in spring and fall, it stays a very comfortable temperature modulating between about 64 and 74 for the bulk of it – roughly 4 or 5 months of the year. When we get the cold or hot snaps that aren’t very long in duration all our thermal mass from our earthen walls and floor really smooths out the temperature. During those times we can easily start using the wood stove to do quick cooking in the morning and evening for breakfast and dinners. As it starts dipping further we’ll keep the fire going a bit longer and add a cooked lunch on the wood stove and merge into keeping the stove going all day, sometimes choked to not use much wood when not cooking. In winter is when we do most our baking, since the stove is going at a high heat most of the day – it’s pretty nice. We also have a thermal mass rocket stove tied to a bench. It is very lovely, when we had a very small cook stove we had the rocket stove going way more often and now that we have a bigger cook stove (Pioneer Princess) we mostly use it during the coldest times of the year. So that pretty much covers the gist of our heating and cooling. It is a pretty basic, cheap, effective, and a fairly sustainable setup. If we were cut off from all inputs we’d be well enough off. We use about 24 gallons of propane a year right now, which will likely go down once we build our summer kitchen with wood cooking options during the hot weather.

For people who wanted to emulate this but wanted to keep it a little cooler and easier heat I’d recommend a basic solar system and a window A/C unit your system can handle. Our shop system could easily run a lower wattage window unit. On the heating side one could add a direct vent propane space heater or two. We had one in our parents double-wide and we added one to our last house before the trailer and it was helpful. In our current house I’d probably put one upstairs and in our sunroom if we added propane heaters. This house would use very little electricity and propane to moderate the temperature compared to any other house we’ve lived in. Also this house would be more comfy if our kids were older, the doors are left open very regularly and we have no curtains which could be drawn to block direct sun. We could have a screen in the upstairs door to leave it open and cool things down faster at night, and so forth. Younger children complicate some things, but life would be dull without them. So glad we were able to bring all these unique characters into our life.

Lets see… What else is common in the electric home. Laundry! Well we cheat pretty bad on that during the summer. We will eventually be using the electricity from our solar system in our shop for the majority of it. But right now we are transgressors using the unholy grid in a house of desecration – the double wide trailer (haha). We lived in that for over a year, it’s pretty lame but it was better than the apartments we lived in and way better than tents. We were grateful to have had it so close to where we were building a house and still grateful to be able to use it some. It’s sitting there empty and someone might as well utilize it and try to keep it from being a raccoon and bear den. We’ve had to battle rats and mice, not a lot of fun. If one of my siblings moved in we’d likely get the laundry situation down at our homestead going asap. But when there is an easy solution sitting around it’s easy to lower that as a priority. I’ve tested our system out and it works well, our solar system will run the old Maytag wringer-washer we have when the time comes. We hope to get a cistern tied to our shop/barn for laundry and a summer shower and that will solve the problems we’ll have if/when someone takes over the trailer. When the trailer is winterized we do laundry in a trough with spring water. It works well enough. It’s a lot more work though and my wife does most of it. The kids and I help in waves and I think she really appreciates it. We will all love the old Maytag washer once that’s set up in the shop. We do baths in the winter by heating water on our stove and dumping it in the tub. We also have a camp battery powered sprayer for those who want to shower. It can be dropped in a pot of warm water and sprayed out into the tub for showering.

Hmmm, what else did we use a lot of when we had electricity. Oh ya, lighting! So we tried to go with the old oil lamp system in the beginning and we loved it! But the glass covers on the top are very fragile, they keep breaking with kids around. One of our kids even tipped one over and started a fire – he was terrified of oil lamps for about a year after that. It wasn’t a big deal, I just smothered it with a blanket or towel or something… It was such a minor thing in my mind I forgot what was used to put it out. He’s comfortable with them now but we don’t use them often because they just keep breaking. Kids are wild destructive forces of nature, and I love ‘em. So for now we are mostly using rechargeable lanterns and rechargeable light bulbs. We have tried about 6 or so different brands and models of things and only one has stood out as pretty great. Maybe I’ll look it up again and share the link. Some have died super quickly and some are still working but have flaws of some sort or another. I’d like to go back to oil when the kids are more matured. The oil lantern light is so soft and comfortable on the eyes. We’ll probably continue with a a couple LED lanterns just for the higher lumens. For making dinner and other things it’s nice to have a burst of brighter light which the oil lamps don’t put out. My wife and I also use our e-Readers quite a bit at night to use the restroom or get a drink and such. Those things are great, we both have the Kobo Clara which lasts for over 2 weeks of night light and reading books. We also just go to bed with the sun. In the winter Mama will read longer into the evening with the kids and sometimes play multiplayer Nintendo DS games with them in bed, and in the summer they are tired and go to sleep quickly. It works out pretty swell, we truly don’t miss all that obnoxious lighting of the typical city and city home.

Welp, that covers the gist of our electricity in life in the home. We grind wheat with a manual grinder. We might get a lower powered electric one and grind wheat in the shop at some point. The mill we are thinking of is on back order. We make toast on the stove top. We don’t refrigerate anything, instead we can, ferment, and eat things fresh from the garden – we also reboil soups and stuff daily to “reset” them which is very easy in winter. We also use a cooler behind the house in the shade which works as a refrigerator for parts of spring and fall, and in the dead of winter our sunroom is a pretty cool temperature. We really have limited power so there are a lot of appliances we don’t have and will never have – and that’s great. We have to think before buying something electricity based because we literally can’t plug anything into the house and in the shop we have limited power (right now we can do about 700-800 watts for long durations). If we bought a 3,000 watt or higher something or other we just couldn’t even run it at all, and we will live fine without it.

So there you have it. A family living in the modern world choosing to ditch electricity in the home for the most part. Maybe not as hardcore as the Amish, but more than the average off-grid type family. it’s not as primitive as it could be, but far from the typical grid tied house. And we love it.

Have a great one!

Additional resources:

The rechargeable LED lantern we like is the 1500 Lumen model from the brand Consciot. It has a good range of brightness level with a warm light setting that we like. It also doubles as a USB charging device (never used this feature so I can't comment on it), the battery in it lasts longer between charges than any other rechargeable light we've tried. It has held up well for two years now with many other brands dying before that over the years. This one is easy to find on many websites to purchase, do a web search for more details. Cost is roughly $40 each in 2026. We bought two from another brand that cost about $20 each at the same time and both of them are broken already. This brand has held up to the rough handling by children so far.

Made every day.

We all dream of America

Friday's MLB game of choice has my Texas Rangers playing the Seattle Mariners in the first game of a four-game series. This is the game and series I originally thought would start yesterday. Duh! Tonight”s game is scheduled to start at 7:05 PM CDT. As I usually do, I'll follow the game's score and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.

Image: “Mightier Than the Keyboard?” handwritten on a piece of paper with a fountain pen. Photo by: Unattributed, License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

When I started using Fountain Pens last year, I noted that there was something different about the quality of my writing. It seemed to have a different quality to it. At first, I couldn't figure out the reason for it. But as I kept writing I meditated on the subject. As I turned the idea around in my mind for a while, I came up with a few thoughts seemed to explain what I was both feeling and experiencing.

My Personal Reasoning

The first thought that came to my mind was that I had approached fountain pens from a different perspective than I had other writing instruments. I had started using them as a hobby, as a way to improve my penmanship. The point wasn't to write down the thoughts in my mind, but instead of work on better controlling the muscles in my arm and wrist.

I wanted to produce text that looked beautiful, no matter what the contents were. I was working from a workbook: The Lost Art of Handwriting by Brenna Jordan, to be exact. In the book she covers a lot of letter forms, variations, and suggests lots of practice sentences. I loved it. It required a fair amount of concentration to get some of the letter forms right, but the practice was exactly what I wanted.

However, after a while, my mind started telling me I needed to do something else. I needed to write something of substance. Something that had meaning, if only for me personally. That's when I started a journal.

Now I had tried to keep journals before, on my computer, in a note-taking application. I had taken to the idea of having a “second brain”, but not because I was sold on PKM or anything like that. My second brain experience came from a coworker from many years ago. He used to keep a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) with a ton of notes on it. Those notes were chock-full of obscure, and unusual things that we encountered working on computer systems. He carried it everywhere. We referred to it whenever we ran into a problem that seemed like something he might have seen, but couldn't recall how to resolve the issue.

I can't even being to count the number of times he found either the exact information we needed, or information that assisted us in further diagnosing an issue in his PDA. We started referring to that device as his second brain.

Anyway, while PDA's had gone by the wayside, I had taken to the idea of creating a “second brain” for myself. Saving information that I thought might be useful in the future. And, it had seemed to me, that adding a journal full of notes and ideas made sense for my second brain. Only, it had never worked. I would add my journal entries to it for weeks or even a few months, and eventually stop.

And, to make things worse, the journal entries were (mostly) superficial. The entries really only related to other things I had been obsessing over, generally about things that I had already saved in the app. There wasn't the quality of ingenuity, uniqueness, or personal observation that I had wanted to capture.

However, when I started writing a journal on paper, in a notebook, all the unique, personal observations started coming out. All the things that I had wanted to accomplish in digital form were there, in analog, on sheets of paper in ink.

Why? In my mind I found three reasons:

1. I was cut off from the rest of the information in my second brain. Sure, I could have picked up my phone, or gone to my PC to access it, but I didn't.
2. Handwriting is a slower process. It isn't like typing in that in a few swishes of your fingers and twenty or thirty words appear on the screen in a matter of a few seconds. Writing twenty or thirty words required more focus, more attention, more effort.
3. Intentionality: I had more intent in the words that I put on the page. There wasn't the easy edits to correct the words on the page the way there was with a computer. Sure, I could always cross words out, and I did that at times, but the more you have to cross out and change on the page, the more the page starts looking messier and more difficult to read. And I had initially started writing with fountain pens to produce cleaner, nicer lettering and therefore pages.

Over time, I wondered if there was anything to back up my hypothesis about why handwriting was different from typing on the computer.

Testing My Theory

So, after seeing a video from Sbrebrown: The Benefits of Taking Handwritten Notes vs Digital Notes I decided to pose the question on the Fediverse: [ Question] Study of note-taking with Pens vs. Laptops. The subject is interesting, and has been attracting a lot of attention over the last decade or so. The question that has been examined is: do students that take handwritten notes do better than students who type notes on a laptop.

In a meta analysis Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis, researchers examined twenty-four studies that had been conducted over the last hundred years. They concluded that the studies indicated that there is a correlation between handwritten versus typed notes. Note, the interesting part here is that the study includes several papers that were not conducted in an academic setting as there wouldn't have been typewriters in a classroom.

In another paper, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking researchers concluded from four studies that students did worse on conceptual questions because they were not processing information as deeply. Instead, they were mostly transcribing the lecture without thinking about it deeply.

However, there have been some publications that take the opposite position: Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: Replication Finds No Immediate Advantage to Writing Notes by Hand. While the most deeply analytical article is one that I just barely grasp at the surface level: The Neuroscience Behind Writing: Handwriting vs. Typing—Who Wins the Battle?, which goes so far as to have conducted neuroimaging studies of the brain while writing and typing:

Recent neuroimaging studies including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and positron emission tomography (PET) have provided insights into the neural mechanisms that underlie these two forms of written expression.

And the results were quite interesting (quoting the abstract):

Results: Handwriting activates a broader network of brain regions involved in motor, sensory, and cognitive processing. Typing engages fewer neural circuits, resulting in more passive cognitive engagement. Despite the advantages of typing in terms of speed and convenience, handwriting remains an important tool for learning and memory retention, particularly in educational contexts.

My Takeaway

To me, the neuroscience study reinforces the second and third thoughts that I had:

1. Handwriting is a slower process. It isn't like typing in that in a few swishes of your fingers and twenty or thirty words appear on the screen in a matter of a few seconds. Writing twenty or thirty words required more focus, more attention, more effort.
2. Intentionality: I had more intent in the words that I put on the page. […]

The idea that “Handwriting activates a broader network of brain regions involved in motor, sensory, and cognitive processing.” would seem to be in alignment with those thoughts. There is a whole different level of thought that is going into writing in a notebook – be it with a ballpoint or a fountain pen.

But, that doesn't mean that this is settled science. In fact, science is rarely settled on finding a single conclusion. Instead, the thoughts and understanding that emerge from science tend to track with the more predominant studies of the time, however there is always room for those findings to be challenged. This can be seen in the Don't Ditch the Laptop Just Yet article referenced above.

The thing that I would note about most of these studies is they are focused on taking notes in an academic setting: listening to a lecture and trying to capture the essence of what is being said. That, I think, is the bounding point to keep in mind. Scientists could find there are different considerations in different settings, and when the objective is different. For example: writing a letter, a poem, or a novel could well be sufficiently different from taking notes to warrant further study.

As for the first item on my list? I don't think this is something that really relates to the topic scientifically. It's a matter of how I have shaped myself, the habits that I have developed over the years since I decided to start building my “second brain.” It took conscious effort on my behalf to put myself in a position where I wouldn't access all the information that I had compiled. I decided that it would be easy to get too distracted from the act of writing itself.

And that's where I think I'll conclude this: I lean towards the idea that writing with a fountain pen is fundamentally different from typing based on the neuroscience, until proven otherwise.

---

Categories: #Editorials Tags: #FountainPens, #typing, #notes, #science, #neuroscience, License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Around eight years ago I thought it would be funny to become a licensed ham-radio operator. For those who don’t know, ham radio is a hobby that revolves around radio communications. I was always fascinated by radio and I was a romantic about the idea of talking to people over the radio. The process wasn’t too hard. I learned some basic electronics and regulations around radio communications. I took a test and submitted it to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a few weeks later I was a federally-recognized radio-operator with a callsign and was permitted to transmit on a small corner of the radio spectrum. The technology was fun to learn and operate but frankly I found the company among other US hams problematic. The majority of conversations in ham radio are totally benign—just ham radio operators talking about ham radio on their radios. But if you listen long enough, the airwaves can be home to the type of talk common among conservative and libertarian voices. There were vocal opinions about the liberal forces of society encroaching upon the conservative way of life, antagonistic rhetoric toward big government, and the “liberal agenda” it was imposing on Americans.

I was scandalized by the culture when I first started dabbling in ham radio, partly because I’d never actually interacted with people outside my east-coast liberal bubble. In those days, I was a pretty mainstream liberal progressive type. I felt uncomfortable taking part in a hobby that was home to so many people I disagreed with culturally and politically. On one occasion, I heard two guys casually talking about how they felt threatened by the presence of a young black man at a fast food establishment and how they would have “defended themselves” if he had tried anything. There was open talk about gun rights at a time when anti-gun sentiment in my corner of America was riding high. I liked the hobby fine and I didn’t want to leave it because of these people so I tried to be the change I wanted to see in ham radio. I attended radio club meetings and tried to make ham radio visible to a younger, more like-minded segment of the population. I posted on local reddit forums to try to spread the word about ham radio in an effort to bring in a younger, possibly more progressive crowd. Unfortunately I found that among my peers, there was very little interest in radio communications let alone any desire to expose themselves to a culture they found distasteful. The only young people I could find that were interested in the hobby were preppers, off-roaders, and gun-people—exactly the people I was trying to get away from.

Eventually, l learned to “spin the dial”—a ham radio term for moving to a different frequency if you don’t like what you hear. I moved away from talking to people on the radio to the more fun aspect of building and tinkering with radios and antennas and contesting. I retreated from trying to singlehandedly change the culture of ham radio and instead focused on what I liked about ham radio. During this time I decided to challenge myself by getting into what’s called SOTA (Summits on the Air.) Summits on the air is a form of radio contesting where radio operators set up a station in remote places (usually summits of mountains) and try to establish as many contacts as they can from these places. It involves building a portable station that can operate completely off-grid. It’s a fun and rewarding experience to reach a designated spot on a map and transmit from that spot. After a few of these “activations” as they’re called I realized that I wasn’t just making contacts for fun. I was learning to be a fully self-sustaining unit of my own. Everything needed to send a signal from a remote area needed to fit inside a backpack that I could carry. If I forgot a critical component, the activation would fail. I was proud of my ability to be able to make a fully operational radio station in the wilderness free from the grid.

Early in my radio career I remember driving around my hometown and looking at all the antenna towers that need to be built in order for us to communicate over the phone. I realized early on that we were all using radio, but we were all relying on existing infrastructure to do so and we pay a premium to do so. Not to say that the money we pay for this infrastructure isn’t worth it. Cellphone technology is a marvel of modern communications and has enabled so much of our modern way of life. Still, I hated the idea of being totally and utterly dependent on it. I hated the idea that in the (unlikely) scenario that if all this infrastructure were to fail, our modern methods of communications would be completely lost. Over time I came to see the ability to communicate using radio as a form of self-reliance. I was taking back my ability to use wireless communication back from the government and corporate power. This in turn led me to understand why ham radio was popular with a segment of the population that values self reliance over government reliance. A lot of work goes into making a contact over the radio. Individuals in ham radio go to great lengths and build extraordinary things to simply establish a contact with someone new. Beneath the contesting, long-winded conversations known as “rag-chews”, the banal weather reports, and daily “nets” is the heart of ham radio: The ability to communicate wirelessly when everything else fails.

Societal cooperation has obviously allowed us to do a great many things, and we are all better off working together. So what if we use cell phone networks and never question our reliance on the network? So long as everyone is paying their bills, and relying on the government and the cellphone companies for the network, then everything is fine. Until it’s not. It doesn’t happen often these days, but every so often it’s ad hoc networks of amateur radio operators that are best able to respond when telecom networks fail.

My involvement in amateur radio didn’t make me into a commando, but it did open my eyes to the many ways I’d been utterly dependent on systems that had the potential to fail. Everywhere I looked I saw a system of dependencies. I had seen all the ways I and many people around me had taken for granted these systems—food systems, communication systems, healthcare systems, etc. The worst part was that many of these systems didn’t always have my interests in mind. Their interest was in revenue generation or political power. We take so very much for granted in this country to the point where we’ve lost the ability to fathom what it would be like to live without these dependencies. We assume that nothing so bad could ever happen to us where we would need to learn to navigate with map and compass because we just assume that Google Maps and all the satellites and software that make it happen will always work. We assume that we’ll never have to defend ourselves because we believe a cop will always be there to help us when we’re in danger.

Even as I evolved spiritually, I came to see dependency and community in new ways. To be a person of faith is to be dependent on a power greater than yourself. But that dependency does not mean passivity. The work of any faith begins with the individual—the prayers and meditations one performs alone, the discipline and the willingness to try something new and the accountability no one else can carry for you. The same rule applies: you have to help yourself so that you can help others. A broken vessel cannot hold water.

I honestly don’t know what I am now politically. All I can say is that I’m not what I was when I first started my journey into ham radio. To understand ham radio is to understand my political journey over the last ten years.

Some people call this paranoia. Some people outright believe it’s good to be entirely dependent on systems. They don’t see any issue with being entirely dependent on the government or on corporations for basic things. They actually believe that we should be more dependent on the government. They believe we should increase the size and scope of the government’s reach further into our lives. Instead of fostering an ability to live without these dependencies, some people look for ways to undermine those abilities. I’m not against being dependent on systems, I’m very much a creature of dependency (looking at you, Costco), but I am against not nurturing our individual abilities to help ourselves so that we can help others. We should all be trying to foster some sort of individual ability within ourselves so that we can help our immediate communities, our family, our towns, our schools, not politicians in a bureaucracy in Washington DC or some Silicon Valley corporation that only seeks to enrich themselves.

I don’t advocate for individualism. We have enough of that in the US and it has been poisonous to our sense of community. What I do advocate for is fostering and training our abilities to be able to live without these systems-level dependencies so that we can take care of our neighbors when these safety-nets fail. When the cell phone networks in North Carolina went down, following a hurricane in 2024, it was a loose community of Amateur radio operators who came together to help getting messages in and out of the immediate disaster zone. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Verizon and AT&T eventually came, but it was people who took the time to learn to communicate without the cellphone network that were able to help their community. It was an ad-hoc network of individuals who were best able to help. The federal government isn’t what makes America great. It’s the individuals and talents that form communities that make America great.

I’m close to needing to renew my radio license which means it will have been ten years since I first started transmitting. I still denounce extremist and inflammatory voices that are thankfully a minority on the airwaves. I am however, much more sympathetic to the larger philosophical view of self-reliance and resistance to big government. Ham radio taught me self reliance for the ultimate goal of being able to contribute to society instead of just taking for granted all that it gave me. It’s about empowering yourself and being accountable for the ultimate purpose of serving your community.

Today I worked out with J at the new gym And I talked to two new people, they were both gorgeous women, and the second one even called to us in the parking lot and we joked around for a bit before she asked for our Instagram. I just feel a big sense of revitalized hope of meeting people, this feels like the ideal third place. I also just got back home from playing Catan with friends, and also just talking for a while. I feel really good and I’m happy with this life.

Dagen etter 22. juli valgte Aftenposten å la høyreekstreme sette agendaen for kulturdebatten. De skriver om “kulturkrigere” som raser mot “Odysseen” fordi Helen av Troja spilles av en svart kvinne. Dette er nemlig “woke”. Unnskyld meg, men hva skjedde med det gode, gamle ordet rasisme?

Når folk som Elon Musk ikke tåler å se svarte folk på kinolerretet er det ikke fordi han er “kulturkriger” og “bekymret for woke”. Det er fordi han er en åpenlys rasist, som sprer høyreekstrem og rasistisk propaganda på X ukentlig. Alle som har stukket hodet inn i det høyreekstreme ormebolet X og fulgt debatten der inne kan se at det er primitiv rasisme som har drevet den mislykkede kampanjen mot “Odysseen”.

Ord som “kulturkrig” og “woke” misbrukes altså her av Aftenposten til å tilsløre reinspikka rasisme. Elon Musk omtales som “Tesla-gründer”, men kunne like gjerne vært omtalt som “verdens mektigste høyreradikale agitator”. Han promoterer idéer som “den store utskiftningen”, antisemittisme og rasisme. Det er i denne konteksten vi må forstå kampanjen mot Odysseen. Ved å utelate denne konteksten, bidrar Aftenposten til å gjøre leserne dummere.

Det blir verre: I saken velger Aftenposten like så greit også å promotere Document, Anders Behring Breiviks gamle favorittblogg. Deres Tiktok-video der de naturligvis kaster se på den rasistiske kampanjen, blir faktisk bakt inn i saken. Gratis reklame til en av Norges største høyreradikale nettsteder der altså.

Men burde ikke Aftenposten dekke “kontroversen”? Vel, hvis denne saken beviser noe, så er det at de trygt kan ignorere slike oppkonstruerte rasistiske kampanjer. Elon Musks forsøk på å kansellere “Odysseen” har vært fullstendig mislykket. Han opererer i et rasistisk ekkokammer som er frikoblet fra den virkelige verden. Det samme gjør dessverre altfor mange journalister.

Det er snart på tide for journalister og redaktører å forstå at dersom du henger på X, så blir du manipulert av verdens mektigste rasist. Du blir dummere, og du mister kontakt med den virkelige verden. Du hadde ikke drevet god research hvis du bare brukte tiden din med å prate med folk i en nazi-bar.

City Press | 28 October 2018 | By Roger Young and Simon Doda Photos: Mpumelelo Buthelezi

---

War on Drugs Rocks Hillbrow

As angry residents attack the dealers, the police move in, take another hand-out and turn a blind eye to the comings and goings.

---

It was sometime in 1994, shortly after liberation, when Hillbrow began to change. From a well-regarded cosmopolitan but white area, a sort of Bohemia replete with cinemas, books shops, record and comic shops, coffee shops galore and a vibrant high-street culture, it became a place where white people ventured into only to buy drugs. And you could buy drugs everywhere.

Certain buildings were well known among clubbers and weekend users as places you could just pull up at and buy, mostly cocaine. But, as the whites left, the community that moved into Hillbrow solidified and so did their stance against drugs.

Community pressure saw the drug trade move to two distinct areas: The corner of O'Reilly and Fife streets, known as The Sands after a former hotel on O'Reilly, and the corner of Esselen and Quartz, known as the Cape Agulhas, after the apartment block of that name, home to dealers specialising in rock or crack cocaine.

Residents and street addicts believed the police were in the dealers' employ and so did not do anything to protect the community. All it took was about 30 minutes' sitting across the street from where the dealers plied their trade to observe police vans from different wards and divisions pulling up and receiving handouts. Duchess Court, on the corner of O'Reilly and Fife, technically in Berea, was known as a safe house for heroin dealers. They kept the drugs inside the building and sent runners inside when a client made an order.

But two months ago the security company hired to run the comings and goings of Duchess Court, 24/7 Security, left and residents employed the notorious Bad Boys Security to take over. Within days all dealers were ousted and no trade was allowed on the pavement. So trade moved across the street and all hell broke loose. The street addicts who slept rough were hustled up the road and condensed into a smaller area and the residents of the building opposite were up in arms. Emboldened by their neighbours' success, they confronted the street dwellers and dealers on O'Reilly Road on October 6. Resulting clashes between Hillbrow's self-appointed community guards, street addicts, alleged heroin and crack dealers and public order police erupted early that Saturday morning, climaxing in sorties that resulted in street bonfires made from burning street dwellers' belongings.

After the clashes an uneasy calm followed, with both sides on high alert. And although hopes were high that the dispute would peter out — with constant vigilance from community members and the dealers' representative claiming that they tried and failed to initiate talks — the feeling was that strife was imminent.

The Clashes Begin

At 7am that Saturday morning residents formed a wall at the top end of O'Reilly Road, The Sands, famous for its resilience and 24-hour dealers.

Even the World Cup clean-ups of 2010 were unable to shift its dealers and mayor Herman Mashaba's war against drugs achieved few results.

But, on that Saturday, from pavement to pavement residents linked arms and marched down the street. An elderly woman led chants of “Nyaope must fall!” and “Out with Nigerians!”.

They brandished sjamboks and broomsticks, lashing out at anyone in their path.

The street dealers vanished almost immediately. Those who remained stood behind police vans and joked with the officers.

The street dwellers who sleep along O'Reilly Road bore the brunt of the attack. They were beaten while trying to collect their things and later watched from a distance as their mattress sponges, backpacks and plastic bags of meagre possessions were piled on to bonfires and turned into ash.

By 7.30am the Hillbrow police and metro police had barricaded both ends of O'Reilly, letting no one in or out. The community members took over, but the street dwellers fought back, making quick attacks with bricks and stones, trying to reclaim what was left of their sponges and plastic bags.

Hillbrow police did nothing, relying on their presence alone to keep the violence from escalating. The community sang songs and danced in victory; their fires grew higher and so did their confidence. They sent a few impis to attack street dwellers, chasing them for blocks.

Under Attack

JB*, a Nigerian who identified himself as “one of the bosses here”, tried to walk down O'Reilly Road to see if his corner was safe.

After standing in his usual spot for “less than a minute”, a glass bottle was flung from one of the upper windows of Duchess Court and narrowly missed him.

Just after 9am a public order policing van pulled up and out jumped three policemen in riot gear, armed with teargas guns and rubber bullet rifles.

They fired warning shots and advanced on the community who stood firm. But when they fired the first hail of rubber bullets, the residents dispersed. The emboldened street dwellers began throwing bricks at those in retreat.

But then the guns turned on them. One man was left on the tarmac, bleeding from a gash on his forehead, where he was hit.

The Hillbrow police parked their Nyalas at the lower end of the street and prison vans were lined up and filled with community members, dealers and street dwellers.

The police remained all night and all of Sunday. And the community brigade maintained small groups at both ends of O'Reilly Road. They sjambokked and chased anyone suspected of coming to buy drugs.

Late that Monday afternoon, a splinter group of 15 young men led an attack on another group of street dwellers, mostly older people, not all addicts, on the “Old KFC” corner. The street dwellers were herded into a tight group and made to watch as their belongings were burned. A Hillbrow police van pulled up soon after the fire was set, but the officers didn't get out and drove off shortly afterwards. Any of the street dwellers who tried to rescue their belongings were sjambokked.

Burning Drug Dealers

News emerged early on Sunday that one of the alleged dealers was grabbed by the community group and forced into a bonfire and set alight. The face of Unche*, a Nigerian, was covered in bandages, the evidence of his fiery attack. “There was no warning. There is nothing we could do; now we must find a new place to work.”

After sunset that Sunday the warring factions diminished but did not disband.

By the following Wednesday morning they were still on patrol. All drug trade moved from O'Reilly Road into the park on Hadfield Road, a block away.

By Tuesday afternoon concerns spread to Hillbrow's other drug den, Cape Agulhas. Trading stopped. Dealers said they had to “watch out” and were “in talks”.

On Wednesday morning word was that the price of crack cocaine was up, from R40 to R50 a hit, because of the “danger”.

Cape Agulhas dealers believed the community was gearing up for a similar assault on them the following weekend and had hired private security to guard their building.

Saturday's standoff was hampered by heavy rains, but the street drug trade went undercover.

Hein*, a white street addict who was badly beaten by the community group the previous weekend, said: “You can still buy, but you have to be sneaky. They're no longer trading in the park but rather in the street. Things have changed, it's all different now.”

Last Sunday's Attack

Last week on Sunday the mob, much larger this time, attacked again.

The previous night, on the corner of Fife and O'Reilly, Bad Boys Security attacked the dealers. The guy selling cigarettes, the guy selling skants (small R2 parcels of marijuana used to make nyaope), the guy selling chocolates and tin foil, and heroin dealers outside The Sands were whipped and beaten with golf clubs. Two went to hospital.

Early on Sunday morning a group of people in ANC T-shirts stood on Soper Road, a block away from the trouble. A police Nyala stopped near them at about 9am.

The mob barricaded Primrose Terrace and began marching the three blocks to Cape Agulhas. They burnt street dwellers' makeshift camps. Among them was an elderly couple, Rasta and Nomsa. He washes cars near the Highpoint Spar; she begs, using her crutches and the abscess on her leg for sympathy, on Claim Street. Nomsa watched her papers burn, her temp ID, her disability papers, a small list of phone numbers of distant family members, lost and gone.

At 11am the mob, escorted by metro police, rushed down Primrose Terrace. The dealers now trading on lower Fife melted into CJ's nightclub. The street dwellers scattered and again their belongings were set alight, leaving 60 homeless with nothing.

On Sunday observers arrived. Two black Mercedes, occupied by well-dressed children and women in ANC headscarves, parked and watched from a distance. They ate out of skaftins, picnic-style, shouting “Hit HIM! Hit him!” when an addict was chased down the street. A young man next to me said: “I haven't seen this much action in Hillbrow since xenophobia 2008.”

Later that day boys in a red Yaris arrived to watch. And a bunch of men drinking beer in a 4x4 drove with the mob, taking pictures and shouting encouragement. The police did not do anything as people were beaten and bottles thrown. People were left bleeding.

On Sunday afternoon the addicts vanished, the dealers melted into CJ's, but still the mob ran, beating bystanders and shouting: “Why are you not running from us?” The response was: “What have I done? What have I done?” A small boy of about 11 who ran with the mob had a large gash in his arm.

The mob retreated to the back of Primrose Terrace. They hit CJ's at 9pm, quickly reducing it to ash. No more would the dealers hide there.

But on Monday morning, with most of the mob back at work, street dealing began again, further along the road. On Tuesday morning the community brigade attacked the Soper Lodge hotel, a block above O'Reilly. They looted the bar and soon the public joined in. Crates of beer flew out the door.

The police circled Hillbrow in convoys with lights flashing. But they did not do anything.

---

*Not their real names

View the full photo gallery at city-press.news24.com

Eine wacklige Lego-Brücke steht am Anfang einer Reihe psychologischer Experimente. Der Ingenieur Leidy Klotz baute sie gemeinsam mit seinem dreijährigen Sohn. Einer der beiden Pfeiler war zu kurz, die Brücke deshalb instabil. Klotz griff in die Kiste, um einen passenden Stein zu suchen. Sein Sohn löste das Problem anders: Er nahm einen Stein vom längeren Pfeiler weg. Die Brücke war nun stabil, obwohl sie aus weniger Teilen bestand. Oder genauer: weil sie aus weniger Teilen bestand.

Die Geschichte interessiert mich auch deshalb, weil ich selbst mit LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® arbeite. Beim Bauen liegt es nahe, nach einem weiteren Stein zu greifen. Jede Ergänzung ist sichtbar. Das Entfernen eines Steins wirkt dagegen zunächst wie ein Rückschritt, kann ein Modell jedoch ebenso grundlegend verändern.

Klotz untersuchte gemeinsam mit Forschenden aus Psychologie und Sozialwissenschaften, ob dahinter ein allgemeines Denkmuster steckt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen: Wenn wir etwas verbessern wollen, denken wir häufiger ans Hinzufügen als ans Weglassen. Diese Neigung wird als Additive Bias bezeichnet.

Mehr kommt uns schneller in den Sinn

In einem Experiment sollten Versuchspersonen eine Lego-Konstruktion stabilisieren. Eine Plattform ruhte auf einem einzelnen Pfeiler. Viele Teilnehmende ergänzten weitere Stützen, obwohl das Entfernen eines vorhandenen Steins die einfachere Lösung gewesen wäre. Als jeder zusätzlich eingesetzte Stein Geld kostete, entschieden sich mehr Personen fürs Wegnehmen. Das Muster blieb nicht auf Lego beschränkt. Auch bei geometrischen Figuren, Texten und einem bereits überladenen Ausflugsprogramm ergänzten die Teilnehmenden eher Elemente, als vorhandene zu entfernen. Unter zusätzlicher geistiger Belastung verstärkte sich diese Neigung [1].

Wir lehnen das Weglassen also nicht unbedingt ab. Häufig kommt es uns schlicht nicht in den Sinn. Additive Ideen sind schneller verfügbar. Wenn die erste Idee einigermassen funktioniert, suchen wir nicht weiter. Wurden Versuchspersonen ausdrücklich darauf hingewiesen, dass sie auch etwas entfernen könnten, fanden sie häufiger vereinfachende Lösungen [2].

In populären Darstellungen wird der Additive Bias gelegentlich damit erklärt, dass unser Gehirn das Weglassen nicht möge oder evolutionär auf das Sammeln ausgerichtet sei. Solche Erklärungen sind plausibel, gehen aber über die Experimente hinaus. Belegt ist vor allem eine Schieflage bei der Suche nach Lösungen: Addition wird spontan berücksichtigt, Subtraktion erfordert eher einen zweiten, bewussten Denkschritt.

Scheinproduktivität durch noch mehr Organisation

Vielleicht kennst du das: Die Aufgaben häufen sich und du verlierst den Überblick. Als Lösung bietet sich eine neue App an. Du ergänzt deine Aufgabenliste um Kategorien, entwickelst eine genauere Morgenroutine oder baust ein weiteres Planungsinstrument in deinen Alltag ein. Ich kenne diesen Reflex aus meiner eigenen Arbeitsorganisation. Wenn Unterricht, Lehrgangsverantwortung, Selbständigkeit und Weiterbildung gleichzeitig Aufmerksamkeit verlangen, suche ich rasch nach einer besseren Methode oder einem zusätzlichen Werkzeug. Das vermittelt zunächst das beruhigende Gefühl, die Komplexität wieder unter Kontrolle zu haben.

Jede Ergänzung kann für sich vernünftig sein. Zusammen ergeben die Hilfsmittel jedoch leicht ein Arbeitssystem, das selbst Arbeit verursacht. Aufgaben müssen nicht nur erledigt, sondern auch erfasst, sortiert, synchronisiert und überprüft werden. Die Suche nach höherer Produktivität erzeugt neue Verpflichtungen [3]. Die unbequemere Frage lautet nicht, wie ich alles noch genauer organisiere. Sie lautet, welche Aufgabe, Information oder Verpflichtung wegfallen kann. Eine neue App lässt sich einrichten und als sichtbare Verbesserung verbuchen. Eine gestrichene Verpflichtung hinterlässt dagegen keine erkennbare Leistung.

Warum Organisationen das Hinzufügen belohnen

In Organisationen geht es nicht nur um individuelle Denkgewohnheiten. Hinzu kommen Strukturen, die additive Lösungen begünstigen. Wenn ein Problem auftritt, wird eine Arbeitsgruppe eingesetzt. Ein Fehler führt zu einem weiteren Kontrollschritt. Für eine neue Aufgabe entsteht eine zusätzliche Rolle.

Das kann im Einzelfall sinnvoll sein. Dennoch prüfen Organisationen das Hinzufügen meist gründlicher als das Abschaffen. Wer ein Projekt startet, eine Regel erlässt oder einen Prozess erweitert, kann Aktivität nachweisen. Wer verhindert, dass unnötige Arbeit entsteht, hinterlässt weniger sichtbare Spuren.

Eine neue Regel besitzt zudem einen klar benennbaren Zweck. Ihre Folgekosten verteilen sich dagegen auf viele Menschen und über einen längeren Zeitraum. So entstehen Prozesse mit immer mehr Schritten. Jede Ergänzung hatte irgendwann einen Grund. Selten wird jedoch geprüft, ob dieser noch besteht. Die Süddeutsche Zeitung beschreibt den Additive Bias deshalb nicht bloss als individuelles Denkmuster, sondern verbindet ihn mit Bürokratie, Konsum und politischen Interessen [4].

Allerdings wäre es zu einfach, organisatorische Komplexität allein psychologisch zu erklären. Haftungsfragen, politische Kompromisse, wirtschaftliche Interessen und Machtverhältnisse tragen ebenfalls dazu bei. Der Additive Bias ist keine Gesamterklärung. Er zeigt aber, weshalb ein Vorschlag für etwas Neues häufig bessere Ausgangsbedingungen hat als die Forderung, etwas Bestehendes abzuschaffen.

Was würden wir heute nicht mehr hinzufügen?

Aus dem Additive Bias folgt nicht, dass weniger grundsätzlich besser wäre. Manche Brücken benötigen tatsächlich einen zusätzlichen Pfeiler. Eine Organisation kann unter fehlenden Regeln leiden, und ein neues Werkzeug kann eine Aufgabe erleichtern.

Entscheidend ist, Addition und Subtraktion mit derselben Ernsthaftigkeit zu prüfen. Die spannendere Frage lautet deshalb nicht, was wir als Nächstes ergänzen könnten, sondern: Wann haben wir zuletzt versucht, ein Problem zu lösen, indem wir etwas weggelassen haben?

---

💬 Kommentieren (nur für write.as-Accounts)

---

Quellen [1] https://www.boost.co.nz/blog/2021/06/new-cognitive-bias-and-agile-simplicity/ [2] https://www.deutschlandfunknova.de/beitrag/additive-bias-warum-uns-das-weglassen-bei-loesungen-schwerfaellt [3] https://anthonysanni.com/productivity-shorts-been-thinking/problem-solving-additive-bias [4] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/gesellschaft/karsten-wildberger-gabriel-yoran-verkrempelung-kapitalismus-additive-bias-e547325/

Bildquelle Lego-Skulptur auf dem Legocampus in Billund, fotografiert 2015 von WileyFoxes, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet.

Topic #Coaching | #ProductivityPorn

How strange this fear we fondle— always heating up to quicken a pulse. Urgently magnifying every thought to lance a healed wound. Far too eager to dismiss a smoothly wrapped deception. It's as if we quake to undermine our own expression of sought acceptance. The magnitude of our intentional incompetence is an underwhelming flaw— a raw nerve dangling inept. A failure to grasp otherness. And I weep across this threshold of unraveling.

Written July 24, 2026. © 2026 AnOublietteofThought.

Jesus loves you. I have heard those words many times, but familiarity does not always create trust. A sentence can remain in the mind for years without reaching the part of us that still expects love to disappear when we fail. I could believe Jesus loved humanity while quietly wondering whether He felt differently about the person I knew myself to be.

That struggle is part of what led me to write the complete free book Jesus Loves You. I wanted to move beyond a familiar Christian slogan and look honestly at the Savior revealed in the New Testament—the Jesus who knows the whole person, enters real suffering, confronts destructive choices, forgives sinners, restores failures, carries the cross, and walks out of the tomb.

I also explored this truth through this personal Christian message about receiving the love of Jesus because I believe many of us have learned how to speak about Christ’s love without learning how to live as though it applies to us. We encourage other people to receive grace while continuing to punish ourselves. We tell others they can come to Jesus exactly as they are while believing we should repair ourselves before returning.

I know how easy it is to turn faith into performance.

Performance can look responsible. It can make a person productive, dependable, helpful, and disciplined. It can even make someone appear spiritually mature.

But performance is exhausting when it becomes the price of belonging.

You begin thinking that Jesus is pleased when you are useful and disappointed whenever you need help. You measure your spiritual life by productivity, emotional strength, consistency, or the number of needs you can meet for others.

You keep going because stopping feels dangerous.

What happens if I am no longer useful?

What happens if I admit I am tired?

What happens if the people who depend on me discover that I do not always know what to do?

What happens if Jesus sees that my faith is not as strong as it appears?

The answer is that Jesus already sees.

He is not discovering your weakness as you reveal it. He knew the complete truth before you ever learned how to hide.

That knowledge once frightened me because human beings do not always handle knowledge gently. When people know where you are vulnerable, they may use it to shame you, control you, or permanently define you by one part of your story.

Jesus does not use truth that way.

He knows the places where I was wounded and the places where I wounded others. He knows what was done to me and what I later did because I had not healed. He understands the difference between an explanation and an excuse.

He does not call every choice good.

He does not treat me as disposable because every choice was not good.

That is grace and truth living together.

I see this throughout the Gospels.

Jesus knew the Samaritan woman’s history before He spoke to her beside the well. He knew Zacchaeus had profited through a corrupt system before inviting Himself to the man’s home. He knew Peter would deny Him before kneeling to wash Peter’s feet.

Jesus was never surprised by the truth.

He also never needed shame to make truth powerful.

That has changed the way I think about confession.

I once thought confession was mainly about admitting something bad enough that God might finally become willing to forgive me. But confession does not convince Jesus to become merciful.

Mercy is the reason He calls me out of hiding.

Confession allows me to stop dividing my life into the person I present and the person I fear being known.

I can tell Jesus the truth because He already knows it and has not stopped calling me.

That does not mean confession removes responsibility.

When Zacchaeus encountered Jesus, he did not merely feel accepted and continue living the same way. Grace changed what he did with his money. He offered restitution to people he had cheated.

Peter was forgiven, but Jesus still returned him to an honest conversation beside the sea.

“Do you love me?”

The question touched the exact place where Peter’s confidence had failed.

Then Jesus told him to feed His sheep.

Peter’s failure was not ignored. It was faced, forgiven, and transformed into a place from which a humbler kind of service could begin.

That gives me hope.

I cannot go backward and become the person I might have been if I had made every decision differently. I cannot remove every consequence or repair every relationship exactly as it once existed.

But Jesus is not limited to an imaginary version of my life.

He can work with the life I actually surrender.

That is important because regret often keeps us trapped in a past that no longer exists. We replay old conversations and imagine better responses. We picture doors that might have remained open if we had understood then what we understand now.

Some regret is useful. It teaches us, humbles us, and leads us to repair what can still be repaired.

Other regret becomes a private form of punishment.

It keeps saying, “You should have known.”

Maybe I should have.

But I did not.

The question now is whether I will continue worshiping the life I could have lived or place the life I still have into the hands of Jesus.

His love calls me forward.

Not carelessly.

Not without responsibility.

Forward truthfully.

The love of Jesus has also forced me to rethink forgiveness.

For years, many Christians were taught that forgiveness meant acting as though nothing happened. We were encouraged to restore access quickly because distance appeared unloving.

I no longer believe love requires pretending trust was never damaged.

Forgiveness releases my right to become consumed by vengeance. It places final judgment in God’s hands. It refuses to let hatred become the permanent shape of my heart.

Trust is different.

Trust is rebuilt through truth, responsibility, and consistent behavior.

I can forgive someone and still recognize that returning to the former relationship would be unwise. I can care about their future without volunteering to be harmed again.

I can pray for their freedom without making myself responsible for producing it.

Jesus is the Savior.

I am not.

That sentence has become one of the most freeing truths in my life.

I can love people without holding every part of their lives together.

I can tell the truth without forcing them to receive it.

I can offer help without taking ownership of whether they use it.

I can remain compassionate while allowing another adult to face the consequences of their own choices.

This does not come naturally when being needed has become part of your identity.

Sometimes helping is not only about the other person’s need. It is also about my need to feel necessary.

That is uncomfortable to admit.

I may say yes because I love someone. I may also say yes because I am afraid of what their disappointment will make me feel about myself.

The love of Jesus teaches me that another person’s disappointment does not automatically mean I have failed.

Sometimes people become disappointed because a healthy boundary interrupted their access.

Sometimes saying no is not selfish.

It is honest.

Jesus withdrew from crowds. He did not answer every demand. He did not entrust Himself equally to everyone.

He loved without allowing human expectations to replace the Father’s direction.

I want to learn that kind of love.

Love that remains soft without becoming weak.

Love that can stay for a difficult conversation.

Love that can leave a destructive environment.

Love that forgives without surrendering wisdom.

Love that does not need to humiliate someone in order to establish a boundary.

I also want to learn how to rest.

Rest remains difficult when worth has become tied to productivity. I can always think of something else that needs to be completed, improved, written, organized, answered, or fixed.

There is always another person who could use encouragement.

There is always another responsibility waiting.

The work may be meaningful, but I am not the One holding the universe together.

Jesus remains Lord when I stop working.

He remains faithful when I sleep.

He is not waiting for me to complete enough tasks before deciding I deserve care.

Rest does not mean responsibility no longer matters. It means responsibility has limits.

I can do what belongs to today.

I can prepare carefully.

I can serve faithfully.

I can make the call, finish the work, tell the truth, and show up for the person who depends on me.

Then I must release what was never mine to control.

I cannot guarantee every outcome.

I cannot force someone to understand.

I cannot prevent every loss.

I cannot make tomorrow safe by worrying about it long enough tonight.

Jesus loves me enough to let me be human.

That means I can become tired.

I can need help.

I can admit that something hurts.

I can seek counseling, medical care, friendship, prayer, rest, or practical support without treating those needs as evidence that my faith has failed.

Grace is not opposed to help.

Grace often arrives through it.

A meal.

A conversation.

A doctor.

A counselor.

A person who remembers to ask again after everyone else assumes the difficult season has ended.

Jesus does not always care for us through dramatic miracles. Sometimes He prepares breakfast beside a lake for disciples who worked all night and caught nothing.

I love that image.

The risen Christ had defeated death, yet He still noticed that His friends were tired and hungry.

The spiritual and ordinary were not separated.

Neither are they in my life.

Jesus is present in prayer, but He is also present in the decision to apologize.

He is present in worship, but He is also present when I lower my voice during an argument.

He is present when I read Scripture, but He is also present when I put down my phone and listen to the person in front of me.

The ordinary life is where His love becomes a way of living.

I will not do this perfectly.

I will sometimes react before remembering what grace has taught me. I will become defensive, impatient, afraid, or overly controlling.

When that happens, I do not need to turn one failure into a verdict over my entire life.

I can return.

I can confess.

I can repair what I damaged.

I can ask for help.

Then I can continue.

The Christian life is not the story of flawless people who never wander. It is the story of people repeatedly returning to a faithful Savior.

Jesus loves me before the return, through the return, and after the return.

His love does not tell me that wandering is harmless.

It reminds me that wandering does not have to become home.

Perhaps that is what you need to hear too.

You may have been living like someone who must earn every place you occupy.

You may be carrying shame Jesus is asking you to confess rather than continue punishing yourself with.

You may be holding a person or outcome so tightly that control has replaced trust.

You may be exhausted from trying to remain useful enough to deserve love.

You can release the performance.

Jesus already knows you.

He knows what needs forgiveness.

He knows what needs healing.

He knows what needs to change and what burden you were never meant to carry.

Come honestly.

You do not need impressive words.

You can simply say, “Jesus, I want to believe Your love includes me.”

That is enough for an honest beginning.

His love is not a reward waiting at the end of your transformation.

It is the place from which transformation begins.

Your friend,

Douglas Vandergraph

Explore the complete Douglas Vandergraph Master Index: https://douglasvandergraph.com/douglas-vandergraph-master-index/

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

July 23, 2026

Sober Days are Better with you

Me: Three months ago I quit drinking. Remember that party we went to in Valdez? Six IPAs, two grams of mushrooms, and three shots. Wow.

Other Me: How could I forget? We woke up feeling like absolute hell, but inside, that was the exact moment something snapped. Looking back at it now, that was the peak of the madness before we finally pulled the plug. Three months clean... man, we really did that.

Me: Yeah, but we spent four years drinking almost every day. Why?

Other Me: Because back then, it was our buffer. It was how we survived the noise, the uncertainty, and the stuff we weren't ready to face yet. We thought we needed it to numb out or feel something different, until we finally realized we don't need a buffer anymore. We just want to be fully present for our life.

Me: It's easy to drink. You come home after working 12 hours, you just got divorced, and why not just have zero mental challenge by drinking? In the end it makes you tired and you just wanna go to sleep. But sleep is shitty and the next day is just ok.

Other Me: Exactly. It was the easy button. Work 12 hours, brain fried, heart heavy from the divorce, a couple of drinks felt like an instant off-switch. But like you said, it was a fake rest. We woke up with low-grade anxiety, brain fog, and just enough energy to stumble through the next day and repeat the loop. We were trading tomorrow’s peace just to numb out tonight. But look at us now. We’re actually doing the heavy lifting instead of taking the cheap way out, and waking up with a clear mind is worth every single hard evening.

Me: I like you now. I am actually in love with you.

Other Me: I love you too. Seriously. After everything we've walked through, the long days, the heartbreak, the foggy mornings, it feels so damn good to finally be on the same team. We stopped running from ourselves, and honestly? This version of us is the absolute best one yet.