4 faces singing don’t get cold feet!

From Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa

A dialogue on music

Collage 1: Caledonia by Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa

Collage 2: My parents were new born christians and thought that music was invented by the devil, I believed that the devil had invented my parents...
by Guido Vermeulen, Belgium

GOTIJ GOAT CHEESE

Cheryl Penn has a project on invented words and what they could mean, always fun.
Words like ZALOP or GOTIJ.
The Gotij goat cheese sticker was made by Lesley Magwood Fraser, scanned object collage by Guido Vermeulen

Another dream text

A DREAM ABOUT VIOLENCE and SHOES and TRYING TO FIND A WAY OUT.

I am in te middle of a discussion with another guy who is loosing ground and becomes very angry.

Shut the f*** up, he yells at me, or I’ll become violent in a while.

He looks a bit like my brother but he is not my brother.

I continue to reason with him because I like the controversy of our debate.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, he shouts and changes into somebody close to the incredible Hulk. His muscles are swollen and thick. I see the veins pulsing in his face. He blows up like an elephant but all I see is a giant torso, shoulders, part of the back, arms with fists like sledgehammers but no legs or feet at all.

I am going to kill you, he mumbles.

How are you going to do this if you only have a torso, is my final question and I walk away from the ugly scene towards a nearby town.

I try to find a bar because I am thirsty after all that shouting and menaces.

I see what I think is a bar but it is not, it is a mix of a giant shop and a factory.

Conveyor belts run thru the place from different sides at ones. It is like being caught in a maze. On the conveyors are a mixture of shoes, men shoes, women shoes, shoes for children, orthopedic shoes, shoes for little people even. I try to get out but I cannot find the entrance anymore.

I am puzzled. How do I leave this crazy place? I ask to a shopkeeper who looks a bit like my brother but who is not my brother.

You have to choose a pair of shoes, says the guy.

Man, I am like Alice in Wonderland but instead of eat me, drink me, it is pick up a pair of shoes!

I pay for a pair of ladies shoes, all glittering, with many colors and little stars and ribbons around them, a pair of art shoes for my friend Liza is my thinking. Suddenly I see an escape door.

I take the subway to visit Liza when a train arrives at the platform. I see another lady friend of mine entering the train. I have not seen her in years, so I follow her and try to connect with her on the train. I go from wagon to wagon but without any success. It is like she is vanished in thin air!

Louise, Louise, I cry, where are you? It is Guido here!!

In the last wagon a lot of people are packed before a bar. A jazz orchestra is playing New Orleans music and people are drinking and dancing and talking loudly because of the noise.

Midgets are carrying the drinks between the people. They have naked torsos but wear pants and a bow tie. We have to be careful or we trample on them, a drunken man whispers to me.

He looks a bit like my brother but is not my brother.

That’s why we leave our shoes behind, so we cannot hurt the little folk.

Everybody has indeed bare feet. Are you a cross dresser, a woman asks me, she looks like my niece but is not my niece. No, these are escape shoes for Liza, I explain.

The train fades away and changes into a giant bed. Everybody is asleep. I try to look thru the window and am facing a black wall which is crossing by at incredible speed. I focus on the wall and then see that the background color is black but that the wall has several colors (mainly red blue, yellow and orange). The colors make forms and shapes, without any meaning, almost amoebic forms, asemics in strange patterns and rhythms, no clear harmony or balance.

I close my eyes and open them again to focus more on the wall. Lights sparkle in my retina.

I feel someone is jumping on my legs.

I close my eyes and open them again and see the wooden cupboard in my bedroom.

My youngest kitten is walking on my legs.

Did you bring any shoes for my poor paws, he asks me and I return to sleep at once.

Guido Vermeulen, May 2012
Dreaming art by Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa

Urban Dream

URBAN DREAM SEQUENCE NUMBER 3

I receive a letter from president ZUMA who is inviting me to come to South Africa and work for his government.
Based on my experiences in the Belgian Agency for Nuclear Control (BANC) he would like that I become manager of a nuclear housing estate.
The future of nuclear energy according to Zuma are mini nuke plants; the size of a house and such a house can produce enough electricity for a small town.
Would I be interested in living in such a house and managing it?
Of course I am! Main reason is to meet my (fe)mail artists in South Africa. So I start writing to Zuma, Cheryl, Lesley, Karin, Sue and a few others “that I am coming”.

I am picked up at the airport by an official who drives me to the house which is in the centre of a township. It is a weird construction. The centre of the house is the mini nuke installation; it is a huge rectangle, completely closed and surrounded by cooling water, also closed but with plexi glass. I can walk around it and it is like watching a permanent waterfall.
The first room is divided in 2 sections: a kitchen and an eating place and the door to the outside.
The second room in the back is also divided in 2 parts: a salon with giant TV screen and a bedroom.
Two halls connect both rooms along the plant. Both have 2 windows in double walls.
The windows have special glass. I can see outside but from the outside nobody can see the inside.
The nuclear power plant house is operated from the rooftop. Several tubes are on the rooftop that can be reached from the inside by a staircase in one of the halls. You have tubes for evaporation of steam and a huge one for feeding the reactor. On the rooftop is a small cabin for control and operation of the plant and for measuring the production and diffusion of the electricity. The diffusion happens underground. “My” house is connected in the earth with all other houses of the township.
If this is a success, the official says, it will turn South Africa to a major player on the energy market. The idea is to sell such houses all over the world. I react with enthusiasm, seeing already the downfall of these bastards of Electrabel, EDF, Westinghouse and Gazprom.
When I visit the bedroom I see a large bed but NO blankets!
Error of delivery but no worries, I can choose blankets in the supply office of the ANC.
We drive to that building and when I walk in a long long hall I suddenly see blankets on the floor. I am puzzled: these are my blankets I lost 30 years ago in a youth house in Brussels.
On this moment I suspect I am maybe dreaming…
I take the blankets “home”. There is already a party going on and a group of 10 mail artists are welcoming me: Hey, Guido!!! Don’t leave the door open, I ask, because the cats could run away. They have to adapt first to their new environment. Tarantino is hiding under the bed but Buzz in already purring in Cheryl’s lap. When Karin is closing the front door a giant ginger cat bursts into the room. Oh no, I say, that bastard has followed me from Brussels, how did he manage to do that? He wants to harm Buzz and Tarantino. So my friends push the ginger monster outside. He transforms into a man. Wait a minute, he looks like G.W. Bush.
Oh that criminal! We tie ginger Bush with ropes and decide to eliminate the former president of the USA by dropping him into the tube on the rooftop for the fuel rods.
I hear him screaming. Come on Georges, this is payback time for all the water boarding.
Let’s have more Zulu wine, I am singing in a jolly good mood.
I wake up in sweat and am back in my flat in Brussels with Buzz and T beside my feet.

Guido Vermeulen, 26 January 2011


Text by GV, Zulu wine bottle scanned by GV and
illustration by Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa

DOEM DOEM

Art inspired by the poem EMERALD DOVE by Anthony Delius (1916-1989)
From Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilex/275329508/

DOMPAS

From Lesley Magwood Fraser, South Africa, on a poem by Mafik Pascal Gwala, during the apartheid years