DELORIS | Can you please just SHARRUP!

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There is layer upon layer to human communication.

Language, conversation is, to use the Western Anglo-Saxon expression coined for a chapter heading by the opium addict and literary genius Lewis Carroll, like going “Down the Rabbit Hole”.

This was, of course, in his timeless children’s book Alice in Wonderland (1865). It’s an author warning you laaities about tyrannical, demented adults, OK kids? Now go read it!

Wiki says that the zippering-down-the-rabbit hole idiom or trope in the English vernacular references getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. 

Zippering is my term, né, to describe a rock climber taking a fall and ripping out the protective gear and gadgets from the rock — not good.

And so we move onto the stage of the Guild Theatre.

Some of you might know I spent the best time of my childhood on that stage in a Pam Emslie and Mary Dicken production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and other extravaganzas they put on for Vincent Primary, now Hudson Park Primary.

While John Forbes, the tall chemist, was charging down the aisles as a fearsome giant roaring “Fi, fo, fi fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!” and a packed house was screaming their little heads off, I was under the stage awaiting the class appearance.

Yes, every class had a scene on stage. The props were incredible and took weeks to paint and construct.

In fact, I was more thrilled about holding the hand of the now late Carolyne Blythe as we watched Laurel and Hardy, or black-and-white Disney, Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Popeye.

She was the trophy gal, a popular one, and I might have been in the dungeon listening to the thump and cheers onstage and in the auditorium, although I was 10 years old or less … but I was actually in heaven.

But drag the cursor forward along the screen of time, to last week, way beyond decades of struggle and strife to the present day of … struggle and strife.

There stands the intellectual giant of jazz, award-winner, a musical philosopher, a spiritual healer, Dr Nduduzo Makhathini, who has travelled all the way to East London, the little city-town that exists in the limbo between all the other real SA cities. Which is why we love it — the city that is not really a city, halfway between there and nowhere. There’s a freedom in that.

We are now an African city, at last! And have been for 30 years. All English, Western pretences have melded into a new swirling plethora of cultural awesomeness and, unfortunately, our own version of the dassie hole.

The Guild, with its familiar golden-brown velvety seating, is about three quarters full and Dr Makhathini is creating the most extraordinary jazz soundscape.

It does require the audience to be still and listen, reports the Daily Dispatch arts and news journalist, who has an honours degree in theatre and performance from UCT.

But no. Once again our audience feels they have the alcohol-emboldened right to make a racket. Call and response, as the Saxons like to label it, is a beautiful African cultural-choral expression of engagement.

At a concert stadium, in church, at a mass funeral, a rally, a graduation ceremony, there is this uncrushed joy and exuberance.

But not tonight, for the doctor of jazz is inviting the audience to come along on a quiet, inner, contemplative journey.

But eish, there are yobs in the house, who persist in jabbering, taking calls, just so incredibly insulting and dismissive of why they came in the first place, to lose themselves and their daily troubles in the art before them.

Last time this happened, the late jazz legend Zim “Zimology” Ngqawana grabbed a handful of front and back brakes on the musical motorcycle cavalcade, stopped the band, and lectured the crowd on music appreciation, managing to also describe the drunken louts as “barbarians”.

Everyone behaves badly at shows. I have friends who have done it too, and I bite my tongue, trying not to tell them to sharupp! and respect the artists. But I have told only one and it is still a bit of a sore moment between us.

Up steps Dr Makhathini. He stops the performance of uNomkhubulwane, named after the Zulu goddess, an expression of jazz from the water, for the womb, to “chat” to the audience in the quietest most respectful tone.

It is a richly layered social commentary and it’s gorgeous, but more of this later, because there is some cultural interpretation required.

He says it is an honour to share the music, but “the circumstances or conditions under which the music is shared are always this place of negotiation between conversations that keep going on and the music that seeks to make meaning.

“I’ve said this many times, and people in East London know, for the most I have been developing these thoughts about the sound in these spaces and really commenting about the failure of performance and case in point.

“In ways, the music, or the body that plays the music, goes on display, and it is this sense of an exhibition that troubles and violates the body that tries to play the music.

“I’m troubled in a deep way by the noises that keep coming, trying to focus the energy in one direction, but it’s like the troubles we face and this is the reality of it.

“I came all the way, I really want to do this, but, it’s just … it’s a period in my life where I want to do something else and if this means stopping to do this because the circumstances are not conducive — not in this moment but as an ongoing study.

“I have very special musicians I came with today and I have guests, so if we could give them some respect it would make sense for what they had to sacrifice to be here.”

All right, now there comes a moment of translation, and I apologise upfront if this detracts from these profoundly expressed thoughts and feelings made on the cusp in the middle of a performance of music and ritual that is clearly going wrong, but here goes…

I love playing for you here on this stage with all its history of transition and creativity. But we can’t share our music and philosophical journey of conversation with you if you are not going to perform your part.

People of East London know these are my thoughts about the music we are making here, but it is failing right now.

Music of the soul comes from the body of the musician and this is shared in the body and mind of the listener.

But if you are going to be so noisy and distracted, then you are violating this communal exchange, you are violating the body and mind that is trying to make this sound we so sincerely want to share with you.

I am so troubled by all your noise I can hardly focus my musical energy. But I understand. Your bad behaviour is in some way an expression of the troubles we face in East London, and SA. That is the reality.

I’m troubled in a deep way by the noises that keep coming, trying to focus the energy in one direction … but it’s like the troubles we face in society and South Africa today, and this is the reality of it.

But hey, I came all the way, and I really want to do this. But, you might know that right now, in my life I have been thinking about stuff, so if I can’t get through to you right now, I might just stop the show and go off and do something else with my life.

To you who will not listen, I say look at my special musicians I came with today; look at the guests who have sacrificed their time and energy to come to enjoy the experience — and show us all some respect.

And, your columnist would like to add: Just sharrruuuup! Or leave! And take the baggage of your tyrannical cancel culture with you.

It’s time to look with a cynical eye at invasive party culture and to struggle for the right of arts and culture to breathe and blossom in our city. Let’s take on these arts thugs and make them feel small, isolated and dumb.

Let’s grow as an intellectual space, for we have so many iconic thinkers who have led the way.

Now, to lighten your morning, is a bit of pop culture from CrackerMilk, which is also brilliant.

Girlfriend: Hey, do you want to, um go and get some ice-cream or something?

Boyfriend: Yeah, I can take you to get some ice-cream.

She: You are not going to have any ice-cream?

He: No, I had some food before, but I can take you to get some.

She: No … that’s fine.

He: But you just said you want to go and get some ice-cream?

She: It’s fine.

Second woman appears: Hi!

She: Who is that?

Second woman: I am his girlfriend interpreter. It’s a subscription service. ‘I don’t want to get ice-cream unless you’re also getting ice-cream because I can’t enjoy it without you. Doing it by myself would make me feel unloved and like a … pig’.

She: That is exactly what I just said!

He perks up: OK, well I will get some ice-cream, that sounds like fun!

She: Mmm no, the moment’s gone now.

He: What?

Girlfriend interpreter: ‘I don’t want ice-cream any more, you have ruined it, because you’re just going to it because you know I just wanted you to, but have to want to want it yourself’.

He: Do you want to do something else?

She: Sure.

He: What about putt putt?

She: Like mini golf?

He: Yeah!

She: Uh … yeah OK!

Girlfriend interpreter: ‘I’d rather gouge my own eyes out than play mini golf with you. I think every woman probably secretly hates putt putt. It’s dumb’.

She: Are you OK?

He: Yeah, I am fine.

She: Is that true?

Boyfriend interpreter appears: ‘He is fine!’