In the beginning....

Pigorilla Power !

53

7 September 2009-09-07

Running with my rain face on
Today I woke up feeling sad
I know that you said,
Running with my rain face on
Today I woke up feeling sad
I know that you said,
That one day I would be glad
Hold the Choirs of Winter,

The Birds are calling to me and
All the leaves I came to love are falling
Ribbons on evergreen, owls that pull them apart
I can hear you singing my funny valentine
Oh you know that breaks my heart
Hold the choirs of winter,
The Birds are calling to me and
All the leaves I came to love

Oh you know that breaks my heart
Oh you know that breaks my heart

Running with my rain face on
No Idea of what to say
No idea of what to do
In this fear that never goes
Waiting for all my dreams
Oh you know it breaks my heart
Hold the Choirs of Winter,
The Birds are calling to me and
All the leaves I came to love

Oh you know it breaks my heart
Oh you know it breaks my heart
Oh you know That breaks my heartThat

 one day I would be glad
Hold the Oh you know that breaks my heart

Running with my rain face on
No Idea of what to say

I I don’t mind losing young Pigorillians to boredom or apathy with my cynicism and destructive dissection of the earth we are inhabiting nor our intellectual incapability to unravel facts as they stare at us obsequiously through the mud of ineptitude that make up my view of the lives we humans live.

The lyrics above are from a song called Evergreen by Faithless, my favourite group of lyrical poets.

It is rare that I am given so much emotion to write, with nowhere to take it, apart from an inevitable end. Life in London continues, unabated. You either feed in at the speed of the traffic or you pull over helplessly to the side of the highway and call 911. The other option is to yield to the throbbing pulse of the main stream, waiting for the uninevitable (don’t bother looking it up....it’s not there) gap in the traffic only to be rear ended by the more determined vehicle behind you.

Lives are funny things....peculiar in their nature. The blue print for a happy one is everywhere, as are the examples of unhappy ones. Financial success of an entrepreneurial nature is littered with the scrap-heap of almost made-its and unfairly pipped at the posts. Even a fairly straight forward business venture involving the design of a website like Facebook has its skeletons.

If one is brought up with the one of the strongest and most enviable values being that you have to have the approval of everyone except the most unreasonable of creatures, know that when you turn that key, the more powerful the engine, the bigger and more instantaneous....the explosion!

My good and one of my closest friends, Nicholas A.P. Slack was given a chance to climb out from under his brothers shadow (who died tragically in a car accident at least ten years ago). He named his first child Matthew, who is now ten, after his brother, who had always been the voice of stability and reason. While Nick was never going to be snuffling with the omnivorous hoofed bristly mammals in their sty’s, the financial leg up that Matthews death brought to Nick was always fundamentally appreciated, but never mentioned, unless to play it down. He grabbed that bull firmly by the horns and he rode that snake.

 I was never really a part of Nick’s business life nor did I try to be, but wherever the opportunity arose, he took it. He chose his business associates well and while some escaped unscathed, others were very forgiving at the big opportunities snapped up from under their noses in their very own businesses by their trusted colleague.

“Creaky”, as he was affectionately known throughout his school years, was always a couple of years behind me at Michaelhouse, but the Clifton choir stopped off religiously at his parents house near Kloof in KwaZulu/Natal and his father played a bit of golf with mine at the Durban Country Club so there was always a connection. There was a tight knit interwoven community in Durban in those days. Both his parents, Michael and Unity, have now outlived both their children and their relationship. My cynicism and understanding of this world does not have the ability to know what that must feel like.....I don’t think I want to know.....would you?

My feelings are too selfish; in any event.....my tears as I have written this have not been for Nick’s sons (Matthew and Christopher) nor his parents, while I suppose they have to fit in there somewhere. Most of all they have been for me and my friend......the hours and hours and terabits of information and thoughts that we have exchanged.....the body of which was generally a humorous perspective and a specific way of looking at things that brought gasping, stomach hugging, roll on the floor kind of laughter that probably helped him shed off some of the strain of his tumultuous relationship with his girlfriend from fifteen years ago who then became his wife. My gain was to escape from my views of the reality that makes up our lives. We used these inadequacies with our lives like fuel and pursued enjoyment of life with crazy, hedonistic deliberation. The same faces were always popping up in Nicks life....always. He wasn’t always as close with all of them, but then that’s probably true of most of our friends. I cannot mention names, Nick was not short of friends that he partied with....it would not do justice to the ones I left out, but whomever is/was one, knows it. We all have a view of “wild”.....to understand some of the bigger parties, it is probably safe to say that when Nick was having fun, most of you can triple your view of “wild” to try and put it into some kind of perspective. This was not a quiet life....this life roared!

I have no power nor was I quite close enough to make a reasonable assimilation of the core, underlying problems of his marriage (nor have I been asked to), suffice to say that an online dating website like eHarmony.com that scientifically matches couples based on personality traits would probably not have paired Nick and Justine. Love follows its own science, and my condolences and empathy lie heavily with those still sucking oxygen trying to make head or foot of the expiry date of one of us shape-shifting in front of our very own infallible eyes.

Sitting here in the generous luxury afforded to me by my sister, Sandy, I am reminded of the times I have spent in Nicholas’s homes....being totally looked after while I convincingly chase my tail all over the room trying to make a riddle from the rhyme. The last time was where he died, in Dunkeld, Johannesburg, just before I returned to London. He threw a fifty person party for me, despite the cancer already biting chunks out of him like a ravenous “Great White”. He was dying....quicker than he was willing to accept, but he was not going to let that tail wag the dog. It might have stopped wagging in the end, but he was determined to be in charge of what it did till it stopped.

“mi casa is tu casa” was never more true of a relationship with anyone than a close friend of Nicks’. The previous time I stayed in one of his homes before was when I lived in his townhouse (in Parkhurst) for a year or so.... a stones throw from where he died. I paid a nominal rent and was predictably furious when he sold it through another agent after I had just got into the property game. I forgave him, as he forgave others that committed what he considered to be similar “minor” indiscretions against him. 

Often his generosity was veiled by a thin cloak of showmanship and it was inevitably the busier restaurants that he dug deep and insisted that we all change our diet to champagne, but it was never the Lamborghini parked outside nor the beverages that impressed me. Here was a guy from nowhere in particular going somewhere and just like the anonymous quote says, “The whole world steps aside for a man that knows where he is going”; All but the most very obstinate obligingly stepped aside for Nick, not least because of his infectious, enthusiastic, friendly, opportunistic, optimistic, astoundingly effective nature.

Wouldn’t it be nice if when this Pigorilla Power! message floated into your Facebook that it was your fingers that carefully moved the mouse over to open another array of disjointed thoughts from your unhappy friend. Wouldn’t it be soo, soo nice.....I’ll miss u, Bruv.

This poem by Auden, chosen by perhaps Nick’s closest friend, Justine, is not true of my relationship with Nick, but is dedicated with fairness as the sum of his parts was never, if ever, not larger than life.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden