I conducted my mother’s funeral here.
I conducted my mother’s funeral here.
There’s not much more to create a sentimental bond with a place than that.
Except for birth. My beloved niece and nephew’s.
And rebirth. My own. With room to grow.
Stretching all the way to Port Alfred from the edge of my garden plummeting into the coastal valley below.
And quiet. Not silence mind you.
The din of nature at play is the loudest living buzz I’ve ever basked in; and Stone’s Hill gave me the idyllic sanctuary in which to listen. Imagine.
Indigenous forest two feet from my garden.
My breathtakingly beautiful neighbour.
And the reason my house didn’t burn down – wrestling the fire quietly to the ground and forcing it to flee and fight elsewhere with invasive aliens.
So much of my old did burn away in Grahamstown though – the incineration of an archaic exoskeleton of learnt behaviour, which allowed a more aware articulation of who I really am to emerge.
My body shifted from merely dancing to music to actually making it – with a new dance, using all four limbs, two of which hold sticks.
It was my body that decided we were moving to G'town in the first place.
I took a physical decision based on how I felt every time I came to Grahamstown; visiting Athina, my sister and soul shaman.
That’s why I “semigrated” from Jo'burg. No plan. No money. Just a deep physical knowing that it was the right thing to do – calming my brain down enough to actually “just do it”.
And it was the game-changer indeed. Music music music music.
Only in the perfect creative storm that is Grahamstown – with ArtsFest’s lighting striking yearly with a blissful thunderclap – could I have finally given in to the childhood dream to drum and watch it rise like flora in a forest; driven upwards by the light of its surroundings.
A lifetime’s passion and five bands were birthed in my mountain house. Hills literally “alive with the sound of music”.
And if I may push the metaphor slightly further down Julie Andrews Avenue; lecturing journalism truly has been “one of my favourite things” – one of the most meaningful I’ve ever done – together with meeting Thandi, the rhino with the delicate face and the courage of angels.
Ultimately, so much was mindfully steered my way and strongly supported in its evolution by the generosity of the wonderfully intricate humans who inhabit this town.
My experiences here, in what my mate and rhythm section partner Anton calls “the largest open air insane asylum in the world”, have been unspeakably beautiful.
The changes in me profound. Big parts of me died here.
Freeing my heart’s garden to let others grow and tentatively, jubilantly, bear fruit.
And as I take the hand of the woman I met and fell in love with here, and move to Cape Town with a beautiful band, it’s with all the gratitude on Earth that I say, “Cheers Grahamstown. And literally, thanks for all the fish.”
