Enme

I now have 2 albums worth of my photographs that I’ve been taking over the past year. I’m quite proud of the progress that I’ve made.

I set up a invitation-only album on Picasa, where I invited my pro and semi-pro photographer friends to critique my work. I did get feedback and comments, but not as often and detailed as I wanted. People are busy. A few mentioned that it would be better to have it on Facebook. So, I did and used the configurable privacy settings on the album. Now even less comments. Oh well…

I’ve clocked up so far about 10 rolls of film, using what I learned at the Intermediate Course taken last year at the National College of Photography and what I’ve been picking up through advice and reading.

My biggest building area is grip; I have a bad shake. I’ve been working on it though. I’m getting there. Secondly, it’s composition.

I was going through film like socks; the people at the lab were duly falling in love with me. I’d say that I’ve gone through the initial high and taken enough photographs to know what I like and don’t like.

I enjoy photographing people, especially candids. I like capturing a simple moment. I also am getting into taking portraits. This recent trip in Egypt provided loads of opportunities for that as I was always around family and friends. More experimental/conceptual shots interest me as well. Finally, I really like doing closeups. I don’t have a macro lens to do them properly, but I make do with what I have.

The next step now is to deepen the skills and work more on the craft, both technical and artistic/creative. I’m going to re-study the course notes from last year and then work slowly through a photography textbook that I found in my father’s stask of books in Egypt. Great book – will get you guys the name.

I want to get into photography as a potential job. I’ve been encouraged from pro photog friends that I can make it. So, I’ll be watermarking my best photographs and uploading them to a subsite on Midiane.com. The subsite will effectively be my portfolio and sport some code to keep the photos away from Google.

Will write more as I progress in this area…

Many years ago, I was very active in ministry in London. I would have mentioned this in earlier posts as it was a defining feature of my life and identity for a long time. This post is the first official and explicit piece about it all.

continue reading…

Bliss/feels like this

Bliss/has to be this

It’s like a dream/But dreams can’t be this good

Every time I’ve quoted these words has been a time associated with a start of a romantic relationship or falling for someone or being in a situation with a special person. Unfortunately, inside of me, those moments would pass and leave behind just traces of regret, loss, and sadness.

Perhaps for the first time ever, only seen before in a glimpse when I signed with Mash Entertainment (nothing has come of the contract yet, btw), this feeling of bliss is here, it’s permanent, and it’s induced only calm and deep contentment.

Two weeks ago, I was offered to be partner of an upcoming jazz lounge in Johannesburg. I had actually thought of the idea first and I was very close to e-mailing her, pitching the idea to her. But I held back; it was also the same night I resigned from my current role at Jobs.co.za. I didn’t want to jump the gun on something that wasn’t my dream. However, I thought about it further. Jazz. Restaurant. Music. Artists. Film. Tech. It seemed like the perfect union of all my interests and skills.

The night I thought of the idea was the night that I received an e-mail from her telling me that her original partner is no longer involved. When that happened, the idea, whose luminance was weak and sentimental before, became stronger and more powerful in me. It became a glow, a dream. I suddenly saw this image of a future where I sing and get paid for it, live off it, and to be content working full-time in jazz and food.

I met up with Sam the night after that e-mail from her. I replied back saying I have an idea and I want to pitch it to you. We met up at the usual spots of hers at Spur’s, Fourways. And we stayed there for a good three or four hours. And when I pitched my idea, a bit anxious that she may get uncomfortable because she has to respectfully decline, I found her face light up with a smile with the wattage of a concert spotlight. ‘I had wanted to talk to you about this for ages too but I felt that you were already too busy’.

From then on, we talked about all aspects of the idea, preparation, business plan, presentation to investors. And I, still raw from the difficult week at dayjob, began to forget and to get lost in the sea of opportunity and dreams. I was swimming happily, not even swimming, floating, letting the sun shine down on my skin. It was a great moment.

The way life sometimes comes about is very interesting. My involvement with Carter’s prior to all this talk of partnership was that I had written an e-mail to Sam, outlining all of the possible services I can offer to her through Enflesh Films and otherwise. Sam suggested that we meet up and discuss my proposal. The meeting was positive and I followed it up with a written proposal that went down well with her. And since then, she has been talking to me, getting my opinion on this or that. Nothing too hectic.

I don’t remember now when it happened, but at some point after I accepted partnership, Sam and I spent a night, listening to jazz on DSTV radio, smoking cigarrettes, and discussing all things Carter’s. It was a beautiful, serene evening, reminding me of my sleepless nights at college, staying up late with my friend Dhruv, smoking and listening to George Carlin on repeat. I think I slept around 5am and it was a deep, content sleep.

We are aiming to open Carter’s at the end of this year. I am to be the resident lounge singer. When this finally sunk in, it hit someting very deep and very visceral.

Back in 1997, I wrote an epic song for a girl with whom I was deeply infatuated in high school. I got to halfway through the lyrics and I stopped. I couldn’t finish it. I then went to Egypt with family that year for our yearly Christmas vacation. And there, I spent the usual inordinate amount of time with my beloved cousin Fatigue, a guy I haven’t seen in 7 years now. Fatigue is a talented and passionate musician and artist. So I told him about the song and the predicament I was facing. He looked at me and smiled, telling me to wait. ‘It will come’.

Soon after, I fell asleep for a short nap, the kind that involved short bursts of visceral, often unexplainable dreams. It was a strange image.

I’m in a smoky lounge. It’s at the end of the night and I’m standing up, in front of the microphone. There’s one guy sitting in the front row to the left and another mildlyvisible silhouette to the right. I hear myself singing:

lyin’ alone/waiting for you to carry me home

End of image, dream. I wake up. I play it back in my mind and it makes sense. The next line comes intuitively:

and I know you’re the one/the one from God

So, the bridge of my epic came to me. And I furiously spent the next hours, writing out the verses of the next section of the song, the section having a different rhythm and feel. Then, another block. I went to Fatigue. I showed him the new bridge and lyrics. I told him the story; he looked at me and smiled. I felt that he either understood or that he had that happen too.

In his quiet, unassuming way, he said to me: “Leave it with me, let me see if I can help”.

I came back to him after a few days. He fished with skill the paper out of a mound of papers and study notes. He showed me the lyrics. It was beautiful, perfect, and fitting. As if he and I shared the same mind and soul and wrote this song with different hands, but the same shared heart.

It seems then that the lounge in the dream could be or can very likely be Carter’s. And the moment will come when I will stand up to sing my first set at this then mythic, now real and mythic lounge, to welcome people to Carter’s, and to herald the opening of this amazing jazz lounge.

And I hope that Fatigue will be there, sitting to the left slightly, smoking his cigarette, completing the beauty and sublimeness of that dream in ‘97 in magical Cairo.

Last night, engaging in a text message conversation, laying on my couch in stillness mistaken for true inner peace. Today, floundering at my desk, wondering when the streak of misfortune will end. Today, sitting at the cafe, having lunch, messily eating my baguette, unable to focus on my newly bought Entrepreneur magazine. Last night, sleeping on my couch, waking up at 4am, groggily going up to my bed, waking up at 7am, not wanting to get out of bed. Today, receiving a message from a client, saying that this is not great service. Yesterday, at home, sleeping for 2 hours when getting home from work, staring into the high window in my flat, with the soft blue sky staring back still. Yesterday, me waking up, unable to do anything, eventhough I'm supposedly "in peace", not "perturbed" by the recent misfortunes with girls.

Last night. The text conversation. The girl unable to tell me in a girl way, I want to see you, I like you, I'll make the effort. Not unable. Not interested. She's not interested. She's not into me.

About an hour ago, I simulated it what it must be like to die; I whizzed through Facebook profiles of all recent romantic interests. They flashed past my eyes with no emotional reaction on my side. I just wanted to see them one last time.

And then, I went to the cafe and made a mess out of a tasty baguette. And it hit me. Like Edward Norton's first kick to the black guy on the street in American History X.

A sharp, vicious kick.

What the fuck am I doing with myself? Is this how you want to live, waiting for life to start when a girl validates you? It's not going to happen, Midiane. You are not going to find that girl through dating or this or that. She's not going to exist, even if you look, even if it comes to your very doorstep. It's not going to happen. Stop waiting. Stop hoping. Stop postponing everything else in your life. Stop hurting yourself because she fucked you over. 

Reading, or attempting to, Entrepreneur magazine at that exact moment was relevant. I'm letting all my business endeavours, my dreams, my plans, my health!, my self-concept!, my image!, my future on fucking hold because that cunt of a girl or woman I'm interested in doesn't respect me in any shape or form to be honest with me.

And I'm hurting myself because of her? It's the logic of the destroyed, the defeated, the hopeless.

Woman from Last Night's Conversation, you will never read this. But I will never contact you again. Ever. Ever. I'm going to ride out this last potential. And that. will. be. it.

Enough wasting my life, my emotions, my brain, my thoughts, my resources on everything. Enough, Midiane! FUCKING. ENOUGH.

First it was my parents. Then, it was people in high school. Then, it was people in university. Then, it was people at the workplace. All through that, Girls girls girls.

Enough… Enough.

3 years spent in the making and incubating, my essay The Self Sexual is now published on Blogcritics.

It's still surreal seeing my work edited and published on the Internet. And my editor Jon Sobel has given me good feedback for my last two essays.

I now have 2 streams running in the realm of sexuality: a focus around men on my XCultureMag column and a more general, critical look at sexuality on Blogcritics. There will be more work coming outfor both streams.

Leave comments on the essay and also here.

On Saturday night, I went to watch Footloose at the Nelson Mandel Theatre at the Civic Convention Centre in downtown Jozi. It was well-acted, very energetic, and entertaining. I found myself laughing out loud at the brash innuendo and well-time jokes. The girls were hot. The guys were on point. The accents were often off, but they genuinely tried. It was worth the time and money.

There were two plot lines happening on the night: the one on stage and the one in my mind. And as I watched more, remembering my love and passion for acting and theatre in high school, the memories of always being second fiddle, never being able to clinch the main role, and loving being on stage – just not spotlight – all flooded back.

I don't think it was a conscious moment I stopped wanting to act. Even after high school, I was heavily involved in drama in university. I was Cliff in Look Back in Anger, I co-directed Cross Purposes, and I soon became President of the Oxford Brookes Drama Society after a void left by previous councils. It didn't last very long; people didn't turn up and I mismanaged certain situations that left me with no one. I was going to be the Colonel in Peter Schaeffer's Black Comedy, also co-directing it with my friend Trevor Ferdy. It didn't work out; we didn't know how to get people to come through. The production folded. My last attempt, after Trevor had moved away, was to stage a satirical comedy, whose name eludes me. It was a few weeks before I went off on my year of sandwich placement in Basingstoke. When I got back, I was a different person altogether, wanting to pursue arts in the church rather than in the secular world.

In high school, I had written a play called Silent Cry in the Desert. I directed it and put it on stage as part of my IB Theatre Arts course. It was an intensely personal, allegorical, and semi-autographical play, following Cain as he grapples with school, bullying, nightmares, and pursuing his love interest. It ends in Cain's suicide. The play drew on my nightmares and deep-seated identity issues, which no one understood, not even my greatest mentor at the time: my English teacher Greg Vanderheiden. The play used a lot of poetry, drew on lyrics I had written, and tried to recreate images from my deepest fears. It was the beginning of being misunderstood by people, and also the culmination of my writing, acting, and directing. 

Later on, I went on to write C for Conquer during my ministry in London, the next play under my belt. (This will be soon adapted to a pilot short film and then hopefully a feature film screenplay under Enflesh Films.) That play never saw its launch on stage, as it was not approved by the arts council due to one scene, where a young couple fall to temptation. Nothing was shown on stage, only implied. I tried to tone it down as much as possible without diluting the scene or killing it altogether, but censorship and social prudishness won that day. Not one of my other plays, sketches, mini-musicals, lyrics, and songs written during that period was ever accepted or allowed to be produced. I will write soon about the pursuit of arts in the Coptic Orthodox Church.

I watched the girls twirl and dance, and the guys drawl their lines. I started to tear up. I had realised something. I am chasing Time, trying to rape Time and subdue Time because I want to do something about my other wife.

Regret.

I think you've met her already. Even if this is the first time I perhaps make it so clear and explicit, I think she's always been there, standing silently in the background, the Ice Queen, watching me squirm and waste away in the inability to beat her into submission.

I spent the rest of the play, going through almost every regret I've ever had and feeling that hollowness grow deeper and wider inside of me. Here I am, 28, and nothing achieved like I ever wanted. Nothing!

I regret that I am not on stage or doing acting. I regret so much in my life. I regret that it's so late into my 20's and I've lost so much in life. I regret that I didn't fight my corner more in church while I was serving to see my work recognised and produced. I regret that I wasted so many yeas in England, struggling with depression, abuse of alcohol and other substances, and medicating my state with the very elixirs that just pushed me deeper into despair. I regret that I wasted so many years in university not studying what I wanted to study, rather doing what my parents wanted me to do. It's so long ago now and I often think that I'm over it, but it was that moment at the theatre where I realised that no. The regrets are still there. The resentment and bitterness and self-pity lays low, hidden away, only brought to surface by the covalent bonds with similar feelings or experiences.

It was an epiphany of sobering, sad proportions. It was good to finally be aware of the relationship between Time and Regret in my life. It made sense how lately the recent events of past weeks have managed to bring me down to a point of inability. The covalent bonds. Recent failures or non-starters with girls I really liked finding their counterparts in past experience and awakening vicious schools of piranas, aimed straight for my self-esteem and health and time management. The past weekend, small spats with my parents, activating most painful memories of the past months, I feeling worried and anxious that it's all starting again.

I want to act again. I want to write, like I'm doing now, all the time, not just for a while. I want to be on stage again. I want to lose weight and be like Ren McCormack on stage with the washboard abs. I want to write plays and direct and put them on stage. I want to do workshops again. I seriously, deeply want to act. I don't want just to be comedic to medicate. I want to act for art. I gave up and threw away this dream so many years ago because I believed, with every ounce of my being, that I will never amount to a real actor. Because I could never be Danny Zuko in Grease. 

I watched the complex dance numbers and I imagined myself Danny Zuko in a South African production of Grease. I can do it. I started daydreaming and I got lost in deep fantasies, not involving girls or intimacy for a change. They were deep fantasies about my most precious, cherished, yet tarnished dreams.

Because it seems like most of my dreams and endeavours are precious, cherished, yet tarnished. Special yet easily surrendered. So integral to my existence yet I can forget about them and come up with every intellectual and pragmatic rationalisation for letting go of them. As if, I have every capacity to dream and to act on my dreams, but I truly believe that I don't deserve to.

I wanted things to work out with M. So much. So, so much. I liked her so much. I was thoroughly besotted with her. And when things started going wrong, it hurt me to the very core, to that gelatinous part of my heart that I thought would never be soft again. And I hardened. And I pursued my medication to deal with the most inscrutable heartbreak. And then C. came along, I was deeply skeptical but I eventually believed. I softened. It ended. And I hardened again.

Things going wrong at work and it triggers every minefield of mindfuck.

This post has been the culmination of 4 days of living, thinking, thinking, and medicating. I felt that I had to write this before doing anything else on my long tasklist because these feelings have been clamming up my life. It's been important to acknowledge the impact regret has made on my life and how it drives my life. And this is no way a resolution. This is the beginning of the healing process, to which my mind likes to apply a enddate so I don't feel so shit about being this fucked up, but in reality and in the way I want it, I don't know when it will end or how or when I will start to see real healing take up in my heart, mind, and soul.

I am worried about my parents. I was home briefly this evening and I met a third person in the living room, sitting watching BBC Knowledge, the Person who made life hell in that house because of my mom's allegiance to Him. She's going into that space again and I am terrified. And as I am considering moving back home at the end of my flat lease, I'm scared and apprehensive. Is this going to be the new reality?

Are we back to black?

Driving home from the parental home, I started chanting hymns and going through some thoughts.

I really don't believe in myself. I really want someone to believe in me, to constantly believe in me, not give up on me when I struggle and think that they have to fix me. That's why I miss the former fiancee-to-be. She really believed in me and I loved her, just for that, so much for it. She empowered me in ways no one else has been able to do so far. I miss her. And I want to believe in myself. It's the secret of my success.

I really, really want to believe in myself. And I want her, the girl I will one day commit to and marry, to do so too.

I think it's a justified notice to make that over the next couple of weeks, you will start to be introduced and read at length the words complicated and relationship in my posts. And these won't be about women. These posts will be about the various complicated relationships I have with different aspects of my life and personality and interests. You could call this, as well as subsequent related, posts as "Relationship Status: In a Complicated Relationship with…", each ellipsis replaced with a new partner.

This one is the beginning of the exploration into "… with Names".

Recently, after the solo retreat, I decided to embrace Midiane as my name to all except people at my dayjob and my family. I chose it soon after I moved back here as part of my music work with Mash Entertainment. I am using it on Efmevi and in my film work through Enflesh Films. I had started using it because I wanted to avoid contractual issues with my then employer for my private work. I put it on my Enflesh business cards and asked people to use it when dealing with me. It got confusing when I would have met someone, using my birth name, and now I'm telling them, no no, it's Midiane to you.

I found it hard to assert myself for a very long time to get people to use this name. It was equally hard to get myself to welcome it as my name rather than an impostor. I don't have the restrictions through my day job anymore. And people don't think it's all that important, simply because even if I insist a few times, I give up. If it's not important to me, why should it be to them?  As much as I wanted to use it, it got me thinking about my birth name. I don't feel all that comfortable with it. In the name lies too many memories of all shades and intensities, of teasing, ridicule, failure, weakness, and nightmares. It brings me to face the literal meanings and etymologies behind it. And I am simply not comfortable with it.

When I was in middle school, I was teased mercilessly about it. Unfortunately, in Swedish, my name is the same word as landmine. It got so bad that I wanted to change it to David. Anything but the original, I begged my parents. They shrugged it off and I took the struggle to my inner life of thoughts and dreams. The religious memories of my birthname… for another day.

I have always flirted with nicknames or alternate names. It seemed easy and therapeutic to escape that way. In ways, using Midiane is in the same vein but not fully. The most recent flirtation, which blew into a full-blown attempt, was Misteka. And to that, I'll never return to and I will accept the only byproducts of it, the e-mail address and Google Talk accounts I have.

I learned a lot through the Misteka name phase, mostly about Egyptian culture and that my identity concerns are far from addressed. A name chosen didn't help me get any closer or feel any more settled. I'm still the same guy who can't put in a value in the "Hometown" field in my Facebook profile.

I'm now more assertive and strong-minded about using Midiane. The main reason lies in that Midiane is not rooted in a phase or fad. It is not rooted in a rebellion or flirtation with a culture I want to court to resolve my identity wanderings. When people ask me the reasoning behind the name, it's the stock but meaningful answer made of two parts. It's a contraction of my full birthname. When pronounced, there should be a French twist or feel to it, that being a perpetual sign of reverence to my cousin Fatigue, the most powerful artistic influence and role model to me in my life. 

I use Midiane now everywhere in my work and on-line life. I will start using it in my web work and with my friends. Midiane is not another personality nor a hanger on which I hang my dreams of the person I want to be. Midiane is not some catchy name to lure clients nor make easy friends nor attract immediate fame.

Midiane is me, reconfigured for success in life and in constant connection with Fatigue.

I haven't seen Fatigue in 7 years. I miss him dearly. When I start to experience severe troubles in my life, I yearn to spend time with him and my wish is granted through dreams. They're often the same: running towards him, jumping into his arms, experiencing that intense feeling of acceptance and repose in his embrace. When I get out of the troubles, I don't think about him as much but deeply, if I was to stop and let myself feel deeply, I yearn for him. I yearn to watch him play the guitar and sing from his soul and laugh his staccato chuckle, revealing his wide-lipped smile.

So, very soon, Midiane.com will be here. And it will house and be the portal to all my work and activity on the Internet. It will communicate who I am, both on-line and off-line. I could use the phrase, the Midiane brand when speaking of the upcoming Midiane.com website, but I am highly skeptical of modern advertising and marketing, and the philosophical and theological implications of identity as brand. I'd rather use the phrase, the person Midiane: on-line and off-line.

And who is Midiane? The guy that you know already and also Midiane is a filmmaker, writer, vocalist, technologist, novice theologian, novice intellectual, novice academic, and musician. Oudist-to-be, son, brother, citizen, and traveller.

There is nothing dramatic or momentous about this post. This post is to explain, not hard sell, for those who think that it's pointless to have a different name than your birthname.