Susi’s Great Unleashing

Oneroa Bay and Palm Beach were full of boats today and yesterday. It marks the start of the long golden weather. Waiheke changes for a few months while we morph into the party island, the island of the rich and famous. We are the jewel in the Hauraki Gulf, and on days like these, we sparkle. The locals raise their eyebrows in recognition of each other, as they dart along the streets trying to avoid the women who carry dogs in handbags. We get the local price in cafes and shops. It’s a dollar or two off the tourist price. We are tangata whenua, people of this land, this rock, this island. We are locals.

I don’t mind sharing this beauty with others, for a while. We tell them we know we’re lucky, we have it all the time. The Brazilian boys I’d filmed for The Naked Truth filmette I made about Little Palm Beach contacted me the other day. We had shared approximately 10 minutes of our lives together down on the rocks. They were making their way to Little Palm Beach, as we were filming cutaways for the film and had wanted to know if they were heading in the right direction. “There’s a line of bollock naked people on that beach, mate” the husband of my co-director said to the Brazilian boys. They had that Astrid Gilberto slurzzy slurzzy way of speaking, taking me back to records my parents would play, from Rio, music that would make me melt like ice-cream on a hot afternoon.

I have several encounters with jelly fish to show on my body tonight. A long welt down my arm and various welts across legs. I was playing with my dog in the surf and the boys had raced off into deeper water to try and catch fish. Jelly fish enjoy the surf too, en masse. They don’t bother me, and I don’t react badly. We have to share the sea with everyone, I reckon. My Colombian friends were there and it was good to catch up. My friend’s uncle – a brilliant Professor of Economics in Colombia who has worked with the Chavez government and others to set up alternative currencies – had been raided by the narco-fascist military police and accused of being a terrorist. I immediately flashed to Argentina and the stories I had heard of people being picked up for being in someone’s address book, who had been in someone else’s address book, who had been photographed at a demonstration. It dawned on me what a struggle Friends of the Earth in Colombia have and how brave Juana is, she who brought us to tears in the Big Intent with her description of her work, what brilliant work they do, working in with indigenous communities, under the radar.

It’s a strange position to be in, having worked for both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace and been on the Boards of both, at the same time, here in New Zealand. I wrote a will a while back and when I wrote it, I had decided that FoE would get whatever portion of whatever estate I might have, at kicking bucket time. I have this intense respect and admiration for the work that Friends of the Earth do. Greenpeace rarely move me and yet I yearn to be back on the Rainbow Warrior, a vessel so influenced by Friends of the Earth whose head office was in London at the time. Perhaps it is yearning for something which is now lost, something truthful and spontaneous. How many would serve Greenpeace today if there was not a healthy pay packet at the end of the week? When Greenpeace came to Europe, Friends of the Earth had been there for some time. They already had a whaling campaign, a campaign against transport, nuclear energy, allotments, recycling…they had a staff of 15-20 and groups all over the United Kingdom. They drafted Bills for Parliament and we often got to hear them read, sitting in special balconies above the wigs and snorers and those popping out for a quick one in the toilets. Three of us from Friends of the Earth were ‘headhunted’ by David McTaggart to establish Greenpeace in Europe, later to morph into Greenpeace International. Denise Bell and I to begin with, headhunted by David, and then later, Pete Wilkinson, with a little help from me. When we bought the Sir William Hardy and transformed her into the Rainbow Warrior, we didn’t have a huge multi-national breathing down our necks. It was just us. And the majority of ‘us’ were from Friends of the Earth.

Don’t get me wrong, Greenpeace do have a role in trumpeting the issues onto the world stage, to get the masses to pay attention in sound bites or photo shoots. They do it well and perhaps it does get the message through, and is ‘soft’ enough to appeal to the now aging baby boomers. I know that Juana and FoE Colombia take a huge risk in their work for the planet, far greater than any zodiac in front of a harpoon, in front of a camera. Their families too, at risk. Doors smashed in the middle of the night, people grabbed and thrown into the back of windowless vans….I have been arrested, charged, released, but this…this would be something entirely different.

I was a self-declared ‘guerilla’ as a teen. I kept it very private, but not from my Italian shipping magnate boyfriend of that time, who in spite of his families inter-generational hold on the port of Genoa, was a card-carrying member of the Communist party. Through him I met members of the Red Brigade who – rather unfortunately – abducted the wrong person from a prominent Roman family, friends of my parents. I may have tried to broker a deal at that young age, between the Brigade and the family friend, and my father was, as always, very understanding.

My shoulders are tight and tingly from the sun. I weeded my garden, which is abundant. People marvel at how huge my veggie plants are. It’s the Bokashi I tell them. The cicadas are well tuned and the pohutakawa is blooming against the soft velvet of its leaves. Daises on the lawn look like snow. Mow the lawn and there they are again, overnight! Birds are training their chicks in the art of swooping between cabbage trees. Ducks take their babies down to the sea for a lesson in swimming. My dog knows to lie still until every one is water borne. They will turn golden in the sun.

As a parent, it is important to have ‘quality time’ with one’s kids. Bonding with my son yesterday afternoon consisted of listening to ‘hard core’ Korn, to a song written while coping with schizophrenia. I know quite a lot about schizophrenia – having worked with young males in residential care – but I wasn’t letting on. Here was a young man bearing his soul to the world, his inner ‘plague, the sexual abuse of his father, primal screaming, a good 8 minutes. I listened with an open heart, yes – the drumming was excellent and I could imagine a live show brimming with energy. I am not a fan of heavy metal, yet have identified with those who walk on the dark side – Nick Cave, Velvet Underground…Patti Smith is my hero. I too have hidden behind my hair, worn tight jeans and boots with leather fringes. I can relate to the angst of youth. The world must seem pretty nutty when you suddenly get what’s going on. And they get what’s going on at a much younger age these days.

When Korn was finished, my son said “bet you can’t do heavier than that”. Probably not, and I wondered what the point of the exercise was anyway. I remembered a track of music a friend had sent me – Leonard Cohen singing Gypsy Wife. A friend of this friend plays the guitar. We watched and listened in silence. I observed my son from the corner of my eye. He was absorbed. His eyes glinted. I wondered whether he had found find something deep within that was drawing him into the music. The zingara connection through his mytochondrial dna. The ghosts of ancestors dancing round fires.

“Pretty cool” was the verdict, and the bonding was complete. It was time to go our separate ways, into the mad hatter world, both reassured that somewhere in all the chaos of life, there is a port of call, a place of sanctuary, where one is understood and validated, where one is loved.

Yesterday I spent some time out at Awaawaroa, on the land. I don’t get there as often as I should, primarily because I never seem to have the time to just hang out. Yesterday, I found such a space in my afternoon and as the Awaroa neighbours were showcasing their winning organic wine selection in a neighbourhood wine-tasting party, I decided to have some fun. What is the difference between Awaawaroa and Awaroa you may well be asking. The answer lies in the ‘awa’ – Maori for water, usually a stream. Lucky us, we got two ‘awas’ at Awaawaroa and, if you count the moana, the ocean, we have actually got three! One of the awas, and it may be the one that flows down the hill above my house site, from Awaroa, is a wee gurgling spring at the entrance to the totara forest next to my site. Soon, a tipi will be erected there, after the gorse has been mowed, and we will indeed discover whether or not I had heard a kiwi in the bush, or whether it was the moon working on my imagination.

Sitting on Bunny’s deck, and up at Jo and Paul’s, I watched the land breathe deeply in the hot afternoon air. Sounds of birds navigating through dried branches in the densest bush, the line of geese soldiering up the hill in single file, everywhere I looked something magical was taking place. I remembered the acoustic resonance of the bittern, a gong from heaven that created a huge sound wave that hit me in the throat. “Wow did you hear that?” I said to my son down by the swimming hole. “That was one of our rarest birds making his presence felt”. And feel it we certainly did.

I sensed a young male Maori warrior, hiding in the harakiki, up near Jo and Paul’s. Their house-site sits on a wahi tapu, place of sacred significance – they too must have an archaeologist stand by when they commence their earth works. I catch glimpses of him out of the corner of my eye, near my site as well. He is darting behind the ponga and the flax, his piupiu crackles as he moves, revealing strong legs, his long jet black hair in a top knot, the moko on skin the colour of earth, a woven belt around his waist, a greenstone patu in his hand. He shakes it now and then and squats and watches us. He is curious but he is happy we are there.

I am happy we are there too. How can we change the world if we do not change the small space in which we live, be it a room, a house or a small piece of land? I wonder about the thousands of people around the world, glued to their computers, engaged in enormous amounts of digital communication, on and on, while outside the earth burns. The local elder would always ask a newcomer “can you plant and grow kumara?” That was his benchmark for knowing the mettle of the man. I have passed that test. I grow potato too, and many many other things – my compost throne has served me well. I tend the garden daily, digging soil out of my nails before I go to bed. Some evenings, a bouquet of fresh garden flowers adorns the simple meal. We bless things, even in our pain. Destiny is our friend.

My good deed for the month was making sure dioxins will no longer be released into air, land or water on Waiheke Island. It wasn’t too hard. Just a few phone calls, and reminding both regional and city councils that this stuff was banned everywhere else in the world, so how come it was happening just down the road in Ostend? And, as for the permit they had given to burn down the bottom end, didn’t they realise that this was happening right next to a marine reserve and an oyster farm. Excuse me, dioxins accumulate in shell fish…duh…oh ok, you are not going to reissue the permit? Good.

So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself yesterday morning when I took the boat to town to discuss Earthships with Michelle. Yes, it’s all for real, and the boys from Taos will be down within 2009 to build one on my house site at Awaawaroa. I can’t wait. It will mean feeding and watering all those tanned, toned bodies from New Mexico, but hey, I ain’t complaining. There will be the inevitable documentary and some good music from the 1 Giant Leap band of gypsies, but if I get to live out my days in an Earthship, I am all theirs.

The roads of Waiheke are lined with junk. It’s hard not to stop and rummage through the piles of rubbish, but to date I have restrained myself and brought home just one antique carpet. The last inorganic rubbish collection yielded a cache of expensive materials in an old leather suitcase, silk and linen, bound together in ribbon from someone’s dress-making collection. At the bottom of the suitcase, a ceremonial silk kimono which I gave to my niece for Christmas. It’s amazing what people chuck out.

A young film-maker sent me a copy of her film “Shades of Green” in which I am interviewed. The premise of the film is that Climate Change is an hysterical construct created by well-meaning activists. However, anyone in doubt about the reality of Climate Change should see “Everything’s Cool” (http://www.everythingscool.org) whose New Zealand premiere was held at the Big Intent. The movie retells the story of a lobbyist for the oil industry hired by the White House to head its Council on Environmental Quality, who edited and softened alarming scientific reports on climate change to make them appear ambiguous. Two days after The New York Times published an article about his alterations, he resigned and was quickly hired by Exxon Mobil. Unfortunately, according to Climate Change researcher Ross Gelbspan, who has probably acquired more hard evidence of Climate Change than anyone else, it is now too late to put into practice fundamental changes to halt global warming within what he sees as a 10-year deadline. I wish the young film-maker had seen this film before making hers.

Aotearoa/New Zealand is grappling with yet another brutal murder of one of its young. A three-year old was subjected to months of abuse – put in a clothes drier, spun on a clothesline, kicked in the head. This went on for months. Two young Maori males, convicted of her murder, practiced violent PlayStation wrestling moves on her because, they said, she was ugly. The mother of the little girl was found guilty of manslaughter. While she and the two murderers partied, her daughter had been left to die in a corner, malnourished and battered. The front page headline today “We have to learn to nark” says it all. Dr Hone Kaa, head of a child advocacy group and a man I respect immensely, has called on all New Zealanders to “Drop them in it” when it comes to reporting abuse. Even as a professional ‘nark’, when I had to inform services of child abuse under my code of professional practice, I became the target of those who sought to keep it secret within the community. It is a protection that is afforded far more easily to the perpetrators of the abuse than that given to the victims or indeed the narks and it has taken me a while to learn that it is very hard, if not dangerous, to call a spade a spade in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I have gone into many homes in a professional capacity, and found untold emotional trauma with devastating consequences. Last week the horror story was around a 14-year old Maori girl who had to have an emergency full hysterectomy because of syphilis contracted from her father. On the island and throughout the nation, the inter-generational dysfunction is a deep festering wound that is poisoning the spirit of this beautiful land.

I think about re-reading Keri Hulme’s “The Bone People” and decide against it. All those years ago on Samos, when I first read it – having lugged it all the way up to the high mountain village in my back pack – I was unnerved at the covert message about the shadow land, beneath the tourist image. Later, I was to meet the shadow, full on – in the maximum security prison’s “assessment block”, as a caseworker for young males with paranoid schizophrenia, working in mental health on a marae, working with young people with ‘behavourial problems’. I meet it every week, in the eyes of a young person wagging school and hitching a ride to the safety of a mate’s home or the internet cafe. Or in the dejected slumped shoulders of an adolescent, sitting in a waiting room of a medical centre, later to be found hanging from a tree in the front garden at home. New Zealand may be paradise, but for some, it is also hell on earth.

The Guinness Book of Records puts the greatest number of drag queens on stage at any one time as 36.  I was there for this world first, seated in the guest row at the Aotea Centre, surrounded by queens in outfits that my mother would have envied.  On the stage were an array of ‘Priscillas’, and a front line crew of ‘boys’ in very short shorts and fishnet stockings.  At any available moment, the crowd erupted into cheers, throwing packets of condoms in the air like confetti.  My colleague on the arts team was behind stage dressing “Miss Japan” whose bio included statements like “I like fishing holiday in Southern Ocean and buying Golf Course in Queenstown.  Hello Kitty”.  The “‘Headgear’ of Nations” section of the show produced outlandish results, involving gigantic phalluses (phalli?) lit up with fairy lights on enormous sun flowers.  I think that was Miss Easter Island although it was difficult to tell.  My team had funded the show and $48K had been raised with this performance alone for HIV/Aids support in NZ.  As a regular street marshal at Auckland’s infamous HERO parade, since canceled by boring people in Council, I wanted to see if there were any familiar faces up there on stage.

I didn’t go to the After Party.  All I wanted to do with get back to my safe island haven and catch up on some sleep.  I thought about the famous Argentinean cartoonist, Copi, who died of Aids in Paris, on the journey home. He was someone close to my mother’s heart and I had heard that more people took to the streets for his funeral than they did for Mitterand’s. All I remember of him as a girl was this striking young man who did doodles that were sold for lots of money.   I can’t imagine what it would be like growing up in a household that is homophobic, or racist.  Instilling fear of others into people at a young age causes so many long-term problems, both individually and generally.  Much of why we go to war is based on fear.

Eckhart Tolle reminds us that we are here to enable the divine purpose of the universe to unfold.  We are all kings and queens of the whole universe, whether in drag or not.  Every single one of us is important, we are all part of an interconnected system.  There are no absolute boundaries between the us and the totality of existence.  When we fully realise this, we will no longer experience fear.  This is what Buddha described as enlightenment.  This is what represents the end of suffering,

Shortly after all the Europeans arrived at the 2005 Reunion, they were splashing their translucent feet in the waters of the Pacific down at Onetangi Beach.  I had narrowly missed mowing down a couple of them who, on a hired motorbike, and jet-lagged to the max, were roaring down Awaawaroa Road on the wrong side.  I caught a glimpse of two pale faces behind goggles and helmet and I thought – they’re here! – as I swerved to the right to avoid them.  I knew they were on automatic pilot, driving as if in Europe, on the wrong side of the road.

We had just finished stacking the crates of organic feijoa champagne on the beach, waiting for the huge Greenpeace zodiac driven by Logey – whose farm had produced the bubbly – when I was taken to task by one of the jet-lagged travelers.  “You nearly killed us, driving on the wrong side of the road!”  I forgave them, because I knew that the moment we got to Cactus Bay, they would leave Europe a long, long way behind, and be reveling at finding themselves in paradise…  Sjoerd was there.

The advance party took off in the Zodiac and because I was the only one who knew where we were going, I was directing them. The spray of the waves as we chundered through the water covered my glasses in a thin film of salt, and I couldn’t see a thing.  I relied on my blurry vision of a sandy strip somewhere in the distance and said confidently “head for there”.  No-one was going to argue with a local even if the chart said otherwise.   While we waited to be rescued from the wrong beach after the second party had been deposited on the right beach, round the headland and some, we drank feijoa champagne at high noon and layers of Northern Hemisphere city stress were shed like clothing, to reveal pale bodes and huge, huge smiles.  It was quite embarrassing really, to get the destination wrong, but I had a good excuse.  One of the Germans present started talking to a rock, re-enacting a scene from a movie where someone gets stranded on an island and befriends a rock.  Everyone laughed…  Sjoerd was there.

Later we climbed a hill with Maori elders and walked among olives dedicated to David McTaggart, we played football, we danced and told stories, we ate, we danced some more.  The German who talked to the rock won a ring in the raffle, fashioned from a bolt from the Rainbow Warrior.  I had found an engineer in a garage in Ostend to machine the bolt into 4 pieces, then tracked down the wedding ring man in Surfdale, who polished off the rest…  Sjoerd was there.

Tents erected down by the community house, Wilks in his campervan on the shores of Onetangi, Simon with his bagpipes.  Cornelius, the Greenpeace doctor who had over-wintered in Antarctica,  saved the life of our old kaumatua who had been taken to the top of the hill for a blessing, seated on a sofa in the digger, and who had then fainted from the heat on the way down.  People we hadn’t seen in years, some I had never met whose names belonged to legends of ice and polar bears and the first base camp.  Salad greens had been grown especially to feed the hungry, a wild pig on the spit, eggs and bacon in the morning for breakfast, baskets and baskets of food so no-one would go without… Sjoerd was there.

Sjoerd had brought us all together and kept us all together through an e-mail list simply entitled “GP-Reunion”.  I had sent him an e-mail only the other day updating him on some new addresses for old reunioners. There had been some rumbles about a 2009 reunion and the list was starting to kick into life again, a life that Sjoerd had given, only to have his so brutally taken.

It’s at times like this, too frequent of late, that I walk around re-living moments we all had together, seeking out those memories, pulling them apart like strands of elastic in the hope of discovering a clue as to why life removes some and leaves others behind.  Sjoerd was there with us in 2005, as was Chris, and I think of them together now, as we will all be some day, reunited in that place of no return.  In the end it will be the blink of an eye, as if nothing had happened, as if time stood still.

I hate my Inbox. I don’t know what’s worse, the late night/early morning phone call, or opening one’s Inbox and finding that another friend has gone.  Riding a bicycle, felled at a crossroad, now brain dead and on life support.  At 6.30am, this is not a good way to start the day.

I glossed over all the other e-mails, briefly noting that the Yes Men had got up to something involving a replica of the New York Times with news of America’s withdrawal from Iraq: “The US defence department yesterday declared the end of the Iraq war and the immediate withdrawal of all troops, prompting an admission from Condoleezza Rice that the Bush administration had known all along that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction”.

And then I spent most of the day looking at images of atmospheric and underground nuclear testing, as Claudia, Scott and I continued editing our film on the  two 90-year old peace activists who live on Waiheke.  I took the couch while Scott was at the desk with the editing suite and Claudia on a seat next to him.  We had put a huge TV screen on another table so we could see what we were doing, in style and comfort,  and I told them that if they saw me with my eyes shut not to think I was falling asleep.  Transcripts spread across the floor, boxes of mini dvs all neatly labeled, another box of archival material, boxes of dvds of films from which we will cut small segments, clear direction from the editor – “capturing now, stand by”.  It was obvious that the house on top of the hill was a bachelor pad – two film-makers each with their own rooms full of gadgets.  I washed the pile of dirty dishes and cleaned the stove, something practical to do while watching bombs go off.

Seeing recent film of Kit, nearly 90, directing a group of percussionists, with a huge treble clef around her neck like some Maori taonga, cheered me up.  Some people can live to a fulsome age and others are cut short in their prime.  On days like this, none of it makes sense, and I have learned that it is pointless trying to understand why.

I have lit another candle, I still have a few, for another person’s journey from life to ever after.  Chris will be there waiting, his hand on the tiller that he held during his own passing, to steer a passage through any turbulance.  The sun was blood orange tonight.  It reminded me of a taffata dress my mother wore when stepping out, her dark hair tied back, her green eyes accentuated by the sheen of the material, and I wondered whether those who pass miss things like the sunset, the sound of the ruru in the bush, the smell of home baking,  wind tickling the ears.  Whether there is a yearning in the ever after for that which was before.

I have decided to build an Earthship on my house site at Awaawaroa.  Actually, the Earthship people found me and I jumped at the opportunity.  I had been trying to build a house out of phone books and recycled materials for some time, and had collected planks of Oregon pine from an 1800′s warehouse in Grey Lynn and 10 or so hardwood telephone poles.  I had thought of post and beam and chuck in the phone books as infill.  The idea received a brief flurry of media interest with tv wanting to fly a helicopter over the site to film the house.  I told them I only had a small model of the house, but if they wanted to fly over that, be my guest.  Someone important in the architecture department of Auckland University  had been testing phone books in the lab and had written a paper presented internationally, so everyone was getting quite excited, but then the building regulations changed,  so that idea went out the window.  Since then, my house site has sat by the totara forest and waited.

My house site is also the place where Maori made they home and so there has to be an archaeologist stand by during the earthworks in case bones are found.  Everyone else in the community have built their houses in ‘noa’ areas, or the earthworks were done before the extent of Maori habitation had been fully realised. Trust me to choose somewhere which is ‘tapu’.  An Earthship fits in well with the feel of the place, and there is the Transfer Station in Ostend from where to get all the Earthship building materials.  Post and beam with glass and adobe, rammed earth tyres and bricks made out of cans and/or plastic bottles.  It’s a self-sustaining system and a part of the Earthship is an internal garden, which feeds you.   They’ve built them all over the world,  run as an educational workshop. They gather a crew who work together intensively over a period of time, bonding and thriving on the collective energy.  They fall in love with what they are doing and in the end, they create these masterpieces of functional living that blend into the landscape as if they had been birthed by mother nature herself. I can imagine they would hum with a special energy and that to sleep in one would be like kissing god.

Sometimes, on an island, you run into people you would really rather not see.  They find it hard to look you in the eye because you know something about them that they would really rather you didn’t.  Because of the work I have done, and still do in some cases, I enter the twilight world of drugs, abuse, violence and crime.  Maori children are the worst affected. There was a case of the murder of 3-month old twins, in a house with 12 people,  and no-one would say who had killed the babies, yet everyone was there at the time.  This closing in and total silence is immensely frustrating to anyone involved in any kind of work with dysfunctional whanau. There are certain people I see here, out and about, who know that I know they nearly killed their kids in a drunken frenzy.  Nothing could be done about the situation because the family closed in, stood by the perpertrator and tried to silence me.  When they couldn’t silence me, they threatened me.  So, every time I see them now, or they see me, they are reminded that I carry that dirty secret of theirs within me. Yes, even in paradise there are dirty secrets.

Today I feel as if I have lost part of my childhood, with the death of Miriam Makeba.  The black and white images of her, and that voice, go way back in my consciousness.  Those were the days of black vinyl and singing along to the record, trying to imitate the Zulu language, really getting into the ‘click click’ sound,  mother claiming to be the ‘expert’ having spent some time in a South African village.   She would invariably produce the beaded fertility belt given to her by a warrior and tell us that it had obviously worked!  This black ambassadress’ elegant face stared at me, from the cover of one of my father’s records.  She looked like an Egyptian sphinx.  Then television news images showed what was happening in Soweto and we were outraged.

Africa has always been part of my life.  As a child, I had a god mother who lived in Johannesburg and my mother had various eccentric cousins who were born in Africa.  One, who was a pilot,  lived in a huge tree house.  I always wanted to visit him.  He sounded fun.  There was another, too,  involved in Rhodesia at the time, someone high up in the government or banking.  I avoided finding out more about him. Far too politically incorrect.  Mother’s family came from North Africa, they were the “Lezards” – and I have to say that all the crazy-brilliant males in my family seem to be Lezards!   My favourite, and the one I knew best, was on the list to be the first person in Europe to go up in a space craft!  He had trained my mother in speed reading and card tricks and they used to entertain people at Buenos Aires parties.  I liked him because he always gave me rum and coke when I went to visit – he lived in the centre of London, after he moved from Argentina and married a Welsh woman.

Then, as a young adult I went to the Canary Islands and later went wandering around Southern Morocco with a friend.  More recently, I have studied the music of West Africa and played with African musicians, mainly from Guinea and Ghana.  The music is in my blood.  When my DNA testing came back recently, it revealed that my mitochondrial line comes from East North Africa.  That is my turangawaewae – the place from whence I come.  Funny, really, when you think that I have had 4 different passports. My ancestors came to France via the North African coast and then married in to royal blood in France.  We have a very simple coats of arms, denoting an ancient lineage (apparently).  I usually tell people I don’t really want to talk to, at boring parties,  that I am descended from Jesus’ daughter and the Black Madonna.  It does stop a conversation short and they do look at you strangely.  Another conversation stopper is telling someone that you are in line to the British throne.  One of those aforementioned Lezards married the Queen’s cousin, so do the maths and you will agree that should a whole heap of the real royal family kick the golden bucket, I would be next in line.

One day I shall return to Africa.  I would love to follow the trail of kpanlogo which is at the heart of so many African rhythms.  I could take the camera and do a “1 Giant Leap” to pay for the trip. But for now  I must rummage around in the old tea chest under the house, and see if the record is there.  Part of my life has passed.  I am sure many round the world are playing her music right now.  Here’s to you Mama Afrika!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1YKOk9QA8U

I saved Duncan Bridgeman’s sorry ass last night. He’s the Grammy nominated film director from 1 Giant Leap. The only New Zealand screening of their latest offering “What About Me?” was held in Stonyridge vineyard last night, just round the corner from me.  “Where you from, girl?” the Maori from the two-piece opening act Unity Pacific asked.  He’s the father of Che Fu, one of New Zealand’s top Hip Hop artists.  “From over the mountain, bro” I replied, pointing in the direction of the hill in the distance.  It seemed more fitting than saying “Ostend” or “Palm Beach”.  He and I watched Duncan struggle with a flimsy screen and the worst kind of data projector set-up for a film of this power. Who were these jokers?  An international act of this importance deserves better, I thought.  Eventually, the woman who was co-ordinating the event – billed as ‘exclusive’  – came up to me and said “Er, Susi, you wouldn’t happen to have a king size white sheet handy by any chance?”

One thing we had at the Big Intent was a brilliant tech team and fantastic equipment.  “Leave it to me” I said to Duncan, and within 45 minutes they had collected one of the Big Intent’s large screens, brought it back and set it up.  Phew!  The show could go on and just as well as all sorts of ‘celeb’ types had arrived from overseas to see this one-off NZ screening.

Last night New Zealand voted for a new government, a National party whose policies on climate change are shameful.  The one good thing is that Catherine has got into Parliament.  She’ll shake up the house. Kia kaha e hoa ma!

If there is only one film you see this year, see this!  “What About Me?” will change your life, will comfort you, will connect you to the pulse of the universe.  It is my gift to you, my friend.   Enjoy!

http://www.whataboutme.tv/#home