In my mini quest (alternatively read: a 27-year-old's quagmire... and nope, the word 'quagmire' never gets dull!), I stumbled upon some pretty endearing characters.
My 6-year-old self:
-- has a family of pet snails, identifying each individually by the dot of paint she's strategically planted on their shells. (In hindsight, a hole-ridden ice-cream tupperware is maybe not the ideal environment for a pet garden snail.)
-- writes (probably nonsensical) 'snail tales' detailing the lives of her favourite molluscs
-- discovers the pause button on the remote control (VHS!) and spends hours dedicated to recreating her favourite Care Bears.
-- dreams of one day being the youngest author ever. (This will soon be Blow No. 1 for young Jocelyn.)
Wish Bear was always a personal favourite.
My 8-year-old self:
-- appears to have made it halfway through an ambitious project entitled At the End of the Rainbow (okay, so it's hardly the most original title!), clearly marking her romanticised gypsy-phase and a fascination with colours that have strange names like ochre or turquoise, although the second colour takes considerably more concentration to write down.
--wishes she had ringlets (yet another word-inspired crush).
--still occasionally misspells 'said' as 'siad'.
-- dreams of one day meeting Moon-Face even though she knows that's not exactly something she should ever say out loud.
I love this depiction of Moon-Face by Durban-based illustrator, Helga Pearson!
Then I went back, not too far, to a varsity editorial I had to do once.
Just three years ago, there she was: my 24-year-old self. Apparently idealism was one of her stronger points. And reading what she had to say, it surprised me. A 24-year-old Jocelyn never doubted that words, that art, could change the world, and in ways that were true and meaningful. And it's all the more surprising when, to think of it, she really isn't so far off from where I am now.
It's just another reminder I'm glad to have.
A 24-year-old's idealistic editorial for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University's creative annual, Sharp! magazine:
How to answer the question that comes with the editorial, "What is Sharp!?" (It's as slippery a question as when the Italian asks that I tell her about 'my country' and I wonder what it is to call something 'mine' or a 'country'.) So I begin with what I do know, and is what I've hoped, throughout this entire process, Sharp! would not be. I hoped it wouldn't be the stuff of the Ivory Tower, because any Rapunzel will tell you that she is lonely. And I hoped it would never be alienating or intimidating. Instead, I hoped that you would find it beyond definition, because it is the 'beyond definition' that offers possibility and the making of magic.
Our country is in the process of prising open even the most territorialised of the past's tyrannical strongholds, and our arts must carry the torch into these spaces. So if you took up this edition, expecting a theme, you will find none. It speaks only to the vibrant, quilted tongue of the proud hybrid that is often, all at once: frustrated, infuriated, challenged but excited, riveted, even beguiled. In Sharp! 2008 are the voices and visions of the African griot, the storyteller, the one who witnesses and passes the story on.
[...] And when I consider how blessed this venture has been in the diverse scope of its artistic reach, I am reminded of African-American writer, Alice Walker, and her insistence that what is needed most in the appreciation of art, and life, is "the larger perspective," and the ability to find in this "varied world the common thread." While it may seem, at times, that we are speaking in tongues that do not understand each other, that do not share the same heart nor mind, it is this observation of Alice Walker's that might provide a point of departure in turning these pages. For the stories that we tell are not remote, are not strangers to each other, but rather pieces of an Immense Story simply torn from different cloths, strips that when brought together, make for the most dazzling of tapestries. And the tapestry you are holding is made of African, South African, Afrikaans, Xhosa, English, Irish, multilingual, multi-visual and multi-coloured thread, that weaves our Immense Story. It tells of the human spirit that is neither black nor white, nor brown nor yellow, and speaks back to power: Do what you will to my body, throw what you may at my mind, but you will not claim my song.
Sharp! Volume.6 Spring 2008
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