MILESTONES

I had a milestone experience recently that was poignant, sad, happy, and made a grown man cry tears.

Bloody hell.  Cowboys even cry now and then, but South African men?  Lash us with barbed wire and we'll laugh.  Apply shock treatment and we'll tell you it tickles.  Beat us at rugby and... okay okay we can get a bit choked up about that I'll admit, especially when it's done by those men in yellow from the nanny state down under.  But cry?  Come on man, that's for Manhattan metrosexuals and Los Angelinos trying to get in touch with their feminine side and Dallas Ole Boys at an Evangelical Rally.  Not us okes.  But I did.  Not as in buckets, but my cheeks were wet.

It's all about the passage of time, and suddenly realising an age has passed.  You'll never again see that unbridled joy when you hand over their first bicycle or full-size cricket bat.  You'll never again guide them as they try some new skill, see that awe as they gaze at some new wonder, watch them drive away in the bus on that first camp at the new school, console them as they fail and try again, celebrate and laugh with them as they make it through.

You look at parents with young kids and suddenly feel like you're lost.  That age with your kids has gone.

Don't get me wrong. I've got two extraordinarily awesome sons.  The one is a maverick entrepreneur networking genius.  The other is a really talented sportsman, scholar, also a helluva entrepreneur, a prankster and character of note.  They've got great values, amazing character and I could never be prouder of them.

St David's Marist Inanda recently held their Final Assembly for the Class of 2011.  Of which my younger son is a member.  My older son is a member of the class of 2009.  His Final Assembly was pretty emotional, but it didn't hit home then that this life would soon be over.  His younger brother still had another two years.

This time was different.  Suddenly we would no longer be sitting at the side of the rugby field or cricket pitch with the other parents.  We wouldn't be bellowing our lungs out as the boys in black and gold thundered towards the try-line.  We wouldn't be sharing wine and snacks at the oval and counting down the overs as they chased a score.  We wouldn't be going to the drama, cultural or fireworks events at the school.

So when the Class of 2011 stood on that stage and did Kalamazoomba for the last time as matrics, and their classmates in the hall returned the war-cry with equal vigour, I found myself with wet cheeks.

Next year both our boys will be in Cape Town and my wife and I will be doing what they call empty-nesting.

It will be a time of new challenges, new rhythms, and new opportunities.  But I will miss them.  No one quite prepares you for this.  I want them to go out there and make their way in the world.  Study.  Think.  Experience.  For them it's the next great adventure.

So why not for us?  Well, 'adventure' is a little over the top right now.  I'm still in the re-group phase.  But my mojo for the unfettered life is awaking and maybe 'adventure' won't be over the top in awhile.  Just give me awhile.  I've got to get used to this.

EPIPHANY AT STR.CRD

By the standards of anyone below the age of 25, I’m a different species.

I like Vivaldi, Haydn, Bach and Beethoven.   My idea of chilling is listening to BBC Radio4 podcasts with a good glass of red wine.

So I was grumpy when I had to go film str.crd 2011.   Last thing I need on a weekend is doef doef music and lots of people who start their sentences with the word “like”.  On top of that the client’s marketing woman had said the str.crd video team would be filming their stall, so why were we actually going?  We decided we loved the BOS brand so we were going anyway.  Which turned out to be a good thing because whoever they were, the str.crd video okes never arrived.

NOTE: Oops, they did arrive.  My bad.  And filmed a great piece for BOS.  My apologies to str.crd and BOS.  View their video at: http://vimeo.com/30725244

So anyway, I'm expecting a tortuous day.

What I got, was a mainline jab of pure street and undiluted youth culture.  

Some of the most gravity-defying, adrenalin-pumping, flavourful people on the planet!  All over 25s like me should have to do this kind of thing on a regular basis as prescribed medicine.  

I met a chick who designed miniature clay pendant sneakers, a guy who is resurrecting old stills cameras – Lomography - that shoot on – gasp – film!  I met Du Toit Botes from Zipz shoes who has a shoe where the upper unzips from the sole so you can have three shoes-styles in one, all on the same day.  I interviewed Darryl Coetzee, a breakdance dude, and then picked up my jaw from the floor when I saw the insane stuff him and other b-dancers could do.

Design student goes BOS against the BOS wall

This is stuff national gymnasts would find challenging.  When I used to do gym (before the Ark was built), there was this thing called a pommel-horse, and you swung around it.  Darryl’s dudes where doing sicker moves that those, on the floor – no horse!

Pommel-horse stuff without the pommel...

They were doing back somersaults off another dude’s stomach.

"Hey Frank, you need a new pair of sneakers, dude..."

They can spin on their heads, like forever.  Like.  Oh God, I’m being infected…

"I can do this all day if you like..."

It's called a jumping-up-and-down-on-one-hand handstand

It was a weekend of demolition.  Demolition of my predjudices and paradigms that young people are shallow, easily influenced and don’t understand the real world.  They understand.  Profoundly.

 

I talked to some of the sharpest minds I’d met in ages.  These young adults have a far deeper insight to complex issues than I’d ever believed.  They were cool, interesting, funny, perceptive and irreverent.  They were talented – my God.  Such talent.  And hey, colour, race, all that shit – it’s so irrelevant.  The leaders of tomorrow don’t see the world through those eyes.  Their take on many issues was so incisive, so well informed that, even if I disagreed, I came away with fresh hope for this country’s future. 

This is not kneejerk sociology.  These are young people with well-formed and well-debated opinions, keen to throw them into the pool of robust discussion, hear other perspectives and form their own view of their world and their future.

Case in point: Mark Ong.  

Mark Ong a.k.a SBTG and his wife, Sue-Anne Lin

When I was Mark’s age my parents wanted me to work for the SABC (I didn’t take their advice, by the way).  What’s Mark’s profession?  Get this.  He hand-designs sneakers.  For a living.  Travels the world, with his beautiful wife, Sue-Anne.  Job description on business card?  Sneakerhead.  Well, no, his business-card is an amended US$100 bill, featuring his website: www.royalefam.com.  But I digress. 

Mark epitomises the cultural and economic climate of his generation: with far fewer options in terms of permanent employment, armed only with an edgy attitude and some skill, he simply employed himself. 

He couldn’t afford to keep replacing his skateboard damaged sneakers, so painted over them with his own designs.  Someone noticed the skill in the designs and suggested he enter a competition.  He does.  He wins.  Globally.  Nike says, ‘Hello, will you customise Nike sneakers?  Like, on a retainer?’  Like, is the Pope a Catholic?  

So Mark and Sue-Anne get to travel all around the world and design sneakers.  Already he’s made shoes for celebs like James Lavelle, Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn from Linkin Park, and Q-tip.

He describes his works as “an unguided result of his life which depicts influences from skateboarding through the late 80’s to mid 90’s, military aesthetics and disciplines, and heavy metal and punk music from that era.”

So why sneakers?  (When I was small we just called them takkies).  Sneaker enthusiasm has a long history in youth culture.  Sneaker-wearers have blurred the lines between athletic gear and stylish streetwear, and sneaker manufacturers have responded by creating demand by producing limited-edition models, creating status out of scarcity and giving more control over what makes a product unique.  Custom sneakers is the logical outcome of that marketing strategy, and a pair of well-designed customised sneakers has big street cred.  One-of-a-kind, and massively cool. 

So what BOS Ice Tea did was hold a Sneaker Custom Workshop, hosted by Mark.  They threw in some highly talented students from the design faculties of Tuks, Wits and UJ, handed out a bunch of sneakers, gave them as much BOS tea as they could drink, and watched the magic unfold, as Mark and Sue-Anne showed them the basics and then drifted around giving hints and advice, as bland was transformed to bold, as cliché became cool, as mass-produced became personal design-manifesto. 

"You guys ready for this?"

"Ummm, is that the green paint or the fallout from my sneeze?"

Very clever marketing by BOS.  The brand gets major kudos with opinion-forming mavens and its legend continues to build in a highly credible storyline…

And thanks, everyone, for my personal epiphany.  James Joyce, go suck eggs.  This one’s mine.

Here's our video of str.crd.  Not edited by me - otherwise it would have had a Vivaldi sound track.  

No, I did the right thing and gave this to one of our very talented YOUNG editors here at TVPC Film and Media, whose short film, by the way, was nominated at the Cannes Film Festival this year.