How to say "Gherkin" in German.

Ok let’s just be honest, music…. is.

It's recommended for pregnancy, played at our funerals and sits upon the seat of memory as King. It’s a force to be reckoned with, played with and above all, it’s a force you simply cannot live without.

Imagine the profundity of the Music Festival - a place where humans gather as one muscle to flex the beauty of existence. I’ve been lucky enough to experience this quite a few times but The Hurricane Music Festival in Scheessel, Germany, is one I’ll never forget.

Watch the Aftermovie here.

 The trip began in my varsity years. 

I met Tamaryn Sutherland - a girl who stood out, stood up and became my friend. She was my confidant in pretty much everything, especially when it came to music and the arts.

Tamaryn married a German philosopher in 2012 and consequently moved to Hamburg. She asked me to visit her in June 2013. She also mentioned The Hurricane music festival and rolled out the band line-up like a red carpet to the stars. The festival was to host a smorgasbord of sound from all over the world. From Sigur Ros to Queens Of The Stone Age and right round back to the beats of Sibot – our very own. I downed a glass of water, smashed the piggy and booked my air ticket straightaway.

I'm not Rockafella, i'm the other fella.  

Traveling with the buck is hard. You’re quick to know that the only thing to buy in Dubai is time. Trawling rows of dates and running out of naked skin upon which to squirt complimentary perfume I was more than happy to sheik Dubai’s dust. Despite it being the second busiest airport in the world, Dubai is surprisingly dismal and their currency – too foreign. After eight mind numbingly boring hours to the power of Instagram I was once again on route to Hamburg.

Hamburg is that congenial, overcast, well-packaged guy who reached into the breadbasket same time as you, causing you to blush. Hamburg’s made love to many, especially the Beatles. Known as The City Of Rivers, Hamburg’s charming water supply snaking through the city carries ancient stories of exotic shipments and visitors to the doorsteps of modern Hamburgers. By day it’s a bustling metropolis of businessmen and pigeons – by night it definitely is not - Google Reeberbahn.

Hearing The Kings Of Convenience carried on the wind over the gates of the city park and into the happy throng of peasant music lovers who couldn’t afford a ticket, I got a real taste for three good things in Hamburg: a dream come true, a Saturday afternoon in June and real black forest cake.

 Listen to the best Kings Of Convenience album - maybe ever. 

Summer in Europe is all about spring. 

My friend’s apartment is nestled between two hedges amid a row of sky scraping poplar trees. Every spot of vegetation wields a magnificent explosion of green. Everything is moving – trying to soak up as much sun before the hellish nature of winter takes its grip for the most part of the year. European lifestyle seems to me a balancing act of seasonal scales tipping the weather from one extreme to another.

Sausages. 

Love em - and the Germans are good at making em. Enough said.

Scheessel... 

...it's just an hour or two outside Hamburg and boasts nothing more than a few sheep and well, 80 000 drunk Germans once a year. We walked for about an hour into the venue to find our camping spot. Our two-man, neon green camping tent was posted between a camper van and what looked like a camper tank.

The festival grounds are massive and muddy and make for an interesting walk back to your camp non-compass - mentis in the dark. On several occasions I lost my legs to deep pools of mud and grime and then after having found them, have them lost again to the multitude crowd of grooving guten tags. Gumboots and swag – two things I forgot to bring to the Hurricane Music festival.

Best performance goes to Paul Kalkbrenner. 

Known for his highly coveted platinum track “Sky and Sand”, he’s Germany’s homegrown talent, Captain of House, King of Techno, Master of Minimal and ambassador for East Berlin. Everyone loves him – he mediates and pacifies the underlying disconnection between Germans through the joy of his music. It was a rare privilege to experience his gig. It’s outrageously fun, meaningful and uplifting. 

At one point i had squeezed myself into a melting pot of race, creed and culture that was sandwiched between a rainbow on the one side and the sunset on the other. I was overcome with gratefulness at the shared community of youth, freedom and life he made us all feel – if only for one brief moment.

After three days of World Class music, World Class sound and World Class mosh pitting I felt overindulged, hung-over and completely in love with life.  The train trip back to Sheessel had us standing in a queue for over three hours watching person and possession fight their way back to civilization. It must be said that I love the Germans – but don’t come near me with that language.

How to say Gherkin in German - By Tamlyn.

In conclusion, here’s a list mind blowing acts from the Hurricane Festival 2013:

1. Paul Kalkbrenner

2. Queens Of The Stone Age

3. Moderat

4. The National

5. Sigur Ros

6. Tame Impala

7. The Maccabees

8. Bloc Party

9. Of Monsters and Men

10. Portishead

11. Parov Stelar

And tailing the besties were these disappointing beasties:

1. Smashing Pumpkins

2. Ramstein

3. Alt J

On the flight back to Johannesburg I was the poorest I’d ever been and yet – strangely enriched by a country, a festival and a friend I’ll forever be grateful for.

In memory of.

People make people. 

It happens when time, circumstance, age and experience align. It’s usually surprising and sometimes just a brief moment – but when it does it’s powerful and hard to forget. It’s taken me a few years to collect my thoughts on this particular story but like most growing things, it’s also all about timing.

I was in my second year of varsity when I met Geoffrey Mangin. 

He was a 93-year-old man with thick black-rimmed glasses and a red jacket who liked to sit alone during lunch. Being a resident of the Rosedale old age home, Geof said that he preferred his own company to the “squabbling drivel” of the old folk around him.

I had been sent to Rosedale as part of a photojournalism assignment. I was to research, document and write about “abandoned people”. For those of you who’ve ever frequented an old age home the signs are up all over… and haven’t been taken down for months. Moth eaten newspaper articles, tuckshop prices and invites to music recitals long expired hang gingerly off dusted pin up boards. The distant echo of a shuffle down the corridor and that distinct sour smell of lavender hand cream and instant smash wafting through the hallways is enough to tell you that visitors are rare. Well, atleast for Geof they are.

I had found my muse. 

Surprisingly Geof agreed to answer all of my questions. I asked him where he was born, what his vocation was, how he ended up in Cape Town and was he enjoying his lunch.

His answers were surprising. Little did anyone know that tucked away in the corner of the Rosedale dining hall was Africa’s first pioneering cinematographer. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Geof began his career out as an accountant but had always been drawn to the camera. Having served his time in both World Wars he eventually got his hands on a video camera and disappeared into the wilderness of Zimbabwe to document it’s expanse. The solitary meandering, the openness of nature and the beauty he could capture of it with his camera gave Geof the fulfilment he had always been looking for.

Years down the line and still a bachelor, Geof retired and ended up at Rosedale, Cape Town - where a small margin of his family were living. He got to see his cousin once or twice a month for Sunday lunch. When he wasn’t reading or watching BBC planet he would sit alone most days teaching himself how to use his Dell Desktop from 1997. Geof was happy. Geof was going deaf. Geof was my oldest friend.

 I’d visit once a week. 

I’d make tea and sneak a teaspoon of peanut butter on the off chance that he had some. We’d talk about everything, seriously. We’d talk about detergent, photography, the weather, spirituality, the state of the nation and what we were both most afraid of. Turns out my biggest fear was his greatest solace in life – and that was of being alone.  

He told me once of the only woman he had ever loved. She was from Johannesburg and a flirt. He said he spent years loving her from a distance as she never returned his sentiments. Who knows how much of his love he truly revealed but the real kicker came when I find out she was one of my distant relatives.

Weird.

Anyway, his advice to me was keep your heart more open than your eyes. What Geof learned early on in life was to surrender to what he needed and not what he wanted. Even though Geof seemed lonely he had everything he knew he needed. He was a pioneer, an explorer and above all he was good at saying no. For me that was a lot to understand and still is.

Geof passed away in January 2013... 

... 3 months after I left Cape Town for Johannesburg. We had tried to keep in touch through writing letters in the post – but eventually his letters stopped coming until I received an email from his niece. Geof had had a bad fall in the bathroom and was admitted to hospital. He never recovered. It was a sad day but the feeling of complete gratitude for having experienced a friendship that knew no age, time or distance overwrote my sense of loss with a profound sense of fulfilment and well, growth.  May we all come to find the people that make us people.