STUDIO83

I grew up with the idea that the education process was my occupation. I was made to understand that the difference between adults and children was that adults had to work, and that a child’s job was to go to school, so that s/he might too grow to be an adult [who worked]. I understood this to be a normal cycle of life; and school was to me a rite of passage.

I did not question why I had to go to school, nor what it was I was doing there. I did not resent it; it was something I had to go through in order to become an honourable member of society. School, is a broad term. Whether school means a period of apprenticeship (in a trade) or a tertiary education (technological or academia); I understood that post high-school was a period of learning that involved preparing me for the world that would come: the world of work and independence. 

Granted I am a child of a different era: it was during my formative years that the phrase “15 minutes of fame” was brought to life (during the OJ Simpson Trial of 1995). I understood the difference between a stroke of luck and hard work. I know that some people are called to different life’s work: you can be called to a life of solitude (as in a monk) or a life of service (as in a doctor or a nurse), and that some people are called to a life of fame (as in an artist, who is celebrated for their creativity).

If creativity is your life’s work, then you know that you are called to a life of communicating to the masses. This communication takes many forms; you may communicate something about a people or communicate something to a people. Either way, you are simply the vessel through which the communication is mitigated; the message is in no way about you.

What a wonderful life-pursuit I think: to live your life as a kind of documentarian; about a people or reflect certain values to a people. This calling is inborn yes, and as a trade, it is one that has to be learnt (preferably at the feet of some or other great master). Said master will allow you to apprentice with them in order that they transfer the skills of the trade to you to ensure your competence as a communicator. The master might even throw trials at you to test the strength of the knowledge that you have gained. Therein lies the value of your apprenticeship – how it stands up to testing.  We do not receive technological products that have not been thoroughly tested, so how do we expect to unleash unto an unsuspecting society incompetent creative communicators?

The goal of one’s apprenticeship is to do all the master puts to you so that you might grow in the trade. The understanding is that once you have become a trade-master in your own right, you might change the rules, and bring innovation to your trade. It baffles me therefore, when I observe in my immediate environment zombies who await discovery by a camera crew who will catapult them into television success. The thought that an odd appearance on Selimathunzi (whose goal is eventual graduation onto a reality show on Vuzu TV) might even carve out a decadent living for an individual is as real as it gets nowadays. 

What happens while you await this upcoming success and celebration? Who feeds you? Who clothes you?

Who is bankrolling your “rockstar” lifestyle (even though you are simply a kasi-boy who has never actually strummed a cord on an electric guitar)? What if this “success” will never come? How will you live then? I live in a world of eternal optimists. People who think they can cruise the malls in their ice-cream sneakers “in the hopes” of becoming “something in life”. The thing is never quite defined you see, it is whatever that life will bestow upon you. What hope is there when you are a 25 year old optimist who wakes up to cornflakes in an abandoned kitchen (because its occupants have gone to work) and an all-day Cartoon Network marathon on a satellite connection that is paid for by your mother? What hope is there for the 25 year old first year student optimist who sometimes wakes to attend classes in a trade “in the hopes” s/he might become “something”? Even though his/her masterful lecturer might not actually possess a magic wand to wave upon him the trade’s magic?

How do we become without transformation? Becoming is not simply a process of “turning out to be” you have to grow in order to undergo conversion. You come in a novice, and grow to be a trades-specialist.  School is a ritual that changes who you are.  You move from one state to another.

Use your rite of passage. Get ready to become!

Photographer // Sfiso