Mr Tambourine Man...

I am a loser. I fail at everything I attempt. I am an awkward, off balance bumbling idiot. I am just like you… but I am me. I put myself down so you can get a lift... That is my serious side.

I am here to mock the serious world we live in. I don’t cry because it is over, I smile because it happened.  I hope I can remind you with a smile, or perhaps a tear, that to be human is to make mistakes… sometimes really stupid mistakes…

This oil spill in the Gulf is affecting everybody.
In fact, when I went to lunch this weekend and ordered the sea bass,
they asked if I wanted it regular or unleaded.
- David Letterman

(A man holds a plastic bag with seawater and oil from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill south of Freemason Island, Louisiana May 7, 2010)

I represent the flip side of sanity. I speak to “power”. I have the ability to speak to the most powerful and the mightiest among us… the governments, the presidents, the kings and queens… I am here to ridicule the establishment and mock authority. I am not the centre of an event… I appear between the great acts, fumble and fall to make you smile again after the tensions created by the heroes we came to admire…

I laugh at myself. I don’t make the joke, I am the joke. I take the bucket in my face, my trousers fall down. I am the one who falls off the ladder. Thank heavens I am only a clown… 

It would have been awful to have been a real human being. But all the world loves a clown?!  I am being tortured for your entertainment. I even pretend to enjoy it... hehe. I know this sounds a bit disturbing… hey? Doesn’t it? Does it make me fundamentally a victim?

Sometimes I scare me a little bit... I tell the truth. My jokes, which seem trivial, are actually all true. Sometimes I think it is not I who is crazy, foolish or upside down… but the world. Sometimes I think I am the only one that really sees clearly. Can you see me? I am no victim. I confront authority openly. I am a truthteller in a world of lies… I highlight the madness of this world with my wit... I think... therefore I clown...

I prefer actions to words... and signs to talking. People think I am a fool... 

They think I cannot deal with trauma very well. Maybe they are right? But I make them laugh... laughter has always been the language of the spirit… it is a light… it is warmth. And the gods of healing and good fortune always find a way inside the hardest heart to connect us to the Heart of the sky. 

All power play is an illusion. Through my humour I think laterally and outside the box. I am the symbol of freedom from the imprisonment of the human spirit in a confined world. Through humour we can transcend… we can see that the emperor has no clothes… that we all have balloon like ego’s….

‘We live on the Planet of the Apes. Is that funny? Or serious?” – Robert Wilson

Comedy and tragedy are closely related. The yin and yang of the human condition… I know people everywhere realize that the most powerful people in the world are those who give their power away… it is easy for me to play the fool… I don’t have to prove nothing…

“ It seems plausible that folly and fool, like magic and religion, meet some deeply rooted need in human society.” Peter Berger

Can you see me now?

There are two kinds of people in this world. People who hate clowns… and clowns. People who bring their own clown to life… and their own imagination into play. We all know clearly the difference between "reality” and “imagination” In the imagination anything is possible… it is the space charged with the possible. With being a clown for a while we can discover our own archetype within ourselves…. We can find our own ways of being a clown… we are given permission to clown around a bit, to be a child again, to be in a naïve and fragile state, to experience opposites through intensity and amplification.

We can experience a metamorphoses… take of our clothes…. Put on our red noses, those outrageous shoes, the larger-than- life shorts… open ourselves a bit….  Bring out our imagination…listen to our feelings…listen to our bodies… listen to others… improvise…

Being a clown is more than a state. It is a movement, a dynamic process – it is even a two way movement: feet on the ground and head in the clouds. This duality facilitates the emergence of our imagination.

Let’s keep our feet on the ground. Let’s remain alert to the concrete reality that surrounds us. Smell it… hear it….feel the world touching us…. Experience this anchor of reality…the security of it. This is our invitation to drift further into the absurd… look at the world beyond what we know…move at the edge of two worlds… that of imagination… and reality… 

Experience the feeling of being in a permanent state of instability…. Do not control… when we let go of control we become aware and surprised by the depth that emerges… give ourselves permission to be a non-conformist for a while…take out the clown in the closet… play with rules and social conventions… Just for  short while “pretend” not to be the responsible, mature, educated and intelligent (which we all are of course!) person… allow ourselves just for a minute a two to become an unruly spirit prone to excesses and a keen explorer of the edges of things…rid yourself of dogma… find a new direction… move forward… exceed the speed of light. Is this the real world? Is this just fantasy?

Light and dark are merely facets of reality. To shatter constraints inside our spirit one has to explode mentally in order to break free of the limitations of our perceptions…. Let’s imagine a new world… together… reality is always way ahead of what we can imagine!

Though you might hear laughin', spinnin', swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

“You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you” – Bob Dylan... is it blowin' in the wind?

Send in the clowns… it is 2011 before 12!

The Spirit of the Great Heart... Asimbonanga

Embarking on a journey to find your true self… your core… your destiny… your inner soul… the mythical being inside you… your reason for being on this earth… the dream for your life… your purest desire… All these themes are probably just ways to ask whether you are really being true to yourself. Not the easiest journey, but a journey that continues to be one of the most profound, personal experiences I could ever imagine….

The world is full of strange behaviour

Every man has to be his own saviour

I know I can make it on my own if I try

But I'm searching for a Great Heart to stand me by

Underneath the African sky

A Great Heart to stand me by

I'm searching for the Spirit of the Great Heart

To hold and keep me by

I'm searching for the spirit of the Great Heart

Under African sky

Sometimes I feel that you really know me

Sometimes there's so much you can show me

There's a highway of stars across the heavens

The whispering song of the wind in the grass

There's the rolling thunder across the savanna

A hope and dream at the edge of the sky

And your life is a story like the wind

Your life is a story like the wind

- Johnny Clegg and Savuka (Spirit of the Great Heart)





A very important part of my journey over the past few years involved accessing the will of the universal soul… finding the spirit of the great heart by looking deep inside and defining my innermost desires. Looking for, choosing and immersing myself in archetypes and symbols that most closely matched my intentions. These “reminders of inspiration” turned out to be the keys to my true and ever unfolding destiny…



Many people have inspired me over the years, most of them still do… It is extremely interesting to seek the most inspirational characteristic in people and friends around me… and they all have it… we all have magic within us. I can surely say that I have only encountered two people in my lifetime that I have experienced as being evil…(the Christians are giving poor ole Satan way too much credit - the "blame the devil" - mentality) Yes, I have met a few people whom I did not like, but even they had some kind of beauty within them… I consciously also try not to label people… the minute we do that we become stuck… like a butterfly in a jar….



Archetypes are more than just people… they are the “bigger than life” mythical figures we talk about around the campfire… the legends… the heroes... So, over the past three years I visited the places where I could get close to the lives and history of my archetypes. I spent many hours researching, reading and finding out as much as I could about these mythical beings that inspired me so much.I wanted to feel what they felt... see what they saw... smell what they smelt...



I must confess that quite a few historical figures really tickle my inner being… Kafka, Cleopatra, Dali, Mozart, Jung, Nietzsche, Tutu, Ataturk, Tutankhamen, Batman (Yes, I've been to Hollywood), The Joker, Goya, Michaelangelo, Donnie Darko, Sitting Bull, Nefertiti, Gaudi, Steve Biko … and I visited all the places where they have spent their lives or parts of it… still need to visit China and India to learn about Taoism and Gandhi.



My favourite archetype took me to a temple site at Ephesus in Turkey during April 2009. The only temple in the world where a pillar of one of the ancient seven wonders of the world is still in existence. The temple is named after a beautiful woman.

She is a nonconformist, the wild one, the rule breaker, the fearless warrior who fights for what she believes in. She is ARTEMIS, the twin sister of Apollo and daughter of Zeus. The goddess of wild animals and birds. 

Artemis had a beloved companion, Orion. He then boasted that he would slay all the beasts of the earth. Gaia (the earth) sent forth a scorpion to slay him, and when he fell, the grief stricken Artemis placed him amongst the stars as the constellation Orion. Orion is one of the most conspicuous and most regonizable constellations in the night sky and visible throughout the world. Orion is also a very useful aid in locating other stars.



The inherent message from Artemis to me: Create stars that will be visible throughout the world.

The second archetype reminds me of the wife of Lot in the Bible… this poor woman only looked back and turned to stone. (The vicious Guy in the Sky does not sleep according to Christian mythology!)  My archetype MEDUSA is to be found in Istanbul. In October 2009 I flew off to Turkey once again with the purpose of exploring the mystery legend of the snake headed woman.


Medusa, one of three sisters in Greek mythology known as the Gorgons, had a destructive effect upon humans. In many myths, she appeared as a horribly ugly woman with hair made of snakes, although occasionally she was described as being beautiful. In both forms, Medusa's appearance was deadly: any person who gazed directly at her would turn to stone.

With the help of the goddess Athena and a group of nymphs Perseus cut off Medusa's head in one swipe and put it in a bag. The drops of blood that fell from the head turned into Medusa's two sons—Chrysaor and Pegasus

My personal message from Medusa: We as humans destruct ourselves and turn to stone when we look around and see what is happening to the earth. Why does this happen?Why can't we all not get involved to save the earth by taking little actions that will leave behind an earth we can be proud of? … we all have wings like Pegasus…we must just use them. (Ons moet nou nie ‘n klomp klippe wees nie, man!!)



Atlanta, the city of MARTIN LUTHER KING, was also on my list. I arrived there in September 2009 to learn about this great hero.

"All I'm saying is simply this, that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality".


— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


Striking words! My personal learning from Martin Luther King:


- Follow your dreams and do what you need to do…
- We are all connected - allow one another to be...
- All people of all countries are interdependent ... we are all world citizens

To find my next two archetypes was quite easy… I just had to return to South Africa… and having had the privilege to experience the miracle of the great change from Apartheid to a democratic society, I could learn firsthand from the greats: NELSON MANDELA and DESMOND TUTU. I can honestly recommend a visit to the Apartheidsmuseum and Robben Island. Many books and articles about these two great leaders are available everywhere…



As you know, I am not impressed with religion. Everywhere I look, religion, their leaders and most of the followers send a message that divide people … the psychological, emotional and physical killing fields in the name of religion is there for all to see. Yuk! But... One man, Rev Desmond Tutu rises above this petty arrogance… and earns respect of people worldwide. (Can the Pope please recruit Rev Tutu for a consulting job in humanity ?)

Rainbow Nation is a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa, after South Africa's first fully-democratic election in 1994.


The phrase was elaborated upon by President Nelson Mandela in his first month of office, when he proclaimed: "Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."


The term was intended to encapsulate the unity of multi-culturalism and the coming-together of people of many different nations, in a country once identified with the strict division of white and black.

Tutu spoke of the 'Rainbow People of God'. As a cleric, this metaphor drew upon the Old Testament story of Noah's Flood, and its ensuing rainbow of peace. Within South African indigenous cultures, the rainbow is associated with hope and a bright future (as in Xhosa culture).

Whether the rainbow has Newton's seven colours, or five of the Nguni (i.e., Xhosa and Zulu) cosmology, the colours are not taken literally to represent particular cultural groups. The implied rhetoric avoids direct reference to colour in the sense of race (especially when acknowledging that natural rainbows have neither white nor black, the two race-associative colours). The colours are simply said to symbolise the diversity of South Africa's usually unspecified cultural, ethnic or racial groups. And we should be working hard to SHOUT against the red stuff on our flag. Why are such a small number of anarchists keeping all the good people captured?

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” – Desmond Tutu

My learning from Desmond Tutu:


- As South Africans we have a miracle to sell to the rest of the world… the concept of sustainability is not just a “green” issue… it is a rainbow issue … we need to get all the people in the world to take hands and take care of this planet.
-… and stop using religious excuses and religious self righteousness as a barrier to divide the nations of the world


For me, the most touching words by Nelson Mandela is to be seen in the following clip:



“It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world… and at peace with myself…” – Nelson Mandela



My core learning from Nelson Mandela:

- Music and Art brings peace to the world... and to the self
- After climbing one hill, there are many more hills to climb…
- Simunye… We are one … ubuntu



Learning from my archetypes created the philosophical foundation for the Istart2 initiative. In my next blog I will complete the picture with a focus on the main symbols connecting my archetypes and the symbols that resonate within my soul.

“ Da’s ‘n sterriekie inni gaaikie inni mirrel funny c”

In the words of Nelson Mandela:”It always seems impossible, until it is done" 
We have only just begun...