When my family emigrated from England to South Africa, I struggled for a while with the climate… and the cultural change. Everything was dry and hot… and we moved in January, it had been snowing and freezing in Greater Manchester… in South Africa it was dusty, dry, and sickeningly hot. For the first few years, the days I loved the most were the rainy days. Another thing that struck me as different was the overwhelming presence of religion and religious belief within the majority of people. Religion was used like an iron fist at school to keep students in line through fear of eternal damnation in the fiery depths of hell. It was natural for me to rebel against anything that was being forced upon me… especially if it was in the form of a threat. There was nothing I despised more than the words ‘you are going to be in so much trouble if you do that.’ I remember fellow students revelling in the idea that you would be punished for forgetting to bring a book or a form or something insignificant.
One of the classes that we had at school was ‘RI’. I wondered what this was. Rudimentary Intelligence, perhaps? Afterall, most of the people in my class seemed years behind in their reading and comprehensive skills. It turned out that RI was Religious Instruction. After several RI classes, the teacher asked the class ‘Who in the class doesn’t believe in God?’ I was the only student to raise their hand. The teacher looked at me coldly and told me that I didn’t need to come to the class in future. I was overjoyed. After that, when my class went to RI, I went to the art room and spent the time with my friends who were usually in there, painting, drawing, listening to music, and just generally being creative.
As the years passed by, I formed bands with some of those artists, others formed bands of their own, and some went on to play in popular bands whilst designing album covers and concert posters and so on. Those art class days were more than 30 years ago and all the people I met in that class are still artists and creatives to this day… those that are still alive.
