Last night I made a return to the red carpet. At the Television Academy’s convention Televerse. SNL was celebrating its 50th Anniversary and we caught an early episode of Black Mirror.
Afterwards I had a vodka martini with Y and we spoke of life’s adventures. The maps and décor on the ceiling of The Wolves inspired stories of travel.
For my part I recalled my narrow escape from the military coup d’état in Mauritania, when President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya was ousted by the Armed Forces of Mauritania in 2005. We were staying at a friend’s mining offices at the time. Two South African Afrikaans geologists were there with us, who burst open the door in the morning, waking us to the situation—that a man with an assault rifle was out the front of our building. And that a man just like him was likely posted on every street corner throughout Mauritania. In many ways it was my first lockdown, and a good preparation for what was to come.
This had come shortly after we’d escaped a brief kidnapping by some local musicians in Senegal who had coordinated with local militia for a small fee.
We’d ended up in that situation in the first place by talking to a man called Fall in the streets of Senegal. He had approached us with a New York accent, said he was from Brooklyn. At the time we had felt lost in the city. Senegal’s heat made the days move slower, and we wanted to see more of our surroundings beyond the pastiche walls of the resort.
Fall was dressed like a Jamaican Rasta, with distinctive loose clothes of red, green, yellow, and black patterns ~ clothes he could have taken anywhere.
His dreadlocks were wound up in a head dress that went straight up, and he carried a satchel.
As his accent was one of the only familiar frames of reference we could find at the time, we followed him into what at first seemed to us a tourist adventure…
The first spot Fall took us too was the Island of Gorée, not far off the coast. It was a short ride over in a small ferry from the mainland. By the docks we stopped by a mural of the Rasta prophet walking with lions at either side.
Fall told us the satchel around his neck contained all the belongings he had, and ever needed. He belonged to the Baye Fall sect, which was very similar to the Jamaican Rastafarians, but Senegalese Rastas with notable differences. The Island of Gorée was a place of particular significance for them. When we arrived we were taken to the spot where Pope John Paul II had visited in 1992, and apologized for the Christian role in the slave trade.
Nearby I noticed a cave-like dwelling where a man was rolling out canvases that looked compelling. I went and asked him about his process. He told me he gathered scraps around his cave to make his paintings. He showed me one in particular, of a mother and child. The two figures were surrounded by “Junjung” ~ leather pouches the Baye Fall wore for protection. I loved it and bought the artwork from him, which hangs on my wall to this day, the artist’s name was NOAMA.
When I returned holding the painting, Fall was standing with the others. He congratulated me on my acquisition, but I noticed he had dropped his accent. It no longer sounded American. In fact, there was no trace of America left in his voice. I first sensed danger about us. Being 19 at the time, I followed them too far down the rabbit hole, and we were about to meet the Knave of Hearts.
They told us it was a local tradition to smoke weed and play music on the beach. Appearing like rastas, this checked out. That evening we followed them down to the beach, where they broke out their drums and started singing reggae, passing around a joint. Before the joint had even reached us in the circle, two men came out from the bushes ~ one holding a handgun, the other an AK-47 engraved with a snake along the side rail. They announced themselves as the local boys in blue, but they didn’t look it. The man with the AK had kind of piratical look about him with a scar over his right eye, his curly mustache twitched beneath his sharp owl like nose, he wore no shirt but a tattered white rag wrapped around his bicep.
They patted down the musicians we were with and found the green they had been passing around. Then they pistol-whipped Fall and bound the musicians’ wrists and feet with plastic strips. Fall tried to negotiate with the man with the AK-47, quite unsuccessfully, as he was dragged into the shallow waves washing onto the moonlit shore. The calming splash of the tide was sharply pierced by Fall’s cries, and a crack like lightning as he received a nasty beating with the butt of the rifle.
When Fall came back to the circle, the musicians were sobbing as if they knew something we didn’t. Fall said that smoking weed carried a five-year jail sentence in Senegal ~ and that’s where we were all headed. The musicians were all crying, convinced their lives were over.
I knew even then that everything has a price, so I swiftly asked Fall: “How much do they want?” He responded: “If we don’t hand over $1k USD, we’ll all go to jail.” Despite not having smoked any of the green stuff, I knew it was up to us to get everyone out of this situation. $1k USD was a small fortune for the Baye Fall musicians.
I remember at the time thinking their asking price was a little high. Despite the guns pointed at us being quite convincing, there was still room to negotiate. Surely it was their preference to walk away with a handful of cash rather than a bag of tourists to discard.
I got them down to half their asking price and we walked away with our lives. $500 seemed a cheap price to pay in hindsight. Of course, it was unlikely the musicians didn’t know the local laws, and unlikely they would have risked their lives to smoke weed on the beach and play music. But there wasn’t an embassy or resort for miles. All my liquidity at the time was tied up in art, so the little adventure set me back until my return to London.
Among them ~ five figurative etchings by Lucian Freud, which all regrettably sold. Several first edition Goya etchings from Los Caprichos.
And five etchings by Peter Howson, which I managed to hold on too ~ and which made for a meaningful hold when, almost 20 years later, I worked with Peter on a collaboration we called Redemption.
I’ve realized since that my adventures in Senegal informed every gig I’ve had since ~ always stay in the game, and don’t drop the accent. The immense benefit the chameleon has over others in the animal kingdom is that he can pass through the crowd, sit at the café and the bar, pass by completely unnoticed ~ while finding what information others let slip.
After Y and I had finished our martinis at The Wolves, we ventured out into the Downtown LA night, and it was thankfully just a short walk round the corner to Mrs Fish.
As we were walking through Downtown there was the city’s myriad of players ~ street vendors and street lurkers. We passed the exact spot where five years prior, I’d had the only time I’ve ever had to use my Muay Thai skills in life. It was after a late shift bartending at Mrs Fish. A drunk guy grabbed my phone out of my hands as his friends circled around me. They proposed the challenge: to get my phone back, I had to wrestle him.
I sized up my opponent. Standing opposite, he wobbled enthusiastically, full of fire and half-asleep with beer. He was young and fit, early twenties, but clearly inexperienced ~ his uneasy stance gave him away. I remembered one of the most useful tools an old mentor, Bren Foster, gave me: when clinching, don’t try to pull down on the opponent’s neck. With many stabilizing core muscles back there, it’s hard to throw someone off balance by wrestling the back of their neck. Instead, pull down at the top of the head, like the opponent’s balance will be completely gone.
As the drunk staggered in front of me, I noticed he was wearing a clean white long-sleeve shirt. Surprising, considering the night he must have had ~ no marks of spilled drinks down his front, and his hair was still perfectly in place. It made me wonder just how drunk he really was. Rolling up his sleeves to reveal broad shoulders and biceps, he clearly thought he was in some kind of Michael Jackson music video. I thought: “This should be a piece of cake.”
His friends chanted as he came towards me, arms outstretched. I reached back and clasped behind the top of his head, pushing down as he struggled to regain balance. Once his head was beneath his chest, it wasn’t hard to trip up his feet as I pulled him from left to right. At that point his main goal had nothing to do with taking me down ~ it was not falling onto the mucky Downtown street and dirtying his perfectly white shirt.
His friends stopped the contest once they saw his pride couldn’t save him from gravity. They returned my phone.
We turned into Pershing Square and reached the door of Mrs Fish, where I had bartended some years before, on the third floor of the establishment upstairs at the Japanese Whiskey bar.
As you walk down the steps to Mrs Fish it’s like descending beneath the ocean in Japan. A large fish tank is installed above the main bar, tended to by the LA County Aquarium. The fish look beautiful, lit up in blue behind the glass, yet a sense of inevitability follows them as they are watched from beneath by the patrons, with nowhere to hide. We looked back at our reflections in the glass and then continued on to the Japanese Whiskey bar on the upper level.
Immediately I was brought back to my three years working there. There was something about the details in the Japanese Whiskey selection, which lined up in several rows ~ a great variety of the various oak barrels, sherry casks, Yamazaki 18yr, port-cask rice whiskey, and the rarest of them all, the Mizunara Cask.
Mizunara is in fact the rarest whiskey cask in the world. The oak grows high up in the Japanese mountains and is only native to the island. The process of distilling takes much longer than with other oaks, because of the porous nature of the wood ~ a lot of whiskey leaks through, contributing to the angels’ share, and taking far longer to reach the end of the process. Impractical, yes. But deeply romantic in its creation. The finish has a distinct taste of driftwood and coconuts.
As we sampled the whiskey I looked around at Jeffrey Fish’s unique collection of contemporary Japanese art on the walls, with vibrant colors and murals. I thought how much like a garden it appeared.
Y showed off her jewelry to me; one item was a gold Chanel bracelet. As she was telling me about it, I slipped it off her wrist. She was completely shocked ~ and hours later, when I lifted it out of my pocket, she was furious. So furious it ended the evening.
As I walked through the Diamond District, I saw many-sided jewels sparkling amongst the roughest streets in the City of Angels. Beauty amongst ruin.
As the jewels reflected back shine in the window beyond my reflection, I thought of the phrase “Nerves of Steel” ~ and wondered why it wasn’t “Nerves of Diamond.”
Nerves of steel imply directed intentions toward a singular goal. In the field, nerves of diamond are more effective. A diamond offers a multitude of possibilities with clarity and equal strength. As the light and subject change, so do the possibilities it presents, shining as the landscape shifts. The range of perspectives provides new information, shaping the ultimate course of action. Nerves of Diamond is better.
I passed by 8th Street and made my way home to Venice, contemplating the future. I woke up the next morning with a piercing hangover from too many martinis and Japanese whiskey the night before. And paid my penance with a poem ~ “SOHO : The Return,” coming soon.