SUPER BORING - Wayne Barker

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WAYNE BARKER
View of Portraits of Matsobane at Clifton Studio | 2009/10
TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT...
Tolstoy said something to the effect that all families are happy in the same way, but
each is unhappy in its own peculiar way. Hmm…. It’s the festive season and the last
thing I should be thinking about is Anna Karenina or anything depressingly Russian. I
order vodka.
I’m waiting for Wayne at Ganesh, a bar-come-restaurant in Observatory, Cape Town. At the table are my parents and
my daughters; Wayne’s dealing with his family at the same time. I’m fl ying out the next morning and this is the last chance
I’ll get to see him and talk about his work. Right then I’ve no idea that I’ll miss my plane, freak out my daughters and my
parents at the airport, fall crashing to the fl oor because of a hopelessly inexcusable incompetence. After all, it’s the last
night of the worst month of my life; a month of dashed hopes and unrequited love; crazed messages and catatonic limbo.
My parents are sane Swedish types who, thanks to Ingmar Bergman, are also well versed in emotional derangement. But
right then, at Ganesh, I’m keeping a lid on it and playing the sorted family man. Of course it takes a whiff of Wayne and
all that sortedness kind of withers.
SUPER BORING
By Ashraf Jamal
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