Balance the scales with good

ESPITE his great fame as a musician, Nico Carstens (86 this year, after a career spanning 70 years) has always been a private man. So, not very many people know what a really great human being he is.

I once attended his birthday party. It was late and most of the guests had had a few. (Nico never drank and was a strict vegetarian.) They were all bitching about a new ogre that had been appointed by the SABC who was making their lives miserable.

After a while I noticed that Nico was not there. I found him in another room at a grand piano. He was just writing in the title of a new song.

I asked him: Did the inspiration just come in the middle of the party? He replied no, but one of the principles by which he tried to live, was not to participate in fruitless, negative conversations, but to try to do something positive, to create something new that might restore the balance.

He had been thinking of the piece all evening and had just slipped away to write it down.

These days I often think of this. So many people are always nagging about the perceived ills of our country. Always the same things. Like an old gramophone stuck in the same groove.

Why do we not rather try to do something creative, something positive, something that will restore the balance?

D