A Remarkable Bull Mask

I forgot to fast on Tuesday.  Oops.  I must have had a tuna-fish craving at noon time that I sated without remembering the day of the week.  So biking home this morning from the gym I remembered I’d missed the day and reluctantly hunkered down for black coffee, bottled water sort of day, complete with croaks and groans from my tummy-guts.

Who was that masked man?  Biking off to the gym I’d looked for something to listen to and settled upon Voudou Game.  He’s a bit of a mystery which a quick look on Wiki would probably respolve.  I have it in my head that he is a member of the Benin-scene that built around the remarkable music of Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, vanguard of the amazing Dahomey Voodoo ecosystem.  I had the album “Kidayu” saved to my Spotify.  But there was a new album listed there “Otodi.”  Vodou Game (the man’s name or is that the group name?) stands on a ledge with a remarkable bull mask covering his head.  He’s also got some sleek pair of hot spandex pants, white boots and an abdomen that immediately makes me rather jealous.  Dude can’t be older than me, is he?

The sound is sparse, slick and rhythmically infectious, channeling that classic Benin, 70’s sound but the mix is clean and contemporary.  Given that I don’t speak local Dahomey and my French is buried beneath my Chinese and my Spanish, I am not sure, but I think he is singing mostly in French.  There are key phrases that flash out, suggesting comprehension.  He’s “not happy”, He’s “tired of it all”, things “need to change.”  

Later that evening, around 5:00PM my older daughter came home.  I’ve been asking her for months about her college essays, reminding her that I’m available any time to help with them.  And like the Lancelot charge that repeats over and over in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and finally actually, makes its mark, the charge hit and she wanted me to review some papers, immediately.  Gladly.  They’re heavy.  It is a window into her private world, her reckoning of what I thought I understood engendering two tracks in my mind: the editor, “this phrase is repetitive” and the father, “but it didn’t happen that way, did it?  Don’t you remember my role and how that incident felt to me?”   The later remains suppressed for another day.  Maybe never. 

Wednesday, 11/28/18