Home: with Charl-Johan Lingenfelder

"How can something that was so amazing and so wonderful also have been so damaging at the same time?”

Dear NE-One

Last year when Peter Frost, an editor with an exceptional talent for (among other things) tuning into the quirk and intrigue of “ordinary” places, asked me to work on Getaway and Isuzu’s Ikhaya Lekhaya campaign, I accepted immediately. “Home. It’s complicated” – the campaign’s tag line – struck a chord with my travelling spirit. I’ve long been fascinated by what “home” means to people and the chance to explore South Africa’s back roads and go on a physical and emotional journey to someone else’s “home” was an assignment I couldn’t ever have passed up.

The main focus of the campaign were the exquisite films that Craig Rhodes-Harrison and Devin Thiart crafted, and for three weeks we travelled with three creative South Africans to the places they once called (and sometimes still call) “home”. With investigative journalist Anneliese Burgess we drove from East London to just outside the little town of Indwe in a farming region of the Eastern Cape (watch the short film here); with comedian Noko Moswete we ventured, via a spectacular mountain pass, from Pretoria to Tibane village in Limpopo (watch that film here); and with acclaimed musical director Charl-Johan Lingenfelder we drove from Cape Town to Villiersdorp, where he was once known as the boy who arranged flowers.

The journeys were, for me anyway, deeply personal – and it was a true privilege to have been allowed into the safe (and complicated) places that had been so instrumental in shaping the people Charl, Anneliese and Noko are today. Home – in all its guises, really does impact who we become.

I’ll be back next week, with stories from Bali, but for now I’ll leave you with the feature I wrote for Getaway about that trip home with Charl. You can watch the short film here – and I really hope you do. It’s beautiful.

With love, Narina

Take me home, country roads

The bamboo blinds have been lowered but – through a delicate cross-hatch pattern of tiny gaps – they let in the soft light of a quiet Cape Town afternoon. It illuminates the edges of treasured objects stacked around a compact apartment; among them an accordion, a curtain of CD cases, three ceiling-high towers of books, and an extensive collection of DVDs that stretches the entire length of the building.

“My apartment is my sanctuary,” explains internationally-acclaimed musical director and composer Charl-Johan Lingenfelder. “It’s small, and everything is everywhere. It’s a bit of a mess, but I have created a space that is absolutely a reflection of who I am.”

Charl looks across to his bed, just metres away, then over his shoulder at two keyboards and a mixing desk, and into the small lounge and kitchen where surfaces are packed with records, books, glasses and vases.

“I don’t need anything more,” he shrugs. “I feel very safe here, and I feel very creative here. And that ultimately is what is important – to have that space where you can truly be who you need to be.”

“So this is home?” I ask, and Charl nods.

His face is illuminated by the softbox light that filmmaker Craig Rhodes-Harrison has set up. We’ve spent the day shooting Charl’s apartment for the first short film in Getaway and Isuzu’s Ikhaya Lekhaya campaign – in which we follow three creative South Africans back to the towns in which they grew up – and are now recording an interview. Charl is completely at ease in front of the camera (he is a man of the theatre, after all), but as I move onto a new set of questions his hands, which until now have been quite animated, rest heavily on his lap.

“What does the word ‘home’ mean to you,” I ask.