We are often told that life is short; some will argue that our 20s are shorter. It is a vivid game of chance where those who are better off make the most of their prime, while other toil and prepare themselves for delayed golden years. It is a time to be young, wild, free, to fall in and out of love, to get the hoe phase out your system, a time for to you live your best, it is primarily a time for your spirit to grow, T A L L E R.
Silé (Full name Khanyisile Makhubu) takes us through the uphill battle of finding love and being lost in the murky waters of lust in our 20s. Finding yourself is often riddled with once-in-a-lifetime regrets, one-night stands that form memorable nights of legend and those pesky irritations of unrequited love, giddy highs, broken bottles, sleepless nights, and existential questions such as is love made for me?.
My first encounter with this body of work was the title of the project T A L L E R. That minor detail of all caps showed me a lineage where MF DOOM forms Sile’s artistic identity. More importantly, as an artist, a person going through growing pains, the journey of becoming is a revolving cycle of filling the gaps. Some of these gaps go unspoken; others linger. For example, when a person disappears from your life, you randomly meet them again 5 years later, both of you are grown, and both of you may not have found closure, so an old wound, an old feeling a can of worms bursts open and you slip into a yesterday that you swore you were done with.
Our 20s are a time for absolute liberation, a time where commitment is frowned upon when you haven’t explored the world or yourself. However, as per the question of the first song titled Solace, “why do you only come after midnight?” Who holds your attention and love during the day such that you find comfort in my space when the world is asleep? Are we ever asleep, or is a certain number that sleeps while we live it up wherever the party is?
These could be the questions underlying the tone of a modern 21st-century lady’s existential crisis, especially one by indication of the lyrical content is a booty call. Ironically she is not opposed to the situationship that she is in. As much as it hurts to be an afterthought, she finds that her day is preoccupied with so much weight that she can only let her hair down and focus on filling the gaps of growing T A L L E R during scary hours, midnight, chasing both identity and comfortable sense of sleep.
How we navigate the pain is in how we distract ourselves, the gaps and conversation we share with friends attempting to achieve the monumental task of forgetting our love interest. Somewhere in this failed attempt at forgetting, there is some hope that our love interest will come to the table and be active in the co-production of this love story that is supposed to have a happy ending. How the progression after the dreaded “What are we?” question will determine whether you become their side piece or their one and only.
Lefifi provides a bit of abstract clarity on the fate that followed the dreaded “What are we?” inquiry that could have filled the room and remained unspoken between the two parties playing cat and mouse. The morose violin accompanied by the rain as the introductory sound paints a picture of gloom in which we find our narrator finding herself disappointed at her needs not being reciprocated and the daunting reality of her and her man being nothing more than a phase, a fling a new thing to throw in the do not remember this memory box.
Here is the tricky part about healing and trying to move on, the denial stage of grief is by far the most dangerous. It carries a vulnerability that is more often than not exploited with an inappropriately applicable amount of persistence. We find our narrator stuck in a catch 22 of being confused, an impression of the man realizing what he has lost, wanting more than just having her back in the manner they were. Is he ready to show her off to the world?
Is he ready to make things official? The lady certainly is not. She does not know if she can trust, if she can be what he is suddenly asking of her, the only thing she is sure of is that she adores him. She prays for him. She laments that despite the bullshit, she honestly wants what they have to work out the way she had hoped. It’s the age-old attempt of turning a player into a husband or a hoe into a housewife. Life is not a romantic series with a happy ending; sadly, we may get short bursts of joy here and there, but the reality is often disappointing, and love is trickier than what is led on by romantic movies that at least do us the honor of acknowledging challenges. Maybe Lefifi means the rough around the edges, the bumps along the way, the disappointments. When you call the downs the Lefifis, it makes sense somehow.
This is something that someone in their 20 somethings should never have to think about too much, if at all. As children restricted by our parents’ reservations and corporal punishment, we are often sold the dream that someone in their 20s has it all figured out, they are making money, going out, drinking, and having the sex you can only dream of in your failed attempts to sneak out the house.
What becomes apparent when you finally get to your 20s are the endless responsibilities that demystify the “how they do it?” question the teenage you ask yourself when you believed your older sister, brother, cousin, or the rich aunt who is about 29 has it all figured out. Instead, you find out why they drink, why they are so reckless with who they date, why they were driven into spaces where they had to find jobs and find them quickly. You understand that they too are escaping something, are relieving stress, and are trying to stay afloat and not think about it too much.
https://soundcloud.com/sileverything/answers-within?in=sileverything/sets/t-a-l-l-e-r
You somehow come to a sense, not necessarily your senses in their entirety, just enough to remember that you are young, and you have your whole life to be the responsible archetype that your parents have built-in your impression of what old age will be like. You remember that you have friends, they have blunted, they have drinks, and non-ones a special reason to party. Sometimes being young is the only reason to celebrate. As dangerous as being young, wild, and free can get, you are only young once. Why not make the most of it?
Some of us eventually get so caught up in living the young life that we become 40-year-olds in a time loop of youth. Doing our utmost best to live in a time that has passed us. It becomes a cardinal, emotional, mental, and spiritual desire to find the fountain of youth, to relive that chapter of life and hopefully do it on better terms, with more money, with more wisdom, and less skeletons that fill the puffs we drag in our Sandton penthouses.
Some would say it’s not about growing T A L L E R. It’s about making the most of being S H O R T and letting the heavens cater for your growth spurt, and when your time comes, enjoy the luxury of reminiscence as opposed to the counterproductivity of trying to relive those once in a lifetime experiences. An EP that is concise, short, sweet, a staunch reminder of how one day you’re the 20-year-old with the world at your feet, and next thing you know, you’re the old bitch in the club.
One day you’re finished with high school; next, it’s your last day of being a teenager, then you’re in your early, the mid and late 20s, and before you know it, the big 3-0, old bitch in the club, the midlife crisis comes crawling by, and your 20s become a flash flood memory. It is the telling tale of how time flies when you’re having fun. Time flies by faster than the time spent listening to this body of art, so when you listen, while we are young, let’s enjoy this interlude in the album of our lives, allows toast to our mistakes that plant the seeds to our wisdom and maybe when we’re in that Sandton penthouse, we can play T A L L E R, think of Sile, the girl next door who does not follow convention. We will think of a custodian who made the soundtrack of a point in our lives, a once upon a time when we were young and did not have it all figured out.
Follow Sile on Social Media
Instagram: @sileverything
Twitter: @sileverything
Article by: Malibongwe Dladla
Media Content Curator: Malibongwe Dladla
Social Media Details
Twitter: @kingcedric95
Instagram: @kingcedric95
Facebook: Malibongwe Dladla
©2021, Urban Divinity Media.
Urban Divinity Media 