The Thirteeeth Short(est) Facebook Musing

Tupac Shakur said:

"The only thing that comes to a sleeping man is dreams."



I say,



"I want to be a dreamer

So that I would not

Be awakened

To a faithless life"



And



"For a living, I work at Dreamland

And for a dying, who knows?"



And



"...if today comes,

We might only be waiters

In the Chinese restaurant

Of Dreams."



This is it. Verba scripta mendes.

The Fourth Short Facebook Musing (On Fiction/Reality)

As an addendum to several thoughts in continuum, spiraling in my mind, I find it apposite to write about fiction/reality.

In essence, what is fiction apart from reality, and what is reality apart from fiction? I write of 'fiction' as a writing genre, into which category others might further confer arbitrariness. And I write of 'reality' as a non-fiction writing genre, into which category others have found no need to confer further arbitrariness; for reality, might we say, is already too arbitrary to a fault.

This, however, is not my preoccupation. My preoccupation is to consider whether all fiction is reality, and all reality fiction.

Indeed, we source our stories, invariably, from the known world. Whether we are Rushdie or Okri, Morrison or Allende, we cannot escape the known world in our fiction. It is our tool, our confinement, even our despair. We might choose to write of a man who is deaf but whose ears are miraculously opened to hear a single Buble song, and then shut back. Or a man with seven ears and eight noses, whose head is the size of a mountain. Or like Adichie, we might be concerned with the past, it's
haunting memory on the present, and the overarching exigency of the future. But who says such stories are unreal?

What, in fact, is reality? Can it be measured or delimited? Is reality not what the realtor calls it? Writers, being realtors/creators, choose to call reality what they wish. It is misplaced to say it is too metaphysical to merit an acceptation of physicality. For we know beyond a doubt that physicality is variant; what a man sees might not be what he sees, or should see. A man can call blessed what is cursed. A man can go to his doomsday thinking it is his birthday. Sight is deceptive, even smell, touch, and everything of the physical. We know. I only remind.

In sum, I must point that I, as a writer of what is called fiction, being plagued with compulsion and the tyranny of the empty page, find that there is a world inside my head. My characters from previous stories are as real to me as those emerging on-screen in newer stories. There is a world of them. One of them, Fred, a religious fanatic, competes for attention with Frank, a philosophy teacher charged with the responsibility of healing a mentally unstable patient. The truth is that Fred was begotten in 2007 and Frank in 2010.

There is a world in my head, a real world. It is, sometimes, more real than the world outside my head. And so it is, I think, for every reader of what is called fiction. There are worlds; peopled, ruled, fantasized, appealing, appalling, magnetic, wanting.

Given this, I make bold to say that only fools think that worlds do not exist on paper. And this is the truth of fiction.

Open publication - Free publishing - More poetry

Pilgrimages: Thirteen African Writers. Thirteen Cities. Thirteen Books

The Pilgrimages Project

Pilgrimages is a ground-breaking, pan-African project organised by The Chinua Achebe Center, Bard College, in partnership with Kachifo Limited in Nigeria, Kwani? Trust in Kenya, and Chimurenga in South Africa, in celebration of Africa’s first world cup.
The project involves 13 African writers visiting 12 cities across the continent and one in Brazil for two weeks during the World Cup. At the end of the project, each writer will produce a book of non-fiction travel literature based on their experiences, forming a series to be published next year.

The Writers
The writers and cities involved in the project are Funmi Iyanda (Durban), Alain Mabanckou (Lagos), Abdourahman A. Waberi (Salvador, Bahia), Akenji Ndumu (Abidjan), Doreen Baingana (Hargeisa), Chris Abani (Johannesburg), Uzodinma Iweala (Timbuktu), Billy Kahora (Luanda), Kojo Laing (Cape Town), Binyavanga Wainaina (Touba), Yvonne Owuor (Kinshasha), Victor Lavelle (Kampala), Nicole Turner (Nairobi) and Nimco Mahmud Hassan (Khartoum).

Alain Mabanckou in Lagos
Alain Mabanckou from Congo-Brazzaville is considered one of the most talented writers in Francophone African literature today. His most notable works are Verre Casse (Broken Glass), Bleu-Blanc-Rouge (Blue-White-Red) and The African Pyscho. His work, Memoirs of a Porcupine, won the Prix Renaudot, one of the highest distinctions in Francophone literature.

Alain visits Lagos from the 25th of June to 2nd of July 2010, during which time he will crisscross the city, from the ‘highbrow’ to the ‘slum’. Each day of his stay will alternate stops at football viewing centres, local bukkas and beer parlours, upmarket bars and relevant cultural events, and will include interviews with local denizens, artists, writers and other social commentators. Alain will be guided around the city by architect, writer and publisher, Ayodele Arigbabu, who will also blog about their daily experiences on the Pilgrimages website.

The Website
A dynamic and state-of-the art multimedia website has been launched as part of the Pilgrimages project, at www.pilgrimages.org.za. During the 13 Pilgrimages the writers and their local guides will blog on the website. Correspondents, artists and photographers in each city will also post topical content on the site.

The Books
The Pilgrimages Project will culminate in the launch of twelve books in four African cities in January 2012 during the African Nations’ Cup. The collection promises to be the most significant, single addition to the continent’s archive of literary knowledge since the African Writers’ Series of the 1960s. The books will be published by Kachifo Limited in Nigeria, Kwani? Trust in Kenya, Chimurenga in South Africa and a francophone publisher to be announced.

For more information on the Pilgrimages Project, please visit the website:
http://www.pilgrimages.org.za/

The Triumph of Small Things

A Review of African Roar

I was overly excited when I read the African Roar. By using the word ‘excitement,’ I look upon each story as a triumph, not only of the individual writers, but of the African community of emerging writing. I have been preoccupied with sustaining this community for the last two years, and I feel that an anthology like this is doing much for African writing. We must agree that our writing is not a onetime stint, but a career. Each story, each anthology, contributes to what we eventually become, and what our writing eventually does.

I start with the story that first left me breathless, Hartmann’s Lost Love. It has the force of abstraction and the urgency of a tale, by celebrating love in the time of dying, we are reminded to have permanent keepsakes of goodly moments, which, as we must have known, come not too often. Just as it is with Tshuma’s Big Pieces, Small Pieces. We are told of the horrendous darkness of domestic violence, the love-hate relationship of spouses and children, just as in Purple Hibiscus. But what is most significant, for me, is the few moments of love the characters are allowed. In both tales, we see the proper balance of a story. For even when love is lost, there was love in the first place. One could add to this list Tamale Blues by Attah.

And then, what is the value of courage? Better still, what is the cost of courage? There is a joint-rendition by Musodza and Tapureta. In effect, we find that freedom is what it is defined as. It does not exactly matter whether we are manacled in prisons or unchained in ghettos. We find that our existence is roundabout, that freedom comes and goes, in indeterminable packs. We find, again, that a man might be judged by his actions, by his inactions, or sometimes by the motivations for his both his actions and inactions. Whichever and whatever is the case, we are reminded in Yesterday’s Dog and Cost of Courage that the past, like Faulkner asserts, is not past. It could be wholesome to add Kola Tubosun’s Behind the Door to this catalogue. How much courage does it cost a man to know his HIV/AIDS status in a world that seems to accord the virus a place in the hall of fame of human existence? And when he finds that he tests negative, how much courage does it take to sympathisze with a fellow man who had tested positive?

What is more, we are reminded of the metaphysical dreaminess that accompanies our beliefs in The Nestbury Tree by Morocco-Clarke and A Cicada in the Shimmer by Mlalazi. Essentially, and as John Mayer has sang, belief is a beautiful honour, but makes for the heaviest loss. In the spate of religious melees and derogations, these stories remind us that perhaps what we would be most remembered for after the dusk of this century is our affinity to beliefs, and how far we can go to remain affiliated. Although I favoured Mlalazi’s tale to Morocco-Clarke’s, in terms of telling, I find that both have similitude in terms of context.

I find it irresistible to do a lone review of Nwokolo Jr.’s Quarterback and Co. Having begun a preliminary research in psychiatry, I assert how wrong we are to assume that mad persons are only those who are street-worthy. But this is not what Nwokolo’s hilarious story ultimately seems to engage. It seems he tries to argue that we must find the unreal in the real, the surreal in the domestic, the metaphysical in the usual. I like this; it is my conviction that we could write about unimagined realities. That said, I feel it deserves (and demands) a reread.

There is a return to the moonlight in Siguake’s A Return to the Moonlight and Damoah’s Truth Floats. The latter story, though, thrived only on the age-long tradition of ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ One thinks it should have leaped beyond those bounds. However, that said, what does one find when he returns? Does he find betrayal or does he regain his senses? Does he find truth or lies? The glory and triumph of return seems to preoccupy the lines of both stories; I certainly agree that we must contemplate return, in holistic and previously unconsidered ways.

What Hartmann, Sigauke, and Barnes, have achieved in this anthology is to set into mode a wholesome pattern for emerging African writing. We, who are in the business of creative writing, should be grateful; it would be short-sighted to think otherwise. It is, in fact, the triumph of small, emergent writing, above economic constraints and the throes of falling publishing standards. I rejoice at this first volume of African Roar, and the rest of the literate world will, too.

News Making

AFTER NEWS THAT PRESIDENT UMARU YAR’ADUA IS DEAD


There might be no such thing, in fact, as bad news. We might receive news based on preconceived notions, on previously expected expectations. Such as the news of the death of a President.

Was it even bad news? What is even, should we ask, the news?

But this should not preoccupy our attention. What should, perhaps, is whether the death of a president was expected, and whether we could live on the expectation that another president would die on us.

Let us never assume that this is preposterous, that we are wrong to think our president would never die again in office. For one, we know it is possible; in twelve years we have lost two presidents. And who knows how disparaged our history (past, present, future) has become because we have lost, in less than two decades, two sitting presidents.

As such, let us contemplate the nature of this last death. We were told lies, unending lies and fables. Or were they even lies? What was the truth? When did our president die? Were we played upon? Could it be more truthful to admit that we never knew what the truth was, or what the lie was, or what the lie eventually became?

Should we rejoice? This is not a question of whether we are expected to. It is a question of whether we are entitled to. Oh yes. If we were not entitled to be certain about our President’s status, how could we be entitled to rejoice? For, as we have seen, someone decides what others are entitled to.

Whoever such someone is, we do not know. Or should not care. We should only believe, with or without a living president, that for a long while in our history, someone has not been honest with us.

That Someone is the only person we should search the news for his - or her or their – death. For if two presidents have died on us, and we have known no difference - no change, only sluggish roundabout movements - then we have no cause to think a President’s death is good (or bad) news. It is no news.

Let us await the better news; that those who have not been honest with us are dead. Until then, no President’s death should make the news.

Argument for Basic Living

AFTER NEWS THAT A FINAL-YEAR STUDENT OF OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY, IFE
HAS BEEN SUSPENDED FOR SELLING HER BEDSPACE

This is for the sake of argument; I proffer no solution.

You meet a palmwine-tapper. You are enthralled by his hard work, his unflinching diligence. But you tell him you are the god of Palm Trees, that you would proceed to limit his access to trees. I do not expect that being god of Palm Trees would stop the wine-tapper from protesting. Or put in a better (more recent) context, you meet a student. You tell her you are the hostel-giver-and-hostel-taker. You give the student no room, no space for her lodgings. The student goes to the Black Market, where everything can be bought (even human parts), and buys space for her lodgings. You return as the hostel-giver-and-hostel-taker, and proceed to punish the student for illegality. But this is a cycle; the student has only exaggeratedly acted upon your neglect. She has only built her illegality on your irresponsibility.

This argument has several parts. For one, there is the argument of the right to the internet. In August 2009, during the ASUU Strike, the management of the College of Health Sciences mobilized security personnel to chase students who had found that they could connect to the internet from a location in the College. A circular was pasted almost immediately which inferred that such location was not a cybercafé; that defaulters would be severely punished. I minced no words then, and I mince no words now: This generation of leaders has failed us.

You may think I am rehashing old lines. Perhaps. Yet, the failure of the present leadership became increasingly disconcerting when we began to earn a living from the internet (at least for myself and Damilola Ajayi), and found no means to use the internet without distress. But this is beyond income. The internet, like our mobile phones, has become an appendage, or a second body. And what did the god(s) of palm trees do? He cut our palm trees.

An argument for basic living would thrive on the premise that certain necessities have taken the form of rights. If the internet has become more than a luxury, if it has become a necessity, then an honest school management would seek ways to enhance its usage, not stultify it. Again, if our future life lies somewhere between use of the internet and our mobile phones, how wonderful is it that we yet crowd cybercafés with poor health conditions to access our emails, and our future?

I find no doubts that we have not been told the truth. Someone, or some people, has not been honest with us. This is, always, a question of sincerity. If we are told that this is the Number One IT University, then we are yet to find ourselves dipped in the waters of such advancement. In other words, there is an obscuritism lurking at our gates. There is little or no betterment of our e-portals. Instead, we seek more ways to build non-ecofriendly buildings and roads. We are hooked away from the world, and we are an educational institution. We are wide-eyed when we hear the mention of the Earth Charter. We are hooked away from the world, and our gods are without care.

Or how else do you explain the suspension of a student who sold allotted space in the hostel? May I say that I have argued in several quarters that selling and buying of spaces are wrong? May I repeat that I have no blessings for the lady who sold her bedspace for a hundred and twenty thousand? Having said those, it remains for us to be honest with ourselves. Do we assume that without adequate provision of living spaces, students would not (re)turn to illegality to cure their wrongs? There is the easily referable example of the Niger Delta. Neglect begat illegality. The fact, then, becomes clear. But our short memories have drowned us. How did our gods assume that continual non-provision of hostels would result in a situation of complete legality, complete adherence to rules, complete triumph of common sense?

An argument for basic living, again, stems from anger. Anger at what our nation has become. Anger that our schools, which should remain as torches of light in the spate of failure, have also become caught up with the disease crippling us.

So this is my claim: I have no words for the wine-tapper who is a victim of some high-placed god. I have neither pity nor laughter. Instead, let these words be directed at the gods themselves. Let them read how disappointed I am, and find that I have been severally denied my basic life. And I am not alone.

I belong to a generation of the Denied, whose basic life is the instinct for survival and victory.