Very early one morning, not too long ago, I was roused by the thought of how some time ago, a year or so, some bloggers took to the internet to talk about the next big things in their lives and careers.  I didn’t know why such memory would stomp into my mind, and at such time. I was actually dreaming of an eternity in the bosom of a crush. We were about kissing when this thought landed in my head. I hissed and jumped out of bed. Such are the travails of a writer! I’m glad the thought came actually. I had been sleeping (and dreaming) too much. A walk to the loo and back was all that followed and got me sane enough to think as well as come up with this.

The idea of the next big thing, I observe, presupposes that there have been things before. Big things! Life is a complex phenomenon to me and by the way, I doubt if it is really simple to other people. Despite its many complexities, I like it and would like to continue being part of its intricate drama. Hence, I hate death…! To some people, this is unbelief and unchristian. I can imagine someone making a ‘Make dis guy park well’ face. Warefa! I have parked and I did it so well it won’t prevent me from making my point. Thank you.

A year ago, after regaining her health, a friend came visiting.  Happy as we both were, I was expecting her, as always, to initiate the normal sweetrat, tom tom expressions with which we greet ourselves. She didn’t. We hugged and what followed was ‘You are scared of death. I saw it on your face!’ ‘AY, I’m not scared of death,’ she ended. Those words, I won’t forget in a long time. I didn’t deny her observation though. As I write this, I cannot but imagine that she was drunk on something that had totally formatted from her head what she experienced on the sick bed some days before. She had asked a friend to inform me that she was at the hospital. I rushed down and found her a different person. She was there lying on the hospital bed with some friends around her. She was pale, and could hardly talk. I could measure her pain by the cakes of dried tears that lined her face. 

I can’t imagine what she saw on my face that made her come up with that inference. However, I must say, as I held one of her hands on the said day, all I could think about was how young we were (and still are) and how we had/have not really made our marks in the world. I thought about the dreams we had shared. I imagined the impending impossibility of attaining her much cherished big thing: winning the Booker Prize.

Again, I am scared of death…. And for one reason. Death, to me is like a board cleaner. It wipes everything about one off the board that is life. Just like that! ‘Shit!’ you said? Death is shit and when it happens, it does all it can to make a mess of people. I see that happen to a whole lot of people and the fact that I don’t want same happening to me is the reason I fear death... Was life a white board, I would like to be scribbled on it with a permanent board marker such that my impacts, my big things, would be forever etched on the memories of the people after me. But where are the big things to be written about me?

Life’s complex, it’s a mirage of some sort; it’s a labyrinth. It’s doing one thing before the other. It’s achieving big things one after the other. It could signify the converse of all these too. So, I woke up that morning thinking about what the current big thing is for me and most importantly, what the next big thing(s) would be. Life’s so unpredictable I couldn’t (and still can’t) say assertively what the next big thing is. But I have visions of it. Yes, I do! Perhaps, it could be that one thing I fear: DEATH, AFTER A PALTRY, WORTHLESS LIFE. 

This is what I mean: I fear death only when it is subsequent to a paltry, worthless existence. However, the next thing for me can’t be death! It is that big, doro thing. And I would entertain no fear in my pursuit. My friend’s doing same. You should too.

Do have a lovely day ahead.

Softlie: A Review

Posted by Lit 'n' Life comments (2)

It's a new year folks! Lit ‘n’ life uses this medium to thank its readers (yes, you and you and you!) for their support in the past year. You guys were just mwah! Going over the posts and comments gives me joy every time I do. 
I’m plunging into blogging this year with the review of Kayode Taiwo Olla’s new poetry collection, Softlie. Read and leave your comments in the comments box. Do have a lovely year ahead.


 I love poetry. It stands out of the three genres of literature, for me. It has a way of attracting attention to itself. The virtual world gives it a redefinition, one which is as good as it is bad. I’ll make my point clearer; the virtual world is poetry’s bane and friend alike. Poets and poems are born by the second in the virtual world. Refreshing a Facebook page is all it takes for a new poem to be birthed. The consistency of its production, however, doesn’t point to a consistency in terms of the production of delectable, undiluted, poignant poetry.

Softlie is a collection of love poems spun into a story line. Love poems. A love poem is line upon line of desire, passion, ambition and lust... It is itself a stereotype that will continue to remain, if man must continue to love. And lust. Softlie is an attestation to this verity. However, Kayode decides to take a different route in telling his love tales. Love’s about making exchanges. These exchanges are what Kayode Taiwo Olla packs into his sixty five paged book.  Softlie’s not about good loving alone. It’s about love and the so many shades in which it manifests. I have heard people pronounce the title as either ‘softly’ or ‘soft lie’. Whichever way, the poem picks on both true, good love and its converse. Here’s a portion I love:

Look at the sad tale of this beauteous Rose,
How handsome Lust, charmed by her sweet beauty,

Just with impulsive desire
Plucked her onto his breast, cooing:

I love you.

And then he rashly unbuttoned the rose’s petal clothes
Cast off her folds, tasted of her secret nectar at once.

And what is more? His appetite filled, his fancy
Ended, our friend passed on from there, notoriously hissing…

I had you. (Page 46)

Softlie is a collection of poetry, with characters. Arewa and Aremu, Kayode’s puppets are students of a tertiary institution. They play their love to the dictates of Kayode’s muse. They make exchanges that are not devoid of the twists and turns of love; and isms.

Aremu plays the Romantic here:

Come with me to nature
Come with me to song
We will have the village green

For ‘ballroom’
We will have the birdsong
For music
We will have the turtledove pairs
For fellow dancers – no, walkers. (Page 11)

And Arewa’s finding it hard to play the Victorian:

yes this oh my! his broad broad
shoulders deep rough deep
voice oh my goodness! His hard
hard iron pinning someone down his
keen masculine keen penetrating
perfume poured inside me as i
just opened my secret door for
him after all…
God! what are you thinking girl! (Page 40)

Softlie’s not the perfect poetry collection. It is not without its slips. A prominent one is the contradiction of settings that comes to fore here:

Down the path she walked to the river
an earthen pot on her bare shoulder
and around her body she had a wrapper (Page 16)

How did a university campus suddenly turn rustic?

Poetry is not prose. It is the rendering of the longest routes of thoughts and experiences in the shortest lexical formations; it is economy. Poetry is nothing but itself; it is poetry; the complication of the simplest; the simplification of the complex… It is a phenomenon whose essence is there, buried in an ellipsis. You stop talking about it when you don’t know what else to qualify it with. Poetry is not just words stashed together in lines and stanzas; it is an art that de-emphasizes the de-economisation of words. I hold the view that Kayode Taiwo Olla’s isn’t poetry.  It is poetry unlike poetry. There are many words. Too many. What’s more? It is poetry, not meant for print. I have read the collection more than twice and every time I do, something in me reads the poems like the conversational lyrics of the remix of Beyonce’s If I were a Boy. These, notwithstanding, are deviations that accrue to Softlie’s distinctiveness. Softlie is poetry, I repeat, not meant for print. I would prefer to have it on stage, performed. This, for instance will translate well on stage:

…Life!

Some people work;
Some people steal from what is reaped.

Some babies die, some kiddies die;
Some people live as if they will never leave!

Some people keep chaste, some people keep lose;
Some people wonder if there’s a tomorrow to protect!

Some people rape, some people eagerly open laps –

And they forget there’s always and ‘after’ waiting… (Page 48)

The slips notwithstanding, Softlie means something to me:  a mile covered on what is the long road of Kayode Taiwo Olla’s literary journey. 

 

The piece explores, from a personal point of view, what art is and is not.



So I pitched a tent on cyberspace. For the love of art and all that surrounds it, I came up with a blog, Lit ‘n’ Life. Just recently, I came to the conclusion that what I do on the blog couldn’t be art; it is rather art in an inchoate form. The fact that I write; that I appreciate literature most times conceals from me the reality that there is much to art than what is scribbled and read. It is so with other forms of art too. Until recently, I’ve not had any reason to consider the boredom inherent in being obsessed with books. I mean being obsessed with no other thing but books. They are beneficial nonetheless, but there are vacuums they can’t just fill. You don’t go munching on pages of poetry when hunger gnaws at you; neither do you offer your in-laws books in place of a bride price. The problem with being obsessed with just books hits you hard on the face when you find yourself seeking succour as a result of the psychological labyrinth a Fyodor Dostoevsky work, for instance throws you. I must confess that nothing else grants relief at such time but another form of art. It could be music, a cup of beer or coffee. Better or worse still, marijuana could be a good option. For me, whatever it is, is art. Then, art could only be one thing: all.

So can I define art? No, because it is like clearing the grime in the Augean stable. I can only express some thoughts. Yes, that’s what they are - thoughts; metaphors of what art is. I prefer to say art is all, though that is relative to me. Denying that art is all will amount to denying the fact that all that man does – positive or otherwise - is reliant on creativity. After all, man, was brought to life that he himself may bring to life; create. To bring to life (whether concrete or abstract) is what art does. 

So art is what my grandmother does to bring yellow, fluffy banku- a Ghanaian delicacy - out of corn; as it is with me eating it and thereafter, manipulating words on my mini PC, Tobby. Art is what kukere is to Iyanya as moonwalking was to Michael Jackson. Art is a lady pleasuring herself with a pen in between butterflied legs; or a man making his wife come. Art is Tyler Perry playing Madea and Jamie Foxx, Django; it is Miley Cyrus twerking, as it is you reading and punching the screen before you because you don’t agree all these could be art…art is all, even madness.

So here is what art is not: a hermit. It works better when it does not exist in isolation. Kenyan author, Okwiri Oduor says ‘All art, not just writing, is incestuous.’ I’ve thought well about this and all I can come up with are reminiscences of the effects the unity of different art forms have had on me. I remember the night Enya tunes nudged me on to disregard the prolixity of reading the diary of thirteen year old Anne Frank till the last leaf was turned. I remember the pleasure I derive reading Saraba’s Art issue and most importantly, feeding my eyes on its delectable offering of illustrative landscapes. Art,to me becomes either bland or out-dated when it is devoid of incestuous tendencies. Whatever is regarded as art has the liberty to be incestuous for therein lies its sustainability. Its strength. I often wonder why Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Abimbola Egbokhare’s Dazzling Mirage must be adapted into movies. Here are possible reasons: the interaction between art forms can only bring about newness; and newness can only lead to the protraction of discourses. By the way, same has happened to other great works like Beowulf and Shakespeare’s plays.

So art is what comes off the merger of storytelling and motion pictures; literature and photography (as exhibited in Klorofyl and Saraba magazines); culture and technology (as is peculiar to Jepchumba’s African Digital Art); photography and blogging as it is portrayed on Emeka Okereke’s Invisible Borders, and the like. Realizing this, I have decided to clip the feathers on my shoulders. It is no longer a special thing that I write. The special thing is this: art is all and we are all artists: you, my grandmother, Iyanya, Tyler, Miley, Enya and me. We create. Most importantly, we see to it that art remains incestuous.

First published in the print version of The Clip Magazine.



I acknowledge the fact that life is filled with opposites; that the clichéd ‘there are two sides to a coin’ maxim finds substance in life’s conflicting nature. Here I am, my ‘x’ (read about it here) is in its third month. Ours is a drama that has failed to reach a resolve.And adrama that fails to have a resolution is itself a manifestation of the second side of the coin. It is no anomaly. It is just one of those things. Take it from me, one gets to understand life the more when you are put through its converse. There is truth in the converse. Always.

As it is, confessions abound that I must make. First, I am not becoming devilish if I say I have prayed enough, and that I am tired. That I have decided to stop fasting for a divine hand to right things wrecked by mortal hands. Take it from me or spit it back in my face, I am being man. And it’s all for good.

I must also tell you that I am being man, like the warring academic and Abuja things, if I say that I am now on the other side of the life I am used to. That I have ported. That I have migrated to a new living plan,on the other side of the classroom.

On this other side of my life, I have to wake between 4 and 5 am (notwithstanding when I sink my weight into bed after writing lesson notes), to avoid some proprietor’s spit-laced hot words. Doing that is not new though. When my wet dreams take longer to reach a climax and I wake an hour or so later than the usual time, I play the bad boy. I evade morning chores, and hang them smartly on my mum’s neck.‘She looks pretty ugly in them,’ dad reports every time I play the cruel game. ‘Her boss is a bit lenient,’ he would add, mum smiling. Then, I ‘Oh!’ and plant a kiss on her forehead. Don’t blame me; it’s me on the other side of life. Mum understands too.

On this other side of my life, it becomes more glaring what one of the problems of the nation’s educational system is. It’s not all about ASUU and the FG #dodgesclubs. It’s partly about those on the other side of the classroom; the teachers. I have become one, on this other side. 

I chalk the board and my fingers every day, kids watching me slug it out with English Language and Literature. They laugh at my jokes too, but little do they know that deep inside of me, I weep for what may befall them. I mean the unlucky ones. What does one say of a fellow teacher who finds it difficult to express himself in simple English or who is in every way incompetent? For me, he evokes reminiscences of my years under some university lecturers who are his ilk. I am not making comparisons here. I am rather drawing parallels from different levels. The fact is this, I just know a good teacher when I see one. All it takes is a few minutes under such person’s tutelage. I feel like rubbing this particular co-worker off the cosmos of the school.That’s not all I feel, by the way. I feel like doing that which I have no power to do: getting a replacement to step in his shoes; to take over his subjects. Yes, subjects! That is what it is on the other side of my life.You have to be hydra-headed; a combine harvester. You teach more than one subject, and at least six periods of forty minutes every day of the week. Because I have to mind my issues; paddle my canoe. I have left the fates of the little ones to stick up for them #theguiltbites.

On this other side of my life, writing has become an issue. That is why I am always keen on dodging the ‘writer’ tag. I can’t be one. Not now. Snips of unfinished pieces keep accumulating on my phone and Tobby. The most painful of them is the review of Saraba’s Art issue which I haven’t been able to get through with. However, I have been devouring webpages like my life depends on them. Thanks to avid bloggers, the entries for Etisalat prize for flash fiction and the pieces of erotica that splatter the internet. Yes, EROTICA. Sex, not necessarily the act but an apt documentation of it. Reading sex could be a good thing.You could read an erotica piece I was made to write by a crazy duo here.

On this other side, life is not stalled. It’s like a moving train. You have so much to say that time wouldn’t permit.You either throttle the muse’s flow or face the consequences. I can’t tell it all, the pain, joy, lessons and all I’ve got here. They may be hard to take in, but life’s fuller on this side. Trust me.

#getyourassoffthatcomfortzone

***

It’s a harvest of barkas this month. Barka de Salah to Muslims around the globe #ramdeliverythingz. And it’s barka de birthday to me, in advance. Last year’s was a Salah birthday. This year’s will be days after Salah. I’m hyper-glad!

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