Back to the Beginning—More Personal Thingamabob
When Asa released her new single, “The beginning”, I knew the universe was sending me a sign I couldn’t ignore. Since the last Thoughts Day, I’ve been thinking about how it all started, "it" being my “writing career” and the growth so far. Her song was a confirmation of the conviction I’d felt to share it with you.
This week, my friend and cofounder of Arts and Africa, published an essay on Overland. It interrogates several concepts, particularly how we project our values on other people, and identity. This short synopsis doesn’t do justice, but reading it was refreshing, and intriguing in a whole different level—another reminder that I had to write about the early days.
In the beginning we dreamed: we sat on mats and threadbare sofas, eating tasteless spaghetti, drinking warm sprite from cool bottles on hot days. Dreaming. We couldn’t wait to “blow”; that’s the word we used then and after, in the park in the University, or on Twitter, hyping each other’s work. Blowing seemed like such a distant future; conceivable but blurry. We had our minds fixed on semblances of who we wanted to become; we existed in comparisons, and perhaps what you may even call literary blasphemies. Spaghetti became our staple meal. Spaghetti and chill in my grandfather's house, our legs on the cool tiles, arguing about the Nobel Prize and Bob Dylan, or Strawberry Swing: Coldplay vs. Frank Ocean etc. This was how the beginning looked. Soft.
Once, like a groupie, we followed Chimamanda around, trying to get a photograph with her, someone who embodied one of the highest levels a writer could get to. Subsequently, at events like Ake Festival, holding copies of books by authors we admired became just as gratifying, or sitting in on their panel discussions and book chats. Some clarity came from this, we drew invisible lines, and carved the path we wanted to walk on.
First there was a collective — Arts and Africa — a safe space for us to grow, connect and for peer review. Then there was the disconnect, the silence. Then the growth, and still growing because each new day, we find a pitch to our voices that we hadn’t known about the day before. Shout out to my goons!
On a more personal level, I remember the art club in University of Lagos Staff School, the small musty room with the dusty stage, high stools, papier mache art on canvas, framed paintings and lifelike sculptures. It was esoteric, and more: a safe space for all kinds of children artists. I was 8 when I first thought about the possibility of being a writer. My pencil sketches were awful; I wasn’t drawing what I saw, in the words of Mr Ambali, the art teacher. Several years later, my artist/psychologist older sister would describe this lack as not being dexterous, and my artist younger sister would agree. By then, my stories had become my life sentence and I was committed to serving time.
In the now, I’ve made several new friends and created new communities within and outside the continent. It’s hard, but I’ve charted my course [presently] along the editor lines: managing writers, editing manuscripts, preparing and reviewing publishing contracts, negotiating right purchases with brutal foreign agents. Still, writing: on the road, in the bus, in the toilet, before bed. Still writing: everything and anything, everything and this letter.
There’s also so much to say now, of how Tosin is one of the best journalists I know, of how Fope’s stories give me life, of how Tochukwu and Ohioleh need to give us more, and how I still think of Eghonghon’s How it Happened. Adulthood is happening, capitalism is claiming our time, and Nigeria is trying to kill some of us, but we haven’t stopped dreaming in and out of writing.
I thought I was writing this to encourage any creative person reading this to continue dreaming, but I think I’m writing it for myself. A lot of times, I feel like I’m not doing enough—“where’s that book deal?”, “your mates are currently enrolled in MFAs, but look at you?”, “and tell me, how many stories have you written, not to talk of published, this year?” (I’m the wicked Yoruba Aunty in my head—and that I’m allowing adulthood fold and bend me into a compromise. Maybe it’s true, but I’m also learning not to be too hard on myself, to pace myself, and to take deep breaths. I don’t know where the next road will take me to, but I’m not doing too badly, sweetie.
That said, Arts and Africa’s archive is my recommended reading for this week. I remember once, I wanted us to take some of the stories down, but Fope said something about documenting and using it as a flagship to remember where we’ve come from. You can also read Plums, my latest story. Here's my little "take-home assignment" for this week, if there's something you've been meaning to start, but for whatever reason, are too scared to start, you should throw caution to the wind and start. Give it a thought :)
"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." - Martin Luther King Jr.