A Crisis of Creativy: The New Angst

This comes out a few hours just after I realise I might be having a crisis of creativity. I'm not even sure what I mean by that myself. The little I'm able to make out of it is that I do not feel in the least like a fulfilled artist, especially when I take into consideration my output over the last two years. I feel like I have on my hands a plane that can't fly (think Howard Hughes). It's some sort of angst that causes me to question my artistic capabilities, walk away from what I'm doing right now, and pick up something else, something new that will bring some excitement. Of course, I learned a long time ago to finish what I started, so it's not like I'm going to drop any current projects. In fact, I think I'll go ahead with even those I've been planning for the near future. I don't need something new to do, what I need is some quiet time to ask myself some hard questions, remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing, and rediscover a vision for the totality of my art. (I eye my Bible as I write this last statement.)

For now, I just need to buckle up and finish Yaro (my new short film). Then I can make sense of the rest of my life.

Note to a Rapist

You ascribe to my body
praise and worship. The
value of a piece of fruit,
Ripe and bursting
with juice. You lift
me and you unravel
my mystery.
A boy impatient with his wrapped
presents. But this isn’t Christmas, and this
Present was never given. Taken like
The fruit of a tree not freely offered.
You suck the life, the purity,
the essence that I too have
Out through the orifice
You forced with a straw.
And when you are finished,
Belching with sweet contentment,
Laughing with the great pleasure,
I am taken, by you and by myself,
to a place where
I did not once
Belong. The abode of
a community of the
defaced, the despoiled.
Because I am not a piece
of fruit, there is an
experience I ascribe
to this…This thing.
Thenceforth,
I become a spectre
In the shadow of
that eternal memory

The Future

I courted confusion across a
shiny sea of promise.
And there was love on either
side of me.
Tricks of the mind are absurd and
yet we yield to them.
There never was one that did not
take me by the hand,
A thing pregnant with promise,
That did not take me by the hand
And sing.
The future. A bed. A smile. Hair.
The future. A pen. A desk. Food.
Kitchen. Little feet. Little voices.
Something true. Home.

?

Light that plays on my head

Makes me wise

Dappled in sunlight the colour of

blood, we live and we thrive

In heat and in cold. Beyond

the years that do so boldly

beset us with misery, we aspire

For higher mysteries than these,

and we would die like a flock

of grounded geese drowned

In the muck of the earth that

was our home for time past

and time to come.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

This searing, post-apocalyptic novel reads like slow, sad song. From the staccato sentences and philosophical ruminations to the bleak and unflinching descriptions, everything has a quietening effect on the soul. In reading it, I felt like I was responding to the command, 'Be still and know that this is The Road.'

The Road is the story of a man and his son on a journey of hope that really holds no hope. They are among a handful of destitute survivors in a literally ashen and barren world. Majority of the survivors have become cannibals, capturing and maintaining human livestock in the full glare of the lack that has engulfed them all. Furnished with a revolver that has only two bullets and a shopping cart containing all their belongings, the man and his son (my guess is less than 10 years old, probably eight) must make their way south, to the ocean. The sun hides behind a Along the way, they make some exciting discoveries that are sure to make any cynic fall on his knees and praise the Good Lord.

McCarthy writes with grace and wisdom. His prose is replete with nuggety quips of insights, and reading it feels like watching a man pick up a sheet of steel, and with his bare hands, bend and beat it to shape. It's hard to think that language can be that malleable. But it certainly is.

What stood out more than anything for me is the deep love and intimacy between the characters. Without describing expressions and emotions, McCarthy is still able to render the human complexity that could exist both within a man and between him and his son. Only a genius could pull something off like this, something so...ingenious. Strictly from dialogue and action, no adjectives, no embellishments, we see this moving portrait of a family of two and the profound love and dedication a man has for his little son, even in a world like the one they live in. At one point, the man says to his son in extremely plain terms that he will kill anyone that touches him because that is the task God has given him.

On the final page, we find McCarthy's answer to everything, his solution to the previous 300+ pages of gloom and despair. A three-lettered word.

I've looked up some of McCarthy's other works, and the man is in an entire class all his own. His work is incredibly sophisticated, and now I can see why Harold Bloom would include him among one of the four greatest living American writers today. For those who don't know, the movie No Country For Old Men is based on his novel of the same name.

We Never Make Mistakes

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is probably the most notable example of what it means to be a writer and a prophet in the 20th century. In fact, I'll be so bold as to say he was the greatest living Russian writer of his time. His entire works were done to accomplish one purpose - exposing the atrocities of the Soviet Regime. The Gulag Archipalego, a sprawling narrative written in the epic style akin to War and Peace, depicts the harshness of the Russian government and Russian life for much of the 20th century in highly nuanced and sophisticated prose.

We Never Make Mistakes combines two of Solzhenitsyn's best known novellas: An Incident at Krechetovka Station and Matryona's House. The first is the story of a Soviet lieutenant working at a railway junction during Hitler's offensive on Russia. The station happens to be just behind the front line of the battle and, much to Lieutenant Kotov's chagrin, he must remain where he is and attend to administrative responsibilities. What he really wants is to be out there in the trenches fighting the good fight. He is an educated man, and a moral one at that. Yet, one fateful night, he meets a stranger who puts his education and morality to the test. Kotov will come to realise that perhaps morality isn't as simple a thing as he had thought it was.

The second story is that of a man staying with the widowed Matryona in a small town where he works as a teacher. Written from the perspective of the teacher, the story simply presents snapshots of the life, struggles, pleasures, and hardships of Matryona.

The genius behind these stories is that they are not at all polemic in nature. The image I have is of Solzhenitsyn as a painter, where he's just painted a picture of touching beauty, even though it doesn't seem to say much at first sight. Then he turns around and walks away from the painting. Just like that, as if to say, 'This is sufficient.' We see normal people living normal lives, or at least trying to, and therein lies the indictment against Lenin, against Stalin, against Soviet Russia. The circumstances and the hardships speak loud enough. I don't think any passionately worded argument would hold as much power, truth, or conviction. The prose, even though translated, reads beautifully, particularly with the story of Matryona. I think truly beautiful writing always carries over no matter how many translations it undergoes.

Just earlier this year, in August to be precise, Alexander Solzhenitsyn passed away at the age of 91. Yet his prophet's voice carries on, because his work will always speak for justice, truth, and human dignity.

Ode To The Drum by Yusuf Komunyakaa

Gazelle, I killed you

for your skin's exquisite

touch, for how easy it is

to be nailed to a board

weathered raw as white

butcher paper. Last night

I heard my daughter praying

for the meat here at my feet.

You know it wasn't anger

that made me stop my heart

till the hammer fell. Weeks

ago, I broke you as a woman

once shattered me into a song

beneath her weight, before

you slouched into that

grassy hush. But now

I'm tightening lashes,

shaping hide as if around

a ribcage, stretched

like five bowstrings.

Ghosts cannot slip

back inside the body's drum.

You've been seasoned

by wind, dusk & sunlight.

Pressure can make everything

whole again, brass nails

tacked into the ebony wood

your face has been carved

five times. I have to drive

trouble from the valley.

Trouble in the hills.

Trouble on the river

too. There's no kola nut,

palm wine, fish, salt,

or calabash. Kadoom.

Kadoom. Kadoom. Ka-

doooom. Kadoom. Now

I have beaten a song back into you,

rise & walk away like a panther.

This is one of those poems I wish I and not the original poet had written. Sounds selfish, I know. And if I could steal it, I probably would, he-he.