Update from Qudus' blog

Jun 19, 2008

Living between paradox and paradise


Living between two realities that seemed really different and contradicting sums up to form prison walls around ones’ existence. Imagine a Yoruba - English speaking - Nigerian residing in France, complication of identity and imprecision of which language or culture to think, to pray and converse with one's (self) inner mind and the conflict of which philosophy to incorporate to life generally, those closer will seem very far away, those far away will in turn be the ones closer, when people speak around, just their echo could be perceived because they are quite far away from your reality. and how does one deal with that.

To better complicate the issue lets take me as an example, a swinger between being a student who is suppose to operate with a constant juvenile energy and on the other end, a professional artiste whose melancholy depresses him more often than ever, two characters which are quite distant to the other, a dancer whose body is imbued with movements and emotion to confront and remind the audience of the reality of the world they live, filling every moving second with poetry but also an acrobat, a circus artiste (entertainer), taking the colors of sorrow away from the soul of the audience, taking them on a journey, away from the reality of the outer world, sometimes a clown and sometimes not so far from a savage.

Today I feel like starting up a diary, to say all I want to say, to myself, because in here in my little apartment, there is none to listen or say my mind to, so I write it out, perhaps it stops me from standing in the center of a thick forest one thick sunny day and screaming the hell out of my voice or slamming myself against my concrete enclosure, I speak my mind, I let my mind ascend above the four walls of this earth to search and bring back distant, exotic brick with which I seek to fabricate a better endurable world within this world.

I write of my desired world in words of optimism; aiming thereby to reduce the massive mass of this pessimist world on my shoulders, rediscover my woebegone personality. In this world, loss of self is often expressed as vexation. Anger is the element of attempt to re-crystallize the slowly dissolving self of the oppressed, anger builds a slow and carefully progressive relationship with one and creeps upon one silently until one day. That day, when it will explodes in an assured violence, leaving one in disbelief of ones own capability of being vicious

- I want to recover my lost self - now that I have became conscious of the fact that I had not really had a self to express in the world, that self has flown away with the migrating birds the day I realized that I am enchained, impotent of my own free will, this chain enslaves not so much the hand and feet as it does to the mind, what is left here is nothing but a mass of soulless fellow only to be revived by a witch doctor, a helpless ass sitting inactively in front of a Broadway cinema, gorgeous hair, dress to kill - kill to dress, but... with tearful eyes and saddened soul; an empty box filled with rubbish and garbage of human development, and a pirated machine that only resembles human being but unable to say NO when it is most needed.

i am aware of the curious eyes staring at me, i close mine, i willed it over the walls of this world to other places. Free. i dream of standing under the stars in my world, where the rain would be falling, there would be nothing else: just me and rain and stars and my feet, i will trust my legs, i will run and just run, my legs will decide when and where to stop - Sometimes the anger leaves one as suddenly as it appeared; then one enter a state of tranquil acceptance. Realizing the absolute puerility of anger: it was nothing, absolute nothing but acid, cancer, eating away ones bowels in the dark.

One accepts the inescapability of ones fate; and with that, I have learnt the craft of cunning, I have learnt ways of surviving - surviving the mindless banality of the walls of this pessimist world around my optimist world and finally, the strong man is not that who has got the most vicious virtuosity but that who has been able to kill his anger when it is most predestined.