Update from Qudus' blog

Aug 3, 2008

Celebrity my FOOT !

Guys sorry, i know i should be sending you gists from kinsh and not still bother you with my laughable thoughts that won't just let me be, you know me now, when everything is alright, i don't feel secured, well we can still imagine this to be a gist but from my weary busy head. 
Hajarat called me few days before i left for kinsh and as we do as usual, during our midnight calls that last for over an hour, we gist about everything from the last time we dropped the phone till the second before the phone rang, so to cut the gist short, she gisted me about her school mate, who brought up a certain issues pertaining to dance, so my baby said to her "my fiance is a dancer" then she became curious to know about this dance genre called Contemporary dance, since my baby knows practically everything about me and we talk a lot about anything including the arts, so she started giving her a low down of the kind of things i get involved in. 

  • So here we get to the basic reason for this note, after her explanation, the girl now said "so your husband is a celebrity, how are you coping?"

Celebrity my foot!

If there is one person on this earth that could claim to really know who i really am, then it must be Hajarat, hear her response "well, to start with, he doesn't see himself as one, and i don't see him as anything but my Qudus" beautiful right?... i don't know why the thought of this celebrity thing came up to my head again here in Kinshasa, i spoke to myself, "i think celebrity is meant for the TV no? those that appears few times on tv doing some very remarkable stuffs like Big Brother, like the movie stars and television actors with lead roles on prominently scheduled shows, High-ranking politicians, national television reporters, daytime television show hosts, supermodels, successful sport personalty. etc. Is that not what celebrity means?" Then i quickly ran to my dictionary.

celebrity |səˈlebrətē|
a famous person.
• the state of being well known :

I though i was wrong until sources from Wikipedia claims that "A celebrity is a widely-recognized or famous person who commands a high degree of PUBLIC and MEDIA ATTENTION."

ahhh! i thought... possibly i am a celebrity, since i got 1280 friends on facebook that increases by two to three daily, shown once or twice on some local, national and international TV and News Papers, i got few stuffs on the search engines, ahh Qudus, why have you been this naive? You are a celebrity... lol

                   Celebrity my ass!


This celebrity culture that doesn't involve paying any dues in Nigeria, you just buy the damn title, i mean normally... People of talent would work hard to create something--something written, something painted, something sculpted, something acted out--and it would be passed on to audiences. but with the rise of these fantasized "reality" TV shows, the audiences have been turned into the creators and social instruments needed. The alleged stars of these "reality" shows (especially Big Brother) have become famous not for doing or having some special talents, but merely for being... wow, how privileged and grateful they must be!

Even those who got some talent, what do they do with it to inspire the "common man"? Is it not in this Nigeria where "celebrities" make fame and the next moment they are thinking of their own clothing line, which is suppose to be their "appreciation" to the 140 million Nigerians, isn't it?... as if those clothes will be dashed out for free, this same celebrity that will arrogantly snub the "common man" that bumps into him or her on the streets of Surulere or a road side shop at Ikeja, even to reply to emails on facebook becomes a problem, cos they know these guys don't need autographs.
 
That is how ungrateful and arrogant our "cele-brities" could be, have you even coincidentally met one on a normal day, in a normal venue (which is not looking like the galleria nor shoprite), and you fast forward to say an intimate hi ? don't be shocked if the reply you get is "Have we met before?". some of them will add you as a friend on facebook, the next moment they are sending you their latest video over and over again, dedicating the same track to you almost a thousand times... sorry i didn't come to join facebook to be part of your business strategy, anything going beyond or rather below human relation, please count me out. if i can send you my videos then i must be ready to chat with you or reply your emails, i think facebook is suppose to be a social platform.

They call them celebrity and they run to the market with it, abeg o, i don't want to be part of your revolution, if i won't dance, what do i do with this celebrity title? Form padi-padi coalition to oppress, or feel more important to the people that has similar problems to mine, so there will be another underground celebrity friend of mine who will organize givings and awards to valorize my talent and creativity, and in-turn valorize his own image as the organizer of a one-in-town event, that regroups mobs of "celebrities" which will only end up making me become too paranoid to travel easily within the streets of Lagos, on okadas, in buses or taxis if i so wish... even within the so called celebs, we still find them getting involved in this childish need to have the last word and show off... Then the public will have a love/hate relationship with me.

Ahh! is that what i'm going do with this title. becoming a spectator on the field where i'm suppose to be a player, what if i personally refuse to acknowledge this title? even if some won't agree with me.

CELEBRITY MY YANSH !

Are we really higher ANIMALS?

IF God has decided to make us humans, in His infinite mercies, isn't it fortunate enough for us? 'cos its not our doing that we appear to be a higher creature than the animals. However, it has been proven that we are as well animals, although higher animals, since animals are defined as any living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond to stimuli. Then I began to think about what makes us higher animals, I haven't gone far into the world of my sometimes absurd thoughts, before I realized that even the fact that I have posed this question, already justifies why I am a "higher animal", then I went further by putting my thoughts into consideration in order to valorize my solo argument.

This our ability to ponder over our conditions, thinking before reacting, our reflective ability over whatever we perceive through our sense organs, these elements that distinguishes man from animals, has later tend to kill our innocence and make us loose our sudden inner impulse that should manifest in all normal animals without premeditation or external stimulus. 

I argue with myself, if these crucial module that is suppose to be our argument for being higher animals, is not becoming the same element responsible for our troubles and malfunction-ness. Creating all sort of suffering for the world and all that exist in it to grapple with, i mean, this ability to choose - and choose well to kill the little harmless insect instead of letting it go, ability to have an ocean dreams, that will soon flood away the efforts of those with just ways and means and leave others with blood on their skins, so that tomorrow, we scream out the notorious phrase « we made it! ». Our ability to fight - to fight for our right and fight for our loved ones and deliberately decline our reasoning of its aftermath because its our celestial right, are we really higher animals? who declared us to be? 

The animal part of me wonders, what the so called lower animals must be thinking about us, "these senseless people thinks they know so much, look at what they are turning our world into" i wonder if a brother cow, will be one day intelligent enough to dream about the creation of something that looks like the Atomic bomb and Avtomat Kalashnikova (AK-47) to bombard his fellow cows, no i can bet for money that it won't do that, 'cos it got pride and knows what shame is, and thats what we don't have, no wonder humans are the only animals who weep. 

Have we taken time to listen to what the animals has got to say about us, cos we kept defining everything, because we know quite well that the monkeys has got no advocate, the tigers has got no philosopher and there is no intellectual in the animal world that could be their mouthpiece and communicate with us, to heal us of our insanity in order to put us back into track of our lost naivety, without being killed or displayed in a special wildlife park for weirdness and top ten wonders of the world.

Hopefully one day we shall get a redeemer from the so called lower animals that we have killed so many of their prophets, yet they are calm and you go study the animals and see the way they watch us insightfully, lets hope we get redemption from them and not a revolution cos the world also belong to them and a revolution is often borne out of a familiar force repelling a non familiar pressure. We can fool them sometimes but can we fool them all time ?

Well i still got this prey in my mind, with my preconceived monologue, are human being really higher animals?