A [post] Christmas List

As per the name of this entry, I am sure you will likely be reading this in the slow languid days where Christmas is over, but the New Year is still a short mile away from now.

Maybe there is a quiet thrill in the air. Maybe you are panicking about New Years’ resolutions. Or you are so full of post-Christmas food and leftover cheer that you are not sure what day it is exactly.

Perhaps the twenty-eight, the thirtieth…

You might, even, be reading this months after I publish it on the blog.

In my last post, I reviewed the past year. What I learnt, how I grew in certain areas. And I closed it with something; that time will continue, and the future will still loom ahead, staring down at us, wondering what we will do about it. We enter into that indefinite area again.

Is that why I started this with a lot of maybes?

Maybe.

But really, with this, I am only stopping by, as it were, to give you something to fix you into this moment, get you to pause and remind you of what it tastes like.

Before we get on with everything again.

As usual, I do it with art. So, here is some of the art I have been consuming recently, and what I have been thinking about it.

BOOKS

For Christmas, I had two books on my reading list

· The Death Of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

· Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

Oddly they both loosely work around the theme of family, and the search for that safety within it.

In the Death of Vivek Oji, the book starts with a single sentence

They burnt the market down on the day Vivek Oji died.

Starting a book by giving out the big event in it, something that should be revealed perhaps in the middle of the story’s sequence is something that is not often done. It seems counter-intuitive in fact.

Yet, the story-teller does justice to it. The story weaves around the characters more than around the plot.

It is a people-facing book if you will. The question is not around whether or not the titular character died. But how.

And even more, why.

The answer to that question; why did Vivek die? Is one that reveals a stark, uncomfortable truth about how people treat each other. How relationships are defined by and lost by things that eventually seem pointless in the face of death.

That was one of the most striking things to me about this story. Something to continue to think about.

For the other book Sankofa, read this excerpt here. It was because of it's simplicity, and un-announcing manner that I was convinced to give the book a read.

MUSIC

I have a regular playlist of artists that I typically do not stray from. But once in a while, something pops up in the algorithm, and curiosity wins.

There is one song in particular that I have been enjoying, a snippet of the lyric plays in my head from time to time.

The song is COLD LITTLE HEART by Micheal Kiwanuka

The music video is a great example of actors conveying emotions without having to speak. And I am still fascinated by how well they do so. How empty spaces are created by the absence of a script. It seems like it is done so the viewer [and listener] fills it out themselves. Become part-creator too, and decide what the emotion the song is trying to express to them.

This lyric in particular is what strikes me. This simple statement of I could live, or I could die.

In the context of the rest of the song, it obviously means choosing to let a cold heart open up to someone else, to let life and love into it.

But in the context of this period, I think it expresses how we can choose to either let the hurt of a rough year, or a rough few years decide the end of the matter.

Or, I could live.

And I have been wondering, what living means in this. It isn’t enough to only do half, or be half of what one can be. Or to erase oneself into a kind of death.

It is something to think about.

Well, what else?

· Be kind to yourself, a lesson I learnt over and over again this year.

· It is also, okay to have to learn something over and over again; forgiveness, a new skill, living requires showing up every day. Even the day after it went rough.

· Study, and consume good art. If you do not, you will study bad art [ha-ha]

Cheers to a New Year. Be brave out there.