(Read the short story this piece discusses here at A Coup Of Owls!)
So,
Why you wanna try me?
I have a new - [ish] short story up here on the online magazine A Coup Of Owls. It is a story that I think, in many ways, started from a song.
The story is titled Burnt OrangeSpecifically, when things had started to open up in my country. When I started writing it, I was a few weeks away from my life getting back to ‘normal’, but I didn’t know that then.
What I knew was the discomfort of the world at that time, the people who had taken to the streets to protest an unfair government. The simultaneous lull and noise of the world.
I remember the specific late evening when the first line came into my mind.
The people in the town, streamed into the street.
I wrote it down and just left it at that, a single line. I was a little intimidated by the vision I had for the story, I wondered if I could pull it off.
But unmistakably, the idea was there.
The feeling and concepts I wanted to pass across were in my mind, and weirdly, they were in a song I had been listening to.
I found the music that opened this story's world up to me in this song called Try me by Nigerian singer Tems.
In the time I am writing this to you, she is an international superstar. Playing sold out venues, and singing on the Black Panther 2 trailer. But I found this song when she had only started to turn heads with her music, she did not have the acclaim and popularity she has now, so discovering that song for the first time felt like stepping into something intimate.
A small, private world.
I was surprised by what I heard in the song, by its very peculiar magic.
The song is definitely a departure from the kind of Nigerian music that is more popular and that I am more familiar with, but when I listened to it, it felt so necessary. So needed.
The frustration she expressed in that song, is something that I think almost everyone could understand, given the times - 2020; the lockdowns, the pandemic, the pause the world was in.
Hearing that particular emotion used in a song made me realize that there is a place for well, anger and discontent in art. They are human emotions, and I think that when they are justified, they push us towards asking important questions about why we are angry. It forces us towards urgency, towards asking what we should do about it.
SET ME ON FIRE
The first ten seconds of the song are just instrumentals. And the first time I heard it, it was like I was hearing the sound of something familiar, but mysterious.
Like a siren, an alarm that something bright was coming.
Have you ever listened to a song that felt like it had an entire world inside of it, hidden beyond its music and lyrics?
Well, I found the world of Burnt Orange inside of that song. The colours, the texture and the emotional palette.
Between the several weeks when I wrote the first line, and when I got round to writing the story one word after another, I knew I could always count on that song to take me back to the feeling and concept I wanted this story to hold. So, I was never worried about stepping away from the story, or worried it would be hard to re-immerse myself into it again.
In a way, I found the story’s sonic representation in that song, and in the lyrics as well.
It explains why the story is told is in a bit of a slant. It is written in a poetic way that is not shy about being poetic.
I mean, I refer to the story as a story within the story. Ha-ha.
It is a story that is fully aware of the fact that it is really, a story. Using this technique was something I found to be fluid and unpretentious. I admired it, and wanted to add this self-awareness to the texture of the story.
Ever since I read a piece by Helen Oyeyemi where her characters were fully aware that they were made up, and just well, got on with being characters despite that knowledge, I had been itching to do something equally strange.
Because it is your story, make it up. And make it up in any way that pleases you.
I got that advice from the writer of speculative fiction Neil Gaiman. (He has a tumblr page by the way).
One of the things I learnt from writing this story (and from Neil Gaiman) is not only to be as strange as you want with it, but also, to not worry so much about justifying the amount of work you have to put into the story. Let it just live up to what you want it to be.
I had to stretch myself creatively to get what I needed on the page. And it was worth it. I was happy with the story I created, satisfied even. And that is something that is a bit rare in writing.
DO the work. Stories matter, your story matters. Even if you create them just so they exist, and never show the story to anyone. The work matters, and the world, and you are a little better for your story existing.
So the work you put into them, laborious or not, is justified.
I mean, it is that simple, write your stories, even if for the only purpose that they just exist. For you.
And also, write them in a way that makes sense to you and what you would like the story be about.
As the poets say, be true to you. And be fully so.
[YOU TRY TO DISTRACT ME]
In the spirit of staying true, I decided I was going to write this story in a way that would just be what I wanted it to be, regardless of how ‘weird’ the idea was.
So, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the actual story, not only the inspiration behind it.
As far as the story’s slanted form goes, it all started when I happened upon this very cool word; phantasmagoria.
Phantasmagoria
“A sequence of real or imaginary images, like that seen in a dream.”
I wanted this story to read like someone walked into a dream. And even more, like the story started at the point when the characters had suddenly woken up after a collective dream.
What do you do when you face the actual truth of the world you live in for the first time? How do you react to it?
As I said, I started writing this piece during the lockdowns in 2020.
That year, beyond being The Year of the Pandemic, was also The Year of the Protests. With George Flyod’s murder, an entire generation had to face the reality that perhaps police, and government institutions were not fully working in their best interests.
My country wasn’t spared either. 2020 was the year of the #EndSars Protests against police brutality in the country – and the general poor governance that people had been dealing with for decades.
I mean, everyone knew the country was annoying, and everyone complained about it. But it seemed like people just woke up.
And decided it was enough.
That is where Burnt Orange picks up. But instead of the ending we got in real life, I wanted to write a happy ending. Well, happy in the sense that the story ends when the people confront the dream, ideals and illusions that allowed their town to decay into what it was.
I think that is what good art should do, what protests should do – they should give us a voice in reimagining what the norm is. They should ignite a certain form of hope in us. They should channel our anger at injustice for good.
The world of the story is built around imagery, and a very warped sense of time – like in a dream. But it is a very uncomfortable dream. Like something you are trying to wake up from and you cannot.
I think the rise of social consciousness and with how the protests started – both of them – pointed to people finally jerking themselves out of a dream that had been crafted by the powers that be.
And when the people woke up, they were very angry. And streamed into the street.
{But also, I wrote it in that dream-like sequence because I just wanted to. Ha-ha.]
I am still a huge fan of the word phantasmagoria. It is a bit of a mouthful, and I like how it brings to mind the exact colour palette I used in creating the story. It is like the emblems I described within the story, but just yunno, not an evil one.
Ha-ha.
Something I also learnt while writing this piece is that take the work go as far as it wants to go. And be brave about it!
And of course, that means that it is going to take as long as it takes for the story to be ready. Let it.
Give the story its own place and time; it took me WEEKS to write a story that is only 2, 900 words or so long. And it took over a year for it to find a home that thoroughly appreciated it ;)
It is not slow if it is done right. It has just taken the time that it has taken.
Say the important things you need to say, however outlandish they may seem, at first glance. They matter too. And who knows, maybe you will end up creating something you are very, very proud of.