Obscurity

For a cchange I have chosen to write through what is deemed as free writing. Here I am just mumbling about a phenomenon I have been contemplating about for couple weeks now. In fact, this very notion has been stuck in my head, not knowing how to best articulate it…

My emptiness and desire to spew bile, some rancous disturbing thoughts that need to be spitted out has triggered the need to pen this down. At this present moment, writing about my thoughts and not a book review is a bit discomforting and comforting at the same time because the meeting point is carelessness that is driven by the gravitas of the two points of departure.

In not so many words, my intention is to invite the readers to what I deem as obscurity. Something mundane yet necessarily to share, not for purposes of instilling fear (whatever that fear may look like) or to create a particular fascade about one’s writing. More than anything the point is simply to display the obscurity of writing, and writing as a form of obscurity. If you question my charge, my answer is in front of that very thought of yours – there is no formula. In other words, this is an obsolete charge, there are no grey areas. It’s all obscure, mundane and unorthodox period.

Following the rules is boring, especially when writing carefreely. Every author deserves to write their “fvck you” kinda book, text or lmpiece something like Americanah. Something so carefree.

Without mumbling and bumbling here, I want to cut to the chase. This piece was prompted by a short clip I encountered earlier today from Toni Morrison wherein she describes the loneliness of writing. The loneliness that potentially drives one to create their own world through creative writing. Creating the familiar and the disfamiliar, the usual and the unsual, myth and fact. What was more striking in her charge as I continued listening to that clip, she kept emphasising how her first novel, The bluest eye (sadly my copy disappeared at work, and I loath the day I misplaced the only copy I had of that novel), alas what MS Morrison said about that iconic novel about Picola is that pockets of what transpired in the novel was to some degree biographical. She mentioned the geography, location, time and place so to speak. This meana that what was biographical in thag novel wqs the setting of the novel. It was her assertion about loneliness that sparked the desire for me to pen down this piece.

Essentially, my meditation is about the obscurity of love. Basically it is mostly difficult to explain what it means to love, to be in love and being loved. And quite often our definitions of these varient categories is imperfect, at certain junctures, quite obscure and far from the truth.

Quite frankly, even truth itself exists not when it comes to the question of love. It is only when one is in time of solitude and solace that the ideation of admiration becomes more prominent. In times of solitary, in times of aloness. That is truely synonymous to the art of writing. A very lonely journey. It’s just you, your pen, your thoughts and the ‘subconscious’, the imaginary reader. You do not know how he or she will receive your work but for some weird reason you only hope that they will receive the work in good faith.

They will appreciate both your intricate fallacies and silent modulation of your voice, tone and style of writing. Last but not least what heightens this obscurity even further is the harsh reality that not everyone will receive your artistic work in the same way but the beauty lies in not caring. The carelessness thereof should not be mistaken with arrogance but viewed as assertiveness. The only exception to this front is when receiving an informed, brutal confrontation from your peers who are as “not so brilliant as you are” . Otherwise, keep insisting in the obscurity. The mess, confusion and complexity. The less linear you are, the more proportionally you are close to prowess.

Here one has to channel some serious dexterity of those who have walked the path before. The less spoken about: the poets who wrote for Staffrider, the writers who wrote when no one was bold enough to do so.