YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL

When you and I were forever wild

The crazy days, city lights

The way you’d play me with me like a child

Will you still love me?

When I’m no longer young and beautiful

When I got nothing but my aching soul

Will you still love me when I’m no longer beautiful? 

You know that incredibly weird thing your mind does where it thinks about something and within micro seconds it has thought of about a thousand other scenarios that are sometimes really random from your initial thought but are amazingly connected to it? Like you can think about so many situations under a second and somehow they are all linked with the first thought that sent you down that reflection path. If you don’t know this feeling, I guess I have to add that to my list of thousand things I experience which somehow eludes other homo sapiens. 

So anyway going back to why I’m writing this; in case you didn’t know, the first part of this article written in italics are actually the lyrics to Lana Del Rey’s song ‘Young and Beautiful’. A soundtrack for one of the most popular movies released this year; the Great Gatsby. I was listening to the whole soundtrack album for this movie earlier today while I was doing my laundry (Jay Z did a really good job producing this album but that’s one for another day) and though I admit this song is one of the solid tunes that hold this album together aside Florence Welsh and Gotye’s piece, I normally don’t play it back thrice or more as I did today. I don’t know but something about the words and the whole song demeanor struck me quiet heavily today and it didn’t take me a while to figure out why. 

You see my grandfather was recently diagnosed of dementia and though this is a normal age-related illness and shouldn’t really be too emotional for the rest of us, when you have a grandfather whose mind and skills is one of the traits you admire the most, emotional becomes a word too weak to describe how you feel in the moment. My granddad was an architect, was part of the team that built one of the biggest high schools in Ghana and Africa; PRESEC. Was part of the team that built the many structures that we call our government ministries today. When you are exceptionally close to a genius like this and he begins to forget sometimes that he is home, can’t remember your name, forgets the nickname he used to shout anytime he saw you return from boarding school, it is a bit difficult, putting it mildly. But you know what; once again I have to remind myself that this is not the point of me writing this.

Nah, my motive is actually more morbid and depressing. 

I did a few readings about dementia and whether it was hereditary or not. Let me not get into medical technicalities and complication but turns out some types are generic and what’s worse, they do NOT skip generations. Now this is where my whole brain connecting situations under a micro second scenario theory comes into play. 

I am a very adventurous person; I like to see places I’ve never been before, like to meet people who are different in every way from me. Where people get their kick from sitting with buddies to catch a weekend football game or head out with some friends to the clubs, I find little joy in those. I am outdoorsy, I walk for hours checking out things most people don’t give second thoughts to. Growing up, I was a bit vain and narcissistic, in that I was a handsome young lad and everyone said so. The mirror was one of my close friends and I spent hours admiring how I looked but you see I as I grew and came across other equally beautiful  people whose attitudes and treatment of other people were anything but beautiful, I snapped out of it. I gave little and little attention to how I looked and instead worked more on my interactions with people. Now I’m writing all of this down just so you know that when I grow old someday and perhaps start to lose my memory, the last thing I would be worried about is not beauty or good looks. 

My energy. My ability to wake up one morning and go to any random place I want to. My youthfulness and zeal to learn more. My inability to see beauty in things, in people. These are the things I’m worried about. People say you can be forever young; it’s all about the heart and the mind-set. Makes me sick hearing that. How about I want to help build a school in some random rural setting somewhere and I can’t even walk across the room for a potty session without my cane or a family member whose name I can’t remember? How would I react to that? Would I be unaware of my pathetic situation or would I seethe and whimper inside because the inevitable has happened? Would I sit with friends and family, talking about past things as if they were occurring or about to happen? Would they look at me sometimes and shake their heads in a sympathetic way while exchanging concerned looks? Would they wish me gone soon enough because I would be disrupting their own lives and their time to be young and beautiful?

I don’t mean to go down this depressing road and dragging you along with me but well I was listening to a Lana Del Rey song and somehow things took a gloomy, depressive turn… surprise, surprise. 

Now that I’m done pouring my guts out, I don’t see the point of my writing all of this  but I’m still going to post because in some dark, twisted way, it all makes sense to me and that’s all that matters. 

MUSIC MINUTE

I love music. I love the feeling it brings to me and the stress it takes from me. Lately I haven’t been listening to new stuff though, I’ll pass on the garbage the radio and mainstream media have been trying to push down our throat. It’s like I have a personal vendetta against it. That they are the government’s mechanism to dumb us down so when it comes to more important political issues like economic policies and country warfare’s, we go about them with the same burger and cheese mentality our dense music lyrical contents have equipped us with. I remember when Rihanna released her first single ‘diamonds’ from her current album ‘Unapologetic’, I was on a blog going through the readers reviews and I came across a funny one I’m gonna quote. “We’re beautiful like diamonds in the sky! Those lyrics are a masterpiece!”……. I remember feeling so bad and thinking if this is what we have been reduced to. What happened to the use of euphemism, word within words and lyrics that aroused in you, emotions that you have been trying hard to suppress? What happened to ambiguity in lyrics that you had to decipher to discover libretto gems? Katy Perry, Justine Bieber and the need for a Billboard No. 1 debut, that’s what! Anyway I could go on forever about the imaginary lawsuit I’m filing against the whole international music industry in my head so without wasting anymore of your time, here’s a list of both old and new songs I’ve been listening to a lot lately.

SIA ft THE WEEKEND – ELASTIC HEART (PRODUCED BY DIPLO)

I was on a hip-hop site about a week ago trying to download Lauryn Hill’s post-jail song ‘consumerism’ when I came across this song. Of course I didn’t doubt how good it was going to be; between The Weekend and Drake, I can’t decide who’s the best thing to come out of Canada musically since my favorite band ‘In-flight Safety’.  Of course Sia is Queen Sia for a reason and when I downloaded this song, I could be arrested for domestic abuse because abuse this song I did. Within an hour I had listened to it over a hundred times and even now when I’m sitting in a class waiting for a lecturer who is not showing up, I shove that sexy Aussie accent that belongs to the queen into my ears and reach some nasty eargasms right there and there on my classroom bench. I have been shoving this song down everyone’s throat (they should be grateful) and when someone says, “Hey Kels, what are you listening to”, I immediately shuffle to this song so they can listen to it (lol)

IN-FLIGHT SAFETY – FEAR

I will try and keep this review as short as I can because I can get a bit carried away with this Sackville band. Fear doesn’t exactly captivate you on first listen; it’s what I call a grower. It grows on you and when you are able to make meaning of the lyrics, it can be really therapeutic. It’s about taking chances on everything life has to offer, on love, on people and on yourself. I know it sounds really sentimental and romantic but really it’s not. This is no Celine Dion in your face kind of love song and the lead vocalist and guitarist John Mullane has the kind of voice that is so intimate and authentic that it makes you feel like he wrote this with you and your life in mind. At least that how it felt to me.

SNOW PATROL – NEW YORK

So Jeffery and I were having a conversation one time at the athletic oval about his entrepreneurial ideas I think and he had his phone playing songs throughout this chat (he loves rock and alternative music too so I could live by his musical choices). I was totally listening to what he was saying till this song started playing and I couldn’t concentrate anymore. It had this serious and solemn beginning that took me from start and I had to ask which band it was because I knew just one band that mostly used such musical arrangements consistently; Goo goo dolls. I was wrong and for the first time I’m glad I found who this band was before I went searching for them. The lyrics are quite deep and a bit depressing but the drumbeats don’t quite allow you to settle for mellowing down. It’s a beautiful song and at times in this week when I’ve found myself trying to listen to something meaningful, this has been the only option that kept bringing itself up.

YOUSSOU N’DOUR – MOOR NDAJE (MR EVERYWHERE)

I read this article (http://www.ameyawdebrah.com/go-huffington-post-releases-list-top-10-african-musicians-youssou-ndour-tops/) last 3 days and smiled at myself. I first discovered this man whose greatness could only be matched by either Fela Kuti or Hugh Masakela one time on school vacation when I was in a certain weird musical stage and all I wanted to listen to was pure African Afro-music. A friend sent me a song I had been searching for so fervidly and I was grateful because I didn’t know the title before and had come up with nothing. ‘Birima’ the first song I heard from this man convinced me someone who could compose a masterpiece as that should have other gems under his discography. Well Moor N’daje is the evidence of that and Mr. N’dour never disappoints on his massive and beautiful use of strings and xylophones. The drums are not studio manufactured and this song always sends me into an exploring mood. It takes me to such a different realm of music that even Michael Jackson would struggle to venture; he mixes the soul of Africa into a contemporary bottle that you wouldn’t or shouldn’t dare pass by at the music market. Like I said before concerning ‘Birima’, I still stand by my opinion that if angels do exist, Youssou N’dour must teach them to sing.

SKY SAILING – CAPTAINS OF THE SKY

Normally, my number one feel good song I always turned to, to get me pumped when I felt any form of negative emotion come up within me was ‘Stomp the roses’ by David Archuletta. Up until a year ago when Dave announced his Mormon mission as per tradition of every young person growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (that’s a long name for a church) and he took along with him the happy representation I likened to this song. Not so long after that, I bought a laptop and discovered an album on the hard drive called ‘An airplane carried me to bed’ by a group called ‘Sky Sailing’. Luckily for me, that album had a song that was to be my next feel good song ‘captains of the sky’. This group is different from any band I know because of the unique perkiness and glee they bring to each song and they remind me of the kind of music to expect if the chipmunks and the smurfs ever came together to form a band. Forever cheerful and even their sad songs have this jolly feel about them. Like a fat kid crying because someone bit off a part of his chocolate though there is still a huge chunk left and he can’t quite decide whether to cry over what he lost or to rejoice over the plenty he has left.

CLAUDE KELLY – SHADOW OF ANGEL

Claude Kelly has always been my favorite RnB songwriter. The genuineness of his lyrics and his ability to actually hold a tune is what draws the respect I have for this dude and though this song has been around for quite a while, it doesn’t matter. Like I always tell people, good music is like good wine, it gets better with age and you start to appreciate the taste more. This song had been hiding somewhere in my iTunes and I came across it one time when I was clearing my memory. Couldn’t bring myself to delete and the number of times I have listened to it this week tells me I made a good decision. If you are in a dysfunctional relationship and you need someone to hear you out or rather to listen to, don’t pay bucks on some shrink who charges by the hour. Hit up Mr. Kelly on this shadow dial and there is an upside to this option; you can crawl in a room somewhere and cry to these lyrics and no one has to know.

Ps. if you download any of these songs and you don’t like them, you probably think the lyrics to Beyonce’s ‘grown woman’ is the best thing since Etta James. You should shoot yourself.

START OVER

It seems to me that I have started my life over again so many times that there is no need any more to be sentimental. I have for some reason found comfort in solitude and I have become an addict. Some people can’t get enough of inhaling dried up herbs, others would stab for a slab of white lines but for some reason, I have found dependence in shoving melodic strings in my ears when I make public appearances and burying my face in paperback when I am alone. I have pushed away people that I spoke to nearly every day and I have picked deliberate fights with people so I can justify myself when I finally slash a razor through that thin line that balanced what we once used to call friendship. Jeffery says it’s my body telling me what it wants. I beg to differ.  Alone, feeling the emptiness around me, I sometimes feel that my life is a separate distinct enterprise connected to others by a slender thread which I have measured by myself. And I think that’s where my addiction lies; the liberating and empowering feeling I get from knowing I can control who stays in my life and who is shown the door. But like every craving, it’s in need of regular supply and herein lays the problem. I have learned in the past weeks that human beings are not a fully stocked wardrobe, that you can’t change them whenever you are bored with your current collection, whenever you feel like they are getting old and used. Because like a wardrobe, you are going to run out, either of the finances to change it or of the ideas to modify.

That been said, I’m in a really good place and I have felt like I have been given another chance. It’s been a long and painful road coming into realizing that but the miraculous avenue I have passed getting here has been nothing short of wonder and had it not been for the fact that it is a private affair between me and God, I would have ranted on and on about it. Privacy; another word I have had a chance of deeply understanding while in my moment of solitude. A word that I have no plans of taking for granted anytime soon.

I have rediscovered myself. The part of me I lost during my weak moment of social conformity and that makes me smile typing this. The guy that got lost in his own religion. This is my church; this is where I get to celebrate what’s holy. Books are my cathedral and words and ideas, those are my scriptures. I’m rediscovering Thomas Palmer, Jeffery Archer, John Grisham, Mario Puzo and I love what I’m discerning. Worlds beyond what I understand and the life I live. Worlds that I can’t wait to experience. Most people spend their whole life waiting for something that’s gonna change everything. They say the grass is not always greener on the other side so let’s wait, let’s work hard, lets not chase waterfalls, let’s stick to what we used to. Well people are full of shit, a fact I have learned these past weeks. The city awaits me there and it’s only some more months to come.

I’m smiling again because the city awaits me? That’s a line from a song I’ve come to accept as the theme music for my life. ‘Fear’ a song by a band that I can’t get enough of; In-flight safety. For some reason I have connected with these Canadian guys so intensely and immensely that I have literally felt them extend a hand down through the dark pit my addiction has thrown me into and pulled me out. All through vocals that sooth me so gently and so warmly, I’m convinced it was recorded in a placenta. I have listened to surround, out of sight, lucky boy from this same band and I can’t even begin to describe the spiritual transformation I begin to collapse into when honey tasting pond streams through my wire.

I have been taught a few things and I have been humbled in the process. I have been thinking this is just a stage like most of the others. That after all I was going to go back and I can’t do that. Not because my pride won’t let me go back into rebuilding friendships of Atlantis. No. But because I have had a taste of a controlled life. A life without fear or apologies. A life where I knew what I wanted and who I wanted. A life where I knew how I wanted to spend my day and where I wanted to spend it. A life without regard for external opinions or external emotions and it feels darn good. I can’t change the past and the possible hurt I might have caused some people, I won’t even bother trying. Not because I’m insensitive but because if there’s anything at all I’ve learned recently, it’s that everything happens for a reason. I won’t apologize for having a predilection for good breathing, positive energy and reasonable intelligence. After all I deserve it, we all do and I understand that I am negative energy to some people. Well I’m sorry but do what I’ll do in your place, cut me off and don’t apologize for it. I know I won’t.

SECLUSION

Freedom of expression,

Free from scrutiny and fear

Delving into a place so deep inside you, a different realm

Tiny cables carrying sweet lyrical melodies we rely on

Melodies of explanation and understanding

Understanding of situations that is misunderstood

Misunderstood by companions that have been shut out

Shut out because familiarity has been discouraged

Discouraged because of situations

Situations that are misunderstood

Temporary relationships that break down

Breakdown because of broken souls and minds

Minds and souls that are hard to save

Mine is a difficult soul to save

Mine is a difficult soul to understand

Relationships, sweet at six, sour at six

Relationships, tainted by inability to salvage

Souls in need of repairs

Repairs that will never happen

Never happen because patience eludes them all

Pushes them away, yes eludes them all

Blood will hurt more

Hurt more from the lies

The conceal

The hide and disguise

Hurt that hurt us

Hurt us because of the emotion we possess for them

Suppression and masks

Emotions felt for the wrong bodies

Emotions that will never be returned

Never be returned for its aberrant nature

And so deeper we coil in

Deeper we shell in

Deeper we conceal

Deeper we are broken

Deeper we break

Relationships without interest to keep up with

Deeper we suppress and crumble

Sunrise to sunset

K.D

NEW SLAVES

Slavery- a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold and are forced to work against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work – you know what, let me just cut through right here and spare you the rest of the abstract nonsense this internet deduced definition has to offer. When you have stood in a tiny dorm-sized room that housed one thousand human beings and seen excreta marks that rose to about 3 feet on its wall where again human beings once laid, you can’t help but disregard this impersonal and aloof description some individual who sat behind a desk somewhere gave to this inhumanity just in time to get their monthly check.

I am a young man who has spent the better part of my twenty-two years in Ghana, a country where slavery is embroiled so deep into our fabrics it makes Coco Chanel seem like a Math teacher. From elementary school to senior high school, the slavery part of our past has been hammered into our consciousness and like everything else it has only become some robotic phenomenon that we just understood in the most abstract manner. Nothing, and good Lord I mean NOTHING prepared me for the harsh reality that hit me on my Cape Coast Castle tour yesterday for the first time in my life, a fact I’m ashamed to even admit as a mature native of this country, Ghana and as I walked through what seemed like boundless layers of darkness, the theoretical aspect of my slavery education was stripped bare and I felt naked with shame and fury on how any human being, forget black, could be put through such dehumanizing conditions all in a quest for some few coin and papers.

50% of the slaves captured were shipped to South America & the Caribbean’s (Majorly Brazil, Haiti, Peru, Jamaica etc and at a point in time, close to 50% of their population of Brazil was made up of black people), 40 % were shipped off to the Southeastern part of the United States (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia etc) and the 10% left were shipped off to other European countries where the demand for them were not as high as the developing continent of America.

I had to go through the shame and pain of measuring human beings in statistical facts and likening them to shipping commodities because it is plays a very important role in explaining certain occurrences that happened to me on my visit and I write in hope that should the same incidence reoccur if you ever visit the Cape Coast castle, you would not be as taken aback as I was. Now as explained before, the majority of the slaves were taken to South American & Caribbean countries and one of the most ethnic visitors of the castle were people from Jamaica, a country were majority of the people were of black origin. Surprisingly, as I witnessed for myself, other major annual visitors to this monumental site were in fact white people and I found myself asking the question “what could possibly drive a criminal to return to the scene of a crime?”- I am no racist and I am definitely a firm believer in the idea that you cannot hold a person responsible for the actions of their fathers, however I am also a firm believer in the idea that when you drive someone out of your home, you don’t turn around to ask them where they are going to stay. It’s insulting and hypocritical to the person and it turns out I had a few other people who seemed to share my sentiments and boy did they have a way of showing it! The harassment and confusion that took place upon the encounter of the visiting blacks from United States (most especially Jamaica) and the whites was something that resulted in pulling people apart and dragging people to reception areas to calm them down. “What are you guys doing here?” “Haven’t you done enough?” “Did you come to survey the damage you caused” “why won’t you people leave us alone” … These are some of the cleanest and sanitary comments I can post here for anyone reading this but even my modest writing skill and play of words cannot even begin to describe the intense and emotional energy that vibrated around the walls of the castle amidst this prevalence. You would think we were captured slaves that had grown restless and violent because news of the arrival of the ship that was to convey us to the New World had reached us and the realization that this was it, we were going to be torn away from everything we knew and everyone we loved had finally hit home. People cried and people apologized but it was hundreds of years too late; you could not blame one side for feeling the need to fight for the little dignity and pride left of their dishonored ancestors as much as you could blame the other for feeling hopeless with regards to conducts of their own ancestors they had no control over. For the mutual faction of us pure Africans that did not in any profound sense belong to any these backgrounds, we just stood and watched what seemed like the same color-motivated struggle between two different races that had occurred on these very grounds hundreds of years ago.

After tempers had been cooled down and reason had been met, we were divided into different groups and a tour none of us were ever to forget any time soon begun. A tour that exposed thousand men been kept in an undersized room with nothing but a window as big as an iPad providing ventilation while one single man possessed a living room and a bedroom area with a sea view so magnificent Warren Buffet would currently be proud to call his own, a tour that exposed hundreds of African women been raped at night and been thrown into sea alive weeks later because they showed pregnancy signs that were not acceptable for people that were to work on plantation farms, a tour that exposed a few white administrators been treated to luxurious delicacies each night while porridge were poured down to thousands of black men and women through tiny windows they had to scramble for amidst human waste and excreta, a tour that uncovered human beings been arranged in tight fashion in ships and were required to settle in one rigid  position for several months and stay healthy while doing so lest they’d be thrown overboard barely alive to trailing sharks that had grown accustomed to strange looking people with dark skin been fed to them every now and then in the epoch of centuries!

A tour that exposed African individuals consciously participating in this filth for nothing more than few shillings and good grace in the white books and a tour that made any black person (man or woman) aware of the sacrifices people have had to go through so we could be educated and think for ourselves today. A tour that reminded us as Africans of how trusting and relying heavily on other people for knowledge and way of doing things had affected us immensely in the past, a tour that prompted us to believe in ourselves and sharpen our own thinking abilities not even as Africans but as human beings that must learn to do things for ourselves and desist from depending solely on other people when the good Lord above did not bless us lesser than He did them.

But even most importantly, this was a tour that taught me as a son of the land that blame is easier to ascribe than acceptance of responsibilities. Because as much as we would like to plunk every guilt on the white man, an old African proverb says ‘Any insect that would bite you is already in your cloth’ and we can forgive them only if we can forgive ourselves for our conscious participation in this brutal dehumanization and abide by the words of the plaque at the exit which reads:

 

In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors.

May those who died rest in peace.

May those who return find their roots.

May humanity never again perpetrate

Such injustice against humanity.

We, the living vow to this.

These walls did not hold back our bodies, they held back our minds.

A great big empire built on the blood and sweat of our fathers

The insurgency will rise & bloods were sacrificed 

His new Empire of dirt, George McClean

These are they, the shackles that have been removed from our hands & feet and placed on our mind and mentality

thousand men breathed through this

One man breathed through this

The door of no return

An experience every man, black or white should experience

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