“Some poets can’t write but brokenness, boys, body, city” – Phunsho Oris
There’s something about being in vogue that makes people flip the coin of their senses— the #MeToo syndrome. Everyone wants to, at least, help fall a table if they can’t shake one. This makes me retrospect to the quote above.
The thing about dynamicity and staticity, most times, isn’t default. How we find ourselves is often determined by how we’ve been: memories we have haboured, teachings we have subjected our minds to, experimentations we have done and also the kind of environment we have been over a specific period of time. The mind is a volatile memory device; but the twist is that its writabiliy for conscious events isn’t always guaranteed. It involves a simple but complex algorithm of tricks needed to be put in place before the contents can be altered. In other words, learning, unlearning and relearning are neither automatic nor trivial.
Without having to spend a coffee hour debating what a full length mirror carries, we will agree with me that these days, a larger percent of writers have attacked the religious themes more than they have done since the inception of their writing career. This is the time when the sky, in place of stars, starlets and moon, is covered with propositions of theism, atheism, anarchism, and every other related subjects of religion and godliness. Why? Because that is what is in vogue.
Some poets can’t write but brokenness, boys, body, city, not because they are poor, but because their minds have been restricted to the thesis of these words that understanding a different language is heaven to Lucifer. And this might be blamed on their falling out and then falling in line with a particular trend or perhaps the style of a successful writer and finding themselves so rooted in this that it’s almost impossible to be anything these people aren’t. This brings me to the notion that most writers, in the quest of acquiring mentorship, become their models’ shadows. Now the tragedy in this is not the doom itself but the fact that it’s lurked within the frame of a blur picture. You adore someone so much you obey dumbly without subjecting their ideas to your mental panel, forgetting you’re a different person with a different kind of light and path only needing guide; you copy their styles, write their themes and in the process, become who they are. This is the genesis of becoming someone you aren’t meant to be and the revelation of your breakthrough.