Eneh Akpan Writes: New York Times

Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Crackdown

As the army cracks down on peaceful protesters after the coup,
the violence that is commonplace in the countryside
serves as a grisly reminder of the military legacy of atrocities.
— New York Times
Courtesy: @nytimes (Twitter)

We're strangers in a familiar place

Confined to our homes in a solid cage.

The things that ought

To work for our salvation,

Wakes a trail of desolation.

In my homeland

Blood runs thicker than sand,

Freedom put a stake thru our hearts:

Freedom to express who we are,

Freedom to choose our own path,

Freedom to demonstrate

And not get shot at;

Freedom to have our say

On who runs the affairs of state.

It's hard to get past

The image in your mind,

'Specially when you got stabbed

By your own tool, from behind.

They threw our leaders in jail

Our women keep getting raped.

It's the only way, or they're dead…

With gunshot wounds to the head.

Soldiers patrolling every street,

So now it's kill season

And dead bodies keep increasing

Yet nobody's out to give one reason,

Asking question's perceived treason.

But we still bleeding

And the junta ain't ceding

Yet the whole world ain't heeding

So, who are we kidding?

Akpan

Thursday, February 6, 2014

What Sir Taught Me About Talent

Back when I was a child (to coin a phrase and a swell one too if I may add), I would lock myself up in my room, turn my back to the world, set the muse to work and, explore all the depths of my creativity. There were times I skipped meals and just got lost in my muse creating lyrics. A feeling of nostalgia often accompanies my recall of those early days of trying and failing and you can readily associate if your childhood hobby morphed into a lifelong career.

Sir (if you have read my post “On Identity,” you know I called my father, “Sir”) was well aware of my obsession—how could he not, I spent more time writing than I did doing anything else. I recall one uneventful evening, that’s one day which has evolved into one of the most memorable of my entire life. An unusual hush garbed the entire household. The way I remember it I suppose my sibs were out playing soccer on some stubbed patch of undeveloped lot.

My improvised desk flaunted a clutter of school notebooks. I was buried in the pages of an exercise book flanking the heap when Sir invaded the privacy of my room.

“I haven’t seen you do too much song writing, lately,” He said, his fatherly aura eclipsing my tiny frame.

The smile, which abruptly, lit up my face, came uninvited and uninhibited because I felt I just had my legs pulled.

Don't get me wrong, though. Sir was a big fan-he loved me and loved what I did.

“Seriously.” He eyed me the way fathers do when they're trying to make you pay attention. “You've not been writing those lyrics of yours like you used to.”

Sir went on to tell me something that rearranged my overall psyche and triggered a new sense of purpose within.

1. Your Talent is ‘Who’ You Are

You can't discover the inner self and not find your talent. Towing the same line, you can't straddle your talent and not know who you really are.

“That’s one reason sloths can’t discover who they really are,” Sir said.

If someone has talent, they still have to work very hard if they want to be very good at something. Some people become quite good at something even if they do not have much talent, but if they are willing to work very hard at the skill. Some people “waste their talent” (they have talent but do not work hard at it, they do not “use their talent”). — Wikipedia

"Inspiration exists but it has to find us working." Picasso

2. Your Talent Ought to Define Your Career

This line rather blows its own trumpet. Nevertheless, that's not the situation much of the time. With unemployment and underemployment running the game and as we all know, a man's gotta eat, sometimes, we defer.
Fact remains you can't be waist deep in your talent and still be, metaphorically speaking, out of a job.

Once you find something you love to do, do more of it. You will improve your skills and refine your technique this way. WikiHow

You should consider making a career of it and help change the world with something only you could rightly show off.

3. Your Talent is No. 1 Priority

Here's what Sir said to me, "Education was invented so gifted people could learn from like-minded folks who have through drill perfected their craft." (I can name a few of my high school teachers who signed up for the job because they ran out of options, though.) "People get an education to polish raw talent. The intent wasn't to get a qualification you can't defend for beans so you can apply for a fine job that pays handsomely."

You should nurture your talent by finding a teacher, even if it's just somebody else with more experience at something who can give you advice. WikiHow

“Thomas Edison (electricity), Benjamin Banneker (clock), Garret Morgan (traffic light), Henry Ford (automobile), and Alexander Graham Bell (telephone) had 8th to 12th grade education.

Bill Gates (Microsoft), Ted Turner (CNN), Bill Lear (Lear Jet), Soichiro Honda (Honda cars), and Howard Hughes (Hughes aircraft) never earned a college degree.

These geniuses had average IQ but made the world a better place by using their intuition.” — The New York Times

That's my idea of a well-rounded education. As Sir said, “In a difficult situation where your talent is pitched against 'formal' education, choose your talent.” Put differently, do it in a heartbeat. No questions asked (to coin a phrase).

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

Monday, October 29, 2012

Writers Live Double Lives

Pretense is a syllable too many for most writers when they take account of the role they play in their stories. It’s one word that don’t fit into the puzzle. Doesn’t spark a vibe.

Feigning their fictional people’s emotional roller coasters is too… well, shallow. As a writer, you want to, really throw yourself into the life of your characters to live out the peak moments with them. Including the low periods, as well. If you want to give your fiction an edge of reality and make it ring true in your readers’ ears, you must tackle this important step.

A writer is the best actor/actress of his own story. Let your characters be your director. Step into the spaces where your characters live, mark their footsteps, thread in them boldly. Face your fictional people’s fears and battle their dragons; go from their darkness into greater darkness; fail in their weaknesses until you drop off the lip of reality into a world that could only be magic. Until the spectacular culmination of art where the character wakes to life within you and walks out of your frame to a different plane, a unique personality separate from you and no less alive.

A New York Times review of his novel, Lisey’s Story, quotes Stephen King as saying (about his perspective on writing),

“The question which haunts and nags and won’t completely let go is this one: ‘Who am I when I write?’”

The quote was taken from a 1993 Stephen King essay but in a scene in his novel The Dark Half the main character in his novel makes a similar statement. (Did the author become his character or is his character voicing the writer’s fears?)

Thomas Harris wrote in the foreword to his novel Red Dragon,

‘I want to tell you the circumstances in which I first encountered Hannibal Lecter, M.D…’

Do you sense the urgency in this statement? See how those words push you to believe there might a real walking and breathing, psycho among us and, who goes by that name? Hannibal is a creation of Thomas Harris, a character in his books.

Writers possess more than one soul residing within them and these angle aggressively, for expression. Life often takes drastic twists for a writer; he cannot be one man at every turn of the page. He must not or he’ll lose the very substance which holds him in one piece, bonds his faculty together as a sane entity.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Top Ten Things That Terrorize

THE TOP TEN COUNTDOWN

10. STAGE FRIGHT –

This group would include speaking/performing in public; interacting with new people and other related stuff involving a large group people. A lot of folks are terrified to be under public scrutiny which is practically what it feels like to be up, front and center performing in public.

9. BETRAYAL/DISAPPOINTMENT/RESENTMENT –

I lumped this trio together because I suppose, in a queer kind of way, they’re related. They are all items you can tick off your finger as relations-oriented issues. People disappoint on a daily basis and though we wrap ourselves up in protective shells, we still get hurt. We walk into relationships half-expecting that in the next second we’ll be sweeping shattered pieces of our hearts off the floor with a dustpan and broom. This is basically, a fear of commitment.

8. HEIGHTS/DEPTHS/ENCLOSED SPACES –

They belong to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort. - Wikipedia

Fear of height probably includes fear of flying. And fear of depths could be further split into two;

1. The fear of volumes with large depths such as stairways and deep caves.

2. The fear of depths

- Wikipedia

7. ADOLESCENCE/PUBERTY (GROWING UP) –

Fear of growing up and fear of being displaced in your parents’ lives. Many of us had this fear and some never get over it, even though, the extreme case is what we’re really discussing. I once read some place where someone stated they were scared of growing up and their parents dying. This is another way to present this phobia.

6. ANIMALS/OTHER CREATURES –

Spiders, dogs, mice/rats, cats and the likes, and of course, snakes and sharks. Stephen King said he can stand snakes but is terrified by spiders! Fear is a mystery and it continues to baffle us through all generations.

5. THE DARK –

The dark throws a scare into millions of people (especially children?). In the dark is when our deepest fears grow talons and come out to play. Loneliness, depression, nightmares and of course, freaks and psychos wield their greatest horror in the dark. And so, people tend to see evil in every shadow.

4. STRANGERS/OTHER PEOPLE –

Roland Poppo is now a famous name across the internet as the homeless guy who got his face chewed off by a stranger. In matter of fact, we are much more terrified if the adversary is a thinking, calculating being. If he is one of us. A human can see into our thoughts and read our every move, which makes psychos more terrifying than uncalculating wild beasts. Fear of foreigners or strange people comes out when we are under stress.

3. THE UNKNOWN –

If the first rule of warfare is know your enemy, then not knowing who or what you’re up against tips the scale. People are afraid of entering and exploring a new ground, because they think they might get in trouble. They are afraid of losing what they already have by jumping into the unknown.

2. DEATH –

Everybody dies, eventually. Yeah, but I aint afraid to die, just trying to make sure I get it right. The fear of death is pervasive in a world where millions of lives can disintegrate at the touch of a button. Terrorists aint helping matters, either. But death is not (in my opinion, anyway and this is backed up by some research) the most fearful thing which is why I placed it in the number 2 spot.

1. FAILURE –

Why do you suppose the rate of suicide has tripled in recent years?

I just finished reading ROADWORK by Stephen King. Although, King doesn’t come right out to state it in black and white, Bart Dawes, the main character in the story offed himself because he saw himself as a failure.

First, he fails to secure a new place for his laundry company (on purpose) and threw away his job;

Secondly, his wife leaves him (in consequence of the fact that he failed to secure a new apartment for them. Again, on purpose.) and

Third, because he wouldn’t exhume the body of his son (who had died a few months before of a brain tumor) and rebury him (an ongoing road construction had forced him to relocate) he blew his apartment to hell taking himself along for the bumpy ride.

Nothing takes the sweetness out your mouth as not being able to discover the hidden you in a severely distracted universe. If you lose sight of yourself, death is only child’s play.

WHAT TRIGGERS YOUR DEMONS?

Without a doubt, this countdown would be different if you had done it. Failure is my number one and only fear cause I believe nothing is as fatal (not even death) as the unfulfilled life. And that’s probably, the reason I always see success as the sweetest revenge.

. . . AND HOW THE WRITER CAN THRIVE ON ‘EM

Check out this week’s edition of the New York Times Bestseller list and try to see how many of the story plots are triggered by any one of these fears.

As a writer, you can tailor your character’s pitfalls around one or four of these. You can be sure your story would appeal to someone out there. Bull's eye, mama!

Let your pen bleed!

Akpan

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Because I Rise!

Should it come as a surprise that you do not recognize the values that are the makings of me?

The purest aspects of a person are not necessarily appealing to the eye of the beholder.

Mystery, by so many, is perceived as calculated confusion. Any appearance of class that baffles their fickle fancy is summarily blasphemed.

Such excesses do not ruffle my feathers even if I find I'm way out of my element. I got my priorities rearranged and I will not in anyway, not by one flickering iota alter my resolve and that’s . . .

Because I rise!

Consequences of defiance may muster all the forces of a threat.

But I am blind to consequences and I shut my mind to threats . . .

Because I rise!

When the fullest realizations of who you are lights upon your consciousness, it's like a feeling comin' home, and it arrives with the sensation of sun rising on a land of fairytales. And right then, your tiny atmosphere seizes the vista of a regained paradise.

The strength to withstand struggles is offshoot of our capacity: that persistent attitude that we can go on. Else we'd wither before the heat of pressure comes thro'. Our battles with personal demons grow fierce. But you oughto know they only confront us . . .

Because we rise!

Living on the edge of time makes a demand on my resources; I'm like atlas on bended knees with the weight of the world pressing on my shoulders. Some days, the skies are blue, at other times, I'm having the blues.

Courage is strong only if there is something worth standing up for and hope survives and perseveres when there is a possibility of redeemable expectations. Still, my faith rekindles embers of yet-to-be seen certainties. Then, the fact hit me like breakers overwhelming a crowded beach that I keep on holding on only . . .

Because I rise!

Hard headed adversity seldom comes singly. And for every progress in my pilgrimage, I am compensated by a multiplication of opposition. But I ain’t runnin' 'cause I know the reason they keep hating is . . .

Because I rise!

What would a sophisticated armed attack on a cripple, prove? Isn't it crystal the poor guy couldn't defend himself not to mention posing a threat?

What's the sense in that?

Arsenal of ammunition and weapons of warfare are used against lethally armed and dangerous men. So, I know why they keep coming is . . .

Because I rise!

You seem to find it an impossible thing to visualize. Is it really so difficult to grasp that the ideas I represent possess magnetic properties to attract opposition? That repression would hurt his back to bring me down . . .

Because I rise?

I wouldn't dare exist in another's imagination. I would endure a million light years of sarcasm if it takes me that long to break free.

I would climb a mountain to swim an ocean and be the martyr of my own motion. It's true. By now, I betcha know the reason why . . .

Akpan