To Memory

Kangsen Feka Wakai

Before I made the choice of becoming a writer, I was enthralled by oral expressions, by mind-bending riddles, by witty proverbs, by nursery rhymes, by idioms, by the treble of language, by fairy tales, by Roger Milla, kongosa, by folklore, by myths and legends, by history’s sardonic laughter, by rituals, by colonial and postcolonial literature, by the relentless hollers of street peddlers, by sanctified choral hymns, by Boney M, by the echoing timbre in political rallies, by Zebrudaya, by presidential decrees, by motions of support, by protest songs, by music, by Mandela, by impassioned Sunday sermons, by Achebe, by Beti, by Wa Thiongo, by Lapiro, by BB, by Petit pays et les sans visas, by Gobata, by Tutuola, by L.T. Asong, by Ako-Aya, by loitering ghosts, by the footwork of possessed masquerades and by the spectacle of everyday life, its tragedies, comedies, laughter, cries, quietude and noise.

And the smells; rice and stew, roasted corns, roasted fish, open latrines, ripe mangoes, pineapples, pigsties, koki, soya, and puff-puff and beans. 

It was from this kaleidoscopic ravine that I first drank from the clear waters of ideas flowing like a stream from the newspapers, magazines, novels, poems, and cartoons that fertilized the rocky terrain of youth—manure for seeds not yet planted.    

Before putting the proverbial ink on paper these relics of youth would nudge my consciousness, probe my Weltanschauung and ignite my artisitic sensibilities.  Latent and unrelenting sensibilities that had been frostbitten by the cold war, numbed by coups and counter coups, mellowed by reggae, caricatured by Popoli, versified by Shakespeare, sung by Fela, decried by Sankara, desecrated by Apartheid, imprisoned by dictatorships, inebriated by lies, ridiculed by hypocrisy and confused by time.

But, as I trudged into adulthood, I joined the flock of those who for economic and non-economic reasons—in other words, to fill our empty stomachs and harvest from the vast orchard of western civilization’s imperial booty—ventured into a frigid landscape of uncertainties, at once inviting yet hostile.  I became part of that horde of modern day Barbary penetrating the porous walls of Rome—third world conquistadors, ambitious, ragged, talented, bruised and hungry immigrants, crossing today’s economic Rhine to drink from the fountain of economic prosperity in Europe and America.

I landed in an American university campus before pitching my tent in the trenches of survival amid the working poor, struggling students, the desolate, busy parents, fatherless daughters, motherless sons, cashless poets, black nationalists, cultists, dreamers, drifters, single mothers, single fathers, foster homes, the druggies, the battered, punk rockers, Rastas, the fighters and sidewalk blues-makers. Once again, they would nudge my consciousness, and spark my creative sensibilities.  

I would be inspired by the gritty poetics of hip-hop, by drunken winos, by afro-futurists by prime time sitcoms, by technology, by conspiracy theories, by rock and roll, by Ellison, by Coltrane, by Sun Ra, by Wright, by Baldwin, by Basquiat, by Miles, by Hendrix, by The Wu-Tang Clan, by Malcolm, by Martin, by homeless philosophers, by perverse opulence, by the improvisational magic of jazz, by Ebonics, by sidewalk prophets, by entrepreneurial immigrants and by the sheer artistic vibrancy of the American landscape, a gilded cemetery of old world cultures.

My first task was to survive.  And with the business of survival underway, I made the decision to write, but not just to write—that is putting pen on pad or finger on keyboard—but to immerse myself in an alchemical and organically process, in perpetual evolution, synchronized to impose form and order to the chaos that spurs most creative outbursts.  Writing, at least for me, became an exercise in deliberate self-discovery, a way of attaching meaning to meaninglessness, an unraveling of mysteries, a depository of memories—however repressed—and a vault for retention.  Writing thus became, at least for this writer, a revelation, a preamble to the demystification of the embroidered seams that make up the human tapestry.

But because I was born when and where I was born and have lived when and where I have lived, the disparate voices, sounds, whispers, nuances, accents, tones, melodies, ideas, theories, in all their conflicting tones and opposing undercurrents, have consciously and perhaps subconsciously found a home in that extension of my person, in all its imperfections, that takes the form of a verse, a phrase, or a train of thought. 

And in my attempt to write, the congested buses of Yaounde have honked at me; the throbbing speakers of Commercial Avenue (Bamenda) have blared my name; my scripts have been garnished by the rattle of the Chicago subway, the Houston asphalt, my mother’s singing, my father’s whistling, Russian concertos on Sunday mornings, makossa, gunshots at burials, ceremonies, dramas and scenes of yore lodged in the caverns of my memory.   Like a choir of messiahs, whirling in the chaotic restlessness and ecstatic fulfillment inherent in the creative process, they have resurrected themselves and fed my imagination.  They have cast their massive shadow upon the dominion of my thoughts. 

I am their vessel and repository.  In writing I have found autonomy.

My task is to create, communicate, learn, teach, seek, question, contest, entertain, and meditate, but most of all, to remind against a raging storm of forgetfulness. 

Comments

[wgb]

This piece, with its prolific use of lists, vividly puts into perspective & picture those tensions, longings, vistas etc emerging in diasporic psychic scapes, capturing in the process a vortex feelings, sensitivies and sensibilities that map lost or found or sought for terrains/countries of cherished (or at times troubling)memories!The 'rawest' material for all writing is memory, even futuristic fictions!That is the value, to the writer & us, of these listed memories: a value so invaluable!