'Why can't, Hausa marry Yoruba, Ibo marry Yoruba, Yoruba marry Oyinbo...and L marry a blond Japanese guy named Han.?

Tuesday April 2nd – 2am. The phone rings. It’s my mother

‘Dodo…Dodo…’ I hear her deep panting exhausted breath. Instantly I knew.
‘Dodo…hello’ she continued

This is a dream!

'Are you awake?’
'Yes, Mummy’.

In one gasping breath she continues, ‘Do you have a girlfriend? Dodo, is your girl friend Oyinbo? Are you going out with an Oyinbo girl? I’m not joking – oh, tell me!’

I respond, stunned, ‘Urh, yes – I mean no. ‘
A screech comes from the other end of the line, .”Jesuoooooooo!’

…….the rest to come.

Litter 6: Manifesto for a small revolution.

Litter 6: Manifesto for a small revolution.

7. Get out of your car; use the underground, get on a bus. Do not read, turn off your i-pod, minidisc, whatever and just look around you. Listen and See.

8. If you live near water, river – go to it. Take a walk along a bridge.

9. STOP WORKING! Take your ‘legally required’ 1 hour lunch break. Get up from your desk and go outside, to a park, to a coffee shop, a café, one that’s not a chain.

10. Ask a stranger how their day was.

Litter 5: Manifesto for a Small Revolution

Litter 5: Manifesto for a small revolution.

Over the weekend do the following:

1. Make a list of everything you own – draw a column along side it and tick everything you think you can live without. Give them away.

2. Pay a compliment to a stranger.

3. Give a stranger a copy of your favourite book.

4. Write a letter to an old friend. No email. Not a Phone Call/Txt. It doesn’t even have to be on recycled or fancy paper that smells of lavender.

5. Go out in the middle of the night. Find an advertising poster you hate.
Write over it – with a black marker– some thing like ‘Does this mean anything to anyone?’

6. Take a minute and think about your mother/father/brother sister, really think about them and all the great/bad times you’ve shared together. Then call them. Think before you call.

Days of Plenty are Numbered

I watch movie and BANG! It hits me – where have my ideals gone. Even the various ideas books I’ve carried around for years are more likely to be filled these days with telephone numbers or names of bars, restaurant and cd’s that I want to go to or buy.
Not one idea!
Not one manifesto for the revolution!

I strove for so much in my youth. I still cling to memories of my school years, fighting for every inch for the freedom of my adolescence. A year to go now – boxes of memories clogged above the wardrobe in my bedroom, waiting for a Friday night, to meet another new girl, an after party, go another summer holiday. So the following is part a reminder to myself, part a homage to the book I’m reading at the moment, Jonathon Swift's ‘A Tale of a Tub’ and the movie I saw last night, ‘The Edukators’:

As Mr Heron once said, ‘The revolution will not be Televised’ – the problem is that today it probably will be. So for a week, lets start – no TV.

In the desire to be someone, to do something different, it’s all I’ve ever dreamt all I’ve ever been. The sure confident guy who was; Potential! Just, waiting for the right time. The right moment.
I forgot something though. I forgot about the system. I forgot about all those just like me, they to have read and thought. Words like self and conscience slither their way through their lives too. Then of course they’re the realist who’ve tried to trap my imagination by telling me it’s the system that no matter who you are your beliefs, hopes and dreams. It will get you, just as it has got me. The literately termed big brother has watched all of me grow to my strongest when I truly believed I was destined for historical immortality. He stood in the background. My progression was slow but I had the benefit of self-belief. I could believe my own hype, term all my failings and inadequacies to some relish for longevity, not to burn out.

God, if only you could see the pile of shit rising in front of me, and as I continue, it grows. I on the other hand begin to diminish into absurdity at its hands. Diluted to mere tasteless cordial drink. Un-refreshing. Where are the giant ants in my pants that kept me itching? So long on my toes, always wanting. The new moment, a fresh experience, to jot down, a note for that biography of life that was to come. Come children I’d say grey haired with dentures and flagging fat, in my day I did this and that, as they’d look on with envy and pride at the old man. Trembling, they’d think he believed in himself and let the wind take him the rest of the way. Here is the man who ground the system and lived his life to the full.

I wake up some mornings, fresh and hard from a night of steamy dreams. In that instant the world I’ve just left occupies my thoughts for precisely 0.0004sec or less. I know, I’ve timed it just as I know it takes me 0.987sec to say supercalafragalistiepidalidotious, that’s a pretty long word Mary Poppins. I’m on that suckers fence now unable to distinguish between me and me. I’ve become paranoid, lost in a wilderness of contradictions between living and life. To eat, to dream, to believe and then to see. Some desire greatness, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrusted upon them. My greatest moment came and went and I didn't know it.

I need security lack certainty and am indeed very careless. It’s not that I’m a great literate either. I often find being articulate sort of loses my raw expression. I need to say fuck, fuck the system that confides me to conform, fuck those who have no belief in another way, fuck those who desire not to understand not to think. Just get on with it, you’ve got responsibilities, you’ve got a family. A wife you don’t love, a kid you didn’t want, a job that numbs your soul. You spend hours lost in a mind numbing black tube because you’ve lost access to those dreams you had when you were twelve, that changed when you were 16, again at 21, then 30...

You wanted to be an astronaut, to go live on the moon. To be a doctor, to save lives, a teacher (not because the salary was good or for the housing allocation), to write novels, be the next president…but as always somewhere along the line you lost sight of that goal. You always lose sight. You try to impress a girl, your parents, with worldy good – or you need to get married in a nice hotel, make sure the colours are co-ordinated, because that’s how a man is judged.

But don’t worry like the other billion people in the world you’re not alone. They say that, in life ‘shit happens’ you make your choices no one held a gun to your head. But the thing is that somebody did somebody did hold a gun to your head. Somebody has always got a gun to your head. When he disappears, goes for a piss or on vacation then it all comes flooding back the discontentment with your ineffectuality, your mediocrity.

Untill your life artieres You're having an affair with your wife's best friend; you're the butt of jokes at work. There are moments when you break free. In a fit of rage and anger. If you're a true bastard you beat your wife, your kids, or just are complete shit to everyone that you come in contact with.

Or worse still you try and escape in a moment of complete cowardice and kill yourself. What then? All that you will have left is a corpse for someone else to mourn over? So you destroy him or her again? Shit if you’re brave enough to tie a noose around your neck or butcher your wrist, you're fucking strong enough to beat it.

Today we’re all talking about self, me, me, oh, and the importance of the world, future, nature and the life of a man, a foetus and all the things that don’t make sense and can’t be understood. They've become general statements in these emphatic households that watch the yearly budget to see how it affects them.

Vote on May 5th. Vote for Me – Labour. Vote for Me – Conservative. Why not try something new – Me – Liberal Democrat, you’ve seen the movie, read the books, ‘I too was against the war’ and I quote, ‘If you’re not a liberal by 30 you’ve got no heart and soul…’ – Always take the part that suits your purpose.

Why? We've all got to do our bit for the progression of mankind. Yet where do we stand, where do I stand, with no answers, no solutions to help the guys sleeping by the cash machine? No real thought just complex layers of counter points pointing the finger at everyone else because I can’t point it at myself. I could but what would that achieve I’d be back where I started. I would be a part it. Shit, I am part of it, ‘it me and I’m you.

I should say, give credit to the imagination, but I’m weary of fiction. Human thought, the human mind is an entity on it’s own. It lives always in a different time. I have no scientific explanation or experiments to back this up. I wouldn’t even say like Einstein, that I have any relative value, in terms of an IQ. I haven’t even thought this out and there lies the problem. Thought. It’s puts us there and takes us back again.

Just say! Then just believe! Just do! What ever IT is! Just love! Just feel Pain! Just Help a guy out! Give your salary away! Believe in a faith! Believe in u in someone else! There is no time! Take a tiny first step alone!

Evil arises out of complexity. First we were nothing and unto dust we shall return. I was going to end this by saying, 'just tell me what happens the moment I die.' But no fuck that I’m cheating death, just like I’m aiming to cheat life.

There’s an alternative ending to one of the first productions to one of my favourite plays, ‘A Man for all Season’ by Robert Bolt. The ‘Common Man’, comes back on stage after one of his guises throughout the play, the executioner has just be-headed Sir Thomas Moore and say’s.

‘ It’s not hard to keep friends alive. Just don’t make trouble. Or if you are going to make trouble, make the sort of trouble that expected…(to the audience) if you see me in the streets recognise me…’
The quote not entirely accurate, just realised my copy is missing – so read it if you can.

Sit and Stare

A friend of mine called me to tell me about a new German film just opened, ‘The Edukators’ – all she said was, Dodo there’s a quote in the film where the father say’s to his son; (not an exact quote)

“If you’re under 30 and not rebelling, you’ve got no heart and soul. If you’re over 30 and still rebelling you’ve got no brain.’

I kinda like that. Yes I do. Hopefully I’ll check it out this weekend. Man, so many films recommended by friends that I’ve missed in the last month or so; Maria Full of Grace, 5x2, The Machinist, Be Cool, Hotel Rwanda…man the list goes on….I miss those days, me, my month pass, bucket of pop-corn and hours talking shit afterwards

Litter 4: Moving in the opposite direction of traffic.

Where is it you come from?

Today I decided to do everything backwards, (well only when moving in public spaces). So on my way to work today, driven by some rebellious urge lacking in my ‘life package’ I decided to add, a new activity day into my now clogged to do monthly calendar. For now, we’ll go by the name ‘Moving in the opposite direction of traffic day’, that is until, someone raises their hand and brings something a little more snappy to light, ‘not as obvious as ‘Jeans day’ or my own personal, monthly ‘Sunny D’ day. But along those line – plus it must have day in the title. Sounds like competition time? Ok – a banana for the wining monkey!........

Let us Pray

Is the Pope the most powerful figure in the world?

Field Of Dreams

If you build it he will come.

I’d like to think that my life has some value, that it is, if not spiralling, then at least gradually curling towards some future trajectory of significance and usefulness, beyond my clownish humorist tendencies (an old girlfriend’s reposit to our relationship and my character – you take what you can). My absence from this cathartic means has been down to ‘work’ – the paddling of vey short oars. Ah, to create – to bring to life.

Litter No. 3

El-P - T.O.J. Lyrics

And you can tell that maybe time is out of joint, my love
So this is maybe just a SOS, shrapnel, an echo of deadsentiment
Measurement tossed to nothing for no one
Or wasted effort to shrug
Or maybe resident incurable romantic defunct in the face of fact
Blackboard formula erased by the next class
But the outlines still intact, and I see it
And I'm still not sure of the meaning
But I'll say it, write it down, and read it for you

(Begin) No protective leathery flesh of emotional chain-mail
(No running shoes) no running, no locking doors, no anger
(No e-mail) no voicemail communicational strangulation
Or distortion of purity sentiment
No fantasy of reconciliation or delusion & no revenge
(No bullshit) no codes or hidden agendas,
No preaching(No pedestal) no standing on the pulpit, no ego,no new speaker freakish lingo
(Here I go...)

I haven't loved many people
I grew up afraid that
I was crazy
One time when I was deep inside your body,you purred
And I was sure that you were gonna have my baby

And you can tell that maybe time is out of joint my love
So this is maybe just a SOS, shrapnel, an echo of dead sentiment
Measurement tossed to nothing for no one or wasted effort to shrug

And you can tell that maybe time is out of joint my love
So this is maybe just a SOS, shrapnel, an echo of dead sentiment
Measurement tossed to nothing for no one or wasted effort toshrug
I used to be in love...

Everything you said I took it all to heart
And you spurred a change in me
Before I could become a new sun I had to fall apart
And I can see that now And I wish you well
Cause you saw what was good in me
And I'll be god damned if I didn't see that myself

And everything you are I look @ that w/ pride
Before I could become a grown man I had to lose my mind
Had to lose my mind
And I see that now
And I wish you well
Cause I see what's good in you
And I'll be god damnedIf you can't see that yourself

(taken from the album Fantastic Damage. What else can i add - a dope lyricist)