Celebrating the Last Glass Of Water With A Smile: A Foray Into The Life Of Artists And Their Sacrifices
 
Let us commence this journey with this poem by a Nigerian literati.

HOMELESS
By Obu Udeozo

Vagabond
In flight, frightened

Like a weaverbird
Frantic at nestling futilely
For toehold

From an infinite bazaar of
Affluent kins and well wishers
In their dense forest of mansions
Of suites and duplexes.

And yet outcast
In flight-loitering

The street dogs stalking my
Swollen steps must think
I am mad
Not knowing
No home has welcomed me

Like two sides of a coin. Not lining some phat pocket, bursting from the sweat of urchins and street people, but tossed askance to some desolate island by Bedouin winds. What can we make of the of the Vagabond and the Hermit? Cutting short the rhetoric, the former, among a plethora of possible connotations, is someone, an individual, mam, woman, child; with no HOME. As we approach the daily twilights of dusk, Man and Beast, especially the diurnal   hurries home to roost, but the vagabond simply roams on. He has no home to return to. He may only find temporary solace in eaves, arches and porches along the street. The latter, is simple, one cut off from the society. At best, anti-social. He very rarely leaves his home, his hermitage. Like a bird perpetually bound to his perch.

There’s a commonality, an essential salt that runs through the essence of the vagabond and the hermit. It is their stoic personalities. Their homogenous sense of lack! This deficiency, which one may describe as the logic of the illogicality, is most ironically, their source of strength! For their humanity and human spirit is heightened whence cut off from the mundane, that which is petty or cosmetic or vogue. Like, killing one’s self for things we want but do not need. That, so eagerly sought, so jealously guarded, so easily lost! And those we actually need, like the common want of salt and pepper that the woman forgot to ask the politicians at the rally of rallies, when she got home to her children and all she found was the empty kitchen ware staring her in the face in Odia Ofeimun`s poem: A SERIOUS MATTER.

The vagabond and the hermit are beyond this state. In other words, he has matured through the various institutions and degrees of suffering and grown numb to the hunger and acid bites of despondency and deprivation.

The ongoing is analogous to the HUNGER ARTIST of Kafka, when his art took him to heights before un-ventured, like places in the sky where even the eagles fear to dare, he was the strongest of mortals present at he zoo material time. Here again, that divine paradox, that illogical..Logic: his weakness was his strength as the former only informed and served the latter. The vagabond would die in the end. So would the hermit, as did Kafka`s hunger artist. And so would we all. But again, as Toni Kan once interred in an elegy for late Ayo mamudu at his last duty post at the University of Jos in the early nineties:

            What is life? But death
            What is gain but loss?
            What is laughter but sorrow?
            That tasks our lives…

And Olu Jacob, a fellow traveller like Toni kan, Helon Habila, Ter Agbeder, I.k Akonobi, Abiye Krukrubo, David Njoku and my humble self also expressed in the poem from our writers forum days in at the University of Jos: WHEN I DIE.

            When I die
            Feed my body to the vultures
            It is not death that I fear but extinction!

            For what is life, if you lived it
            Without fame nor fortune
            Without progeny…

Thus it is not the life you lived or are living that matters, but of what quality? That is the question. We all remember Ayo Mamudu and Zack Orbunde among others and their untold sacrifices staying faithful to the Arts: they’re ever truly jealous spouse, the same of which many have paid the ultimate price. Distinguished in this category is the callous murder of KENULE BEESON WIWA, known to the world simply as Ken Saro Wiwa by the Abacha junta. And someone very dear to my heart, whose piratical leave taking left such a wind blowing in my mind; he was called Carlos Izzia Ahmad!
 
Other Artist, painters, and writers spreaded across the continents of the globe that has lived through various degrees of untold, unqualified sufferering include inter alia: Leonardo da Vinci –an Italian artist and to properly label him: a master of masters, jack of all trades and master of all! Physician, painter, sculptor e.c.t   among his best known works are the ever refreshing portrait of the mystery lady, Mona Lisa. Song    and celebrated in all art forms. This painting, glanced from every which way you choose, a different pictured is conveyed for your delight! It is at best, kaleidoscopic in nature. A still painting, smiling when viewed from an angle and at another, the smile is gone, just like magic! And here’s the interesting part, it is like a sweet joke told for your exclusive benefit, yet you can neither unravel nor fathom the exactly what its all about…Leonardo da Vinci`s Mona Lisa. His other notable works are: The Last Super and The Madonna Of The Rocks. He is also known on records to be the first to dissect the human anatomy!  He painted the motifs on the ceiling in St Peter’s Basilica lying straight on his back on a ladder and the paint was entering his eyes, from which after so many months, he wrote a letter to his family describing his hazardous task and his deeming sight.

A great man indeed won’t you say? In the words of Obu Odeozo: an archetype of the western genius (he lived in the time when to go to the University meant you simply studied all the disciplines to be learnt therein!) But here’s the catch!  He was poor most of the time, never knowing when his next meal would come. He wallowed, wobbled and stumbled from one royal court to another, struggling daily with his servant for survival amidst the smallest denominations of the Italian peso.

Vincent Van Gore. A Dutch painter known like Da Vinci in the world of Art was only able to sell one singly painting in his lifetime! Funny don’t you think? He was reported to have lived perpetually under the benevolence of his younger brother. But interestingly, only a few years ago, his painting DR GATCHE sold for 82 .5 million dollars (American). He suffered so much in his lifetime that he first cut off his own ear. And finally suicide took pity on him for escape from this miscellaneous Earth we habit.

Rembrandt. Equally celebrated today as the others, one of the greatest painters of all times, was so poor, he went bankrupt and invited auctioneers to sell off his desk, chairs and even his the very beddings that he slept on: because of untold hardship! And dept!