To Hell with Creative Writing; or, Politics: an Alternative Amusement
- By Uche Peter Umez
- Published June 29, 2009
- Features
-
Rating:
Uche Peter Umez
Uche Peter Umez has won awards in poetry, short story and children novel. He is the author of Dark through the Delta (poems), Tears in her Eyes (short stories) and Aridity of Feelings (poems).
View all Entries by Uche Peter Umez
To Hell with Creative Writing; or, Politics: an Alternative Amusement
“To be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds we carry inside us.” – Orhan Pamuk
That’s the end, you vow. I’m finished with writing. You don’t rise at once from the beach; instead, you lay back and let the froth-lipped waves lick your feet. Between the emerald sea and you stand the nectarine sun bowing out. Behind you is the edifice of The Palms, a hotel on Collins Avenue. This entire landscape is fuel for a verse, a scene, but you overwhelm it.
They will feel shocked. They’ll feel saddened. It is for the good of the literati, you hope to convince them. The general community as well. YOU ARE QUITTING. Not because creativity has turned into an exhausted oil-well. You just can no longer live among the ghostly legion that yanks the imagination in all directions or the riot of phrases – phrases that strive to outwit each other. You. Are. Fed up.
The self-flagellation, all of it. You have recognized that the more you try to conceive and juxtapose words and worlds in your head the more demanding writing becomes, more insatiable than the grave. Though you’ve started to drag yourself out of the wetlands of angst, you feel so powerless you just want to lie in it.
Sometimes creative writing is the paradox of the flame and the moth. Reality is suspect, and the air is the crypt of a thousand simulacra. It is magnetic, but you have willed yourself, at least for now, not to succumb to the pull of penning The End to your life.
On countless occasions though, migraine and fever assault you from every angle. You bear the attacks as stoically as a Zen disciple. Silence in pain promises inspiration, a threshold to an artistic nirvana never before experienced, you readily fantasized, calming the spate of self-doubts churning in your heart. You’ve often glared at the peaceful beauty curled up next to you. The kolanuts of insomnia are more acerbic than wormwood, and though you abhor it, you are compelled to chew it at full tilt. Because of your impotence.
You’re unable to thwart the skirmishes of characters badgering for attention. Can’t turn off the fervent cries of characters whose souls you’ve crushed, like a mixer, and tossed into the bureau of ephemera. How long can you keep on, smothering and smiling – when the world about teems with such sunshine that you feel like choking the person nearest to you? How long can you live with the demons dashing about in your head?
Barbiturates are familiar as your blues. There are nights you long to empty the bottle down your throat. Moments you feel so dark it seems leaping off the bridge or in front of a speeding vehicle is gratifying. Can’t remember the number of times you want to twist the naked electric wire round your neck.
This is crazy, life. Even Sigmund Freud failed to explain his self to himself.
Nobody knows the torrents in your mind. They don’t know. None of them, not even those dear to you. Or close. But all this would later change.
All along you were committed to writing, particularly since you alighted at the Cedar Rapids Airport. Less than 48 hours later, you took to absorbing sights and sounds as a wife takes to the kitchen, dutiful, eager. Read as widely as possible. Wrote just as frenziedly too, pounding away at the keyboard until heavy-lidded you slumped into the bed and slept like a whacked janitor. Once complained to your family that you’ve been sleeping for only 2 or 3 hours, and they expressed alarm, told you it was pointless and vain. Besides, why were you driving yourself so hard, they queried. You would have laughed, but fatigue in your bones tightened your jaw. Pensively you replied: What about those thousands of Nigerians in U.S. slaving away on a job they despised?
Then Miami…
Sand, sea, sun, and sex.
You’ve watched Will Smith’s video of Miami in 1998, the same momentous year the infamous Abacha passed on, the dictator who inspired you into escapism, an alternative opiate. You swore to visit the Magic City, whenever you set foot in America. A decade later, the opportunity fell – Plop! – into your lap.
American Airlines flew you to Miami via Chicago. That evening, the weather was one unapologetic sneeze from the skies, and drizzly. The road echoed the nocturne of the rain. Yet, safe was the flight. Straightway, your guide chartered a Chrysler car at the Enterprise lot, and, as you hauled your luggage into the trunk, you caught sight of a baroque-looking building. The Embassy Suites, sky-high and expansive, just across the road.
Every architecture has its story. You took some shots. Then the soothing cruise down to Miami Beach. Minutes later, you are face-to-face with another structure. Before you admire its splendor, a likable Hispanic bell-hop said, “Bienvenido,” and assisted you with the luggage. In a while, you rode the elevator to the eight floor in a backdrop of jazz – so hypnotic you almost nodded off. You slid out through the lush corridor into your suite.
Lips cracked open. The butter-cream spaciousness captivated you with a burst of aesthetic singularity. It surpassed the last 5-star-hotel you spent a weekend in, back home, an ocean-view though.
That instant you imagined Will Smith whispering in your ears: Party in the city where the heat is on…
Fling your carry-on to the floor. Leap to the large window. Place your palms against the glass panes. Fix your eyes on the partying below. There, the bar throbbed with Calypso. Couples and friends sated their appetites in drinks and banter. Some people lounged by the blue pool, books and magazines folded across their legs. And beyond, the sea gleamed as molten gold, the incandescent sun half-swallowed by the sedate horizon.
“To be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds we carry inside us.” – Orhan Pamuk
That’s the end, you vow. I’m finished with writing. You don’t rise at once from the beach; instead, you lay back and let the froth-lipped waves lick your feet. Between the emerald sea and you stand the nectarine sun bowing out. Behind you is the edifice of The Palms, a hotel on Collins Avenue. This entire landscape is fuel for a verse, a scene, but you overwhelm it.
They will feel shocked. They’ll feel saddened. It is for the good of the literati, you hope to convince them. The general community as well. YOU ARE QUITTING. Not because creativity has turned into an exhausted oil-well. You just can no longer live among the ghostly legion that yanks the imagination in all directions or the riot of phrases – phrases that strive to outwit each other. You. Are. Fed up.
The self-flagellation, all of it. You have recognized that the more you try to conceive and juxtapose words and worlds in your head the more demanding writing becomes, more insatiable than the grave. Though you’ve started to drag yourself out of the wetlands of angst, you feel so powerless you just want to lie in it.
Sometimes creative writing is the paradox of the flame and the moth. Reality is suspect, and the air is the crypt of a thousand simulacra. It is magnetic, but you have willed yourself, at least for now, not to succumb to the pull of penning The End to your life.
On countless occasions though, migraine and fever assault you from every angle. You bear the attacks as stoically as a Zen disciple. Silence in pain promises inspiration, a threshold to an artistic nirvana never before experienced, you readily fantasized, calming the spate of self-doubts churning in your heart. You’ve often glared at the peaceful beauty curled up next to you. The kolanuts of insomnia are more acerbic than wormwood, and though you abhor it, you are compelled to chew it at full tilt. Because of your impotence.
You’re unable to thwart the skirmishes of characters badgering for attention. Can’t turn off the fervent cries of characters whose souls you’ve crushed, like a mixer, and tossed into the bureau of ephemera. How long can you keep on, smothering and smiling – when the world about teems with such sunshine that you feel like choking the person nearest to you? How long can you live with the demons dashing about in your head?
Barbiturates are familiar as your blues. There are nights you long to empty the bottle down your throat. Moments you feel so dark it seems leaping off the bridge or in front of a speeding vehicle is gratifying. Can’t remember the number of times you want to twist the naked electric wire round your neck.
This is crazy, life. Even Sigmund Freud failed to explain his self to himself.
Nobody knows the torrents in your mind. They don’t know. None of them, not even those dear to you. Or close. But all this would later change.
All along you were committed to writing, particularly since you alighted at the Cedar Rapids Airport. Less than 48 hours later, you took to absorbing sights and sounds as a wife takes to the kitchen, dutiful, eager. Read as widely as possible. Wrote just as frenziedly too, pounding away at the keyboard until heavy-lidded you slumped into the bed and slept like a whacked janitor. Once complained to your family that you’ve been sleeping for only 2 or 3 hours, and they expressed alarm, told you it was pointless and vain. Besides, why were you driving yourself so hard, they queried. You would have laughed, but fatigue in your bones tightened your jaw. Pensively you replied: What about those thousands of Nigerians in U.S. slaving away on a job they despised?
Then Miami…
Sand, sea, sun, and sex.
You’ve watched Will Smith’s video of Miami in 1998, the same momentous year the infamous Abacha passed on, the dictator who inspired you into escapism, an alternative opiate. You swore to visit the Magic City, whenever you set foot in America. A decade later, the opportunity fell – Plop! – into your lap.
American Airlines flew you to Miami via Chicago. That evening, the weather was one unapologetic sneeze from the skies, and drizzly. The road echoed the nocturne of the rain. Yet, safe was the flight. Straightway, your guide chartered a Chrysler car at the Enterprise lot, and, as you hauled your luggage into the trunk, you caught sight of a baroque-looking building. The Embassy Suites, sky-high and expansive, just across the road.
Every architecture has its story. You took some shots. Then the soothing cruise down to Miami Beach. Minutes later, you are face-to-face with another structure. Before you admire its splendor, a likable Hispanic bell-hop said, “Bienvenido,” and assisted you with the luggage. In a while, you rode the elevator to the eight floor in a backdrop of jazz – so hypnotic you almost nodded off. You slid out through the lush corridor into your suite.
Lips cracked open. The butter-cream spaciousness captivated you with a burst of aesthetic singularity. It surpassed the last 5-star-hotel you spent a weekend in, back home, an ocean-view though.
That instant you imagined Will Smith whispering in your ears: Party in the city where the heat is on…
Fling your carry-on to the floor. Leap to the large window. Place your palms against the glass panes. Fix your eyes on the partying below. There, the bar throbbed with Calypso. Couples and friends sated their appetites in drinks and banter. Some people lounged by the blue pool, books and magazines folded across their legs. And beyond, the sea gleamed as molten gold, the incandescent sun half-swallowed by the sedate horizon.