Dream. Had another dream where I was chased by a super villain. So, take the opening scene from MEN IN BLACK, you know how Will Smith is chasing down this alien, jumping over bridges, onto moving double decker buses. Well, replace me with the alien, that was my dream. 'Cept, I was the good guy. It was set in London, I jumped off the bus 9 around Trafalgar Sqr, hurtled down Whitehall, circled back to the ICA's area, which was laid out like giant chess board with a terracotta and lime stone finish. I spidered up the walls, and with my back against the stone, pushed the giant chess pieces onto the guy chasing me. I kept missing him. Then I woke up.
Wake. My body clocks back to normal, it is 2 minutes before my alarm goes off, 6.28. I roll off the bed, wide open the doors, put the kettle on, shower, make a cup of tea, get dressed, turn to sip and there is a dragon fly on the rim. On the white ikea mug sits a sleek, bluish green sky lord. It looks built for speed, reminds me of a slogan for a car. Simply read: Zero Miles Per Hour, Never Looked So Fast. I make for my camera, the dragon flies into the Scottish landscape, and it begins to rain.
Work. Door. Shut. Work. Today I'm working on a podcast, a 10 minute something discussing Black History Month. My starting point is that I am against it. I would see the month either expanded to include other ethnic minority groups or obliterated. In the first instance, a month would simple not be enough. Therefore, hopefully, it would spread over the year and eventually become common history. I think to dedicate a month specifically to an ethnic minority (black history, which is largely powered by guilt) causes further divisions in society. Why shouldn't there be a Middle Easter History Month, an Asian Hist. Month, list goes on...
Ten minutes simply isn't enough to table an argument. An in these Scottish Highlands with the loch lazily stretching out to sea, I am battle free. Instead, I plan to make a podcast celebrating the lives of the kaleidoscopic characters that litter my life. I plan to interview friends on their personal histories. My homies roam from China, Malaysia, Sweden, Uganda, Canda, India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Jamaica and the rabbit holes between. I'm lucky.
I choose to end the podcast with a poem called 'Clubbing'. It is essentially, about going out partying something I do not do that often, but its parallel narrative is the slave trade. I wrote this for the British Council's competition. A pause for poetry?
Till Tomorrow, Out. x
Clubbing.
It begins with shackling necklaces across throats: the distorted custom of wearing amulets to battle talismans to war; we are new hunters, wear jeans
for camouflage, clutch mobile phones like spears journey to the village / town / city square, meet the rest of the tribe mostly in short skirts, armed
with stilettos, armoured by Chanel. Dusk thickens, the customary bickering between us commences through the jungle vines of power lines/stampede
of zebra crossings/night growth of streets bustling, our ritual is natural, till the traders come. Greater armed, they divide with such ease that most of us
are taken. Those who resist are swayed by liquor deals, sailed to darkness where the master spins a tune not our own. We move stiffly to it as minds
force indifference, but spines have a preference for drums. Rage building, we make our melody, fight to find our feet until the master tries to mix
our movement with his song… but the rhythm is uneven and the tempo, wrong. Against its waves, we raise voices in anger, fists in protest, dancers
in the tide, militant against the music, a million men marching through seas. But we still know how to cross water: the ocean holds our bones,
explains our way of navigating past bouncers like breeze into night’s air, where clouds pass like dark ships and find us beached, benched
with parched lips, loose-limbed and looking to light. Now, the best thing about clubbing is not this, or the struggle to make hips sway
just so, not the need to charge cloakrooms as if through underground railroads. No. Best thing about clubbing is the feeling
of freedom on the ride home.