Becoming

So what's the connection between theatre arts and diplomacy? This question has been sitting unanswered in an old email from a friend for well over a year. A note of appreciation I received the other day finally gets me to blog a public response.

I've done graduate studies (Masters) in both Theatre Arts and Diplomacy, and found that my knowledge of one discipline thoroughly enhanced my understanding of the other. They are two sides of the same coin. Both are scripts performed on a stage with actors playing different roles. In Diplomacy Studies, the stage is the World Affairs, the actors are States and non-State entities, and the script is driven by the players' interests.

With both Theatre and Diplomacy, every character/player's entrance and exit comes with a motive, and the drama erupts during the struggle to achieve this motive. It is no surprise that the greatest playwright had his greatest dramas woven around politics; or that some of the most influential statesmen were also performing artists (Ronald Reagan the actor, Vaclav Havel - my favorite - the playwright/director).

It's not always a smooth connection between things one knows how to do. Sometimes, there's a brick wall of exclusiveness around things you want to become. For example, getting into that institution of diplomatic corps can be as difficult as getting the password to an Eyes Wide Shut masked ball. I don't have the password either. Just don't kill for it.

A lot about what we do so well is multi-sided and can be interwoven or competently done on parallel tracks. Society punishes you for not having a title to your name, yet most people secretly despise the confines of singular-profession definitions. There’s an imaginary Million Humans March against the question “What do you do?” It’s a pigeonholing question that makes a whole lot of us squirm, as if one can only be one thing that’s disconnected from everything else.

There’s something true to Karl Marx’s view that a world where “each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape,” is superficial. I agree with him in toto that one should be able to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and rear cattle in the evening.” We’re constantly, and covertly, trying to tear away from the rigidity of our forced mono-occupational existence. We just want the fluidity of becoming.

In the process of "becoming", the path of possibilities multiplies, especially when the mind is not stifled. This is why it's so important to live in and fight for a free society in which anyone’s desire to become is unencumbered. In my years of self-discovery, I've found that I can teach very well; that I could even make a great priest; heck, I could become President. But alas, I'm 3 lifetimes too short. Right now, being a theatre artist, a writer, a teacher, a documentarist and a diplomacy wonk is about all I can squeeze in.

How to avoid becoming a Jane of All Trades? Establish a connectedness between the things you do so well so that you have opportunity to excel. If the things you do so well remain disconnected, you run the risk of having scattered bits of unnoticed achievements, like little lamps shinning under the table all by their lonely selves, and you feel frustrated. The world is an eager audience, and it awaits an outstanding act so it can applaud. Being appreciated is priceless. Take your bow. Exit stage left.

Sere

A Soprano for Sale: The "Yalio Ndwele" Hustles

One artist to another. It's the season of side-kicks and sell-outs for hire. This brother, MC Njagi, is a great entertainer, extremely talented. I thoroughly enjoyed his "Yalio Ndwele Sipite" parody. But it looks like someone at Jubilee Party noticed him and asked him to do a hit job with it. He sold out! The crossroads where easy money becomes a big piece of steamy cassava for many a hungry artists who later find themselves used up and scrounging for relevance.

This equally entertaining song, Mbele Iko Sawa employs the cheapest tactic of lumping a people into a cheap tribe-baiting stereotype-- says the Kamba have always been pro-establishment and opposition is new to them-- "upinzani ni ugeni kwetu sisi wakamba", so goes the song. Asi!

Has this guy never heard of the great anti-colonization female dancer/warrior, Syotune wa Kathake; Muindi Mbingu and the Ukamba Members Association? There's a long list of independent thinkers from that region. It's a sad day when an artist chooses to become a tool for stereotyping a people for someone else's political gain.

You may say- he has a right to take sides. True, not just a right, but a responsibility. But when artists take sides in politics, they should take the third side-- the side of justice, the side of the underdog in the streets who simply demands a better life because they pay their share in taxes and toil.

The third side is one that rarely pays, mostly leaves an artist sidelined by both political sides, but when that artist maintains a solid stand against selfish opportunistic politics, they become the voice that people listen for.

Lucky Dube. Nina Simone. Bob Dylan. Miriam Makeba, Fela Kuti... They took the third side, they paid a price, they are legendary. I'd like to add Eric Wainaina, whose "Sawa Sawa" album put him on the artist-the-warrior path, although still has ways to go before earning the legendary title.

But I get it, it's political bimborization time when people say or sing silly soundbites that win quick points for the side that is paying you. Maybe the other side wasn't quick enough to lure MC Njagi with a better deal, otherwise instead of "vitendawili sitaki" he'd be singing "ulevi na wizi sitaki". Both sides have used artists equally as creative hitmen (yes, hitmen includes women.)

Now, there are artists who become politicians, and that is absolutely necessary sometimes; but it takes a highly woke kind of artist to take that path. My favorite by far is the late Vaclav Havel, a playwright & stage director who became the revolutionary leader of the non-violent Velvet Revolution, brought down a repressive regime, and became the President of the Czech Republic. That's how woke you need to be!

Sere

Memento Mori: A Reminder to Kenyans of Your Unnatural Mortality

"For the Love of God", a sculpture made with flawless diamonds, by artist, Damien Hirst. A 'Memento mori' - a genre of works done as a reminder of human mortality.

You do not have the simple luxury of accepting the death of a political personality as natural, even if it may be so. If you have your eyes anywhere near half-open, your ears unclogged enough to hear just a whisper, your soul live enough to feel the faintest heartbeat, then you cannot pretend you live in a normal environment.

If you’re getting up every morning with a happy yawn of middle-class contentedness, then you’re probably among thousands in Kenyans who probably see the darkness of despair every day, but you’d rather pretend it’s only the dark shadow of a passing cloud. You probably hear the muffled cries of forgotten citizens every day, but you’d rather pretend it’s the passing sniffles of seasonal poverty. You probably feel the sighs of a people weighed down with dead dreams, but you’d rather pretend it’s the passing sag of temporary weariness.

The environment you pretend not to see breeds a fog of apathy that with time becomes a jungle of heartless survival for the class that is ruled. Robbery, killings, kidnappings, car-jackings, rapes and silent victims are a daily staple in poor neighborhoods and in the dark city inferno where a dense cloud of humanity rises with the night. I’ve seen it, I know it, I’ve walked in it, I’ve been snatched by it, I’ve survived it. So have thousands of others. Daily. It’s not a secret world, but we’d rather pretend it is so that we can wake up in the morning and post a smiling selfie that is thankful to God for the blessing of life. The artificial world of social media is the newest, most potent opium of a broken people.

Meanwhile, the rulers haggle for power in the ruthless markets of cartel politics. When one of them dies, there’s nothing normal about it, simply because the environment he or she lived in is not normal. Remember, they leave behind a long stretch of unresolved assassinations; a pile-up of stolen elections and bitterness packaged into neat boxes of meaningless prayer; a valley of silenced voices and forgotten victims; an endless echo of troubled heartbeats that are always a beat away from eviction, starvation and joblessness. We must stop piling up pretentious prudery and demand a normal environment fit for all citizens; an environment where living in simple dignity allows us all the luxury of dying naturally. 

*Reflections following the death of Kenya's Cabinet Secretary, Gen. Joseph ole Nkaissery, one month before the country's general election.

Sere