Making sense of from whence we came

Who are they who bore us?

I have always been fascinated by the BBC TV series, ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ which in its 20^th series still intrigues me with plot twists and revelations in genealogy, history, identity, identification, and context of the lives of the participants.

In fact, it was interesting to learn that not every apparently famous person today qualifies for insightful research of their pasts, whilst others might be able to dig back almost a millennium to their auspicious or notorious roots.

It has left me wondering what entertaining piece of knowledge I would acquire if I decided to research my own genealogy, though my father has quite studiously researched much going back up to 6 or so generations, I have not been able to review his work to any detail.

In the grand scheme of things

In terms of encounter, I had a paternal great-grandmother on his maternal side into my twenties with whom I had many a conversation and repartee, my paternal grandparents were literally not that engaging, beyond greetings, not much else transpired. My maternal grandmother was a stalwart, a widow from an early age, my maternal grandfather had passed on over 4 years before my birth.

In meeting and greeting her, she would laud each one of us with our individual Oríkì, affirmative poetic praise of our progeny and destiny with the kind of fluency that it stuck in memory, at least the first two lines do, the rest, I need to determine. Spoken in a dialect that even with my knowledge of Yoruba I am yet to unravel meaning or import, but its rousing cadence suggests a meaningfulness that gave me a relationship I did not have with my other grandparents.

Of knowledge and memory

Yet, I write this to reflect on attachment and detachment that exhibits between my current familial ties, for which the forming of identity and how I identify remains a work in progress. For some things, there is a simple explanation, and for others, I might just be clutching at straws to make sense of how I belong.

If not for Facebook and the advancements in technology, many of the people with whom I share consanguinity, I would never have known or met. Quite a good few of those I have met, I can barely remember by face or by name. They belong in the deep recesses of memory sometimes irretrievable when brought to my notice that I either feign acknowledgement or admit a failure in recollection.

Having written all this, the purpose for which I commenced this blog has not been fulfilled, it would seem the right form of words to address attachment and detachment are yet to be realised. I have had this on my mind for a while, it might yet find expression in the next blog. Who knows?

Seeing the madness that intrigues

Looking up to see

Foregoing the discomfort that accompanies welcoming people to the cathedral, the experience is quite enlivening, even if it is in the snatches of conversation and the sharing of the very basic snippets of interest as the angels with string instruments on the right side of the ceiling of the nave as you look towards the altar and the angels with wind instruments on the left side.

As one visitor opined, every time she has visited a church, the most interesting things are found looking up, to which I intoned, if you are looking up to the heavens, the church is an excellent place to be doing that. Then again, you do not have to crank your neck to look up, there is a magnifying mirror like a table from which you can observe the ceiling.

In the path of forebears

Then another who was visiting from Canada, though from these parts had not been back in the UK for over 30 years. Her visit to the cathedral was in commemoration of over 5 generations of family that had been christened, baptised, and married in the church, I would suppose the funerals of many of them would have been conducted by clergy in the diocese too. It was amazing to watch the emotion as she took pictures of the baptismal font where her forebears would have been baptised.

As much as there were visitors from as far away as Chile, there were many from France and Italy too, Hong Kong and China featured as well as an African American family from Switzerland. Though, what surprised me was the number of people from Manchester who had never been to the cathedral before. The gems of interest we miss from proximity are many, even I realised there are still many places in the centre of Manchester that still need to have my footfall.

A homily of madness

As welcomers to the cathedral, we are also exposed to interesting people, of one, I was asked to be very careful because she was assessed as very clingy once engaged. However, it was one on his way out of the cathedral that left me feeling weird and almost out of sorts. He started, “You know society is living on lies?” I could not imagine what he was talking about.

He continued, “The world will convert to Islam by 2050 and this place will change. Do you know why? Because it is 100 years after WWII, we signed up for this.” I should have had the men in white coats on speed dial. He finished with, “England would be the first Islamic country because English is spoken around the world.” I stared at him blank-faced as he made for the exit.

Then unusually I looked out in his direction to be sure he was moving on rather than just waiting around. Though not a terrorist in the typical sense, he was a terrorist to reason given to one of the strangest conspiracy theories I have heard in a long time. Maybe it was time to sit down and give no heed to anything he said, though I find myself remembering more than I would have cared to recollect. We are in a world of madness; it is stranger when you meet one that does it better than us.

Thought Picnic: In the rivers of black identity

The river as it flows

I was invited to listen to Leon Bridges River; which also appears in HBO’s Big Little Lies original TV soundtrack, with the thought that the song was a significantly meaningful reflection for the black race, but there was a pause as that statement was made with the feeling that across the pond and history, things might not necessarily have the same import that they thought it should.

Attentively, I listened and tried to grasp the essence of it, I felt obligated to see things from their perspective as the lyrics though unseen but heard clearly did speak but did not catch on. In all honesty, it was best not to feign pretence as we were exploring the deeper issues of black identity. It hadn’t heard of Leon Bridges before.

River does evoke much about history and redemption, but in the words of the refrain, “Take me to your river, I wanna go”, the river was a place of routine, where you bathed, fetched water, washed clothes, and had fun, it did not carry any form of sacredness associated with cleansing and baptism as my interlocutor surmised. [Genius Lyrics: Leon Bridges River]

The river somewhere different

I felt that as there was no restriction to go to the river that flowed by the village, its great value might have been lost in its apparent familiarity. At my first hearing, meaningful as the song might well be, it would take more listening to it to have the deeper understanding being asked for at that time.

Later, I thought about where the river could mean just as much to me, it involved a different qualification in The Holy River by Prince, from the Emancipation album; there he sang, “Let’s go down to the holy river, If we drown we would be delivered,” that alone in its introduction was taking me to a special and sacred place of discovery and miracles. I was taken from the time I originally heard the song. [Lyrics from The Holy River]

Blog - Thought Picnic: Find your holy river in which to drown

This river was not a place of fun but a grotto of sorts, it was filled with a different kind of symbolism and mysticism, a place your approached with some dread and yet the anticipation that if everything seemed to go wrong, it would come out right regardless.

The subconscious of eternal existence

I found myself thinking of enclosures and openings, why I am totally averse to wearing anything like ankle chains, and then finger rings or neck chains. I wear a bangle of betrothal, but it is open-ended. I could give a reason, but I felt a profundity in the fact that the time we spend on earth is but a subset of the eternity of our existence.

We are in genetic and ethereal terms the result of an ancestry that doubles up each further generator of our origin that goes back from two parents to four grandparents, to eight great-grandparents, to sixteen great-great-grandparents and so on. If we do procreation, we begin a new chain that is a subset of our progeny.

It had me wondering where a tendency to fussiness or aversion comes from without influence or education, quirks and traits that attend to similarities with people we have never encountered but are strong in our personalities that some might even be inclined to the belief in reincarnation. I do not assume to suggest that I am competent in any form of existential philosophy, I would consider myself a total novice.

However, what I came away with was once again how so diverse and divergent the cultural and historical identities of the black race are, where the search for one's roots is a journey of discovery and the acceptance of self with being comfortable in one’s skin is a process of continuous learning involving complementation and jettison in various measures that we evolve and restate who we are depending on where we are.

I guess there is more to meditate on.

The Memories of a Castaway

The farewells

One bright morning just four weeks after returning from a business trip, he returned to the airport, with a one-way ticket in his hand.

The check-in was easy, and the absence of that pregnant customs officer who seized his passport just six weeks earlier asking for a handout was a great relief. He wondered whether the corrupt during gestation brought forth more corruption upon the earth.

It took the wiliness of his travel companion then to retrieve the passport after he palmed her filthy grubby hands with illicit silver.

His friends gathered, and he recollects, "we hugged and shook hands before we parted ways waving goodbyes without tears."

Bye for long

The scheduled take-off time had moved, and it was another five hours before they finally took to the air and one last glimpse of home became a distant memory of almost 23 years.

The boy is lost to one home and found in another home, affinities split between homes of ancestry and homes of birth, the latter bringing more satisfaction.

However, the passage of time comes with the experience of events and the news from afar of tales make sad songs a refuge for a season.

Lost for good?

What the boy has not suffered too badly is nostalgia, he can be removed and be placed in another place and another time to adapt. He has learnt to bargain for the best deal than challenge for the indifference of a rotten deal.

His people are growing older, his links are growing weaker; weighted down at times in seething resentfulness left unaddressed by conflicts that go back decades, all fondness suffering a contemn.

Sometimes, he really cannot be that bothered anymore, they have parted ways for so long that technology is just a tenuous link leveraged for convenience.

The boy is lost and not looking to be found.