illustration by karo akpokiere
i've really been enjoying my little time in lagos. i spent way more money than i should have at the art and fashion fair at the civic centre on victoria island. the event, sponsored by the african artists foundation, showcased the best of local artists and artisans, and was all about reclaiming the african gaze and public spaces. i bought a lot of handcrafted jewelry, my all time weakness after sweets (there was a cupcake stand too, baked by cupyd patisserie, that i somehow managed to stay away from).

in many ways, lagos is like new york--or london, i suppose, except for those damned power outages--teeming with talented entrepreneurs, illustrators, fashion designers, photographers, and everything under the sun. it seemed like most folks were trained abroad in the u.s. or the u.k., and brought a worldly, cosmopolitan edge to their work. i almost felt bashful buying a pair of beaded, moroccan bracelets wearing my "ethnic" and "natural" dreadlocks. at least there were a few other patrons with locs, too, so i didn't feel quite as conspicuous as i usually do.

if i were you, i would keep my eye out for the lagos photo exhibit, also sponsored by the aaf. it's been commemmorated in a magazine with a feature story by, you guessed it, chimamanda ngozi adichie (maybe i should just start calling her "chichi" on here, since she's so ubiquitous?). i wish i bought the (very pricey) mag to quote her here, but she wrote beautifully about how photos reveal the truth, as in writing and film.

i really should take more pictures. i can be so shy about intruding on private spaces with a lens. c'est la vie. --AL.

last night i went to an open studio show of one of my longtime friends, multimedia artist eto oro, at the school of the visual arts. he was super creative and always painting as a kid, then studied mechanical engineering at mit and design engineering at stanford. after working as a consultant for some time, he decided to go full-time creative and worked on dozens of multimedia installations before singlehandedly opening an art gallery in jersey. it closed just shy of three years later, but i still give him mad props for it.

eto was showing some work with a handful of classmates at sva (he took a sculpture class this summer just to broaden his horizons). he designed this wicked double-sided video projector that hung suspended from the air like a pendulum and, as it spun around, plastered the walls in words, colors and images (thelonious monk, psychedelic pastures, the human skeleton) that moved in and out of focus depending on how close the projector came to the walls. for me, he represents most closely what i think of as a creative mind. want to take it apart and look inside at how all the synapses connect.

*sigh* i just fucking love artists.

one of my girlfriends gave a standout performance last week for a solo show class she's been taking. i was not in a good mood that night, my creativity at a dismal low. i somewhat dragged myself there expecting to hate it and go home wishing i'd never went, but something split me wide open -- aside from her belly-busting jokes about growing up in a conscious household, her parents rousing her for school by singing get up, stand up/stand up for your rights.

i crossed my arms stiffly as a slightly nondescript, nearing-middle-aged woman started a monologue about her life as a temp worker -- bouncing from agency to agency, drifting from odd job to odd job. she wasn't the worst performer in the bunch, but close enough to it that i started to get a little fidgety and check my watch, calculating how long it would take to get back to the Bronx from 14th Street. when i finally settled down and actually listened to what she was saying, buried in her apprehension and missed cues, i found a kinship so deep it was like watching myself on stage.

the priding herself on officious titles, like publicist and marketing assistant, that carried little significance; the never really asking herself what she wanted out of life and going for it. at the end of it all, i wanted so badly to give her a hug, to shield her vulnerability in some way, to tell her that i understood exactly what she had been through and could relate. that my siblings, like hers, also parade around with their many degrees while i bumble and grasp at a little slice of fulfillment.

i feel so often like i am just bouncing along from job to job, trying to stay employed while pushing my dreams, my art to the forefront. it is a somewhat miserable task. trying to create authenticity in my creative work while going every day to a job i hate, sitting at a desk, checking emails and performing other unnatural activities that God never intended for upright, social beings.

at an interview for a new job this week, my would-be employer asked, "I notice you've had rather short stints of employment. Is this something we're gonna have to worry about?" I lied, of course. how to encapsulate the absolute waste of time 9-to-5 employment has been in my life? the atrophying of my creative brain? as much as i have labored to demonstrate mastery of this profit-driven endeavor of employment, how little i have actually cared for these jobs. i could find no better use for my resume than as toilet paper to rub my ass with. but my yellow composition book, in which i keep my meager writings, means the world to me.

i had forgotten that night, in my funk, the essential gift of art-making and sharing--until this woman had the courage to reveal herself, her life, for us onstage. though never perfect, it is something positive for the good. and i really could identify and relate with her impulse to manifest this shapeless, nameless creative spark buried deep within her. there is nothing quite like reaching someone on the other end of that impulse, moving them, causing them to reflect on their own experience and process.

i think embracing that impulse is what it means to be an artist. and it makes everything else you do an absolute waste of time. perhaps i am saying this more for myself than for you, wise reader.

A devil of an information session for the Jerome Foundation travel grant tonight. You'd think going to Nigeria to research a novel would be interesting, but I had to be about the fifth person "going to Africa" to "do research" on something "interesting." So I asked the session facilitator whether it was important that the applicant have a connection to the culture in question, and the answer was "yes and no." Interesting. So I might have just as good a shot applying for a grant to go to Iceland to study whales than Akwa Ibom to study my people? That notion gave me a moment of pause, thinking, Maybe I should reconsider?

I also wonder about this phrase "emerging artist," like I am hatching from an egg. I do not know what it means. My brain thinks "artist in the rough who has not found her way yet." I feel very confused and conflicted creatively. Slightly immature or maybe amateur. But I think the phrase is supposed to be empowering. Then the facilitator drops a name, a choreographer who's been at it for at least a decade, but is still "emerging." I am confused again. He tries to explain the delicate tension between having not yet emerged, but having a strong enough body of work to be "competitive" for the grant (their words, not mine). I feel an inherent contradiction there.

I look around at the other emerging artists, the rabid New Yorkers and misunderstood Eastern Europeans, couple of fresh-off-the-boat Chinese video installation heads, the handful of sistahs (mostly from Brooklyn), and the overwhelming majority of white female choreographers. All on the edge of our seats, clamoring for the same money (and what the hell can you really do with $5K?), thinking the same thoughts of our superior/inferiority, having long since become irrelevant to the world-at-large living in this damn fishbowl NYC. Mostly left wanting to be rid of the strange phenomenon of the New York artist all together. (You know, there is a world in which to live out there.) I am having a cynical moment. My apologies.

Oddly enough, today I ran into one of my friends who says she left her job and is now writing full time. I asked if she got a grant and she said that she had some "savings" so she's working full-time on two book projects. I was speechless. Here I am running to work every morning, never finding any time to write, and seeing the days of my "emergence" stretch on in perpetuity. I am extremely frustrated that I do not own my time. My boss does.

Things are really crazy at work. We're scrambling to write a proposal for potential funders to complete the UN documentary--now moving beyond a story about peacekeeping missions in Haiti, among others, to also include footage of the post-earthquake recovery/rebuilding process. It wouldn't be so hectic if my boss weren't leaving for Sundance on Saturday and wanting something in hand to give to folks.

I brought a designer in today who seems really on point, the kind of high-level concept woman I've always wanted to be from a communications standpoint. Wait a minute, scratch that. The kind of woman I would want to be if I weren't already committed to my life as a writer/filmmaker. (That sounds a lot better.)

I started off in global communications outside of college, then started freelancing as a writer and editor, then worked with private clients in my own communications consultancy, before becoming gainfully employed as a Communications Director. It sounds really linear now, but was nothing of the sort--in fact, it was only by sheer tenacity that I made anything of myself at all. I was a biology major in college, a pre-med, and I learned firsthand that the worst thing you can ever do in college is earn a degree you don't want to use.

I think the fact that I'm a storyteller is the only reason I made it. It was my ability to relanguage myself--in resumes, interviews, and grad school--that allowed me to imagine and create something different for my life. The whole marketing/design thing? Pure invention. I started off doing odds and ends for an indie magazine in Brooklyn, for free of course, took a few useful courses in a year of film school, and here I am.

But most days, I'd rather be writing than dealing with the business of art.

I think to myself, what is it really gonna take to reinvent myself as a full-time writer? And I wish I could wave a wand and it would be done. But it's about sitting down every day and confronting my real self, not the one I have imagined and created for public consumption. Damned if I haven't tried to cut corners, to sell the book without writing it (can't tell you how many proposals I've written), but it's the only thing I can't imagine, can't fake.

In every way, I believe that books, films, and plays are real things--durable goods that are essential to the functioning of society. They must be made, and each is an act of love and generosity. Each one, regardless of aesthetic value, is a repository of culture, language, and history.

I think that this makes art and artists vitally important. I thought it was really interesting that, in a speech capping a yearly wrap-up of the economic successes and failures in Akwa Ibom, a political leader praised Chimamanda Adichie for her many awards, saying that more Nigerians should be writing. At first I thought, Wait a minute, she's not even from Akwa Ibom! Then I marveled at how quickly the leader wrapped himself in her success, how central writers in fact are to the history of the world, when so many continue to see art as merely derivative or tangential.

Funny how more and more those of us living in developed nations are coming to realize that these economies are based on derivatives of virtual goods with no real value whatsoever. (I don't know if that made sense, but it sounded good.) All we want at the end of the day is something to hold on to -- maybe even a good book.

I'm tired and I'm not going anywhere with this, so I'll stop here. I also realize I have been jumping around from topic to topic. I will definitely write more about my trip. Later.

As children, we are conditioned to seek permission from our parents, if we are lucky to have one or both of them. In grade school, we ask the teacher when to go to the bathroom; and as adults, ask our bosses if we can leave early from work or take a vacation. We seem to always be asking someone permission for something, like they're God standing with a giant thumb poised over our heads, ready to squash our joy.

It takes a long time to outgrow that conditioning, and maybe even a lifetime to realize that it is only your fear hanging overhead -- a frightful ghost that disappears when you look it square in the face (my yoga instructor actually repeats her fears to herself in the morning mirror, watching them scuttle away).

I recognize this often in fellow writers, always asking whether they are "real" writers, when they will become "real" writers, why they are writing, and whether they should be doing something else. We can be vulnerable people, using writing as a form of self validation.

Nevertheless, it dawned on me today that I have finally stopped asking myself those questions. I'm not sure when, exactly, but it likely had something to do with Hedgebrook.

In reality, nobody can give you permission to live your life except you. Nobody has the right or authority to tell you that you aren't a writer (or actor, or dancer, or singer) or that you should not write (or act, or dance, or sing) if that's what brings you joy.

As an artist you are not anybody's child, you are an embodiment of divine energy imprinting your unique vision on the world. And nobody can give or take that from you. The energy is already flowing through you; you have only to give yourself permission to experience it.

So write (or act, or dance, or sing) because it is your right. Open up the book of your life, write your name on the first page and fill it up with all of your dreams. Then close the book, get up, and go after them. If you get lost along the way, there is a wonderful book that I am reading that is helping, called Wild Mind, by Natalie Goldberg. I carry it with me in case I forget.

And if you still need permission from someone, I give you permission to be who you are in all your divine brilliance. You may go to the bathroom, take a break, eat chocolate cake and spoil your dinner, but you may also officially stop asking if it's okay.