On reading Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji ‘s “THANKYOU, BLOOD”
Cornelius Hamelberg
On reading Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji ‘s “THANK YOU, BLOOD”
It’s axiomatic. All men are mortal. We don’t even have to be reminded that we are mortal and you don’t have to forgive me for saying so. Forgive yourself. Forgiveness starts in the heart, not in the testicles, although some men have more natural hair down there than on their heads, some have a lot more hair than grey matter. Others don’t like to hear – “all men are equal” - they think that they are “better”, have greater brainpower, bigger grammar etc. Feel free. Let us all breathe while we still can. As Brother Obama said, once upon a time,
This is not a responsa. A responsa is always erudite, tightly argued, shows a lot of depth and some respect for those to whom it is intended. Fact is, Members, Don't Git Weary.
No worries. Non-members (for whom this is not intended) should simply ignore this, they, and those who say that they reach for their delete button when they see anything from a geriatric ignoramus like their father, to any such I say, please keep your promise (not to me, but to yourself or to your father) - as Jesus said, “ if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
So, in this case, if thy eye offend thee, it’s better that you ignore this than that you perish. To any such miscreant I borrow these words from dear Shakespeare’s Henry V:
“Dishonor not your mothers. Now attest
That those whom you called fathers did beget you.”
This is only a meditation, taking stock, (thinking aloud) the beginning of a free flow response to what I read at the head of this thread and the immediate background to what follows is the feeling derived from reading the Dagens Nyheter Review of Bob Dylan’s latest “Rough and Rowdy Ways” – a testimony to our mortality especially in the United States where whether we like it or we like it not, we the people who are darker than blue are living dangerously and in 2020 all you have to do is to fall asleep peacefully in your car and to be politely woken up, after which you park the car park and you are summarily executed moments later, brutally put to eternal sleep, shot in the back twice, by some coward, shot in the back twice for merely running away from arrest - an offence the silly cop thinks merits the death penalty if you are as black and blue as Rayshard Brooks was, is and forevermore shall be
Olof Palme too was shot in the back, twice by another coward, another traitor to humanity.
Lisbeth Palme cried when her husband died.
Did you see Rayshard Brook’s widow, crying?
These murders will remain with us always. She too is eternal.
Just as Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji ‘s milestone praise-testimony to the African woman, She IS Eternal, the first and foremost woman, Gloria in Excelsis X, so too, both in spirit and tone the level-headed Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji’s solidarity with his “THANK YOU, BLOOD” submission is inspirational.
Many thanks. It’s in the same name of International brotherhood and solidarity that the Human Rights Council is meeting to address the issue of "the current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and the violence against peaceful protests
One blood. One destiny.
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Take up your cross and follow me. The blood, the blood, the blood, the blood of Jesus.
Archie Shepp : Malcolm , Malcolm - Semper Malcolm
The one love - the same love, the one and only love is supposed to bring us together in unity and harmony, in peace and love.
As Marvin Gaye crooned,
“Don't punish me with brutality
Come on, talk to me, so you can see”
The Brutality that wiped out the Native American peoples, created reservation cultures, not to mention the other brutalities for which each and every one of the perpetrators will be punished. There’s no man who is so powerful or so as white as snow that he will escape Divine justice or live in the White House forever.
As Bob Dylan is quoted as having said in the New York Times a few days ago “ Every human being, no matter how strong and mighty, is frail when it comes to death”
The showman Mr. President of the United States can have the cameras on the ready and rolling for when he grabs the Holy Bible and holds it up outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, for all to see. If only he would have read a suitable passage from it to make his point about love or if only, he had publicly repented on the spot and cried to God for mercy or he had burst into cathartic song and sung the Psalm that concludes,
But even in a right state of mind, can the narcissistic Trump sing Psalm 23 and mean it?
Too much gun-talk in the United States – see how Marvin’s life was abruptly, tragically terminated.
During the months that Marvin lived in London, during a difficult period in his life doing some studio work there, my brother now late, Patrick, became a close friend - and later on, I too got to know Marvin’s bodyguard Derek “Cool Black”, from Guyana and by hanging out with him for a while, also got to know London a little better. More stories to tell, so many tragic heroes gone to the everlasting and now at-one-ment with the universe….
“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
Chidi, I hope that you’re OK?
For some time now some of us have felt/ have been feeling a little dispirited, but a month ago buoyed up by the atmosphere created by our own indefatigable MC & Solar music DJ, Oga Falola’s Ramadan offerings, during the Muslim holy month of Mercy. That too was an act of solidarity.
With the most recent happenings, names such as the Rev Dr Martin Luther King jr have been so much in the offing that in the same trajectory, either a slip of the tongue or of the pen or maybe a Freudian slip, I was about to say, in the same spirit, to add another accolade: Professor the Rev Dr. Toyin Falola.
Somehow, despite the Ramadan offerings, in the upper crust of heart, mind and imagination, I don’t associate Oga Falola with the title “Imam”, “ prayer elder” ,“ Prayer leader”, “ Infallible Pope” or even “ Supreme Leader” of the USA-Africa Dialogue Series or the “Supreme leader” , the Papa Doc currently occupying the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair, since I appreciate straightforwardness, hate racism and racialism, loath holier-than-thou pretence, pretentions and pretentiousness, have instinctively taken a distance to every vestige of upper-class stiff-upper-lip of Creoledom which I recognise in an instant, and now take an equal distance to any humourless, low life, no class, no style, barbaric Bariba attempts at one up-Manship on some assumed grounds of a pretend intellect that lacks even 1% of the wit or charm shown by e.g. the self-didact Alexander Pope
I more closely associate and identify Oga Falola with the title “Rev” – a title that I give to Bob Marley because he – the Rev Bob Marley ( the salt of the earth) preached with feeling and without ceasing, preached to the limit – his very last song “ Redemption song “ - just like Bob Dylan, Marley’s lyrics are full of the Holy Bible, the Holy Spirit, the ganja and life’s teachings.
The spirit of solidarity is there alright, but what we are still lacking is a greater African-American presence in this forum. Imagine what Sista Lavonda Staples would have been saying about what’s going right now, if she were still with us, here. And Kwame Zulu Shabazz, to name just two….
Cornelius Hamelberg
Correction (trust me to make mistakes)
Re- “e.g. the self-didact Alexander Pope” – somehow a while ago, I thought that autodidact was too big a word ; so why not just “self-taught” ?
Well here’s a list of some of the accomplished.
The list of autodidactics is formidable and far from complete. Too many other cultures, peoples, ages and their accomplishments left out.
I cry often to Baba Kadiri about what colonialism has done to some of us. It’s so incomprehensible that I still can’t understand how e.g. some mediocrity - in Nigerian English parlance, some mediocre “nonentity” through some notions of self-promotion, a smattering of some Man Friday English can begin to think that he is better than the best of us, start exalting himself over his African president. As Malcolm put it – and I think it was a pun when he said to one such, “They taught you little” (since Malcolm’s “real” name was “Malcolm Little”)
I have witnessed the same tendency - back in Africa among some of Creole, Anglo-Sierra Leoneans who would look down on any of the Baga-Baga tribes as performing monkeys, the mimic men slaving away after correct pronunciation and generally – so they thought, without the culture, the manners or the values that are supposed to be transmitted along with the education, such as it is or was, that they want to boast about. I could, if I want, go on about this in some detail. When the White man behaves in the same way towards them, they cry “Racism!”
And that’s the kind of attitude some of our Africans have towards other Africans in America - “that’s not English” etc. How are you going to have peace and love and unity with people that you despise?
And what our pre-colonial knowledge systems were they all in Latin, Greek, Elizabethan English, German, Dutch, French, Arabic?
“Illiterate” is still one of the favourite curse words; once upon a time it used to mean someone who was not familiar with the King James Version of the Bible. By the time I left secondary school, by “illiterate” I meant someone who could read and write but for whom I still had some secret contempt, someone who was not familiar with e.g. John Donne, John Dryden, John Milton and didn’t have a clue about John Dover Wilson’s “Life in Shakespeare's England”
Today, I know a little better: Pa Michael Imoudu is one of my heroes. So is I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson, I went past him many, many times….
This is one of my favourite sayings:
“And you know that the self-made man, babe
Is truly shallow
He knows he's no one
But who he wants to be…” (Stephen Stills - Church (Part Of Someone)
Stephens Stills (First Album)
Stephen Still : Old times, good times ( Hendrix in the background there)
Pray for us...
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