Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 4 : Being and Non-Being

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

                                                               

Between Beauty and Meaning

Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation

4

Adeyinka Bello at Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros

Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

The first essay in this series, “Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 1,” explores the celebration of life demonstrated by a picture of Adeyinka Bello , concluding by contrasting two different Buddhist perspectives.

The second essay, “Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 2,” engages with the same theme through the same picture, this time in relation to Western esotericism and Hinduism.

The third essay, “Between Beauty and Meaning : Adeyinka Bello and the Eloquent Radiation 3,” goes further in identifying with the same image with the aid of both the Western esoteric expression and an expansion of the Hindu conceptions from part 2.

This essay explores issues emerging from the life of Adeyinka Bello by using scientific cosmology as a nexus integrating iconography of the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, a science fiction story by Clifford Simak and an African oral poem.

Between Human and Cosmic History

What is the point of conjunction of human and cosmic history?

On the surface of the opon ifa, a central cosmological symbol and divinatory instrument of the Yoruba/Orisa Ifa system, two lines converge.

                           

                                                       

These lines may be described, among other possibilities, as evoking the intersection of individual and cosmic life.

As the universe continually expands from its centre of emergence, the point of the explosion that brought into being its material forms and the constellation of principles through which these forms are organised and developed, according to the Big Bang theory of cosmogenesis, our lives also expand, from the initial point of emergence onto terrestrial space, to our exit from that space to zones unknown.

Iyalode Adeyinka Bello's journey begins at Ogbagi-Akoko, in Nigeria's Yorubaland, in a life lived deep within Yoruba cultural history, and from there into the scholarly study of world cultures and the management of society known as politics, to fundamental fulfillments of humanity-marriage, childbearing and child upbringing, and an active presence on the social media network, Facebook, the world's primary means of global interaction.

What may be the relationship of this trajectory, of this blaze through time and space, to the awesome constellations of space and time as the celestial bodies wheel in their circuits?

What could be the connection of one on the surface of a small planet on a dwarf star in the Milky Way solar system, with the vastness of intergalactic space?

There is a connection.

That one on the planetary surface, relatively minuscule in form and temporal persistence within the space/time convergence of a lifetime on Earth, may ask questions that reverberate within the cosmic fabric.

She may question existence.

Between the ocean expanse and  delicate dentitions like coral, we reflect on nature and the human, on mortality and beauty, on the void between being and the unknown, on permanence in the midst of transience

These questions arise from her immersion in the very activity of living, in the dust of the daily commute, from home to office, from where she lives in Lagos to her office at Lagos State University, in the context of activities within her APC political constituency, research trips to explore Yoruba culture, debates on Facebook, physical world social activities, such as wedding ceremonies, birthday celebrations and the grand outing of her father to the world beyond, this range of activity evident in her Facebook photo albums.

Within such contexts, one may ask from time to time-what is really going on -beyond these activities one is engaged in?

Beyond these socially propelled engagements, what am I really within the immensities represented by this planet on which I roll within space, as the planetary sequence to which the Earth belongs, the Milky Way solar system, revolves round the galactic centre?

“How painful. I couldn't buy you that house nor buy that jeep I'd have loved you to drive. Solemnly my heart bleeds. You were a father a daughter like me should have. You taught me all my resilience, my rascality, to love family and rally them around all the time. To be a man in thinking and a woman in other ways. If there is another life you'll still be my father. Adieu to my best friend, Prince Yinusa Abayomi Bello-Ogunyomade.”

Facebook status update of 6 July 2013 by Adeyinka Bello in response to the final departure of her beloved father.

What follows is an an Egako/Afin clan oriki, a Yoruba praise poem, "passed down from oral tradition, a representative of a verbal art developed over time, comprising environment, religion/belief,craft and economic activities, physiological attributes, legendary stories[among other references, a form of ] woven artistry, describing an individual or a people," according to Adeyinka Bello, rendered by her and translated into English below by herself and Wale Adedayo:

“Scion of Owa, scion of a Tiger,

Scion of a place of refuge for the helpless,

Whoever seeks refuge there cannot get drenched in rain.

Scion of the Wise One.

The one who does his festival like a lion.

The child of Ogun with teeth of swords.

That child from 'Ako,

made of scattered rocks.

The reflections are enormous if you are facing the rocks that surround Egako.

The child of Aweya stream, that a native would swim and win a medal.

The Aweya child swam so very much, he got a human being as a prize.

The child who kills when one is not willing to die.

This one loves beads to the extent of following a corpse to Oyo Kingdom.

Your ancestors were ever prepared for war, with a heart of steel.

They were fearless enough to traverse the sea.

Your ancestors were skillful enough to destroy the enemies in their hiding places.

Scion of the One who became an inlaw in Oyo for beauty's sake.

Scion of the Ever Loyal One, who will NEVER change his words.

One Tiger, one fierce curb,

The one that says and does.

Continue to rest in peace, my dear father!”

Earth to earth, the Christian rite intones at the place of internment. The human body is made from earth and to earth it returns at last, in the Christian creation narrative, a point that demonstrates universal metaphorical value in the kinship of the human body with earth, in its being made up significantly of water, and fed by nutrients from the earth, of which air and plants are central.

Evoking such a context, a classical African funeral song declares, "With my feet, I touch the goat's earth and with my hands I touch God's sky," linking the human aspiration to reach to the sky in imagination,worship and action with the earthy animality of the goat, representative of animals with which humans share the earth, the earth on which the goat passes waste matter, into which humans inter waste and into which human bodies decay, the earth, accepting all in silent embrace, an image of God as integrator of all possibilities, according to Akinsola Abiodun Solanke.

Echoing through this summation are the words of Parker in Cllifford Simak's story "The Whistling Well." The story reaches through humanity to the most temporally distant terrestrial ecosystem in Earth's history represented by the dinosaurs and even to beings whom the dinosaurs worshiped in that story, chtonic figures who reach out to Parker in the present to acknowledge brotherhood. He shrinks from their alienness but is compelled to acknowledge that "all life on earth is brother, and we carry with us if we will, the token of our faith".

Prince Yinusa Abayomi Bello-Ogunyomade has departed for the farthest shore, but in departing he affirms our kinship with all that is, trees bending in the wind, the force of time both empowering growth and dissipating power, as we reach irrevocably to the ultimate departure, in the face of which inevitability, between Being and Mystery, we must justify our existence.

Let Adeyinka Bello, her father's daughter, have the last word on the testimony of Prince Yinusa Abayomi Bello-Ogunyomade, in his journey through the spatio-temporal nexus orbiting the sun in the star's journey around the galactic centre:

'"That was one great soul. He didn't leave anything behind in material wealth but he left me his legacy as one of the few remaining prophets of that Supreme being known by many names.

I'm honored to have had him as a father.”

Cover Image

Adeyinka Bello at Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan

Also published on Facebook

Adapted from publications of 23rd Dec 2013 and 24th Oct.2013 at the Facebook group Adeyinka Olarinmoye : Aesthetics,Thought, Action