“Because there is nothing as personal as the past.”
To me, serpia is symbolic of personal spaces- spaces as personal, as exclusive and as secret, as known to you as the past.
This is the first of so many stories I am sharing under this forum in light of the vision this platform holds, hopefully for others, but firstly and fore mostly for myself. I want to share where the spaces that produce art in me are found, and I want to share that through art. I want to share the feelings that call this expression out from within myself, so my eyes, inwardly looking out, see that in the real world, it is truth as well and not just in myself. I want to share because I must and because maybe you need to as well. I want to share this story because we all have that kind of world; mine is simply written out on art’s scaffolding, in all its different forms that I have the ability to express to myself and others. Yours is written out on something else.
The art is the end, you see; but the story is what came before the end, that makes the art what it is.
Since before I could remember, I was always those children that lived in every other world except the one I actually existed in. It made playing Star Wars with my brothers easier even when I was a girl because, it was our virtual creation and reality. My first love were stories, therefore. I watched all the Disney ones and sang along to all the songs, with such a faith that life was filled with all the possibilities one could dream of. This is true still in some ways as an adult, but after Disney came the books; Sweet Valley Highs, Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, Animorphs, Goosebumps and then finally settled into the Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens territory as my favorite. There is a way the latter authors and many more to follow, presented reality; as if it wasn’t true and wasn’t false but was more true than false, yet it, was all “made up”, fictitious – false. I mean Oliver Twist never really existed, but he actually did and continues to in many ways, all these years later.
One of the many other worlds I therefore eventually lived in was that the 19th Century writers pulled me into. This is my favorite. If the author could describe the smell of the baking bread baking on whatever street and in whatever house, I was there. I saw the lace gowns and bonnets and frocks, and I saw Pemberley and Hartfield and Hertfordshire. I saw it all because that’s all it took. It took a description. I am a person that resonates with the writings and existences of Austen and the Bronte sisters because I get their time. I get it because they screamed it in their art and all these years later I have to listen. It’s like for me, they hit this large proverbial gong with every word they wrote, whose sounds rang out across time. I get it. I get it because they needed me to. They described and explained everything almost so desperately in their books, because with the same tenacity, the truth of all they told reciprocally rang out in the very lives they lived. Because of everything they described, the waves reach me somehow; and so, I resonate.
I don’t just resonate, but completely resound with the polarities they saw and dared to pen down at a time when the risks about it (for women especially) did not come short. They saw how messed up and how beautiful life was, in the same breath. They accepted and therefore exuded the truth that made those facts true and remained true, even when all of society preferred to read something else; even when society preferred to read the “false” and “easier to accept”. They didn’t just see the polarities, they felt them and within them, they rationalized with pen and paper. That’s how their stories to me were both truth and a “lie” but mostly true, yet completely made up, like Oliver Twist.
They understood this; We are the wars inside ourselves. We are the demons and fears we can only face alone. We are our societies and their flaws, our governments and their corruption, and we are our personal pasts, our mistakes and triumphs. They affect our lives in some way and in every way.
When I read about the life of Jane Austen, I can see her. I can see her story and all she went through in Pride and Prejudice. I can see her country, her society and the world as it was in her day. I can see why themes of cultural stratification, love versus duty and family are repeated and emphasized in all the six major books she wrote that became popular because of that one fact; the fact that she shared her serpia world.
You see who she was and who she aspired to be in Elizabeth Bennet. You see her forbidden and tragic love story partly redeemed in the triumph of love between Darcy and Elizabeth despite class, education, circumstance, family and especially societal differences. That dream came true for her in that art. In her story, Elizabeth didn’t go through what Jane did. I don’t think all of England knew this part (or any part for that matter) of the story of Jane Austen, the second daughter of a parish rector, when this book was released in 1813. But a random African that is me 200 years later does.
Her society, as did ours, received it because it was told as truth; because while everything was “made up” about it, nothing was. She had shared everything with the world and it still remained a personal past, and exclusive and even to an extent all the more special. In Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, you see the many sufferings of the Emily and Charlotte Bronte because what they wrote about is something they could imagine to write down- they went through it. You see Leo Tolstoy and his confusion about life that is expressed in simple complexities; that in themselves are brilliance in his written tragedies.
In art, we see the artists. It’s their stories and their worlds filled with themselves.
That’s why I live the most in the 19th century. I live most there because when Austen and the Brontes wrote, they told me the truth of their times and how that influenced their lives. They told it so truthfully, all these years later and for so many more to come, they shall be known and remembered. In their books, I saw them. It was their stories and their worlds filled with every single detail of their personal pasts. I live the most there because they helped me understand that time the most, somewhat even more than the one I live in now. So, I empathize with all they need me to.
But see while that happens, we have a duty as artists today to do the same for ourselves and others with whom we are now, and with what the world is around us, as well. The truth of those elements is what has always enabled art and its message travel across time from centuries ago to the present; the here and now. Share your Serpia colored world; there’s nothing as personal as the past, you see; and therefore, nothing else as strong to influence and inspire thought and feeling in yourself, and in others. There’s nothing more precious or less precious to you than the story of where you’ve come from and what you’ve seen along the way-the past; your testimony.
The story of the eyes in you that see with hindsight, can equip others and especially yourself with a foresight. Share your world of art and tell your story; the story of your world.
I see and know Bronte’s story because Bronte wrote. Maybe there is an African story about a NaBronte or NaAusten. But I don’t know it and I wonder if it ever existed. After I wonder, I am convinced in myself it did. How do I remember that today? What am I doing for the child that will long to look back on their history to know themselves more, today? These thoughts are a blog post and may or may not be here tomorrow. What if what you can do, will? Nothing is therefore as valuable as the story of the past. Each song that is written, every painting painted and every art form expressed even while with us, will be stuck in a time that is the past, one day. Don’t get me wrong, the present and the future have their quirks of awesomeness. We prize the future because that’s all that’s left, the present probably because that’s all we have. But the past is more precious because it cannot be returned to ever. No time travel ever. Or at least not yet.
Nothing is as personal as all those things you and you alone remember alone, all those things you saw alone, all those things you went through alone. Even if whatever happened was with or in a crowd of people, you went through that thing alone and look back on it alone in a way. It’s something so personal this thing that is the past. In every relationship, it takes a while to get to the past, for reasons that needn’t be said; and when time comes to share it, it’s more than just sharing. It’s something so much more. Looking back therefore, and seeing that it gives you guidance to go ahead is indeed something much more than a song, or a painting or a job.
How we know what happened in the past is because, someone shared it. In fact, someone dared to share it- you’d think they didn’t have to.
But no.
They had to and that’s why they did.
It’s not easy to tell the truth of the past and for so many reasons, neither is it desirable. It’s not easy sitting down to write blog posts about my every thought and feeling as I do, but I must.
You feel you must because that thing; the mission, purpose and/or conviction is etched in the centrality of all you are and like me you have a world of art you express it in. You make laws, interpret them or defend them and so the truth expressed therein you engage with, by being a lawyer. You treat disease and intervene with the penalties our falleness by binding wounds and prescribing remedies. You live this out as a doctor. I write words, add melody to them and sing out my every thought and feeling as a songwriter. I tell you, all who live are artists in some sense!
So, Serpia is just a reddish-brown color associated particularly with monochrome photographs of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
How my world is eventually colored by it is;
When everything I write and record and go through today expressed in an art form, is filtered with the honesty required for one to share something as personal as the past, not that you may see it, but I that my never forget it. It is for me, before it is for you. It gives the art that touch of value because it suddenly looks like something old; in any case one day, it truly will be. For others it may be a reminder to write so that when they listen they will look back and remember and have some sort of guidance if they need it, from where we went wrong and where we went right. I’m sure England is guided in a more serious sense by the things that Austen and Bronte put down. They know that guidance so much, they teach it to their children in their education and to their colonies for their children’s A level education.
When all I share is true because I went through it and can empathize in some way because I see it around me; is somewhat false because I am telling my character’s story as well, but more true than false because my character (s) is(are) composed of mostly me, yet it was all false because I made it up in my head.
A great bearded man once said to a boy, “Just because it’s happening in your head Harry, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
I calls them as I sees them.
Maybe you should too.
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