One of my favorite songwriters and musical expressionists in her song, South London forever sings this:
“And we’re just children wanting children of our own
I want a space to watch things grow
But did I dream too big?
Do I have to let it go?
What if one day there is no such thing as snow?
Oh God, what do I know?”
At 29, in forceful capitulation, I must make sense of my life in a very new way.
As the pastors, motivational speakers and academic laureates assured us that the choices we made then made our futures now; and that their testimony and attestation was credible to this end, I was the wide eyed credulous child drinking it all in. I should have been sending chits to boys or some other disesteemed practice the teachers and parents would never let us forget about, instead of setting myself up for disappointment.
In the event that you have never known, I was a child obsessed with growing up. It was my biggest dream- to be an adult. Yes, 13 going on 30 was a movie monumental to the purpose of art in making people (insert teenage Isabel here) feel less alone and in fact seen & acknowledged. 30 was going to be a blast: I was to have my doctorate, three kids and the happiest marriage known to man. In some ways I think most of my adult life disillusionment comes from the fact that my twenties have been about the capital realizations of just how much of a façade that was to bet on such a linear fulfilment of what I thought I wanted, because newsflash: life is not that simple.
Grownups fell in love and when I grew up, all those disney princess kisses would be suddenly re-perspectivised in adult hood. I would finally understand this by contextualizing why exchanging saliva was always the culmination of a disney princess flick. The FOMO cannot be overstated and yes, King Oyo was the goal from a tender age of 6 years because even me I would prosper in life by becoming a princess. Also, grownups could own babies. I was even supposed to be pediatrician because the dream was to hold babies and smell them all day. Just imagine having your own and then when they grew up, you just needed to have another. First chill just how shocking the shock of learning how that came about in P.6 one afternoon in science class, did not dissuade me from my dreams and aspirations in this vein, because my dreams were going to come true.
Furthermore, did you know how cool it was to have money? I had purposed that all my dimes would be for buying chips and cleaning out Kim Video and its VHS catalogue. It became apparent that all you needed was good grades on some certificate that you presented to some company that would hire you and pay you and that was that; money was going to be spent. I have never judged spend thrifts in my life. I relate on a whole other level and always have.
The stuff that got in the way of this usually prosperous adulthood picture that was painted was sex and drugs. Easy-peezy. I had decided I was going to be a virgin and I would never take drugs. Please don’t ask me how old I was when I lost my virginity and what drugs I have or haven’t taken. Allow this to be an application of some literary device to require your imagination to fill in the blanks of that; but remember how the exchange of saliva was supposed to make sense? Let’s just say it made a lot of sense in life very quickly.
Safe to say, before it all went to proverbial sh*t, I had ticked every single box and, in some respects, even surpassed the estimated best of my ability. So yey, even as I write this, there are indeed some perks to my infant credulity, for example I can smell my dear Luka in my arms all day. ( we shall see about what to do when he is older kubanga nedda bambi regarding going through labor ever again). However, the subsequent dissonance was somehow foreseeable for everyone who had seen how personally I took the sample handwriting “Determination leads to success.” (except me of course because I am just writing this post.)
The rigidity they saw in me and however they saw it enforced in my upbringing made it super discernable that when the Baptist pastor’s first daughter identified as agnostic, it was no shock. When she decided to do secular music, the reaction was “nga she had even delayed”. As for the out of wedlock pregnancy, I’m sure some people made some substantial money on that bet. When I got married, consensus was “okay, a wild card outcome”; but when that marriage ended, trust that the odds had been predicted already. Generally, I achieved and exceeded everyone’s expectations in life as I am one of the most accomplished 29 year olds that can boast a child, a marriage and divorce all before 30. I’m beginning a new chapter in life where like Paul the apostle, I boast in my sufferings because I am rich in them, innit?
The news flash is: life is pain. Imagine what this looks like regarding my artistic aspirations. I promise you, it is also: Art is pain. There is a plethora of posts on this blog you can look at to get an idea of the madness and its conversations in my head. Then imagine the mess in having to reconcile my many expressions of self (mother, lawyer etc) also expressed on here as well that you can look at and shake your head about in your free time. They are all assortments of “Choice is Pain”, “Being Different is Pain”, “This album is Pain”, but the point is, I have to return to some semblance of meaning of this to this reality because you guessed it right, “Meaning is Pain?”
The past couple of years has been something akin to Kafka writing his dad letters, in the hope that in his adult life, all the hurt of that relationship would suddenly be mended; or, Dostoyevsky never having experienced prison and its suffering for embodying his own views the tyrannical rulership was not too keen about. I know more than anything, Kafka would have loved to have a better relationship with his father. Dostoyevsky would have preferred to use all those years in prison, actually writing. But for better for worse, that didn’t happen.
If something else, or anything else in fact had happened, there would not have been Kafka as we know and relate to him today, or the Dostoyevsky we learn from. Isabel for one reason or the other is at this point for and just like them, it goes both ways; it is for better or for worse. Maybe this is why we can accept this saying? Maybe I can comfortably write “life is pain” because there is always something “worth it” at the end of it?
I used to rationalize that the purpose of this messy life I embody was so that I one day would be just as monumental as these people were, but once again I have to accept that life is just life. So newsflash: Life is life and Life is Pain. It’s humbling; so humbling that I have a mood disorder to prove it. What is the point to pain? How do you tell me that after enduring it I don’t get some badge and trophy for making it through?
I have spent a year grieving a lot; an ended marriage for starters, and the realities of this plot twist are still requiring me to reel some more. After singing songs to and for the Ugandan public for almost 8 years, I still am unsure about how and what I am doing. To make it even more complicated, the ideas that present themselves regarding this won’t stop coming in and the actualities of their achievement are daunting burdens. I am tired of singing this song of pain. What am I missing?
This is the existential depth I must rise from every waking day to make meaningful and productive sense of my life? This is the product of all those nights we called “winta” with legs steeped in cold water and blankets drooped over our shoulders to rid ourselves of the anxiety that came with sleeping at all, when there was the real probability, you would quite literally mess up your whole life by failing an exam? This is why I suffocated all those legitimate curiosities necessary to allow my psyche to individuate just so my adulthood dreams could be actualized? This is it?
I remember in high school that the best punishments were those you endured with your friends. As long as you were “consoled” it wasn’t so bad. Some of my best teenage memories are scrubbing pavements with the rest of my class singing songs so loudly until we were punished some more for making that much noise during the exercise of our punishment. For so long the personal shame from my own random standards of “failure” has been immeasurable; and I have been doing what I hadn’t realized so many of those around me were doing; pretending we didn’t bear it; pretending it wasn’t knives twisting up inside us we were on the some auto-pilot plot because that was less complicated or costly.
I’ve had a great musical year (bambi Blankets and Wine was a highlight). I’ve had a great professional year; Do you know what a flex is it that whenever I want, I can buy chips for myself? Please congratulate me even when you see me. What I’m trying to say is the “wins” that I can use to “cover up” this great existential nightmare are there for application. First chill these ones that need us to have a conversation, Instagram the app owned by Zuckerberg, is there for you to paint this picture without dialogue even. How convenient. When it gets too bad, we shall take a nap or grab a few cold ones with the friends.
I am realizing that as long as you want a great life, there shall be some pain. Do you know that the only root word for “passion” is a Latin word that literally means “to suffer”? Life is pain because we must be alive and we want to be alive; we are passionate about being alive. Part of being alive is being true to how that “aliveness”- that is, your existence is expressed. Maybe you have a horrible relationship with your dad? Maybe your reality will be being imprisoned for writing at all? Maybe this is your version of the chart topping number one hit, Life is Pain. Maybe you need to sing it anyway?
I have always had a passion for authenticity because I would not be who I am without the people that wrote and said it as it was, like Kafka and Dostoyevsky; even if it wasn’t sexy at the time to do so; and I had always respected that. But even with the beautiful disaster my life is, authenticity just seemed to add more problems and suddenly, I didn’t have the courage to anymore.
I had decided that as this was the case, I would “privatize” the true authenticity of my take and experiences on life. I stopped sharing as much as used to. I stopped encouraging people about mental health issues and my experience of them. I stopped sharing what I actually wanted to. I stopped saying what I mean and meaning what I said. It seeped into my songwriting and dried up a desire to sit at the piano and “pour out”. Personal habits like journaling faced the same reality.
I have ended up isolated more and more this year because of just how hard it had become to drudge up what wasn’t at the surface because of how repressed everything was. Bambi, my therapist has endured me just nodding my head in agreement because that was easier than what the actual journey self-awareness requires of being true to the resistance I feel. (she is going to be so happy and give me more assignments when she reads this even *facepalm*)
As a songwriter, I started hating listening to songwriters pour out their own feelings; it was too much. Movies were heavy because someone is making a point, and it takes so much energy to arrive at that point with them (I took leave from work after finally watching Everything Everywhere All at Once). Let me assure you that even the kid shows I watch with my son like Bluey had become triggering at some point.
In the work meetings, I kept quiet during the meetings where I used to make mob noise, and detached from any and all problem solving because of all of the relational conflict it caused and then started wondering why I had started becoming bored with work.
Most amazingly, I think I finally understand why my music has always been deemed ”too dark’ and “too heavy” and I can finally relate to why sometimes it isn’t a good idea to stream Little Grown Up Child when you have just woken up.
But what is my message here? My message here is that newsflash: self-betrayal is hugely detrimental. You have to own your life and its versions of pain/suffering/passion unique to you. Not even for anyone else, but for you. For you first and foremost, dear reader.
My passion is authenticity and self-expression. I don’t usually shut up about what I learn and observe or question. In life, that reality leads me to the inevitabilities present about that even today, as a lawyer and an artiste. Making sense of life is an ongoing thing and being true to it is regenerative because further newsflash: you shall be doing it again sooner than you think rather than in the later you thought. And in case you missed it, newsflash of newsflashes: while your passion should be to be yourself, doesn’t mean that’s easy or isn’t messy and that’s okay. So newsflash of newsflashes: Life is pain so just cut to the chase and tell everyone about it already. We are all experiencing it.
Like Florence Welch, it’s okay to look back on life like she probably does every time she goes home to South London, and just consistently, painfully and excruciately wonder if you’ve ever known a single damn thing in your life because what and why is life pain, but also in the midst of something so seemingly antithetical, celebrate that fact in being true to yourself.
If it hurts, it’s okay to cry because newsflash…you guessed it.
“Oh, don’t you know I have seen
I have seen the fields aflame
And everything I ever did
Was just another way to scream your name
Over and over and over and over again
Over and over and over and over again.”
augandanartist.com 