Everything Is Art. Everything Has Texture

I have a thing for finely boned, strong pretty hands. Farmer's hands. Artist's hands. Pianist's hands. Gardener's hands. Pretty, pretty hands. Hands with veins standing out because they're so frequently used, always creating.

Also necklines. That area beneath the throat, especially when the collar bones are so delicately and finely defined, with smooth shiny skin stretched across. Freckles, tiny moles. Am I a vampire? Hm.

~ From Olatorera Dickson-Amusa's notes.

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I remember waiting for nightfall in Shobayo, Lagos. It was (probably still is) a semi rural area, and there wasn't much in the way of electricity.

The afternoons I spent there will remain with me forever. I remember watching the little dramas that always seemed to crop up in the little shops in front of my parents' school.

I remember those shops with open sides, where people came to grind pepper and beans; to buy snacks and delicious cooked food, and meddle good-naturedly with each other's lives.

I remember the vendors passing by hawking everything from rat poison to cooked food. One particular woman and her daily call to her customers, “e ra rice osann o! Enu yin oni ko! (Buy afternoon rice/lunch! Your mouths will not reject/refuse it).”

I remember when the woman who sold food directly in front of our school, found out that her teenage daughter (fourteen, fifteen) was pregnant. The mother was livid. She tore open her wrapper, rewrapped it in a classic Yoruba mother move while her daughter knelt before her, cowering and blubbering.

The mother picked up a ladle reclining in a pot of hot soup, and started hitting the girl, all the while screaming for neighbors to deliver her from her daughter. Only Nigerians will truly understand that the cry, “Egbami, egbami”, doesn't always mean the person yelling it is a victim.

What stood out most for me though, were the evenings. Like clockwork, the sun would go down and the mosques would begin their call to prayer. The end of the prayer often signified true dusk for me, and that's when the shakabulas would come on.

Shakabula is basically an oil lamp made out of old tin cans, stove wool and some kerosene. One by one, the shops lining the street would turn on their shakabulas, and they would form bright pins of light in the darkness.

Picture this: A short sighted child who only sees blurs and bright colors, gazing out into the dark. Now imagine the blend of sounds and sight: the muezzin's mournful, melodic call and the strange orange lights it seemed to summon.

And I wanted to paint it all. I wanted to immortalize every skyline, every weathered face, every rock formation.

When I was young, my greatest regret was that I could not paint. I have always been someone who sees minute details, edges, the slightest etches, textures. I wanted to put all the pictures of the world that appeared vividly before me into the sort of permanency paint offers.

Every time I tried to paint though, I'd end up with smudges that did not remotely convey what was in my head, and I'd be so disappointed.

I developed a complex, and I convinced myself that I could not be an artist. It never occurred to my little mind that art is vast, and that even my existence, my mind, is art.

As a consequence, I'd categorize all the things I could do, as anything else but art. As a child I'd sit for long stretches in the evenings, gazing into lit candles. I'd wait for the wax to drip. Every drop of wax for me was precious, because I would mould them into little, roughly detailed statues.

I'd write the most heartfelt poetry, draw. I'd craft stories to tell my brothers every day, and I'd create dolls made out of stuffed calico with corn silk for hair. I was a very creative child, but I never considered myself an artist.

As I grew older, my urge to create became even stronger. I went through a phase in my teens where I made my own jewelry, and created my own style of dressing.

I didn't really have access to the internet then, or I'd have realized that I was the very image of the bohemian style. For me, it was about creating, and I should have realized then, that self-expression on its own, is art.

I'd wear loose flowing skirts, loose flowing blouses. Layers and layers of beads around my neck and wrists. I'd wear two different sets of earrings in each ear, all beads.

People watching cured me of the deep-seated notion that only painting can be defined as art. Every other evening when I was in school (higher institution), I'd sit at The Federal Polytechnic Bida's Small Gate and just watch people go by.

I would watch their gestures, their mouths when they spoke. The difference between a person walking with friends and carrying out an animated discussion, and that same person walking back alone, eyes down, lips still turned up in a goodbye smile.

I would observe the way light played on people's skins, changing the hues. I'd listen to voices and try to pick out the emotions each person was feeling.

My days at school turned me into an emotional sponge, even though I did not show it outwardly. The poems I wrote during this period were so vivid to me, that every time I read them I could easily see the pictures that had triggered them.

I realized that I'd been making art all along, even through my thoughts without realizing it. Everytime I put my emotions into creating something, I am making art.

For me, art is texture. Art is rough, soft, smooth, thick, thin. Art should remind me of palm tree branches rubbing across my face. Art should tingle, like the sensation of skimming bare feet over cold water puddles. Art is the crinkles by the eyes when people smile. Teeth. Crooked, straight, protruding. Hands. I am so utterly fascinated by people's hands.

Voices can be translated into texture. Everything has texture if you feel it deeply enough. Everything. The clogged roughness that sadness brings. The smooth, shiny satin of happiness. The raw, wooly feeling that anxiety brings.

The world is vast, and I want to touch it all. Run my fingers through it and translate it into whatever form it comes to me. Selah.