At this particular moment.

Where do I want to be when I’m 30?

I’ve been away. It is not an apology. I’m being an actress now for a TV Drama that will hopefully come to a tube near you in the coming year. – well, it will if you’re in East Africa region. It’s crazy. You work like a dog and then you go home to sleep. I’ve bawled for an hour straight to shoot enough material for a scene that will take probably all of 3minutes. I’ve drank probably 10 liters of water to shoot probably 15seconds worth of material, I have worn painful heels for longer than I want to say…and the list is severely edited.

So, I’m not allowed to see “The rushes” – the edited scenes – while we’re shooting, which basically means I’ll be as shocked as any other person when I see the thing on TV; but I’m told it looks good. more to the point, I know I have a knack for this thing.

I love poetry,

I miss making music (cause its been a minute).

It occurs to me that performing music is performing poetry and is playing a character and making something on a page, words and melodies, alive. Perhaps I am plotting my own return to music without knowing it myself.

Perhaps i’m mustering the incredible belief in oneself it takes to do anything new and worthwhile on this earth. Or allowing myself to live into it, or become it? I’m a nervous wreck about the possibility that I might not be able to be this amazing person. (ok, we’re getting really sensitive here) there are a million posers and I’d hate to be one of them. But perhaps I’m more afraid that I am supercalafragalisticexpialidocious [(c) Mary Poppins] and I don’t know how I’m going to get there from my current self.
You’ve heard this before. I’m not pasting it below for you. lol. for me. HA!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

She’s Gorgeous, that Marianne.

Yea, ok, so I’m an artist. But given the direction the arts are going, I have to be among the thinkers as well, the administrators and marketers who create concepts and things for you to desire… like Jipange this Saturday. Me I want to say (as I return to Bantu language sentence construction) that if the Jipange Generation “concert” is nothing but a “concert” – someone missed the ball entirely. It’s nice to get people together in a safe space to enjoy music and each other, but it does not teach anyone to Jipanga, nor does it necessarily allow them the opportunity to think about Jipangaring.

And folk need to Jipanga. vibaya yaani.

Entertainment is a wonderful thing. Art is a beautiful meaningful thing. Culture is the way you teach yourself to be. Me I care more about the latter two.

It’s possible for an artist in my position to find themselves impotent, because the place that they would love to write, sing or offer whatever for doesn’t know how to read/hear/watch it, respond to, value, or absorb it. It is at that point that the artist with their heart set on that particular goal, must also teach their audience/market how to desire their work, and be fulfilled by it in the manner described above.

I met a superqualified dude the other month who deals with Fire safety. like, his whole purpose in recent years has been around Fire Safety. Clearly he did this outside the country of kenya. I don’t know if there is a legal code, and doubt that it is particularly binding. Thinking if it was, A hella lotta people would owe Gava money. Even the public doesn’t take fire safety stuff seriously, cause their government doesn’t seem to. (How fast did you leave the building that one time a fire alarm went off?!)

Basically, the guy has to make a job for himself in kenya. He has to teach us (Gava and the public) that we need his skills, that we ought to pay him so much for his kind of work, (meaning that he would need to show that the cost attached to not heeding him is X ksh…)

Even me (Kenyan ebonics i tell you) I have to show you that I am the one you’ve been waiting for. just chill.

Oh, big up to Spark Africa for their encouragement and support to me as an artist, to Kenya as a nation of mostly Young People who need to Jipanga. When you go to the concert. Check out their tent for some serious ways to JiPanga.