Gathering of Spirits & Other Poems
Umar Abubakar Sidi
Gathering of Spirits
During my first trip to Cuba, in 1944
as a child, I observed that different orders of reality
appear to disturb the dreams beset
by the Orisha and ancestral spirits of African origin
A painter may create a secret order of things
where different strokes suggest a gathering
of masks and spirit animals
Ancestral spirits
do not accept ritual & magic
expressed in hallucinating forms
scattered on a canvas
Pseudo-African prophets masquerading
as art critics & scholars of voodoo art
are distinguished by their power to surprise
to synthesise different mediums of dreams
this experience is widened by the violent reaction of man
to the unconscious garden beset by spirit animals
Religious satire in Chronicles of the Orisha
captures a child being initiated into a dark order
he is led by a figure wearing a mask
I observed, in a haunted wood, in Cuba, in 1944, that
a stature of a moon-headed female cast in bronze
is charged with raw energy equivalent of ‘voodoo music for Cuban nightclubs’
it is a world of ritual inhibited by the monstrous
Orisha with a child
Orisha with a child gathering around the unconscious garden beset by spirit animals
Orisha with a child entering a spiritual halo
Orisha with a child rotating around the incandescent canvas painted by a poet hovering between native influences and the post-modern eye
Orisha with a child cannot be depicted on a canvas
Orisha with a child cannot be seen by a poet
Orisha with a child
the gathering of spirits is complete
Letters of Desnos & Bataille
The selection & arrangement of material for
a survey on Surrealism is in consonance
with the game ‘one in the other’
in our willingness to experience the unexpected
we hold our minds
we allow the bourgeois & commercial affiliations of theatre
to execute the radical project
*
To excavate the ‘prehensile tail end’ of Surrealism
put Desnos & Bataille in a mug of tea
let them each publish a dossier of letters:
First Letter
The first letter describes how an artist can both be lyrical & dispassionate by approaching a piece of art as a collection of periodicals about fully forced psychic, erotic, self-definition of high energy, diverging in the domain of contrast
Second Letter
A recorded voice of a couple of ogres making love to language in a space where moon & the stars are represented as equations about the beauty of sky
Third Letter
Paris itself, exuberant, intensive, relevant, stretched
Fourth Letter
A portrait of a curvy woman, her breasts dangling between
the anxious journey & the melancholy of agony
Last Letter
A portrait of Duchamp, at times an experiment that would
continue to be at the centre of the railway station
at times, an established October setting itself in full speed
towards the virgin forest
at times a Dadaist poem harbouring seeds of irony
at times, the portrait appears as a train, esteemed, intense, dissident, speeding on the margin of the avant-garde
at times, Duchamp steps out of the portrait of Duchamp
to stand in front of a rail track & several railway stations
returning to the image of a distant train
The Disquieting Play of Thought
I was with this method
akin to spoken thought
A typical example of the process is collage
Such as using the most powerful poetic detonations to free humans from the control of reason
or another trick, like taking special interest in keeping records of dreams & thought processes of mental patients
this would be a special kind of spoken monologue
as rapidly as possible, without any intervention of reason
it is unencumbered
without the slightest inhibition by the cold pillars of conscious thought
without the hallucinatory effects of contaminated graphic elements from different contexts
without clippings from department store catalogues & the brilliant, slow, revelation of the end of art
without the visual fields where leaves & their veins ravel the edges of an eye
without the graphic counterpart of free association with words
without grappling with the contents of the book that brought together Tzara’s text and Man Ray’s graphs
without the paranoid – critical method invented while making the three dimensional colour photography of the superfine images of concrete irrationality entirely made by hand
without the realisation of acts
without the functioning objects of automatic origin
without the harrowing, soft footsteps of a woman threading on The Mystery & Melancholy of a Street in 1914
without a spectator & his headless companions in The Disquieting Muses
without the naked upper body of a woman, half hidden in a grotto-like space
without a truck; adorned with a cuff, a horned head & tusk
without the confusing dictum ‘art is the by-product of life’
This process of raising the omnipotence of dream
could be shown, on a clock or on a mantelpiece
as, an old haggard woman playing on a stage where the laws of time & space cease to be
the woman, could also appear through a wall in a portrait as a princess
there are unexplained shadows & a psychological clock, ticking slowly towards the junction, which outlines the true function of thought
to solve all the principal problems of modern life
Umar Abubakar Sidi is a Nigerian naval helicopter pilot. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
*Image by Wonderlane on Unsplash