Post Birthday Muse

After changing my birth date on Facebook, place my phone on call forwarding to a dead line, turned off my wifi, you people still manage to embarrass me with all your exaggerated words and messages, placed everywhere on my path, that Wife of mine even sent a cake to bother my early morning sleep. But me on the other hand, what did i do all day? As usual reflecting on the meaning and the point of all these celebration? This morning, I read some messages sent on my path of instagram, Facebook, sms, messenger and whatsapp groups, and i wondered who they were all referring to. So i put that within the reflection of my Venice biennale preoccupation, which in my reality, is more real than a birthday celebration :).

Right Here, Right Now is the title of my proposition, in the bid to examine what it means to be in the present and the chronology of time, so naturally, the monotony of birthdays and that of ticking time, and that of being the 'new kid' on the block, presents me with something nice to grasp with. According to common sense, the ‘old' and the ‘new' designate the place that the elements of our experience and our disposition takes within the line of Time. Stay with me, closely. What is ‘new' is what is the now right? The present presenting itself to us moment by moment. The elements of our experiences operate in realm of knowledge; old to a point where it withdraws from the present, for presence can only be in the now, the now which constitutes the point zero in the scale of Time; not past, not future, not known, not unknown, but just now. This very moment, where we are constantly producing the present, a ticking future that is constantly making itself present. The content of the happenings of the present is of no importance, what is important however, is the intensity of the experience, the qualitative mark that we leave in the moment of experiencing the now, which is constantly unfolding into the sphere of the known, the old, the "well-known" known which eventually becomes banal and ultimately boring in its repetitiveness. The ‘now’ generally has charms, for it bears the seen unforeseen, which we now refers to as the new, it is a new qualitative mark which bears the interesting, the promising and fresh when looked upon afresh, before it becomes the upsetting, the menacing, radical, the hostile, the arrogant which unapologetically arrogate his right to the assured presence, let’s call it the troubler of troubles. Viewed under the formal Time perspective, everything new ages with the speed of light, its constancy, when reduced to pure chronology, shows that nothing stays absolutely new, absolute newness is instantaneous in the “now,” a ’now’ which already liable and already depreciated by the future, a future in view of a new, virtually newer that the new, a new which sinks into the older and older, the known, the old, the "well-known" known which eventually becomes banal, the boring. But a re/new/ed possibility opens to the qualitative content of what was new and now old, the intense experience of the old which left a bruised mark upon time, manages to intervene in the memory of the new, within the chronology of history. This memory can seem new if put in relation to the monotony of the throbbing of Time; in the nostalgia for origins, for myth, legends and newer narratives. The past returns, in our imagination, more or less tailored by the present to suit its own needs, a way to make the old even more new that is was in its present. In order to stay new, don’t listen to all those wishing you happy birthday, some who only writes you once in a year, the birthdays well wishers, don’t listen to the menace of glorification and celebration, that is the trap the future places on your way, to drag you further into the abyss of the old, to stay anew, constantly reinvent yourself and plug in to all the menace of the future, give room for the troubling troubles of the now, accept its radicality and hostility, but also give room for appreciation. On that note i say thank you all for all your messages, i lie, they were uplifting :) and that cake, oh my gosh, sister Yemi should get a Phd for the art and science of cake technology.