For you, my Restful Space folks, I’ve been hounding people on the (internet) streets, begging them for their playlists and thoughts/stories behind them. One such person is the poet and artist Onyeka. A real lover-man. “Endlessly entrenched in beauty,” he says he is.
You see how this year is coming to an end, try be more like Onyeka. No, for real, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, dwell on these things. One way to do this is using the Grateful flow tool by psychiatrist/psychotherapist Phil Stutz, the subject of Jonah Hill’s documentary, Stutz (which you should absolutely watch, by the way).
Other Onyeka playlists that I’ve loved: Yoruba love songs, Nigerian Love and Saying your lover’s name. Read on for what this playlist means to Onyeka.
I didn't have anyone in mind when I made the playlist, but I had something in mind. The world is a place that mostly trudges on regardless of our pain, when it does not care enough to make a mockery of it. I know the value of spaces where a person is loved, cherished and nourished. I made the playlist because I wanted to create a place where one feels loved, or someplace reminiscent of where one once felt loved.
The value of being desired cannot be overstated, and it can be tangible enough to keep people alive and on their feet. James Baldwin said, “The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and devotion of a few people.” Maybe desire and devotion do not and cannot hold the world together, big and mighty and ruthless as it is? But I can testify that they do hold lives together, here and there, our little lives, making of them testimonials of tenderness dotting a brutal landscape. I know this.
The playlist opens with REAVE's Get to know me because I have come to believe that one cannot be truly loved if one does not submit to the humbling rigour of being known, of being seen in all fullness. Being seen in all fullness involves being known as light and being known as shadows—those pockets of spaces in one's being where the illumination does not reach, but almost does. “Tell me about despair, yours, and I'll tell you mine,” Mary Oliver writes. And what better way is there to know each other if not the laying bare of our individual despairs?
Let us do this, and in the light of the attendant truth, hold hands and dance because we're weighed down by nothing now.
Will You Dance with Me, Please? (36 mins)
As usual, Apple Music helpers, get at me and I’ll include the link here.
If you have a playlist you’d like to share here, let me know. I’m especially seeking any of the following:
a good Christmas-week playlist that acknowledges that family time can be exhausting time too.
an Igbo playlist for the girlies who won’t be going to village this Christmas.
anything anxiety-calming for the boys. some of us are struggling to drink water and drop cup this season.
Beautifully put together. ❤️
Great ❤️