Making sense of this transitory world
Greetings
So much in the world today feels fleeting. How quickly we forget today’s headlines or trending topics. How quickly we forget yesterday tragedy today. Many years ago, I used to do a Monday recap of the moments, incidents and accidents that we deemed unacceptable in the previous week on Twitter. It feels like we can’t hold attention on more than one thing at a time and so we simply replace one thing with the next.
In 2009, I had the opportunity to interview Nneka, who was in South Africa for the Channel O Music Awards. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of her until then and submerged myself in the two albums she had released at the time, Victim of Truth and No Longer At Ease. I have been a fan ever since and I am currently listening to her latest album, Love Supreme.
At the height of pandemic lockdown, Gary Hustwit made his documentaries available for viewing for free, including his documentary on the legendary and influential German industrial designer Dieter Rams. Recently Hustwit designed, with Rich Gonçalves, the Kronberg Porsche 911 inspired by Rams and Braun (who Rams designed for).
Simple but powerful. Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work: The Six Word Test
This past week was the first anniversary of the publishing of my book Listen To Your Footsteps. I keep reminding myself that having a book out is a marathon not a sprint.
Happy #BookAnniversary, @kojobaffoe 🎊 #ListenToYourFootsteps is available for purchase at bookstores stores and online. Curious about the book? Read more about it here: bit.ly/3M9RJVb Cover photo by: @victordlamini. #ReadLocalIt just occurred to me that #ListenToYourFootsteps is a year old https://t.co/dHhI5ytEi7
Kojo Baffoe @kojobaffoeIn Listen To Your Footsteps, I have an essay based on a conversation I once had with South African poet and author Don Mattera, where he lectured myself and another poet, Zee, on how, as young poets, we focused on the ‘I’ in writing, as opposed to broadening our horizons. He used the tree as an example, in that it could serve as a metaphor for life. I was reminded of this conversation when reading Trees at Night: Rebecca Solnit Reads and Reflects on a Stunning Century-Old Poem by the Young Harlem Renaissance Poet Helene Johnson
When I got into anime, one of the first things I watched was Ghost In A Shell. Netflix has just come out with Season 2 of Ghost In A Shell: SAC_2045. I am trying to drag it out because who knows whether there will be a season 3 and how long that will take, if there is.
I joined Twitter in 2008 and, for the longest time, it was my social media platform of choice. Not so much, anymore, for various reasons, including some of the thoughts I shared in a blog post: The Twitter Abyss. In How Twitter Became Twitter, Barathunde Thurston (who I have been following on Twitter for years), articulates it much better, writing “Twitter, however, is just one giant chatroom with everyone talking about everything all the time, and it’s overwhelming, confusing, and frustrating. As our digital lives merge into our own realverses, this dissonance is more jarring than ever. I can’t address or listen to a single conversation because of the cacophony that abounds.”
That’s it for today. If you enjoy receiving the Zebra Culture By Kojo Baffoe newsletter but are not subscribed, please do subscribe.
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I also welcome comments, thoughts, etc. A big thank you to those of you who have sent me messages.
And if you would like a copy of my book Listen To Your Footsteps, it is widely available online and in bookshops (primarily in South Africa but also on Barnes & Noble and Amazon) both in digital and physical form.
Easy
Kojo