The Philosophies of Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"A people losing sight of origins are dead. A people
deaf to purposes are lost. Under fertile rain, in
scorching sunshine there is no difference: their
bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial....It
was not always so. The desert was made the desert,
turned barren by a people whose spirit is itself the
seed of death. Each single one of them is a carrier
of destruction. The spirit of their coming together,
the purpose of their existence, is the spread of death
over all the earth. An insatiable urge drives them.
Wherever there is life, even if it be only a
possibility, the harbingers of death must go -- to
destroy it. See the footsteps they have left over all
the world. Wherever they have been they have
destroyed along their road, taking, taking, taking.
They have wiped the surface barren with their greed.
They have dug deep to take what the earth needed for
itself to stay fertile earth. They have taken
everything within their reach, things that made the
earth good, and they have put nothing back but hard,
dead things in place of life destroyed. Even their
putting back was nothing of a sense of reciprocity.
Their semblance of giving is parcel of their greed.
It is their habit to put dead, useless things in the
hollowed earth to help them take more coveted
things....Monstrous the barrenness of people when
outside the lonely cut-off self there is no connection
with the whole. Blood itself is impotent before the
white perdition brought against us by the destroyers
from the sea: the severing of each mind, the cutting
of each soul off from the whole being of our people,
the removal of each single present away from knowledge
of our common past, our common destiny: against all
this blood itself is impotent if it flows away from
connectedness, away from our single way, the way.
Ludicrous is the freedom of the slave unchained in his
single body if his mind remains a cut-off individual
mind, not a living piece of our common mind, our
common soul...Against the death brought by whiteness
only the greatest connecting force will prevail: the
working together of minds connected, souls connected,
travelling along that one way, our way, the way.
Connected thought, connected action: that is the
beginning of our journey back to our self, to living
again the connected life, travelling again along our
way, the way....Endless our struggle must seem to
those whose vision reaches only to the end of today.
But those with ears connected to our soul will hear a
message calling us to a better life, to a life closer
to our ancient way, to a preparation for the best, the
only living way. It is not vengeance for our own
single selves we have been seeking in this work.
Those who can see, those able to hear, let them hear
this: we are preparers of paths to the way that was
our way; it will be our way again."

-Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"A mind attacked and conquered is guided easily away from the paths of its own soul."

-Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"It's a disease, a popular one. It comes from
spiritual blindness. If I'm not spiritually blind, I
see your spirit. I speak to it if I want to invite you
to do something with me. If your spirit agrees it
moves your body and your body acts. That's
inspiration. But if I'm blind to your spirit I see
only your body. Then if I want you to do something for
me I force or trick your body into doing it even
against your spirit's direction. That's manipulation.
Manipulation steals a person's body from his spirit,
cuts the body off from its own spirit's direction."

Damfo, The Healer (1978)
Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"Let us work to turn the forgotten paths into the
remembered way. Let us mix the long memories of a
people destroyed with new narratives of our own
making, as we move into space of our own choosing, as
we dream in images woven from our people's best
desires, as we plan on designs drawn from our own
reflection, then make again the universe that might
have been but was not, here in this place, now in this
time freed for our new creation.
I will walk with you away from the superhighways of
forgetfulness onto the paths of remembrance. Together
we shall breathe energy into faded memories of a
people once destroyed. Let us walk together, invoking
the future into now."

-Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"The events that have shattered our people were not
simply painful events. They were disasters. They
were strange, unnatural catastrophes. Those who
survived them could only survive in part because they
found ways to forget the catastrophes. When you're
still close to past dangers that threatened to wipe
you out, even remembrance pains you. Our people
forgot a lot of things in order to survive. We even
went beyond forgetfulness. To forget thoroughly the
shattering and the dispersal of a people that was once
whole, we have gone so far as to pretend we have
always been these silly little fragments each calling
itself a nation. Is forgetfulness natural? It is
natural, but only for a while, not for all time.
Forgetfulness helps the diseased cross over the time
of greatest pain. It is a sort of sleep, like the
sleep brought on by herbs to help a sick man rest when
his disease has exhausted him. In that case
forgetfulness works toward health. But when the
period of forgetfulness is prolonged unnaturally, then
it doesn't work towards health. It works toward
death."

-Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"Terrible is the fragility of good beginnings. Look at the egg; what strength can you see in it with your physical eyes? Yet from that fragility can come great vitality. That is one reason for us not to lose courage simply because our current reality is so fragile in the face of established chaos."

-Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"Healers are just awakeners of a people who have slept too long."

-Ayi Kwei Armah

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

"...but what is a gift from the powerful if not a cut from property stolen from the people?"

-Ayi Kwei Armah