I begin this gospel to you, my fellow scribes, by recalling an old, weathered moment from my own journey. See with me a moment when I, too, sat in solitude, a spirit above a void, trying to comprehend the nightwaters of my own craft. I sat thus almost in catatonic comportment in a small timber and ironsheet room, the windows cracked open to the dust of the slum behind the university, where I began to understand the silent, pulsing mechanics of writing.
The manuscript of those rudimentary days of musing in the fever of youth, I dared to name: Detonations of Silence. It was handwritten on printing papers of about 100. I lost it together with a second-hand laptop and its bag to a burglar when I left for rural Bungoma to take graduation photos with extended clan members in the autumn of 2002.
These days, my thoughts often wander into the discipline of writing. I cogitate for days on end about the discipline of style and structure. I ruminate oddly on the art of how we carry the weight of our words, the manner in which we choose to approach the act of creation.
It is a subject that has long occupied me, perhaps more than any other: What does it mean to be a writer in this our time and in this our country? How do we, with these simple tools, the pen and the keyboard, engage with the universe of thought, of emotion, of history, of our own particular lived experience?
At the moment, I am exploring the old principles of non-attachment and vulnerability. They are worthy companions as I work with members of the Literature and Performing Arts Society of Kenya on several anthologies of short stories, poems and literary criticism. Think of them as ideals or abstract notions to be admired by any scribe worth an ounce of salt. They are the tools with which we trace the very contours of our voices in the world.
When I began as a young writer in my early twenties, I held onto my words with clenched fists stained with tobacco and other plants. I was afraid to let them go. Each sentence felt like a part of me. The work was my work. My words. My heart. But the paradox of writing is that the moment you clutch your work too tightly, it ceases to live. It chokes. Words are meant to breathe, they are not prisoners of the scribe’s fear.
Non-attachment, then, is the art of letting go. It is not a self-rejection of your work. It is not abdication of your responsibility as a creator. It is, simply so, the ability to release your creation into the world without the desperate need for validation. This is perhaps the most difficult lesson of all. I believe to truly create, one must first learn to relinquish control. To release the work as if it were a baby bird that has outgrown the nest and must be nudged to depart it no matter what.
This lesson is one that all writers, young or old, must learn: Your work will never be all things to all people. Some will praise it. Others will find it lacking. Some will misunderstand it altogether. But none of this should deter you from the quiet, steady discipline of creating.
Non-attachment allows you to surrender your work to the world, not because you do not care for it but because you understand that it must find its own place in the cosmos. Your job is to create. The toil and moil of people of the world is to respond.
And yet, while we practise non-attachment, we must also embrace vulnerability. The scribe who does not risk exposing the raw parts of themselves is no scribe at all. In your words, you must be willing to stand before the world creatively naked. To write from the deepest, most personal parts of your being. To expose the soft, unhealed places of your soul. There is no true writing without this courage. Take that to the bank.
It is an act of bravery to write honestly about the events that occur in the world and how those events touch your very bones. It is to say, “Here I am. This is my story. This is my pain, my joy, my laughter, my grief, my percolation.” It is to risk being misunderstood. It is to risk rejection. It is to risk being seen in all your complexity and contradiction. But in this risk lies the power of words. For without vulnerability, writing is just what an eminent critic recently called “tortuous verbiage”. Words as mere mask and spectacle.
When we open ourselves to vulnerability, we allow the world to recognise its own reflections in our words. The reader who knows the scent of drizzle in Githurai dust or the rhythm of bra bazaars of Kibuye will find themselves in your words even if they have never met you. They will see their lives in yours. This, comrades, is the true magic of writing. This is the bridge that connects the hidden hearts of strangers.
I am reminded of an old saying, one that speaks to the journey we all must take as artists. The way is long, they say. Both the way of life and the life of ways. But we walk it together in words. All of us. I mean the way and life of the wayfarers across the land of art.
So I implore you, young scribe, to take these two principles to heart: non-attachment and vulnerability. Write with courage. Release your work into the world and allow it to find its place.
And in the act of writing, expose yourself proper, without fear, without hesitation. For, as a poet who was born today 268 years ago, William Blake, once said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
