We Write to Fight Memory

Writing to someone closes the physical space between two people. Words fill that space. The written word has always carried more weight than the spoken word because "writing fights memory - we write so that we don't forget".

The person who said this was named Frédéric Bruly Buabré. I bought this postcard of a painting by him when I was on a student exchange program in Switzerland last summer. I managed to drag a few friends to a museum called "Collection de l'Art Brut" in Lausanne, which houses artwork (paintings and sculptures of all kinds, made of all sorts of material, using all sorts of techniques) created by people with mental disorders - people who went insane (debatable what that means) or were retained in mental asylums. Since my visit, I have read up a lot about outsider art (art that lies outside the boundaries of normal culture) but I don't claim to fully understand even one thousandth of what it really comprises.

All I know is that this image, made by Frédéric Bruly Buabré - an Ivorian artist from the West Coast of Africa - is a memoir of a period of curiosity and introspection in my own insignificant little life. All his drawings are part of a larger spectrum called World Knowledge. It is said that he received a vision in 1948, that influenced all his work.

"On March 11, 1948, “the heavens opened up before my eyes and seven colorful suns described a circle of beauty around their Mother-Sun, I became Cheik Nadro: ‘He who does not forget."

La montée de l'humanité au ciel: un nuage

blanc figurant un < < enfant >> >, 2006

mine de plomb, stylo a bille et crayon

de couleur sur carton

16,2 x 10,7 cm

Photo: Amélie Blanc

Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne

Translation from French:

The rise of humanity to heaven: a white cloud contained a < < enfant >> >, 2006
graphite, ballpoint pen and pencil
color on cardboard
16.2 x 10.7 cm
Photo: Amelia Blanc

Collection de l'Art Brut, Lausanne

How little I understand about what goes on in his mind, and how much I wish I could. They were running an interview of this charming, happy African man in a corner of the museum on a television set, and I memorized his words and scribbled them down before I could forget. In explanation of one of his paintings, he said (in his own language):

When the earth and sun make love, they create rain. All sorts of things (life) spring forth from the earth - children, trees, animals.

After some looking around, I stumbled upon this website: http://www.caacart.com/html/frederic-bruly-bouabre.html. If anything about this blog post interests you, then go ahead and explore some more. I give you my word, you won't be disappointed.

Lava Lamp

It felt like a movie.

Her lava lamp was orange. It cast an orange glow over the entire room. Globs of wax in it moved up and down, slowly, floating, hitting one wall and moving unperturbed towards the another, only to be gently self-pushed in a tangential direction again. Their lazy fluency was fascinating. Big gooey bubbles of all sizes, bumping and moving along, like lots of people slowly hitting each other and continuing to move without a complaint. Maybe she should have bought a blue one. A blue glow would have been lovely.

She continued to watch it shine and drift lazily. She wished she could go inside it and trap herself into one of the little bubbles, and watch the world from atop the bookshelf, from inside the lava lamp - and if her bubble slowly stretched and eventually performed mitosis, then she would stretch with it, stretch gracefully, arching, until she slowly got divided in the middle, and became two small replicas of herself, one in each bubble. There could be many of her floating around inside the lava lamp, just like that, watching the apartment from a corner, people coming and going.

She shook her head from side to side to clear it, and sipped her strong black tea. She could feel it slipping down her throat, like a small stream of water on the floor would slip along the surface - she could feel it flowing gently, soundlessly, into her stomach, and soothing her. It had a distinct flavour. It sent a shiver up her spine. The breeze in her hometown did that to her. It was a shiver she waited for, invited, looked forward to, anticipated - like waiting for a person with more power, with the power to pleasure her insanely for just a moment, and then take it all away and tease her from a distance.

I'm drifting again, just like the wax globs, she thought, taking another sip. She shifted her gaze from the perfect lava lamp to the scene outside her window. A mosque began it's daily call, and she watched a few birds flying into the sun. It was quiet, except for a single baby's wailing, almost haunting in its loudness and helplessness. There is no time like evening - the last hour of light before dark, the last breath of a long and tired day, the last flutter of the sun's eyelashes before they close for the night. She watched as it got darker, and the lights in the buildings came on everywhere, one by one. The city still looked beautiful. From the top floor of a building, any city looks beautiful.

The mosque finished its prayer and the silence that followed it resonated into the dusk. The baby stopped wailing and finished off its complaints with a prolonged gurgle. She continued to sip her tea, blinking slowly, seeing everything clearly from behind her glasses. She played a strain of Billy Joel on her laptop, and continued to watch the city wake up for the night. The trains must be so crowded. The clubs must be getting ready for the teenagers - college goers in their first year, waiting for a release without knowing why, doing things they didn't understand and being carefree with the excuse that these years only come once. They aren't wrong, but they will regret some things later. 

Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong that week. All the promises she could have made to herself and broken, she had made to herself, and broken. A few bright spots, like plankton in a dark shallow sea, had come along over that dark week, but they were short lived. Like fire flies. Like shooting stars. Like a bulb with a fuse. She felt like she had sunk to to bottom of something jelly-like, and was yet to begin her journey up. She knew it wouldn't be so hard. She knew she would get there, and be all she had to be - it was dark, yet there was solace in that sunset, that lava lamp, that black tea, those city lights. 


How cliché. 


How true. 


That entire surreal moment encapsulated in the evening, the fading light, the liquid, the silence.

She returned to her desk, checked her mail, rustled a few papers, and began working again.

The lava lamp continued to glow.