Art and Literature in My Sleepless Pursuit of African Pasts

My room was small, but it was beautiful. I loved it like that until I started writing on the walls and started wishing for more wall surface area to write on. The wall in my apartment became a repository of culture, memory and timeless beauty.

If I remember correctly, the first thing I ever wrote on my wall, was a line in black marker from a Kendrick Lamar song: ‘Shit don’t change unless you get up and wash your ass, nigga.’ I copied out the line because I thought it was really beautiful—and I live for beauty. Elsewhere on the walls, you’d find scribbled: ‘Not Today’, a popular refrain from the TV series, Game of Thrones; ‘The Sense Of An Ending’, the title of the most striking Juliane Barnes novel I ever read; and ‘Flygol Was Here’, written by a visitor who desired remembrance. Above my bed, I had two other important fragments: