What's Jollof without its creamy salad?

On verbosity...

I got this from Istock. I thought it was cool.

It is 5:45 pm and I have just walked into one of my favourite eateries. They make good jollof. More importantly, the salad is creamy. How does one grasp the majestic simplicity of jollof without the mix of that ketchup and cream’s tender embrace? To understand one is to be lost in the other’s grace.

In an amusing twist of fate, my aspirations hinge upon the reluctant cooperation of the microwave, while the generator—the supposed saviour of my gastronomic desires—has decided to stage a protest, leaving me in a limbo. One might think it prudent to request the luxury of a chilled meal, yet here I am, yearning for the fiery cuddle of hot jollof alongside the crisp refreshment of cold salad. I have now taken a seat and opened my notes app.

Like jollof, art is all in the colour, the layering, intermingling of flavors and the quiet coup of complementary elements, like the creamy salad. It's always the mix that makes the melody. They say colour shines brightest in a long sentence, like a sunset that refuses to be brief. When you meet your crush, do they not yammer on, waxing lyrical about this or that? I thought we all adore a good yapper? Or has that become another tale, spun from the twitchy fingers of those chasing X likes?

Sadly though, a non jollof eater will not see the beatitude on the plate. All of those words will get overlooked by people who refuse to read them in the first place. They see an ocean of words as incoherence. They are also not your problem. The vitality of the verbose is where you find the entertainment factor. Nietzsche's penetrating analogies, Murakami's ethereal metaphors, Shakespeare's transcendent wordplay, Soyinka's incisive satire.

The purpose of words is to communicate ideas. That said, verbosity is not the issue, you are. Art essentially, is not meant to cater to you, that you have been catered for is mostly an accidental benefit. No man's land, they say—is everyone's land. When people hold you in an esteem, they intend to turn you solely into an object of entertainment for themselves. That you must make art specifically to regale them who have named themselves art enjoyers. But I am an artist, as I am an essayist, my only responsibility is to make works which appeal to me, only then have I created valuable art. I seek no applause but my own, for in my eyes alone I am certain; thus, I stand both performer and spectator, first to watch what only I can behold.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Art is the most intense form of individualism the world has ever known.” But Oscar Wilde was a nice guy, he meant to say "Art is self centered." With all due respect, it’s never been yours to hold, yet still you reach, as though the world should echo your name. It is arrogant to imply the words of an expressionist “unnecessary” as though it is a tribute to a reader. Perhaps, in truth, we must cease weaving ourselves into what was never our thread.

You can cut all that, because it's not important."

But important to whom? If Paul Graham tells you not to send words too dense for his taste, words like "delve," you stand at crossroads: Craft your letters in the language he understands, or forever let your pen forget his name. There are times when "to whom?" matters. If my goal is to write for a specific audience, it behooves me to take their values and time constraints into account. But if my goal is to accurately express my ideas, it's going to take the number of words that it takes. Wouldn't you agree?

Think about it now— Who's the weirdo? The Astronaut, who landed on a new planet and called the dwellers "Alien" or the weirdly looking creature simply existing on his own planet?

“Yeah, yeah. I get it!”

But you can also obscure meaning by being too terse:

“What? I don’t get it. Please explain.”

I’ve been called verbose. I am verbose, sometimes I am not. It doesn't matter. It shouldn't. I write really long posts, and I do not think I could have pruned any of them, maybe I could have— using fewer words to express the same ideas. It will also surprise you to know that most of my writings feels incomplete.

Another interesting thing is that, when I’ve found people willing to talk to me about why they think I’m overly verbose, it usually turns out that verbosity isn’t what they’re objecting to. They believe it is so, yet upon deeper reflection, it is not the manner of my expression they resist, but the very substance of my thought. They simply dislike your ideas. They presume I dwell excessively on trifles, for what is insignificant to them is of consequence to me. And therein, my friends, lies the problem. We are often blind to the truth, for the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

I abhor excess, yet revel in its irony. When one accuses me of verbosity, I extend an invitation—"Help me, how might I distill this?" I ponder what stirs in Wole Soyinka’s heart when they dare call his Autobiography—his very life—an indulgence in superfluity. An autobiography, his alone to tell. The audacity. A jest, surely.

I’m also, yet to find anyone who could, say, take 5 pages I’ve written and cut it down to 2 pages while keeping the ideas intact. Pretty soon, (often without realizing he’s doing this) he’ll quit cutting phrasing and start cutting ideas. Say for example; "He's deeply hyprophenic and sometimes, solivagant. And when catechized, he resorts to tacenda." Or simply: "He's sad and lonely. When asked what is wrong, he says nothing."

Tell me now, what will you remove from the first sentence above? Verbosity is a quantity issue, you can only remove, not replace. And should you find yourself ensnared in the fallacy that verbosity equates to complexity, remember: HTML is not Haskell. Some languages simply weave threads of greater intricacy. Is this not the essence of language's allure? The myriad forms it assumes, the endless dance of expression. So, I beseech you, dear friends, why do we confine ourselves?

What the criticism often boils down to is “Your take on the subject is too nuanced for me (I don’t care about all those details), and the things you think are important, I find immaterial.” Which is totally fair. But what’s immaterial to him is material to me. To me, the world is a tangled labyrinth of complexity, where every thread gleams with its own nuance. I dance past the details that don't sing to my soul, though you may see me entwined in what you deem trivial. If my gaze lingers, perhaps it's the weight of your indifference, not mine.

The folks who get most irritated about certain types of writing tend to say things like “Whatever. All this psychoanalyzing and navel gazing … Sometimes people are just evil. There doesn’t have to be an explanation.” The world, in my mind, unfolds backward from this. It is the literal opposite. Each phenomenon is a puzzle whose pieces fit only once explained. There is an explanation. There has to be. My senses dance in the shadows, until writing, that odd alchemy, molds this chaos into clarity. It frees me. Like the curious hands that tear open a shawarma, blissfully unaware, searching for meaning in its delicious confusion.

In the end, there is only the ebb and flow of want and provision. If each grain of sand holds such importance for Ayò that he devotes his life to crafting a hundred volumes on his sandbox, few eyes will trace hiswords. Maybe he is okay with that. Perhaps, this solitude is his sanctuary. To question whether his work should be less voluminous is futile without understanding the compass of his desire. Should he yearn for the gaze of the many, then weaving 57 pages for a single grain is folly. But if his heart beats for the slow, deliberate unfolding of that which stirs him, then, perhaps, he is painting his world in the strokes it demands.

The writer's pen need not dance either for an audience of one or for a multitude of unseen faces. I find myself lost in the infinitesimal—tiny echoes of Shakespeare's words, his punctuated breaths, each mark a universe. I could write endlessly of these nuances, and in doing so, push away many a reader. Yet, perhaps there lingers a quiet number, a delicate few, for whom my obsession might serve both their curiosity and my own.

And like that perfect bite of jollof—the result of such a masterpiece is a culmination of different flavours, sometimes the most profound truths require both abundance and precision. In the end, one cannot sell freedom to one who thinks he's not enslaved, nor can one force-feed the beauty of jollof to those who refuse to savor its depths.