Aerial View

How shadows shift from east to west, tower at a midday height and flatten out with the shifting of the sun like cardboard cutouts in a pop-up book, is all a matter of perspective. The pages turn with his camera-hand; scenes take shape and adopt a structure, captured in lens from the aerial view or sideways at an angle from a city street; landscapes form and flip up; figures lie out on concrete or sit fountain-side during the lunch hour reading, just lounging or gazing unwittingly with minds transported elsewhere until, at that perfect instant, he presses the button. And snap, a chronicle is created. Here at the center of the universe, at the highest point there is, in the midst of all the machinery and the madness, where discerning eyes must distinguish the aspiration of the divine from the deluge; a chronicle is created. The gift of sight is given to he who wishes to see. The gift of insight is given to him. And unto all others that come to watch; a gift is given.

With God as a witness, she may as well have been living in the wilderness for the amount of time that had gone by. She lamented to a pal only recently about how she felt; friendless and abandoned, and lacking passion in every regard. She held this under her jacket like a piece of jewelry she wanted no one to see, and behind those glasses that she always wore, even though she only needed them to read with. She sought the effect of imperviousness they created; now the only identity she could claim. No longer could she be called woman with a tone that said; that’s mine. The noun was true only to itself now. It meant exactly what it meant. And she was at an age where this status might be permanent. Why even now, it was a struggle to remember when the man took her in the sitting room, or riskier still, in the hallway; letting his hands interfere with her undergarments and squeeze her skin. She threw her head back and melted into the wall. She remembered. She had heard herself groan as she watched the chandelier spinning down on her, capturing her in all her splendor, exalting her with light.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2010

Because happiness is not a state that is easily sustained, it is impermanent, arriving at its own leisure and going just as quickly as water goes through extended fingers or a piece of stretched cloth, we must snatch the moment. Let us live in the instant and give in to glee. Let us make our mouths wide; toss back our heads; slap our knees; stomp rhythms into the ground; rattle our shoulders; kick our legs out; howl to the heights. For who knows what may come.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2010

An uncle said laughingly, that the memory of it was in the boy’s genes. But he was not really telling a joke. It was genetic, like the contours rounding out the laugh that came from the older man’s mouth as he watched. Laughter that said, you can’t stop rain from falling or the moon from appearing and posing in the dark. And the child was like the stars that clustered themselves around the moon, with no concrete explanation, only that it just happened naturally. He touched the drum as if he knew it, and a thousand souls delighted behind the screens to the other dimensions. He hit the drum and could not understand that he was replicating a rhythm that had long been written for him, beating out concepts too deep for even his guardians to comprehend. Somewhere in the spiritual spectrum, women were gyrating in a circle, spinning their hips, leaning back, and working their shoulders to the ground. The men crouched very low before leaping out into the air.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2010

They lollygag, for the moment, and sprawl at their leisure. They will smoke cigarettes and chatter on about whatever subjects take their fancy, pour wine into flute glasses that have been stuffed into jacket pockets and pocketbooks and held upside down between fingers, while digging their heels into the sand. They will stand, legs akimbo, in the shallow water with arms folded and trousers rolled up, thinking about nothing really. This is an occasion that must be seized, for they are still somewhat young and work is only an antidote against idleness and not yet required to sustain any particular kind of lifestyle. The thought of it alone is a bore. No matter, in a little while, they will ride up, two by two out to the surrounding areas and shop for residences with good yard space. Or, they will come by taxi to the city, arm in arm to look over a loft in one of those up and coming neighborhoods, where rents are being raised to accommodate the influx and other less desirable characteristics are quickly being identified and phased out.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2009

Every religious house would surrender its offerings, dispatch to us the rolls of sacred material upon which all devout knees kneel, chant noontime prayers with their intricate verse, highlight for our view full sections of holy passages to induce us to tell our secret. And even the traditional sciences, for which the powers have no name, would pour years of libation, bidding us to tell our tale. But ours is not hidden from eyes that are willing to see, we dance here in sculpture, giving evidence that our time here was a mere audition; practice for the immature soul. It is the pattern of the maker of all things; the atoms and the elements. We are wiser for having come here and we dance in sculpture giving evidence; death is but a conversion to another state.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2009

Newer tenants would not be aware that the passions climbed steam high in those flats. Too many years had passed. Perhaps people no longer ran after one another in the hallways after hours or grappled at the top of the stairs. Maybe no one crumpled sob-heavy in the foyer anymore, fingerprinting the glass on the double doors. The building held no records that a coat of quality paint could not conceal. It overlooked all of the activity with the same fixed indifference trees have as all other things transform. A passerby could still look up the following day and see its gorgeous concrete curves. Untouched.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi Ako Dash. © 2009