To all the girls I wrote to in school

Don Williams’ death leads to a reminiscing about a period in time when letters and lyrics were the assumed way to a girl’s heart. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • During the Q&A, a square-jawed boy at the front raised one arm and asked, “What do you feel about poetry?” I thought about it for a second and said, “Well, poetry as an art form is quite, uhm, creative, and requires one to master the ease of playing with words.”
  • He waited for me to expound but I didn’t have anything more to say, so he cleared his throat and asked.
  • “Do you write poetry?” I said, “No. The last time I wrote a poem was in high school, to a girl who didn’t reply, so it’s safe to assume that I’m terrible at it.”

I recently went to Kakuma refugee camp to give a talk to a club comprising young writers, film-makers and screenwriters. They were refugees from all around the region: Sudan, Congo, Somalia. I don’t enjoy those public speaking gigs but these are refugees, not some privileged kids with iPads who call water ‘warrer’.

They had never heard of me, which was perfect because this meant we had a clean slate to start from. I told them about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule; about artistic hunger and transcendent curiosity, and about showing up to write no matter how you felt or the weather; about reading and reading! And about the gods of words and how only the spilling of ink can appease them. (Yeah, I was a bit dramatic.) Ultimately, I painted writing as a glamourless struggle within oneself and a constant toil that offers few (but immensely worthwhile) pockets of reward. Someone at the back yawned, probably thinking, “Maybe I should try becoming a hip-hop artist instead. I can rhyme “jiggy” with “ligi.”

During the Q&A, a square-jawed boy at the front raised one arm and asked, “What do you feel about poetry?” I thought about it for a second and said, “Well, poetry as an art form is quite, uhm, creative, and requires one to master the ease of playing with words.” He waited for me to expound but I didn’t have anything more to say, so he cleared his throat and asked. “Do you write poetry?” I said, “No. The last time I wrote a poem was in high school, to a girl who didn’t reply, so it’s safe to assume that I’m terrible at it.” They laughed.

LETTERS FROM BACK WHEN

There was a time when seduction played out paper, not on Facebook or WhatsApp; when men wrote letters on stationary perfumed by cheap brands like Yolanda and sent them with a metaphorical kiss. They were so cool we didn’t call them letters, we called them ‘missives’. We even purchased stationary with love hearts printed on them, or flowers, that we thought fit for the purpose. We then spent half our night-time preps writing these letters in black ink. This kind of writing was arduous and precise because you didn’t have the benefit of the backspace, which means if you erred on the fifth paragraph, you had to start the letter afresh on a fresh piece of stationary. You wrote things like: ‘You make my heart go boom / food tastes like murram when I think about how you sung during that CU outing / your smile is like the full moon, and now it keeps my heart bright during these cold nights studying nomenclature in bio / I can’t wait to see you again because I’m the luckiest man in the world.’

Then you sent the letter with your photo enclosed – the only photo in which you were wearing a clean school shirt. Letters would take a week to get there and another week to come back, assuming she was so taken by your lyrics that she wrote back immediately. But then you would wait and wait and at some point you would realise you aren’t the luckiest man in the world and that in place of the full moon smile that shone in your heart, there now lived darkness. Oh, with the level of heartbreak some of us endured in high school, it’s a wonder that we even finished that race.

DEAD ART

The art of writing letters to women is dead. I mean proper letters in envelopes. I miss licking the sticky side of an envelope. (How safe was that, anyway?) The thrill was not even in writing the letter with the cheesy poetry, it was in waiting for a reply. Sometimes you would wait and wait and think that maybe the klutzy form one Letter Boy in charge of distributing the letters lost your letter in a heap. So you would write another one full of poetry and enclose another picture of yourself in a clean, borrowed shirt and still, she wouldn’t reply! Love was tough in high school. Hell, love is still tough. Now it comes in the form of an ignored blue tick.

There is very good written song by Don Williams who just passed on called If Hollywood Don’t Need You. It’s one of my favourites. I stole a lot from Don’s lyrics. This song starts with him telling this girl who left him to go to Hollywood that, “While you know I’m not much good at writing letters, so I gave up and decided that I’d call.../ There isn’t much news to tell you, things back here never seemed to change at all / I hope you made the big time / I hope your dreams come true / But if Hollywood don’t need you, honey I still do / Lately we don’t cut up like we used to (with his mates) / Cause all that I think about is you / I know this is what you’ve always wanted / but I know now that all I want is you.”

Boy, did I love that jam! I stole it and mutilated it and turned it into mine. And boy, did it fall flat with those girls! I guess I imagined that the girls would read it in Don William’s gentle voice. They obviously read it in my squeaky voice. Oh well, this was supposed to be a tribute to Don Williams for dominating my pre-teens with great poetry and great lyrics. To all the girls I wrote to in high school who never replied, I hope you are proud of your heartlessness.