soso tharpa: Along the Thames (Part II)
Photography: Luke Brosnahan
Michael has just landed in London for his first European excursion.
Thursday, June 16, 2022
The next afternoon, Luke and I meet Michael on the other side of the river in Southbank. We sit on a bench, Michael and Luke on either side of me, and overlook the brown river as it trudges along. Reverberations from the shaded skatepark behind us soundtrack our afternoon. Boards are slamming and bodies are flailing, and every so often, a trick is being met with rapturous applause and groans.
I turn to Michael. “What time did you actually get in at?”
“Got in at like 6am,” Michael replies, softly.
“Today?”
“Yeah, I got like three hours of sleep.”
“And what are you doing back in Washington?”
“So, I was working for a corporate company, things didn't work out, and I started working for a music store because I wanted to take it easy. But now, I'm working for my family's business.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, so I'm making a lot more money, plus it's flexible because they support my music so if I'm like, Yeah, I want to go to London, they support my dreams.”
“Is there a spoken agreement that you don't take advantage of that deal? Or are you very responsible in that respect?”
“Yeah, because we're a first generation Nigerian family. I've seen the struggles of my parents and what they went through in order to even make that business, so I would never play them like that. But once they saw how passionate I was about my music and they were seeing that I was making money from it and that I could DJ and go to Berlin and London, they were like, Oh, this is his gift. We'll just let him do it.”
“That's cool.”
“And I'm blessed in that regard because I know a lot of immigrant parents don't think like that.”
“I think sometimes,” I say, “you can't really let yourself enjoy a trip abroad until it's all over almost, when it's too late, because you're just too caught up in organising everything.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael mutters.
“Have you felt this way with coming here?”
“Not really,” Michael says. “My girlfriend Madeleine, she's really like, Ok, we're going to do this at this time. What about this? You won't have free time for that. She just has that kind of brain.”
I laugh. “And you don't, no?”
“I do, but not as much as her,” Michael admits.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I'm Nigerian and we're not really good with time.”
I laugh. “Is that a common stereotype, is it?”
“I mean, yeah. It's a sociological term where different cultures have different time values.”
“Ok, yeah.”
“So some cultures like Nigerian people and Arabic people, they show up later. If they say, Let's meet up at four, Nigerian people and other people might show up at four-thirty.”
I chuckle. “Ok.”
“Whereas in the West, if they say to show up at four, you show up at four.”
“If not earlier.”
“Right. So that's something I've been working on.”
“In Marseille, where I’m living, obviously there's a huge North African diaspora and it is a common stereotype that when you say a time, expect them to be there an hour later. Maybe it's just that langour. That laidback approach.”
Michael nods. “Laidback. Exactly.”
I remind myself of Michael’s appearance on Hessle Audio’s Rinse show. “Are you sending these tracks out to Ben UFO and the likes, or are they finding you?”
“They're just finding me,” Michael says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. My homies that I know, I'll send it to them, but everyone else kinda just finds it out for themselves.”
Luke chimes in. “Good position to be in.”
“Yeah, wow,” I say. “I'm trying to get into a state of mind of not forcing it.”
“They call it wu wei in Taoism,” Michael tells us. “Have you ever been in a conversation and you wanna say something but you forget what you're gonna say?”
“Yeah,” Luke and I say in tandem.
“And,” Michael continues, “it's only when you talk about something else that you remember what you were gonna say?”
Luke and I nod along.
“That's because you're not actively trying to remember? Does this make sense.”
I look back at Michael bemused.
“Yeah,” Luke says. “Once you let it go then it comes back.”
Michael starts nodding his head. “Then it comes to you.”
“Ok,” I say, unconvincingly.
“I don't think everything in the universe works like that,” Michael admits, “but for some reason with music if I have an intention of wanting to release on a certain label and I don't force it, then it just happens. Or the opportunity will come my way and I can choose whether or not to take it or just let it go.”
“And,” I start, “did you go through an enlightening experience to come to terms with that being how the world works?”
“No, it's just how it works,” Michael says, crossing his legs and cuffing his hands on his knee. “I feel like the best things come from a place of ease, where you don't try to force nothing. Just let it happen then a lot of things fall into place. You can frustrate yourself, trying to chase to dragon.”
“With Nigerian parents,” I say, “did you come from a religious background?”
“Yeah, my parents are Buddhist and I'm Buddhist too, so I'm pretty sure that has an effect on it.”
“I'd say so. I don't know what the demographic breakdown is, but I just assumed it was a staunchly Catholic and Islamic region.”
“Yeah, my parents were Christians, but then my Grandma passed away on my Mom's side and they just went through this whole process where they got disillusioned with the church and they started meditating and stuff.”
“I don't know if it's a generational thing and that we're all going through it, but it's certainly happening in Ireland where there's a collapse in Catholic devotions.”
“Are you Irish?” Michael asks, very curiously.
“I'm Irish, yeah. And he's Irish,” I say, pointing at Luke.
Michael looks over at Luke. “You're Irish too?”
“Do we not hold up the stereotype?” I ask.
Luke laughs.
“I mean,” Michael says, inspecting my beard, “you got the orange going on.”
I laugh. “Anyway,” I quickly continue, “there's a collapse in Catholic devotions.”
“In the church?” Michael asks. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“In a big way,” Luke says.
“There's a big backlash,” I say.
“People are disillusioned?” Michael asks.
“Not only in their teachings, but just their conduct. There's also been scandals involving-”
“Child abuse,” Michael interjects.
“Yeah,” I say. “But generally speaking, I think the idea of God, or the lack of one, is a lot more palatable in a Buddhist teaching as opposed to a Catholic teaching in which he is personified.”
“Yeah, I mean, everyone has a different mind,” Michael says. “So, some religions work better for some people. How do you think the slaves got through slavery? Christianity.”
“This is true.”
“They believed in something, right?”
“You gotta believe in something,” I say. “What do you believe in, Luke?”
“Ehhhhm, Jeeesus Christ,” Luke says, with visible discomfort.
I laugh.
“I did try meditating for a while,” Luke says, “and I actually really enjoyed it. I don't know why I stopped. I feel like when you're in London it feels so strange to have a moment to sit down and just think about nothing.”
Michael laughs.
“Honestly.”
“But surely,” I say, “10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night?”
“I know it's that easy and it was that easy and I really enjoyed it, it's just—”
“London does feel like go, go, go here,” Michael says. “Is that true?”
“Yeah,” I say. “It's a rat race.”
“Damn,” Michael says. “We were driving through downtown. All the business people. One person that way, one person that way.” Michael throws out his arms to gesture different directions.
“There's obviously this notion,” I say, “that Londoners are rude.”
“I'm sure some can be,” Michael says.
“Luke was telling me yesterday that he's done with how aggro everyone is here. Everyone's got a short fuse.”
“Yeah,” Luke says.
“Do you feel like the energy is tense right now among people?” Michael asks. “In certain areas or something?”
“I don't know,” Luke says. “I think as well with all those lockdowns people kinda just forgot how to behave around each other a little bit too. I feel like people's patience for bullshit lowered.”
“That happened in D.C. too.”
“What's it like being in D.C.?” I ask Michael. “Because obviously America is going through this very confusing political time?”
“Oh my God,” Michael groans.
“And being in the epicentre of that. Does it really reflect in the general population of D.C. almost?”
“Yeah, it's weird because I was born and raised in D.C. since 1996. I've lived in D.C. my whole life and to see what happened with Trump and then the people storming the Capitol.”
“Exactly, yeah.”
“It's like a cartoon. It's not even real, man.”
A young man saunters behind on his skateboard, rhythmically rolling over the cracks of the pavement.