Who will tweet about your virtues when you die?
I am learning things when I am writing. And even though I hate the hurry rush rush delivery of blogging, I am learning things. So, it is 10 pm and I find out that Ken Saro Wiwa Jr has died. I did not know that Ken Saro Wiwa had a junior.
My eye is red. Victor Ehikhamenor Indonesian installation type red. I am sad because I am googling his name and finding beauty. He was a writer of flowing sentences. Like, heavy heavy points passed in absorb-able sighs type writing. And I am only finding out in his death. Imagine!
The people I follow on Twitter, who, as a rule, are smarter than me, are mourning him proper and I am learning. He was a good guy. There is a memoir on his father’s execution. There is a soft, tear hiccup filled slow back rub of an Instagram post.
There are tweets. Very many.
Who will tweet about my virtues when I die? My selfishness cannot sleep and I am thinking of myself in the wake of another’s death. But it is not such a bad thing. It is self examination. Maybe. To be remembered you must touch your foot to the floor while you can still walk. Ken did this. As a mentor at the Trudeau Foundation, Columnist for Mail and Guardian, Special Adviser to three Presidents. I don’t know half the list of these things, but he did them and more. So he is remembered and missed and there is a space. That particles are relearning to occupy, moving slowly out of respect. Reading teary eyed tweets along the way.
What I think I am trying to say, when you are dying, and after you have died, because you will, we all will, who will be tweeting these tweets?
Who will be remembering you for a thing that you did not do for yourself? Or a thing you did so well? Or a thing only you could do? What is your foot leaving on the ground?
Will you set a google reminder? Promise me. Now. To be, everyday. To remember to remain in a doing state. Of excellence. Creating every waking hour, a block of immortality. Stacking your awesome. Being a little bit of Ken Saro Wiwa Jr, a little bit of Ken Saro Wiwa, a little of Chinua Achebe. You get my point do you not? Be so fucking epic some 20 year old on the night of your death stays up to guzzle the work of your life and the tweets announcing its end.
