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theses

This thesis Chasing Ochosi: Family Jobs Narratives tells family stories through various literary lenses and voices. While this is primarily a collection of essays, I will demonstrate how by moving from the esoteric, the creative or spiritual impulse of the literary writing, to the exoteric it moves me from the inner circle of my community, my family and my personal inner world to public square. By sharing what I see and saw, hear and heard, taste and tasted, touch and touched, feel and felt--putting the interior in the exterior maybe others will know that they have stories to share or my journey will be of interest or inspiration to them. Maybe, I will demonstrate a way for them to tell their story or inspire them to create their own narrative model.

Though some of the stories are related and others are disjointed, I chose to put in in form. The style I chose to tell is a sonata since it’s a form I am used to. Each section has four movements--the introductory story in the form of a letter to my youngest granddaughter, Janae followed by a poem, quote or vignette. Next are its variations in the form of essays, a development that slows the reader down because of its intensity, and lighter stories that recapitulate the theme and variations. It culminates with a Finale, where the lessons learned are passed on in a letter to subsequent generations.

My primary concern in the creation of this thesis was how to integrate the stories in an authentic and truthful manner while including a first person voice. This is a voice that has matured and evolved. So, it was a journey the hypersensitive child and young adult, through the emotional journey of tears and emotional traumas coming of age, to enter the first phase of the empress priestess who has really grown past the selfish and limited view of the self centered interior soul to the more omniscient spirit who can see beyond just the physical, emotional and intellectual into a higher esoteric reality--only to be able to share this evolution to a more exoteric audience, including my daughters, grandchildren and all the subsequent generations.

After further analysis of my final thesis, I realized that maybe someone wanted to share my journey, the spaces between the notes, and the interludes between the themes. Consequently, dividing the thesis into this classic musical form is an attempt to help ground this work; I created because music embodies this perceptive lens. I found that in doing so I was comfortable enough to delve into the multi-layers of the childish observer, the overly emotional young adult to the more celebratory peaceful spirit. Inherent in music is poetic rhythm and the literary voice of an autobiographical essay, the tempo that is the undercurrent of the sound, the exposure of unexpected themes and variations including a type of metafiction quality, and then the light culmination.

This experimental creative work is part of a series of family narratives told through various topics. The MFA, Chasing Ochosi is the first in a collection of essays in the sonata form. Maybe later some of the others will take a different musical form or I will invent something new.

Who knows? I chose to start with this employment because why humans were “ordered to work” as they taught us in Sunday School shapes life. What one does at work, how work and family life is balanced, the life lessons we learn through our jobs. Then for me, how Arlene as a child saw her parents’ jobs, the end of the work day dinner table conversations, and how we are must work to live. Yet it goes on to explore the high meaning of the legacy of generations of workers and how the work one did affected the life one lives.

Ochosi is the Yoruba orisha (what some might think of as an angel or saint) associated with work. The Yoruba people migrated from East Africa, to West Africa and a few made it to Europe where many arrived in the Caribbean and the eastern shore of the United States from Boston to the Carolinas and Florida. I am a Christian yet I am aware to the indigenous spirit within me, the spirit my ancestors carried with them, hid from themselves, watered it down, and then embracing it in secret.

So often artists relish in the physical world--the senses of seeing, hearing, touching, feeling quite comfortable in the emotional realities of romantic love, chasing rainbow dreams, crying over emotional hurts, and being beyond tears. Sometimes we delve into the intellectual milieu--making sense of what happened, is happening, will happen. To rise into the spiritual realm, as our ancestors did, is scary. Yet it is something we all ultimately must and will do.

Yes, to integrate this spirit into art is scary. Some think of it as primitive. Others view it as diabolic. Still more think those who are in touch with the world beyond our planet are delusional. Yet many will have no trouble embracing miracles or synchronicity as long as they can explain it. Sometimes, however, entering into a greater presence is like going beyond the tears, going beyond the simple prelude and fugue. It may now become a “sound piece”, a sonata that now includes different movements that almost can be played separately. Yet after the pauses in between them and all the differences one realizes it is all connected--just like we are connected to our body, our emotions, out intellect and most of all our spirit. The creative process itself is spiritual, a regurgitation of the essence of spirit.

Consequently Chasing Ochosi is not a linear narrative. It is not just stories about my family. Yes, it incorporates pieces of my childhood diaries and journals, my own memory and reinterpretations, real people, places and things. It includes personal reflections, life lessons, and intergenerational connectedness--not being able to run from who we are or who we came from. Yet at the end of the day this is about what it means to be human, what it means to treat others humanely. Some of the moments are happy and light, others are sad and jarring. It is all about realizing that this life is not all there is and there will be those coming after us. As we move into other realms it is about who needs to learn our lessons and the lesson we have left to learn, as we serve as guides and guardians to those who come after us just like those who came before us did.

ETD_10998

M.F.A.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-24cd-gv67

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.