Kiss and say goodbye

FUNKE ADETUTU
A feeling of nostalgia, I will call it. It’s just the feeling that overwhelmed my tired body as I passed through Outer Marina last Wednesday on my way home from work. I long for home just as much as I miss the beautiful lights that adorned this road a few weeks ago. The festive season is over and so the Outer Marina has been stripped off its glamour and gleam.
There is no one who passed through some major areas on Lagos Island that would deny the fact that the Island was beautifully decorated for Christmas. The Outer Marina, Falomo Roundabout and Ajose Adeogun, were all remarkably decorated and I sincerely wished Christmas was everyday.
Passing through Outer Marina that Wednesday night, I was sad that the lights and other decorations were nowhere to be found. The importance of what I’m saying becomes apparent when I remember that taste depends very much on the standards with which we as individuals are familiar, and that the ability to enjoy the best and only the best is conditioned upon intimate acquaintance with the best.
You will agree with me that lighting is a great art, and a great deal of creativity must have gone into the decoration of those areas. If you will permit me to delve into philosophy, to remember the thoughts and words of Aristotle in The Poetics on beauty and Horace’s in On the Sublime, both philosophers believe that the sublime is what can catapult the individual into another world, a place where inspiration abounds. Therefore, the man who is thrown into constant association with inferior work either revolts against his surroundings or suffers a disintegration of aim and standard, which perceptibly lowers the plane on which he lives. In either case, the power of enjoyment from contact with a genuine piece of creative work is sensibly diminished, and may be finally lost. The delicacy of the mind is both precious and perishable; it can be preserved only by associations which confirm and satisfy it. For this reason, among others, the best decorations which a man who appreciates beauty should see are those that are awe-inspiring. Inferior lighting not only wastes his time, but dulls the edge of his perception, thereby diminishing his capacity for delight!
Hence, the kind of feeling I experienced when I first saw the beautifully decorated streets of Lagos Island were not only susceptible to cultivation, but very quickly responded to appeals which were made to it by noble or beautiful objects. It is essentially a feeling, but one which depends very largely on intelligence. It is strengthened, made sensitive and responsive by constant contact with the objects which call it out.
It’s just some feeling that is difficult to analyse because it is intangible and indefinite. It is subtly diffused. It so difficult to explain such that a close friend who had the same experience could not help but exclaim: “Lagos Island is unusually beautiful this Christmas. I wish it could be like this always.”
But don’t be taken aback by the way my friend and I were gushing about Lagos. Life always evades us, no matter how keen and exhaustive our search may be. In the past, as residents of Lagos, most of us were so entirely out of touch with the spirit of art in this busy new world that we were not quite convinced of its reality. We thought such beauty was alien to the streets of Lagos. But Fashola’s administration has proved us wrong. He seems to believe that as residents of this state, we deserve much more. He wants us to know that life could be good and decorative, and that a certain pleasure flows from its beauty. But we are sceptical of its significance in the life of the race, of its deep necessity in the development of that life, and of its supreme educational value. And our scepticism, it must be frankly said, grows out of our ignorance. It was sad to kiss and say goodbye to such a beautiful sight. I just wish like my friend that Christmas is everyday.