The old man has a dream Gloria Bugie have a dream, you dear reader has a dream, and the world we inhabit is nothing but a contestation of these dreams. We are constantly trapped in this dream of the other, thus says Deleuze.
Dear Reader,
It’s not a usual occurrence that one gets to address you with this much formality. In such moments, any Ugandan would wonder, what is it they have done that accords them such momentous addresses. But Dear reader, I do assume you are not the Najjera and Bulindo type.
Those people, the world has punished them twice. First, by making them Uganda, second, by placing them in Dante’s seventh hell.
Let me brief you on the events that transpired in Uganda. And by Uganda, we often mean the enclave of Kampala and Wakiso. The old man of this country, the Mzee, the Seven of them all, celebrated his 80th birthday. And he had a wish. One of an East African political federation. I was tempted to pick up the phone, and say, but isn’t this delulu (in Gen.Z speak), then I remembered that I had no right to speak in the arena of Generals.
It does so happen dear reader that in the time leading to this grand birthday wish, Uganda’s greatest female artist, Bugie, the Gloria, had something similar to a premonition of the President’s wish. We could say that the Universe manifested something of the Old man’s wish.
X (called Twitter by Boss Baby and her folks) had such a clear, and ideological unity.
Never before has the entertainment industry seen such a meteoritic growth of a musical career. On this note, I have written to the British Sociologist, Catherine Hakim to declare that her idea of alternative capital (by other names sexual) has been taken to its final conclusion in Uganda.
Dear reader, the point I am beleaguering to stretch here is that we are all prisoners of each other’s dreams. The old man has a dream, Gloria Bugie have a dream, you dear reader has a dream, and the world we inhabit is nothing but a contestation of these dreams. We are constantly trapped in this dream of the other, thus says Deleuze. Because the President dared to dream of a federation, Bugie too had no option but to dream.
As I have said before, we are living in such times where time moves fast and slow. It’s the kind of times where the old fights the new, the new seeks a radical replacement of the old, the old sees the new as devoid of acuity. It’s this constant fight that continues to consume us on a daily. In this world of fast and slow, you can’t tell on what day Thursday fell last week. You can’t tell whether you’re extravagant or your salary is collapsing under the weight of your dreams.
It’s the kind of state that prompts partners running out of time to ask; ‘what are we now?’ Well what could we be? Just human beings, inhabiting such small moments in time. Today, we are here, tomorrow, we are gone. That’s why, the old revolutionary has now gone from having a goal to a dream, and now to wishes. As men skirt to the closing of the curtain, they simply wish. And those wishes, you could say, are but masks of regrets.
Now Dear reader, you must be getting confused. Shouldn’t we just be partying away, making merry while we still can. After all, does our agency matter in the structure of things? Can man ever surpass their times? For I imagine Dear reader that once you dreamed of changing the world. Now, here you are struggling to decipher a simple reading.
You dreamed of a house by the beach side, and you’ve had to settle for a 50 by 100 in Buwaate.
You dreamed of a Lamborghini; there you go pleading with your mechanic to find some cheap brakes. In such moments of truth, you realize why such a dark and melancholic world needs a Gloria Bugie, a candle in the wind.
Something that gives light, doesn’t matter the colour of this light.
The only way to read the game is to stop playing for some time. Dear reader, you’ve played for too long.
You’ve been consumed by the daily commute. There are other forms of capital, forms beyond the social, and monetary. Capital exists all around you. In this new future, we won’t be paid for what we know, we shall be paid for mere existence, for who we are. If you do doubt Dear reader, look for the streamer ‘Ishowspeed’.
The idea of work as we know it and ever knew it, is collapsing. The only people to be spared by this Artificial Intelligence will be the writers. Why? AI will just never write. AI will never arrive at the intersection of Gloria Bugie’s creative art and Museveni’s birthday wish.
For 80 years, the President dreamed of uniting Ugandans. In a few seconds, Bugie did it.
What Museveni couldn’t achieve in 80, Bugie achieved in seconds. Isn’t this proof Dear reader that the old is collapsing and the new is taking over? Is there a better proof of transition than this? Is it not worthy to say, Bugie should go for Cricket Oval? Again, like I have always warned, do not blink in these times, we could leave you behind.
