Iya, I called you twice, you didn’t answer.  Something is up.  If this is the food you are eating, I understand the Yoruba rituals of “eating” and using people.  True lecturing and speeches, when well researched and presented creatively, can make a big impact in people’s lives.  Hence, this below is how I would have approached your topic artistically with freshness of personal story. 

If you are genuine in your thanking of me for staying with you during the hard times, better yet, working with you, for you, for the whole family, raising your big babies, even financing the studies of Seyi/Folusho, visiting Allyson and Caroline in UK summerly en route to Nigeria, as Seyi now will not call me back when I was looking for ways to contact you in “China” with your swollen feet, akii dupe ara eni.

If your thank you is for Folusho who came to my house, claiming I never did anything for him, that it is all you, then your thanking me will be better served if you continuously speak truthfully of what a dutiful son/brother I have been to you and the family.  Still akii dupe ara eni.  Now if it’s of the UK kids, Caroline was never rude, but Allyson who I saw was in need of family/cultural embrace, thought her Britishness was special and domineering, more than the respect of the hands, mind, and culture that raises her high.  She attempted to step in the fabric of the senior – bee akii to aso agba mo’le.  You didn’t tell her/them, like you owe your children fear rather than an honest truthfulness, loving care of who helped you care, love, and raise them.  You have filled their head with too much lies or you did not want them to hear what is of truth.  I am the one that wakes up with wealth – mo bolaji – so you may not take what is mine, but who is to tell you the honest truth if not me for all are in fear of losing what they might get from Mommy, but they have nothing to say to you other than to be thankful.  I’ve always been grateful to you for the role you play that leads to the person I am today.  But the role of my grandmother and grandfather cannot be overlooked for they gave me life that I would have lost as a child with you and my father.  I’m not faulting you relative to my upgrowth as a baby, but I will not give the praise that belongs to you to my grandmother or grandfather, nor will I give the one that belongs to them to you. 

When it comes to doing art with you, learning Batik, I’ve never said my grandmother taught me Batik.  But you’ve always used my capabilities, what I am, what I work for with you, for you, to you to feed to the other kids.  In America, it’s not good business and I live and work in America.  In Nigeria, it’s culture and traditions, but we are not in Nigeria.  In that “Nigerian” culture, especially of Yoruba, it says eni taa se l’ore ti ko dupe- it is like a thief that has come to steal one’s load, property, belongings away.  You are thankful; your children are not.  For they do not know how hard you made me work by choice for the whole family.  They only see all that goodness and hard work in you.  I expect nothing from anybody.  So I thank you for thanking, if it’s genuine, because I know you.  And it is because I know you well well, at least then, when we were associating, because it is always business.  I grew up in the village.  I didn’t grow up with you.  We came to Oshogbo for summer holidays and you guys are mostly gone trading art.  I went to school in Oke Opin.  I know without you I wouldn’t have provisions or means of attending high school.  I always I honor you for that because my dad was broke, and he doesn’t has money he said, yet he paid dowry when I was caring for his broken leg/hips when you returned from your American business journey when your passport was burnt at a gallery in Washington DC.  I too am very thankful to you.  It is only when I left Oke Opin in ‘84 that I moved in with you in Ede. 

Do you know I never ate a bucket of ice cream ever again?  That is what you gave to me and my daddy saw, while I was waiting at the swimming pool at Ede Water Works.  It turned out you were with DJ.  It’s in 1984 that I finally moved in with you and DJ as I was registered to school with the help of the King of Ede at Baptist High School in Ede.   You have always glossed over the family’s experiences with DJ in all your storytelling and book writing like you are in fear of a healing truth.  This internal struggle that artists have, battling one’s demons always leads catastrophically for artists.  Hence, honest and open truth frees artists of their demonic past.  I have no secrets; you are full of secrets.  I always speak of DJ’s goodness, but DJ was very physically abusive to you and everybody, even to the molestation of Seyi, especially when he is drunk.  Is it the prostitutes DJ brought in when you were gone that we should be talking about?  It is when DJ apologizes for his wrongdoings for he treated us woefully, beyond my understanding of what wrong the British did to a while country, world, of great abuse, yet they are the GREAT BRITAIN OF ABUSES.  You see why I don’t want to tolerate nonsense from Allyson talking about Yoruba’s being lost, the same cultural people that raises her high like a princess.  Abused by her country, abused by her father, how I as a senior brother, born and raised Yoruba, nurtured in free societies of America, with the understanding of how the British came to be that they were once a conquered people, acting like their conqueror, proclaiming to be an empire, as they went on a killing, murderous, exploitative rampage of the world.  Yet, they claimed to be great.  Who is a great thief, rapist, murderer to the extent that a half-born Yoruba sister of mine who claimed to be educated in UK will not know the wrong and rot that she spilled out of her mouth?  I know it is not just British sausage she was eating in Nigeria in the garden of art and culture I helped cultivate that I sent her for her needed motherly cultural and artistic upgrowth.  When she says sorry, and her father says sorry, then maybe Heavenly transformation is coming to England, but I don’t expect it.  Hence, I say H is not C.  A is not R.  L is not E.  The dismantling of the house of Windsor for their name is never Windsor.  They are a Germanic people who thought they are superior above all – Yet, it is the cultured French who named Germans the people of the Germs.

I was a village boy, Yoruba, moral and religiously Christian raised.  Of course, I witness my grandmother selling l’eku l’eja plus some other provisions of which is natural to healing in a tropical old cultural system.  I chose to look after you and my dad’s kids in DJ’s care as my father’s son and representative of my father’s house.  I didn’t know that white people are that abusive, talkless of British people.  In fact, DJ said he is not British; he is Welsh.  All foreigners are oyinbo, even Indians and Chinese fit white to Nigerians growing up.  The love and care we saw in movies of white people’s relationship with others turned out to be a visual chosen propaganda projected to the world of others hiding their brutality of their conquest, not wanting it to be told or taught in schools.  Too many things, doctorate, HSC, I would have done and achieved in Nigeria and you said, “work with me, let’s get this work done.”  I brought all these people, all these artists to our school we started in Ede in the back of the three bedroom bungalow building we lived.  I was the one teaching while you traveled to sell.  The first girl Auntie Bunmi was from Baba Oroke from Sekona; second girl from the King of Ede’s cousin Alaja- Wahid was a neighbors son in Oshogbo, an invitee to Ede whom I sketched for in the beginning and he loved money and trade.  Now May God rest him in peace.  I sketched for him, we worked on batik, my uncle was working in a shed, doing beading. Stanley was the cook that got punched in the face or chest when your husband DJ drank too much and came home in frustration – on one occasion Stanley vomited blood.  Folusho, a left handed, did nothing.  In fact, you used to spoil him saying he brought his slave from Heaven.  And I used to wonder, where is the slave Folusho brought?  If Folusho had worked towards your successfulness in art and culture and its not about crookery of money, consuming resources others worked so hard for, let me know, so I may not be speaking out of not-knowing.

The school grew from there to Ofa-tedo.  I was still the one teaching, making sure all the works were done and my Uncle Joseph still worked in the tiny little house you built for him next to the loud, large generator, sketching most of the batik drawings, doing beading.  I brought Segun; I saw him carving at my father’s farm.  Segun brought his brothers, cousins.  Togbe was doing concrete college technical art for my father- we are both village people and I said, “come do that here at our art cooperative.”  I don’t know when he joined fully, as I was already in America.  Bodunde and Foley were trying to recruit my sister Margaret to sing with them and I know the trouble they will be in if my father caught them while looking for his first daughter – two men from Ilorin roaming through his compound in Oshogbo for his daughter.  Jeez, 77.   So I shepherded them your way – to the artistry and school we’d been cultivating.  Even the house you built in secrecy while you were married to my father, turned the first art workshop cooperative, who was the one planting flowers? Do you remember how I got stung all over my face when you asked me to get flowers for you to plant?  I remember your laughter very clearly.  Not out of “got you”, but an unforgettable tender moment.  All the mango, banana tree I planted around the new house in Ofa-tedo.  Is it the cooking, feeding, entertaining?  You actually asked me to move to Osogbo to stay with the other artists at the workshop.  David Osawe “Ojoto” – the embroidery man.  Isaac Ojo, the taking drummer, the woodcarver, the ladies of the fiber art.  These are all artists so I too learned the art of carving wood, drumming, Yoruba cultural art and trade.  I read about Ogun in books but I know about the worship of Ogun in the culture of a wood carver. 

Again, I thank you.  Without you, I wouldn’t have that experience.  It was an art cooperative.  It was bubbling and joyous.  Davies was still a menacing force.  His presence protected you as an artist from all these men artist where women artists are normally secondary, but DJ was punishing of you also because you are an artist who wants to do what you want to do, while respect to the culture you work within or the newfound you now embrace.   There was no death in that artist group.  Those artists were not killing themselves while we work.

Artist here in the West too kill themselves because of society pressure, expectation, subjugation, repression and demand that are contrary to the freedom of thought, space and environment that is conducive to creative thinking.  You brought me to America at 18 after my father’s family nearly killed me in my father’s house at 17.  It was not the artist in me at 17 that wanted to die, it is my own father’s family that felt the need to kill due to the fight of separation between you and my father and the children’s jealousy of my father’s love for me.  when your separation fight was at its height, my father told me I’m disowned because I questioned him as to why he wanted to kill my mother through juju as you had told me in Ede. Family trouble are detrimental to the life of artists, life of children, the attempt on my life at 17 was a concerted effort by my father to punish you by organizing to ritualize me and awash the house, his house, with my blood for his house to thrive on Bola’s 20th birthday.  Even today, I do not know who you have offended for Kasali the woodcarver was here in Iowa to hurt me because you fired his son in Abuja, while I thought I was helping him to make income in the United States and helping the National Black Theater to cater to the artist you had all brought that cannot feed themselves through their arts in the United States.  You see, friends and family and the deeds of others, whether positive or negative, can be detrimental to artists, even in their good practices. 

The ritualistic culture that artists come from is a detriment to the power of creative thought.  Now you have to look into your own life.  What led to detriment and death of my Uncle Joseph?  I was going to come home and care for him for I knew where he was in his mind and Seyi, the announcer of bad things, who now proclaims to be the Reverend mother of Celestial Cherubim Church, because of wanting to take over your school for her own gain, announced Uncle Joseph is dead.  She is the one who announced Stanley is dead.  Ayo is the one who announced my father is dead.  Deliverer of messages who find happiness in sad news to others, purposely to sadden.  How many artists are constantly being bombarded by sad news?

Uncle Joseph was the true artist. I know how my dad and you put a lot of artists to work  at my father’s Oshogbo house and the culture of excitement and violence that is associated of having men of talent in grouping, band members with little resources to go around, especially when one like my father is domineering over freedom, necessities of creative hands.  Artists working for another artist is not particular to you and my father.  I have just recently addressed Koons, who has so many craft hands crafting his sculptures for hours and hours as a slavemaster, not a true artist.   Boda Koni, Boda Waibi, Boda Delodun, Boda Pesco, the guitarist Boda Labode, my Uncle, your brother – just to mention a few, how many of them killed themselves, if not the pressures of society and the community of people around them plus the darkness of exploitative thought that did not let them rise and achieve their greatest potentiality as an artist?  The death some of them died are natural to disease or alcohol consumption, or exposure to toxins of the material they use unknowingly.  Who is to ask?  Who investigates where the cultural belief overwhelms a physical and natural understanding?   “It’s God that brought it.”  Amuwa Olorun.   I think you should find the story in your brother as a great artist who was used to death.  He did not kill himself.  It is the demand of supporting his only sister and family.  I don’t know how you guys grew up when you were a kid, but my experience with you both from 14 to 18, looking at it with my 53 year old life experience, suggests too many darkness of unknown that are easily understandable today.  What a needless death, waste of a genius talent but we are grateful we are all blessed for it today.  Hence, I am fighting for you not to give it to any other man – in honor of my uncle, father, grandfather and all the men that have supported you because of your goodness to many.  But you have not been kind to me, o.  I know that for sure.  It has always been repressive. I even remember when you are comparing my art form to my Uncle while I was in search of my true artful self.  It was my Uncle Kunle in Seattle that corrected you at Seattle Art Festival.  See, that a mother of an artist, even though she is an artist, can be detrimental to an artist child.  If I’m not of my father and you as an artist, because artists are sensitive.  What would I have done with my art, profession or life?  So your topic of speech of artist’s suicide while they were working connotes negativity not positivity.  If true, you are speaking, the speech of yesterday, if you remember clearly, where you proclaimed Folusho’s wife having AIDS, and it turned out not to be so, and I told you as I asked you not to go there as you are in fear, because of what you want to use Folusho for in business in Chicago, that if I meet you in Folusho’s house that you do not want me to go, that I will disrespect you.  And the same house you asked me not to go is where you were sitting, eating, planning the demise of your first child with the other kids, wanting a family meeting, bringing Folusho and his wife here.  And Mr. Rudeness himself claimed it was all mother who did it.  And you did not correct him right then and there.  So I kicked him out, and you followed.  It is the family of artists that are detrimental to artists, for their cunning untruthfulness where artists seek freedom of truthful thinking – not the corrupt artists.  Remember the fake cry of Seyi, thinking she has juju, wrapping my wrist with her hand, pulling to weigh me down.  And you are bringing your stupid eye prayer of conversion.  What are you converting?  You guys are the ones who are forked in the head with Christianity – a practice that plagues Nigeria in Nigeria, why bring it to the USA that you all run to for better life, where there is separation of church and state?  You cannot govern everybody with one idea.  I too love Jesus and I say I’m Christ – you say its crazy.  Artists do not conform.  Every effort to conform an artist by crook or con, by law and trade, is a leading road of death to artists.  These are the things that destroy artists that are not Heavenly endowed.  ATAPAARA TAPAARA.

At one point you even complained of a “University Graduate” using Yoruba in English speech, yet you use Yoruba in art.  American professors use Yoruba in academic writings not knowing the imposition of little manipulative thought of not-knowing can confuse and depress artists who aren’t strong enough or of liberty to go against those who are psychologically berating them.  The big musical influx of acrobat today rests fully on the mixed language, mixed beat of anewness in the World’s taste of music. My uncle’s story rests with you, my father, and the bead artist that doesn’t want any other person to use beads, as Jimoh Buraimoh claimed beading as his medium and any other person who used beads must be hated to the point sometimes of madness and death.  The same Jimoh was the one who blocked the door when I brought my University of Michigan art students to the Palace of Ataoja of Oshogbo, claiming the King is asleep, yet as we turned around, the King was attending to others – a denial I associate with his knowledge of me using beads for painting.  The blockage is not limited to selfish artists.  It was evident among the professors at the University of Michigan that doesn’t want me to outshine them for I was artfully outperforming all of them.  Ed West a digital photographer who was perplexed by an “African Artist” doing better digital art than him.  He did all he can to make sure that what I propose to do as a visiting artist at UM doesn’t come to fruition.  The mixed media professor was angry that I wasn’t serving him like I was sent to slave for him, the textile professor showed me an intrinsic threat of poison ivy, the technicians were jealous and began faulting me for things I did not do – “It is the African who broke a $250,000 machine that I did not use.”  John Rush thought I should not walk side by side, like we are equal,  Marinaro, who can’t sculpt figure insist on my teaching my class in a 10ft x10ft space.  My program director Frankie at Center for World Performance Studies siphoned my program funds from $110,000 and reduced it to $30,000.  The provost didn’t want me dressing up to have a meeting with him – “just an African, an artist.” Then I asked the Dean for Center for African and African American studies, “why the F do black people play basketball so well, yet they are to be coached by white man?”  To artists, why is it that artists create everything in society and artists are treated so badly to the point as you said, that some thought of committing suicide or even take their own life while they work?  If I was an artist of low-wing, no-air, what would I have done in that circumstances, where my studio and art was raided at an “acclaimed” American institution – the best public university? 

Again, I thank you for always getting me to finish the bead paintings my uncle didn’t finish.  I also thank my uncle for letting me play with loose beads spilled on the ground in his art studio in ALEKUWODO.  WE HAVE DRIVEN DEATH TO THE WATER.  WATER, BY COMMAND, TAKE DEATH AWAY.  The weight of misguided cultural beliefs and practices coupled with ignorance of darkness of thought relative to contemporary modern understanding of artistic practice and profession endangers the lives of artists.  Take for instance, your brother.  An artistic genius that all had to convince that he was mad for walking in a culture that used to walk everywhere that had no locomotive.  He too had lived and created art in America with freedom of thought. So he walked to Ibadan because he had no money and he had to get to Ibadan.  Artists make do and create with what they have.   It was you who went to get him from Fela’s place where he was well-suited.  You should have given him the funds to do what he needed since he was working for you.  So there was a degree of control that you have over him so he walked.  Look at Greta who journeyed across the sea from Europe to America for a cause she truly believed in.  That is an artistic mind.  There are others who do a great feat – walking to the North Pole, or living in Antartica.  Dropping from the sky, from the edge of space.  Don’t call it science, for science grows out of an artistic culture, inquisitiveness.  Quest, exploration.  The materials Uncle Joseph had plenty of at the time were butterflies and moths drawn to the light because he worked in a shed and the shed had a light that drew moths and butterflies -Damien – he has it plenty and free relative to beads and glue – ARADITE.  He might have put glue on a board and a moth landed on it, so he beaded around it like an ancient tree sap holding onto mosquito you call amber – natural process and reaction effect.  That is art.    There is no telling that the fumes of aradite are not detrimental to a mental health.  2 part Chemicals create a chemical reaction.  Fumes released are supposed to be aerated, not to be contained and inhaled in a tight small studio space where the artist working close to a gluing board can over inhale an unnatural fume.  We now know that inhaling toxic fumes can affect human behavior, but artists work with hazardous materials. The idea that artists smoke Indian hemp makes them have mental disorder as proclaimed relative to my uncle – the whole United States would have been mad country.  Let’s say the whole world – to the Indian temple and devotees its spirituality, hence the term “Indian Hemp.”  What drives artists to death?  Chemicals, culture, people, family – and the need to be free to create.  I’ve been able to create my own art form without family around because the family I had around was trying to convince me that I’ve “gone to the other side”.   What other side?  Where we live in daily physicality, out-balancing our sacred understanding.  I grew up without electricity and running water in the village.  Now I live in constant light and electricity, cooking gas, internet in my hands and home.  So is the society mad to grow?  Seyi was stuck in the performances that she knows, where dance is for fashion and entertaining guests, not where art is of true emotion designed to provoke thought and to help humanity better future for the greater good. 

Seyi who I rescued from over-sexualizing herself at 15, doesn’t know anything about art and creation.  She was trying to convince me that I had “run mad,” (claiming don’t let your thing climb on you, but those who climb on me were Seyi and Rafiu who I should have tossed in jail for assault while performing as they were trying to ritualize me – the effect of friends and family on artists).  As her eldest brother who was nurturing and supporting her, I had gone through an artistic transformation from an understanding of art and culture in Nigeria, to art school and attaining the highest degree an artist can receive in America where originality and inventiveness is adored and capitalized on, as great artists look to the past great artists and aim to push and create beyond the limits of the established order of art and creativity, like an athlete.  Here, the artist who believes in whatever others are telling them, if care is not taken, can seed their freedom to those that will manipulatively use them and abuse them, even toss them and tell them what is not true of life as Christians and Muslims and world faiths have done to many lives that have become fundamentalists to the point of death, or the ones that were effected by the actions of faith and beliefs.  Seyi cannot sleep a night here in my house because she knows I don’t believe her attempt to deceive me of madness, nor will Rafiu be in the same space as I am, knowing that I too am a jealous God, that asks of the sins of the father/mother from the children’s children.  That is art.  Why not claim the artist is crazy rather than say they did wrong – that is family and friends.  Death of an artist?

Good, great, artists seek to do good and greatest art.  Since you always call me a stone carver not wanting to acknowledge all my other talents and academic achievements, you probably wouldn’t know Michelangelo was a stone carver – he helped design, carve, and paint Rome that was not built in a day- the same one you are goo goo, gaga over when the Pope included you in his video.    Artists create society.  There is nothing that touches a human entity that artists have not come about and crafted. Once there was nothing, some artistic thought of Moses, just like magic, he claimed God said, “Let there be light.”  First Genesis.  Like Gods, power is the talent given to those of creative minds and artistic capability.  In fact, the religious pope that controlled Europe, world, in their dark ages, proclaimed God working through the hands of artists.  You sign Nike to your work today because one artist named Michelangelo in the Renascence days to record etched in stone that this Pieta was not carved by God, through him, but by Michelangelo’s hand and mind.  He too was rebelling against the social and cultural norms.  That is artists in society.  There are many others in their wake-up from slumber of European darkness which leads to this modern society that Nigeria cannot figure their way out of, mixing evil practices of “mo gbe ri – don’t rise” with repressing of stardom or the borrower-ship of one’s irawo, starship.   It is not only in Nigeria, Africa, that artists are kept down and abused and kept to produce beyond their need for freedom and ability to make a living and raise a family.  This has been the case for artists all over the world.  It pained me when Wahid passed and the circumstances that revolved around his death, leading Oshogbo people to come after you through me.  Whatever Rafiu was attempting to do, while Seyi was holding me down in a performance for his stupid incantation, while they both know that I cannot break character during performance – Daniel Day Lewis, I honor – Rafiu proclaimed what my mom did to Wahid, “he too will have money.”  As if my mom used Wahid’s death for money.  And Seyi was stuffing my mouth with palm oil.  What the fork?  I should have had them arrested, but I was the one who invited them to the University of Michigan to perform with me because I thought they have a bit of artistic energy and I had been nurturing, protecting and grooming their artistic careers all along from our home and school in Nigeria to performing them all over America.  Whether of jealousy that my students are outperforming them or of the fact that I was using the Yoruba folklore to enhance the idea of “Life is a Performance,”  the same Shango Osun they were dancing for tourists to make a living, I do not know.  But one thing I know from that experience, family and friends that have no understanding of what is art, relative to art and artistic profession, confuse the geniuses of art with mental instability.  I know Rafiu and Seyi were not trying to heal, for Seyi went around til today claiming that I am mentally disturbed, assassinating my character, even though she is not an art critic.  Even Folusho who I sent money to help him establish a video game business, paying off his debts at constant, bought into that crazy wagon, but I doubt if you too have not, for I do not know what you guys talk about.  But I know how you have been behaving around me, your artist son of an artistic birth, from an artistic culture, an artistic father/mother, of blood.  So that means, you too don’t know art or artists but are just doing it to make a living.  You don’t understand it to its core.  You cannot destroy what Heavens sent to transform the greatest of human sin – that is artists and artists thought.   Jesus is a philosopher.  I was taught by a Jesuit Christian brother in a Christian school.  And he brought change to the world.  Of course, he too was what because of the difference he was in his time?  If things are not the way you all/society think a person should be, then the person is condemned. What does Jesus say upon his return?  Visualizing, revelations – he is not a painter, but a carpenter, a maker, a  sculptor, a transformer, a professor who professed that he is the son of God.  To them at that time, that was crazy.  And I’m saying to you now, Heaven is here.  And I am the order of Heaven.  Only the person who wants to die, will even attempt to think even before the thought of taking what is rightfully mine.  Come get it.  Come get your death.  THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS HERE.  REPENT OR PERISH.

Artists are not supposed to accept social norms.  If not, everybody will still be living in the cave.  Ye all will still be thinking that thunder is of Poseidon, if Poseidon represents water.  Zulu still wears hides.  Obasanjo claimed Yoruba have evolved passed wearing animal hide.  But Nigerians are the most confused in thought that I know, coming from Nigeria, of all humankind, for ye accepted faith unknowingly, believe in foreign faith beyond, yet locked in the triviality of cultural thought and love the materialistic things of modern cultural today, with no single understanding of the cultures and its history that you send your children to.  And you still expect them to behave the way Nigerians should behave.  Where it comes to the United States of America, the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States I have been living for over 30 years calls for the Freedom of Expression, thought, Speech, a powering driving force of American ingenuity.  Artists love freedom and here in the United States you can express yourself freely.  I as an artist coming from Nigeria went to school to my highest degree to learn art, thought, and understanding in America academy where all are to trade ideas.  Some foolish girl, high school level who was rescued from Nigeria because of Epon Agbo of Rafiu forgot that you do not conspire against your own blood, talkless of trying to interpret my new gained knowledge relative to art free thinking.  All of this to show you the danger family represents to artists.  Hence, the distance of a heat bubble I designed Heavenly to shield myself, my talent, my family, my freedom, my expression, my children my country, my world, my Heaven away from the catastrophic effect a family has over a person/artist.  When I was paying Seyi’s tuition I was not crazy.  When I am working for you and doing you a service, building you art school and business, I was not a problem.  When I was driving back and forth, feeding the garden with people, tourists, and financial fertilizing, it was a welcomed enriching experience.  But where artists become unappreciated, where artists become taken advantage of, where artists are exploited, the artist that does not have access to free themselves from the jaws of exploitative fools that consider themselves friends, even foe, artist person becomes fed up with life.  In fact, many Western artists have died – Modigliani I honor – due to his life, pressures of negative competitiveness, over criticism, and romantic false love.  The artist that cut off his ear is due to society and family suffering him – Van Gogh, what a pleasure.  Thanks for the lesson.  Me, I listen.  My Heavenly command.  The one who drank himself to death – Pollock – is no different.  Not free to create truly what he would like to create.  Most artist felt bound by the making of commodity rather than original creative thought as it comes to them through their mind – HEAVEN’S GIFT.  The closest of understanding artists and death is my father who has been trading and selling to the West all his life, not knowing that he was just being a modern day slave and when he thought he was free from his financial burden, he did not know that he was in the jaws of those who kill artists for the artist’s work so that the work then becomes more expensive where they have free access to the ownership of the story, the life, the work, the legacy everlastingly.  It is my quest to understand the culture of killing artists for the artistic value of their work that makes me question of what forked up society kills artists to be a good artist where no other professionals have to die to be good. A dead engineer is of no use.   Basquiat did not kill himself.  He was driven to death because of the value of his work.  My father did not die of stroke; he was slowly poisoned, medicated to produce to death, killed for the value of his work by the people he was working with in a culture that proclaims a good artist a dead artist.  Now, they own all of him and they said there is nothing the child will do, and America would not investigate.  Hence, I reveal how the West is killing the culture of Africa through exploitation of its people, land and resources and in America by re-writing false stories by those who do not know the cultures of Africa in the academia to tell wrongful stories, history of Africans for others to accept as their story, like my sister telling me what she doesn’t know for me to believe.  Or a Christian bible and a Muslim Quran in the hands of Africans as the word of God, owing to their deposit spiritual believes.  Now they cannot do anything but to follow.  Many Nigerians, Africans will read books written of their own culture, interpreted by white supremacists who hate and repress black people as the story of who they are.  Literal re-work are paintings of mind.  So artists of artistic words can also be detrimental to artistic mind and culture.  As an artist that will not be my story, for my uncle, father, and the great artists who have come before me have shown me by thought and understanding, deeds, and stories of their lives why and how artistic minds break down because of society’s want and pressure of controlling and containing the creative impulse and truthfulness of an artistic thought, owing to exploitative-ness of capitalization of the artist’s artistic/cultural value.  ORIGINELE, ART Nouveau AVANTE GUARD. 

In Nigeria among Yorubas, they say they are. “using their head.”  Rituals of a ritualistic mind forkers.  Everybody use your head.  Think and reason to create, not just consume food.  “We all came to eat.”  All the other countries are growing, Nigeria is buying, spending, eating, visiting, falling.  “Dem go chop life, o.”   I have chased death to the water, Alekuwodo.  Water has taken death away.  When I am President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I will transform all the minds that are lost, the resourced land that is over-exploited and turn asale to a richful land flowing of milk and honey. The reasons above relative to art, artists, and artistic life, is why Nigeria doesn’t know its way out for there is no true artist living among ye.  I am here in the US midwest, being tucked away you thought, not knowing the Heavenly culture, a have cultivated.  Me and the then-Alaji, the King of Edo have a little history past.  When I was in need of support to travel my American art students – support for artists –  ask the King of Edo what he did in New York, being a Nigerian.  But he has used my house, my mother to establish himself a king in Edo Osun, your associate.  Where artists need support and those who have refuse to support because of one reason or the other, yet will dwell inside an artist’s creation and consume to fatness, even becoming a King, how is the artist to find solace?  Artist don’t kill themselves – it is the people, society, family that drives artists to nuttiness in their attempt to kill the artist, to kill the difference/anewness.  To destroy what is not conforming to their established order.  I, David Olaniyi, do not owe anything to all the people my artistic mother associates with, or to anyone.  For ye all have been eating in my garden that I helped create.  Your relationship with them is your relationship with them.  Nigerian accepted American style of Constitutional democracy.  I live in the United States, a Constitutional democracy.  My understanding of America differs from other Nigerians who have lived here or visited the United States.  I am not beholding to anyone, If your speech is about killing another artist.  I will not succumb to any ritualization.  I have fought it here and will transform it in you and all, hence changing Nigeria for the better – even Charles, I won’t call him a king til he apologizes for the wrong his family has done to my people, culture.  I actually fought them for you, Allyson and Caroline.  Now think about all the minds that the British empire forked with.  I hate to tell you, Mama.  You are doing the same – the division, repression, subversive, taking/enslaving of one to feed the other – leading to global instability.  If your intention is to pull your family together in the hatred of one – then you are not together for your hatred is the love you seek in one.  I am love that ye all are seeking.  Only the civilization, culture. people who want to die will make the past mistake of killing and over-exploiting, using artists in our Heavenly presence.  HEAVEN’S PROTECT.  SHIELD.   I hereby command you to reverse your speech if true and already not made of death seeking for artists to artists living the fullest of their life and achieving their Heaven sent destiny by recognition of my speech written above.   All these fools have been trying to repress me the artist of their artistic culture, in their attempts to subjugate me to their consumption of my artistic wealth while eating and growing handsomely in my artistic cultural Eden.  A HEAVENLY KINGDOM IS HERE.  ALL BOW.  OGBARA GUGU GBARA GUGU. BOW.  HEAT SHIELD. 

I don’t believe you are giving a lecture about suicide of artists to its fullest, if you do not speak from the truth that is hidden under your garment of artists and your artistic life for a greater, better impact. You cannot polish yourself beyond your truthfulness, nor can you fabricate truthfulness with lies.  I have chased death of artists into water.  ALEKUWODO.  There is no etutu here.  Yorubas and their intrinsic threat.   You have no power.  I render you all useless – a culture of wearing cloth for show.  Your money is sh$#.  You are of flashy consumption.  You’ve lost your creative edge and mind.  You are not even in the class of thought, as thought transforms to sketches, sketches to metal engineered to pierce through a mountain or underwater. I bet many of you have traveled Europe and America and said, “these people are so smart, o.  They are way ahead of us.  That is the way God made it.  The God that did it for them will do it for us too.” Yet, God sent you talents, and you kill them.  God sent you artists, and you tried to drive them mad for being who they are.  God sent you orators, artists of words, you claim them professing nonsense that is not written in the Bible or Quran as the word of God, forgetting that Qu’ran and Bible are of human stories, where cultures of the Middle Eastern where the world was then before the discover of the dark people of the “Niger” Area of the coastal water does too have their own.  But most of the time, way too brutal to the creative minds unless the creative mind has a lot of money, wears gold chain, drives Bugatti or Rolls Royce, Benz, and fancy Chinese GAC car, copy of American jeeps and trucks, relative of Ford F150 that Chinese stole as it violates America copyright.  Do you know why artistry is protected in America?  When I show up in Nigeria, you should rejoice with me, o, for sese is how children rejoice with birds.    

Please give me the address, paper, and information about the place and venue you are speaking, so that I can give a speech.  Look above.  I am the professor, professing.  I am the one who is Heavenly gifted.  I am the artist.  I just don’t do what Nigerians consider art – the art of copy of Western art.  I am taught and rebirth in Western art as I am of Yoruba tradition art and thought.  American art is about freedom of creativity and expression.  They wrestle with material – I wrestle with thought.  My thought is performative, So I am only performing you relative to the speech, both an object interacting in space.  I practice art in its full freedom of thought and expression.  It is where artists are repressed that artists are pushed to death.  Not me, I am not Mohbad, o, for I am good and love.  Mohbad, I honor.  “If I am playing football, I will bench Messi…”  I, David Olaniyi, I have benched the culture, people, family, society that abuse, repress, exploit, ritualize, conspire to use, fool, trick all the nonsense that people and community, galleries, art dealers, included, do to artists.  I AM FREE.  I AM A FREE ARTIST. 

WHAT DEATH OF AN ARTIST?  ART, ARTISTS ALIVE AND LIVING!  IT IS NOT THAT THE STORM IS COMING.  THE STORM IS HERE. NIGERIA, I AM HERE.  YOUR HEAVEN IS HERE.  YOUR ARTISTICNESS IS HERE.   I AM YOUR ARTIST, PRECEDENCE,  YOUR PRESIDENT.  MY HEAVENLY KINGDOM.  YOU ARE ALL MINE.  Much love.  K’ara ole.