"What Does It Mean To Dream?"

Reflections on the private and public nature of dreams.

Left to me, I’d be somewhere else. Not facing this laptop, attempting to sweep my frenzied thoughts into cohesion. Sometime ago, I started this newsletter as a means to keep my writing sharp while I followed my primary mission of completing university. To be honest, school was never a distraction. I’ve written more than I’ve been an undergrad, managing to pay some bills from there. I was always going to write.

Distant Relatives was something more. The name came to me one cold day in 2021, weeks after I’d began ideating a newsletter. And the name would reflect the commonness of our struggles, the similar hues of our strangest dreams. That’s why I’m here now, writing these words in account of the previous months. I began working with Native Mag in February, so proud of bringing my culture journalism into a publication I’ve loved for a long time. Along with the literary-focused work I was doing at Open Country Mag as one of the founding writers, I haven’t had much time for honesty. Don’t misunderstand me—there’s always time for things you love.

But Nigerian life isn’t the stuff of motivational quips or arresting lines. I’m at that weird intersection between the trenches and a better life—full of potential, getting paid on good days, but still physically in the places I ought to have outgrown. It comes with a lot of confusion. On better days, a joint of weed calms the terror of my bones. Other days, I’m deeply troubled by the simple fact that life doesn’t really change.

BRIEF INTERSECTION BECAUSE I’VE BEEN WRITING SOME HAUNTING POETRY IN RECENT TIMES WHEN MY COUNTRY IS FALLING INTO THE BIGGEST & BLACKEST HOLE YOU EVER SAW IN YOUR LIFE

I have no language for affection, but I do know how to throw a fist 

I throw a fist because my country's song is 

wounded inside me & violence always appeared as 

a mirror. I throw a fist because the mirror is 

unforgiving and relentless, because it forces me to 

behold the ugliest parts of me. I throw a fist 

because boys thought I was a pushover, and what 

pushing triumphs the force of a fist? 


all the times I ever got into a fight

the opponent had it coming. well, maybe

except the one thing a girl named Peace 

floored my ass, reminding a young boy there 

was stronger bricks of energy than his fickle

manhood. we became good friends afterwards,

& perhaps this is how you get loved in a world 

like ours. you fight for it, even though you 

really shouldn't, knowing how much of a bad name 

violence has picked up on its many travels

I admit here my attention problems too. Don’t know if it’s ADHD (I’m hoping a non-tag might save me), but it’s a hard thing to deal with. When you forget things you said you’d do five minutes earlier. When you search for something that’s in front of you all along. When you postpone the simplest tasks till they become a huge messy pile to be sorted through. When that huge messy pile to be sorted through becomes a kind of silent enemy, judging you every second it is left undone. Well, that’s all for honesty.

You see, while I was busy being busy I interviewed a musician named Obongjayar (read the whole thing here), whose album titled ‘Some Nights I Dream of Doors’ is one of the most impactful I’ve ever heard. While we spoke, I asked him about the meaning behind the title which I found poignant, poetic even. And instead of jumping into the heaviness of all his motivations, he mentioned a documentary he’d once seen. It was titled ‘Hoop Dreams’ and featured those heavy motivations quite alright. “What does it mean to dream?” He’d asked me rhetorically, sketching the ways he went about investigation an inherently divisive subject.

My friend and I were recently talking about dreams, especially nightmares. It’s a quite boyish thing to do, proving you weren’t scared by talking about shit that scared you the most, and I told him of that one time. A man was trying to kill me—I don’t know how I reached that conclusion but trust I believed it—and I would deftly hide somewhere, spring an attack and cut away his head. Yet he kept rising, never dead, forever ongoing. Until I woke up, that is.

And I didn’t tell my friend but I wondered about how dreams—in that primal sense—always had the assurance of being ‘the other’, something you could escape with enough determination. In recent times, dreams come to me with the air of being a burden. Imagine when you were ten, full of hope and purity, wanting to become a lawyer, doctor, pilot, or nurse. That was before dreams revealed their true nature, and the world became a jungle. Our world became a jungle. I guess it’s always been, but more than ever the wild animals prance about in full display.

So what’s the point of everything? Do we remain dreamers or do we approach the future with practical eyes? I don’t know, I’m still finding balance in my own life. What I do wish you though, is some sense of purpose. Knowing you’re here for a reason—and it might not really be the greatest reason—makes it all bearable somehow. Makes it all livable. And this might not be enough, but it’s definitely honest work.