Scatterbrain Mad Artist

Chatting Up Baba Agbalagba


You should have seen the murderous look I gave Pig-head (that is what I call him... well, behind his back) last night when he asked me: ‘But why do you always call yourself Scatterbrain? Don’t you know what you call yourself has a way of manifesting in your star?'
I shot him this deadly gaze… Dem don come again o! Wetin consain you wetin I call myself? I fit call myself goathead, panpala or even yamtuber… na me get myself…"
But how dat one take consain the matter we have at hand sef? You no go mind ya own business'…
For where I no tell am all these o, I was just grumbling within my raging head.
Yet, tens of agrofy-ing questions raced thru my mind.
Well I dared not show it… I was on his ticket. The drink. The fish-peppersoup were on his account. I was just a layabout, hanging like a haplessly around him.
Pighead had asked me out so we could discuss some projects (yes o, another wild dream, which though long on vision are always short on political will to execute)… We had been doing well in the talk, even if much of the science-based jives he injected in the talk were way above my light head… I nodded along anyway... I needed to make him feel happy. He didn’t come all the way from Germany to look Lagos bridge, did he?
And he wasn’t spending as much as 5k on this outing just for the fun of seeing my ugly face, abi?
With his tempestuous (I could feel the tension) in spite of his masterful concealment) query on the reason I dub myself a ‘Scatterbrain’, I knew he was already reviewing the propriety or the wisdom of having me as his face, ear and nose on the ground in this country o the proposed business… eh, the business was going to be worth millions of Naira he assured me…
Oh, shit, your suspicion is damn wrong. It wasn’t connected to any scam-related beats o. Just some bite at the hospitality, showbiz pie, that is surely growing in this clime.
And soooo, Pig-head was insistent so I had to edit my looooongish life history to some few miserable sentences. Okay!
I begin: I call myself Scatterbrain, because I am sure that the cells in my ‘medulla oblongata’ are too restive, too scattered, too impatient (especially with rubbish(es)and nonsensical)) too scattered to let me stay steady in one place.
At every moment I want to do so many things… fly, walk, run, eat, sleep, read, dance, pinch something soft, touch up something.. yo know… smooch something soft and inspiring (this is becoming an obsession really with Lagos swimming with heavy, heavy ‘stuffs’ delicately balanced as to serve as ‘in-your-face-man’ sort of ala carte; or the WMD (weapon of man’s distraction (someone said it is Destruction) ) deliberately half-covered with see-through spaghetti tops and bum-hugging pants… oh, the TV screen is not helping, especially the music channels… which makes me always wonder: ‘why aren’t the defenders of woman’s dignity suing the life out of those TV stations daily abusing the anatomy of the womenfolk… my crazy friend said the defenders (mostly the ngo-rised women themselves) couldn’t because seeing such lavish expose by the ‘young, daring and willing’ in a sort of way help the usually oldin’ activists measure or affirm the surplus-ness or leanness of their own ‘wealth’.. well that is another matter.
Oh …. See my scatterbrain has been at work all this while… So you are confused at the end or tail of my tale? I told you I am a Scatterbrain….
Well the end of this scattered tale is that I call myself a Scatterbrain because I could not afford to let the name ‘Mad Artist’, which some coat-wearing colleagues in the office seemed hell-bent to attach to my honourable person.
It is maddening enough to be an artiste, now to be a ‘Mad Artist’ is sure to be the end of all madness, abi?
So any time I acted sort of funny and they opened their wide mouth to say Mad Artiste, I quickly hop in and give them a lead: I am a Scatterbrain… so now you know what why and how I came about the name... notto so… I don tire jo, tomorrow is another day

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