Musa Okwonga - In The End, It Was All About Love

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The sense of being a stranger has its roots in childhood, in the aftermath of the vast blast radius of grief (I think here of Elizabeth Bishop): The narrator arrives in Berlin, a place famed for its hedonism, to find peace and maybe love, only to discover that the problems which have long haunted him have arrived there too, and are more present than ever. As he approaches his fortieth birthday, nearing the age where his father was killed in a brutal revolution, he drifts through this endlessly addictive and sometimes mystical city, through its slow days and bottomless nights, wondering whether he will ever escape the damage left by his father’s death. With the world as a whole more uncertain, as both the far-right and global temperatures rise at frightening speed, he finds himself fighting a fierce inner battle against his turbulent past, for a future free of his fear of failure, of persecution, and of intimacy. A heartfelt and intimate account of what it is to be human, especially right now. My idea was to start off with very universal experiences, like arriving in Berlin – anyone can do that, white, straight, whatever – and you’re reading it, you’re into it, so by the time something happens that is not specific to your experience, you’re already emotionally invested. I wanted to put the reader in a place where they would actually walk a mile in my shoes. Part One: Righteous Migrants - the poem concerns the lingering effect of the winds that blew the slave ships, and the narrative tells of the narrator's time in Berlin. In the years since, people would often ask you about Uganda, what it was like, and you would never really know what to say. If you had, you would have told them it was the place which taught you the extremes of joy and pain. And now, for better or worse, you are coming home.

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There is a specific time and date you have been fearing for much of your adult life. When that moment passes, you will be precisely one second older than your father was when he died, and you will have precisely no idea what to do next. what are you? What have you achieved? You are a writer, making work that is far below his potential. The power of the romantic narrative to drive dating behaviour and commerce is clear but it may also have darker consequences. In 2017 the testimony of 15 women regarding intimate partner violence (IPV) was published. It was clear that one of the issues with IPV was the stories these women had heard about what love was. Love overcomes all obstacles and must be maintained at all costs (even when you’re being abused). Love is about losing control, being swept off your feet, having no say in who you fall for (even if they are violent). Lovers protect each other, fight for each other to the end (even against the authorities who are trying to protect you). It is interesting to contemplate the power of our words. We speak without thinking but the stories we tell our children have consequences.

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Ha-nee and Dae-o meet. They both ask each other how they are feeling. Ha-nee asks Dae-o to take care of her mother first. This is the scene that confirms that she trusts Dae-o. Dae-o admits that he hated Ae-jeong for a very long time over misunderstandings. Ha-nee says she’s always been happy due to her mother and grandma but that it’s time for Dae-o and her mother to be happy. The level of maturity from this kid is incredible. If this was my child, I’d offer them half of my salary just to maintain this outstanding behavior. Sacrificing the film Demographic data shows that the downgrading of romantic love is, to some extent, already happening. Figures from the Office for National Statistics and Relate show that by 2039, one in seven people in the UK will be living alone and today only one in six people believe in “the one”. Which all rather ties up with the author's own biography. Asked in an interview if the novel was auto-fiction, Okwonga laughed and replied "I’d say it’s more like a ‘tall tale’ – can we call it that? Obviously there’s parts of this book that haven’t happened, and characters that don’t exist in real life...."

In The End, It Was All About Love - Musa Okwonga - Google Books

Instead, they can build loving relationships with other people and beings who are capable of fulfilling all their needs. Relationships, science shows us, are underpinned by the same biological and psychological mechanisms and are as beneficial to health and wellbeing as romantic love. Any hierarchy of importance is a cultural construct. We can experience love in so many different ways that we underestimate, even neglect. We are missing out on so much The narrator has left the UK, repelled by the anti-immigration feelings linked to the Brexit vote, for Berlin.

Both books are at their hearts journeys to find homes, to find some sort of emotional and psychological settling. In this one, he seeks an easier unburdened place to call home, a restart: The moment that haunts the early part of the book is the one he knows is coming steadily closer, when he passes his father’s age at his death: Human love is a special thing, unique in its longevity and the sheer number of beings we are capable of loving. We can love our family, our friends, our lovers. We can also love across the species boundary and the spiritual divide. And as AI romps ahead it may be that one day we can find love with an avatar or robot.

In the End it was all About Love by Musa Okwonga - Royal

You look at the empty laptop screen before you and the list of new projects next to it, and you can’t be bothered to start. What is the point, you think, of all this writing, all this creating, if at the end there is no-one to stroke your head on the night bus home, no-one’s hand to hold in a darkened cinema, no-one to feed ice cream on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon. What is the point of trying to put joy into the world when you can find none of your own.Okwonga is actually a highly regarded author in a variety of genres, but part of what he’s interested in here is how little that can seem to count for, spiritually as well as financially. Even so, when the protagonist points out how poorly he was paid for his most successful articles (“not necessarily those which were most widely shared”, he clarifies, “but those which contributed to the national or even global conversation”), it’s hard not to detect at least a batsqueak of humblebrag. Perhaps when ones survival, social standing and acceptance is predicated on coupling up, the obsession with romantic love is understandable. And it will always have a place in the spectrum of love. But we can experience love in so many different ways that we underestimate, even neglect. We are missing out on so much. Ha-nee reads the book “Love is Nonexistent” and ponders over the claims that it is fake and the implied truth that Dae-o abandoned Ae-jeong and her child. She speaks to her mother and tells her that everyone online is saying the novel is fake and that she knows the woman is based on her. Of course, Ms Song is the orchestrator of all of this. This is one last throw of the dice to stop Ae-jeong and Dae-o from concluding their relationship but it’s obvious it isn’t going to work. Episode 16 is going through the motions. It’s true The book is divided into small vignette style pieces, all focusing on a different section of the author’s life in Berlin and his past actions in London and Uganda. These range from the importance of therapy, racism, the different types of cakes one finds in Berlin to the minimalist architecture. At times it’s gently humorous, sometimes it poignant. Musa Okwonga is also a poet and there are some poets which also express the author’s feelings about Berlin.