There is a new rag in town called ‘Down River Road’

There is a new rag in town. It is called Down River Road (DRR). The new kid on the block makes a very bold proclamation in its first issue in December 2019. I would like to quote how it describes itself for the sake of clarity.

It says, “DRR is an online and print journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry and ideas. We are interested in the margins, in the shifting centers and the new spaces that exist in what we have come to call the alternative. We are curious about how we can all imagine and create this world, build this world, shape this small corner of the world into a place we can claim.

We want to imagine this world here, in the right now, in the ongoing, in this perpetual machine we call enlightenment, to continuously seek to collaborate with writers, artists, musicians, etc., and break free from these hefty editorials and simply create and jam together. We are here again for the first time. We welcome you to join us in this world-making.” Such weighty definition of the self.

Then, in the introduction, to the same first issue, with the title, ‘Late Arrivals’, the editors, Frankline Sunday and Clifton Gachagua, say this, “Perhaps this should begin as a treatise on the unreachability of places we will never go, the inevitability, even when we do, keeping in mind that it was never the intention to go, of the heartbreak and nostalgia for these places began a long time ago, that there might be many ways to map a way out but it’s a long way there.

Delusions and paranoia

 But formalism will not be found in these pages. We wanted to work against systems, at the same time work with what has been said and written, the delusions and paranoia of it – this has come to mean different things in the recent history of creating in the here.” What a pronouncement!

In order to avoid being accused of mis-paraphrasing or misquoting, I took the liberty of citing DRR at length because its claims carry the usual contradictions of such projects, if recent memory serves us right.

There have been rags in the recent past that have declared boldly that they are revolutionary; that they seek to destabilise the centre (even Ngugi hasn’t managed to shift the centre, leave alone leave the centre); that they seek to do things in new ways unlike what exists; that they have found the much-sought-after spirit of writing and creating and speaking in tongues that other ordinary souls haven’t been able to do. Years later they disappear from the arena without declaring their departure.

One hopes that DRR will live long. That it will outlive River Road. That it will reveal to its readers what Meja Mwangi was searching for when he boldly declared that he was Going Down River Road. We know that Ben and Ocholla, despite much sweating during the building of Development House (in the novel; not the real one), never enjoyed the progress that Nairobi offers.

So, one can only hope that DRR will indeed keep formalism at bay, as it declares, and offer its readers, entry into the belly of the beast that is modernity, Kenyan or from wherever.

But how does declaring “formalism will not be found in these pages” and wishing to “work against systems” make a rag, one may ask? Aren’t these mere political statements, shorn of artistic substance? In any case, can artists, especially today, ever work against systems?

What systems in fact would one be controverting? Aren’t artists, by their very work or character, creators of systems? Isn’t creating artwork in itself creating a system, a map of seeing, unravelling and possibly understanding the world? Couldn’t it have been possible to create DRR without making such patently postmodernist but often muddled claims?

Literary persona

For a magazine whose first issue has such a compelling urban legend as ‘Always be Lateef’, why seek to claim a literary persona beyond the ordinary? This story by Idza Luhumyo is literally and literarily acidic. It is about being and not-being. Of the individual changing his perceived public identity so many times – from being Wafula to Ustadh Liwa to Dingo to Lateef – but still retaining the capacity to be in ‘charge of his story’.

This is a story of the tricks of survival and surviving the vagaries of being Kenyan that pits any other that our politicians have come up with in the recent past. The poem, ‘Mombasa Raha, Raha Mombasa’ by Binti Mombasa that comes after ‘Always be Lateef’ is what one would call the icing on the cake in its incisive and biting mockery of the prejudice of upcountry Kenyans against fellow citizens from the Coast.

For sure, the rest of the issue is as eclectic as the declarations in the introduction – inviting one into the world or more poetry, artwork, personal musings etc. Every taste in journals of this type is covered. However, sometimes one is left feeling that some of these writings are too esoteric, as if meant for the writer’s personal diary than for public sharing.

But, well, the editors had forewarned the reader that they shall not necessarily follow the beaten path of writing around here. Nevertheless, there is still enough serving in the issue to meet the needs of those who just wish to read a good poem or a good story, by which I mean one that I wouldn’t have to scratch my head too much trying to unravel the meaning.

Rituals  

Issue two of DRR has the theme ‘ritual.’

I struggled to see the ritual in the many poems from near here and afar it offered but may be the idea is that writing, and reading a poem, are rituals in themselves. Like in issue one, the lead fictional story, ‘Ayiecho’ by Caroline Okello and the personal essay on his conversion from Christian to Muslim by Dalle Abraham are definite winners. Both the fictional story and non-fiction remind us about who we are, how we become, the habits we acquire from the places we inhabit and the rituals of those spaces, and how the world (near and far) can change us over time.

I’d strongly recommend Dalle’s ‘To have the face of a Muslim’ for its examination of how rituals make and unmake us, and the agency within us to re-make the world in the way we vision the future.

The two issues of DRR leave no doubt that there is something literary exciting that is cooking. One imagines that even the proclamations in the introduction are artistic provocations meant to invite more conversations on arts and culture in the worlds we inhabit and the beings we are; and also create more about what we sense and envision.

 Down River Road is a good dream, at least from its first two issues. But can it eventually lead us into a better world (maybe only creatively) than the one that Meja Mwangi’s characters in Going Down River Road inhabited? Only time will tell. You can access DRR at: downriverroad.org or order a print copy from the publishers.

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