When Love was “Do or Die”

Jon Bellion takes me back to Lagos, to when I was 22 and love was do or die. It was quite the time to be alive, every love was the one and every heartbreak was the one that could kill you and in some instances, it did kill you. Back then, every adventure had the ability to take the life out of you but that ability was not compelling enough to curb your recklessness because it was in that city that I sat in the passenger’s seat of my friend’s Toyota Camry as he drove into Ikoyi typing on his MacBook. It was this same friend, this same car, on a different occasion that I sat in the passenger’s seat for a drive on Landbridge Avenue with the car door open and before you ask, both times he was very sober.

Lagos overwhelmed me with adventure that I waved aside as a huge inconvenience. I think of it now and sometimes I miss it. Not for the traffic, or the opportunities that people claim are there but for all the things I did not let myself feel because I did not want the city to inconvenience me. I always felt like Lagos could destroy my character – it felt so small. If I was bad there, it mattered because I thought many people knew me and would care. Truth is, no one knew me or cared and I was too young and stupid to realize I should just have lived my life the way I wanted because no one would even notice. In my defense, I did not know then how I wanted to live my life and I have forgiven myself for that. Sometimes, I remember something from my time there and I am just amazed that such a memory is buried so deep I have to unload much to find it – like the memory of my 21st birthday or that random bonfire in Elegushi.

Now, I keep with me music from that time – Jon Bellion’s The Human Condition Ablum, HER’s H.E.R Volume 2, and Dwin, the Stoic’s Heavy Heart. I play Jon Bellion’s Luxury to remind me where I am coming from – to think of money as nothing but a tool. I play HER’s Say It Again more now because I have found a love that makes me want to play it all the time. When I first discovered the HER album, the song for the season was “2” – don’t ask. I play Dwin’s End of an Era whenever I move cities or something pivotal happens in my life (it so happens that most of the pivotal things that happen in my life involve me moving cities). I carry these sounds with me. They take me back to the time when I was 22 and love was do or die and when I get there, I look at those memories like pictures in a museum of a time no one should go back to but everyone is grateful for.