Having never tried journaling until now, I can’t say if I’m doing a good job. Of all the activities people recommend for ‘staying positive’ through the pandemic, journaling seemed the most obvious choice for me. Though I have set no grand expectations for myself, I’m afraid I will be unable to keep from filling each page, eventually, with minutiae. With the flatness of time as it passes here. An instinct, I think, from an earlier, truncated life in the sciences. Or perhaps like the voice in Sans Solei, ‘I have been around the world several times, and now only banality interests me.’
I am not that far gone, I don’t think.
Some books are best measured not by the number of pages they hold between their covers, or the number of words they carry. Do Not Send Me Out Among Strangers by Nigerian writer, essayist and photographer Joshua Segun-Lean tells a deeply personal, vulnerable story in this slender volume that, at first blush, appears deceptively sparse and quiet, not unlike the pandemic-sheltering world in which it was conceived. But at its heart lies a raw testament to loss, distilled into a spare collection of images and words that is no less powerful than the too-much-information memoir that has become so ubiquitous.
Less is more.
Do Not Send Me Out Among Strangers is a collection of brief journal entries—observations, accounts, and recollections—nested among a series of harsh black and white photographs of soil, rock, and debris, marked with occasional tufts of vegetation. Numbered and time stamped, these images are titled “Field Notes.” This is the visual record of the search that occupies Segun-Lean’s lockdown days: he has been tasked with the dispersal of his father’s ashes. He thinks back on their strained relationship and his insecurity about the responsibility he has been given. Meanwhile, friends are falling sick with Covid; some are even dying. A journey of grief lies in the stillness of this book.
A couple of colour “Interior” photographs, also numbered and time stamped, appear along the way, echoed by a few Edward Hopper paintings. The explicit theme connecting these illustrations is the colour red. The inherent loneliness of the artwork perhaps, the author admits, “too obvious,” given the circumstances. There are also a handful of sketches, abstracted, and, finally, a number of short excerpts dealing with ancient burial practices from various archaeological and historical texts.
Taken together, this collection of thoughts and images, speak of the complicated relationship we have to life, death, and disability—to the body in sickness and health, whole or incomplete. At a time of isolation and uncertainty, as Segun-Lean is searching for the right place to scatter his father’s ashes, he is quietly exploring, as the book description says, “the strange terrain where private and public grief meet.” He is carrying both, as he will reveal.
Do Not Send Me Out Among Strangers by Joshua Segun-Lean is a haunting little book, the kind of small, unclassifiable work that UK publisher CB Editions specializes in.
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