I am now rolling film reels, rewinding time to my undergraduate days, about 7 years ago, when I was an actor on stage, wearing multiple personalities or characters and performing to the cathartic thrill of the audience. As an actor, I shared in that process of becoming and unbecoming, then becoming again, living fictional lives temporarily in the mental framework of diverse characters. This process is not an instant switch. It takes a level of mastery to suspend your real self and breathe through imagined emotions that draw energy from one’s inner emotional and mental reserve. Some people have lost touch of reality after staying in character for too long and some have stepped out transformed to a degree while for others, it’s a walk in the park, just another day at the job. Thankfully, I’m still myself, Chizzy, yours faithfully.

Back then, our department had this initiation ceremony that was our dramatic way of welcoming freshers to the department. This ceremony spanned a week and part of the itinerary for the week-long event was a carnival. The aim of this carnival was to showcase pride in our African mystical traditions, specifically through performative reverence to the Yoruba pantheon. Visually, this meant singing praise chants, dancing, actors wearing costumes in adherence to the aesthetic appeal of each god, reciting age-old words of adulation. What started out as a purely performative act detached from any real spiritual investment ended up as a frenzy of climactic, ecstatic and frenetic bodily possession of the crew. Each actor got possessed by the god they were performing. The lead singer who played Yemoja started emitting humanly unintelligible utterances and was drifting in and out of consciousness as though the goddess she praised was so starved of worship from her people that she seized this one opportunity to manifest in the physical world again. Another, a guy who played Esu, the trickster, was caught walking on walls like Spiderman. It felt like something you should watch on HBO or Showmax but it was happening in real-time, in our reality, the next best thing after virtual reality.

That event left an impression on me about the thriving ecosystem of a different dimension existing in parallel to ours, maybe sharing the same space as us but not bound to this space or our human perception of time. I got fascinated by other metaphysical realities and went in search of knowledge that could help me solidify an intellectual grip on the reality of these unknowns. In my search, I came across Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious which gave a psychological view of human’s interactions with intangible metaphysical forces beyond our understanding. According to this theory, humans are generally driven or motivated by similar instinctual patterns that have their origin in several primordial archetypes or symbols. That was a mouthful and as much as I hate this next line, let me unpack.

Over centuries of human existence, certain motifs keep recurring like mothers wanting to nurture their children, people rising to defend the voiceless or underprivileged, cunning men scheming in dark corners, wise people giving counsel to warriors and so many more. Jung encapsulates these motifs into “archetypes” such as the good mother, the wise old man, the trickster, etc. Basically, all of humanity will keep sharing these motifs forever. There will be heroes and villains (think of every story ever written, every film ever made), the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor, and several other dualities.

Let us not forget another universal motif of people desiring to obtain supernatural powers, a demand that gives Marvel Studios a job. In as much as the case of spiritual realities can be debated into oblivion, most humans have an instinctual desire to connect with transcendental entities. It is easy from a scientific and materialistic worldview to slap off the idea of metaphysical realities but from the way I see it, there will be no sockets if there is nothing to plug into them. Both the socket and the plug exist to complete or complement each other or are doomed to remain poorly utilized as anything else other than the purpose for which they were designed. Whether electrical currents decide to pass through or not depends on PHCN but until power comes through, the conducting vessels are either connected and ready or they are not. In other words, a desire or demand for something most often implies that there’s a supply, no matter how long it takes us to find the supply. I do not claim to understand how the mechanisms of the otherworldly operate but if for millennia our ancestors felt the need to connect to a higher entity via any means available such as the sun, sand, water, etc there is definitely something noteworthy to investigate there.

On a practical level, there is something to say about the absorptive nature of our subconscious towards anything that permeates our mental and physical space. Archetypes are usually represented in the world as images, symbols or actions. So on a daily basis we knowingly or unknowingly engage in the business of buying into different belief systems that are the modes of initiation into embodying an archetype. We like to think we rationally choose all that we believe in but that is not often the case. Some carriages of raw thoughts that transport themselves into us can be elusive especially when they offload their content to dark regions of our minds that also escape our notice. When we ignore the darkest parts of our minds, we also ignore when those parts emit desires that latch onto strange things in the physical world. Then we find ourselves doing things we never knew we could do and get the kind of satisfaction we thought to be unobtainable. The more we confront these dark regions of our psyche, the better our chance at really understanding who we are and filtering what gets in and out of us. And I say “dark” not because such regions harbour only evil but simply because it’s overly shaded or shelved away to gather dust somewhere in the noodly folds of our brains.

Segue. Much of how branding has evolved in the modern age can be traced to imitations of religious belief systems. Nothing beats religion when it comes to unveiling clusters or superclusters of archetypes that burrow deep into the psyche of the average person who instinctively desires to understand why he was created, what his purpose on earth is and what comes after death. People are no longer just interested in the materialistic function of things but in the “why” behind them, a search for meaning essentially. We are constantly seeking out things to believe in. Brands that build thriving communities focus on creating belief systems that resonate deeply with their target audience so that they look beyond the product and share in a collective pursuit towards more universally rewarding ideals. Patrick Hanlon in his book “Primal branding” explores several components of a belief system that help brands connect more deeply with people.

These components are:

1. Creation story
2. Creed
3. Icons
4. Rituals
5. Lexicons (Sacred words)
6. Nonbelievers
7. Leader

The creation story explores the birth of an idea that propels the brand into formation. What set of rollercoasters did a founder overcome to bring the idea out into the world? According to the Judeo-Christian worldview, in the beginning, God commanded “Let there be light” and light appeared. How did the first light of your idea appear? Did it fluctuate? What tried snuffing that light out? Give your answers as a story. People beg to know so that they care.

Creed. These are a set of beliefs a group of people embrace and demonstrate in their actions. What do you believe to be true? Hindus believe in samsara, the continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth. The nature of a person is seen as evolving through various lifetimes, and one’s ultimate goal is to escape this cycle and achieve moksha (liberation). How do you embrace and navigate change in turbulent times throughout the lifetime of your brand? What kind of liberation do you ultimately promise your audience? Respond in a story. We love stories.

Icons. These are pictorial symbols that anyone can recognize. Things like logos, art styles, use of colour, shapes and forms signal to people who you are. As a Catholic, I delightfully drown in the architecture, use of specific utensils, hymns, long stretches of stained glass windows, waving of incense, the priestly garments and what they symbolize. These by themselves won’t get me to heaven but will they establish a sense of the sacred? Yes. Therefore, what icons will your brand use to connect to people? Show them. Show them often.

Rituals. These are repetitive processes that end in an expected outcome. The Yoruba use the Ifá divination system to seek answers and guidance from the divine. A Babalawo (priest) or Iyanifa (priestess) uses a divination tray and sacred palm nuts or cowrie shells to interpret messages from the Orishas through specific patterns. How does your team respond to problems? Does the job of providing solutions entirely belong to the higher management or is everyone encouraged to contribute their own ideas? Can everyone become a conduit for answers or do we leave it all to the proverbial Moses?

I invite you to explore the rest of these components yourself. Just as how the Yoruba cosmology exhibits all of these components which fashions a participant into a conductive vessel (socket-plug) awaiting transcendental transmission, brands can unleash modern versions of these components that release admirable archetypes people can consciously or subconsciously absorb and act out in the world, leading to both their own personal improvement and the success of the brand.

The lead singer who got possessed subconsciously embraced a lot of the images and symbols representative of certain archetypes that flourish in Yoruba cosmology and maybe somewhere in her mind she actually fantasized about really becoming one with a god. While we all thought the carnival was purely performative, she was unknowingly or knowingly getting transformed into a vessel for transmission. Her singing was sonorous and maybe just as how our current voice command technology makes us trigger Siri to respond, it took her singing a set of praise chants to elicit a response from primordial deities. One way or another, in that moment, she became an ambassador of a traditional mythological brand as a result of interacting with the symbols of the brand. When modern brands strategize around this, instead of getting people possessed with unfamiliar entities, we might turn them into change makers who will forever alter the course of our collective human journey for good.

There I was in the living room wondering, who out there cares about what I have to say?

Take me as a newborn when it comes to writing. I’ve played with the idea of being a writer in the past but the enthusiasm to pursue that path died an unnatural death. I now realize that what I love more than words are pictures and better still, moving pictures. Not just film but animation or to be precise, motion design.

As a young Nigerian child I had the privilege of owning a chinko phone and the big dream of recreating something I had seen on TV. It looked like a shiny golden object on Silverbird channel. Since I didn’t know how to do that, I settled for creating something within my strength, a rising fog.

Note: A chinko phone is a Nigerian slang for a low-grade phone imported from or made in China.

I asked, what could give me some smoke? My eyes swooshed over to my Father’s big aluminium cup. I filled it with water and left it in the freezer for hours till the water froze into impenetrable ice. I remember lifting the cup like an evil scientist with the exception of the comical evil laugh. I had to carry out this operation at night in order to have a black background on camera. I grabbed my Father’s torch, steadied it on a table, turned on the light and pointed it to the bottom of the frozen cup.

I made sure to capture the space between the bottom of the cup and the light source to get a footage of light beaming into smoking ice. I felt great. I did it. Then I placed that footage onto PowerPoint where I had lots of fancy text animations like fade in and fade out. I added end credits to the clip and felt satisfied watching the end of an absent movie with the smoke and light and stuff.

I’ve not stopped feeling this good about animation or motion design and I don’t see myself doing anything else. Well, except acting.

To see my works, please visit chizzyjames.com
Thank you for reading.
How did you step into the love of what you do?