 When do I put it on my channel? When the girls decide. What's your name? Why so serious though? What's your name? It's a single question daddy. My name is Osekuwame. Today, what does Osekuwame mean? Today Osekuwame means a free guy, you know. A lover of film, a lover of art, a lover of music, a lover of life. I think there's something you've left out, a love of conversation. A love of conversation, yes. But life is a big umbrella. Life is one big conversation. The reason we're born a lot is because of our mutual affection for conversation. Let's start off the conversation with what do you think about conversations? I think conversations are... This might sound fake deep. But they are the pathway to the soul. It's like a path. Conversation is a journey. Conversation is a walk together. And often you would know a lot about somebody when you walk together. Because in conversation, you... If you do have room for empathy, in conversation, you empathize with the person. In empathizing with the person, you walk a little bit in their shoes. In walking a bit in their shoes, you understand them properly or understand them better. And after the conversation, you feel like you know why they are the way they are, why they behave the way they do. So... What are some of your favorite conversations today? If you say today, you mean figuratively? Yes. Yes, figuratively. I like to have mental health conversations. I like to have people's passion influences. I send things they love to do and why they love to do them. And things that bring them joy. Yeah, I like to have those conversations because there's so much darkness. If I should put it that way, there's so much darkness. There's so much stress. There's so much tiredness all around. So having conversations with people about things that bring them joy and watching them go on and on. In that moment, they get to live. They get to have their... It's a dopamine run through their system and they're happy to share. So for example, if you ask me to talk about film or to talk about voice acting or art or telling stories, then I begin to nerd and when I nerd, I feel like it's such a good release. So yeah, I like to have mental health conversations as well because that also helps people unpack and offload certain things that they otherwise may have been keeping to themselves because they think the people that they would talk to may not understand enough. So yeah, those are my favorite conversations today. And of course, having conversations with my partner, which are usually therapeutic in that sense or in this sense as well because we do have conversations about our experiences and how we navigate our experiences. So if you're watching this video right now on this channel, that's what we do. So those are my favorite conversations. I like them a lot. Which conversations would you say have brought you here? Do you remember one or two conversations that have brought you here in this moment to become a filmmaker, a vlogger, etc. Yeah, the conversation with myself will be the first one. Okay, so let's explore that a bit. Yeah, so the conversation with myself asking questions about my situation back then or my person back then. Back then. That's around 2017 when I started to question what else? Is this an existential crisis or something? You just want to find out what is next from here? Where do I go? What do I want to do? What do I love? What's next in the story? How do I want to live? So in having conversations with myself, I came to the conclusion that I may not want to do the thing I was doing at the time, as in working in the sense of nine to five or four in that general sense. Yeah, like that boxed sense of nine to five. I may not necessarily want to be doing that the rest of my life because I do love a lot of freedom, free will, ability to... I think joy comes from being able to decide or choose when and how things should happen to you and how you react to things. So I had that conversation with myself. And thankfully, the other conversation I had was with my partner and now was to figure out how to come out of that space to witness what I am witnessing now. So it was a journey through conversations. Your career, because I followed your career and because conversations are becoming very... Conversations are a very key part of this intervention. You know, in your past life, you were a radio presenter. Being a radio presenter means that you're having conversations with people that you do not know... Or don't even see, yes. Exactly. Let's discuss that a bit. And how you go into the studio and do not lose your mind when you are laughing at your own jokes. Okay, so when I was having a conversation with you a while back, there was something you mentioned that you write for someone. When you're writing, you picture somebody in your head and you talk to the person or you write to the person. You have a conversation with the person. It's the same trick for radio. You speak to someone depending on your mood, depending on what you want to communicate. So it's about a serious conversation because it has a lot to do with reverence and respect. You may want to speak to somebody that you see in that light. If it's a fun conversation, if it's gossip, if it's jokes, you may want to speak to somebody you see in that light that somebody you're comfortable with. So getting into the studio, you cite yourself to speak to that person in its entirety. Right. What was the most difficult conversation you've ever had? What's the easiest conversation you've ever had? I think... Why am I sounding so philosophical? Come with the philosopher. The most difficult conversations are the conversations of self. Because there is always the... What is the most difficult conversation you've ever had? There are too many difficult ones. I don't think I've had the most difficult one. You can't share one or two. I think one of the most difficult conversations I've had is what I mentioned earlier. Having a conversation with myself and deciding to leave a space which a lot of people wonder how, why? Why would you leave a brand or a workplace or a career or even an industry as attractive as that to say that, well, you just want to be on your own for yourself. So it was a very scary, difficult conversation. You had to come to terms with the fact that, well, when you do jump, that's it. You either fly or you die. But shouldn't those be some of the easiest conversations? Because these are conversations about yourself and what makes you happy. Yeah, but yourself and what makes you happy exists in a world. You don't exist in a fantasy. You don't exist in your mind. This is coming from somebody who was on radio and who created realities. Yes, you create realities. But in the end, when you get up and leave, you leave to the world. So if I was having a conversation with myself about things that made me happy and wanting to pursue those things that made me happy, I think that I will still have to do those things in the world. And the world is where the issue comes in because you may know yourself. You may trust yourself to a certain point. But the things that you do will be done outside of your control in a way. I mean, you do it, put it out there, and then whatever is out there is not in your control anymore. Now you have to build stamina to react. So in the reaction, because you don't know what the world is going to throw at you, that is where the scary part is. The conversation with yourself is not necessarily a difficult conversation. It's the implication of that conversation that scares you. So that was one of the toughest conversations I've had to have with myself. What is the easiest conversation you've ever had? Paradoxically, it's the same conversation. Could you elaborate? So I know what I can do. I know what I love and I know what I wanted to do. I need to know that I want to do this. I'm going to do this. That's easy. I trusted myself enough, or I think I had enough knowledge of self and belief to want to do what I wanted to do and I'm doing. So that was an easy take that I would bet on myself. That, yeah, I can do this. But then I also had to rely on the external being also somebody I was with that supported me fully and made me know that with the parts of the ropes that were supposed to be hung outside the world where I was afraid to jump, she would help monitor those ropes so that we see that I can land. And even if I fall, it will be okay. She'll be there. I'm picking up back on that. I think I know the answer to this next question but I'm going to ask anyway, who's your favorite person to have a conversation with? Who's your favorite conversationalist? My partner. Okay, go on. Yeah, my partner is my favorite conversationalist because she's very analytical. So, and yes, she's like a mirror, you know. She's not judging. She's only reflecting. So, it's easy to have conversations with her and if you do open up, you get back the energy you've given. I said, if you open up this little, she can only do so much. If you open up a lot, she can give you a lot of information back or a lot of perspective that you wouldn't have otherwise. But there's somebody who is having a conversation with you within a context of being your best friend and being your partner. So, that would change the dynamic of the conversation. If you're having that same conversation with your mom or with somebody you met on the street, it's going to be completely different. Yes. Would you say you have grown to almost require conversations with your partner to make sense of things that don't make sense? No, not almost always. Not almost always. I'm actually still very much reliant on self-conversation. A lot. I think the higher percentage is self-conversation, but I'm opening up and trying to have more conversations outside that. And my favorite person to have the external conversations is my partner, but my internal conversations are still the biggest. Who gives the best conversations? The conversation with yourself? The conversation with your partner? Where do you find? What's the difference? There's no best. Okay, maybe that's the one. There's no best. So, what's the difference? There's more of purpose than what it serves. If I want to go with belief and passion and fuel and propelling myself like euphoria, like enough energy to move, I go with the conversation of self in the things I can do and my abilities but when I have to step out, that's when I look into the mirror. It's just philosophy. The mirror is reflecting you. Yes, but the mirror also tells me the things I cannot see when I look down because the mirror would show you a different perspective. Right. But at the end of the day, it's you. So, are we therefore seeing that in the grand scheme of things by having conversations with your partner, having conversations with yourself? Again, yes. It's an external version of yourself. That is why the choice of partner or the person you end up with is the most important thing you can ever have in your journey. Okay, do you want to take me to the conversation you had with yourself before you settled on your partner? Wow. The conversation I had with myself and the advice I had with my partner. Who has now become very integral to just you having conversations and you looking out into the world and making sense of the world in general? Yeah. So, knowing my shortfalls or, no, accepting that conversations with myself were going to be one-sided, of course, you have to have perspective and, you know, not to have perspective, you have to respect the perspective or to believe that the perspective was valuable enough, you know, to be had. So, of course, I've always been a partner person as well because I always thought that, yes, I do believe in myself and everything, but I've also had a lot of disappointments and, you know, doubts because disappointment brings doubts in your next thing because you thought, oh, so good, I'm going to do it and then you do it and you're like, ah, why didn't people even... So, where did I go wrong? How do I, you know... So, you need somebody. In my mind, I mean, I've come to admit or accept that you need somebody to be able to give you that other self-prespective. Which is yourself, if you think about it. It's yourself, but it's a more objective neutral self that you can rely on. Yourself nonetheless. Yes. What's the place of conversations, would you say? What's the place of conversations? Do you mean physical geography or what? Today. What's the place of conversations? Generally. In my life? In your life, in the society. What do you think is the place of conversations? Do you think... Then do you think we're having enough conversations? I don't think we're having enough conversations, period. I think that conversations are... Again, the journey is a walk and they open us up to a lot of things and I don't think we have enough conversations because everybody's busy trying to survive. Everybody's busy trying to make sense of their own conversation even before they try to share in the first place. So it's not easy for people to share their conversation with you if they feel that they are not ready one or that you would not understand or that they may not get the answers they want from you or that they may not even trust the answers they get from you. So conversation, for example, I started this channel, specifically for conversation. The conversation of preserving our conversations, promoting our conversations, bringing more enlightenment or fostering more conversations around the conversations. It's just a lot of conversations. Like I said tonight, it's the way we live and the way we live is built on conversation. We're just literally having conversations together as we go through the years. It's just conversation. Which conversations do you reckon would lead to more conversations in our society as you've established conversations are how we make sense of the world and how we can make progress? Which conversations must we have in order to have more conversations? I think we should have conversations about the beauty and the safety of conversations. I think we should make people more attracted to the culture of opening up, the culture of speaking up, the culture of even knowing how to speak. So I think the beauty of that is what we should have more conversations about because if I hadn't found somebody who, for example, understood what the things I would tell her and be able to reflect it and give me perspectives that made sense to me, I would be having conversations with myself, doing things by myself and just hopefully relying on a win or a failure. And if the failures were more, then I would be crawling back into my shell even more, having less and less conversations with myself and then you just keep going into the dark, into the shell, just deeper, deeper, deeper. So we should make it an enticing thing. So we should make it a point to have more conversations and to make it a point to be less judgmental when conversations come up because they are the very fabric of our souls, I think. And they are too deep for you to play with or for me to share my conversation with you and you laugh about it. The next thing is the hashtag. Yes, and you laugh about it or you don't understand it and you just think that, oof, as for this your conversation, yeah. I think it's fine that people don't understand your conversations. I think the point is that they should not be little in any form. Don't belittle the conversation. It's fine if you don't understand it. You're not at this stage where you understand the conversation. And don't take it out there if you didn't understand it. If you couldn't carry the conversation, I don't expect that you take the conversation. It's not your place to carry out the conversation somewhere because first of all, if you don't understand it, you're going to miscommunicate it. And another person is going to think that that's the truth and then the person is going to look at me with your truth of me, not my truth of me. Therefore, how important is it? How important is the person at the end of your conversation? What should go into a person's choice of who is at the end of their conversation? It's a gamble. I mean, you're going in there thinking that the person you're going to be talking to should understand you, should empathize. But then if the person is not even aware of these elements of understanding, of empathy, how do you even know? So it's a gamble. That's why people open up in bits. It has to be over time. You don't go pouring out your deepest darkest secrets unless it's something you just want to throw out to somebody. You don't go pouring it out to a random person. Conversations do happen over time before you can know that there's somebody who can give heavier loads of conversation too. In my experience, as a journalist, I find that the best conversations happen between strangers. I feel like strangers feel safest amongst each other when having conversations because, like you said, they're not worried about being jacked or they know that I don't know their conversation. They might not see you again. You're going to remain strangers, as Malcolm Gladwell says. He talks to me about strangers. What do you think about strangers and what do you think their value is to conversations? Maybe that informs therapy. When you do therapy for the first time, you don't do therapy with family. Or when you do professional therapy, you do professional therapy with a stranger. A person doesn't know you, so they don't judge you. It's not their place to judge you, except to listen and try to help you understand or figure out what you're maybe going through. That's where therapy comes in. That's where we should make it a point to pay more attention or give more energy or support to mental health institutions and mental health people, people who help us make sense of these things. We should pay more attention to them. When is the right time to have conversations? When is the right time to have conversations? There's no right time to have conversations, in my opinion, but some of the conversations will come. You hit a place where you feel like, the words will come out. You try and find somebody to bounce off, and there are some that will have to be forced or beaten out of you. So there's no right time. When is the wrong time to have conversations? Ideally, there shouldn't be a wrong time. If the people around you, the person you're working on the path with, there shouldn't be a wrong time. Ideally, there shouldn't be a wrong time. But I also think that we tend to forget that everybody is having their own conversations as well as having conversations of you and other people and even the whole, what do you call it, all of us connected in conversation as a people. Everybody is bouncing off all this energy, all these energies. So where we are in the fix and want to pull out or have a conversation and the person who may be next to us may not be ready and our inability to see that the person is not ready for such a conversation at the time and sometimes because we feel that the person is by us or has been by us on our journey so we feel that they automatically supposed to take on that conversation at the time is when it's the wrong time because if the person doesn't react in the way that you're used to, then you think, ah, I'm alone. I understand that sometimes you cannot control that you really need a conversation at the time. But you're not entitled to forcing the conversation on somebody. So there is a wrong time to have a conversation. That's what I'm saying ideally there shouldn't be but everybody is having their own conversations. So when somebody does take on your conversation it's a privilege that you shouldn't feel entitled to. Should I have a conversation because I have to have a conversation or should I have a conversation when I'm ready to have a conversation? When you're ready. Sometimes in dealing with people especially people you love you feel so helpless when they can't have conversations with you because they don't feel ready and you feel helpless because you can't hear them and so you can't help them. Talk to me about that space and what to do when you feel helpless that's a tricky one. I don't have an answer to it. But can you grapple with the idea of I understand completely what you're saying that sometimes you want to have those conversations and you want to help the person but the person is not ready and it's affecting your dynamic because the person is not ready to share and you feel like you want to walk that journey with them to offload and the person is not ready to share and I have no answer to that because the person has to give you the room as in open the door for that conversation and if the person is not opening the door and you're banging sometimes it might make them go further into the corner of the room. Do you know what conversations you're going to have with your kids? With your male child There are too many live conversations Do you know very fresh conversations with them? I don't know until the conversation happens which means I don't know until they're here What if they're female or it doesn't change anything? It doesn't change It's a human conversation Let's not put gender on conversations No I feel like I have to ask and contextualize using gender because of the society we find ourselves in where there are a set of expectations for I don't expect to raise my I want to finish the question What are the expectations for a male Ghanaian child? There are expectations for an African a male African of course because it's a global village now whether they are Ghanaian or not they are going to face the rest of the world so there are a set of expectations and there are a set of they're going to be seen in a certain lens so I wonder which is why I thought to ask about what they are male or female and what kind of conversations are going to or whether gender is going to influence your conversations with your children Gender is not going to influence my conversations with my children I'm going to try as much as possible to have human conversations because human conversations are that of emotions and every human has emotions and every human has a way that they react to emotions The emotions may be there's love, there's sadness there's hate, there's disgust there's all those things but then everybody has their way of reacting to it and every human has their way of reacting to it I don't want my kids to think that men do this because of that and have a justification for behaving in a certain way behaving in a certain way because of the agenda no, if it's kindness ah, yes I'm going to have conversations with my children I think one of the first conversations will be about kindness kindness to self and kindness to the next person because kindness makes wow philosophical, kindness makes the conversation a walk in meadow it's nice and that's how conversations must be heard yes, it's comfortable it's safe there's no judgement kindness is it it's too rosy, we have to get into some dark parts why do you want to get into the dark part because I'm behind the camera and I feel like I want to take advantage of you anyway, what kind of conversations did you have with your mom not that that's a dark side I'm sorry that that joke preceded it's not unfortunately most of the conversations with my mom or my siblings or my family were not the kind of conversations that I'm having now there were more reactionary or reactional conversations to our realities at a time or our living experiences there were more reactional there were more reacting on the things that have happened and for the most part we were not having conversations about how it made us feel and why we may need to unpack or do certain things in a certain way it was more like it happened or we made jokes about how it happened after that happened those were the kind of conversations I remember having so I've not really been as my current partner in my conversations which is one thing I'm learning a lot of what conversations do you have with your dad almost none it's the reason yeah so how much of that story are you able to share yeah so there's not much conversation with my dad just because he was in a space where fathers and sons didn't have to have conversation he's always been in a space where there wasn't a conversation there was a talking to talking to is not the same as having a conversation he never saw you as an equal or sitting on the same platform and having a conversation so I don't think I've ever had conversations with my father no no that's a very serious thing to say that's a very serious thing to admit yeah I've never had so I wonder what kind of man you are because people say that a man is the conversations he's had with his dad and if you've had next to none with your dad what kind of man are you who is Osekuwami today so Osekuwami is based on the impact of the lack of conversation and finding conversations within self and self-knowledge I also know that I do not want to put that on somebody else so I mean either you become like him or you become completely opposite and I think I'm leaning towards the opposite whereby I want to have conversations with my children as a person why are you feeling this way what is it that I can do for you how are we going to solve this how are we going to fix this so that is also why I'm also an advocate or a staunch advocate for breaking that I call it a generational curse because we lack conversations with our parents or our fathers in that sense I'm currently working on a short film which is literally based on conversation between a father and a son which is inspired by my lack of conversation so I'm using the art as a therapy avenue to tell that story and also to advocate and educate people that we do need to break that generational curse of not having conversations with our sons and daughters and our children so now it says father and son thing in the film but like I said before I'd rather have conversations with my children not gender based conversations but just conversations as humans as how they feel so for you your art is beginning to imitate your life I wasn't going to go there but you brought back the issue of children because of your unique situation in that you know the world people tend to can I ask you questions about race okay so you're going to bring children into the world you're going to have an African father and a European mother as an African father you've had to deal with being looked at in the same way in the same parts of the world do you think about these things when you think about your children do you think that you must have conversations with them to prepare them for how the world is going to look at them because of what they look like yes definitely definitely it's something my partner and I talk about a lot actually we have to have conversations with them because like I was saying conversations of self and belief of self and knowledge of self will always have to exist in an external world so they have to be aware of the external world and how the external world views them I don't think by the time they are born age the world by virtue of these campaigns that we're having or these little conversations we're having completely changed like overnight and start seeing people as people and having conversations with people as a person and not because they're from here or they're a guy or they're a woman or they are a they or whatever they choose to identify as it's not going to get there in the next two generations even I don't think so that's the reality I think in my son pessimistic I don't think the world is going to change in the next 10 years or in that sense that by the time they are 15 they don't even have to worry about being from a Ghanian father and a Dutch mother it's a conversation that they're going to have to or a reality they're going to have to deal with so they have to be prepared yet what kind of conversations do you hope your children are going to have what kind of conversations do you hope that your children are going to have cause I don't imagine that you want them to have or deal with the kind of conversations that you dealt with if it's the reality at the time I mean that's why conversations are there if it's still the reality then we're going to go through it together I hope that they don't have to have those conversations the way I do have those conversations of course it will evolve it won't be the same as I did but if it's still the reality then we're going to go through it together we have to have those conversations together they have to understand they still have to offload, unpack perspectives, new perspectives understanding, okay navigation, yes so other conversations you stay clear of and you say why no, I don't think I stay clear of particular conversations because I think all conversations can be had if the two people are there's an underlying empathy and understanding if there's understanding or if there's room for comfort and safety if the room is safe then there's no difficult conversation in the world as difficult as it is if you know that if I bring it out there's no judgments, they're safe and there's understanding, empathy and yeah people knowing that okay, this is your perspective or this is what you feel, but it's not the truth but it's okay that it's what it is then yeah every conversation can be had here's a final question on conversations for you do you know what your final conversation is going to be if I did, I wouldn't be here that's why I'm leaving the conversation nobody knows their final conversation do you think about it? I don't think about my final conversation why don't you think about your final conversation because between this conversation and my final conversation there's so many conversations and so I'm looking forward to those conversations rather than thinking of what the end is yeah thank you for this conversation we have another conversation I can't believe we actually had a conversation about conversations the philosophy of conversations that's nice I always knew the title of this video yeah