Edgar Agayi

I am a person who loves computers — especially software, where most problems can be fixed by staring at them long enough and occasionally restarting something. I also do law and government, which is less easy to restart. I listen to pop, hip-hop, EDM and R&B; Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, The Neighbourhood and Twenty One Pilots are usually somewhere nearby. And when inspiration arrives, normally at an inconvenient hour, I write.

Anyway. Let me try to explain how all of that became one person.

First movement History, and how it made me a lawyer

I am Kenyan by birth, and history got hold of me early. While other children were doing sensible things, I was reading about Alexander crossing into Asia, Julius Caesar making one extremely consequential river crossing, Augustus, Cyrus the Great, Charles V, James I, the Tudors, Napoleon, and both world wars. Apparently I liked knowing exactly how everything went wrong.

Believe me, the full list is very, very long. We would both need snacks. But aaah.

Somewhere between the emperors, constitutions and spectacularly bad decisions, law began to make sense as a career. So I pursued a Bachelor of Laws. Government is the part I enjoy most, which surprises people until I start talking about it and then they probably regret asking. Having one foot in law and the other in technology is useful: Kenya is writing technology law faster than most people can read it. Sometimes I translate it into ordinary language for the rest of us who still have to live under it.

Second movement Computers, and the concept of the cloud

Technology was the other early obsession. I was eight when curiosity became the kind of thing that makes you click every button just to learn which one breaks everything. Software fascinated me. The cloud fascinated me even more: a machine can exist because you asked politely in a terminal, do some work, and disappear when you are finished. Very dramatic. Very efficient.

These days I work as a cloud engineer across AWS and DevOps, build software, and develop with MediaWiki — the machinery behind Wikipedia, and one of the few enormous things the internet still builds with the doors open. My usual stack is Python, Golang, PHP, Node.js, JavaScript, AWS, Linux and Bash.

I love the command line, and I hope every day it loves me too.

Third movement Music

I do not really listen to music in the background. I listen to it as if there will be an examination afterwards. Hans Zimmer and Ludovico Einaudi are what I write to. No lyrics when I am trying to find my own words; my brain is easily persuaded to use somebody else's.

The rest of the time it is pop, EDM, hip-hop, R&B and band music — Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, The Neighbourhood, Twenty One Pilots. Those are examples, not borders. If it sounds good, I am not going to ask it for identification.

I have also released three songs of my own. That sentence still feels strange, but the songs exist on the internet now, so there is no taking it back.

Fourth movement Writing

Fiction lets me tell the truth while pretending I made it up. I do not really believe in love, although I keep writing about it with suspicious commitment. Yes, that is a contradiction. I have decided to keep it. Maybe one day the books will convince me.

I write poetry and prose. Eleven books now, which seems excessive when written as a number. Most circle the same difficult territory from different directions: loving someone more than they love you, the silence afterwards, and the slow, unglamorous business of becoming yourself again.

Here they are, newest first, because apparently the heartbreak needed a bibliography.

Well, those are some things about me. I am still working out the rest, which is inconvenient when you own the domain with your name on it. Thank you for staying this long. I genuinely mean that.

Cheers.