Ben Asante

Ben played bass for a band you may know for a decade and then quit because the road was no longer where he wanted his life. He writes from a small house in Accra and is mostly with his two kids. His essays for Aya are practical, honest, and a little funny — about manifestation when there is a baby crying in the next room and the laundry is wet. Ten years of touring taught him more about practice than any book: you play the same lines every night until they live in your hands, and the repetition is not the enemy of the feeling — it is where the feeling comes from. He brings that musician's patience to the inner work. His essays are timed in real units — the practice that fits inside a nap window, the affirmation said over a sink of dishes, the Dream-Self Moment listened to in the school pickup queue with the engine off. He is honest about the trade he made and what it cost, and funnier about it than he has any right to be. His recurring themes: fatherhood as the great editor of ambition, the difference between quitting and finishing, and rhythm as the household's secret infrastructure. A groove, he says, is just a promise kept at tempo — and family life runs on the same principle.

Writes about: fatherhood, career change, manifestation.

Elsewhere: instagram.com