Overheard
At the Calabash Literary Festival, Treasure Beach, Jamaica; 22 May, 2009:
"My last lover was a Maroon. Or so he said."
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Herd instincts
(Written for the very belated February 2009 Caribbean Review of Books.)
The herd waiting to cross the Savannah judging point
Even in the age of the spreadsheet and the sponsorship deal and the masquerader satisfaction survey, mas retains the capacity to surprise. Witness the apparition, last Carnival Tuesday, of this ragtag herd of cows, with their staring skull-blank faces and stark horns, swaddled in black and white, straying through the streets of Port of Spain and interrupting the flow of polychromatic spandex and spangles.
Conceived by the artists Richard “Ashraph” Ramsaran and Shalini Seereeram, designed and built in no more than the five days before Carnival, T’in Cow Fat Cow took its original inspiration from a song by 3Canal, an angry denunciation of power, greed, and social inequality: “Fat cow, the butcher calling you ... in the pot you going to go.” But the band’s two dozen masqueraders, many of them artists and actors, articulated a variety of themes through the simple costumes -- headpieces made from cardboard and paint, and ordinary white clothes splotched with black. For some, the band -- assembled with volunteer labour, using discarded and recycled materials -- was a commentary on the commercialisation of mas. Others discerned an environmental message. Each cow brandished a punning placard, borrowed from the tradition of old mas, some of them making fun of politicians (Patrick’s National Moovement), or with slanted references to international affairs (Dow Cow, Cownter Insurgency). One cow was festooned with a feather boa, another with black Mardi Gras beads. The gilded Emperor Cow was king of the band and golden calf at the same time.
The cows were not early risers, and it was eleven on Carnival Tuesday morning before they set out from their mas camp in Woodbrook, to the jangle of cowbells and a chorus of moos. The cardboard headpieces wilted in the intermittent rain, and the herd made frequent grazing stops. Still, they moseyed round the whole parade circuit -- in record time, squeezing past slow-moving larger bands downtown -- and, though officially unregistered for competition, crossed the stage at four judging points, to the bemusement of the official announcers. Spectators on the street squinted to read the placards. At the Savannah, the traditional climax of the parade route, the cows pranced past the TV cameras, making up with their enthusiasm for the small size of the herd. By five in the afternoon the band, re-nearing their starting point, began to split apart, and in their twos and threes the cows disappeared into the larger herd of las’ lap revelers.
But that was not the end of the bovine story. Two months later, the cows reappeared on the streets of Port of Spain. Dressed in black, with blood-red tears running from the headpieces’ eyes, and the masqueraders’ mouths bound with red cloth, they marched to Independence Square and sat silently among the decorative flowerbeds. It was the day before the opening of the controversial Summit of the Americas, hosted by Trinidad and Tobago at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and the temporary suspension of civil freedoms in the capital (thanks to a security lockdown around the summit venue).
Through a printed manifesto, the cows declared: “We represent the voiceless. The many thousands of Trinbagonians . . . whose tax dollars are being invested in a display that does not address their most urgent concerns . . . Who is listening?” But the more eloquent message was the medium itself, the spectacle of these stray cows lost in the shadows of Port of Spain’s new skyscrapers. Red letters spelled out the rechristened band’s new name: The People Must Be Herd, a pun poised between the ideal of participatory democracy and the reality of a society stumbling mindlessly under the prods of cowboy politicians. Even Prime Minister Patrick Manning, famously oblivious to public opinion, might have got the joke.
(Written for the very belated February 2009 Caribbean Review of Books.)
The herd waiting to cross the Savannah judging point
Even in the age of the spreadsheet and the sponsorship deal and the masquerader satisfaction survey, mas retains the capacity to surprise. Witness the apparition, last Carnival Tuesday, of this ragtag herd of cows, with their staring skull-blank faces and stark horns, swaddled in black and white, straying through the streets of Port of Spain and interrupting the flow of polychromatic spandex and spangles.
Conceived by the artists Richard “Ashraph” Ramsaran and Shalini Seereeram, designed and built in no more than the five days before Carnival, T’in Cow Fat Cow took its original inspiration from a song by 3Canal, an angry denunciation of power, greed, and social inequality: “Fat cow, the butcher calling you ... in the pot you going to go.” But the band’s two dozen masqueraders, many of them artists and actors, articulated a variety of themes through the simple costumes -- headpieces made from cardboard and paint, and ordinary white clothes splotched with black. For some, the band -- assembled with volunteer labour, using discarded and recycled materials -- was a commentary on the commercialisation of mas. Others discerned an environmental message. Each cow brandished a punning placard, borrowed from the tradition of old mas, some of them making fun of politicians (Patrick’s National Moovement), or with slanted references to international affairs (Dow Cow, Cownter Insurgency). One cow was festooned with a feather boa, another with black Mardi Gras beads. The gilded Emperor Cow was king of the band and golden calf at the same time.
The cows were not early risers, and it was eleven on Carnival Tuesday morning before they set out from their mas camp in Woodbrook, to the jangle of cowbells and a chorus of moos. The cardboard headpieces wilted in the intermittent rain, and the herd made frequent grazing stops. Still, they moseyed round the whole parade circuit -- in record time, squeezing past slow-moving larger bands downtown -- and, though officially unregistered for competition, crossed the stage at four judging points, to the bemusement of the official announcers. Spectators on the street squinted to read the placards. At the Savannah, the traditional climax of the parade route, the cows pranced past the TV cameras, making up with their enthusiasm for the small size of the herd. By five in the afternoon the band, re-nearing their starting point, began to split apart, and in their twos and threes the cows disappeared into the larger herd of las’ lap revelers.
But that was not the end of the bovine story. Two months later, the cows reappeared on the streets of Port of Spain. Dressed in black, with blood-red tears running from the headpieces’ eyes, and the masqueraders’ mouths bound with red cloth, they marched to Independence Square and sat silently among the decorative flowerbeds. It was the day before the opening of the controversial Summit of the Americas, hosted by Trinidad and Tobago at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and the temporary suspension of civil freedoms in the capital (thanks to a security lockdown around the summit venue).
Through a printed manifesto, the cows declared: “We represent the voiceless. The many thousands of Trinbagonians . . . whose tax dollars are being invested in a display that does not address their most urgent concerns . . . Who is listening?” But the more eloquent message was the medium itself, the spectacle of these stray cows lost in the shadows of Port of Spain’s new skyscrapers. Red letters spelled out the rechristened band’s new name: The People Must Be Herd, a pun poised between the ideal of participatory democracy and the reality of a society stumbling mindlessly under the prods of cowboy politicians. Even Prime Minister Patrick Manning, famously oblivious to public opinion, might have got the joke.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Paradise™
(Written for the forthcoming e-catalogue of Christopher Cozier’s Available at All Leading Stores, published for the 2009 Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan.)
J'Ouvert morning, 23 February, 2009. Photo by Brian Kinzie
Some say that we lost Paradise
Some say that we living Paradise
Some say well if this is Paradise
Good God where the hell is Paradise?
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise....
— 3Canal, “Paradise?”
It is the drizzly Friday morning before Carnival, and I am slumped in my chair, staring at the chaos of my desk, trying to invent a costume for J’Ouvert. This year I am playing with 3Canal. The theme of the band is Paradise?, complete with sardonic question mark, after one of the songs on their new album. Nowadays, most people don’t bother with costumes for J’Ouvert, beyond the obligatory layer of paint or mud. But I like the challenge, in all senses, of a costume. Last year it was devil wings, a bow tie, and a placard. This year, I’m stumped.
I stare at the chaos of my desk. Piles of paper, an empty teacup, my dusty laptop screen. A bowl of paperclips. A small brown cardboard box, not much bigger than a stack of Post-It notes, with plain black text on one side:
FEAR
1 PACK
NET WT. 30 OZS
MADE IN THE USA
It is one of the original hand-stamped boxes from Christopher Cozier’s installation Available At All Leading Stores, shipped down from the gallery in Canada. It has sat on my desk for months, a mordant reminder of my time and place. I summon up iTunes and listen to the 3Canal song.
Buildings filling the skies
And people dying for another to rise
Black gold and crimson tides
Is this Paradise?
I pick up the phone and dial a number. “Chris? It’s Nicholas. What you think of this….”
*
I find a plain cardboard box lying around the house, 16 x 12 x 10 inches--not a cube, but close enough. I spend a couple of days figuring out how I’ll carry it through the streets. Should I strap it to my back? Attach it to a stick so I can hoist it into the air? I don’t want it to get crushed in the intoxicated J’Ouvert throng, and I want to carry it high enough that people can read the words from a distance.
“Put your head inside it and wear it like a mask,” one friend suggests. No, I won’t be able to see where I’m going, and I’ll stifle. Instead I imagine an old-time Fancy Sailor with some papier-mâché extravaganza perched on his head, and two cords dangling in front to help balance the weight.
In the end, the design is simple. I cut an oval into the underside of the box, just slightly smaller than the circumference of my head, and line it with strips of plastic foam. I try it on: the box sits firmly just above my brow, even if I jump around. Next I punch two holes in the underside. I thread in lengths of strong yarn and knot them on the inside. I can grab onto the dangling cords to shift the weight of the box as I move.
Now the text: Chris suggests I blow up a version of his original design, make a colour print, and paste it to the box. I decide on a more low-tech method, hand-lettering the box with a black permanent marker. I haven’t told Chris yet, but I’ve taken liberties with his text. The box now reads:
PARADISE
100 PACKS 10 OZ. EACH
MADE IN CHINA
DISTRIBUTED IN T+T
And in smaller letters:
(APOLOGIES TO CHRISTOPHER COZIER)
*
The history of the Caribbean is a catalogue of trade wars, pillagings, predatory exchanges, bank heists on the scale of whole countries, and bills of sale enforced at gunpoint. Glass beads for gold, blood for sugar, self-respect for tourist dollars, oil for salvation. It sometimes seems there’s nothing we can’t or won’t offer for sale. In what Derek Walcott called “this chain store of islands,” independence only changed the faces of the salesmen, not their tactics.
Cozier conceived Available At All Leading Stores at a particularly anxious moment in recent history. As the wider world worried over the Bush doctrine, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the Axis of Evil, Trinidadians grew obsessed with a spiraling murder rate, garbage-can bombs deposited in downtown Port of Spain, and the latest popular business scheme: kidnappings for ransom. Fear was the hot global commodity, often packaged together with Security in buy-one-get-one-free deals; manufactured in Washington, DC, advertised on CNN and Fox News, traded in capital cities around the world, with special discounts available at the nearest airport metal scanner. Trinidad, always ready to adopt and adapt trendy imports, didn’t lag behind.
Three years later, the market has shifted. Global capitalism as we knew it took a tumble in 2008. American voters replaced Bush 2.0 with a brighter, shinier, and better-designed model. Now the world wants to buy an Obama t-shirt, the one with the new brand name: Hope.
Meanwhile, here in Trinidad, the populace has finally got the invoice for the PNM government’s Potemkin nation project, better known as Vision 2020. The costs are stated in trillions, the fine print seems to be in Cantonese, and the product was broken before it came out of the package. Port of Spain floods and traffic gridlocks in the shadow of half-finished skyscrapers built by imported Chinese labour with imported Chinese materials. They said we were buying Paradise. Well, if this is Paradise, where the hell is Paradise?
*
For three or so hours on J’Ouvert morning, Paradise is an empty space, an absence, in a cardboard box I balance on my head. Watch me, turning into a metaphor for a nation bearing the burden of false advertising and false hopes. If anything and everything is for sale, if art is just another product with varying profit margins, if Cozier can taunt us with the joke of commodified Fear, then I can re-commodify, re-sell, re-brand.
Down Ariapita Avenue and up Carlos Street. Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh. Hundreds writhing and rubbing up and gyrating, bareback and torn t-shirts and busted-up sneakers, rum and paint and around our necks the little plastic tags that prove we paid our $200 to play with 3Canal. Oh-oh. Down Tragarete as the sun rises, up Edward and across Gordon, and eventually we reach the Savannah. Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise....
But Paradise is heavier than I expected. At half past eight, by Memorial Park, I slip out of the band and stride off with my cardboard box, now spattered with pretty pink and purple paint. It’s early, but the sun is already too hot.
Photo by Brian Kinzie
(Written for the forthcoming e-catalogue of Christopher Cozier’s Available at All Leading Stores, published for the 2009 Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan.)
J'Ouvert morning, 23 February, 2009. Photo by Brian Kinzie
Some say that we lost Paradise
Some say that we living Paradise
Some say well if this is Paradise
Good God where the hell is Paradise?
Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise....
— 3Canal, “Paradise?”
It is the drizzly Friday morning before Carnival, and I am slumped in my chair, staring at the chaos of my desk, trying to invent a costume for J’Ouvert. This year I am playing with 3Canal. The theme of the band is Paradise?, complete with sardonic question mark, after one of the songs on their new album. Nowadays, most people don’t bother with costumes for J’Ouvert, beyond the obligatory layer of paint or mud. But I like the challenge, in all senses, of a costume. Last year it was devil wings, a bow tie, and a placard. This year, I’m stumped.
I stare at the chaos of my desk. Piles of paper, an empty teacup, my dusty laptop screen. A bowl of paperclips. A small brown cardboard box, not much bigger than a stack of Post-It notes, with plain black text on one side:
FEAR
1 PACK
NET WT. 30 OZS
MADE IN THE USA
It is one of the original hand-stamped boxes from Christopher Cozier’s installation Available At All Leading Stores, shipped down from the gallery in Canada. It has sat on my desk for months, a mordant reminder of my time and place. I summon up iTunes and listen to the 3Canal song.
Buildings filling the skies
And people dying for another to rise
Black gold and crimson tides
Is this Paradise?
I pick up the phone and dial a number. “Chris? It’s Nicholas. What you think of this….”
*
I find a plain cardboard box lying around the house, 16 x 12 x 10 inches--not a cube, but close enough. I spend a couple of days figuring out how I’ll carry it through the streets. Should I strap it to my back? Attach it to a stick so I can hoist it into the air? I don’t want it to get crushed in the intoxicated J’Ouvert throng, and I want to carry it high enough that people can read the words from a distance.
“Put your head inside it and wear it like a mask,” one friend suggests. No, I won’t be able to see where I’m going, and I’ll stifle. Instead I imagine an old-time Fancy Sailor with some papier-mâché extravaganza perched on his head, and two cords dangling in front to help balance the weight.
In the end, the design is simple. I cut an oval into the underside of the box, just slightly smaller than the circumference of my head, and line it with strips of plastic foam. I try it on: the box sits firmly just above my brow, even if I jump around. Next I punch two holes in the underside. I thread in lengths of strong yarn and knot them on the inside. I can grab onto the dangling cords to shift the weight of the box as I move.
Now the text: Chris suggests I blow up a version of his original design, make a colour print, and paste it to the box. I decide on a more low-tech method, hand-lettering the box with a black permanent marker. I haven’t told Chris yet, but I’ve taken liberties with his text. The box now reads:
PARADISE
100 PACKS 10 OZ. EACH
MADE IN CHINA
DISTRIBUTED IN T+T
And in smaller letters:
(APOLOGIES TO CHRISTOPHER COZIER)
*
The history of the Caribbean is a catalogue of trade wars, pillagings, predatory exchanges, bank heists on the scale of whole countries, and bills of sale enforced at gunpoint. Glass beads for gold, blood for sugar, self-respect for tourist dollars, oil for salvation. It sometimes seems there’s nothing we can’t or won’t offer for sale. In what Derek Walcott called “this chain store of islands,” independence only changed the faces of the salesmen, not their tactics.
Cozier conceived Available At All Leading Stores at a particularly anxious moment in recent history. As the wider world worried over the Bush doctrine, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the Axis of Evil, Trinidadians grew obsessed with a spiraling murder rate, garbage-can bombs deposited in downtown Port of Spain, and the latest popular business scheme: kidnappings for ransom. Fear was the hot global commodity, often packaged together with Security in buy-one-get-one-free deals; manufactured in Washington, DC, advertised on CNN and Fox News, traded in capital cities around the world, with special discounts available at the nearest airport metal scanner. Trinidad, always ready to adopt and adapt trendy imports, didn’t lag behind.
Three years later, the market has shifted. Global capitalism as we knew it took a tumble in 2008. American voters replaced Bush 2.0 with a brighter, shinier, and better-designed model. Now the world wants to buy an Obama t-shirt, the one with the new brand name: Hope.
Meanwhile, here in Trinidad, the populace has finally got the invoice for the PNM government’s Potemkin nation project, better known as Vision 2020. The costs are stated in trillions, the fine print seems to be in Cantonese, and the product was broken before it came out of the package. Port of Spain floods and traffic gridlocks in the shadow of half-finished skyscrapers built by imported Chinese labour with imported Chinese materials. They said we were buying Paradise. Well, if this is Paradise, where the hell is Paradise?
*
For three or so hours on J’Ouvert morning, Paradise is an empty space, an absence, in a cardboard box I balance on my head. Watch me, turning into a metaphor for a nation bearing the burden of false advertising and false hopes. If anything and everything is for sale, if art is just another product with varying profit margins, if Cozier can taunt us with the joke of commodified Fear, then I can re-commodify, re-sell, re-brand.
Down Ariapita Avenue and up Carlos Street. Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh. Hundreds writhing and rubbing up and gyrating, bareback and torn t-shirts and busted-up sneakers, rum and paint and around our necks the little plastic tags that prove we paid our $200 to play with 3Canal. Oh-oh. Down Tragarete as the sun rises, up Edward and across Gordon, and eventually we reach the Savannah. Oh-oh, oh-oh, leh we go, oh-oh, to Paradise....
But Paradise is heavier than I expected. At half past eight, by Memorial Park, I slip out of the band and stride off with my cardboard box, now spattered with pretty pink and purple paint. It’s early, but the sun is already too hot.
Photo by Brian Kinzie
Sunday, March 29, 2009
"Everybody wore painted toenails then"
I had read and heard so many malicious accounts of Mrs. Jagan that I was prejudiced in her favour. Although she has suffered much from visiting writers, she received me kindly in her small air-conditioned office. She sat behind a large desk, neatly ordered, on which were photographs of her husband and children. Her bag was on the floor. I thought her far more attractive than her photographs: women who wear spectacles rarely photograph well. A plain cotton frock set off her balanced figure; large hoop ear-rings and red toenails gave her a touch of frivolity which seemed incongruous in that office, the door of which was marked: Hon. Janet Jagan, Minister of Labour, Health and Housing. She looked tired, and her talk was frequently broken by nervous laughter.
-- V.S. Naipaul, The Middle Passage, 1962
Janet ... talked of what I had written about her nearly thirty years before.
"People remembered two details mainly. You wouldn't believe. The first was that I painted my toenails."
I had forgotten that, forgotten the fact, forgotten that I had written it.
"I don't know why that should have caused such interest," she said. "Everybody wore painted toenails then."
"Everybody," Cheddi said.
She said, "I looked at the book just the other day. And the other thing you mentioned that people talked about--I checked that, too--was the book I was reading."
I had forgotten that as well.
"It was Colette. The Vagabond."
That would have made an impression: the boastfulness and shallow sensual vanities of Colette, in a setting so removed: muddy Guyanese rivers, old river steamers. And then, in a distant reach of my mind, the two details together did bring back an impression, rather than an idea, of a trip in the interior with Janet Jagan, when she was minister of health.
She said, "I looked for it among my books the other day. I don't think I have it anymore."
-- V.S. Naipaul, "A Handful of Dust: Cheddi Jagan in Guyana", 1991
(Janet Jagan, 1920-2009)
I had read and heard so many malicious accounts of Mrs. Jagan that I was prejudiced in her favour. Although she has suffered much from visiting writers, she received me kindly in her small air-conditioned office. She sat behind a large desk, neatly ordered, on which were photographs of her husband and children. Her bag was on the floor. I thought her far more attractive than her photographs: women who wear spectacles rarely photograph well. A plain cotton frock set off her balanced figure; large hoop ear-rings and red toenails gave her a touch of frivolity which seemed incongruous in that office, the door of which was marked: Hon. Janet Jagan, Minister of Labour, Health and Housing. She looked tired, and her talk was frequently broken by nervous laughter.
-- V.S. Naipaul, The Middle Passage, 1962
Janet ... talked of what I had written about her nearly thirty years before.
"People remembered two details mainly. You wouldn't believe. The first was that I painted my toenails."
I had forgotten that, forgotten the fact, forgotten that I had written it.
"I don't know why that should have caused such interest," she said. "Everybody wore painted toenails then."
"Everybody," Cheddi said.
She said, "I looked at the book just the other day. And the other thing you mentioned that people talked about--I checked that, too--was the book I was reading."
I had forgotten that as well.
"It was Colette. The Vagabond."
That would have made an impression: the boastfulness and shallow sensual vanities of Colette, in a setting so removed: muddy Guyanese rivers, old river steamers. And then, in a distant reach of my mind, the two details together did bring back an impression, rather than an idea, of a trip in the interior with Janet Jagan, when she was minister of health.
She said, "I looked for it among my books the other day. I don't think I have it anymore."
-- V.S. Naipaul, "A Handful of Dust: Cheddi Jagan in Guyana", 1991
(Janet Jagan, 1920-2009)
Monday, March 16, 2009
Phagwah faces
I was drenched with abeer, caked with coloured powder, and stalked by a six-year-old girl with a pichakaree, and I was glad. My photos from yesterday's Phagwah celebrations at Aranguez Savannah are posted here.
I was drenched with abeer, caked with coloured powder, and stalked by a six-year-old girl with a pichakaree, and I was glad. My photos from yesterday's Phagwah celebrations at Aranguez Savannah are posted here.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
A week in the life: 8 to 14 March, 2009
Read: The first half of Marlon James's new novel, The Book of Night Women; lots of random stuff online
Wrote: emails
Listened: to Horace Andy and Bob Marley; and a bit of Ella Fitzgerald
Swam: at Doctor's Cave Beach in Montego Bay
Hiked: up an old donkey trail from Top Jack into the southern foothills of the Blue Mountains
Flew: back home from Jamaica. My brother was co-pilot of the Caribbean Airlines flight--the first time he's flown me since a jaunt to Tobago in a four-seater 'plane nine years ago
Acquired: a copy of the very first issue of Savacou; a bottle of Busha Browne's planter's sauce
Ate: masala dosa at Pushpa's, with Annie; a whole wheat ackee patty (aka a "yattie")
Drank: Twyman Estate peaberry coffee; a mojito
Gave: Georgia her Christmas present, at last
Caught up with: Roxanne and Nicolas, friends visiting from New York
Felt: great affection for Jamaica
Worried: about all the work piled up on my desk, especially CRB business
Regretted: that I haven't been blogging the last couple of months
Plotted: a trip to Suriname and French Guiana next month
Other significant events: 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Caribbean/Canada regional awards announcement ceremony on Wednesday night
Read: The first half of Marlon James's new novel, The Book of Night Women; lots of random stuff online
Wrote: emails
Listened: to Horace Andy and Bob Marley; and a bit of Ella Fitzgerald
Swam: at Doctor's Cave Beach in Montego Bay
Hiked: up an old donkey trail from Top Jack into the southern foothills of the Blue Mountains
Flew: back home from Jamaica. My brother was co-pilot of the Caribbean Airlines flight--the first time he's flown me since a jaunt to Tobago in a four-seater 'plane nine years ago
Acquired: a copy of the very first issue of Savacou; a bottle of Busha Browne's planter's sauce
Ate: masala dosa at Pushpa's, with Annie; a whole wheat ackee patty (aka a "yattie")
Drank: Twyman Estate peaberry coffee; a mojito
Gave: Georgia her Christmas present, at last
Caught up with: Roxanne and Nicolas, friends visiting from New York
Felt: great affection for Jamaica
Worried: about all the work piled up on my desk, especially CRB business
Regretted: that I haven't been blogging the last couple of months
Plotted: a trip to Suriname and French Guiana next month
Other significant events: 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Caribbean/Canada regional awards announcement ceremony on Wednesday night
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
John Updike, 1932-2009
I ate my sandwich, brewed a cup of tea, returned to my desk, and loaded up the New York Times. The first thing I saw was a photo of John Updike, with his typical air of worldly amusement. I started to smile, thinking there'd be an article or interview I could read before snugging back down to work. Then I read the headline and spilled my tea. Updike is dead.
I'm shocked by how shocked I am. People call Naipaul the greatest living writer of English prose. If by "English" you mean "in the English language", then for my money that was Updike. Until today.
He once famously remarked of Nabokov that he "writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically," which of course is just the way Updike himself wrote.
I almost never sit down before my laptop to write something--anything--without remembering a line from Updike's foreword to Hugging the Shore. The writer begins, he said, by "taking a deep breath, leaning out over the typewriter, and trying to dive a little deeper than the first words that come to mind."
I read the Times headline and the first word that came to mind was "No".
I ate my sandwich, brewed a cup of tea, returned to my desk, and loaded up the New York Times. The first thing I saw was a photo of John Updike, with his typical air of worldly amusement. I started to smile, thinking there'd be an article or interview I could read before snugging back down to work. Then I read the headline and spilled my tea. Updike is dead.
I'm shocked by how shocked I am. People call Naipaul the greatest living writer of English prose. If by "English" you mean "in the English language", then for my money that was Updike. Until today.
He once famously remarked of Nabokov that he "writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically," which of course is just the way Updike himself wrote.
I almost never sit down before my laptop to write something--anything--without remembering a line from Updike's foreword to Hugging the Shore. The writer begins, he said, by "taking a deep breath, leaning out over the typewriter, and trying to dive a little deeper than the first words that come to mind."
I read the Times headline and the first word that came to mind was "No".
Friday, January 02, 2009
Happy new year
So as a new year's present to the nation the Express has fired B.C. Pires, that newspaper's best writer. His final column there appears today.
Sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, insight for insight, B.C. is one of the finest writers at work not just in Trinidad and Tobago but in the Caribbean. He is fiercely intelligent, profoundly sane, a masterful craftsman of prose, and, on top of all that, funny. His column is one of the few things in the daily press worth buying a newspaper for. He is exactly the sort of writer the Express should be seeking out and nurturing. Instead....
The only consolation is that B.C. is now writing a column for the Barbados Nation--what has the world come to, when Bajans have more of a sense of humour than Trinis? And in a fortnight he will launch a new website, www.bcraw.com. So he's certainly not disappearing. Still, it's sad and frankly embarrassing that the Express apparently thinks there is no place for a writer like B.C. Pires in our national conversation.
So as a new year's present to the nation the Express has fired B.C. Pires, that newspaper's best writer. His final column there appears today.
Sentence for sentence, paragraph for paragraph, insight for insight, B.C. is one of the finest writers at work not just in Trinidad and Tobago but in the Caribbean. He is fiercely intelligent, profoundly sane, a masterful craftsman of prose, and, on top of all that, funny. His column is one of the few things in the daily press worth buying a newspaper for. He is exactly the sort of writer the Express should be seeking out and nurturing. Instead....
The only consolation is that B.C. is now writing a column for the Barbados Nation--what has the world come to, when Bajans have more of a sense of humour than Trinis? And in a fortnight he will launch a new website, www.bcraw.com. So he's certainly not disappearing. Still, it's sad and frankly embarrassing that the Express apparently thinks there is no place for a writer like B.C. Pires in our national conversation.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
I've been a volunteer with Global Voices for nearly three years now. Over that time, I've continued to be surprised and encouraged by the energy and enthusiasm and collective brilliance of the GV community, which has broken all kinds of barriers in the ways an international and multilingual association of dozens of people with common interests can work together. I believe strongly in GV's core mission, which is to amplify the voices of ordinary people using online tools to tell their own stories, explain their own realities, share their own concerns. I feel privileged to play even a very small role in this. GV has just launched a fundraising campaign to ensure that this work can continue. (My friend and GV colleague Georgia Popplewell explains more here.) I've happily made an online donation to Global Voices. I urge you to do the same. And if you're not familiar with the extraordinary work the GV community has been doing for the last four years, please visit the GV website and see if it doesn't inspire you to get involved.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
A modest proposal
Heartiest congratulations to national security minister Martin Joseph on achieving this historic milestone: 500 murders in Trinidad and Tobago this year, as of yesterday. Wow. That's well over a hundred more than we managed in 2007. But wait--there's still a whole month to go before the end of 2008, and the police always like to tell you December is a high homicide month. With a little bit of extra effort, if we all chip in, maybe we can make it to--dare I say it--600!
To really grasp the magnitude of the achievement, you have to look at the murder statistics for the past few years. In 2000 we only managed 120. Less than one per day. We did better in 2001: 151. At the end of that year, the PNM won the general election--er, actually, they didn't, they tied with the UNC, but that's a minor detail. The important thing is that they moved into government. In 2002, the first full year under this PNM administration, we saw just a small increase in murders, to 172. We also had another election, the PNM was voted in with an actual majority, and the result: 269 murders in 2003!
The prime minister thought we could do better. He decided it was a matter of giving the national security job to the right man. So in November 2003 he appointed Minister Joseph to the post. He got off to a slow start--261 murders in 2004. Why, that was even less than the year before. But he was new to the job, let's give him that--after all, in 2005 he got the rate all the way up to 386, a new record--more than one per day! 2006 was another rocky year--the rate fell again, to just 368 murders. Senator Joseph must have vowed to never again be so embarrassed. He worked extra hard in 2007--and set a new record, 391 murders. In just one year!
The country entered 2008 with high expectations--which have been far exceeded already, beyond our wildest dreams. 500! In just eleven months! And that was yesterday! By now, as I type this, we've probably reached 501 or 502. I feel--and I'm sure all decent citizens will agree with me--that the country ought to do something special to congratulate Minister Joseph, give him some special kind of gift. And we mustn't forget he didn't achieve this all by himself. It takes special skill to oversee such a thrilling rise in a country's murder rate in such a short time, and also a lot of luck--but it surely also required the advice and support and cooperation of the prime minister and the rest of Cabinet, of the Opposition, of the police and the judiciary and the business sector--of all of us, really, especially the loyal citizens who had the foresight to vote the PNM back into government a year ago. We should all be patting ourselves on the back.
But I still think we should do something special for Minister Joseph. Organise some kind of event to show our appreciation. Maybe a huge parade? Shut down the country so everyone can participate, then descend, all of us grateful and loyal citizens, tens of thousands of us, on the next Cabinet meeting--wearing red, screaming bloody murder, and waving our flaming torches and our pitchforks.
Heartiest congratulations to national security minister Martin Joseph on achieving this historic milestone: 500 murders in Trinidad and Tobago this year, as of yesterday. Wow. That's well over a hundred more than we managed in 2007. But wait--there's still a whole month to go before the end of 2008, and the police always like to tell you December is a high homicide month. With a little bit of extra effort, if we all chip in, maybe we can make it to--dare I say it--600!
To really grasp the magnitude of the achievement, you have to look at the murder statistics for the past few years. In 2000 we only managed 120. Less than one per day. We did better in 2001: 151. At the end of that year, the PNM won the general election--er, actually, they didn't, they tied with the UNC, but that's a minor detail. The important thing is that they moved into government. In 2002, the first full year under this PNM administration, we saw just a small increase in murders, to 172. We also had another election, the PNM was voted in with an actual majority, and the result: 269 murders in 2003!
The prime minister thought we could do better. He decided it was a matter of giving the national security job to the right man. So in November 2003 he appointed Minister Joseph to the post. He got off to a slow start--261 murders in 2004. Why, that was even less than the year before. But he was new to the job, let's give him that--after all, in 2005 he got the rate all the way up to 386, a new record--more than one per day! 2006 was another rocky year--the rate fell again, to just 368 murders. Senator Joseph must have vowed to never again be so embarrassed. He worked extra hard in 2007--and set a new record, 391 murders. In just one year!
The country entered 2008 with high expectations--which have been far exceeded already, beyond our wildest dreams. 500! In just eleven months! And that was yesterday! By now, as I type this, we've probably reached 501 or 502. I feel--and I'm sure all decent citizens will agree with me--that the country ought to do something special to congratulate Minister Joseph, give him some special kind of gift. And we mustn't forget he didn't achieve this all by himself. It takes special skill to oversee such a thrilling rise in a country's murder rate in such a short time, and also a lot of luck--but it surely also required the advice and support and cooperation of the prime minister and the rest of Cabinet, of the Opposition, of the police and the judiciary and the business sector--of all of us, really, especially the loyal citizens who had the foresight to vote the PNM back into government a year ago. We should all be patting ourselves on the back.
But I still think we should do something special for Minister Joseph. Organise some kind of event to show our appreciation. Maybe a huge parade? Shut down the country so everyone can participate, then descend, all of us grateful and loyal citizens, tens of thousands of us, on the next Cabinet meeting--wearing red, screaming bloody murder, and waving our flaming torches and our pitchforks.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Three years later
More than three years have passed already since the Saturday morning in October 2005 when thousands of Trinidadians marched through the streets of Port of Spain to protest the Manning government's failure to deal with spiralling murder and kidnapping rates, widespread public anxiety, and the profound social inequalities behind these.
I was there. I walked from Independence Square up Henry Street, across Duke Street, down Frederick Street to Woodford Square. Outside the Red House three hundred volunteers dressed in white lay down on a long sheet of red cloth, representing that year's tally of murder victims to date. I talked to dozens of people, asked them why there were there, what they were feeling. They were angry. We were angry. It seemed the whole country was finally angry enough to trigger a political revolution of some kind--not a revolution of guns and bombs, but one of responsibility and accountability and democracy.
Less than a month later, on 16 November, the Trinidad and Tobago football team qualified for the World Cup. It was a wonderful thing to experience the explosion of sheer joy that rocked the country that afternoon. Again, I was there. I walked down Ariapita Avenue and Western Main Road through deliriously celebrating throngs. We were happy. We forgot how angry we had been just a few days before. For a few blissful hours, it was wonderful to forget.
We forgot too well.
It is time to get angry again.
More than three years have passed already since the Saturday morning in October 2005 when thousands of Trinidadians marched through the streets of Port of Spain to protest the Manning government's failure to deal with spiralling murder and kidnapping rates, widespread public anxiety, and the profound social inequalities behind these.
I was there. I walked from Independence Square up Henry Street, across Duke Street, down Frederick Street to Woodford Square. Outside the Red House three hundred volunteers dressed in white lay down on a long sheet of red cloth, representing that year's tally of murder victims to date. I talked to dozens of people, asked them why there were there, what they were feeling. They were angry. We were angry. It seemed the whole country was finally angry enough to trigger a political revolution of some kind--not a revolution of guns and bombs, but one of responsibility and accountability and democracy.
Less than a month later, on 16 November, the Trinidad and Tobago football team qualified for the World Cup. It was a wonderful thing to experience the explosion of sheer joy that rocked the country that afternoon. Again, I was there. I walked down Ariapita Avenue and Western Main Road through deliriously celebrating throngs. We were happy. We forgot how angry we had been just a few days before. For a few blissful hours, it was wonderful to forget.
We forgot too well.
It is time to get angry again.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
"If that person's person outweighs his babble...."
You may well want to ask--Is not every person a valid person? And I say: Yes. I say yes only if that person's person outweighs his babble in the war against the reduction of himself, because every word or deed a person utters or commits which fails to recognise or increase the value of another ends up by effecting a reduction of the provenance of the intention.
-- Martin Carter, address at the University of Guyana's eighth Convocation Ceremony, 1974
(This person's person feels slightly more valid this evening after reading some Carter, listening to some Bach, and sipping some Campari on the rocks.)
You may well want to ask--Is not every person a valid person? And I say: Yes. I say yes only if that person's person outweighs his babble in the war against the reduction of himself, because every word or deed a person utters or commits which fails to recognise or increase the value of another ends up by effecting a reduction of the provenance of the intention.
-- Martin Carter, address at the University of Guyana's eighth Convocation Ceremony, 1974
(This person's person feels slightly more valid this evening after reading some Carter, listening to some Bach, and sipping some Campari on the rocks.)
Sunday, November 09, 2008
"Bang on the gates and demand to be heard"
Andre Bagoo, writing in today's Newsday:
“If ever I am aggrieved by anything the media does in the future, I am going to the courts,” Manning said. But why didn’t he go to the courts in the first place? That was and is his right as a citizen of this country and he has exercised that right in the past. Why did the Prime Minister ignore the rule of law by his actions? Instead of driving for miles into Port-of-Spain, why did he not just pick up a phone and make a call to complain? Or write a letter? Or complain to the Media Complaints Council? Or call for the implementation of the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT)’s draft broadcast code. TATT, which is established by an act of Parliament, has included a clear and concise complaints provision in the draft. The Prime Minister is aware of all of these options.
You see, if you have a grievance, there is a procedure. That procedure ensures law and order. For this reason, no citizen of this country, no matter how aggrieved by anything the Prime Minister does, can drive up to La Fantasie, bang on the gates and demand to be heard.
(Maybe we should?)
Andre Bagoo, writing in today's Newsday:
“If ever I am aggrieved by anything the media does in the future, I am going to the courts,” Manning said. But why didn’t he go to the courts in the first place? That was and is his right as a citizen of this country and he has exercised that right in the past. Why did the Prime Minister ignore the rule of law by his actions? Instead of driving for miles into Port-of-Spain, why did he not just pick up a phone and make a call to complain? Or write a letter? Or complain to the Media Complaints Council? Or call for the implementation of the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT)’s draft broadcast code. TATT, which is established by an act of Parliament, has included a clear and concise complaints provision in the draft. The Prime Minister is aware of all of these options.
You see, if you have a grievance, there is a procedure. That procedure ensures law and order. For this reason, no citizen of this country, no matter how aggrieved by anything the Prime Minister does, can drive up to La Fantasie, bang on the gates and demand to be heard.
(Maybe we should?)
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Invalid persons
So on 25 October, just four days after Reporters Without Borders released its 2008 Press Freedom Index--in which Trinidad and Tobago slipped eight places down from our 2007 ranking--Mr. Manning took such visceral offence to the on-air comments of a couple of radio journalists that he swooped down upon the 94.1 FM office, with all the security detail commesse that prime ministerial dignity apparently requires, to make a personal complaint to the station management. The two journalists were swiftly suspended.
What were the vicious and scandalous comments that so roused Mr. Manning's righteous ire? Today's Express helpfully publishes a transcript. They had the nerve to--drumroll--criticise the government's gasoline pricing policy, and mock Mr. Manning's suggestion that cars be converted to run on CNG.
Prime ministerial dignity, it seems, is a delicate and fragile thing. Mr. Manning was "aggrieved", he said. His rights as a citizen were trampled on. Worse, this kind of criticism by the media, Mr. Manning said at a press conference two days ago, could even bring the country to its knees:
... too many of the commentators either in the newspapers, or in the media or on the radio, do not respect our institutions. It is a question of being disrespectful to institutions and authority, and pursuing a course of action that could cause the image of these institutions and individuals to be tarnished in the minds of those in whose interest they are set up to serve, and therefore they could become completely non-effective. That is the risk that we run.
Never mind that many citizens would say the institutions and individuals of the Manning government are already "completely non-effective" at solving the real and urgent problems facing the country. Forget the murder rate, the babies dying in hospitals, the near-permanent gridlock of the country's transport infrastructure, the power outages and water lock-offs, the widespread belief in massive corruption and fraud at high levels of government, the secret new constitution now being drafted that will consolidate executive power, etc etc etc etc. What we really need to worry about, Mr. Manning seems to believe--and he even seems hurt that we don't agree--is a free press.
The Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago and the Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association have rightly--and forcefully--objected. Today's Guardian and Newsday run strongly worded editorials criticising Mr. Manning's stance. Georgia Popplewell at Caribbean Free Radio has weighed in. Taran Rampersad at KnowProSE lists his concerns in an open letter to the prime minister.
But the real question here is even more fundamental than freedom of the press and all citizens' freedom of expression. In a letter printed in today's Express, C. Peters says: "It may do Mr. Manning well to remember that prime ministership is leadership and not ownership." In her column in today's Guardian, Attillah Springer makes a similar point:
We can't imagine ourselves ever as anything else but good slaves, doing massa's bidding. We can't bear the threat of the threat of massa's whip coming down on our backs.... We can't be anything that is not expected of us. Loyal servants, with ready smiles and words of praise.
Mr. Manning's radio station raid is yet one more reminder--as if, Lord, we needed another--that in Trinidad and Tobago democracy is not a practice but a concept, and a concept that we still, forty-six years after independence, do not really understand, much less believe in. In a representative democracy--the form of government we claim--the people's representatives, our members of Parliament, and the prime minister chosen from among them, have the duty of acting in the people's interest. Instead--with the help of a constitution which already concentrates too much power in the executive's hands, a system of tribal politics that is destructive of clear thought, and a succession of politicians enamoured of the trappings of power--we are lorded over by an administration which seems to believe it is the people's duty to act in the government's interest.
Mr. Manning has demonstrated over and again his disdain for criticism--however useful, however well meant--whether it comes from the media, the public at large, or even from within his own party. The 94.1 incident is perhaps not even the most serious example we've witnessed of late. I have no doubt that the Trinidad and Tobago media, backed up by their regional colleagues, will face down Mr. Manning's threats of personal and legal action against journalists by whom he feels "aggrieved". But who among us is facing up to the bigger and deeper crisis, the bankruptcy of "democracy" as a meaningful idea and principle and practice in twenty-first-century Trinidad and Tobago?
Because we are all responsible.
More than three decades ago, Martin Carter summed up his social and political ideal for the Caribbean as "a free community of valid persons."
I have never in my life felt so pessimistic about us merely understanding this ideal, much less achieving it.
So on 25 October, just four days after Reporters Without Borders released its 2008 Press Freedom Index--in which Trinidad and Tobago slipped eight places down from our 2007 ranking--Mr. Manning took such visceral offence to the on-air comments of a couple of radio journalists that he swooped down upon the 94.1 FM office, with all the security detail commesse that prime ministerial dignity apparently requires, to make a personal complaint to the station management. The two journalists were swiftly suspended.
What were the vicious and scandalous comments that so roused Mr. Manning's righteous ire? Today's Express helpfully publishes a transcript. They had the nerve to--drumroll--criticise the government's gasoline pricing policy, and mock Mr. Manning's suggestion that cars be converted to run on CNG.
Prime ministerial dignity, it seems, is a delicate and fragile thing. Mr. Manning was "aggrieved", he said. His rights as a citizen were trampled on. Worse, this kind of criticism by the media, Mr. Manning said at a press conference two days ago, could even bring the country to its knees:
... too many of the commentators either in the newspapers, or in the media or on the radio, do not respect our institutions. It is a question of being disrespectful to institutions and authority, and pursuing a course of action that could cause the image of these institutions and individuals to be tarnished in the minds of those in whose interest they are set up to serve, and therefore they could become completely non-effective. That is the risk that we run.
Never mind that many citizens would say the institutions and individuals of the Manning government are already "completely non-effective" at solving the real and urgent problems facing the country. Forget the murder rate, the babies dying in hospitals, the near-permanent gridlock of the country's transport infrastructure, the power outages and water lock-offs, the widespread belief in massive corruption and fraud at high levels of government, the secret new constitution now being drafted that will consolidate executive power, etc etc etc etc. What we really need to worry about, Mr. Manning seems to believe--and he even seems hurt that we don't agree--is a free press.
The Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago and the Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association have rightly--and forcefully--objected. Today's Guardian and Newsday run strongly worded editorials criticising Mr. Manning's stance. Georgia Popplewell at Caribbean Free Radio has weighed in. Taran Rampersad at KnowProSE lists his concerns in an open letter to the prime minister.
But the real question here is even more fundamental than freedom of the press and all citizens' freedom of expression. In a letter printed in today's Express, C. Peters says: "It may do Mr. Manning well to remember that prime ministership is leadership and not ownership." In her column in today's Guardian, Attillah Springer makes a similar point:
We can't imagine ourselves ever as anything else but good slaves, doing massa's bidding. We can't bear the threat of the threat of massa's whip coming down on our backs.... We can't be anything that is not expected of us. Loyal servants, with ready smiles and words of praise.
Mr. Manning's radio station raid is yet one more reminder--as if, Lord, we needed another--that in Trinidad and Tobago democracy is not a practice but a concept, and a concept that we still, forty-six years after independence, do not really understand, much less believe in. In a representative democracy--the form of government we claim--the people's representatives, our members of Parliament, and the prime minister chosen from among them, have the duty of acting in the people's interest. Instead--with the help of a constitution which already concentrates too much power in the executive's hands, a system of tribal politics that is destructive of clear thought, and a succession of politicians enamoured of the trappings of power--we are lorded over by an administration which seems to believe it is the people's duty to act in the government's interest.
Mr. Manning has demonstrated over and again his disdain for criticism--however useful, however well meant--whether it comes from the media, the public at large, or even from within his own party. The 94.1 incident is perhaps not even the most serious example we've witnessed of late. I have no doubt that the Trinidad and Tobago media, backed up by their regional colleagues, will face down Mr. Manning's threats of personal and legal action against journalists by whom he feels "aggrieved". But who among us is facing up to the bigger and deeper crisis, the bankruptcy of "democracy" as a meaningful idea and principle and practice in twenty-first-century Trinidad and Tobago?
Because we are all responsible.
More than three decades ago, Martin Carter summed up his social and political ideal for the Caribbean as "a free community of valid persons."
I have never in my life felt so pessimistic about us merely understanding this ideal, much less achieving it.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
A Change Is Gonna Come
I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I've been running ever since
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die
'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
I go to the movie and I go downtown
Somebody keep telling me don't hang around
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
Then I go to my brother
And I say brother help me please
But he winds up knocking me
Back down on my knees
There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh and just like the river I've been running ever since
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
It's been too hard living but I'm afraid to die
'Cause I don't know what's up there beyond the sky
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
I go to the movie and I go downtown
Somebody keep telling me don't hang around
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
Then I go to my brother
And I say brother help me please
But he winds up knocking me
Back down on my knees
There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Saturday, September 27, 2008
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