An Inconvenient Knight
Black people have a problem; a big, big problem. And Antiguans and Barbudans have it worse; maybe the worst. Somebody says that all black people should get along; and everybody believes that. You believe that? Not me. I know, personally (how else?), a whole ton of my own black people (I mingle with them every, single, solitary, confining day) from whom I will beg God to separate me, if I were unfortunate enough to end up with them in some un-earthly place. Move me Lord; move me; send me back to purgatory; even down to hell (to rhatid!), but get me far, far from this madding crowd of neaga, especially far from some of those so-called, holier-than-thou, Christian ones.
Divisiveness, to a point, is a good thing. Short division and long division must be understood and practised so that addition and multiplication and unity can make sense. It is the mortar of democracy. And yes, it cannot be too thick or too thin. We, Antiguans and Barbudans seem to be very fine long distance runners; and so we carry things, including divisiveness, way too far. But a national hero cannot talk to us like that. Tell us what you want to say; but tell us so we can tell everybody, including school children.
Can it be that this overpowering desire for us to be one, dear, good people, and work together, is forcing us to this very end, by any means necessary? It cannot be. This is why we must believe in real, serious old-time jumbie: We put way too much burden on living, national heroes, forcing them to be super-human in life, when in fact it is post mortem that we see the true national hero. Most heroes must be dead people. And national heroes must be dead, dead, dead; because it demands a long period of time and study, in the permanent absence of the candidate, to truly assess the worth of a national hero.
Being a living, national hero is like going to your own funeral (as if you had a choice). It has no earthly or heavenly, positive value to the national hero. It is purgatory; living hell. It is for the congregation of the living that national heroes become. And moreover, we learn more from the total sum of the errors of our heroes than from the early, primary good they do.
So, if that inconvenient night teaches us anything; it is that, starting with the Father of the Nation (and moving right along), we must look at the successes and failures of our heroes. Regarding their failures is not a recipe to laugh and get giddy and point finger and become even more divisive and reject them. It is to register, by indelibly writing down, the simple fact that they are, were, human. And hence, my dear good people, our national heroes, by definition and purpose, and in the future, cannot be oxymoronically alive, lest we kill them, dead, with the burden of an ox.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
In Memoriam
Dr. Rex Williams
Rex in peace my brother. From Kensington Court to Grammar School; to Jamaica, London and Birmingham. Sadly, I never visited you in South Africa. From Rising Sun Steel Band to fete on campus and off campus. You always opened your heart to the music and the love that true friends share.
I cannot recall you been constitutively angry, even in ('nuff) argument, which almost always ended with a laugh, or a bet, or both.
It is strikingly strange how memories of you, in the twinkling of a tear-drop, travel faster than the speed of light when the sound of death flashes from South Africa to Antigua and Barbuda. It must be some sign of extra-special relativity. Whenever we meet, I always ask you when will you come home. And now you answer me for real (“fu tru”).
But when it is all said and done, and dusted, and the ashes call you back, I want to remember you through the immortality of memories. As Sir Derek Walcott said in reference to calypsonian Spoiler, and so to you I will: I decompose, but I composing still. Rex in peace, my brother. Rex, in peace.
Si (Dr. Lester Simon)
Rex in peace my brother. From Kensington Court to Grammar School; to Jamaica, London and Birmingham. Sadly, I never visited you in South Africa. From Rising Sun Steel Band to fete on campus and off campus. You always opened your heart to the music and the love that true friends share.
I cannot recall you been constitutively angry, even in ('nuff) argument, which almost always ended with a laugh, or a bet, or both.
It is strikingly strange how memories of you, in the twinkling of a tear-drop, travel faster than the speed of light when the sound of death flashes from South Africa to Antigua and Barbuda. It must be some sign of extra-special relativity. Whenever we meet, I always ask you when will you come home. And now you answer me for real (“fu tru”).
But when it is all said and done, and dusted, and the ashes call you back, I want to remember you through the immortality of memories. As Sir Derek Walcott said in reference to calypsonian Spoiler, and so to you I will: I decompose, but I composing still. Rex in peace, my brother. Rex, in peace.
Si (Dr. Lester Simon)
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Reparations
I was appalled and saddened to read the caption for the cartoon on Friday, September 30, 2011. It read, “Imagine Baldwin ’tap ah de Waldorf and den tun round an beg fuh reparations.” Jumping Jehosaphat! Or, as we say here when we are nonplussed, ok then. In the continued spirit of cartooning, let me ask the cartoonist and the vessels that will have made this empty noise, where did they find the money, to get the money, to make the money, to spend the money to build the hotel?
But Langston Hughes said it better in his satirical poem, Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria:
“…..Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stones, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy
(Or haven’t you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bitter bread of charity?)….”
I am forced to register that the historical sociologist, Orlando Patterson, writing in what has been referred to as his profound treatise, Slavery and Social Death, argued that slavery cannot be understood without comprehending the importance of honour. This kindergarten requirement is because slavery is much more that an institution allowing property-in-people. Slavery is “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons.”
And it is to Patterson we must turn to define honour: “True honour is possible only where one is fully accepted and included, where one is considered by one’s potential peers as wholly belonging.” This “wholly belonging” status probably explains why even some of our best and brightest minds want us to, “get over it”; like a dirty pool of water they have left behind; as if water can’t swim. They must disabuse themselves of their migrant, belonging status or be prepared to face ad hoc deportation. Look at the President of America. Look at him.
I can only end by reminding that the first four syllable word all West Indian children, of all races, should learn to pronounce is, e-co-no-mics. That is what brought us here and that is what will take us where all honourable (and not so honourable) citizens of the world should reside. My dear good people, reparations for slavery and its offspring are the diametric, the antithesis, of charity.
But Langston Hughes said it better in his satirical poem, Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria:
“…..Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your hands dug coal, drilled stones, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy
(Or haven’t you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bitter bread of charity?)….”
I am forced to register that the historical sociologist, Orlando Patterson, writing in what has been referred to as his profound treatise, Slavery and Social Death, argued that slavery cannot be understood without comprehending the importance of honour. This kindergarten requirement is because slavery is much more that an institution allowing property-in-people. Slavery is “the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons.”
And it is to Patterson we must turn to define honour: “True honour is possible only where one is fully accepted and included, where one is considered by one’s potential peers as wholly belonging.” This “wholly belonging” status probably explains why even some of our best and brightest minds want us to, “get over it”; like a dirty pool of water they have left behind; as if water can’t swim. They must disabuse themselves of their migrant, belonging status or be prepared to face ad hoc deportation. Look at the President of America. Look at him.
I can only end by reminding that the first four syllable word all West Indian children, of all races, should learn to pronounce is, e-co-no-mics. That is what brought us here and that is what will take us where all honourable (and not so honourable) citizens of the world should reside. My dear good people, reparations for slavery and its offspring are the diametric, the antithesis, of charity.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
All Alone
Hell Is Empty
You woke up late. The brainless alarm clock did not go off. It was set for 6 o’clock alright, but for 6 PM. Who would want to wake up at 6 PM? You must have gone to bed really tired and very sleepy; just the state in which you do not want to set the alarm clock in error and the state in which you need the alarm clock set right. There is a hellish, familiar, alarming ring to this irony.
Many years ago, at a very important conference, you had decided not to trust your alarm clock. You called the receptionist after midnight and, assured that she would be working until 7 AM, you requested a wake-up call at 6 AM. The gentle woman spoke softly, almost somnolently, and suggested that you used the telephone. Shaking your head in certain thought that she must have fallen asleep, you responded in your most caustic and sarcastic tone and questioned why on earth would you rise from your slumber, extend your sleeping hand to an inanimate telephone, call the receptionist, and ask her to wake you up, when you would have been awakened already? When the insistent, decelerated response came that you should kindly use the telephone, with “Sir” prefixed and suffixed, you twisted your imploding head like a confused dog and transferred your daft conversation to the telephone.
When you are late, you either rush to minimise the lateness, or you just give up and carry on as if you were not late, as if it did not matter. Can it be that persons who are habitually late for work (and almost everything else) are the very same persons who used to be late for primary school? And knowing that they would receive a lash and a lashing from the headmaster, they would just amble on like a lamb to be exampled.
Late or not, the bathroom must be engaged, prefaced by a banana and a cup of tea to get your bowels into motion. Bananas in abundance for half the week and then nonexistent. You should not rush through the toilet. In fact, it is one of the best places to read and think. All modern bathrooms have a design flaw. Since you must wash your hands afterwards, why, after doing your do, do you pull up and push down your clothes with your unwashed hands, and then wash your presumably dirty hands? Surely, the wash basin should be within arm’s length of the toilet whilst you are seated on the throne so you can redress yourself with washed, clean hands. Or, maybe you should doff your clothes before using the toilet and don them after washing your potentially dirty hands.
Somehow, you get going on the road. Being late, everything appears magnified. Why is there a sign in the road saying “road” followed by “hump”? If there is a hump in the road, why warm me with the word, “road”. A hump in the road must be a road hump, unless hump by itself refers to a caravan of camels crossing (with pedestrians in saddles). In some countries a “road hump” is called a “sleeping policeman”. That would be too confusing for this country.
Driving along, you decided not to stop and allow the school children to cross the road; not because you are late, but because they are usually so unappreciative. But knowing you always stopped, they sauntered across the road and, with your sudden stop, the driver behind waltzed into you. Figurative road humps, caravans of camels with saddled pedestrians. You then have to wait on the “sleeping policeman”.
You recalled rushing to catch the village bus when you were a child. Granny was trying to sew a button onto your shirt pocket. When the bus passed down the hill you earnestly suggested that instead of sewing one button on, she should take the other button off. Granny must have been a frustrated violinist, the way her disarticulated hands descended on you. Your cousin, following instructions to speak properly since she was then attending big school, in town, threw faith and hope to the wind and proclaimed to the village that the “burse” was coming back. Granny’s arthritic hands ascended into heaven.
You finally arrived at work. You begin to settle down to a day of calm, intelligent discourse. The alarm-clock irony chimes again. The devil had dispatched, by overnight delivery (and without any tracking number), a series of earthquakes and tsunamis that pushed you back all day until you got back home. On the way home you were impeded by two drivers in prolong conversation. Another form of road humps.
When night falls and you reset the alarm clock, you remembered that it was your dream about West Indies cricket that caused you to get up late that morning. After all, with India and Sri Lanka playing in the final match, West Indies still managed to lose.
You are afraid to go to sleep. The day had been so bad, it must be a sign of more bad things to come. You might dream of hell, die in your sleep and end up there. But you decide to sleep nonetheless; not because you are not afraid of dying and going to hell. You sleep very soundly and peacefully because you finally realised that in your moments of tempest, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here”.
You woke up late. The brainless alarm clock did not go off. It was set for 6 o’clock alright, but for 6 PM. Who would want to wake up at 6 PM? You must have gone to bed really tired and very sleepy; just the state in which you do not want to set the alarm clock in error and the state in which you need the alarm clock set right. There is a hellish, familiar, alarming ring to this irony.
Many years ago, at a very important conference, you had decided not to trust your alarm clock. You called the receptionist after midnight and, assured that she would be working until 7 AM, you requested a wake-up call at 6 AM. The gentle woman spoke softly, almost somnolently, and suggested that you used the telephone. Shaking your head in certain thought that she must have fallen asleep, you responded in your most caustic and sarcastic tone and questioned why on earth would you rise from your slumber, extend your sleeping hand to an inanimate telephone, call the receptionist, and ask her to wake you up, when you would have been awakened already? When the insistent, decelerated response came that you should kindly use the telephone, with “Sir” prefixed and suffixed, you twisted your imploding head like a confused dog and transferred your daft conversation to the telephone.
When you are late, you either rush to minimise the lateness, or you just give up and carry on as if you were not late, as if it did not matter. Can it be that persons who are habitually late for work (and almost everything else) are the very same persons who used to be late for primary school? And knowing that they would receive a lash and a lashing from the headmaster, they would just amble on like a lamb to be exampled.
Late or not, the bathroom must be engaged, prefaced by a banana and a cup of tea to get your bowels into motion. Bananas in abundance for half the week and then nonexistent. You should not rush through the toilet. In fact, it is one of the best places to read and think. All modern bathrooms have a design flaw. Since you must wash your hands afterwards, why, after doing your do, do you pull up and push down your clothes with your unwashed hands, and then wash your presumably dirty hands? Surely, the wash basin should be within arm’s length of the toilet whilst you are seated on the throne so you can redress yourself with washed, clean hands. Or, maybe you should doff your clothes before using the toilet and don them after washing your potentially dirty hands.
Somehow, you get going on the road. Being late, everything appears magnified. Why is there a sign in the road saying “road” followed by “hump”? If there is a hump in the road, why warm me with the word, “road”. A hump in the road must be a road hump, unless hump by itself refers to a caravan of camels crossing (with pedestrians in saddles). In some countries a “road hump” is called a “sleeping policeman”. That would be too confusing for this country.
Driving along, you decided not to stop and allow the school children to cross the road; not because you are late, but because they are usually so unappreciative. But knowing you always stopped, they sauntered across the road and, with your sudden stop, the driver behind waltzed into you. Figurative road humps, caravans of camels with saddled pedestrians. You then have to wait on the “sleeping policeman”.
You recalled rushing to catch the village bus when you were a child. Granny was trying to sew a button onto your shirt pocket. When the bus passed down the hill you earnestly suggested that instead of sewing one button on, she should take the other button off. Granny must have been a frustrated violinist, the way her disarticulated hands descended on you. Your cousin, following instructions to speak properly since she was then attending big school, in town, threw faith and hope to the wind and proclaimed to the village that the “burse” was coming back. Granny’s arthritic hands ascended into heaven.
You finally arrived at work. You begin to settle down to a day of calm, intelligent discourse. The alarm-clock irony chimes again. The devil had dispatched, by overnight delivery (and without any tracking number), a series of earthquakes and tsunamis that pushed you back all day until you got back home. On the way home you were impeded by two drivers in prolong conversation. Another form of road humps.
When night falls and you reset the alarm clock, you remembered that it was your dream about West Indies cricket that caused you to get up late that morning. After all, with India and Sri Lanka playing in the final match, West Indies still managed to lose.
You are afraid to go to sleep. The day had been so bad, it must be a sign of more bad things to come. You might dream of hell, die in your sleep and end up there. But you decide to sleep nonetheless; not because you are not afraid of dying and going to hell. You sleep very soundly and peacefully because you finally realised that in your moments of tempest, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here”.
Friday, December 24, 2010
ROUND AND ROUND
The Excursions of Mr. Emmanuel
A One Act Christmas Play
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
Scene: The porch of a small guest house in St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda.
Jonathan: “It has become that time of evening.”
Mizpah: “When people sit on their porches.”
Jonathan: “Rocking gently and talking gently”
Mizpah: “And watching the street.”
Joseph: To see who will take in the non-national girl; big, big with child; and her Antiguan boyfriend.
Jonathan: “And the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees…”
Joseph: You can ignore me and carry on reciting your poem. Even trees are better off than these poor folks.
Jonathan: “People go by; things go by”. Talking casually, I hear he is not the real boyfriend at all. Truth to tell, I hear he cannot have children. Dry; dry. Like an Antiguan drought.
Mizpah: You are always hearing something. You must be a radio station.
Jonathan: No my dear. You are the radio station. I am the listener, the observer.
Joseph: I would take her in, if I had my way in this guest house. She might be a non-national here, but she is a national of somewhere. The man can go and look after himself.
Jonathan: Yes, she is a national of the whole, wide, web of the Caribbean. You and Mizpah and all the rest of you think Caribbean people are going to wake up one morning and start to sing in harmony, “One Love. Let’s get together and feel alright”?
Mizpah: Why not. We are all one people.
Jonathan: For the same reason I cannot take in this wandering couple: It is not in my self-interest. Self-interest is what drives the world. The father of economics, Adam Smith, said so. Part of the money our foolish governments spent on the Caribbean Court of Justice should have been spent buying a few ferries; so that Caribbean people, including your wandering friends out on the street, can travel cheaply up and down the Caribbean and do business. You won’t have to sell Caribbean unity to people. They will be selling it to each other. Self-interest brings simple interest and compound interest, if you can understand my arithmetic. The drug people are way ahead of us.
Mizpah: I understand arithmetic. I am not a judge in an election petition case. The same father of economics also talked about moral sentiments. And why were you so upset with the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago for talking the truth, the same self-interest truth you are now talking about?
Jonathan: Because my dear Mizpah, some thoughts must remain thoughts and become deeds without talk.
Mizpah: The same way you have been dropping hints at me since you turn manager and part owner of this little guest house.
Jonathan: Precisely.
Joseph: Jonathan, I know Mizpah well; very well. If you really like her and have plans for her, you are going to have to wet your hand and wait.
Mizpah: Well put Jo. I could not have said it better myself. But if I were to augment: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”, ….with emphasis, I hasten to add, on the indefinite article before wife becoming the definite article, if I may so articulate myself.
Joseph: This brings me back to the pregnant woman. Maybe we should get them to go to the hospital, since we are not that hospitable here; I hasten to add.
Jonathan: Let then go ahead. Everybody wants to go up to the hospital. Some people go there just to watch television.
Mizpah: What if the baby turns out to be a genius, a Mr. Somebody Important?
Joseph: Yes, suppose he grows up to be Mr. Emmanuel?
Jonathan: Then God be with us. And then we will haul him through the streets (over all the pot holes), string him up on a tree, dig him in his side and give him vinegar to drink. What kind of life is that?
Mizpah: Some people have to die so others may live.
Jonathan: Be careful with that kind of talk. It reminds me of what you said the other day about some people having to be gay so others can say they are straight.
Mizpah: It’s not me who say that. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man….that people are defined by the other.
Joseph: Every time talk about gay and straight comes up, I get confused. Everybody fighting for rights; black people, gay people.
Mizpah: Don’t confuse sex with race. As gay or as straight as you are, you can abstain, even for a day, or an hour. Try abstaining from being black…although some try to.
Jonathan: It’s really confusing. Take all those vicious, male, anti-gay bashers. Many of them are very abusive of women too.
Mizpah: You hit the nail “right in me head”, as an old, idiosyncratic, carpenter used to say. That is why these same men who wantonly abuse women will also abuse passive, gay men who behave like women, have sex with them and still fight against them in public; because they see them as women and therefore objects to be abused. They do not see them as men, like them, at all.
Jonathan: So all that round about talk, all that excursion, is telling me that I have to define myself by the way I treat others, even the ones I don’t like.
Mizpah: Yes. You are known by the company you keep.
Joseph: And by the company you publicly say you don’t want to keep, but are yet keeping, in private.
Jonathan: So I must take in this pregnant stranger, for nothing, just to show how kind I am?
Mizpah: That, my dear Jonathan, is your immaculate perception.
Joseph: I thought it was immaculate conception. But it’s all words. They can mean what you want them to mean. You can make them up.
Mizpah: Like when you were tipsy the other night and asked what you call a man who writes plays under a pear tree and shakes up the literary world? Shakespeare!
Jonathan: And the name of the man who was so happy to win the election petition he started to bawl? Baldwin!
Mizpah: And if more big than big, is bigger, then more less than less, is what? Lester!
Jonathan: And don’t forget the one who talks a lot of sense but sometimes it’s a ton a gas.
Joseph: Alright then. Here’s a new one. So when the whole mass of people in the Caribbean get over the bad-play on the Caribs and Arawaks, the false mathematics of the Federation and come to understand this regional excursion, this wandering and welcoming of the outsider, and take in the other, like that poor, pregnant woman outside; take in people like Christ himself would; what do we, the mass of Caribbean people have?
Mizpah and Jonathan: Christmas! Christmas!
(And they all sang, “drink a rum and a punch a crema, drink a rum”)
A One Act Christmas Play
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
Scene: The porch of a small guest house in St. John’s, Antigua and Barbuda.
Jonathan: “It has become that time of evening.”
Mizpah: “When people sit on their porches.”
Jonathan: “Rocking gently and talking gently”
Mizpah: “And watching the street.”
Joseph: To see who will take in the non-national girl; big, big with child; and her Antiguan boyfriend.
Jonathan: “And the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees…”
Joseph: You can ignore me and carry on reciting your poem. Even trees are better off than these poor folks.
Jonathan: “People go by; things go by”. Talking casually, I hear he is not the real boyfriend at all. Truth to tell, I hear he cannot have children. Dry; dry. Like an Antiguan drought.
Mizpah: You are always hearing something. You must be a radio station.
Jonathan: No my dear. You are the radio station. I am the listener, the observer.
Joseph: I would take her in, if I had my way in this guest house. She might be a non-national here, but she is a national of somewhere. The man can go and look after himself.
Jonathan: Yes, she is a national of the whole, wide, web of the Caribbean. You and Mizpah and all the rest of you think Caribbean people are going to wake up one morning and start to sing in harmony, “One Love. Let’s get together and feel alright”?
Mizpah: Why not. We are all one people.
Jonathan: For the same reason I cannot take in this wandering couple: It is not in my self-interest. Self-interest is what drives the world. The father of economics, Adam Smith, said so. Part of the money our foolish governments spent on the Caribbean Court of Justice should have been spent buying a few ferries; so that Caribbean people, including your wandering friends out on the street, can travel cheaply up and down the Caribbean and do business. You won’t have to sell Caribbean unity to people. They will be selling it to each other. Self-interest brings simple interest and compound interest, if you can understand my arithmetic. The drug people are way ahead of us.
Mizpah: I understand arithmetic. I am not a judge in an election petition case. The same father of economics also talked about moral sentiments. And why were you so upset with the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago for talking the truth, the same self-interest truth you are now talking about?
Jonathan: Because my dear Mizpah, some thoughts must remain thoughts and become deeds without talk.
Mizpah: The same way you have been dropping hints at me since you turn manager and part owner of this little guest house.
Jonathan: Precisely.
Joseph: Jonathan, I know Mizpah well; very well. If you really like her and have plans for her, you are going to have to wet your hand and wait.
Mizpah: Well put Jo. I could not have said it better myself. But if I were to augment: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”, ….with emphasis, I hasten to add, on the indefinite article before wife becoming the definite article, if I may so articulate myself.
Joseph: This brings me back to the pregnant woman. Maybe we should get them to go to the hospital, since we are not that hospitable here; I hasten to add.
Jonathan: Let then go ahead. Everybody wants to go up to the hospital. Some people go there just to watch television.
Mizpah: What if the baby turns out to be a genius, a Mr. Somebody Important?
Joseph: Yes, suppose he grows up to be Mr. Emmanuel?
Jonathan: Then God be with us. And then we will haul him through the streets (over all the pot holes), string him up on a tree, dig him in his side and give him vinegar to drink. What kind of life is that?
Mizpah: Some people have to die so others may live.
Jonathan: Be careful with that kind of talk. It reminds me of what you said the other day about some people having to be gay so others can say they are straight.
Mizpah: It’s not me who say that. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man….that people are defined by the other.
Joseph: Every time talk about gay and straight comes up, I get confused. Everybody fighting for rights; black people, gay people.
Mizpah: Don’t confuse sex with race. As gay or as straight as you are, you can abstain, even for a day, or an hour. Try abstaining from being black…although some try to.
Jonathan: It’s really confusing. Take all those vicious, male, anti-gay bashers. Many of them are very abusive of women too.
Mizpah: You hit the nail “right in me head”, as an old, idiosyncratic, carpenter used to say. That is why these same men who wantonly abuse women will also abuse passive, gay men who behave like women, have sex with them and still fight against them in public; because they see them as women and therefore objects to be abused. They do not see them as men, like them, at all.
Jonathan: So all that round about talk, all that excursion, is telling me that I have to define myself by the way I treat others, even the ones I don’t like.
Mizpah: Yes. You are known by the company you keep.
Joseph: And by the company you publicly say you don’t want to keep, but are yet keeping, in private.
Jonathan: So I must take in this pregnant stranger, for nothing, just to show how kind I am?
Mizpah: That, my dear Jonathan, is your immaculate perception.
Joseph: I thought it was immaculate conception. But it’s all words. They can mean what you want them to mean. You can make them up.
Mizpah: Like when you were tipsy the other night and asked what you call a man who writes plays under a pear tree and shakes up the literary world? Shakespeare!
Jonathan: And the name of the man who was so happy to win the election petition he started to bawl? Baldwin!
Mizpah: And if more big than big, is bigger, then more less than less, is what? Lester!
Jonathan: And don’t forget the one who talks a lot of sense but sometimes it’s a ton a gas.
Joseph: Alright then. Here’s a new one. So when the whole mass of people in the Caribbean get over the bad-play on the Caribs and Arawaks, the false mathematics of the Federation and come to understand this regional excursion, this wandering and welcoming of the outsider, and take in the other, like that poor, pregnant woman outside; take in people like Christ himself would; what do we, the mass of Caribbean people have?
Mizpah and Jonathan: Christmas! Christmas!
(And they all sang, “drink a rum and a punch a crema, drink a rum”)
Thursday, November 4, 2010
WORKIE WORKIE
Give Them Work To Do
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
When I was a little boy attending primary school, I was quiet and rotund and called all sorts of names. I was an easy target for the bullies, until I engaged the superhuman strength of one of my female cousins. Just the mention of her name and that she was from Cedar Grove would send them packing. The sequence of insult, damage or punishment followed by my call and her response, was so remarkably efficient, effective and Pavlovian, I wondered if I had deliberately and gratifyingly provoked them.
One of the bullies and his Gordian knot of infidels would assault poor, little, innocent me, after I had nervously removed from my own anatomical shoulder, a blade of grass he had harvested from nature, transplanted and called his cultivated own. He might box me and I would display a pensive (and expensive) countenance; and then bawl out for my cousin. It was early training at thinking outside of the box.
Some people just love to fight. They fight when they are right. They fight when they are wrong. They fight all day and fight all night long. Some people just love to jump over fences. They will scale high walls with a garland of barbed wire to enter a free function. And, on discovering the function was free, they will bellow mouthfuls of expletives and gracefully exit the very same way they came in.
Someone has to tell some members of our tribe that the old revolution is over. It was televised. A new revolution is on. But they know this. They also know and believe that, based on all the fighting (and jumping fences) they have done historically, they are the only ones who can run things. Or, can it be that the clamour, the chatter and clatter, and promises, if provoked, to batter and shatter, are mere symptoms arising from and disguising the essential heart of the matter?
A revolution is said to be a large change in a short time. Our independent nation, twenty-nine years old, needs another revolution. Call some members of our tribe what you like. Subtract whatever, whichever and whomever from their past leader. And subtraction and division are in order but you know how they are afraid now of mathematics. They will still have a past to reckon with and a future to fight for.
Warriors do die but they die very badly from inaction. Atrophy sets in and gnaws their lives away. Look at the elderly cast aside with nothing to do but think. Thoughts without deeds are like ploughs without fields. Their arthritic hands and feet disappear and they soon go tumbling after.
When the cry goes out for nation building and nation building stands still, it is not because people are not nation builders. We have to understand this very clearly lest we spend stone-heaps of time firing at a target that does not exist. We are all nation builders but we want to build the nation the way we see it. And the way we see it is uniquely different from the views of others, if views they have at all.
We know the answer to our problems. When we had a problem with the snake, we brought in the mongoose. After the snake died, the poor mongoose, with nothing to do, started to feed on the chickens. Pity they did not have a mongoose to eat the first snake, or wish that Adam had been smart enough, and not a vegetarian, to refuse the apple and barbecue the snake instead.
I remember the May 68 protests in France. Two of the graffiti from that era that bear recalling are: “Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking” and “The future will only contain what we put into it now.” Can we imagine what we have to do to shape a prosperous future for Antigua and Barbuda? Let us assume that the others members of our tribe are found guilty of whatever they are accused, and more even. What does it gain Antigua and Barbuda to go through these bruising battles in court after court and end up with national concussion at best or Alzheimer’s at worst? If we can do mathematics inside the court now, surely we can do the same mathematics outside the court and use subtraction to save long division.
In war and in politics, strategy is vital. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected. Before the days of adequate and affordable security I used to contemplate my response to a burglar breaking into our home; through a window perhaps. Might I express sincere gratitude to him for proving right my suspicions about the vagrant window and solicit his able assistance, at a negotiable price of course, in finding the notorious carpenter (probably his friend) who had done such a terrible job installing the windows?
The local political battle is hot and sticky. The country is tired and weary. Combatants are approaching that point when, if provoked, they warn, they will hawk and spit in the beverage for no one to drink. A large change is required in a short time: A revolution. You know their strategy, so calling their bluff will be too easy for your right and might. No. That is not a revolution. That is simply going round and round and round.
Drop your weapons and leave them with theirs. It is not a sign of weakness. It is the maximum strength and the moral high ground of which you boast that force you to compel them to do the same. Throw down the gauntlet of peace and reconciliation and force them to take it up. Give them work to do. Give them really hard work to do.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
When I was a little boy attending primary school, I was quiet and rotund and called all sorts of names. I was an easy target for the bullies, until I engaged the superhuman strength of one of my female cousins. Just the mention of her name and that she was from Cedar Grove would send them packing. The sequence of insult, damage or punishment followed by my call and her response, was so remarkably efficient, effective and Pavlovian, I wondered if I had deliberately and gratifyingly provoked them.
One of the bullies and his Gordian knot of infidels would assault poor, little, innocent me, after I had nervously removed from my own anatomical shoulder, a blade of grass he had harvested from nature, transplanted and called his cultivated own. He might box me and I would display a pensive (and expensive) countenance; and then bawl out for my cousin. It was early training at thinking outside of the box.
Some people just love to fight. They fight when they are right. They fight when they are wrong. They fight all day and fight all night long. Some people just love to jump over fences. They will scale high walls with a garland of barbed wire to enter a free function. And, on discovering the function was free, they will bellow mouthfuls of expletives and gracefully exit the very same way they came in.
Someone has to tell some members of our tribe that the old revolution is over. It was televised. A new revolution is on. But they know this. They also know and believe that, based on all the fighting (and jumping fences) they have done historically, they are the only ones who can run things. Or, can it be that the clamour, the chatter and clatter, and promises, if provoked, to batter and shatter, are mere symptoms arising from and disguising the essential heart of the matter?
A revolution is said to be a large change in a short time. Our independent nation, twenty-nine years old, needs another revolution. Call some members of our tribe what you like. Subtract whatever, whichever and whomever from their past leader. And subtraction and division are in order but you know how they are afraid now of mathematics. They will still have a past to reckon with and a future to fight for.
Warriors do die but they die very badly from inaction. Atrophy sets in and gnaws their lives away. Look at the elderly cast aside with nothing to do but think. Thoughts without deeds are like ploughs without fields. Their arthritic hands and feet disappear and they soon go tumbling after.
When the cry goes out for nation building and nation building stands still, it is not because people are not nation builders. We have to understand this very clearly lest we spend stone-heaps of time firing at a target that does not exist. We are all nation builders but we want to build the nation the way we see it. And the way we see it is uniquely different from the views of others, if views they have at all.
We know the answer to our problems. When we had a problem with the snake, we brought in the mongoose. After the snake died, the poor mongoose, with nothing to do, started to feed on the chickens. Pity they did not have a mongoose to eat the first snake, or wish that Adam had been smart enough, and not a vegetarian, to refuse the apple and barbecue the snake instead.
I remember the May 68 protests in France. Two of the graffiti from that era that bear recalling are: “Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking” and “The future will only contain what we put into it now.” Can we imagine what we have to do to shape a prosperous future for Antigua and Barbuda? Let us assume that the others members of our tribe are found guilty of whatever they are accused, and more even. What does it gain Antigua and Barbuda to go through these bruising battles in court after court and end up with national concussion at best or Alzheimer’s at worst? If we can do mathematics inside the court now, surely we can do the same mathematics outside the court and use subtraction to save long division.
In war and in politics, strategy is vital. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected. Before the days of adequate and affordable security I used to contemplate my response to a burglar breaking into our home; through a window perhaps. Might I express sincere gratitude to him for proving right my suspicions about the vagrant window and solicit his able assistance, at a negotiable price of course, in finding the notorious carpenter (probably his friend) who had done such a terrible job installing the windows?
The local political battle is hot and sticky. The country is tired and weary. Combatants are approaching that point when, if provoked, they warn, they will hawk and spit in the beverage for no one to drink. A large change is required in a short time: A revolution. You know their strategy, so calling their bluff will be too easy for your right and might. No. That is not a revolution. That is simply going round and round and round.
Drop your weapons and leave them with theirs. It is not a sign of weakness. It is the maximum strength and the moral high ground of which you boast that force you to compel them to do the same. Throw down the gauntlet of peace and reconciliation and force them to take it up. Give them work to do. Give them really hard work to do.
Monday, November 1, 2010
ALL TOGETHER NOW
The Enigma of Independence
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I should be ashamed to report that some years ago I asked another West Indian national if we could exchange nationalities. The negative response was not because my friend declined to accept my nationality. It was arguably that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. We are all the same, one West Indian people with similar cultures, politics and problems. I beg to differ.
Can it be the wrong premise that to become a West Indian and embrace a West Indian nationality I have to first become and express my island nationality? As a musician, I am aware that I have to be able to express myself well on my individual instrument before I can join, understand and really enjoy the collective sound of an orchestra.
What then do I do when I find myself in need of West Indian nationality whilst I am trying to find and come to terms with my island nationality? How can I be part of an orchestra when I, like many of the other players, am still learning my basic craft? This is where many of us find ourselves on the twenty ninth anniversary of our independence. As we write and re-write our political and cultural narratives we are arguably the most assorted West Indian nation per square mile.
The struggle for nationality and its expression post-independence is being pitched against the expressions and livelihoods of the masses of West Indians and other nationalities in Antigua and Barbuda. It’s a very delicate battle that can be lost easily on both fronts. And like all battles, strategy is essential for victory.
We are upset over the way many of our guest Caribbean nationals were shuttled and chaperoned here to alter the political landscape. Ironically, many of our politicians have little regard for and pay scant regard to them, except for their voting fingers. We argue a strange logic that says essentially that we can be bribed at elections but they shouldn’t. This is probably a corrugated corollary of the warped philosophy that some parents can beat their children (almost to death) but that these same parents should not even raise their voices at strangers.
Our guest Caribbean nationals are already here, regardless of how and why some of them bang water to come here. In life and in dominoes, you have to play the hand you have. After a while, when you will have exercised and exorcised your point, you have to, as the English say, “get on with it”.
In getting on with it, we have to escape the paradox trap set for us. We cannot afford to decry and debase our guest Caribbean nationals in order to praise and purify our nationalism. If we do, we will end up losing the soul of the very nationalism we seek to find, declare and display. And then we will end up like those who set the trap in the first place; indeed worse. The plotters will laugh and point with giddiness and say, “See, they don’t love Caribbean people. They don’t even love their own selves”.
Good strategy and tolerance in a democratic state inform us that we should contend with ultra-nationalists who blindly see nothing and no one else. We will also have among us our native, Caribbean nationalists who by dint of travel, family, thought or otherwise will tell you that they have long gone beyond island nationalism, to the greater, more laudable, aesthetically enriching and economically rewarding Caribbean nationalism. But what of those, like swing voters, caught between two extremes, in two minds or with no mind on the matter at all?
National identity (and indeed West Indian nationality) begins in the mind and becomes culture when the expressions of the mind lead us to create, modify and inhabit the world around us. If this identity is perceived to be under threat, nationals will rally around it. Many Antiguans and Barbudans fear that we will end up last and lost as we redefine ourselves as the greatest assortment of Caribbean nationals in the smallest place. But rallying around the West Indies will force us to more clearly identify and crystallise who and what we really are. Maybe in doing so we will disabuse ourselves and others of idealistic notions of nationalisms, island and West Indian.
In the orchestra, steelband or other, there is constant dissonance and consonance (musically and otherwise) to remove inertia and give momentum to the music. It is within the orchestra that the true musician really begins to find and harness that individual voice. You are forced to listen to all others as well as your insular instrument, at the same time. This dialectic gives birth, with all its pangs and damns, to the epiphany that you can only find yourself in others. Independence becomes meaningful only when you selflessly accept this enigma.
Dr. Lester CN Simon-Hazlewood
I should be ashamed to report that some years ago I asked another West Indian national if we could exchange nationalities. The negative response was not because my friend declined to accept my nationality. It was arguably that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. We are all the same, one West Indian people with similar cultures, politics and problems. I beg to differ.
Can it be the wrong premise that to become a West Indian and embrace a West Indian nationality I have to first become and express my island nationality? As a musician, I am aware that I have to be able to express myself well on my individual instrument before I can join, understand and really enjoy the collective sound of an orchestra.
What then do I do when I find myself in need of West Indian nationality whilst I am trying to find and come to terms with my island nationality? How can I be part of an orchestra when I, like many of the other players, am still learning my basic craft? This is where many of us find ourselves on the twenty ninth anniversary of our independence. As we write and re-write our political and cultural narratives we are arguably the most assorted West Indian nation per square mile.
The struggle for nationality and its expression post-independence is being pitched against the expressions and livelihoods of the masses of West Indians and other nationalities in Antigua and Barbuda. It’s a very delicate battle that can be lost easily on both fronts. And like all battles, strategy is essential for victory.
We are upset over the way many of our guest Caribbean nationals were shuttled and chaperoned here to alter the political landscape. Ironically, many of our politicians have little regard for and pay scant regard to them, except for their voting fingers. We argue a strange logic that says essentially that we can be bribed at elections but they shouldn’t. This is probably a corrugated corollary of the warped philosophy that some parents can beat their children (almost to death) but that these same parents should not even raise their voices at strangers.
Our guest Caribbean nationals are already here, regardless of how and why some of them bang water to come here. In life and in dominoes, you have to play the hand you have. After a while, when you will have exercised and exorcised your point, you have to, as the English say, “get on with it”.
In getting on with it, we have to escape the paradox trap set for us. We cannot afford to decry and debase our guest Caribbean nationals in order to praise and purify our nationalism. If we do, we will end up losing the soul of the very nationalism we seek to find, declare and display. And then we will end up like those who set the trap in the first place; indeed worse. The plotters will laugh and point with giddiness and say, “See, they don’t love Caribbean people. They don’t even love their own selves”.
Good strategy and tolerance in a democratic state inform us that we should contend with ultra-nationalists who blindly see nothing and no one else. We will also have among us our native, Caribbean nationalists who by dint of travel, family, thought or otherwise will tell you that they have long gone beyond island nationalism, to the greater, more laudable, aesthetically enriching and economically rewarding Caribbean nationalism. But what of those, like swing voters, caught between two extremes, in two minds or with no mind on the matter at all?
National identity (and indeed West Indian nationality) begins in the mind and becomes culture when the expressions of the mind lead us to create, modify and inhabit the world around us. If this identity is perceived to be under threat, nationals will rally around it. Many Antiguans and Barbudans fear that we will end up last and lost as we redefine ourselves as the greatest assortment of Caribbean nationals in the smallest place. But rallying around the West Indies will force us to more clearly identify and crystallise who and what we really are. Maybe in doing so we will disabuse ourselves and others of idealistic notions of nationalisms, island and West Indian.
In the orchestra, steelband or other, there is constant dissonance and consonance (musically and otherwise) to remove inertia and give momentum to the music. It is within the orchestra that the true musician really begins to find and harness that individual voice. You are forced to listen to all others as well as your insular instrument, at the same time. This dialectic gives birth, with all its pangs and damns, to the epiphany that you can only find yourself in others. Independence becomes meaningful only when you selflessly accept this enigma.
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