There are so many things on the current agenda, both pleasant and deeply tragic, that a public affairs newspaper column provided limited space will always fall far short of comprehensive or adequate coverage.
There is the fact of personal perspective and values with these media things as you know. Yet, I always navigate quickly to the op-eds to witness vast tapestries, the undersides of which almost always appear untidily stitched and patched, but where routinely resides actual meaning.
Today, I could have addressed the fact of our unitary state and positioned it alongside other regional archipelagos within our archipelago – St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, all of The Bahamas, and the several others - all different but representing similar social and political conundra.
We would have called that one ‘The Spill that Binds’ and helped define the “self” in “self-determination” and explored questions of unitary statehood.
Then there are the measured tiptoes around the perimeter of horror and pain that have defied legal technicality in the way a headless corpse requires a final declaration of death by a lingering DMO.
“Genocide” by other names. “Ethnic cleansing” as euphemistic “migration”. “Hamas” for the men, women, and children of Palestine.
Much like “Laventille” and “Caroni” as ethnic code and trigger for action, or no action. “Carnival culture” the same. “Beat pan, but don’t beat books.” A reduction of festival to “song and dance” and its practices as emblematic of terminal ethnic failure.
I am no real fan of the concept of Carnival’s ostensible cathartic or “safety valve” effect. To agree with this would be to concede to multiple civilisational failures.
Creative expression is also not the stuff of rotating seasons. I have explored pan and its value to our country numerous times and need not retrace those steps now.
There will always be those who do not understand what we mean, solely on the basis of either personal aesthetic appreciation or ready resort to a notion of tribal exclusivity.
So, let’s get that one out of the way. Ditto music. This year, the performers sought to address the prejudice of people like me who have gradually stepped away from the scene of what we considered to be serial creative crime. I made it through an entire Calypso Monarch competition after many years, including some of the supposed “good old days.”
I always thought more than 90 percent of it was disposable and have witnessed seemingly endless recycling, even back then. It’s probably around the same ratio now and talk of more frequent “sampling” is easily dismissed.
So, let’s also race past the mas’ – the less said the better, except that emotions surrounding the “playing” of mas’ are entirely valid as a form of self-expression, love, and pride. For example, we in T&T understood “body positive” in all its manifestations long before it became the stuff of an identifiable social cause or movement.
Okay, last but not least. At one time, long ago, I experienced Carnival art in the mas’ camp. I remember well, as a young boy, seeing the Eustace family of St Augustine at work. Follette did Art at school. I followed suit.
The mas’ camps continue to perform the same function – as outlets for the production of superb art and creative mentoring.
Celebrated artist, Jackie Hinkson, has in recent years added yet another perspective on the art of Carnival. Art as both a focal point and backdrop for street theatre and the employment of art as journalistic first and second drafts of history.
In a sense, Hinkson’s ‘Ah Sailing with the Ship’ murals at Fisher Avenue in St Ann’s, which closed on Monday, represented a credible artistic archive of life in T&T spanning decades. When he explains its role, outside of the need to display artistic excellence, any journalist or social scientist would immediately recognise common cause.
This, I thought, was as Carnival an experience as you can get – picong and commentary, pretty and ugly mas,’ pan and more pan, history, and recency, bacchanal and argument, politics and politricks, and love after love.
When we get serious, we will find permanent accommodation for ‘Ah Sailing’ and all other quality visual art the season produces. This calls for about as much space as we devote to naked walls, underutilised community centres, and an extensive list of prestige infrastructure projects.
This is much more than a centrally located Carnival Museum. It is a claiming of public territory by art in the way some major cities yield space to what helps define their past and their present.
See what I mean? Plenty things to talk about.
