Seawall things and Culture and Guyana 2020 and beyond..

 

 

 

Hot Saturday afternoon.  Moon is moving, dark clouds hovering over my capacity to do major tasks.

I decide to make a pilgrimage to a new painting which is sometimes covered by the sea. Moving off from liking the virtual Facebook posts, to seeing the thing in real life when I don't really feel like going anywhere.

Professor Vibert Cambridge initiates a discussion about a CARIFESTA 2022. A woman messaged me about  diversity in an event she was organising. A writer messaged me about writing a letter to restart the Guyana Prize for Literature , to figure out a way to stimulate more writing opportunities and exposure for writers in Guyana. A diaspora poet invites me to participate in an interesting poetry project which would have involved me writing a poem - I declined as I aint a poems man.

I worry that I am an impostor and poseur getting asked into things which I only do as 'like' and 'not like'.  

A young economist who plays dholak and sings chowtaal asks me to listen to a podcast interview with a scientist about the importance of  liberal arts in the curriculum.

A musician questions understanding  of culture by another musician. 

It is a hot Saturday afternoon.   Culture on my mind which is clouded.

Culture of community

I filter Facebook so I dodging the politics as much as possible to preserve sanity.  

Nice thing floats up. Seawalls and Beyond. Carl Melville has been cleaning a piece of the seawall area, Dwayne Hackett joins him and soon there is a small community of random people cleaning the seawall area.

There is a painting on the jetty.  Something about this effort, random collective in a time of revenge taking and madness, a culture of community. 

I learned that the sea interacts with this painting, washing up sand, washing away sand from it, covering it with water, then laying it bear.. providing reflection in the water depending on the sun. The painting and the sea and sand around it are not static.

And one day it might disappear when the sea scrubs its out.

Hot Saturday afternoon. Watching a piece of art produced by Community through Nix Butler. 

The conversation on CARIFESTA. People hoping the Government would do something.

The question of CARIFESTA, apparently started with Forbes Burnham 50 years ago inviting writers and artists to Guyana for a Caribbean Conference. Caribbean Community and so. The elders remember the vibes and energy By 2008, Nicholas Laughlin questioned the use of Carifesta. , while channeling the vibes and energy of 1970.

Some of the people commenting on the conversation about Carifesta , it seems that they yearn for the community spirit around that time, of building and creating.  I might be wrong, maybe that is what I am yearning for now in Guyana 2020 after Elections and during Covid.

And wishing that people realise the Governments and politicians have oil now, and they don't really care about culture except to prop up their interests. And instead of one big Festa, time now, to find ways to mobilise and organise and co-create ongoing series of small events,all year round in different places, in which all of us could participate,  which are driven by community, and not by commercial or partisan political interests.  Learn from the Timehri Film Festival, from the Guyana Photographers Group. There are valid reasons why people would be reluctant to organise.

Culture of diversity, difference, unity

 

Diversity in Guyana 2020. Who is responsible for celebrating diversity and difference and dealing with prejudice and discrimination? Thinking of when I used to programme the SASOD LGBT Film Festival; when there was a scoring under columns to make sure equal representation across, genders, across 'race', of removing films, adding films. 

Thinking of our Book Club as we look at 12 months and make sure we have a diverse range. And that diversity was not reading all in one go, but one at a time over a period and that in May 2019. we went to Peepal Tree Gardens in Enmore to talk abouk Peter Jailall's Sacrifice : Poems on the Indian Arrival in Guyana ; and in August 2019 we reach by Cuffy, the 1763 monument, to talk about Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing. (We dreamed of going to Essequibo to discuss Imam Baksh's The Dark of the Sea.. but. the commitment to Geographic diversity is not so strong. ). 

And thinking how I resist tokenism, that it is not just pull a thing from here, pull two things from there and then say 'but we asked and nobody came forward' but instead understanding.. why wouldn't people come forward and participating, and how else can people be involved in their own cultural expressions and be recognised as part of humanity. 

Nix Butler did another mural to George Simon. The culture of inter-generational honouring. I don't know if younger artists have done their tributes to the ones now gone, in this public way.  My memories of George Simon's work are related to the hinterland rivers, forests, landscapes.

The mural is between Dubai 360, which might or might not be part of the mural. Dubai 360 was on the stand opposite the mural.

In the clear afternoon, there is a man urinating in the wind on the stones not far from the Demerara Rebellion monument. I see two police officers and say, officer officer look a man exposing himself. Officers don't take me on, and the man finishes and goes back to sit down and enjoy the sea breeze and so.

Culture of Guyana as one large urinal, one toilet... not far from the police I catch a whiff of ganja smoke. I wanted to go ask the guys who smoking what they thought of the monument and the murals  and the urinal, but I didn't get to inhale enough ganja to summons up that courage.

Culture of resilience, and beyond resilience

  

The green fronds rising out of the grey rip rap is a surprise. The sea must have washed up a coconut which lodged in the boulders. The plastic bottles etc are there as a reminder of the diversity of citizens.. some of us who want to live in a beautiful Guyana with all its lovely rainforests and so on, and others who have no problem living in a rubbish dump. Cultural diversity.

We never talk about resilience in Guyana and how we do resilience and how we build the culture of resilience. We move on from madness to madness, numb ourselves, celebrate the individuals who have come through hard times. 

If anything about culture discussions and so in 2020,  is how we discuss ways of being resilient, not just surviving, but also thriving, not individually , but collectively.  

While figuring out ways of doing this and not limiting the freedoms of those who want to urinate in the wind and throw their rubbish anywhere they please.