Listening to Stanley Greaves in a time of violence

Extract of NAILS by Stanley Greaves, 1984 available on Stabroek News

 Listening to Stanley Greaves
 

On the morning after police killed Ronaldo Peters and on the morning when police killed Keon Fogenay called 'Dan' I was listening to Stanley Greaves respond to questions in his usual generous, warm way , explaining things in simple language that I could understand.

 Moray House Trust had organised "Ask me anything … about the creative arts: Stanley Greaves, and that was the spirit of the discussion, that kind of open exchange which is nurturing. I liked Nails, which I saw for the first time , in the newspapers on the Sunday. Something about reusing bent nails, and using them not discarding.

On the morning the police killed Ronaldo Peters and on the morning when citizens were enraged at the police explanation of why they killed Ronaldo Peters and when police then killed Keon Fogenay called 'Dan' I was in a nice online bubble, being in this other Guyana where people were accountable and could gaff about things. 

And I did not know about the police response and the anger because a woman and I were talking about the legacies of violence, and about healing from legacies and laughing at other things like her request to me to go listen to Stanley Greaves and write about it.

But neither of us knew about the violence in Linden as we connected in our healing bubble , and my promise to go and write mean I had to hustle up  to listen to Stanley Greaves who has been sharing his paintings and poems in Stabroek News after he felt he did not need permission from  the Minister and not the Curator of the Art Gallery to to share his paintings for his 90th birthday.  Exhibitions usually take time to plan and so on in proper places and technocrats manage art galleries and so on, as Janet Jagan must have envisioned when she created Castellani House. 

 But Janet Jagan and Cheddi Jagan are dead , very dead and when the woman and I were in our healing bubble I did not expect to write about police killing citizens. I do not know if the PPP intends to keep killing the Jagans in every cuss out and buse out against citizens who continue to imagine Guyana as a healthy place where we could all thrive.

The day before I was listening to Stanley Greaves share generously, I engaged with other public servants who could not perform professionally and who felt trapped because the politicians who sent the police with live rounds to Linden to kill Ronaldo Peters and Keon Fogenay called 'Dan' know everything about everything including how to ensure that after police kill citizens, they do not stop.

I did not really think that after Linden 2012 when police killed Ron Somerset, Shemroy Bouyea and Allan Lewis, that the police would go with live bullets to kill more citizens who go out of control even as other citizens ask them to be 'peaceful'. 

But while listening to Stanley Greaves I found out that the politicians who nurtured the police in Linden 2012 had not really changed anything , and I as I moved beyond the safe beautiful zoom bubble of what Guyana could be, to the other window of what Guyana is, Stanley Greaves talked about his spirituality, about Universal Consciousness.

Universal Consciousness

And Stanley Greaves talked about religion and spirituality. About going to a catholic school and a librarian at the National Library calling the Headmaster to say that he and his friends were reading 'adult' books some of which were on the Vatican ' Index Librorum Prohibitorum".  He talked about 'reading as an adventure'. And the discussion on books led to discussion about religion.. he said he is not religious as he explored ideas of the Zorastrian duality of good has to exist with evil, and about being confused by Hinduism even as he talked about realising that there are connecting energies everywhere, he called in Universal Consciousness which some Hindus might know as Brahman.

Books

What books do the police read , did they read the same books as the people they kill?  What books did the men who went to rob the Chinese supermarket while fellow citizens were raging and mourning and the security guard had to resort to killing them ? What books did the other security man read who went and killed the woman who broke up with him on the day after the police said they killed a man who they suspected of rape? 

What is the spirituality, what books did the politicians who know everything and want to control everything including how Stanley Greaves must share his work in the public space with all of us, what is their spirituality, what are their books?

Did Karl Marx and co say police must kill people, and that the politicians who know nothing must alienate and dominate over those who have knowledge ?

Looking at, looking in

Stanley Greaves talked about making things with sculpture and his 'painting' as making. He talked about nature. He talked about the impossibility of one Caribbean (and maybe Guyanese ) identity given all our different origins and experiences.. talking about this difference while talking about the energies and Universal Consciousness which I think connects us across the differences.

He talked about learning as an artist to not only 'looking at', but 'look in' ..

Many of us now can look at the videos of the violence, the man shooting his wife to defend the manhood of the other men who abuse women,  and her son standing in her blood, the videos of the killings and the protests and the murders. 

Many of us look at, easy to look at , two dimensions really .. videos, facebook posts, and the rantings and ravings of the politicians whose rantings are showing deep insecurities and fear. 

 And I know I am one with all of them as Stanley Greaves had introduced as Universal Consciousness.

But where do we get a chance to look in, look in and see how we are stuck in this violence all the time, this trauma?

Are we waiting for permission from those who are thriving in this chaos , the people who felt they had to give permission for Stanley Greaves to share his work with us, are we waiting on them before we could realise this Universal Consciousness which would transform how we thrive in our differences ?

Or do we have to continue to live with this violence, looking at videos, raging while not being able to look in..cuss up either PPP or PNC or both who are also 'One' to recover, to heal? 

To not have to wait to hear when police will kill another citizen, or any other citizen kill or harm another one.