A page from the book, perhaps

God knows if I’ll ever finish it, but after several proddings from various quarters I have begun writing a book. I was originally dubious about the idea because I wasn’t interested in simply writing a history of my life in a chronological retelling; I wanted to do something unconventional. So even to interesting offers, including one from my talented friend Glenn Cheong, son of a Vreed-en-Hoop buddy, I politely stalled. But out of the blue, one day, it struck me that the best way to relate the Dave Martins Tradewinds journey was sitting right in front of me all the time; it was a journal that I had kept, writing by hand, during my travels with the band all over the Caribbean and North America for some 16 years. In this process – a day here, a day there – I had been writing about the experiences I had, the people I met, my own personal wanderings, mistakes I made, values I gained, incidents I witnessed – anything and everything. Some of it was poetry, some of it was just a couple of lines, but much of it was in prose pieces of essay length, on every subject under the sun – ironically similar in concept to the columns I would later write for the Compass newspaper when I lived in Cayman and for Stabroek News here now. It is a pile of material, however, as well a huge task involved in putting it together for the flow of a book, so I may well indeed never finish it. I’m using one piece here below, so from the book that may not come out you at least have one page thanks to Stabroek News. The location is St Vincent in the late 1970s. With the Tradewinds Saturday night fete over, and no outbound flights available, I was on the seashore with my Vincy host, the late Stillie Fraser, watching the Sunday world go by. As we sat there, something began evolving on the sea just off the island that ended up leaving a powerful impression on