So It Go

A close friend sent me a note recently that I’m passing onto you.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a column entitled ‘Knowing the fine fine‘ on the point that to understand the why and the how and the where of conditions in a country you have to live there a long time in order to begin to see all the factors, many invisible, that are operating on the particular aspect that’s bugging you – garbage in town; speeding minibuses; shoddy workmanship, etc.

A young man from West Demerara who takes care of the electrical problems in my home was pointing out to me this past week that I should get rid of the half dozen or so fluorescent fixtures in the place.

Useful as they are, dictionaries are inadequate when we are trying to define certain intangibles. 

One of the striking things about the Guyanese culture is our disposition to improvise, to use our ingenuity, to use our wiles, to try and overcome. 

In the early 1990s, during the ‘mo fyah’ disturbances, a prominent Guyanese political figure called me in Toronto with the suggestion that I should write a song to help calm tensions.

Every now and then you run into people who are true masters at what they do.

Out of nowhere, sometimes from a complete stranger, sometimes from someone who knows you intimately, a chance remark will come to you and set you thinking about a subject you had not previously considered.

I approach the columns I write for Stabroek News appreciating that, among other things, they are likely to trigger discussion.

Approximately 15 years ago yesterday, a young man from Berbice arrived at Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Within a month or so of returning home to live, I found myself in a well-known lawyer’s office in town to have a document notarized. 

I’m driving with this Canadian lady heading for “cottage country” in Northern Ontario.

This started with a comment from my friend Henry Muttoo, the theatre whiz, following a piece of poetry by Louise Bennett I had sent him.

I hate to travel.  When Tradewinds became popular in 1968, we were doing a lot of travelling. 

When I formed the Tradewinds band in Toronto in the late 1960s, we played frequently at a small bar downtown on Yonge Street (the main drag) called the Bermuda Tavern. 

I’m a big fan of the American evangelist Bishop T D Jacques. 

About four years ago I travelled from Cayman for the funeral of my friend Bobby Clarke who had died in Castries after a tough two-year battle with cancer.

Hardly a day goes by without someone, in a private gaff or a public forum, waxing eloquently about “the good old days,” and how great things were then, and how unfortunate our young people

This may surprise you, but it has taken me a long time to realise how deeply my songs have penetrated the Caribbean culture generally, and particularly that of Guyana. 

The progression of the prominent, the ones who appear before us as elected politician, social activist, business tycoon, etc, is intriguing for the different stages in the professional lives of these individuals.