BY Jackson Burnside III

“I can’t see anything,” he thought. “If I see nothing, that means I’m stupid! Or, worse, incompetent!” If the Prime Minister admitted that he didn’t see anything, he would be discharged from his office.
Hans Christian Anderson

First I must thank both Nicolette Bethel and Ward Minnis for the opportunity to participate at this level in the ongoing debate about A Day of Absence. For some time now I have been following these two scholars on their blogs, on Facebook, and in e-mail discussing a variety of issues particularly important to the culture, arts and heritage of our country. Ward has been in several places including Canada and Eleuthera, and Nicolette has been at the Ministry of Culture and the College of The Bahamas and Shakespeare in Paradise. What is fascinating today is they could be anywhere and still be here, getting in the business of “Who we are and What we are all about”.

Both of these Artists have managed to draw me, and many others, into their musings on the state of Art and Culture in our Bahamas, and they have managed to maintain a mature level of discussion while throwing the kind of blows intellectually that would have knocked out the toughest head-fellas back in the days of the Cinema on East Street. Now you must understand that all this is happening on the Internet which opens up The Bahamas to expose ourselves to the world, to give and to receive, consciously and subconsciously. We seem helpless to control the volume of the information we are exposed to, and we seem to accept and wait for our opinions of ourselves and our worldview to come to us from those outside to whom we have given the authority to define us.

We did not always have the Internet, obviously. Less than twenty years before Independence in 1973, we thought that television was the limit of technological innovation and we accepted the intelligence came from Ed Sullivan and Walter Cronkite. Before television we were connected to the radio. Even before electricity was inside the house, we turned on battery charged radios on schedule to listen to the BBC and ZNS to hear the news and special stories.

We have always been fascinated by stories. Before the modern broadcast technologies, stories were in books or were ole-stories in the minds or in the traditions of families and communities. The stories that were repeated were those stories that served a purpose to entertain and to pass down survival skills to the younger generations to adapt to these flat, barren, narrow rocks that we only saw as wasteland. These stories, written, spoken, and performed, formed an important part of our rich heritage.

Before the radio, when the stories came to us on the boat, we made every new story a part of our “ole-story”. We made this “conch salad” or peas soup” with everything from the Bible stories to the Royal Reader to the Oxendale and the Bellas Hess catalogues, (before the Sears and Roebuck catalogue). Families built the fire on the three rocks and roast corn, and told Bookie and Brer Rabbie stories, and speerit stories to scare the children to sleep and teach them how to survive in hazardous environments. Programs and Recitations in church halls and Lodge Halls throughout the land guaranteed that folk lore and traditions were repeated and impressed into the minds and hearts of the communities. Our people travelled and returned, and others visited and stayed, all bringing influences which we added to this mix-right-up concoction we call our Bahamaland.

Reading stories from books and reciting from memory were important to who we were and what we were about. We looked forward to our teachers and story time.  I can hear Naomi Blatch now reading from Hans Christian Anderson one of my favourite stories, The Emperor’s New Clothes. This was the tale of the vain Emperor who loved to dress in fancy clothing, who “get swing” by two swindling tailors who were full of self praise.

These scoundrels told the Emperor they were great “Artists” and claimed they invented a fabric so light and fine that it appeared invisible. In fact, they said if anyone could not appreciate its quality, this cloth would be invisible to them because they were too stupid and incompetent to see its beauty. The Emperor, his Prime Minister, and all of his Ministers were fooled by these scoundrels, and the Emperor provided a loom, silk and gold threads, and large bags of gold from the public treasury to sponsor the work of the scoundrels. In addition to getting new clothes, the Emperor and members of government would soon learn which of the people were stupid and incompetent.

Well you all know how the story went. The Emperor and his men were too embarrassed to admit they did not see the cloth and the clothes. They marveled at the beauty of the cloth and the design of the costumes, and because the Emperor and his court were so obviously impressed all of the spectators in the streets praised the work of the two crooked tailors as the Emperor strutted proudly on parade.

A child, however who had nothing to gain from the Ministers and the Emperor could only see things as his eyes showed them to him.”The Emperor is naked”, he cried. “Fool” his Mother screamed. “Don’t talk nonsense!” she shouted as she grabbed his arm and led him away. But the damage had been done, and the sip-sip spread all through the crowds.

This story continued to play in my mind as I read the exchange between Nicolette and Ward. Both Scholars agree that, at times, the Emperor is naked. The swindling tailors, like many who call themselves “Artists” in our country are simply foolin’ most of the people most of the time, and their invisible product is expected to be appreciated by the majority of the people. These so-called “artists” are amongst us in every aspect of our lives, the Government, the Church, the Teachers, the Unions, and indeed the Arts, asking us to see what is not there.

The most important role in the old fable is given to the child. The young boy is the first to see what he’s lookin’ at, providing that badly needed critique of the work of the Artists. Ward reminds me of that critic, who seems to say that the clothes of the Emperor were full of holes even before he met these so called artists. He says the cloth is badly woven, and the design of the garments is not elegant. Ward says, “We artists in this country have not only had days of absence but we have had years, even decades, of absence”. While I cannot agree fully that Art has been so absent, I support the spirit of his statement.

Ward’s role as the “Critic” is a badly missing character in our national story. Without “the children” courageous enough to criticize the “elders” in strong but respectful and honest critique, we will never have the consistent production of Art at the standard of world class. We like to say “We are the Best in The World”, yet we turn around and want to be like heroes from someplace else.

Like us, Hans Christian Anderson took stories from other cultures and adapted them to his own.   Anderson’s story is an old Arab and Jewish story from North Africa that found its way to Spain, then Germany, and Anderson learned it in Denmark and used it to create his classic. So you will excuse me if I act as if this story, from someplace else, is my own. This works for me because I see the creativity of the Emperors cloth and the design of his fashions as ART, which is the expression of the people’s spirit. I see the behavior of the Emperor, his Ministers and the people as CULTURE. Culture, for me is simply “What” we do, “How” we do, and “Why” we do all the things we do. Heritage, then, is the “Story” of the people and their place, expressed in tangible and intangible forms.

To tell you the truth, I too was confused when Nicolette invited Artists to make themselves present in “A Day of Absence”. I agree with Ward when, in praise of his former professor, he says,

I still believe that the Bahamian Community is in need of something like this though, and if we begin a dialogue on what we really lack, maybe we can eventually get at what it is we really need.

Is the Emperor naked? Is Art really absent? Nicolette makes it abundantly clear that,

We Bahamians have cultivated the habit of supporting certain cultural endeavours simply because they are produced by Bahamians, regardless of quality. We have suppressed our critical faculties. We have come to expect sub-standard work from Bahamians, so much so that the very adjective “Bahamian” stands for mediocrity.

While this sad case of affairs is undeniable, it is also true that there is an abundance of individuals and organizations that, in spite of the culture of the “Emperor and his court”, produce diverse expressions of the highest standards.

This is a blow that Nico strikes on the defensive in her “Second Response” to Ward’s stinging critique. She asks two questions, how good are we? And, how do we get better? She also argues that most of us choose to present the culture of mediocrity to make the argument that we are not that good. She turns that argument on itself and begs us to focus on the positive. There is no argument from any of us that for a country of our size we have produced an enormous volume of excellent Artwork of all kinds.

Ward argues, however, that when we think of “the world of Art”, we are thinking mostly of artist generally from outside our borders. This is a very important issue, in his mind, because he says,

The reality is that most, if not all of the images and products that filter our way from great foreign cultural creators, such as the United States, have been produced by professionals who have already been paid. To ask the right question therefore, is to ask, what would the Bahamas be without Bahamian Art?

I agree with Ward that the metaphor of absence must be questioned. Ward says. “We do not need any more absence. We need to make our presence felt”. We particularly need to make our presence felt to ourselves, so that we, Bahamians, would not automatically conclude that to get quality creative production or design, we need to look outside of ourselves.

Clearly, Nicolette agrees with Ward also when she says, “The Day of Absence is not about withdrawal, about begging, about making money or getting jobs: it is about respect”. Ward questions, “Are all Bahamian Artists worthy of respect?”, and says, “The simple answer is no”. He asks, “Are we (the artists) really trying to reach the people, or have we been aiming at something else?” I believe this searching interrogation underscores the need for more dialogue and institutions in our nation to place Art and Culture in the centre of the public discussion and the national social and economic debate.

If “culture” is everything that we do, can you imagine “a day where the undesirable and underdeveloped aspects of our culture are absent? Can you imagine “a day without tiefin, a day without schemin’, a day without liein’, A day without killin’”?  The “Emperor and his Ministers”, as well as the people in the public square seem satisfied with this status quo. Less than a generation ago, we declared, in our ignorance, that we have no culture. Then, we began to say that regatta, or junkanoo, or the Dundas, or the orchestra was our “culture”. We were confused then and continue to be confused now, about what culture is, what Art is, or who Artists are. We hate to admit our ignorance, or say “we do not know”. But it is this very confession of ignorance that is the essence and the beginning of learning. Admitting our ignorance is at the foundation of the institutions that ask the questions that lead to new solutions and give our nation guidance to go forward.

Can you imagine a Bahamian environment where quality of life is paramount? Imagine if you will that everywhere you turned in The Bahamas there was proof that Fashion, and Film, Fine Art and Craft, Monuments and Museums, Music and Dance, Literature and Theatre, Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Homecomings and Festivals, Public Transportation and Open Space were all of the highest quality. Imagine if there was evidence of Bahamian Art and Cultural excellence all around you and the quality of the design environment was given the highest priority in our nation.

In her Curator’s Note of Volume 6 of the NAGB Newsletter, Dr. Erica James states:

More and more I have come to accept this recession as a rite of passage for The Bahamas, an indication that the nation’s extended childhood is over. Is it possible to seek vision in difficult times?  Will these trying days host the moment when we are forced to learn the presence and value of our culture, accept the complexities of our identity and take ownership of our lives, our communities, our societies, and harness the ability to write our own stories?… Can we accept the fact of our limits, yet embrace the limitlessness of our imagination and determine nevertheless to insist on the excellence we are fully capable of?

Unless we are confident enough like Nicolette Bethel to offer new solutions, and courageous enough like Ward Minnis to question the obvious, we will continue to wallow in our ignorance believing that artistic expressions alone make up culture, crippled by our fear to speak truth to power. Art hopefully places a mirror in the face of culture, and causes us to see what we lookin’ at when we look at ourselves. This is particularly critical in our economy, where our only public focus appears to be “winning on Bay Street”, or on the pretty scenic post card, and the well trained smiling servant faces, and on making money.  We hide the ills, the pains, and the social and intellectual poverty of our society for fear that we might offend or upset our almighty tourist trade and dollars.

So, we continue to hold “the parades”, in all aspects of our social and economic life, where the Emperor is naked, and we are satisfied when the children’s illustrations from somewhere else show that the Emperor at least has on underwear.  We look at what the Emperor is wearing on Bay Street and we marvel, because we do not want anyone to think we are incompetent or stupid and we go back over-the-hill, out East, out West, and to the Deep South, and we holler “Dey rob us!”

A Comprehensive Critique of Nicolette Bethel’s 2009 Day of Absence.

Out of absence let the new day be born. — Helen Klonaris

The response to Dr. Nicolette Bethel’s Day of Absence held for the first time on February 11, 2009, was nothing short of amazing. I had almost lost faith in the desire of Bahamians to band together for a cause, and yet here they were banding. Nicolette deserves to be commended because she did something — she threw an idea into the void and the response to that idea proves conclusively that we, as an emerging art community, need something like this to rally around.

Nicolette Bethel and I have been friends since she taught me English 120 at the College of the Bahamas in 2001. When I was in Nassau this past January gathering research for my Masters thesis she suggested that we get together and share a coffee. We eventually met at the Starbucks across the road from the College of the Bahamas. At the time I had only briefly heard about her Day of Absence, I had skimmed over the press release cum manifesto and I thought then, much as I do now, that the idea had potential. Over lattes and tea we talked about her upcoming day, the need for art in society, the inescapable nature of design in every aspect of our lives, and the fact that a place like the café in which we sat, was what it was, in large part because of the art.

The warm and fuzzy feelings left me once I read what had been written about the Day of Absence more carefully. The more contemplated the ideas as presented, the more I was bothered by the incongruities in the project. This essay is thus my odd way of congratulating Nicolette on a job well done while taking her to task for ideas that are at best half-baked. Her Day of Absence clouds over and conflates many different and unrelated ideas while advancing an awkward historical agenda and a cumbersome theory of cultural development. It is political and apolitical, about something and about nothing, clear and blurry, all at the same time. I still believe that the Bahamian art community is in need of something like this though, and if we can begin a dialogue on what we really lack, maybe we can eventually get at what it is we really need.

A World Without Art

I’m asking us all to stop — for a day, for a moment even, and imagine our country, our world, if we woke up one day and all the artists and cultural workers had disappeared. — Nicolette Bethel

This Day of Absence requires us to think about a world without art. Can we imagine our world without artists? The around-the-world-ness of Nicolette’s opening plea is, admittedly, quite compelling and gives her proposal a certain new-age sexiness. Everyone can agree that without art the world would be a pretty dull place. Unfortunately this broad net also makes the fundamental argument meaningless. Yes, it is true that everything we touch, even a mug at Starbucks, has been designed by someone. However, this generalization covers over a very important issue for Bahamian artists. (I think it is important to underline the word to remind us who we are really talking about here.) The reality is that most, if not all, of the images and products that filter our way from the great foreign cultural creators, such as the United States, have been produced by professionals who have already been compensated.

I do not feel the need to conduct a sit-in for American movie directors; or Swedish industrial designers; or the graphic designers from some ad agency. The street graffiti artist working feverishly under the bridge in some foreign city is another story, but we never see her work here. Most of the art that the Day of Absence invites us to imagine our world without has a price on it, and that price has already been paid. And if you really boil it down, our money has gone, and is going, to pay that price. Let’s not even touch the issue of the cultural imperialism that these anonymous artists from abroad are perhaps unwittingly promoting.

Once we recognize that the artists for whom we were demonstrating have already been paid, with some of our money no less, and we ask again, “how about a Day of Absence?” the underlying absurdity becomes plainly evident — we are asking the wrong question. To ask the right question is to ask what the Bahamas would be like without BAHAMIAN artists, and this is a lot like asking what 100 Jamz would sound like without BAHAMIAN music. You know the answer to that question don’t you? We artists in this country have not only had days of absence but we have had years, even decades, of absence. The Bahamian public is already aware of what their life would look like without Bahamian artists; it is the life they now lead.

Bahamian poet, Maelynn Seymour-Major, expressed the situation to me like this:

I think the public gets the absence. We [the artists] are absent to them. We exist in the abstract. Even Ronnie Butler and KB and John Cox. Those of us who have no names aren’t even abstract. We are ether.

This is the doubtless the reason that Nicolette never articulates a true Day of Absence. She instead describes it as

a symbolic day, … where artists can come together in person or in cyberspace, and blog, email, sing, act, perform, speak, or whatever they want to do, in honour of art and artists themselves.

I will say it plainly: it is necessary for Bahamian artists to come out and do something on the Day of Absence because if they stayed home one day, or even a whole week, no one would notice.

The metaphor of absence is in error. We do not need any more absence. We need to make our presence felt. The dissonance at the centre of the proposal leads to more explaining than is necessary, and the point gets lost. Most important, the metaphor misses the problem that we, as an artistic community, have. Ours is not simply an issue of being taken for granted; the roots go far deeper than that. A day of hand-holding isn’t going to get us where we need to go.

On February 11, 2009, the first Day of Absence was observed in the Bahamas with the above tag-line. This event was the brain child of Nicolette Bethel, prominent Bahamian anthropologist, scholar and playwright. With a demonstration at the College of the Bahamas and numerous blog posts, interviews and radio appearances, the Day of Absence captured the imagination of the Bahamian arts community.

On December 31, 2009, Bahamian writer and artist Ward Minnis, (me, a.k.a. mainslave) will release a comprehensive critique of the Day of Absence on this website, and also an abridged version at Bahama Pundit.com. In the essay I question many of assumptions upon which the Day of Absence was based, and while I agree that it filled a need, I argue that it should not continue in its present form.

On January 12, 2010, at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas at 6:30pm, the merits of both the Day of Absence and its critique will be debated between Nicolette Bethel, myself and the Bahamian art community at large.

What is the role of the artist in Bahamian society? What part, if any, should the government play in the arts? Have Bahamian artists been absent from the wider society?

What do you think?

Way back in 2003, I presented my views on Bahamian national identity at a wonderful little conference held at The College of The Bahamas. In my presentation I used the metaphor of the “Bahamian-detector” to describe the process we go through to determine what is true true Bahamian and what isn’t. My problem, then and now, is that we are slowly wiping ourselves out of existence.

See, national identities are contrary and complex things. They are imaginary entities that exist in our heads that have tangible real world effects. If I had to define what it is, I would say that national identity is the sum of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. In the process of figuring out what tales are to be told, both the teller and the audience are brought into being. Of course, this also means that the stories are constantly changing, that there is eternal conflict over which story should be told and when, and the audience isn’t sure, from one minute to the next, if any of it is meant for them.

The Bahamian national story, and the concept of self embedded within it, has gone through some dramatic rewrites in the last fifty years. Before 1967, the rulers were the minority white population and they defined us as British-not-American and not-West Indian. After 1967 we were told that we were Black-and-British-but-not-American and-not-West-Indian. After independence it turned to Black-and-kinda-British (maybe we’ll just keep ‘em for their awards) not-American and not-West-Indian and sure-as-hell-not-Haitian.

We have had to figure out who we are on the fly while the ground was shifting beneath our feet. All while we felt under siege, first by Buckra, then by Britain. Once we wrote them out of the story, we felt under cultural attack by America and then by immigrants. And we have had to deal with all this while always having a tale or two to give to tourists who were looking for an authentic holiday experience. The end result of all that bombardment is the story we now have; a story that is more about what it isn’t than what is. This, in a nutshell, is the problem.

What’s wrong with the current national story, and the Bahamian that exists within it, is its narrowness. That story’s only Bahamian is charcoal black, male, aggressively heterosexual and he lives over-the-hill. He is a bush medicine expert who talks endlessly about going back to the island while eating scorched conch and fish after church on Sunday. He spends most of his time in the Junkanoo shack and on the walls of his clap-board home you will find post-card paintings of Poincianas…

That story is completely out of touch with reality.

Is there room in the national narrative for a Bahamian who grew up middle-class-affluent in the suburbs? Or can a white Bahamian find themselves represented there as anything other than a tourist? Can Bahamians with Haitian blood even exist in that tale without becoming a cuss word?

The problem here does not lie with those Bahamians who are excluded; the problem is the story itself. We need to see that the conception of self that that story perpetuates is slowly strangling us to death. Bahamians are black, white, gay, straight, Haitian, Jamaican, American, Jungless, upper-lower-middle class and everything else in between. We are not one thing, we are many, many interesting, contradictory, beautiful things. We can’t keep denying parts of ourselves, hating our own face, our own skin, our own lives and expect to go anywhere worth a damn.

In short, it’s high time for a new story.

As it stands the Bahamian identity is constructed as black, ghetto and male. This construction ignores, deliberately I believe, the 20 percent or so of the country that happen to be white. I have inadvertently asked a few white Bahamians “so, where are you from?” It’s polite conversation with a tourist but it’s the surest, most direct way to insult a native.

To be called white in the Bahamas is another way to say that you do not belong. Those who don’t belong are tourists. Visitors. Just passing through. Seaweed. Driftwood. In Nassau the quickest insult is usually to call me “white boy”. Hit a shot on the basketball court and I will hear “buhy! You let white-boy-archah score on you” or something to that effect. They know that I’m not white, but my skin-color places me in a liminal space. I’m not white, but to their minds I’m not black enough.

This color line is tricky. It’s no where near as rigid as the “one drop” rule that governs blackness in the United States. The Bahamian black/white line is a fluid boundary that varies in different islands and even in different settlements / villages on the same island. For example on the same island of Eleuthera, I am read as black in Tarpum Bay and white in Lower Bogue.

I self-identify as black. This is simply because I also self-identify as Bahamian. And to be Bahamian means that you must be black. Now there are myriad ways of performing blackness in the Bahamas, so even if you don’t have the correct pigmentation, you can find other ways to fit in, but lets leave it there for now.

Fast forward to Canada and here I am read without question as black. Now, the Canadian identity, crudely put, is a young white man brandishing a hockey stick in one hand, and a cup of Tim Horton’s Coffee in the other. He says “eh?” in between sips and ice-checks. Now with my Bahamian baggage already in tow, you can understand why I reject the label of Canadian. The Bahamian identity I want to hold on to won’t allow it. But my presence here has begun to complicate who I think I am; two recent experiences come to mind.

The first happened at a writers retreat over the summer in Trinidad. On the first day of the workshop, as the introductions went around the room I mentioned that I was a Caribbean person in exile in Canada. There was shock from the organizers. How could I, a member of the Caribbean diaspora, have made it into the program they asked? The workshop was only open to people from the Caribbean and not to people who came from elsewhere.

Surely, I thought, they must be joking. I have only been in Canada for five years, and this only to study at University. I hold nothing more than a study permit. Surely they can’t take my Caribbean-ness, my blackness away from me for this? Yet, they did. I protested and argued that I surely was not a Canadian, but the label stuck. Much to my chagrin.

The second experience happened a couple of weeks ago, at the MA student orientation in Canada. A white first year MA student says to me with a mischievous gleam in his eye,”you know a word that I like to throw out in my tutorials… Nigger.” The air was suddenly sucked out of the room. Needless to say I was taken back. I had never seen the “N-word” so close before. I really didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t directly calling me a N… of course, but he knew what he was doing.

My own shock took me by surprise, especially since the word in both Bahamian creole and Haitian creole translates as the politically / racial neutral “man.” So, yes, “white niggers” do appear in Bahamian creole, although the speaker will most likely correct themselves afterwards. In Haitian creole there would be no correction. Was I offended? Or did I merely want to be offended?

I give you all of this because I’ve been thinking a lot about identity recently. It’s the first and most important question you need to ask yourself: Who am I? Honestly I’m not sure any more. After studying theories of nationalism and seeing first-hand the artificialness of national identities, I can clearly see how these “imagined communities” are more at the service of the state than anything else and have little basis in reality.

Through my study of Eastern thought I see what they mean when they talk about identity as “maya” / illusion. When I look in the mirror, what do I see? Do I see what I want to see? Can I only see the story that I am telling myself about myself: My name is, I was born in, I am. Can I even see myself anymore? Have I ever really seen myself?

In the Bahamas we have this strange habit, and I don’t know how many other societies do this, where we let the body repose. This basically means that the dead body is made up to go on display and just sits there in the coffin.

This is seriously freaky shit. The coroner basically becomes a taxidermist. Sometimes they make the face look all rubbery and fat and they put on too much make up. In this case, with my grandmother, who died in December, they made her up so that she looked like she was still alive. I swear that I saw her breathe.

Why they do this, I will never know or understand.

The service was interesting. Nice, as they say. This was the first time that I stepped foot inside a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall since I left that religion five years ago. Nothing had changed. Nothing but the paint on the walls and some of the plants lining the driveway, but that same feeling was there.

I felt a lot of eyes on me though. Judging, probing eyes looking for flaws. It’s so awkward now.

Mum had converted to Jehovah’s Witness in her later years, I’m not sure exactly when. Let’s say the last fifteen years or so. At the time, I was one of them too, so it was a happy day when she got baptized.

When I left the church, she never cut me off like the others did. She always said she was praying for me everynight and when I grew my hair and braided it she never liked it, but at least she talked to me.

Somehow she found a way to stay in the JW church and get her cake too. Birthday cake that is. As JW’s aren’t supposed to celebrate birthdays or Easter, or Christmas or just about anything, she was able to keep one foot in the door and the other with her ‘worldly’ family till she died. A real smart woman. I still wonder why she converted. I wonder what her reasons were. Guess I can only speculate now.

Even after all this time, I still don’t know what to feel. Death is a funny thing. To get through a day of this life we build up walls of clichés, throwing around little stock phrases to stand for actual thought, to simulate actual feeling. Death breaks that wall down and leaves you as you really are. Naked, alone and afraid.

I never know what to say at funerals. I never know what to do. All I have is a terminated relationship and a hell of a lot of questions. Could I have done more? The answer is always yes. Did I ever want to?

That one takes a bit longer to answer.