It
may seem a far stretch to connect the current state of emergency that we are now
in with the sudden collapse and subsequent death of Pat Bishop on Saturday
(August 20) during a meeting meant to borrow value from the culture sector for
national development. But is it really?
Pat’s death may in fact signal
the kind of cultural state of emergency in which we find ourselves. If, as a
society, we cannot link the killings and the curfew and other quick fixes with
the state of our arts and culture in the struggles articulated in her life, and
so poignantly in her last days, then it speaks volumes about the state of our
nation as we look for solutions to crime and other social negatives across the
country.
It also seems particularly
significant as we prepare to ‘celebrate’ our 49th anniversary of Independence
next week, celebrations which will take place under the shroud of the state of
emergency. It certainly represents how far away we have moved from the
aspirations and hope and optimism that must have hung over that moment in our
history 49 years ago when the national flag of Trinidad and Tobago was first
hoisted, when the national anthem was first sung, when the people of Trinidad
and Tobago asserted themselves as a self-governing independent nation
responsible for its own destiny.
In fact, part of the mandate of
the meeting at which Bishop collapsed was to define ways of celebrating our
next, the 50th anniversary of Independence in 2012.
Pat Bishop threw herself into
the discussions with the kind of passion she is said to resonate in all her
work as a painter, musician, conductor, orator, historian, lecturer, mentor;
and that, despite her skepticism of the outcome of
yet another committee, another panel, another meeting, to discuss the way
forward for national development, for the culture of T&T, and the culture
sector.
When I had expressed similar skepticism, she looked at me with that sympathetically
knowing look that comes with the wisdom of years and the frank bluntness many
expect of her and said: ‘and you are just a baby, yet. I can’t tell you how
many of these I have been in; how many truckloads of reports I have at my
home.”
It was a bitter pill for her to
swallow that perhaps those were efforts in futility in pursuit of her stated
vision “that my countrymen may find their place in the sun,” as she cites as
her goal in her resume.
A child of pre-Independence
Trinidad and Tobago, Pat Bishop was born at the crux of the nationalist
movement of the 1940’s. The vision of people’s empowerment ignited by the trade
unions, regionalism, federation and the movement towards self governance; of self
assertion and of aspiration to be whatever a fledgling nation wanted to be,
were all embedded in her ample personage.
She would have been twenty-two
years old when the red, white and black national flag of Trinidad and Tobago
was hoisted for the first time; when the national anthem with its assertion of
“boundless faith in our destiny” and its final refrain, “every creed and race
finds an equal place” was first sung.
But she lived those words.
Independence was an iconic word then; icon is now the word that will attach
itself to descriptions of her life and works.
I did not know Pat Bishop well
before the few days within the last few weeks when I sat at the same table with
her, and got glimpses of her encyclopaedia of experiences which she was so
generous to share to those willing to receive knowledge. But I did, to some
extent, know and was touched by her work as a musician, painter and orator and
have interviewed her occasionally over the years.
In fact, one of my earliest
inspirations for my work in the culture sector, following on gestation from
involvements in our village community, was when I was preparing a special
television report to examine the potential of the then upcoming Carifesta V
which T&T was preparing to host in 1992. Her vision of a Caribbean united
through the vitality of its arts poured out in images of quicksilver that
seemed so tangible and so elusive at the same time. It is a vision that has
kept its potency through the years and which she has tirelessly asserted
through her every activity as vibrant, alive, real, and certainly, achievable.
She embraced in her work the
cultural incubators that are in the main in the obscure and often invisible
village niches and tried to connect them to the vast field of opportunities
available at the national and international levels in her tireless pursuit to
have her countrymen benefit from those opportunities as well as her
experiences. She kept an enduring faith in the power of the arts to transform,
regenerate, to provide sustenance for its users, benefactors and beneficiaries,
and to nourish them both physically and spiritually. She was an academic who
never lost sight of the significance of informal education influences and
processes that included popular culture. She recognised the value of providing
avenues for self expression in the language of various forms – music, art,
design, words and the connection between such self-confidence and the self
image it defined as essential life-skills and companion to critical thinking
and a compelling alternative to those expressions that manifested themselves in
violence and criminal activity.
She held firmly to the notion
that well-visioned, well-structured and well-managed
culture systems were the antidote to the negative self image, lack of self
confidence and the essential elixir to cultivation of a sense of self and
nation self.
Very little angered her as much
as any suggestion that elements of the cultural sector were at loggerheads, or
that differences among them were related to ethnicity. That was a position she
derived from long experience of working with groups of all races and classes at
all levels in T&T. It was not a dream to be realised; it was already
real.
She embodied the reservoirs of
cultural energy that resides in so many of our artists and culture
practitioners. Where resources did not exist, (or was not accessible to the
arts) she created them. Drawing on the creative power of her artistic genius,
she continuously improvised facilities and methods to make up for the
deficiencies. She once said that she could have stayed in Britain after her
studies and indulge in its rich array of arts; but chose to return to these
islands where “if you want to enjoy a concert, you better make it yourself.”
And she did make concert after concert after concert, as she did painting after
painting after painting. So graphic and lyrical were her expressions that those
who remember her speak, also felt that each of those speeches was a song, a
painting, a gem to be treasured.
The spring well of her artistic
energy fuelled her faith in the potential of T&T to rise above its
circumstances as small islands in a vast globe and tremendous countercurrents, and that despite the weariness that seemed
to be overcoming her spirit in trying time and again, and again, and yet again,
to represent that position in boardrooms, and committees and panels. She fought
that those of us around the table would not have to be fighting the same fight
and in the same words some half a century hence.
“I would get kicked out, and every time they fired me, they gave me an award,”
she would often say dryly.
She had many words to add
throughout the meeting, held on a Saturday, her sacred day of engagement with
her students which she so reluctantly gave up for the meeting. With an
expressed aversion to use of technologies that were negatively moulding and
growing mould over minds of men women and children, she upheld a vision of
Trinidad and Tobago as a collective of tremendously talented people that is not
imagined but real. She vehemently rejected any notion that the culture sector
is divided and fragmented and that its various elements are at loggerheads with
each other, but saw it as perpetuated myths by those who can best benefit from
fuelling such divisions.
After many words reiterating
those experiences, her last words to the culture panel last Saturday were:
“I have no words to add to this
discourse. I have spoken at meetings like this all my life I have no more words
to add. I am very tired. Maybe I am too old now.”
Bishop’s last words resound the
weariness of the culture fraternity who have sat around such tables and in
forums like those, eternally planning for the culture sector, lobbying for the
realisation of the options that she and others like her offered, even in the
face of the violence and the crime and the depletion of the youth communities
with which she worked, often with very little, if any resources.
An enabling environment that
included changes in thinking about development priorities, how those priorities
are addressed, how they could be accommodated and activated in a national
blueprint for development were what she brought to the table. It was a vision
that accommodated all of Trinidad and Tobago, even as it championed our
creativity and the arts and culture as the fuel with the best properties to
ignite such progress in a way none of the abundance of energy resources ever
could.