KJ's WAYS OF BEING (Part 1)

INTRODUCTION - A LOVE STORY

Once, a long time ago, I asked a woman, Why d'you dance?

She replied: To escape death.

On another occasion many years later I told another woman after knowing her for two days: I love you.

Sometimes, three words can contain a whole book.

Bele on stage, by Kim

The collection of essays of which this is the first was originally conceived as simply Ways of Hearing, which were my considerations on the music and orature of the Caribbean. It was also a tribute to John Berger's seminal Ways of Seeing by way of differentiating my New World civilization from the Old one Berger scrutinized so acutely. 

The investigation led me into labyrinths where I essayed many unsatisfactory beginnings, until in 2017 I was introduced to my third, guiding meditation after a visiting researcher from the US requested an interview. She wanted to talk about something to do with steelbands. That's the only thing it seems people want to interview me about, which had begun to feel constricting, but I agreed we could meet. She sounded unpretentious and enthusiastic. Twice we planned to meet and both times she cancelled. Then she called again a fortnight before her due departure date. So maybe she wasn't that enthusiastic after all, and therefore I wasn't either. Still, I went along. Maybe she'd be easy on the eye.

We met long after lunch. You were late but easy on the eye. We discussed your research and mine then traded stories about ourselves and our different worlds. You disappeared into the broadness of your smile like a Cheshire cat. I've been told my slow eyes become slits but I know they haven't of late. Your conversation and laughter filled my world. After dinner I deposited you my reluctant leopard at your home and flew through a purple haze to mine. There at 9.59 pm I dashed off a cautious note: "Very enjoyable to me today was. Ta."

Round midnight, your response was: "I may not have let on how much I enjoyed spending time with you and it took me a while to stop smiling after you drove off. I look forward to seeing you again soon."

Malika by Kerron Riley

I take the next day off and concoct a reason to be coincidentally passing your way. We visit a beach near my home and swim to a submarine rock where on tiptoe and swaying like fronds we continue our interrupted conversation. We drive into the hills and explore narrow tracks in the bush before I return you home. "Ev'ry time you say goodbye I die a little," wrote Cole Porter. By 5.30 desperation has me by the throat. I write: 

"When can I see you again? This evening? Friday? When on the weekend? I feel as if you are about to disappear for ever. (Here I was going to add a quote about commuication and time from Ways of Hearing of which I'm writing, but it's about lovers and as such a bit awkward.)"

As ever you wait to respond at 9.15: "Why didn't you want to let me interpret the quote for myself? Now I'm dying to know what it is! 😊 I will call you today. Plans stil not solid yet for the next couple of days. Tonight and Saturday night are possibilities though. Have a wonderful morning."

Me, right away: "Morning not so good. Neighbour bonks the car which was stationary, but it's a company car so that's going to cause bureaucratic problems. Otherwise: 

"The most intimate currents between lovers may be communicated in silence, through looks, expressions, touches. But the relationship is woven of a private language. The sweet nothings whispered in each other's ear, the private allusions, the secret shorthand with its density of meanings, which no one else may comprehend.

This private argot operates as parentheses, which enclose a moment of stillness outside the flow of time."

About Time, by Nik McEchrane-Johnson

Until you leave we update one another continuously every day like long-lost best friends. We have two lifetimes to catch up on in two weeks, bartering pieces of ourselves, our hearts, in stories, opinions, songs, memories and by other means. To my surprise you like Notes From The Underground, one of my favourite novels. We eat hot dogs on The Avenue and you think they are the best you've had anywhere but for a joint back home in Chicago. Your favourite Stevie Wonder song is "All in love is fair", and mine is "Ngiculela". My goosebumps raise as his voice ascends from "Tomorrow will be for you and me," smoothly accelerating "meee..." upwards to land an octave higher: "....I am singing of tomorrow, I am singing of love". The song lifts me effortlessly to the heavens. But there is hardly space for music between our words on the highway to San Fernando, where you visit a steelband and I steal a poster summoning a convocation of moko jumbies. 

When we climb the miles to Fort George I pause at a bench to talk. You accuse me of fabricating an excuse to rest. We race breathlessly up the short driveway to the Fort. You reach the gate first. I point out that you started off first. I translate for you the words painted by a daughter on my T-shirt - Abyssus Abyssum Invocat. Afterwards you compose a poem about it, although I don't think you grasped its horror. I hope you never do. Then, having known you for all of a few days or years I declare that I am in love. I had found the Ariadne thread that would guide me out of my labyrinth of solitude. You scoff: "You just haven't had it in a while." So I whisk you off to Toco to convince you otherwise. 

To the Toco Lighthouse by Kim

You ignore the primeval seascape to photograph crumbling, overgrown shacks and rotting, derelict cars. Why? Months after you answer from the windy city.

My love asked: Why do you take pictures of old, broken-up raggedy-looking homes? There's a hopefulness in something that was once loved and had life, and is now given new purpose as the pillar for mother earth's impetus. A home that was once a retreat, sanctuary, castle for a family or person seeking solitude. Once a place of fellowship, celebrations, mourning, joy, discovery and love. An old motor vehicle that once travelled about, moving through space and time. Passengers laughed, sang, planned to arrive or depart. Painted, hammered, screwed, settled, opened and shut. Now in their final resting place, these things are remnants of the egos that once occupied them. When the rain softens the paint. When the wind comes the joints give way. When earth shakes the entryways bow. 

Now the earth reclaims her life. She breathes deep and evokes love to rebirth after rebirth.

Green Revolution by Malika

Love, too, is a house we may inhabit and, as such, can also be abandoned and returned to the earth. Then all that remains is to wait in the cold and hope it can one day be rebuilt.