Calabash--Second Day and Night

For the entire day, a sheltering cloud settles over Treasure Beach, and when it rains, the thousand and a half people find shelter under the tent where poets and novelists are reading, their voices clean and assured against the drone of rain beating against the canvas and hushing through the trees. Somehow, the lines marked out for passageways through the crowds remain intact, and the spirit of the festival has not changed--people are happy to be there, they are there to listen to writers read their work, and a little rain (or a lot of rain) will not spoil this for them.

When you are the organizer of an outdoor festival, you have a strange relationship to the sky--you keep looking for signs, you even learn to pray for steady sun and you dread the deluge because it can make everything quite chaotic, quite unsettling. Often, you find yourself talking to the sky--quite casually, "No, not now. You can't do that now." Or, "Nice one, lovely one..." Several years ago, Calabash faced two especially wet seasons. We pressed on regardless, and the 'Bashers of those years would talk about those years as a sort of blooding, a rite of passage that baptized them into the cult of this festival. "You call this rain?" they say this year, scoffing. "Man you should have been here when bell hooks held forth in a storm, or when Jan Carew kept us spell bound while the road ways were being washed away. Come on, man, this is just a drizzle!"
The truth is that we have learned to handle the unexpected at Calabash. Everything begins on time, regardless. At 10:00 AM on Saturday morning, I start to read the bios of the three first book finalists for the Commonwealth Writers Prize who will be reading to an crowd that keeps growing steadily as I go through the biographies. Andrew O' Connor from Australia reads with a cool confidence and assured wit from his novel Tuvalu set in Tokyo* *the audience enjoys his jokes. Before him ruggedly handsome French Canadian, D.Y. Bechard reads from a surreal novel that involves a boxer, and strange magical happenings, his smile is brilliant and disarming, even when he is stumbling around for the right word. Maxine Case, a South African from Cape Town reads also--her voice shifting to a high pitched squeak of a child to replicate the voice of her narrator. It is unsettling because her story is about loss and abuse. Maxine Case had no idea how important the struggle for freedom from Apartheid was to Jamaicans, and she is moved by how much people know about that struggle and how much they care.
By the time Colin Channer has taken the stage with Mike Farrell, one of the stars of M*A*S*H and the author of a tough memoir, Call Me Mike, the sheltering clouds have gotten heavier and the wind is cool and dense with moisture. I meet Linton Kwesi Johnson in the food area--he has come down to just be at the festival after his remarkable performance year before last. He is an old country man, and he can read the sky. He says, "Yes, rain coming". I am hoping he is wrong. He continues, "It is the humidity, this is rain time."
Colin Channer is one of the most self-assured people I know. In this he is as Jamaican as one can muster in his fearlessness about people. And this is counter balanced only by his generosity of spirit and his disarming way of connecting to people and giving them, his attention. Seated on stage with Mike Farrell, he is completely at ease and he wastes no time in making Mike Farrell feel at ease with easy jokes, set-up lines for punchy one liners, and the two began a duet that will take us from topic to topic, becoming increasingly complex, difficult and controversial as the interview continues. Mike Farrell reads from his memoir from the podium and returns to his seat for more questions from Colin Channer, and when it is over, the audiences is loud, hooting and cheering.
Now it is impossible for me to get through the crowd without being stopped to answer a question about the Open Mike. People come to Calabash just to read at the open mike or to watch the open mike. It is a serious element of the festival--it is how the audience engages with itself; it is entertaining because it is unpredictable, and it is popular because of its Jamaicanness. I know that I will have to field complaints about how short the open mike is, and why the big writers* get a half an hour and they can only get a minute, because they have hours of material; and why is the host of the open mike, Marlon James, the Jamaican novelist, so rude about getting people off stage when their time is up; and whether I can look at their chapbook or listen to their CD; or when Calabash is going to just give its entire schedule to the Open Mike because that is really what the people want; and why we are allowing the colonial mentality to rule us and not allowing the people to speak; and whether they can be proxy reader for a friend who could not make it, who is too shy, who has lost her voice; question after question. I try to answer everyone, but I know that the complaints will keep flowing for the rest of the festival. I sit in the audience sometimes to hide from the questions. Standing, I am a target; slumped down in my seat, few people can see me, and I make my notes, get my breath and try and enjoy the open mike which we have planned each year during the meal breaks at the festival. The tent area remains packed as ever, and people bring plates of food to eat while listening and watching. The performers chant, sing, shout, whisper--and the work is as varied as the faces that come up. Some of it is quite accomplished, and some not so much. But the work is always entertaining and Marlon James's role of getting people off the stage after they have overstayed their time allotment, can be quite hilarious.
Between 3:00 PM and 7:30 PM, it will rain steadily, wind spitting rain into the tent, and the stage area's gleaming cement floor is slippery in parts. John DaCosta and his team of sound and light people are working extra hard to keep circuits dry and to make sure the sound is as impeccable as always--even better than normal to overcome the sound of the rain. Between 3:00 PM and 7:30 PM, two reading panels will follow one another that will represent one of several high points of the festival. Elizabeth Alexander, Linda Susan Jackson and Patricia Smith will follow each other on the stage to read with stunning presence and genius to an audience that has always been extremely happy to hear women poets do their thing. Our first demographic are women in their late thirties and upwards, our second demographic are the men they bring with them and the young people who listen to them. These three poets are each gifted writers and consummate performers, and the readings are astounding. By the time Patricia Smith ends the session the audience between extending the standing ovation for the three women standing on stage, or rushing to the bookstore to pick up books. Linda Susan Jackson sells out at once, and the bookstore manager tells me that business was intense for these women.
It is raining steadily now, but now it is clear that we are working with the rain and the audience is grateful for the coolness in the air from the rain.There is hardly a break between the readings--only "announcements," a list I rehearse as I wait to head back to the stage: buy t-shirts at the Calabash concession booth; Jack Sprat is serving organic meals; these are our sponsors; there are portable bathrooms now available to augment the bathroom facilities; someone with such-and-such license number needs to go to his or her car because there is a nail in the tire and the person she or he was traveling with needs to meet him or her; these are our sponsors; buy books; keep the lines straight; phones on vibrate; these are our sponsors; smoke outside the tent; stay dry; an agent looking for clients will meet people in the bookstore; these are our sponsors; and on and on and on.
I often make good friends at Calabash and this year is no different. I have come to adore Maryse Conde and her husband and translator Richard Philcox for their humor, their generosity and their complete lack of pretension. We have breakfast together on two of the mornings. She likes to tease me in a good-hearted and embracing way. Maryse Conde takes the stage during the deluge. She is dressed in white slacks and a white breezy blouse. She sits for her reading while Richard sits on stage waiting to take the podium to read with her. It is a historical moment. Maryse Conde is a brilliant and important author and the audience knows this and is there for her. She is followed by Michael Ondaatje who reads with a clear timbre, first poems, and then passages of prose* spellbinding and deeply engaging. The revelation of self is touching, but most of all the art of the thing is a gift. I am reminded of why these writers have such icon positions in the world. They are great writers, simple as that. Caryl Phillips then takes the stage and reads with one of the most accomplished deliveries as you will find in any writer. It is as if the world around us has grown still, as if the waves are not being unruly on the beach, as if the gossiping rain has paused for breath, as if everyone has become rooted to the spot just to listen.He reads about reading, about growing up with books, about the business of being a black English man, about home and its meaning, about art. The audience loves them as much for their work as it does for the generosity of their recognition of what they mean to us, and what their work means to us. I am moved always by the receptions that Calabash audiences give, and this evening is no different.
Between my labors at the podium and fielding questions from the audience, I am doing interviews with the press. I am asked why Calabash is as successful as it is. I say for the millionth time that we must never forget that while there are events in which individual writers will do readings in Jamaica, and while there is a growing book launch culture now emerging out of the model for such launches that Colin Channer established in Jamaica a few years ago, Jamaica is not like other places where on any given month you can go to a library or a community center or a book store to catch a reading by some international author. For many Calabash is their annual dose of first-rate writers, the best in the world. They come to buy books, to have them signed, to meet other lovers of writing and to find a sense of affirmation about what can go well in Jamaica despite the toughness of their day-to-day existence. On the ground, you can see the value of art, the way it helps to humanize a society.
By the time darkness has settled on the festival, the place is teeming with people--a few thousand. The young people in the rural community stroll in with the casual beauty of people who understand what a night out is. Girls and women laugh and giggle together, boys and men stand with languid cool underneath the trees nodding and whispering in low tones. Everyone is fashionably turned out--these are teachers, fishermen, farmers, hotel workers, students, civil servants, policemen and women, politicians, librarians, musicians--just people from the community arriving at this event that they have come to own. The out-of-towners, meaning the Kingston crowd, will return to their hotels, bed and breakfasts, inns, and campsites to freshen themselves. They know that Lloyd Parks and We the People Band is supposed to play on stage that night. They know that Lloyd Parks will be supporting Johnny Clarke, Pam Hall and Ken Boothe--all classic reggae artists of the seventies. It is going to be a bash, despite the rain.
The food area is doing a brisk business, all the t-shirts have sold out at the concessions stands, no one can get one of the bright orange, efficiently designed program for the festival--we printed twenty five hundred and they were all gone by Saturday noon, people are drinking in the side tented area of the festival, separated from the big tent area by a bamboo fence. This is where meals are eaten, friends meet each other and chat, and if they want, they can listen to the open mike in full throttle from there. Not far from this area, on a wooden scaffolding rising to a platform some ten feet above the ground is the canvas covered press area. Brightly colored sofas and comfortable chairs are laid out on the platform. Authors are answering questions by journalists, and the bar is doing a lively business in the press area.
I have a walkie-talkie that I have to use to make sure that the writers are in place for the next event. Carleene is on the other end, always ready for an update, always sure where every single author is. We have worked together for five years and we barely have to communicate with each other--it is all by instinct, we know what time it is, we know when things have to get started. I will always check with Colin before taking the stage to start the next session--he keeps the whole event in his head, remembering the most minute detail, giving reminders, being finicky about the chairs, the order in the tent.
While I take cover in the tent to listen to the open mike (and to hide from the questions and suggestions for a bit), Carleene walks by to tell me that the team is meeting to make a decision. It is still raining although now it is a light rain and though the air is heavy with moisture and the possibility of another heavy fall, we are more relaxed about the lighter rain. We make our way through the crowd to John's room, Tiki-Tiki 2--one of two bungalows that face the tent area. The other room is mine. John and I are there because we are always under the tent. The rooms are literally on the stage grounds and this turns out to be beautifully convenient.
The team is sitting in the front room of the apartment. The mood is giddy and relaxed. Colin is asking whether we should call Lloyd Parks and the convoy heading to us from Kingston, and tell them not to come. We can't be sure about the rain, and John is not certain whether he can pull everything together on a smaller stage (because of the rain) in good time. Some of us are cautious, but I am convinced that we should take the risk and simply trust that it will work out. Colin and I want the concert because we want any reggae concert to happen. But there would be implications if the band arrived and were unable to perform because of the weather. Someone suggests that we can have a sound system event and people could party if there is no band. But we also have to think that much of the food sales and the drink sales will suffer if the show is canceled. I offer to put out a fleece (an Old Testament tradition), step out into the outdoor and if a drop of rain falls on my head, then we can't go ahead. We all laugh. John calls Lloyd Parks and finds out that they are already in Mandeville, half way here, and waiting for us to give the word. That settles it. Since they have come so far, we will have them come. John says he will make it work, he will have the band up and running in good time. Colin gives a pep talk of pure daring, saying we are Calabash and if we are not risk takers then we are not who we have always been. Once we step out into the slight drizzle, we all know that this is going to work, that this will be a great night.
On stage the senior novelists from the Commonwealth Writers Prize are reading. Lloyd Jones, a tall bald headed New Zealander with the rugged looks of a Bruce Willis; Naeem Murr, a slight unassuming man with a startling imagination; Shaun Johnson, a South African with impressive connections to the anti-apartheid movement and a wonderful way of defining the new South African world through a look at the past; and David Adams Richards, a Canadian from the Miramichi who I knew when I lived in New Brunswick, Canada, years ago--a man who enjoyed chewing tobacco and always spoke with a spark in his eyes, all read one after the other with the clear confidence of seasoned writers and seasoned speakers. The audience is immediately engaged and they are as attentive as ever as the stories in the finalists' books swirl around the tented area. By the time I invite the audience to applaud these writers and encourage them to buy books to be signed by these authors, the crowd is in agreement that further than half way into the festival and every panel has been a superb show of great writing and great reading.
It is about an hour later--just after midnight--and I am sitting with a cluster of African American poets with Cave Canem connections: Terrance Hayes, Patricia Smith, Elizabeth Alexander, Linda Susan Jackson, Dante Micheux, Shamiya Bashir, and so many more, some who are reading at the festival and others who have come to be a part of the event. A game of scrabble is underway, and there is much laughter and good feeling here in the relative quiet and isolation of the Jakes salt-water pool area. I hear the thump of drum and bass carrying across the campus. I know that Lloyd Parks has kicked into gear, and that the Calabashment show has began. I say goodbye to the scrabble players. I have no idea if they will ever get to the stage area, but I hurry to the large tent in a gentle drizzle and the music, the music, the music!
For three hours, vintage reggae is played. We dance, we sing along, we applaud, we demand pull-ups and a wheel and come again or two or five, and we are transported into a past that is rich with youthful memories and a sense of hopefulness that marked the seventies for many of us. It is a beautiful night, and I am glad that we decided that the music must go on. Day two is over. The tent is packed to the brim with dancing people. This is our biggest Bashment night in seven years and we are happy about it.
I fall asleep after doing some more work on a tribute poem I am writing for Perry Henzell that will have to be read the next afternoon. The poem has now sprawled into a six-part epic. It is called "Treasure Beach" at the moment. I know I have a good poem here. It is three thirty when I finally allow myself to sleep. My son is already drawing his soft snores in the next room. He has been happy, and I am happy for it. I think to myself, I really have wonderful children who want to share what I love with me. I am a blessed man. A little sentimental, but I am allowed.