CALABSH DISPATCHES-DAY THREE

Pico Iyer and Paul Holdegraber are brilliant writers whose capacity to articulate with insight and relevance matters of politics, spirit and the basics of life is enviable.  This interview between the non-fiction, novelist, travel writer and the Director of Public Programs at the New York Public Library will go down as perhaps the most engaging and memorable of Calabash’s history.  Sometimes, the threads of our lives can become entangled with the sources of wisdoms and through some genius of circumstance and effort, lead to a life of insight and enlightenment.  You do expect two well-educated and well positioned thinkers to make sense when they come together on stage, but what you don’t always expect is their humanity, their humor, their humility and their genuine desire to communicate to come across.  On Saturday morning of Calabash this happened.

When Iyer described his monastic life in Japan, marked by deep isolation from all the trappings of modern life, as the counterpoint to his frenetic life of travel, jet-lag and speed in other cities, he spoke of it as his real life, his life of stillness and reflection that allows him to embrace loss as freedom, and to see, really see things free of the distractions that we allow to consume us.  The other person in this conversation between these two men, one, a lisping compactly built white with an intense stare, and the other a wide-eyed man of Indian parentage, neatly slim without being fussy, was the Calabash audience that engaged in this public lecture with groans of approval, moments of gentle applause, nods, laughter and a thunderous expression of gratitude for being a part of this magic at the end.

Saturday at Calabash was as hectic as always. The festival was in full swing at 10:00 in the morning when, what some feared would be the most controversial reading of the festival unfolded with the rather unremarkable calm and joy of most Calabash events.  Stacyann Chin reminded us that in many places, a woman talking about menstruation remains taboo—and yet when expressed by a writer of such clarity of thought and skill, the effect can be disarming.  She was followed by Edward Seaga, the former Prime Minister of Jamaica whose reception at a festival in a country that was polarized for years by politics, the kind of politics that saw Mr. Seaga as a central protagonist for years, made me wonder about matters of class, economics and race as I thought of who was at Calabash.  I wondered whether this generous welcome was prompted by a partisan affinity that the audience might have felt to this man—an affinity borne out by class, race and political inclination—or whether, as I have suspected and hoped, Calabash’s audience was fiercely demanded a space in which civility, the willingness to engage in discourse with people we don’t even agree with, the willingness to “hear out” people regardless of what they have to say, has become the new norm.  I remain hopeful that it is the latter.  Mr. Seaga read from a forthcoming memoir in two volumes that will speak to his unquestionable years of public service to Jamaica.  To end the reading, humorist and novelist, Anthony Winkler proceeded to unsettle the audience with a combination of short fiction and memoir that was provocatively outrageous.  The first piece was a piece about pre-teen boys become patrons of prostitutes at a young age.  Winkler’s memoir is a beautifully written and self-deprecating work of tenderness, humor, no small amount of pain.

It is an odd thing, but on this Saturday of Calabash, there was not a single panel devote to poetry.  This perhaps why the open mic sessions which remain as well-attended as many of the sessions at the Festival was such a hit.  The writers are asked to read for two minutes and the host—this year, a well known Jamaican personality, Denise Hunt—has full permission to yank people from off the stage when they have gone over time.  It is no exaggeration to say that many people come to Calabash simply to read at the open mic.  It is understandable—there are few places in Jamaica where an audience of the size can be found that will listen to a person reading their work.  The open mic, though, is often a contentious thing.  Not all writers who sign up get to read because the time is limited,  Few writers get to read twice over the weekend, and I become a sort of ombudsman fielding complaints by people in the audience who feel as if they have been unfairly treated by the host or by the entire set-up.  I field these with good humor, I think, but I suspect that an enterprising individual would do well to plan a mass open mic festival in Jamaica that would be a massive hit.  I do grow slightly impatient when it is clear to me that a person ahs not attended a single reading, but has stayed in the bar area, waiting for the line up to be announced for open mic.  But that is another story.

Fiction was well-represented on Saturday. Joseph Boyden, a Canadian who has lived in Louisiana for many years, and who writes about native Canadian peoples, drew the audience in immediately with a series of chants.  His work is thick with the messy mix of human frailty and grace.  Laura Fish, a black British writer of Jamaican heritage, read from her new novel that is based in Jamaica, and which, fascinatingly, explores the history of the Brownings and Barretts in Jamaica.  I am referring to the famous British poets of “how do I love thee…” etc. whose families’ wealth came from massive slaveholdings in Jamaica.  Laura Fish, as it happens, has a personal connection to this legacy, and her novel explores the longstanding and complicated issues of race and economics that have existed between Britain and Jamaica.  She was followed by Marlon James, whose originally conceived and ambitious latest novel, written entirely in Jamaican patois, traces the lives of slaves in 19th Century Jamaica.  James relishes the sexual and the outrageous, he understands the secrets and truths that are often hidden behind the taboos around sexual practice, and so he read accordingly.  Soon folks from the audience were shouting, “there are children in the audience”.  James, in deference to these protests, briefly altered his language) a profusion of “frigs” replaced the more volatile offending words), until he tired of this game and simply said, “Now I have given you ample time to flee.  This is an adult festival.”

This incident is no small thing for Calabash.  After the reading I spoke to audience about the challenge of language, the challenge of asking what is fitting for a public reading and a festival.  Jamaica is a conservative country, in many ways, with a rich vein of openness and dogged commitment to the freedom to express thoughts and ideas.  I said to the audience that Calabash is a festival that assumes an adult presence.  And by adult, I mean people who come with the awareness that the subject matter dealt with can be disturbing and unsettling and mature.  Very little at Calabash is simply salacious for its own sake.  But language has the potential to be a lightning rod for controversy.  I carry in me, as one of the organizers, a pulse that jumps whenever something is said on stage that I think may trigger the sensibilities of the audience.  So expletives will trigger this.  And yet, I have felt that one of the beauties of Calabash has been the willingness of the audience to allow language to be used in all kinds of ways, even when it may have not been to the taste or the values of the audience.

In Jamaica, language and its use is never free of issues of race, class, religion and conceptions of cultural value.  The society is embroiled in a grand debate about laws about indecency of language and image in popular song and popular culture.  Calabash could face censure and challenge if there is a feeling that the values of the society are not being taken into consideration by the writers.  Yet, short of a presumption about what exactly these values might be, it is almost impossible to suggest a set of standards that will be acceptable.  So Calabash seeks a ground that is about tolerance and a quest to engage the core of the artists’ humanity above the matter of language itself.  And this is only achieved when a relationship is established with the audience that allows us them to feel as if the choice is theirs to listen to and allow the many voices that emerge at the festival.

There will be more on this day in tomorrow's post.