Jun

27

Annie Paul on Michael Jackson

June 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

I wouldn’t have expected to post more than once on this issue, but I came across this post by Annie Paul meditating on the life and death of Michael Jackson, and I thought I’d share.

Anthropologically speaking, there’s a study in this somewhere. Haven’t worked out quite where yet, but I’m thinking.

Anyway, over to Annie:

PROVE YOU’RE HUMAN demand the spambot busters when you try to leave a comment on blogposts or Facebook discussions. You then have to correctly type two distorted-looking words into a box, an action that apparently would instantly expose a spambot (which pretend to be users but actually want to harvest your email and other useful info about you) incapable of deciphering the letters.

Could MJ possibly have realized just how many fans and well-wishers he has all over the world? Michael Jackson dies and nearly takes internet with him said one headline referring to the volume of cybertraffic googling to verify his death and the resulting overload which nearly crashed the Net the day he died. The media, snarling and vicious only a few years ago now obsessively adulated him in death.

looklikemoney09 crazy how this nigga #michaeljackson got respect when he died an aint have none when he was alive was how one tweep roughly and eloquently summed it up. A commenter (sharon p) on a blog called Can’t Stop Won’t Stop poignantly asked: “how will i remember him? as the person who bought the elephant man’s bones just so he could bury them. who will he remind me of? Zora Neale Hurston, who was also accused of child molestation in 1948 — an accusation that caused her to leave the “community” she had dedicated her life to.”

via Active Voice: PROVE YOU’RE HUMAN: The Post-Michael Jackson Post

Anthropology, Culture and the Arts, music

Jun

26

Here’s to the MJ I knew

June 26, 2009 | 4 Comments |

Off the Wall was one of my favourite albums. Of course Thriller and Bad were up there, and they have some of my favourite MJ songs (”Man in the Mirror” would probably win the sweeps if I had to choose), but if you wanted me to tell you which one gave me the most joy, it’d be Off the Wall. It was the last one which had Michael Jackson looking the way God intended him to look — like a damn cute black boy.

Of course, when “Billie Jean” hit the charts, and Michael moonwalked across the stage, like virtually every other woman of colour that I knew (and men too), I leaped out of my seat and squealed. When he released  the “Thriller” video and the world fell for this cute black boy, we moonwalked across our floors.

The whiter Michael got the further he got from me and from my friends. The more he assimilated, for whatever reason, the closer he came to yesterday. By the time his hair caught on fire on the Pepsi shoot, we’d determined that Michael, the Michael Jackson we’d grown up with, the singer of “Ben” and “Got to Be There” and “She’s Out of My Life”, was dead. All that was left was the clone.

But here’s to Michael — to all the Michaels that he ever was — the greatest performer I’ve ever seen.

And I don’t do starstruck.

Culture and the Arts, Literature, World

Jun

25

Swedish parents keep 2-year-old’s gender secret – The Local

June 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

Just in case you might be thinking that male/female was a god-given thing—

A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl.

Pop’s parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

The child’s parents said so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

– Swedish parents keep 2-year-old’s gender secret – The Local

Anthropology, Thinking Critically

Jun

20

This one’s for Lynn: Aimee Mullins on poetry, science and super-powers

June 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

Lynn Sweeting, that is.


Science can make her able; art and poetry make her super-able.

O brave new world, that has such creatures in it!


Anthropology, Culture and the Arts, Human Rights, Social Conscience

Jun

17

Students are wonderful

June 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

So are teachers (thanks, Sameer!).

I got to this video through Sameer’s blog. Watch it. That’s an order.


@ Yahoo! Video

“I have a dream … that you will live the rest of your life in possibility.” — Benjamin Zander

Personal, Thinking Critically

Jun

16

On the need for cultural capital – Richard Florida on Montreal’s Creative Class

June 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

I’ve already blogged about why I think that our government’s cancellation of CARIFESTA was a bad idea. (I think the word I used was “terrible”). Now the rumours I am hearing about the future of Bahamian culture and its development are as bad or worse. Rather than serious investment in the development of our cultural identity, “economics” appear to be inspiring the exact opposite — the dissolution, real or effective, of the Cultural Affairs Division of the Government of The Bahamas.

Now there may be not much wrong with a government’s decision to gut the only agency that is even vaguely (if poorly) equipped to deal with cultural development. At the very least, it moves us one step away from the hypocrisy that has inspired cultural decisions throughout the 21st century (lots of lip service paid, no money, personnel, or real plans to back it up) and allows the Bahamian people to see the true value of our culture and identity to the people who we have elected to make decisions for us. There is something to be said for ending the pretence; honesty is good, and encourages honest decisions.

However, it betrays once again what the cancellation of CARIFESTA made clear: that our politicians and our leaders, the people who make those decisions, have no comprehension whatsoever about the world, about history, or about what will keep our nation successful.

Just in case people think I’m making this stuff up, here’s a little something-something from Canada, where the citizens have sussed it out better than we have. (The highlights are mine).

Read more

Bahamas Government, CARIFESTA, Caribbean, Cultural Industries, Culture and the Arts, art and culture make good business

Jun

15

Server Outage

June 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

Just a note for those of you who tried to access Blogworld today and couldn’t, here’s a note from our service provider about it:

UPDATE: All Services Are Being Restored

We experienced a power supply issue at one of our data centers, which caused the startlogic.com site, as well as some of our customer sites, to be offline for a brief period of time. We are currently in the process of bringing the servers back up, and all services should be restored momentarily.

We apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused you. We realize that you depend on us to provide you with a reliable hosting solution, and we take that responsibility very seriously.
- 06/15/09 at 17:15 ET

Blog

Jun

14

M.O. for the rest of the year

June 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

I’ve been a bad blogger lately. There is a reason (isn’t there always?) and it’s the simplest reason in the world — I’m stretched to the limit, and I’ve got five blogs going on six to maintain. So things tend to slip.

I had all kinds of plans for the year. I still have them, but they’re going to change somewhat. I had planned to issue a new volume of Essays on Life, for instance, and that is still a priority. I had planned to finish my book of Lily poems and submit it for publication, which in itself is a lengthy process, and I had hoped also to begin working on a second collection of poems, this one about the Bahama Islands. Maybe that one, though, will finish itself before Lily; I don’t know.

And I had planned to write a memoir about my five years in the civil service. There’s such a thing as theatre of the absurd, and my favourite proponents of that are Eugène Ionesco and Tom Stoppard; and I never realized how close to absurdism life in the Bahamian civil service can be. (I’m sure all bureaucracies work similarly, especially in the postcolonial world; but I know the Bahamian model the best.) Days I’d wake up I’d be reminded also of Armah’s The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born.

But Shakespeare in Paradise and tongues of the ocean, together with my return to COB and commitment to research and teaching, are more than enough to keep me busy! So some things have to be postponed, or rescheduled.

Accordingly, I plan to keep checking in on my personal blogs, but far less frequently than before. I’m hoping to post something once a week on each, just to keep things going. For the rest of the year, that’s how it’ll be.

Cheers to you all, and watch this space — just not as frequently perhaps as you used to.

Blog, My Bahamas, Personal

Jun

13

Interview – Antilles: the weblog of the CRB

June 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

I count Nicholas Laughlin as one of my cyberfriends, though I think we really met over the telephone during the last CARIFESTA (such arts festivals are always, truly, such a waste of time, are they not? They make no connections, advance no careers, clearly, and they are so much a waste of money that we prefer to spend our millions on, oh, Miss Universe. But I digress.) Since then we’ve been communicating and collaborating online, and he has been a champion of tongues of the ocean.

Anyhow, Nicholas is the valiant editor of the Caribbean Review of Books, which he continues to publish in the face of opposition, failing finances, exhaustion, fed-upness, etc.

In the spirit of massive support that he’d already established, he recently interviewed me about tongues. Go check it out.

And then, if you like it, go subscribe to the Caribbean Review of Books.

Antilles: the weblog of the CRB.

Many Antilles readers are familiar with tongues of the ocean, an online poetry journal based in the Bahamas, which was launched in February 2009. Edited by poet and playwright Nicolette Bethel, and focused on poetry from the Caribbean and its diasporas, tongues plans to publish three issues per year, with the contents of each issue appearing gradually week by week.

Soon after the second issue of tongues — dated June 2009 — began appearing, Bethel answered some questions via email about the journal’s background, influences, and modus operandi.

Caribbean, Cultural Industries, Culture and the Arts, Literature, Personal, Writing, art and culture make good business

Jun

7

“On the Wreck of the Henrietta Marie“

June 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment |

Accepted by The Caribbean Writer.

Now this is a poem that has been hanging around my Writing folder for four years or so. Inspired by a conjunction between the travelling exhibition of the slave ship that re-opened the Pompey Museum after the 2001 Market Fire and an in-depth poetry workshop session over at the Poetry Free-For-All, it made the rounds of the appropriate journals. I thought — wrongly — that it might get picked up two years ago, when commemorating slavery and its detritus was a year-long affair, but it didn’t. I’d almost given up on its being published, not being too sure what was not-right about it and not knowing what to do about it. I’m a big one for letting a poem be, of knowing when something’s finished (or ought to be finished), of letting the time pass when it ought to, and after several years of honing and tweaking it seemed to me that “Henrietta Marie” was finished. This year, I pulled it back out, dusted it off and polished it a bit, and then sent it off with four others to The Caribbean Writer. And last month, managing editor Quilin Mars let me know they wanted to publish it.

Well, yay, I say. And to others inclined to see rejection slips as always being about the quality of the work (sometimes they are, but not always; sometimes the work doesn’t fit the publication), I pass on the writer’s advice: never give up, never. The one that publishes you is almost always the last one you try.

Here’s a bit of it:

I.  Vendue House/Pompey Museum, Nassau, Bahamas

Come. Stand in a place to sell slaves where planters, farmers, businessmen
bought planters, farmers, businessmen.  Just there, a crier stood
before a block.  An African stood upon it.  Shackles and locks
trammelled black legs that ached from the straightening.

Go buy The Caribbean Writer Vol 23 if you want to read more.

Caribbean, Culture and the Arts, Literature, Personal, Writing

« older posts