Essays on Life

If you’re a follower of this blog, you’ll know that about a month and a half ago there was considerable activity here online about the Day of Absence concept. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, here’s a short refresher, both about the original idea and the critique that it sparked.

Thirty-six years after independence and forty-one years after majority rule, creative workers in our country are unable to find work in the areas in which God has gifted them. There are virtually no avenues in The Bahamas to enable creative people to develop and hone their talents, or to enable them to make use of them when they are developed. Our greatest brain drain is arguably in the area of the arts; like Sidney Poitier over sixty years ago, Bahamians who want to exercise their talents in the cultural industries are faced with the choice of pursuing their callings as hobbies at home, or of leaving home to make a living by their gifts elsewhere. And we are all the poorer for it.

Nicolette Bethel, “Day of Absence: 11 February”, Blogworld, January 30 2009

The idea behind the day of observance was to sensitize people — Bahamians primarily, but anyone, really, who regards the arts and cultural activity as luxuries, upper-class frivolities that have no place in the real life of adults — to the centrality of the arts. In a nutshell, it asks people to imagine a day without art. To imagine life without music, design, decoration, colour, rhyme, story, or dance. To imagine worship without these things; to imagine working or living or moving from place to place without them; to believe the lie that art is a luxury.

And then to consider according art and artists the respect that they deserve.