SIGNS OF LIFE

         A fellow artist’s cat had killed a hummingbird. Knowing I deal in death, she offered it to me even though it was “in really bad shape”, but I took it and left it in the grass to let the flies do their work. It was just supposed to be a means to an end, but it changed everything for me. I took photos of the stunning green carrion flies that landed on the bird’s body, like death’s brooch, strangely beautiful for something in charge of decay. The next day I approached the hummingbird and was surprised to see it breathing slowly, its small breast and neck rising and falling. To my fascinated horror, it was the maggots making their way around the body:  a macabre reanimation.

 What’s the most Trinidadian thing? Most would say Carnival. What invokes our spirit more than that? And I would agree. The problem is, I think we’ve gotten so used to the bright colours and glitter and feathers, which is enjoyable in its own right, but it matches the current mentality of Trinis needing to throw sequins on anything upsetting and keep our tourism smiles plastered. I believe in our roots of Carnival, not to preach tradition for traditions sake, but to remind people what it means.

A critic of Peter Minshall said Carnival is not the forum to bring up darkness, and I would say that’s what people think about the role of art in general when it comes to Trinidad: let it be a sunny beach scene, a vivid bougainvillea, do not dance with the macabre. As if we wouldn’t crawl out of hell with the blue devils if they invited us, as if there isn’t life in the movement of the Bat’s wings, or fire in the Midnight Robber’s words. The slowly forgotten Carnival is a perfect exhibition of the Trinidadian spirit: our ability to look into the darkness like a bull ready to charge, like a jab jab with his whip, and challenge it. Our true spirit is not to ignore, but to take some of the deepest suffering, death and horror, and transform it into freedom, expression, rebellion and most of all, life.