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Book 4. Continued…Tales of The Second Coming.5 And Book 1. Isla Grande .4
Book 4. Continued…Tales of The Second Coming .5
I am in the muddle of, ah…middle of, preparing for three very important occasions, and the April 15 tax deadline.
First, Sula’s One Hundred and Eighth Birthday, (the 22nd of April).
Second, The release of my new CD “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical. In Concert” Containing my new single “Surrender To The Sun” and
Third, A benefit Concert for COAST (The Council On Alcoholism and Drug Dependency, St. Thomas, St John) on April 25th at French Man’s Reef in St. Thomas, and…
yes, I filed online, just in the nickel of dime.
We have completed the production elements of “The Virgin islands Songs, The Musical, In Concert” and are now snaggled up in the manufacturing process.
Shari Brandt, Digitaldave (both from MAAC, the collective that I am involved with here in the states) and I spent much time on the cover last evening and that element looks great. Shari had a photo of a “Golden Sky” that she took in the Virgin Islands.
The photograph is wonderfully representative of lines from “The Virgin Islands Song”
The Virgin.Islands Song
Have you ever been, to a Virgin Island?
If you answer no, come let’s go come let’s go
Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?
If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go
In this world of gray on gray
I know where the rainbow day
Is born upon the golden sunrise
That scatters the stars turning diamonds to sky
Over Amalie… an emerald in the sea
Her perfumed mystery, bold as love longs to be.
Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?
If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go
In this world of grey on grey
I know where the rainbow day
Is born upon the golden sunrise
That scatters the stars turning diamonds to sky
Over sisters three… like emeralds in the sea
Their people’s history, bold as love, wild and free.
Have you ever been, to a Virgin Island?
If you answer no, come let’s go come let’s go
Have you ever seen what Virgin Islands mean?
If you answer no come let’s go, come let’s go
If you answer no, come let’s go, come let’s go…
And our upcoming single “Surrender To The Sun”.
Surrender To The Sun
Go down by the sea, surrender to the sun
Find the one you used to be, forget what time has done
Go down by the sea and heal your heart,
Too many memories are tearing you apart
Your eyes show you’re tired so
Of love of lose or win
Old friends know you’ve got to go
And let your heart begin again.
Instrumental
Your eyes show you’re tired so
Of love of lose or win
Old friends know you’ve got to go
And let your heart begin again.
Go down by the sea and heal your heart,
Too many memories are tearing you apart
Go down by the sea, surrender to the sun
Find the one you used to be, forget what time has done
Go down by the sea and heal your heart,
Too many memories are tearing you apart,
They’re tearing you apart…
We need to work quickly as I am scheduled to travel back to St. Thomas on Tuesday the 20th of April, for Sula’s Birthday Party on the 24th and the Benefit Concert at French Mans Reef on the 25th. I would like to have at least fifty copies of the new CD to take along. The CD is a double album so we are actually burning and printing 100 discs to make 50 copies.
The package looks great (Thanks to Shari Brandt of MAAC) the production quality is great (thanks to Digital Dave of MAAC) and the content is interesting and unusual.
(The printing and burning is being done as I write, by John E. a once well-known New York City recording engineer who is also a part of the exciting MAAC collective)
In terms of content, the CD contains what I believe to be a selection of good and appropriate “Virgin Island Songs” (of which there could have been three times as many) poetry, and lots of what we call (down in the Islands) “schupidness” aka (in the USA), as “humor”. I think that folks will find it interesting, amusing, and worth their while.
This is our first co-production with MAAC (The Middletown Area Arts Collective) and this afternoon the media committee is meeting to discuss and create an action plan for getting the product (most especially the single “Surrender To The Sun” to the public. We do believe that there is an audience for this song and this recording of it, and the trick is how to get the recording to its audience. Specifically,
1. How to get exposure for the recording.
2. How to make the recording available to those people who would like to have it
3. How to collect sufficient pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars from sales of the recording to be able to create more recordings…
We think that this recording is close to the perfect one to help us develop and establish a promotion and distribution (and collection?) process that we will be able to utilize for future products.
Of course we have no freakin’ “mowker balowker” (moolah boolah) (At last report it took an investment of $250,000 to get a hit) to pursue the traditional or established promotion and distribution processes. Which includes printing thousands of promotional copies and shipping them to radio stations, hiring an “independent record promotions person” who would “get our release to the top of the pile” hiring a publicist to get us as much “press” as needed, shipping copies to and getting the interest and attention of ”reviewers” inclined to “rave or even rant” about our humble offering, and mounting a “Promotional Tour” to get exposure and support for the release” so, we have to uncover and discover new ways to achieve our goal. Which is in a word,.. ah six words, “To make this record a hit”.
We are certainly interested to hear your ideas and to engage your help in this. Please write to me at scott@lilfishrecords.com with your thoughts, and suggestions. I (and we) thank you very much.
P.S someone is saying “Scott you’ve got to bribe folks! Urging me to offer “half a bag of Hershey’s Kisses as a grand prize” Continued…
Book 1. Isla Grande .4
I walk right up to it and stop and stare almost every day. The house on South Catherine, it was my sister Gale’s home. We were here together loving each other as much as a brother and sister can. What fun we had rambling through the house shouting or mumbling silliness in English, Spanish and Calypso, in and out of yesterday, today and tomorrow. (incidentally, that’s the fun of being a “grown up” you get to shout and laugh and yell as loud and as often as you want to, and turn the music way up high).
Who in the world could have imagined that Gale would have to split? Not to California, not to Florida, but completely. Clean gone outta here, off the Earth…Not here there or anywhere, and not back tomorrow either. Gone gone gone. It’s unbelievable.
So, I walk right up to the house and stop. Almost every day. I just can’t believe she’s gone.
She would have loved “The Virgin Islands Songs, The Musical”, The MAAC Collective (right here in her little town, Middletown,) and her brudder bonehead’s new recording of “Surrender To The Sun”. After all, she was the one. She was the one that first heard the whispers in the wind, that realized a new kind of music was being birthed, one that she and her little brother Bonehead, belonged to, and were born to be part of.
It was the beginning of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Bill Haley and The Comets, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, The Platters, The Moon glows, The Flamingos, Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, their music, the idea that their music was OUR music, that spoke, that sang our freedom became our strength, the sweet salve, solace and succor for the soul, that we, that Gale and I, in that time and in our place, so desperately needed. Continued…
Book 1. Isla Grande Continued…Book 4. “Tales of The Second Coming” Continues..
Book 1. Isla Grande Continued…
While we were living at “Parada Vente Cinco, Y El Fangio” I was enrolled in “El Colejio de San Juan Bautista”, a fine and upstanding Escuela, wherein not a word of English was spoken..
None, no, nunca, nada, except of course for the odd combo/ patois dialect passing for English, spoken by yours truly.
The experience at San Juan Bautista was after all is said and done, one of the most instructive and educational of my entire academic career, and I would recommend it for anyone. The experience of becoming and being “El Estupido” simply because of language is like becoming the Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Louie the leper over night A most illuminating and ultimately, empathy producing exercise that I think ought to be a required part of every ones education.
While at Parade Vente Cinco, I made a friend, Terry (who lived nearby, but away from El Fangito). Through Terry, I was introduced to “Abuelitas” (a Spanish term for “little Grandmothers”).
My friend Terry’s Mother was “Puerto Ricania” his Father was a state-sider as I recall, but out of the picture at the time… In any case Terry and his Mother were living with his Abuelita, in a beautiful old “Spanish Moroccan” style, mini Hacienda, A very “Castiliano” pad and atmosphere (in those days the “upper class” considered themselves “Castilians” or “Castilianos” pure or semi pure “Spaniards” as opposed to the “lower classes” which were made up of a mixture of Spanish, African, Indios, and, well you name it. All together known as Puerto Ricanios, Boricuas, Borenquenios, as fine a Sangria of humankind as can be found any where on the Earth.
Americans occupied a position in the Castiliano hierarchy below the sub heading of “Vulgar” “Vulgarians” were tolerated more or less in direct relation to the individual’s power or financial status. And God pity the vulgarian who was “poor” “ese no vale nada”, their only redeeming quality was the fact that by their existence, they proved the natural superiority of Castilianos.
Castilianos who were of course, by divine preference, selected by Dios as most appropriate to “discover”, civilize and rule the new world. Ah yes… there had been some mismanagement, setbacks and perhaps even a few mistakes, but as long as “los Castillianos” held true to their superior attitude and ideation, this too would pass, this too would pass. Terry’s Abuelita was one of those.
It was through her intervention in our friendship that I given my first introduction to an interesting new point of view on my natural place and relative worth in the world.
Terry and I were talking about ways to make some money, (actually I suppose, I was the one concerned with making money because he always seemed to have all he needed, while I had none.) One block over from Aveneda Fernandez Juncos, was “Aveneda De Diego” a far more ritzy Aveneda, than Fernandez Juncos, On Aveneda De Diego, was where you would find “El Nilo”, a well-known breakfast and lunch type restaurant with these fabulous giant glazed donuts in the window (that I was dazzled and dizzyfied by but could never afford) always on sale for only “un bejon” a nickel.
Further along Aveneda De Diego, there was an empty lot in which a little traveling carnival set up a few rides. Among them, these great looking little cars that you got into and steered around a wooden track. I wanted more than anything in the world to be able to give them the quarter fare needed, and take my turn around the track. It happened that the day that my dear Mudder dear had sufficient discretionary funds to give her dear little bonehead dear a quarter, was the very day that the little cars had packed up and left. I was very sad and disappointed.
I know that things were worse in the Fangito, that my self-centered materialistic material wants, were wants, not needs and in the grand scheme of things blah, blah, blah. However, the experience of “having not” and “getting not” over and again, brings a sadness to the spirit, and the question of “hey, wot th’ heck, what’s goin’ on?” and” hmm, what the matter with me?”, begins to bubble sweetly beneath the consciousness, silently building to the subtle burp and overt belching of odd and uninvited emotional and cognitive bub-splosions and disturbances from time to time.
There was a big air-conditioned movie theater on Calle De Diego that was advertising and showing a really interesting looking grown up movie “Carmen Jones” starring a really interesting grown up actress, Dorothy Dandridge. The posters outside showed a strikingly beautiful lady of color in the starring role, (which even an eight year old knew was very unusual) I was really intrigued by the posters and knew there was no way that I would be able to pay my way in, so we decided to ask the movie theater man for a job. To our surprise and delight he said something like “sure, I’ll give you un peso each to sweep up and clean out the theater after each show”. With that he took us into the theater, it was enormous, but we got right to work…a sweepin’ and a pickin’ up and a moppin’ and a pickin’ up and a moppin’ and a sweepin’ and a “oh oh” a scrapin’ gum and a god knows what and a sweepin’ and as always, Terry’s Abuelita wanted him home for lunch, which meant that he had to leave before the job was over..Which meant that I had to do it alone, which was no fun, not even a little.
When I saw Terry later, he said that his Abeulita had told him that he couldn’t do that kind of work, that theaters “were filthy and full of spit” and that she said “while I could do it, she wouldn’t allow him to go back there anymore”. When I heard that I wondered why if he couldn’t, I could? While I didn’t quite understand what that meant, I knew it implied something that didn’t “feel” right. Something was wrong and further, it left me cleaning up the whole filthy place all by my self.
Fortunately we moved to Cacique Street before my soul sank completely through the sidewalk and “el estupido” got demoted all the way back to the first grade.
Cacique Street was interesting for a few reasons, One, because we lived in a house completely devoid of any furniture or furnishings (knives, forks, plates) of any kind, what so ever. And Two, because Gale and I had never been so all out blasted and interminably hungry in all our lives. It seems to me that all that Gale and I did on Cacique Street was wait and wait for an adult to bring us something to eat. It was crazy.
The only thing in the house other than our hunger and our suitcases was a radio…Gale and I played it day and night. Not surprisingly, the piece of music that I remember best from Calle Cacique was a bouncy melodic advertisement (in Spanish) for “Fruta Melocoton…..Libbys!” A jingle for Libby’s brand Peaches and Apricots, I’m telling you, it made a deep Impression…to this day “Melocoton” is one of my favorites of lip and lingo.
In a stroke of good fortune, we were unable to pay the rent, and had to move again.
This time to a furnished apartment at 1700 Ashford Avenue, in “El Condado”. Condado was a relatively upscale section of Santurce, that ran parallel to Condado Beach. 1700 Ashford Avenue, was an eight to ten story wonderful Spanish style old world apartment building overlooking the ocean, The coconut trees swaying in the breeze along the silver strand, the morning sun rising up golden and good out of the idyllic blue. It was beautiful.
We lived in a little apartment over the garage behind the main building blocked from the sea breeze and the view, still it beat the flaming heck out of tragico El Fangito and the crazy hungry nights and days of Cacique.,, Continued
Book 4. “Tales of The Second Coming” Continues..
Last evening, Your sixty four year old singer who will not take no for an answer, continued his voyage of discovery in pursuit of his ever elusive audience, up to and into the Capital of the great state of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg. He was accompanied by un congero Puertoriciano que se jama Rafael, a blond Croatian guitarista Goddess that calls her self “Barbie” and a “visually challenged”, well…a blind stick tappin’, ex NYC recording engineer and whiz-bang computer wizzit, John “E”
The object of their objective was a small (but big inside) bookstore and coffee joint called “The Midtown Scholar’ where he would be auditioning via their “Open Mike”, for a coveted one hour slot in their performance schedule which and when, there-upon therein, he would be allowed to put out a tip jar and possibly pass the basket.
We were met at our Capital City objective by the spark plug and leader of the MAAC (Middletown Area Arts Collective), Shari Brandt www.middletownarts.com (Middletown is “The Gritty little City that Glows” ever since Three Mile Island made it the shiniest place on the map) MAAC’s radical new Theater and Media group may be producing “the sixty four year old writer who won’t take no for an answer’s” new mini opus “Three Mile Island, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth, The Musical” we shall see…
Shari was accompanied by her husband handsome Dave and Bob The Train Engineer. All there to provide a kind and much appreciated collective support experience.
Meanwhile, your boy knows more than a little about “passing the basket” being a veteran of Greenwich Village in the sixties and Washington Square Park, in particular. (The best spot was under the arch where a singer could count on a nice echo effect) in fact the very spot in which and where in, he had accidentally discovered that the most astounding, surefire and guaranteed success with a singular “ basket pass” had little to do with the quality of the performance and everything to do with the visual effect of the comely wench making the round of the crowd, basket in hand. Remembering clearly that his most successful basket pass of all time occurred when his wild redheaded earth mama sweetie Annie’s proud young gravity defying pink and ivory breast had found it’s way out of her hippified peasant blouse to astound, electrify and thrill the crowd out of $80.00 (eighty dallah) cash money in Pennies, Nickels, Dimes. Quarters, Dollar bills (even a twenty) and sundry bells, buttons joints and medicinals. (yes, yes, I know, I’ve promised a “G” rated Memwa? but Annie is the Mother and Granny Mother of two of my girls and I think the story may be important and potentially useful for them to reference, when heated discussions arise over their own behaviors and wardrobe choices)
The question tonight here in Harrisburg, will be will these neo-hip folks object if we skip the songs and go directly to having the Croatian Goddess Barbie, flip, or float one out, basket in hand, for a quick killing. We shall see…
The problem turned out to be, that the person your singer needed to impress to get the gig, didn’t bother coming, and nether did the sound guy. So your boy stepped up to the mike, electric guitar in hand and offered up his performance in honor and remembrance of forty-five years of folkies, Earth Mothers, basket houses, bazooms, high falutin’ coffee house waitresses, rainy nights in the village, dark streets flashing reflections of red amber and green, neon lights and pouty lipped girls.
Your sixty-four year old “comeback kid” screeched a splendid and heartfelt medley of Zimmerman tunes artfully scrunched in between the Donovanian epic “Catch The Wind” in a trans Atlantic, sense defying audition tribute to what was, what is, and what will be, this moment, that moment, and forever, etc. Quite something to hear as the vocal mike was live live live and the guitfiddle amp dead dead dead.
Ah well, it certainly wasn’t the first time, nor will it be the last… We arranged a second audition with the decider, and the singer will keep his spirits clean and sober and high high high, because it turns out that for him, life and love and music, is just better that way. Continued…
Book 1. The Catch.
Book 1. The Catch.
I was talking with Tuts the other night about times and friends and places that are no more, we were talking specifically about our “Doun De Road” Alma Mater, the notorious Nisky elementary school. Nisky was located in an (even then) old one story military barracks, in the world war one submarine base on St. Thomas, and was known far and wide for having what were thought to be some of the hardest headed children in captivity, ah…ah… I mean the public school system, in it’s oh so unruly student body.
The sub base was located on land originally owned by the Nisky Moravian Church, bordering on Gregorie Channel and including Little Crumb Bay, the site of the earliest (five thousand years ago) Cibonay settlement in the lesser Antilles.
Under Danish Rule, the Moravians had been put in charge of educating the people of the Danish West Indies, and after the transfer, although there was an effort (mostly unsuccessful) made to bring some of the more salutary elements of American education into the picture, at Nisky, Dick and Jane and Sally and Spot mostly elicited laughter. In any case, that’s a little of how a double gaggle of dusty knobby noggined, wildly willful, rough and unruly children came to be occupying a “one room school” in a dilapidated military barracks (complete with jail cells) named after a Moravian Church, in a submarine base, down in the bongo isles.
So, on my way back from doing a radio interview with “Brownie” on WSTA (which is now also located in the old sub base) I stopped at the old school grounds to soak up some of the “vibes” and to relive and remember how it was.
The first thing that one notices is that the school and building are no more, they have been replaced by a frigging concrete parking lot, the lot is full of cars and trucks and there is not a trace of the place, (unless you know how and where to look.) If you do know how and where to look, then you will find everything exactly, (in fact even more exactly) as it was, than it was.
That place is of course the so called “wind..rather sugar cane mills of your mind, mentis and memory”.”The place of course where the reds are so much redder, and the blues are downright azure.
One of the most striking similarities bridging now and then is the fact that this little unshaded frying pan of a half-acre was and is among the hottest habitable places on the planet earth.
We, the knobby noggined, would stand right where I stood, in our raggedy lines and bake-fry three times a day, waiting for the odd collection of teacher ladies (young and old) to get us lined up properly and to the satisfaction of our strict disciplinarian principal, Mrs. Ulla Muller.
Once we were lined up, we prayed the “Our Father” and (in the after noon) sang “Now The Day Is Over) to the tune of “Onward Christian Soldiers” Sula says that when she was a teacher, they did the very same thing up in the country. (Interesting to note that my friend Sula taught our principal Ulla Muller, how to read in the little one room school-house called “Bonne Resolution” up in the cool mountain air just down the road from Nelteburg.
I’ve since learned that the content and process was the same at all the public schools, but it must have been very much more pleasant under the tall shade trees and in the cool mountain breeze at Bonne Resolution, No wonder she was grumpy down in the hot frying pan flat land, who wouldn’t be.
Additionally interesting, is the fact that Mrs. Ulla Muller is now a very sweet, pretty and gentle, ninety year old lady and friend of ours,) but that is also another story.
This one has to do with what I consider to be the best decision that I ever made. It happened at Nisky School early one morning just before the school bell rang.
At that time (September, 1951) Gale and I were the only white children in the public school system, certainly the only white children at Nisky School. The “big boys” fifth and sixth graders (some of whom were teenagers already) were not inclined to the gentle and kind, and especially not to a little white boy. On the morning in question a ball game was in process in the narrow area behind the old Navy heavy equipment shop and the School. The playing field was a long rectangular area between the shop, the school and the chain link fence protecting the Moravian Ministers “yard” (an area planted with Mango and Coconut trees) from the depredations of unruly and hungry children.
The “big boys” were playing and all the rest of the children (including my sister Gale and I) were standing on the sidelines watching. One of the sides needed someone to play the deepest part of the outfield and somehow I was push pulled forward to be the one. I was in the very beginning of the first grade and was certainly one of the smallest children there, however, I suspect this was about discovering what kind of man the little white boy was, so it would be clear to all where in the hierarchy he belonged”
The first test was; would I play at all, or would I back out of playing when we had to take the field, did I, would I have the moxie to try. (I of course didn’t know all about all this stuff; I just knew that if I didn’t step up, the teasing would be merciless)
When the sides changed, someone on the incoming team threw me a glove, actually some kind of a “mitt” (which means to me a glove with fingers splayed in every direction and no rawhide string connecting any of them) The mitt flew through the air and fell in the dust at my feet, eliciting the first of what many anticipated would be a whole string of laughs (at my expense) that morning. The truth is I didn’t know how to not participate in what was developing and so I automatically but reluctantly, moved into the game.
I put the enormous mitt-glove on my little hand and went out, out, out, until they signaled me to stop. When I turned around and looked back at the paint can that was home plate it looked like a miniature thimble. The first batter swacked something on the ground to third and I felt pretty good about that. I knew that I had scored some points just by accepting the challenge of playing, and I hoped that this would be “one two-three” and game over. The second batter also swacked it on the ground, and my team was getting very excited now, because we had the lead with one out to go and the school bell about to end the game at any moment.
The next thing I know, up steps a really big tough guy, and the second base guy and every body else are signaling me to go even further and further out…then blam-o the the really big fellow hits the friggin ball up up up and out out out, a monstrous “bataso largo” a moon shot and my good god awmighty the blasted thing has passed up and over everyone else and is heading straight for me.
That was the moment of the best decision I think I ever made. I was just a little kid, in fact I’d never even been in a real ball game before, and I had certainly never caught a ball that someone had hit, let alone launched into outer space. We were playing with what is (for reasons unknown to me) called a “soft ball” which means that the friggin thing coming down at me was every bit as big and hard as the moon.
The question in question, was never consciously put, I just ran forward to meet the falling sky. Not eagerly and confidently, rather scared to death, but determined to try. I stuck my two hands out palms up before me as I ran and the enormous orb hit the mitt-glove with what seemed like the force and weight of a cannon ball. There it was wobbling back and forth in the center of the wobbling mitt thing (which was too cockamamie to close) with my left hand trembling under the weight of it.
I could not believe that, 1, I had caught it, and 2, I was now about to drop the blasted thing. My right hand flew over to help steady the ball and by God, seconds later, the catch was caught. And caught too, forever in the hearts and minds of every single kid in Nisky School. My credibility and basic worth in terms of character, and cohones was established forever. The celebration began immediately the shouting and cheering was almost universal, and felt so good..and welcoming to me. It was beautiful, de lil’ Nisky School white boy had proved himself to be someone they could be proud of, had established his credibility, and though it would be tested many times again, the foundation for friendships based on admiration and respect, relationships that have lasted a life time, was created that fine morning by the best decision I ever made, which was simply, “Don’t run away Scott, run forward… and try”
Book 4. Who Sez Huh? Who Sez? Book 3. Popeye and The Crystal Cathedral
Book 4. Who Sez Huh? Who Sez?
While I haven’t gotten “The Virgin Islands Songs” completed as a full cast recording, I have written it and can perform a one man version of it… so it does exist, and it does contain the silliness and emotion, the feelings and the fun that I wanted an audience to experience as “The Virgin Islands Songs”
It looks as though the full cast recording may have to be done in another place, in another time. Too many things are getting backed up. Having finally attained “the age of reason” I am able to “reasonize” that I don’t have any time to waste.
One way or the other, I have to keep moving.
There is a certain freedom around this question of creating so-called product now that one has next to no expectation of being paid for it. I confess that I (having been in the music business for forty-five years now) have developed a sort of built-in automatic “Biz Monitor” an “adult music business voice” that pops (uninvited) into many if not all internal creative dialogs, to say almost always “Scott, you can’t do that, nobody wants that, it’ll never sell” (I further confess that while there are a few things to which I’ve said “Yeah, you’re probably right” there are many more to which my response is “Oh yeah! Who sez, huh? Who sez?” and “so what” This is one of those occasions.
I think that “my audience” will understand, if I can ever find them, they are the most elusive non group I’ve ever never known, I do have a few or perhaps multiples of a few solid “committables” although I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon of late. In those instances where I’ve come down from Olympus to answer “fan email” personally, I’ve some how managed to turn enthusiastic fans (some committible since South Atlantic Blues) into people I’ve never heard from again.
Perhaps I’ve been too effusive, and their responses something like “Nah, a big time handsome mysterioso (did I say handsome?) recording artist dude like Scott Fagan wouldn’t, couldn’t, really write all that nice stuff to me all by himself could he?, it must be some kind of crazy psychedelico algorithmico generated form letter” Heck no, I’m not gonna put up with this on top of his obscurity, it too much hard work to be a big fan of somebody you’ve never even seen or never even heard (and if you did probably confused him with Lou Rawls or Lou Christy or Monty Rock the Third, heck no, it’s too much work. So I’m not gonna like him any more, cause after all I put up with for him.. HE SENT ME A FORM LETTER!.
Anyway, as I said, there are (or were) perhaps fourteen or fifteen of them (my audience) scattered across the globe (in the most AMAZING places) there were an important few (including the head of the world-wide Scott Fagan Forever Fan club) in the Woman’s Detention Center in Greenwich Village, but unfortunately I don’t know where that “all important list of addresses” has gone, so now I’m going to have to wait for “The Fabulous Fourteen or Fifteen” to re-discover me all over again.
The fact is I’m a sixty-four year old singer whose train has left the station. Fortunately, I’ve got some fans, followers and friends who are still true believers, still willing to run alongside the tracks with me, in an attempt to flag the blood dragon down when “she’s comin’ round the mountain when she comes”, or shooting and raining sparks on the huffy puffel trail up the Big Rock Candy Mountain or somethin’
So, with their help we will begin. (what the heck is it that’s beginning?) It is the next phase of “The Virgin Islands Songs” more specifically, the beginning of promoting and performing the one man version, which began very appropriately at the Cultural Institute, in the J. Antonio Jarvis Museum, on Polyberg Hill..just across from the Alton Adams Home. In St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.
Chico (Gus Edwards, Tutsie’s brother, the pre-eminent Afro-decended Playwright in America) said some important things..he said that trying to do it all (Write it, Fund it, Rewrite it, Cast it, Arrange it, Sing it, Rehearse it, Record it, Direct it, Produce it, and Promote it,) is too much for anyone to have on their plate. He suggested that it made sense to simplify the process by lessening the requirements for a production by doing it as a one man show.
This makes a lot of sense where moving it forward as a performance and production is concerned, however it confuses me at depth because I am inclined to think in musical terms. Towards enhancing the musicality of a thing as an automatic response. and always always, towards creating musical recordings.
Additionally, there is the fact that I’m going to have to do different content for most stateside audiences because they probably are not going to get the spoken calypso humor of the Buckra De Paehae pieces. But we shall do and we shall see and it will be a fun and exciting element of the “Second Coming”.
Once upon a time in the music business, if you were an artist armies of smarmies would swarm ya trying to steal you away from the oh so honest upstanding trustworthy and upright personal manager or agent you were already signed and committed to. It was awful. They would try to get at you through your wife or girl friend, promising them this that and the next thing. It was really anxiety producing, unpleasant and depressing.The truth is I would rather be rejected than smarmed because ultimately, it’s up to me to find my way. I just hope me poor bent cogi-tater organ doesn’t snap crackle and pop under the strain! This is probably what that danged missing “executive center” in the brain is supposed to solve and resolve clickty clackity, lickty splito. We shall see…yes we shall.
Book 3. Popeye and The Crystal Cathedral
In the context of all the above, the various difficulties of my life, are the consequences of my failure, this is a line of information that keeps coming to mind and with it, the opportunity to get more clear about the causes of my failure, and what to do about them.
I am getting mighty clear about the consequences of my failure, they are all around me all day and all night, they are everything I have and don’t have, everything I do and don’t do and they are debilitating and contributory to more and more and more failure.
Well I ain’t a gonna take it!.. now effen ah kin jus figger out which button to punch which rock to roll up what hill, which road to take home.
I know that it’s drastically more subtle than that, rolling boulders up Everest is easy compared to getting a grip on these slippery invisibilities, many of which I’m confident, are comfortably anchored high above and behind me in the far confluence where cobweb, corner and ceiling gently conspire and quietly collude to collide.
Yep, an effen ah keep talking lak thet..it’s gonna be a cold day on rocky top before my blue moon turns to gold again. Yep, and If I keep talking like that, good ol’ Rocky top will be sweetly tinkling sand on the bottom of the sea, by the time I make any sense to me.
A while back I thought to my self “You’ve got to do better!” and I wondered “yeah but do what better?” and my answer was “everything.” And THAT made sense to me. Everything that I’m timid about, everything that I’m afraid of and try to avoid, everything that I dismiss as unimportant or beneath me, or square or… everything.
This idea of accepting the term “failure” as useful and accurate is fairly new for me. I have absolutely failed at accomplishing what I set out to accomplish, and though I have accomplished other important things (which may after all be all that I get to accomplish) I have failed at what I set out to do.
My father used to say “Fidel, I want you to watch Robert Schuller from the Crystal Cathedral, in fact we have a pane of glass there in our name, he’s positive and great, I watch him every Sunday” And I would feel a wave of pity and compassion for my father dear, living down in the friggin’ okeefeenokeeglades in an all but collapsed trailer. Breeding mosquitoes the size of humming birds and singing to his thirty or sixty or so leaping, barking, nonstop copulating Chihuahuas, having himself failed at what he set out to do. I would say not on your friggin’ life, thinking that the Robert Shuller Okeedooky was what allowed him to tolerate living the way he did, not realizing that it was the alcohol and likely his own dose of fetal alcohol effects that had melted his lofty dreams and burning ambitions into a warmish pool of Schlitzy piss.
Ah dear my fadder dear, your boy Fidel had a lot to learn… and is trying like hell to learn it.
Anyway, so last, (not this but last) January up in the states, I was watching Robert Shuller..when he mentioned one of my very favorite characters of all “New World” mythology “Popeye The Sailor Man”
The Reverend Robert Shuller came on and introduced his guest speaker Bill Hybels, and Mr. Hybels introduced his Popeye inspired approach to changing one’s life.
Mr. Hybels launched right into his premise, which is that we all have an “I jus can’t stands it no more” and if we can identify it then we can change our lives. He asked the viewers to think about that and he asked.” What is your “I Just Can’t Stands It No More”?
I leapt to my feet and confessed aloud that my “I Just Can’t Stands it No More” is my failure.
Now I know that some of you folks think that one of the more endearing things about me is my utter absence from the check out stand publications, and my quaint habit of laying so low that nobody knows a thing about me or my scandalous behaviors. Some of you have even gone so far as to track me down to ask for my obscurity formulae so that you can model your own business and life plans upon it, and while I don’t mind being able to come and go as I please with out the complications that so many others complain about, The fact and the truth, is I failed at what I set out to do. Which was/is to make a difference in the world and to provide financial freedom and security for my family and myself while doing it
I thought that I could and would do it through my ability to sing and write and make records… I have been at it since July 2nd 1964 and although I am not a failure at singing and writing,or a number of other things, I have failed miserably at managing and promoting my abilities and the products of my abilities to produce financial freedom and security for my family and myself.
Consequently, I have been materially “poor” and my Children have been materially “poor” all of our lives. Both parents, my sister and two of my three brothers have died materially “poor”. I was not successful at providing a breakthrough for any of them. Or any of the four mothers of my five children.
My Daughters Lelia and Holiday are still most vulnerable and the reality that I am not able to help them in spite of the fact that I am bright, inventive and more talented than many AND have given the past forty-five years to trying and trying and failing and failing,, brings me to where.. “I JUS CAN’T STANDS IT NO MORE!”
So, with the help of the Higher Power I am going to change it. Here are elements of my Action Plan. I will assess my assets and my deficits and identify what I have to learn and do to reverse my failure and at long last… well, ahh …reverse my failure.
- I will keep a diary of the process. The diary will be helpful to folks and a valuable creative product in its own right…
- I will make an entry each morning (2 minutes) and each evening (4 minutes), the first stating what I intend to achieve that day, and the second, what I got done and did not get done and what I learned as a result and the remedy.
January 25, 2009 AM
I intend to hold on to Popeye’s saying, “I Jus Can’t Stands It No More” write it down and see what if anything I can learn and do from that process. I intend to find a way or at least the beginning of a way to turn my failure into success, and to follow consistently the process that I outline or discover.
January 25, 2009 PM
I have started the process of turning my failure into success. I have written my intentions down and have begun. I spent an hour and a half rehearsing songs from “South Atlantic Blues”. I will out line the many ideas for potentially revenue producing projects, I will do the outlines in the morning.
January 31, 2009
Listing the many projects that I started this week
JULY 12, 2009 AM
Gosh, I had completely forgotten all about the daily diary entry aspect of this daily diary entry exercise, and have just rediscovered what I had written back in January! I am in St. Thomas recording “The Virgin Island Songs”. It has been interesting. but..good Lord.
February 12, 2010
Gosh, I’d forgotten what I rediscovered I’d forgotten and rediscovered, in July! Good Good God Amighty…
Book 1. We From UPSTREET Continued…and De Barracks Yad Bay and Beach Club
Book 1. We From UPSTREET Continued… and De Barracks Yad Bay and Beach Club
In the days before the present waterfront drive was built, the waterfront from The West India Dock, to Carenage (French Town), was beach front property. True the beach front in the Upstreet area known as “Barracks Yard” was what you could kindly call “muckity muck” or perhaps describe more accurately by saying that mud and night soil in equal measure, equals muckity muck, (night soil from the big “gut” that emptied into the sea there) still, when ever they felt like it, the people of Barracks Yard could and would walk right into the water to cool off and refresh themselves.
By the time Tony and Joe went away to Mandahl, they had taken me into Barracks Yard sufficient times for me to feel (if not completely welcome) welcome enough to come and go as I pleased. The truth is, few if any people from outside Barracks Yard were welcome there, the folks that lived there were perhaps one step below destitute, and they were (as you would be) somewhat sensitive about it.
Apparently they recognized and accepted things about me that I was unaware of myself. They saw that my shoes were long overdue for the dungheap, that my clothing was unkempt, my hair unbrushed and uncombed. They may also have noticed that I didn’t notice any of that and if I did, it didn’t bother me a bit.
I was completely unaware that I too, might have reason to be embarrassed about my circumstances, or any thing else. Looking back, my time as a denizen of (what I like to call) “De Barracks Yad Bay and Beach Club”, may have been the final beats of that kind of innocence for me.
Somehow in that seventh summer, far away from the poverty of the barracks yard, I felt the beginnings of what it was to burn with embarrassment and shame for my color and for what my family didn’t have.
But before we get to all of that sort of thing, here (in the language of my childhood, known as calypso) is a little spoken piece with that exact title from “The Virgin Islands Songs”
“De Barracks Yad Bay An Beach Club”
It jus so happen dat one day roun de bay dere by de Barracks yad a big truck come an dump out a truck load a san.
Wha! Yeh meboy, (I se to meself) now yu talking boy, lemme go lay doun in it.
No sooner said dan done an I was de fus man dare. Boy, ah lay back an cross me leg an crass up me han dem behine me head like ah contemplating de clouds in de clear blue sky.
De nex second, ah jump up ana run back home to de head a pave street for me Muddah towel ana umbrella fo style, den ah grab up a can a sardine, two French bread ana red soda ana fly back to de beautiful new san at wha I kno gon soon be “De Barracks Yad Bay an Beach Club” Yeh meboy, ah se to meself now yu talking now yu talking.
By de time ah reach back, three o fo touris had done fin de spot, but ah tro doun me self right in de middle ah dem, put an me shades ana open me sardine.
Jus den a big hard face man se “Hey Buckra, wha de hell yu tink yu doin, yu can’ see we come tu mix up concrete an cement?”
Ah se “wha? Yu crazy? Wha yu commin’ to de beach tu mix up concrete and cement” De man se “Is you is de one who crazy, who de hell tell you dis is a beach, we makin’ a watahfront fo bigtruck cou pass here” Ah se “wha? Is YOU is de one who crazy, look de beautiful blue watah de, look de san here, look de people in de middle. We here in de Barracks Yad waitin’ bocoups an many years plus fo somebody to bring de san fo de beach. Man de people dem been laydin doun in de mud full a crab hole an rock stone an badein’ in de watah wha de bottom fulla broke shell an beer can. De chrirren dem billin san calsel outtah mud an don’ talk abou when de gut runnin and de nightsoil commin’ doun, den dey makin mud pie outta dat!
No man, we waitin’ two hundred years an mo for dis san tu come (an fo somebody to plug up de gut) We ain’ wan no concrete and cement fo de beach, how de people dem gon lay doun on concrete and cement?, why yu wan tu have to jump up wid yu coal pot an yu fry fish and yu mabi an yu blanket an everyting, everytime some schupid muddah skunk ina bigtruck want tu pass. Yu crazy? No man, bring mo san!
Dis is de place right here me boy, in fac we should exten de beach all de way from Wes Indian dock to Cha Cha Ta…ah.. ah mean French Toun! Yu kno de beach belongs to de people dem and dat way every day will be like Christmas Mahnin fo de whole ah Charlotte Amalia me boy. Man sellin fraco an jumbi bead lef an right, woman sellin pate an benye by de poun. Touris frum all ovah de place commin to see de most beautiful town in de wurl, wid de bigges an de bes and de most beautiful beach in de wurl, rite in de middle ait. An de people dem will own de whole ting!. Man ah tell yu bring mo san! Bring mo san!..
Back at the very beginning of the blook I said that, from time to time we would be talking about “so called race” in ways that most so called white folks were not accustomed to, (and for that matter many people of color might find novel).
Gale and I were little white children in the West Indies, which (in those days) would automatically suggest that we were children of privilege and a certain social status…
Hmm, let me come at this in a different way… there are/ were shades of color all along a continuum from darkest to lightest from blue black to the paleest white and every incremental degree of brown, red, yellow and gold along the spectrum.
In the isolated island world of Euro/Afro/Caribbean society those families who were descendent of wealthy white plantation masters or masters of the mercantile, generally enjoyed the most favored status. This is not news to anyone; however a fine complication arose when white (and black) Americans entered the mix. Neither rich or poor white nor black Americans were programmed or inclined to kowtow to the self important “old families” at the top of the fairly rigid local hierarchy.
This of course made those folks that were about to lose “most favored status” resentful and angry and their often spoiled children (who of course were not as even tempered as their often spoiled adults) were too often surprisingly cruel. Alas for the guiless “poor yankee girl or boy” who comes pogo sticking into view, as unsuspecting and trusting as a tail-wagging puppy dog. Yaaiiiee!
Of course if I knew then what I know now…
But even then I knew that most people all round the color wheel, were people of good heart and good will.
What I didn’t know was that among them, (us) often indistinguishable from the rest, lurked miseries who were mean, resentful and vindictive and chomping at the bit to act on it. Not to lift their hands “mano a mano” to do battle (thereby running the risk of being exposed, embarrassing themselves, and getting the good “assing” they deserved) but to whisper, conspire to hurt, diminish, undermine and humiliate the object of their affliction. Permanently and forever, as often as possible. Tragically, these kinds of miserable poisonous wretches have succeeded many times in many places, many times more than once.
These days we all know that the point of all that crazy action is to put you down or diminish you, in an effort to elevate or feel better about themselves, but what kid of any color comes into the picture armed with that information. What a different world it would be if kids were armed early on with that info. If the bad guys and bullys were immediately identified for what they really are and why they do what they do.
Anyway, aside from having the seeds of shame planted by wacko shame propagator types, and unfortunately, having the idea that we were less than, and beyond pitiful somewhat watered and reinforced by the fact that all we had to eat at home was green pea soup for literally weeks at a time, We (Gale and I) had the wildest, warmest, and most wonderful fun while we lived UPSTREET. Tomorrow (Sunday Jan 31.) I will be doing a concert in the new Jarvis Museum the UPSTREET part of Charlotte Amalia…I am filled with emotion about the whole thing and I will sing like crazy. Yep. Continued…
Book 4. and Book 1.The Concert, and We From UPSTREET!
Book 4 and Book 1. The Concert, and We From UPSTREET!
I’m writing from St.Thomas, having arrived yesterday, Sunday, January the 24th. (One of my very favorite days of the year, by virtue of the fact that it is the Birthingday of my beautiful twins Lelia and Archie)
I am here to do a concert performance of The Virgin Islands Songs, for “The Virgin Islands Cultural Heritage Institute” and the “J. Antonio Jarvis Museum and Learning Center”.
Tuts and I have just returned from meeting with the Director, Myron Jackson and his extremely talented assistant Yvette Finch and taking a look at the performance area.
The stage will be set up under a tent on the grounds and I will be looking south, directly at the hillside location of the “Bandmaster Alton Adams” family home. Alton Adams is the most highly regarded musician to have come from the Virgin Islands, he was the bandmaster of a local Virgin Islands Brass Band that was so good, that the Navy enlisted the whole Oompa kit and kaboddle, and sent them all around the world representing the USA. They were gentlemen of color each and every one, whose sense of possibility and self had not been saddled with the innumerable and onerous burdens of segregation. They represented themselves, the Islands and the Country well, and made beautiful music for many years.
Bandmaster Adams is considered second only to John Phillips Sousa in quantity and quality of Marches composed, and authored our own “Virgin Islands March” the Official Anthem of the Virgin Islands, which is a wonderful song. His Grand Daughter is the afore mentioned extremely talented Yvette Finch who on top of everything else, is a brilliant singer, and his Grandson is Cliff Finch the extraordinary Bass player on most of my album “Dreams Should Never Die” (The Virgin Islands Songs Vol. 2) which songs make up one third of the score of “The Virgin Islands Songs”. If ever I had occasion for inspiration it is certainly this coming Sunday. As I will be (from the stage) looking directly up at Bandmaster Adams familial home, with his granddaughter looking directly and me and his grandson’s wonderfully melodic bass leading us away from staggering off one musical precipice after another. Yes indeed, this ought to be stimulating and fun.
Since the Second Coming has not yet impressed any journalists (or for that matter anyone other than those still impressed by the first coming…well not true, some folks are saying some very nice things about my singing and treating me like I’m the greatest thing since freshwater, but they’re way back up in the states), I will probably have to review the concert for you myself.
Actually while I would have real difficulty reviewing the performance from the audience prospective while at the same time swacking the guitar and screechin’ on stage while saying nice things about how well and goodly handsome myself are, it probably couldn’t be much worse than what you may have read about me already. I suspect that some of you are aware that the lasting echoing journalistic statement of the entire forty five years of the first coming, is the oft (really oft, irritatingly oft) dismissal of me as “Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Field’s father, who did an album for ATCO in the 60’s, the obscure folk singer Scott Fagan )
If however (for reasons known only to me, until I finally spill the beans in perhaps book Twelve and a half) there are no post concert comments coming from yours truly, you may feel absolutely free to make up all kinds of stuff yourself…because even though I am with out question a real high ball, Ah, I mean a real high brow, ultra double artsy dude, there is no business like show business, and my dear dear friends, in spite of the best intentions of mice (“mike men”) and musicians, you just never never know.
P.S. Am I anxious? Yes I’m anxious…but I will do my best, to do my best, and then I will do my best.
We From UPSTREET
Yesterday after our meeting at the Jarvis museum, I pointed out to Morita (Morita is Tut’s ex-wife, the Mother of his fourth child, daughter Jamaine. She is also the Grand Mother of Tut’s Grandson “Nikell” who is the cheery little round headed fellow riding along in the truck with us. Morita is also a former class mate of mine to whom I carried sweet messages of young love from Tuts, at Charlotte Amalie High School) The “wall house” (concrete block) at the head of “pave street” (the century old name for Main Street) in which I used to live and which qualifies me to be accepted as a member of the “We from UPSTREET” organization. Whew!
“We From UPSTREET” is a neighborhood organization very similar to the “We From DOWNSTREET”neighborhood organization in fact they are almost exactly alike except they are on opposite sides of Charlotte Amalie, UP on the East and, DOWN on the West. Each is convinced that their “We from” is best and better than all the rest (and there are many, ie. We From DOUNDEROAD, De SAVANEROS, We from ROUNDEFIELD, Dem from SILVAHDALLAH and so forth). Which is of course quite true in every case. Yep,
When I pointed out the house and told her that I had lived there, and that that’s what made me a member of “We from UPSTREET”, she said “Man you live all over the place, you mus’ be a part of everyting” I said “Yes, that’s right, I did, I am” while Tuts chimed in “Yes, that’s why everybody know Scottie.”
It was true and it was a very interesting reality, an interesting alternative to actually having a home and belonging somewhere. Was belonging (to a degree) everywhere. I am really grateful for that, as it allows me to feel at home just about everywhere I go, at home and all over the away.
The “smoke truck” (a mosquito eradication truck, spraying what was commonly known to be DDT, out of a high pressure nozzle mounted at nose level for leaping, laughing, gyrating children) came to visit UPSTREET once or twice a week just after nightfall. When that high pitched hissing, the crazy flashing lights, and those billowing clouds of smoke arrived, it meant hysterical fun for all the children in the neighborhood. We would disappear into the thick white smoke, leaping and laughing dancing and carrying on to beat the band, for what seemed like hours on end.
More than once I realized a certain odd power as I emerged staggering, oiled to the bone, from the cloud and bystanders (who had no reason to suspect or way of knowing, that the pale apparition was one of two white children (Gale and I) who had moved into their part of town), would cry out in shock upon seeing me “Oh GOD! Look a Jumbi! It was great fun.
I learned or (began to learn) a great many things in our time living “UPSTREET”. Among them, that even “good” children could be “taken away by the government” never to be seen or heard from again.
When we first came to the house at the head of “Pave Street” I was befriended by two brothers, Tony and Joe, who appointed themselves as my protectors. They lived with their father in a very interesting old wooden structure on “The Beljan Road”. An actual “Sail loft” left over from the days of the massive canvas square riggers and the great Clipper Ships. Tony and Joe were bright, alert, friendly and kind boys (maybe nine and eleven years old) that for the most part, (when not taking care of me, seven going on eight) took care of themselves.
Their father was a large silent shambling man, who (in retrospect) was not able to properly care for them. One day they said goodbye by announcing that they were going to be sent to the dreaded Mandahl.
Gale and I had been in the Islands long enough to have heard one and another teacher, parent, or grumpy citizen threaten a child with “Ah gon sen yu ass Mandhal if yu don behave” We knew that being sent to Mandahl was akin to being delivered to de “Ol’ Man stinkin’ toe” who stuffed disrespectful and naughty children in his crocus (burlap) bag and took them away, most likely to cook and eat them for supper. Tony and Joe hadn’t done a thing to deserve such a fate…but the day came and they were gone.
In reality, the dreaded Mandahl was the only resource that the system had for children without the benefit of parental or familial care givers. While I never saw them again, from time to time I would hear that they were fine and doing ok. I hope that their’s is a tale that ended well.
Years later, while still a minor myself, I watched helplessly as social services put my younger brothers Larry and Lonnie into foster care. But that, (and how I managed to avoid being snagged by the system myself), is another story… which soon come…
Book 3. The Vigil… Conclusion.
Book 3. The Vigil… Conclusion.
Remarkably, along the long zig zaggy journey to uncovering and discovering “who yu tink yu is?” or more precisely, “Who is you is you is?” these good folks have for the most part, found their way to being themselves.
It is long past time that we stop telling people who they should be, (based on the old racist models, or the newer racist bullying of the “who’s blacker than who prison gang model”) and allow people to decide for themselves who they are, and how they wish to be..and further, to welcome them there
You might think that I’ve been on some kind of a socio/religiological dig, or vigiling for reasons to rant and rave, but I’ve been thinking about these things long and hard since my own childhood and particularly since I (as a young white boy) became the older brother to one and then another younger brother of color.Trying my big brother best to help each of them find their way in the world; as children of color and young men of color and then, as men of color, with children of their own, of color.
In addition to these thoughts and concerns swirling in and out of my head and around and through the solemnity of the occasion, I confess that I have also been holding close, a secret hope, to see a certain smile.
I am watching and waiting for the one who inspired my poem “The Girl With The Golden Skin”
“The Girl With The Golden Skin”
When I was a boy I fell in love with the girl with the golden skin
Gold dust is her face, she glowed as if she were little sister to the sun
I whispered her name to the moon, I sang, she was music to me
Can you imagine?.. A girl with golden skin..
She fought in the street for me when another girl said, “he’s mine”
And again when her Mother said “he will never do”
he is too Splotchy and blotchy and pink and red and foolish
to think of you,
the girl with the golden skin.
You are our pride and our joy
You are our prized possession
the peak of perfection
he will never do, he is not for you.
The sky was blue in those days,
The air like frangipangi soup
the world a ruckus of color and sound
my head pounded to think of her,
I could never catch my breath
You are not for him, her father said
We have suffered for centuries to make you as you are
denied our destiny from Africa to Colon
slaved in increments of a hundred, hundred years
To make you
You are not for him
I was a hero in those days, a little one but still..macho
A splotchi-ty blotchi-ty pink and red, 85 pound macho man
A hero for justice and equality, a fly weight street fighting “doun de road” boy
Against the drunken U.S. Navy. Once, twice three times a week
“But he’s good Mam’ere and he’s a hero” she said, “I love him”
“He is not for you,” said her Grand Mother “he is nothing but a ragamuffin pae-hae
his Mother is a drunken white woman married to a drunken black man
life will trample him, time will explode his illusions
like balloons on a string
bang, bang, bang, in his empty and presumptuous big head
You are our triumph, our future story. We vanquished Portugal and Spain,
Africa and the Aztec. the Dutch and Dane, the Carib and the Ciboney
All are in you, the girl with the golden skin, the apex of our intention
the vessel of our arrival, the dawn of our day, the virgin saint of our freedom come
There were trade winds in those days, and I would put my face in them
I knew that they came from Sahara,
I knew that they carried truth across time
to those that cared to listen.
and so I came to know my place..
Still, a lifetime later,
I can never catch my breath
my temples pound
I will love forever, the girl with the golden skin
Gold dust is her face, little sister to the sun
I whisper her name to the moon, I sing, she is music to me
The apex of perfection, the virgin saint of freedom come, the girl with the golden skin
The one that they would bless for you, could never be me.
because he must never be… less than golden too…
I had been at the vigil for over an hour, and had promised my friend Nicky Russel (The Mighty Whitey) that I would come and do some tunes at his open mike night at “Tickles”, a bar and restaurant in the Crown Bay Marina. I was beginning to go back and forth between the idea that it was time to go home to start tuning up the pipes for the performance, and staying right where I was, to hear the service and especially the singing of the old spirituals. (And yes, I’ve confessed that a certain lady girl was on my mind).
I struggled back and forth and finally, my sense of artistic responsibility won. I got up and excused my self along the pew and headed out.
When I got to the foyer, I ran right into the girl with the golden skin.
She looked at me with her aquamarine eyes and said in a melodious voice that moves me like a Philharmonic “I heard your new song (Surrender To The Sun) on the radio this morning” My dear friends,..can you imagine what those words mean and meant to me? As I cooly stammered out “Yee ya yo ya yu did?” my shoulder was grabbed from the other side by my old friend Freddie, the Chief of the Carib/Arawak Federation, and in that moment she was gone.
I stared in amazement as the crowd that I had just come through, closed around her.
Friends, I have loved this girl for over fifty years. That’s a long time for a boy of thirteen to hold on to that kind of feeling, but there it is. In all that time, in all the years that I have known her, we have not exchanged more than a hundred words with one another, and sixteen of the best of them were spoken and sputtered just moments ago.
I would like you to know, that I know that she is a married Lady, (and unbelievably, a mother and grand mother even) and that I would never intentionally disrupt her situation in any way (well in ultra-truth, I would hope that she still holds at least a sparkle of affection (if not a raging wildfire) for me, but I will not be disrespectful of her situation or her sweetheart, and will behave appropriately..(This despite my dear friend and long time advisor in matters of relationships and the heart, (who shall remain anonymous,) insisting over and again that clearlyI should have grabbed her and pulled her into the room where they keep the frozen dead people, and given her a big fat smooch)
Anyway..I struggled with the irony and a cascade of ephemeral but insistent emotions and concluded that the Great God almighty was saving at least two of his star-crossed children from further heartbreak and mayhem, and that my shoulder grabbing friend Freddy, Attorney at Law, Chief Of The Carib and Arawak Federation, ultimate Wazam of The Knights of The Mysterioso, was used this day by the divine as an interventionary angel. I wondered if Freddie had felt the gentle hand of the Eternal directing him as he reached out and distracted me from pursuing what might have become (and still could be) a disasterous and dastardly destiny.
Whatever else, “The girl with the golden skin” has always been an inspiration to me and will be forever. I do hope that she knows or at least suspects how grateful I am to her, for her…
Book 3. Sula, The Mountain Dove
Book 3. Sula, The Mountain Dove
I had an unusually enjoyable visit with Sula this morning, I put three of my last six dollars in the tank so that I could go up to see her. It was a beautiful morning and the views round this that and the next corner were crystal clear. The” surf was up” outside Hull Bay, Tortola, Jos Van Dyke and islands of the Thatch Key archipelago were a majestic blue in the distance, and the”Plums were up” in Sulas “Hog Plum” tree too. The shutters are flung open in her little wooden house and the voices of the choir at the Cathedral of Saints. Peter and Paul come pouring out of her little radio, each utterance aspiring to sanctity and sounding like they are hitting awfully close to the mark, to me.
I have come to love the shaky but sincere leads and rough harmonies of one singer after the next and one Choir after the other. Sula’s sister the long departed “Tantan Bertha’s” son, Ashford is in the other room, with his radio also tuned to WSTA and he is playing his alto saxophone along with the music. He plays in the old “Quelbay” style, a high wavering vibrato, a full beautiful tone. He is one of the very best but does not play in public, he is very shy and is waiting until he becomes a better player. He is really very good already, and I very much delight in listening to him play.
Ashford and I connect through the music and we have interesting music related conversations just about every Sunday. Conversations about music books that he orders through the mail, scales and intervals, theory and improvisations. He honors me by presenting thoughtful questions about these things as though I were (because I am a recording artist) a knowledgeable maestro. God bless him, I’ve actually been able to answer a few of his questions and even add a little info on top of that, but it’s a fluke, small bits of knowledge I’ve picked up by osmosis. My storehouse/library of academic information in this area is embarrassingly sketchy, my own musical gifts are more like a wild rolling eyed confidence, married to a series of semi spontaneous heartfelt polyphonic outbursts through an instrument that continually surprises (among others) me, with it’s power and purdyness.
What the heck that has to do with knowing anything, is a great mystery. But if Ashford (or anyone else) wishes to be kind to me because of it, I’ll take it and try my best to return the same.
The music of sincere people in reverential worship fills Sulas world every Sunday and it is a beautiful thing
Sula’s Hog Plum Tree is weighed down with golden-yellow and soo very sweet plums. She was hoping that I would be able to pick a bag full for her “other” boy friend Desooka” (really Desouza but Sula has decided to call him Desooka and so it is)
My first question to Sula is always “Sula have you been behaving your self?” and she answers sweetly in a proper lilting creole, “Yes Scott, I am always well-behaved” My second question is “But Sula, how can a woman who has not one or two or even three or four but maybe five or six or more boyfriends at the same time, claim to be behaving herself?” And she will throw her head back and laugh out loud..
I ask her if she has gotten all dressed up for me this morning, because she looks so sharp.. She denys it, but her dress was especially pretty, a royal blue with little heart wreaths filled with flowers all over. She looked very pretty and I told her so. She had a red kerchief on, but took it off to re-tie, as she did I noticed her hair, a wild confusion of snow-white curls with perfect little plaits and braids. I said “Sula, don’t you ever leave the kerchief off? Your hair looks so pretty and the kerchief must be so hot.
To my surprise she did leave it off..she looked great and comfortable and cool.
Breaking into a more colloquial calypso accent, she said, “Scott, Ah wan yu tu git me ting dem frum de box dare fo me, ah want a candy, because my mout is soo dry, an ah wan yu put me oy drop dem in me oy”
I teasingly say “Sula yu wan me put yu oy drop dem in yu oy? In yu oy? She laughed at my exaggeration of oy, then I said “but Sula yu have tu open yu oy so I cou put in de drops” She said “But, What do yu mean? I thought they were wide open already? Yu know yu poor girlfren is as bline as a bat, de poor ol girl kee-an see a ting!
“Scott yu know what I heard on de radio? Some boys who went to college say that there is no God, Who de hell dey tink made the heavens and de Eart, de moon and de stars? Dey mus-ee tink red pea soup could cook it self. How de hell dey could tink there is no God?
Sula then spoke a loud the sequence of the angel of the lord visiting a young virgin Mary and God placing his only begotten son in her womb, to grow there like every one else. She recounted the angel of the lord coming to Joseph in his sleep to explain what was happening with Mary, and she noted that in those days for a young man to be engaged to be married and discovering that his young bride to be was having a baby, was a difficult thing, but Joseph over came that and they had the little baby Jesus. And the little boy grew up playing and going to school just like all the rest, but then gave himself so that the rest of us could have life everlasting, could be relieved of our sins..”Oh yes!” she said “I know there is a God and I know my God is a good God.”
“Didn’t God save me when I was only twelve years old and I had the Typhoid Fever? Scott, Doctor Knud Hansen was right here, he was white yu know, and He told Mama Lovie (Sula’s Mother) that he was going, and coming back that afternoon. Then he told Old Uncle George (one of the original of the three Moolenar brothers), he told him that he didn’t believe that it would be possible for me to live out the day, and George came down and told Mama Lovie what the Doctor had said”. “Sula” I asked, “Were you in the hospital in town whe you had typhoid fever or were you out here?” “Right here” she said “I was right here, and Knud Hansen called me his little girl and took care of me” “Sula” I said, “How did Knud Hansen come out? Did he ride on a horse or a carrage”? “No, Scott, No,” she said “Knud Hansen walked, he walked all the way from town. Knud Hansen came out here ten times to see me, and when he came back that afternoon and saw that I was still alive..he said it was a miracle. He told Mama Lovie that if he could, he would give her a Gold Star for how extra specially good she took care of me. It was God that saved me, my God is a good God. How else could I have lived when I gave birth two different times, to two little dead babies?”
“Knud Hansen took care of me then too you know, even though I was a big and old and grown up woman, he still called me his little girl, and said that he would never let anything happen to me”. “How big where you then Sula”, I asked “any bigger than you are now? I don’t think you were ever big Sula, I don’t think you were ever any bigger than a Mountain Dove. And Sula, tell me, how old were you then?” “I was tutty one, tutty-two, tutty-three,” ” Wow Sula” I said, “all things considered that doesn’t sound very old either. Big and old?” She laughed..”You’re right, anyway, How can they think there is no God when God has always been so good to me?”
As she spoke..I thought to my self, just listen Scott.. she doesn’t need, nor will she benefit from hearing your cockamamie comments on the old or new testaments, or you recounting current theories on self-organization. you don’t really know any more than she does, or Knud Hansen did, about what came before or lies beyond the stars..you don’t need to show off how smart you are, at the expense of her comfort and beliefs, you don’t need to upset her and make her sad. She’s a good soul and a wonder in the world. Just dig it and be present..listen to the love in her and in the music all around.
I asked her if she knew my friend PK Hansen, (related to the Christiansens, a family that she has mentioned often) she ruminated a bit searching through a vast net of direct and tangentialy connected names and relations, and then said..”But Scott, our friend Jowers said he was going to bring Noreen to see me, but Alric says the house is too old and run down for visitors, that we should paint it first.
I said “Sula, we all love your old wood house, it doesn’t need to be painted before anyone comes to see you, we all expect to see, we want to see, we love to see the old house just the way it is, it’s like a national historic site, and you, Sula, you are a national treasure”
Her face always lights up when I remind her of these things, her eldest son Alric has just moved back to the island after spending fifty-five years in the states, working mostly as a prison guard. He is a good and decent fellow, but he’s impacted by a stateside mentality that has not yet been recalibrated to the local culture. Further, he would prefer that Sula left her old house and moved into his brand new house, with he and his wife Florence, on the other side of Crown.
Perhaps enough people expressed their shock and dismay with that idea, voicing their opinion that that would be the end of Sula, to have gotten his attention. However, He is still unfortunately quite verbal in his disapproval of her “old-time” environment as it is. at 107, Sula really is a national treasure. The shame is that more people are not aware of her, and have the opportunity to spend time in her home and company. She is a National Treasure is every way imaginable.
Book 3. The Man Who Swam To St. John…
BOOK 3. The Man Who Swam To St. John
In 1985 Shaky Acres (the recovery program that Tuts and I had started in 1981) was going along fairly well, but was in need of a fund raiser or two, Tuts heard (along with everyone else) of a proposed St. John swim (every body heard of it because it was considered impossible by most folks, and suicidaly dangerous by local folks who knew that there were hungry sharks out there the size of the battleship “Bismarck”). The UDT (The Frogmen, The Navy Seals, The toughest hombres on or under the sea) while training for many years in St. Thomas, had given up on swimming to St. John because it was simply too crazy dangerous a deed.
The well intentioned local lady legislator who had proposed “the swim” was unaware of the deep and dark difficulties inherent in the “big fun fundraiser”
.When Tutsie was a young boy, riding back across Sir Francis Drake’s Passage coming home with his Mother from a harvest festival in Cane Garden bay in Tortola, he looked out from the deck of “The Joan Of Arc” or “The Bomba Charger” at Pillsbury Sound (The five mile stretch of wild water that separates St. Thomas and St. John) he said to her “I could swim ‘crass dat yu kno” His usually loving mother had replied “Man hush up yu schupid mout, why yu like tu talk such schupid craziness?” Tuts didn’t see any reason to discuss it any further, but, he says, the conviction that he could do it, was locked in his mind for ever after.
It was July the third, 1985, Emancipation Day in The Virgin Islands. (Emancipation Day is the day in 1849, on which it became official that the slaves in the Danish West Indies had won their freedom and were now and forever more free) Freedom was a long time coming for the children of Africa in the DWI, and very hard won, as was Tut’s own personal freedom from drugs and alcohol.
There were forty eight entrants all together, most of them young white kids from the hot shot St. Croix “Dolphins Swim Team”, they came prepared and ready to succeed, with sleek buoyant body suits, well fitted goggles and the best fins that money could buy
A number of the St. Thomas swimmers were runners down from the states, budding tri-athletes, an elderly white gent determined to show his wife he still “had it” and half a hand full of locals with a mismatched assortment of masks and fins..
Tuts on the other hand was wearing one pair of big and baggy boxer trunks, y nada mas…
As the other swimmers did warm ups and calesthetics on the sand at Vessup bay, Red Hook, a tough old Tortola man, a sailor, pulled Tuts aside and said” Buaayyy yu, yu crazy buaay? Following de damn schupid white people dem? Yu don kno de real name fo red hook is shak waff? Buaayy!! Shak ow de biggah den uh submarine! A black man gon follow dem schupid white people? Buaayy wha rang wid yu, yu crazy o something?”
Tuts concedes that the strongly delivered warning did cause him much concern, but that he had already told everybody over and again that he was going to do it, told them in the strongest terms, in the face of the harshest ridicule. It was common knoweldge that no (sane) black person from the Islands could ever, should ever and would ever attempt to make that swim. Therefore, as his sanity was in question, it was also a crucial moment for recovery in the Islands.
At this moment he was demonstrating clearly (to local folks) that local people who went to fellowship meetings “wid de crazy white people dem” were demonstrably nuts (just like they thought) and for him to chicken out before he even hit the water would have sealed it once and for all. Tuts has since confessed that on that particular morning he had decided that he would rather be eaten alive, than quit.
Once the old Tortola man realized that he was not talking to a sensible gentleman of color, he began to encourage him with information about what to expect in terms of currents and where to find what he called “soft spots” in the sea. He stated flatly that “yu can’t swim directly East ta St. John, yu will have tu swim for “Loango” (Loango Key, a small Island due North of St. John) and as yu hold Loango as your goal, the current will be sweepin’ yu south, look sharp! Buaay, dat is de onliest way to get dare”.
As the swim began, the fast and the fancy took off due East for Cruz bay and before you knew it half of them had been swept away and were heading backwards around Cabrita Point towards Big and Little St. James, then out over the Anegada Trench, (on the bottom of which the scariest bug eyed things on earth, with jumping, wiggling electro “bait worms” dangling in front of foot long razor teeth, swim around four miles down, snapping steel trap jaws, and saying fish prayers, to get their dribbly lips around something, anything, slathered in coconut oil, or greasy mango scented sun tan lotion) and then south and west for St Croix, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Haiti, The Caymans, The Isle of Pines Cuba, and New Orleans. (of course by the time they got to New Orleans there would be nothing left of them but a Speedo tag and whatever plastics they’d swallowed along the way) needless to say, an armada of rescue boats started pulling people in over the gunnels, like langustas on parade, on a fish pot Saturday night.
Tuts was heading for Loango .
Shortly after the fast and the fancy fiasco, the old white gent’s wife, standing in his rescue boat started screaming hysterically “A Shark! A Shark! Oh my God, I see a Shark!” Pull my husband out, pull my husband out, pull him out right now!! Oh my GOD! Pull my husband out right now!
Tuts says the poor old gent was utterly dejected as they pulled him up, his bathing suit drooping below his pale old, pink old, shiny hiney.
Next went the dapper sharply outfitted “high color” attorney from the states, who had looked most disdainfully upon our man’s baggy boxers and boney bare feet but was now being dragged, thoroughly defeated, flat on his back from the sea to flat on his back on the bottom of the heaving boat.
The boats were heaving now because the seas were heaving now, they were coming into “The Big Blue”. A section of the sound a mile or more wide, in which, or perhaps I ought to say, through which, big serioso, fast moving, megalo mountains of Big Blue Heavy Water Waves (Waves of the sort that make you say “Good Lord” or “Mama Mia” or “Holy Freakin’ Toledo” when you first see them even though you are looking at them from your perch on the deck of a passenger ferry, ten or fifteen feet above the water line.
If you are in the water “down in the hollow” splashing along on your belly and craning your neck up trying to see the top of the wave, you will probably say a lot more than good lord, and if you are Tutsie and your rescue boat is manned by one “Fisherman John” a continental dipso juicehead, that you helped to drag off the junk heap of life, but now haven’t seen for over half an hour, most of it will not be printable in a general audience mem.wha? such as this one. But you can believe me when I say, you have probably never heard anything like it.
Eventually, Tuts discovered that if he swam like crazy faster and faster as he got closer and closer to the top and he could then flip over to his back at just the last second the wave would crest and the curl would break over his shoulders. He could “hang there” for seconds, (perhaps one or two of the longest this side of eternity,) and contemplate his mounting misery and helplessness before having to roll over and slide headfirst down down down, ah..down down down, ah down down down, down. (Knowing that some thing is surely waiting in the “trough” to open its porky yaw and scrape you all along your back, belly and sides as it swallows you whole)
As I may have mentioned casually a short while ago, this section of the sound was just a splash over a mile or more wide, can you guess how many times your whole life can flash before your eyes before you get completely bored with it?
What you don’t get bored with is the fact that you cannot see either Island or for that matter any thing at all when you are down in the valley, nothing but deep dark blue. So the desperate hope that you might be able to see something, anything, hinting at where you are, (is it Puerto Rico? Is it Berlin?) at the top of the next wave is a powerful draw, and can keep you going for many a repetition.
One time he did see some thing recognizable back on St.Thomas, it was the two super poles that mark the spot where the undersea cable goes down beneath the sea. way down to the bottom, that’s the bottom way way down in the pitch black darkness beneath his own bottom. Better to see nothing he thought, than things as scary as that.
Pretty soon his primary concern had shifted from monstroso seas, to waves slapping him in the face, slap slap slap slap and he realized that he was in a different kind of swim now, the big blue was behind him, and he was battling offshore currents, lucky he had gone for Loango, because now, in spite of his forward motion he was being swept sideways, southward towards “Stephens Key”, a small flat island outside of Cruz Bay Bay, (or the Bay of Cruz Bay), that is actually two small flat Islands because what would have been one Island has a rocky channel (with it’s own spiffy little current) right through it’s middle.
Tut knew that if allowed himself to be swept southward beyond Stephens Key, he would be out in the Anegada Trench, and then as likely as not his rescuers would be the Venezuelan Navy. He determined that he had to get to and make it through the spiffy little current hole in the middle of Stephens Key
.If the current was running in his favor it could be a breeze, he was exhausted but just on the inside of Stephens Key was the outer entrance to Cruz Bay. He was almost, almost there.
Alas, the current was not in his favor (unless he wanted to turn around and “go with the flow” back to the “Cabrita express” and the afore mentioned many points beyond) and this part of the swim took everything but the very best of him. The very best of him was all that kept him kicking; the current was so strong that the surface water was rippling backwards in protest. That’s when the “water under water” is moving too fast for the water “on the water” to keep up, so the surface ripples backwards in tiny little cascades of confusion, all of which seemed to be going right up his nose, and down his throat.
They say that the children of Africa can’t swim. My friend Tutsie has proved time and again, that that is a racist lie, or put another way, demonstrably untrue. Although it is true that Tutsie’s Mother, Miss Meu, born in Dominica, was one half Carib. And although the present effort of the Carib/Arawak Federation is to dispel the myth that King Charles of Spain used to promulgate and excuse the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, specifically, that the Caribs were so savage that they ate people, there is no question that the Caribs were and are among the toughest of the toughest human beings that have ever lived. So our man, three quarters African, One quarter Carib (with a smitter smatter of Frenchish, British, both in the African part of the pie) is all but dead in the water, having just burst through the impassable current hole at Stephen’s Rock.
Tuts aka “El Toro” aka “Peperino” aka Skarpy aka “The Rabbi” (that’s another story) aka a hundred other desperado descriptors, is ready to surrender. If only he had the strength to raise his arm signaling, no, begging to be dragged out of the sea, he would have done so. Just then the cheerful voice of Fisherman John came skipping across the water, singsonging advice to“Make it look pretty Tuts! Make it look pretty! We’re almost there man!, Make it look pretty!!!.
Some day I’ll build a statue at Cabrita Point to Victor Antonius “Tutsie” “El Toro” Edwards, one portraying a skinny little mahogany hued dude in baggy boxers, tilting forward on one leg, the other angled out behind, with hands (as in prayer) just above his head,. Poised to dive into history.
Tuts became that day the first native Virgin Islander to EVER in all time, swim from St. Thomas to St. John.
It wasn’t pretty as he crawled and dragged himself ashore (water streaming from every orifice), and it wasn’t pretty as he collapsed on the sand, unable to stand for a full three minutes. But in his defense, he was forty freakin’ years old and working with a body that had been ravaged by drugs and alcohol.
The kids on the Dolphin swim team have much to be proud of, they did in their wetsuits, fins and organized swim formations, what the rough and tough UDT had given up on, they made the swim.
I know that where ever these kids are in the world, and where ever they will go, they will always remember that “once upon a time, when we were kids in the islands, my friends and me did the impossible together” they will also remember with awe and admiration “that skinny little fellow in the baggy boxer trunks” that did it alone and bare footed, and then, passed on the champagne and praise, because “that’s not why he was there”.
.Tutsie made the swim because it was Emancipation Day, and he wanted to demonstrate and celebrate freedom, he wanted to demonstrate freedom from fear of the sea and the ignorant idea that “Black people can’t swim” He wanted to demonstrate that “recovery is macho” and that black people now need to be emancipated from the chemical slavery that is alcoholism and addiction, and because even though she was long gone, he wanted his mother to know that he could do, what he said he could do, and now it was time to go home… And oh yeah, to raise a few dollars for Shaky Acres.
Scott Fagan's Mem.wa? 