Dr Kris Ram­per­sad

It may seem a far stretch to con­nect the cur­rent state of emer­gency that we are now in with the sud­den col­lapse and sub­se­quent death of Pat Bish­op on Au­gust 20 dur­ing a meet­ing meant to bor­row val­ue from the cul­ture sec­tor for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. But is it re­al­ly?Pat's death may in fact sig­nal the kind of cul­tur­al state of emer­gency in which we find our­selves. If, as a so­ci­ety, we can­not link the killings and the cur­few and oth­er quick fix­es with the state of our arts and cul­ture in the strug­gles ar­tic­u­lat­ed in her life, and so poignant­ly in her last days, then it speaks vol­umes about the state of our na­tion as we look for so­lu­tions to crime and oth­er so­cial neg­a­tives across the coun­try.

It al­so seems par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant as we pre­pare to "cel­e­brate" our 49th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence next week, cel­e­bra­tions which will take place un­der the shroud of the state of emer­gency. It cer­tain­ly rep­re­sents how far away we have moved from the as­pi­ra­tions and hope and op­ti­mism that must have hung over that mo­ment in our his­to­ry 49 years ago when the na­tion­al flag of T&T was first hoist­ed, when the na­tion­al an­them was first sung, when the peo­ple of T&T as­sert­ed them­selves as a self-gov­ern­ing in­de­pen­dent na­tion re­spon­si­ble for its own des­tiny.In fact, part of the man­date of the meet­ing at which Bish­op col­lapsed was to de­fine ways of cel­e­brat­ing our next, the 50th an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence in 2012.Pat Bish­op threw her­self in­to the dis­cus­sions with the kind of pas­sion she is said to res­onate in all her work as a painter, mu­si­cian, con­duc­tor, or­a­tor, his­to­ri­an, lec­tur­er, men­tor; and that, de­spite her scep­ti­cism of the out­come of yet an­oth­er com­mit­tee, an­oth­er pan­el, an­oth­er meet­ing, to dis­cuss the way for­ward for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, for the cul­ture of T&T, and the cul­ture sec­tor.

When I had ex­pressed sim­i­lar scep­ti­cism, she looked at me with that sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly know­ing look that comes with the wis­dom of years and the frank blunt­ness many ex­pect of her and said: "and you are just a ba­by, yet. I can't tell you how many of these I have been in; how many truck­loads of re­ports I have at my home."It was a bit­ter pill for her to swal­low that per­haps those were ef­forts in fu­til­i­ty in pur­suit of her stat­ed vi­sion "that my coun­try­men may find their place in the sun," as she cites as her goal in her re­sume.A child of pre-in­de­pen­dence T&T, Pat Bish­op was born at the crux of the na­tion­al­ist move­ment of the 1940s. The vi­sion of peo­ple's em­pow­er­ment ig­nit­ed by the trade unions, re­gion­al­ism, fed­er­a­tion and the move­ment to­wards self-gov­er­nance; of self-as­ser­tion and of as­pi­ra­tion to be what­ev­er a fledg­ling na­tion want­ed to be, were all em­bed­ded in her am­ple per­son­age.

She would have been 22 years old when the red, white and black na­tion­al flag of T&T was hoist­ed for the first time; when the na­tion­al an­them with its as­ser­tion of "bound­less faith in our des­tiny" and its fi­nal re­frain, "every creed and race finds an equal place," was first sung.But she lived those words. In­de­pen­dence was an icon­ic word then; icon is now the word that will at­tach it­self to de­scrip­tions of her life and works.I did not know Pat Bish­op well be­fore the few days with­in the last few weeks when I sat at the same ta­ble with her, and got glimpses of her en­cy­clopae­dia of ex­pe­ri­ences which she was so gen­er­ous to share with those will­ing to re­ceive knowl­edge. But I did, to some ex­tent, know and was touched by her work as a mu­si­cian, painter and or­a­tor and have in­ter­viewed her oc­ca­sion­al­ly over the years.

In fact, one of my ear­li­est in­spi­ra­tions for my work in the cul­ture sec­tor, fol­low­ing on ges­ta­tion from in­volve­ments in our vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty, was when I was prepar­ing a spe­cial tele­vi­sion re­port to ex­am­ine the po­ten­tial of the then up­com­ing Car­ifes­ta V which T&T was prepar­ing to host in 1992. Her vi­sion of a Caribbean unit­ed through the vi­tal­i­ty of its arts poured out in im­ages of quick­sil­ver that seemed so tan­gi­ble and so elu­sive at the same time. It is a vi­sion that has kept its po­ten­cy through the years and which she has tire­less­ly as­sert­ed through her every ac­tiv­i­ty as vi­brant, alive, re­al and, cer­tain­ly, achiev­able.She em­braced in her work the cul­tur­al in­cu­ba­tors that are in the main in the ob­scure and of­ten in­vis­i­ble vil­lage nich­es and tried to con­nect them to the vast field of op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able at the na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al lev­els in her tire­less pur­suit to have her coun­try­men ben­e­fit from those op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as her ex­pe­ri­ences.

She kept an en­dur­ing faith in the pow­er of the arts to trans­form, re­gen­er­ate, to pro­vide sus­te­nance for its users, bene­fac­tors and ben­e­fi­cia­ries, and to nour­ish them both phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. She was an aca­d­e­m­ic who nev­er lost sight of the sig­nif­i­cance of in­for­mal ed­u­ca­tion in­flu­ences and process­es that in­clud­ed pop­u­lar cul­ture. She recog­nised the val­ue of pro­vid­ing av­enues for self-ex­pres­sion in the lan­guage of var­i­ous forms-mu­sic, art, de­sign, words and the con­nec­tion be­tween such self-con­fi­dence and the self-im­age it de­fined as es­sen­tial life-skills and com­pan­ion to crit­i­cal think­ing and a com­pelling al­ter­na­tive to those ex­pres­sions that man­i­fest­ed them­selves in vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

She held firm­ly to the no­tion that well-vi­sioned, well-struc­tured and well-man­aged cul­ture sys­tems were the an­ti­dote to the neg­a­tive self-im­age, lack of self-con­fi­dence and the es­sen­tial elixir to cul­ti­va­tion of a sense of self and na­tion self.Very lit­tle an­gered her as much as any sug­ges­tion that el­e­ments of the cul­tur­al sec­tor were at log­ger­heads, or that dif­fer­ences among them were re­lat­ed to eth­nic­i­ty. That was a po­si­tion she de­rived from long ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing with groups of all races and class­es at all lev­els in T&T. It was not a dream to be re­alised; it was al­ready re­al.She em­bod­ied the reser­voirs of cul­tur­al en­er­gy that re­sides in so many of our artists and cul­ture prac­ti­tion­ers. Where re­sources did not ex­ist (or was not ac­ces­si­ble to the arts), she cre­at­ed them. Draw­ing on the cre­ative pow­er of her artis­tic ge­nius, she con­tin­u­ous­ly im­pro­vised fa­cil­i­ties and meth­ods to make up for the de­fi­cien­cies. She once said that she­could have stayed in Britain af­ter her stud­ies and in­dulged in its rich ar­ray of arts, but chose to re­turn to these is­lands where "if you want to en­joy a con­cert, you bet­ter make it your­self." And she did make con­cert af­ter con­cert af­ter con­cert, as she did paint­ing af­ter paint­ing af­ter paint­ing.

So graph­ic and lyri­cal were her ex­pres­sions that those who re­mem­ber her speak, al­so felt that each of those speech­es was a song, a paint­ing, a gem to be trea­sured.The spring well of her artis­tic en­er­gy fu­elled her faith in the po­ten­tial of T&T to rise above its cir­cum­stances as small is­lands in a vast globe and tremen­dous coun­ter­cur­rents, and that de­spite the weari­ness that seemed to be over­com­ing her spir­it in try­ing time and again, and again, and yet again, to rep­re­sent that po­si­tion in board­rooms and com­mit­tees and pan­els. She fought that those of us around the ta­ble would not have to be fight­ing the same fight and in the same words some half a cen­tu­ry hence.

"I would get kicked out, and every time they fired me, they gave me an award," she would of­ten say dry­ly.She had many words to add through­out the meet­ing, held on a Sat­ur­day, her sa­cred day of en­gage­ment with her stu­dents which she so re­luc­tant­ly gave up for the meet­ing. With an ex­pressed aver­sion to use of tech­nolo­gies that were neg­a­tive­ly mould­ing and grow­ing mould over minds of men, women and chil­dren, she up­held a vi­sion of T&T as a col­lec­tive of tremen­dous­ly tal­ent­ed peo­ple that is not imag­ined but re­al. She ve­he­ment­ly re­ject­ed any no­tion that the cul­ture sec­tor is di­vid­ed and frag­ment­ed and that its var­i­ous el­e­ments are at log­ger­heads with each oth­er, but saw it as per­pet­u­at­ed myths by those who can best ben­e­fit from fu­elling such di­vi­sions.Af­ter many words re­it­er­at­ing those ex­pe­ri­ences, her last words to the cul­ture pan­el last Sat­ur­day were:"I have no words to add to this dis­course.

I have spo­ken at meet­ings like this all my life. I have no more words to add. I am very tired. Maybe I am too old now."Bish­op's last words re­sound the weari­ness of the cul­ture fra­ter­ni­ty who have sat around such ta­bles and in fo­rums like those, eter­nal­ly plan­ning for the cul­ture sec­tor, lob­by­ing for the re­al­i­sa­tion of the op­tions that she and oth­ers like her of­fered, even in the face of the vi­o­lence and the crime and the de­ple­tion of the youth com­mu­ni­ties with which she worked, of­ten with very lit­tle, if any re­sources.An en­abling en­vi­ron­ment that in­clud­ed changes in think­ing about de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties, how those pri­or­i­ties are ad­dressed, how they could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed and ac­ti­vat­ed in a na­tion­al blue­print for de­vel­op­ment were what she brought to the ta­ble. It was a vi­sion that ac­com­mo­dat­ed all of T&T, even as it cham­pi­oned our cre­ativ­i­ty and the arts and cul­ture as the fu­el with the best prop­er­ties to ig­nite such progress in a way none of the abun­dance of en­er­gy re­sources ever could.