Clevon Raphael

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed writer, au­thor and play­wright Earl Lovelace, is not com­plete­ly hap­py with how we as a so­ci­ety are deal­ing with cer­tain hard ques­tions that we must con­front.The 77-year-old Lovelace, who was born in To­co, is al­so dis­pleased with the lack of the in­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work for thinkers like him­self who could con­tribute in a more tan­gi­ble way to the de­vel­op­ment of their na­tive coun­try.He laments that com­mu­ni­ties such as Laven­tille have not re­al­ly been de­vel­oped since the pe­ri­od of eman­ci­pa­tion.

Q: Mr. Lovelace from the per­spec­tives of a cel­e­brat­ed writer, au­thor, play­wright how do you see Trinidad and To­ba­go in this 50th an­niver­sary of our in­de­pen­dence?

A: (In the back porch of his Cas­cade home Wednes­day morn­ing): Well, I feel there are many things in the coun­try to­day some that are en­cour­ag­ing and some that are of con­cern.

Ok. The bad news first?

Well the bad news is that in terms of the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion crimes seems to be the biggest prob­lem...per­haps crime and traf­fic, right? But it seems to me there is much more than crime that is prob­lem­at­ic.

What could be big­ger than crime?

(Ad­just­ing his trade mark shade close to the front of his fore­head.) Where we go­ing as a so­ci­ety to me that is of tremen­dous im­por­tance...what do we want to be? It is not just a so­ci­ety to be tick­ing over as if every­thing is al­right ex­cept a few fel­lows who are com­mit­ting crime. What do we want to do with the so­ci­ety...?

From your some­what unique van­tage point what sort of peo­ple do you be­lieve we want to be?

I don't know what we want to be and we are a lot of peo­ple thrown to­geth­er from dif­fer­ent parts un­der very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances and what do we want to do with that? That is the ques­tion be­fore us. I think we have not done too bad­ly but when we view what every­body has brought here as our own then we seem to ac­cept the gifts that we have but we can­not do that with­out a sense of equal­i­ty.

Are we util­is­ing those gifts in a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive way?

Well it's very dif­fi­cult to an­swer cer­tain ques­tions yes or no, right? And even as I speak things are much more com­plex than that, but what one is con­cerned about is what are we do­ing in re­la­tion to these prob­lems and I don't know as a so­ci­ety what we are do­ing.

Are you sug­gest­ing Mr Lovelace that we are not re­al­ly do­ing any­thing in spite of some things be­ing done?

(Chuck­ling) Well, I don't know...your peo­ple would have to point out to me what ex­act­ly is be­ing done in cer­tain ar­eas.

Are you not sat­is­fied with what is be­ing done let's say in the area of crime fight­ing? (A palm cup­ping the left side of his face)... I think crime should alert us to the fact that some­thing is wrong. The "Bad john" for ex­am­ple was a man in­volved in vi­o­lent ac­tions be­tween him and his fel­low peo­ple. To­day crime seems to be al­so hav­ing that el­e­ment of rob­bery; tak­ing from per­sons, break­ing in­to prop­er­ties as well as oth­er crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. I am say­ing that to say that delin­quen­cy has al­ways been with us and some­times we have seen the... (paus­ing in a con­tem­pla­tive mode) I am think­ing we have al­ways seen...I am think­ing a lot of things at the same time right? And I think we have come down to ac­cept re­bel­lion as delin­quen­cy but re­bel­lion is not on­ly delin­quen­cy. There might be some peo­ple who might be delin­quent with­in the frame­work of those com­mu­ni­ties.

Which com­mu­ni­ties are you specif­i­cal­ly re­fer­ring to?

We are talk­ing about com­mu­ni­ties that have nev­er re­al­ly had a chance, that have nev­er re­al­ly moved from the state they were in since eman­ci­pa­tion, mean­ing they were nev­er re­al­ly de­vel­oped. We as a peo­ple have nev­er re­al­ly tak­en the whole so­ci­ety and see what is wrong with it and what we can do about it. We leave com­mu­ni­ties to see about them­selves.

Think­ing of any one place in par­tic­u­lar?

For in­stance Laven­tille, is a name that will jump up as a sym­bol­ic name if you want, it is a place that has pro­duced a lot but has re­mained large­ly in the same kind of way.

Couldn't the ar­gu­ment be made that gov­ern­ments have failed to do just that over the years?

Well this is an­oth­er prob­lem; who is the gov­ern­ment? That is one way of look­ing at it and in­deed it is true that cer­tain gov­ern­ments have not done as much as they should, right? But it is a larg­er prob­lem and the con­cern of the so­ci­ety be­longs to the so­ci­ety and how are we or­gan­ised to deal with them.

Care to ex­pand on that point?

If you have a prob­lem in let's say in Ca­roni, it is not Ca­roni's prob­lem alone. I want to see it as the so­ci­ety's prob­lem. Sim­i­lar­ly in Laven­tille, or wher­ev­er and if we be­gin to look at things in that fash­ion we will be­gin to bring the re­sources at least of imag­i­na­tion, to bear on some of these ques­tions.

Is it al­so a case of suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions fail­ing to in­spire peo­ple to help them­selves in a more mean­ing­ful man­ner?

Well, in a way I will say yes. (Cast­ing his eyes to the ceil­ing) I don't think we have been in­spired, (A heavy sigh) Well, I don't know...we have done more in­spir­ing rather than be­ing in­spired (laughs). I am think­ing of ideas about where we are and I am think­ing in­ci­den­tal­ly of CLR James, and al­most his to­tal ab­sence from even the land­scape of thought that is be­ing pre­sent­ed at this mo­ment. You see Clevon, you are ask­ing me a lot ques­tions which might ap­pear to be straight­for­ward, sim­ple and so on, but they re­quire a lot of not on­ly thought but ex­pla­na­tion...

Mr Lovelace I seem to de­tect that you feel we are plac­ing too much em­pha­sis on gov­ern­ment and its role in our de­vel­op­ment as a peo­ple?

Yeah. I feel that we have placed too much em­pha­sis on what we call gov­ern­ment, you know, and where are we in this whole sto­ry? We talk about our­selves as though we are a long-stand­ing coun­try. This is a very young coun­try; 50 years old. We have been in en­slave­ment three times as long as we have been in­de­pen­dent so it is re­al­ly a very young coun­try with a lot of peo­ple who are new to pow­er. Peo­ple, who have nev­er re­al­ly had pow­er, peo­ple who have had pow­er and pa­rad­ed pow­er and felt them­selves en­ti­tled to pow­er. So there are many fac­tors here and we have, in a kind of way, to be pa­tient with each oth­er.

Mr Lovelace your works have been ac­claimed world­wide you hav­ing won many writ­ers' awards and so on. Do you be­lieve that thinkers such as your­self and oth­er lo­cals who have done well in this sphere are be­ing suf­fi­cient­ly used in cre­at­ing a think­ing so­ci­ety and all what that en­tails?

No. We are not do­ing suf­fi­cient of that...that as­pect of our lives is not even be­ing pre­sent­ed. What we're get­ting is en­ter­tain­ment. En­ter­tain­ment is fine too but en­ter­tain­ment is not all there is. What is re­quired is a so­ci­ety that is think­ing and en­gag­ing in deal­ing with the se­ri­ous ques­tions, a so­ci­ety that is con­cerned that when it be­gins to look at its writ­ers, artists gen­er­al­ly and so on, it be­gins to look at it­self.

Nat­u­ral­ly you would thinkers like your­self to be tapped as we pro­ceed to build­ing a bet­ter and pros­per­ous so­ci­ety?

Yes. And it says some­thing aw­ful about a so­ci­ety where peo­ple who have been in the fore­front of imag­in­ing a bet­ter coun­try there is no in­sti­tu­tion­al means as by which this hap­pens. It shouldn't be be­cause you are in the favour of a gov­ern­ment or in the favour of some­body (Sud­den­ly rais­ing his voice.) Who the hell are these peo­ple to be in favour of or to favour you?!!! (Chuck­le.) There should be some in­sti­tu­tion­al means by which this is done. We are a small coun­try and peo­ple do as though they can­not find you. How they can­not find you? This is a very small place when they want to find you they will find you.

Mr Lovelace if one could peer through you as the prover­bial crys­tal ball where do you see Trinidad and To­ba­go in the next 50 years?

I think we have to have a lot more con­ver­sa­tions, we need to talk a lot more to each oth­er and raise re­al hard ques­tions and I think we too have been a so­ci­ety that has avoid­ed the hard ques­tions be­cause we don't want to make some­body feel bad or it is not con­ve­nient to the sta­tus quo.