Kalypsoul: The Other Self

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Barack Update: The Morehouse Chronicle Episode

So, I dressed up today - just for him. New snazzy sweater, skinny jeans, tall-heeled knee-high boot. lipstick. Ticket in hand. I was ready!! It did not matter that I had just emerged from an all/day marathon meeting. You see, I stomped for him, phone-banked, canvassed, knocked on doors . . . the works . . . and long before I was even able to vote. I drove up from Atlanta to his inauguration and braved the subzero temperatures for hours and hours under a Jumbotron all the way down by the Washington memorial (you already know that story). Meeting this man in person is way high up on my bucket list. So yeah! I was ready!

Well there was the red VIP line (not mine). The green Stacey Abrams supporters line (again not mine), and then the blue ‘Rest of Us’ line - needless to say, mine. There must have been at least 40,000 people in the blue line that snaked down several blocks from The Fair Street entrance to the Forbes Arena where he was going to be speaking to several blocks up to Northside Drive and beyond as far as the eye could see. I walked for about 30 minutes (hooker heels small steps) to get to the end of the line and still no end of line in sight. And it was bloody freezing cold. By now my fingertips blue. Now I know Forbes Arena and there’s no way even one hundredth of those people will fit in that arena. So, in the interest of preserving my feet for a future meeting with him, I gave up, handed my ticket to a student (who, needless to say, was thankful but totally nonplussed by the ease with which anyone sane and not under duress would surrender a ticket to see Barack) and headed for Spelman to my car. Had to jump a fence between Clark Atlanta and Spelman in my heels to get back to our parking lot because security was so tight they had all Gates closed.

It was 6 (the time Barack was supposed to speak) by the time I reached the Cosby parking lot. By the time I got to my car I could not feel my fingers. Thank God for heated seats! And Baron’s sweet soca love songs to keep me company on the way home.

So me and Barack’s gonna have to have a one-on-one sometime in the near future. He has got to come up with a Plan B if he is to make my bucket list wish come true ‘cause this ain’t working. We’re gonna have to talk!! It was not about convincing me to vote for Stacey and the whole list of Dems. Checked that off my list via early voting. It was all about him!! He has got to understand that it was not fun jumping the fence with my 👠 . But at least I looked cute doing it. And I made sure to take a photo of the ticket. And by the way, I already wrote him to let him know this ain’t working, but that I’m keeping HOPE alive.

Stay tuned for future updates!

11.03.2018

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The Way I Use Language

Author’s Note: Codeflow

You will find that I have started to experiment with movement in communication referencing (in speech and thought patterns) from dialect to standard that is neither unidirectional nor formulaic. This is deliberate. The style used here is my experimentation with what I call code-flow. I find myself writing the way I speak – in a comfortable, fluid mixture of standard and dialect, often within the same sentence, the same thought. It is what we Caribbean people do in uncontrived everyday speech. It is not code-shifting with which the literary world is familiar. Code-switching or code- shifting tends to follow a certain pattern, dialect for speech and standard for description and narration as has been traditionally used in Caribbean fiction. I am taking it a step further, letting dialect flow into standard and back again in both dialogue and narration/description, mingling together in the same sentence, the same thought. To me this shows the true fluidity/reality of how we operate linguistically in everyday life. We do not think in standard English and converse in Trini dialect; we think in both and speak in both but not all the same time. I may begin a thought in the standard received form but suddenly I want to express surprise, hilarity, indignation, outrage and the standard does not have the right words. I flow effortlessly to that in which I can express those thought, those ideas, those sentiments most comfortably. I express them and, depending on what I wish to reference next, I either move back to standard, stay where I am or move deeper into another dialect comfort zone. I may say it in French Patois or Cocoa Panyol or a dialect of Hindi or of English or I may use a uniquely West African turn of phrase or grammatical construct or express m thoughts in a totally creative word or expression known only to my country or one group or individual within. Language gets created through use and new words and expressions all have a very specific starting point.

Code switching is an improvement on the outright rejection of the use of dialect as having no place in the written word or in Caribbean literature. It also differs from the outright rejection of the standard as a form of linguistic resistance to colonialism. Yet, code switching is a colonized, conformist mode that, in spite of itself, accepts the superiority of the standard and makes apologies for dialect by restricting its use only to direct speech. It reflects the pedagogy of colonial education which polarized the acceptable standard of the reading books and the classroom from the unacceptable dialect of everyday use by everyday people. It was a time when the whip was applied to purge the tendency towards dialect use in respectable settings.

Code sliding attempts a more integral blending of the two and brings together a variety of Caribbean dialects in one form. It moves in the direction of defining a distinct and decolonized Caribbean identity in the aftermath of colonialism. The term code-sliding, however, implies for me a lack of control, a downward sort of slippery slope movement, and a built-in acceptance of linguistic hierarchies. Instead I advance the concept of code-flow which conveys the sense of non-hierarchical fluidity and an effortlessness that defines acceptance of a unique identity in the context of postmodernity rather than deliberate conscious resistance in the context of coloniality or postcoloniality. It speaks of creativity, reinterpretation and transformation. The smooth fluidity of language that melds the standard with dialect in a thought, in a phrase, in a sentence, shows not so much a rejection of historic influences but an acceptance of the new self, the birth of a Caribbean identity in which colonialism and an ethos defined by resistance to it are merely blurred distant memories. Caribbean code-flow essentially involves and emerges from an unequivocal acceptance of all aspects of a new self: Africa, Europe, India and Mesoamerica, all integral to the new identity through reinterpretation and transformation. It is méstissajé, creolité, unrepentant.