ArtReach and the Castries Underground

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]very city has its seedy edges, its dark fringes, dim lit crossroads where the needy and the nebulous converge. Castries is no exception. When the regular stores close, the real, insomniac trading begins: food, alcohol, drugs, flesh.

Nothing new.  In fact, not so long ago, at certain hours after sundown, it was not just window-shopping on lower Laborie Street.  It was weed, women, girls, boys, and a few things in between. And the car-driving customers—whose numbers would surprise you—were not all male either. Maybe this is still the case, in a city where so little changes.

So, imagine, last Friday night, sometime after dark, a convergence of audience and art, exactly one block due west of the city’s infamous pick-up point. An assembly—of all things—in the name of poetry. Not so ironic, perhaps, given that our christian history is replete with liaisons of poets, prophets and prostitutes, including the immortal Magdalene.

Yes, we digress, but pleasurably so, and before returning to the narrative, let us agree that there is a tendency in this town to avoid the obvious. Perhaps it is part of our jabal psychosis: a syndrome which allows us to simultaneously acknowledge and ignore the elephant in the room, even if she is wearing nothing but fishnet stockings and scarlet stilettos.

So, at the risk of restating the not so obvious, we could use a good dose of honesty in this town: a detoxification, whether by purge or enema, a riddance from the body politic of the fear and facetiousness that is corrupting not just our capital city, but every aspect of the national psyche.

Bravo then, to the boldness of the CDF—that last bastion of our underfunded culture—for daring not once, but twice, to transform a downtown back alley into a temporary theatre, and having the audacity to stage therein, an evening of brave, bold, unapologetic poetry.

Last year, the event featured the work of veteran poet Kendel Hippolyte. This year, it was some other writer. Not so important. The point is that it happened successfully, yet again, and if allowed to grow, could become a model for urban and human renewal.

The Castries City Council collaborated. Yes, I know they have changed their name, but consider this my objection to the overthrow of local government, and to the pall of partisan politics shadowing public administration.

Far more important, is the commendation due to the Cadet Street business collective who willingly embraced this enterprise. Some supplied electric power. One opened up bathrooms. Another gave cash. All agreed to the closure of the road, surrendering their loading zones and parking spaces. Instead of the usual afternoon exodus, the roadside cafés, bars and restaurants remained abuzz with evening traffic.

By 7 p.m. the power-washed street appeared suitably poetic. A persistent drizzle conveyed its scepticism to a struggling moon. A forgotten alley, devoted to dysfunction by day and virtually abandoned by night, was transformed into a rodent-free urban theatre, complete with covered seating, dressed tables, projection screen, technical booth, and lighting truss rising toward the overcast sky.

Move over Manhattan. The Cadet Street Theatre is open for business. With power issues largely sorted, the stage came suddenly alive. The sound was on cue. The lighting, somewhat less so. But, with a decisive thrust from its expansive host, the programme built steadily through a first-half of innovative pieces, including several mixed-media interpretations of works by the featured poet.   

The early content was youthful and suitably brave, poignant and personal. There was poetry, spoken word, dance, pan, cello, violin—all sincere and unapologetic—suggesting strongly that if young people would vote as they should at general elections, they could elect a whole new cohort of legislators more suited for governance in this century.

Most important, the people came, many with umbrellas.They sat and stayed and listened: accountants, insurance executives, business women, musicians, managers, bus drivers, retirees, vendors, fellow artists, musicians and young poets. Many of these would only be caught dead in Castries after dark.

The featured poet occupied the second half, delivering content which ranged from acute patriotism to provocative, painful politics. No doubt, he rubbed a raw nerve or two, but not once did anyone ask: don’t you think that line, that poem, that statement is too political?

To which I would have remarked: what use is art, what use is poetry if it is not political; if it is unconcerned with injustice; if it does not lament the corruption of the human condition; if it will not resist degradations of spirit and landscape; if it does not speak truth to power; if it does not rail against things rank and gross in nature?

The only purpose of art is truth. Its primary fuel is thought. Its most powerful vehicle is unrepressed expression. To surrender any one of these is to surrender the right to think, to express, to demand the shaping of a better, different future.

So enough already with the political politeness, the cultured cowardice. Let us either embrace or evict the jabal in the room. Let us at least admit that her six-inch red stilettos both frighten and excite us. If we are ever to address the malignant psychoses in our society, we need to stop being so damn scared all the time; scared of our own unblemished truths.

That is the daily battle. The wider war is to save art itself from annihilation, and that requires a more enlightened distinction between genuine culture and our new, insistent regression into a mania of unrooted events.

In this spirit, let there be big, brave, unsinged thanks to the CDF crew, to fellow performers, to the city, the Cadet Street businesses, sponsors, citizens, all who conspire in this enterprise to save the city from nightly oblivion, to save the living arts.

Thanks indeed, for a full house, a full night, a full heart, and as the rain subsided, the sad crescent smile of an April moon.

Adrian Augier is an award-winning poet, artist and producer and an ANSA Foundation Caribbean Laureate of Arts and Letters.   He is also a development economist, an independent senator, and Saint Lucia’s 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year. In October 2012, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies for his contribution to regional development and culture.  For more information on this writer and his work visit adrianaugier.blogspot.com.