Su, here’s my storyboard script from the video we shot in 04. I’ll try to add my own exercise soon….Isislady (Meida)
Mind Travel: Chaguanas to Port of Spain
Sunil’s Journey to a Place
The geography of a place affects the mind in many ways.
Physical, social, psychic geography…
And these “geographies” change
From village to village
And town to town…
The body: Head, eyes, running fingers across neck, shoulders, skin…
Su looking out – the street from his home (panning, long shot)
Quick landscape shots of Chag, along the driving route, POS
Commuting between Chaguanas and Port of Spain had always been about adjusting between the two “cultures”
Or two kinds of collective consciousness.
Improvisation: “Adjusting” in outside locales,,,external clothes & body posture, leaning/adjusting on structures
The hub of departure is “Busy Corner.”
Panning shot of “Busy Corner”.
Sitting in a taxi on Busy Corner bound for Port of Spain brings expectation. It’s very unlike sitting in a taxi going to San Fernando or Couva. You are going to the capital city after all. You feel happy and important as it were, to leave the mundane-ness of Chaguanas, the out-of-touchness, the sight of people going by wearing dictated fashions, ‘brands’ and hairstyles and gender roles largely prescribed by the media.
To leave this and head to the centre of where everything happens – Port of Spain. It is a happy escape.
[Getting in car, closing door, walking down/thru Chag.]
Facing the Northern Range as you head North on the Uriah Butler is to suddenly become attuned to the notions of our country, our history, our nation, as nebulous as these may seem to be. And these are often marred by the asinine driving habits of taxi drivers and the general public. Highways in Trinidad are the scenes where the confoundedness of a people who show blatant disregard for country respect, life and the law is demonstrated minute by minute, hour by hour. So much overtaking, speeding and shoulder-driving – past swamp vegetation that takes me away to my childhood – is seen as one says Psalms and tries to distract the mind with the beauty of the Caroni Swamp and again the mountains standing in front of all this witnessing, remaining quiet and silent and majestic as mountains always do.
[swamp, billboards, beetham, sealots]
[lighthouse, downtown on henry street – marion street (where he was born)]
Billboards demonstrate our brand of consumerism. They seem to me to target the ‘other demographic,’ those from the more “townish” locales and are markers in the transitions from Chaguanas to the Northwest of the island.
But the highways in Trinidad run next to communities that are visually not very amusing. The houses are more about nothing than about tasteful style and design. So this offends me. And I think back to some point in history – the oil boom – that led us to being so unconscious about tasteful architecture. There was money, wealth, and extravagance among the ‘masses.’ The lack of order and neatness and planning in our houses and buildings had been concreted into history and stands now for one to look at and lament. I suppose I equate pretty landscapes with quality of life.
The La Basse, the hills of Laventille and the community of Beetham are not pretty landscapes but are the prelude to Downtown. It’s the “fallout” of politics past placed there. It seems in stark contrast to the downtown business district, the ‘have nots’ on the outskirts of the ‘haves.’ Almost every city in the world has a ghetto. The houses in Beetham always had these doors and windows in strange, bright, playful colours of red, blue, orange. As a child, I always found this palette of colours inviting and wondered who lived there and wanted to meet them. Each time I pass it I still sort of have that response but I feel that those colours are about blocking out the drudgery of ghetto life and a rudimentary way of thinking, existing, living. Beetham connects to Sea Lots and Shanty town-by-the-wharf. Half naked bodies bathing by a standpipe, their robust rough beauty belies the very poverty that would have them bathing by the roadside.
I wonder about a life without conveniences and comforts. Is it a life of contentedness without worry and concern like the one that I live? Would I be happy and better off if I didn’t know the restless onward urge of civilization to be someone, something.
How about poverty-humility? How about cheap rubber slippers and nondescript white bread from the parlor for $2? How about tacked-up hovels that smell of damp? How about no sunblock so I look 37 going on 60? How about bathing with blue soap? How about filth and moss around my door? How about the appeal of the rotting smell of the waterfront? But sorry I eh kill no priest! So, the lighthouse beckons and pulls you into the city.
Oh, and the terribly haunting solitary appeal of the lighthouse. I would like to climb its spiral staircase and get stuck and remain there and spend the night there as a blustery squall batters the port and then be rescued by some Samaritan who brings food and drink and anxiety. So much happens to me as I go past that leaning obelisk that is the boundary line between the edge of Port of Spain and the rest of the country.
