Thinking is free

I think I want to call it self-imposed exile but there are other ways of looking at and describing a quite complex matter.

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest, which takes place every year in the beautifully modern National Library and the adjoining, historical Old Fire Station, is a five-day festival that is free to the public and completely open to absolutely anyone to walk off the street, without invitation.

So why do relatively few people actually venture off the street, and why do so many others feel resentful that they have not been invited? I am not complaining that the festival is short of an audience.

Lots of people realise that the NGC Bocas Lit Fest is the biggest “free” arts events in this country that is not linked to religious celebration or Carnival or Panorama.

Every year it attracts a total of over 6,000 people, plus another thousand or so who join in online, which is a very respectable number, especially when one adds on the lingering effect of the festival and the many projects that carry on all year in schools and society, linked to the main business of the Bocas Lit Fest, namely reader and writer development.

Bocas is committed to encouraging people to read, whatever, however and wherever they choose as a means of personal growth, to reawakening our love of stories, and to helping expand the publishing industry with a view to economic diversification, and we have been making a bit of progress.

But, I ponder why more people who would consider themselves thoughtful and interested, and are obvious candidates for much of the Bocas fare, do not make the effort and take the time to attend. Is it that we are just spoilt for choice with so much to do and limited time, or could it be that we do not value things that are free, even when people elsewhere would pay a lot for the very same offerings at a world-class festival with over 100 events? We may have become so used to money being the mechanism for maintaining the social hierarchy, pricing people who are “not like us” out, that we give little credence to free events, or perhaps do not welcome initiatives that cause disruption to the way our society functions. We have got along fine with everyone knowing the unwritten rules, just like in every society, and we value that sense of order.

A unique feature of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest is that it is not snobby. Bocas can be accused of being inclusive and egalitarian, of attempting to reject the idea that art is for the elite and of not seeking permission to do its job of pushing us to think and express ourselves through the written word, performance and song, and through our traditional characters.

We shun formalities and pomp, we actively create a space where every level of writer can come and read their stories and exchange in an open, safe space ideas with their readers. Writers are in many ways subversive, since their agenda is to make us look at things full frontal, to analyse and weigh up human motivation, to explore with us why things are the way they are, and why we do and say what we do.

It was suggested to me that Trinis fear the word “literary.” It is interesting that in Jamaica, where illiteracy is much higher than here, people who cannot read and write go to their free Calabash festival to simply hear stories, because they understand that is what books do.

They tell s o m e p r e t t y g o o d stories.

No invit a t i ons needed for anyone.