Harris finds her Tribe

Simone Harris is a Jamaican finding her way.

A country that sometimes hits headlines for its stance on LGBTQ rights and the ensuing vitriolic artistic expression to members of that community proved the perfect place for her to find sanctuary.

Harris, a seventh generation maroon, calls her new-found support system her ‘Tribe’, but she wasn’t always interested in the solace of a federation.

Instead she kept herself at arms length, an island surrounded on all sides by a sea of negativity.

“I had isolated myself, I lived in America in a state for almost ten years and today I have no friends there, how does that happen?! “I was a mean person, I had a chip on my shoulder, I had a sense of entitlement because of who me did dey wid and all the ting where me did have,” she relates in a mixture of Jamaican patois and the Queen’s “that was sheer bull****” she admits.

Caught up in the maelstrom of a high profile, jet-setting romantic relationship, she couldn’t see, past her upturned nose, the way her attitudes toward the world affected her own quality of life. A break-up was only the beginning of her ongoing moment of clarity.

She describes her fall off her high horse as “feeling like I drop in this hole”. However, at the bottom of that pit she found what she needed to grow toward her light; “I became open to love and to light and to positivity and that is what I began to attract.

“Part of my self-discovery, really, was that I had to get mash down to the ground to find myself,” she says. She gave away all the trappings of her affluence, cut her dreadlocks and stopped performing.

The Tribe, a mixture of friends and family who Harris explained isn’t necessarily friends with each other banded together to help her find her way.

It’s a construct she believes is available to everyone; “Most people already have (a Tribe) we just don’t know how to tap into it.” During the opening night discussion at the two-day exhibition of the eight-piece show at Alice Yard in Woodbrook, Harris shared her experiences and fielded questions about the pros and cons of the Tribe.

In response to a member of her intimate audience relating how she took the decision to maintain her distance from relationships, she shared her renewed outlook.

“I believe in the mirror I believe that if I’m sitting here and I’m giving off negative vibes you are going to give it back to me,” she said “I can only speak for myself, I feel like there are no toxic relationships because these people are there for me in ways that are 95 percent positive.

So I feel like the energy that I started giving off led these people to me, led me to discover them so that they could help me cuz’ I was open and I wanted support and I needed to feel like I was worth a damn. Cuz’ normally me don’t feel like nothing, like nobody.” Sitting on the Yard’s concrete floor, baring her soul to a crowd that included Trinidad and Tobago based allies and former classmates at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Harris’ talk included an apology to a young lady she had a ‘rough ting’ with, she implored her audience to start their process and find their version of the Tribe.

“It’s not a blueprint for everyone, everybody’s journey is different, this is mine, but the common denominator is looking at yourself,” she said.

The photographs, a mixture of black and white and earthy toned colour shots were taken by Jordan Morris, a second year photography major at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica.

“I remember going to the riverside and seeing this hillside and I saw a Nanny - a female maroon warrior, protector of runaway communities and Jamaican national heroine - and I knew what I wanted the pictures to look like, the picture of the tribe.” She says making the photographs has been therapeutic, causing her to take a closer look at herself literally and figuratively.

In late June Harris showed her photos at Nuit Rose a satellite art and performance showcase at Toronto Pride while also sharing the message of the Tribe to an often-beleaguered LGBTQ community.

She’s scheduled to shoot part two of her personal journey in Jamaica sometime this month.

Asked if she still danced, the former professional dancer’s answer was decidedly Trini’.

“I have a strange relationship with soca and that’s when I dance, soca is ritual for me, my mouth would water (before performing), and that doesn’t happen anymore, now I get excited about the next photo-shoot.