It’s been 20 years now. Going over that very first article posted on this site 19 years ago, but with embedded hyperlinked reference to a talk I gave one year before that, I am aware that my claim, given tongue-in-cheek whenever people try to compliment my intellectual output, that I am anything but a creative thinker since I have not had a new thought in twenty years and all I do in my blogs is regurgitate the same things over and over again; is not bogus at all. Struck by how exactly my ideas, my articulation, my examples, my passion remains basically unchanged, I recognized the truth. I am stuck. But more tellingly, we are stuck. The things I was saying then are truer now than they have ever been, if by truth we mean manifestly evident. The message is the same. Nobody has moved. Like the children of Jacob in the wilderness, we’ve been circling around the same issues for far longer than the twenty years I have been calling attention to them. We have not budged, and our judgment is on our doorstep.
It was exactly twenty years ago that this declarative anthem was first performed publicly on the 4th July. The vision heralded of Caribbean United Power is just as much a fantastic dream floating in the wind as then, even though circumstances have substantially changed, indicating that it has much promise in practically providing the requirements for our survival, even if our mentalities are geared towards a much more fantastic projection of a future that doesn’t and cannot exist, being anchored to a present swiftly disappearing, having roots in a past no longer relevant.
They say that when your back is against the wall, new things can happen, new strength is found. Well, crisis is on our doorstep. And we will be revisiting the dream. Maybe some elements of its scattered shards will speak to us. I certainly hope so. Because, no matter how hard I try, I just cant move on.
YeKengalé 