Si­mon Lee

One of the two bright­est men in Trinidad, the one with the curli­est head­piece on is­land, ten­ta­tive­ly launched a new ca­reer in cere­bral stand-up com­e­dy last Thurs­day night at the pre­mier "space for se­ri­ous in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­course", ex­per­i­men­tal and avant garde art, the Medul­la Art Gallery in Port-of-Spain.

A size­able con­tin­gent of the art­sy fart­sy brigade (read in­tel­li­gentsia, or those who can dis­tin­guish Fou­cault from mi­graine, or Dante from dan dan) were present to wit­ness that well-known pre-dawn run­ner of Preysal, self-de­clared athe­ist, hu­man­ist, ra­tio­nal­ist, three-time nov­el­ist, po­lit­i­cal satirist, cham­pi­on of con­sti­tu­tion­al and gay rights, text book writer, jour­nal­ist, colum­nist, lec­tur­er, pub­lic in­tel­lec­tu­al and fa­ther-to-be Kevin "Nat­u­ral­ly Curly" Baldeosingh, tread the boards of com­e­dy.

Now you know why this in­de­fati­ga­ble nail in the bobol that pass­es as lo­cal pol­i­tics gets up at 4.30 am. He's not just run­ning from drunk dri­vers from Cen­tral re­turn­ing home from their own more vis­cer­al pur­suits on the Av­enue. Oh no pap­pi, he's jug­gling a hot piece of scat­ol­ogy with a run­ning com­men­tary on the fol­lies of fun­da­men­tal­ism. So let all those less gift­ed scratch their bald­heads, weaves and locks and give it up (as far as it will go) for the man (even if he wouldn't be caught stiff with a Stag) who's here to top­ple Tom­my and Learie Joseph, with his po­lit­i­cal­ly cor­rect brand of satire.

Here's to you Curly. You have to ad­mire a man who makes claim to be­ing the first stand-up com­ic in Trinidad, the land with the world's most jok­ers per square hectare, even if you sus­pect he'd much rather be­ing ly­ing down, or even go­ing down, all the way south.

For a man of let­ters it was no sur­prise that Baldeosingh pref­aced his per­for­mance with an on­screen ab­stract read­ing some­thing like: "An imag­is­tic re­view of prelap­sar­i­an art, em­body­ing an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal in­ter­ro­ga­tion of the on­tol­ogy of politi­co-cul­tur­al in­flu­ence through Dionysi­ac con­struc­tion­ism." (apolo­gies Kev, if I've mis­quot­ed or, Yah­weh for­bid, mis­rep­re­sent­ed you). For a mo I thought I was back in a UWI post­grad sem­i­nar on con­cep­tu­al­is­ing cul­ture un­til Curls took a side swipe (maybe a well aimed and de­served right hook) at lec­tur­ers who in­sist on read­ing from their turgid pow­er points, on the as­sump­tion that their au­di­ence is as tru­ly il­lit­er­ate/ig­no­rant as them­selves. One up for Kev, I say.

Ever the aveng­ing de­flater of hubris but pos­si­bly not hot air, Baldeosingh played re­verse shrinkol­o­gist by ques­tion­ing his own pres­ence in a space "ded­i­cat­ed to se­ri­ous in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­course". Nev­er one to dwell on the su­per­flu­ous, he ex­plained that as Medul­la is an art gallery, his top­ic would be art, be­fore launch­ing in­to an ex­tract from his first nov­el The Au­to­bi­og­ra­phy of Paras P.

The hap­pi­ly-seat­ed au­di­ence lapped up the pi­caresque episode chron­i­cling the epony­mous pro­tag­o­nist and as­pir­ing writer's re­la­tion­ship with an es­tab­lished au­thor (echoes of Wayne Brown with­out the fisticuffs?). The ap­pren­tice's in­gen­u­ous­ness ("Do you make any mon­ey from writ­ing?") is amus­ing­ly matched by the writer's pom­pos­i­ty ("How long have you been a stu­dent of the mov­ing pen?")

Af­ter this lit­er­ary ice break­er Baldeosingh shift­ed to the night's top­ic: "A re­view of a piece of art by the most promi­nent (em­i­nent and lead­ing) artist in T&T." Yes folks you guessed, Bri­an 'Ah gone Brazil' Mac­Far­lane and his state-com­mis­sioned 50th an­niver­sary sculp­ture mur­al. Cit­ing his boy­hood pas­sion for car­toons as qual­i­fi­ca­tion as art re­view­er, he warmed to his cri­tique of se­lect­ed fig­ures from the Ath­let­ic Art mur­al. First up was "run­ner with a hot pee', which had the Preysal fly­er rem­i­nisc­ing about his own road run­ning. Since scat­ol­ogy has long been a bed­mate of satire if not self dep­re­ca­tion, the au­di­ence was then made privy to the fact that no longer a stripling youth, dif­fer­ent parts of his body wake at dif­fer­ent times and bi­en sur it's usu­al­ly his blad­der that gives the alarm call. While every­one may not have savoured the over­ar­ch­ing pee of it all, one has to ap­plaud the ex­tem­po style word­play.

Sec­ond to the crease was a fig­ure dubbed The Agony of West In­dies Crick­et, which al­lowed Baldeosingh to go brave and dis­as­so­ci­ate him­self from Tri­ni crick­et machis­mo "Crick­et is of no in­ter­est to me" be­fore de­con­struct­ing the great Mac­Far­lane's mes­sage hid­den in a golf­ing fig­ure with no feet (his hand­i­cap?) and a pro­por­tion­al­ly large bi­cep: "Golf is not a sexy sport, so this man mas­tur­bates a lot." The Pol­i­tics of Cham­pi­ons was the ti­tle of a weight lifter with one leg short­er than the oth­er and "no balls" � an ob­vi­ous sug­ges­tion by Mac­Far­lane that "we need a so­cial­ist sys­tem" and that "cap­i­tal­ism re­moves your balls."

Stray­ing from the mur­al to the ever fe­cund fields of sex �and pos­si­bly sex­ism- Baldeosingh sug­gest­ed a pro­pos work­ing out in the gym, that men un­der 30 go "to get sex" while the over 30s go "to con­tin­ue hav­ing sex"; draw­ing his own (im­plied) log­i­cal con­clu­sion that sex is the main male mo­ti­va­tion-whether writ­ing or in the gym. An­oth­er short di­gres­sion took us to the con­sti­tu­tion re­form meet­ings and a de­mo­li­tion of gay bash­ers' in­tol­er­ant and ridicu­lous re­sis­tance to equal­i­ty of rights re­gard­less of sex­u­al­i­ty ("be­cause it'll en­cour­age the spread of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty").

Con­clud­ing his mur­al per­ora­tion with the com­ment that "What be­gan as the Art of Com­e­dy end­ed with the Com­e­dy of Art" one might have been tempt­ed to amend this, giv­en the many scat­o­log­i­cal com­ments, to the art of ar­se­ness, all of which is per­ti­nent to the present state of pol­i­tics, cul­tur­al and oth­er­wise in T&T. Re­turn­ing to text, con­clu­sive Curly Kev read a 2009 col­umn, cas­ti­gat­ing those in the Arts who sell out for a few pres­i­den­tial cock­tails and jum­bo shrimps; the mes­sage em­bed­ded in the potage be­ing that "artists need to have a more crit­i­cal dis­course with pol­i­tics.

As a try out, one would have to con­cede that Curly Kev com­bined Tri­ni word­play and po­lit­i­cal satire to most­ly cere­bral ef­fect. Sex and pol­i­tics are al­ways go­ing to be good for a laugh and giv­en cur­rent lev­els of na­tion­al frus­tra­tion it's healthy and hope­ful­ly per­spec­tive al­ter­ing to ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the farces per­pe­trat­ed in the names of na­tion­al­ism and art. Maybe the sleep de­pri­va­tion of ear­ly pap­pi­hood will in­tro­duce a nec­es­sary shot of the vis­cer­al in­to Baldeosingh's com­ing to come de­but and we can fall off our seats while he con­tin­ues to stand up.