BC Pires

The rain came down on Port-of-Spain like the me­dia on Jack Warn­er last Fri­day af­ter­noon. I sat in a cor­ner of the broad, cov­ered, Paris-side­walk caf�-like pave­ment that na­tion­al li­brary ar­chi­tect Col­in Laird in­clud­ed in Trinidad's most lov­ing­ly de­signed pub­lic space, watch­ing the heavy sheet rain­fall cur­tain­ing off the old Par­lia­ment build­ing across Hart Street like the fog around the courts of Chancery in Charles Dick­ens' own Bleak House; I was wait­ing for Irvine Welsh.

The huge­ly suc­cess­ful Scot­tish writer was the star of the third NGC Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val and the main rea­son I was there. Soon, I'd be sit­ting with him to talk about his life, his work and tor­tur­ing dogs as com­e­dy. Trainspot­ting, his first book, had been vi­su­al­ly re­made by the amaz­ing Dan­ny Boyle and they'd just wrapped pro­duc­tion on Filth, the fourth of his books to be­come movies. He was, at my age, rich enough to write, and to do, what­ev­er the firetruck he want­ed any­where in the firetruck­ing world.And he'd come to Port-of-Spain!

I mar­velled at the coup. If Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, prime mover of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, could have Irvine Welsh read­ing at on­ly the third fes­ti­val, what would she put to­geth­er for the tenth? Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez do­ing a tap dance? Nao­mi Wolf do­ing a pole one? vs Naipaul and Derek Wal­cott duk­ing it out live? But Sir Video and Sabine-There-had-al­ready-Done-That: in her in­tro­duc­tion to the Pauline Melville sto­ry she'd read at the Bo­cas launch the day be­fore, Lloyd Best In­sti­tute head Suni­ty Ma­haraj had point­ed out the de­li­cious irony in the old fire sta­tion be­ing named af­ter Wal­cott and the li­brary oc­cu­py­ing the rest of the same city block be­ing named af­ter Naipaul, unit­ing them for­ev­er side by side; I chuck­led, and watched the rain, and did a bit of Irvine-spot­ting.

And, though Irvine Welsh was both pro­fes­sion­al and po­lite enough to give a con­sid­ered an­swer to what I'd in­tend­ed as a joke ques­tion: "Tell the truth about Trainspot­ting: did you pre­fer the movie?" and had there­by moved him­self high­er in my books, as it were, there was still an­oth­er writer I thought of as my own fes­ti­val "head­lin­er": Ian Mc­Don­ald, au­thor of the de­fin­i­tive nov­el of Caribbean child­hood, The Hum­ming­bird Tree, who sat in con­ver­sa­tion with Caribbean Beat ed­i­tor and lit fest mul­ti-func­tionary, Nicholas Laugh­lin.

How good it was to see Ian, now aged 80, and to hear him, par­tic­u­lar­ly the last lines of the last po­em he chose to read, What It Was Like Once For­ev­er: "At home, I leap heav­en­wards as high as I can/ Not far but brave­ly done; my wife smiles/ She shakes her head, af­ter all I am close to sev­en­ty-five/ There is no lim­it to our love/ Even death will set no lim­it/ Our sons are con­tent, healthy as snort­ing hors­es/ They will be com­ing soon/ I write this ab­surd­ly hap­py verse/ To tell what it was like once for­ev­er."

How much bet­ter off were Ian & Mary's snort­ing off­spring than those of a far more fa­mous, far more "suc­cess­ful" artist whose name will live on far longer than Ian's: at yet an­oth­er ex­cel­lent fes­ti­val event, I lis­tened, rapt, to Prof Ian Robert­son's Bo­cas Lec­ture, adapt­ed from his book, The Win­ner Ef­fect: How Pow­er Af­fects the Body and Mind, which was not a "self-help" book at all, as Mark Lyn­der­say painstak­ing­ly un­der­lined in in­tro­duc­ing the pro­fes­sor, but a chem­istry one. As Robert­son out­lined how mere­ly hav­ing pow­er changed the mind (and, er­go, per­son­al­i­ty) en­cour­ag­ing the pow­er­ful in­to, in­ter alia, lim­it­less hubris and self-en­ti­tle­ment, I heard two names whis­pered around the room in awed recog­ni­tion, "Man­ning!" and "Jack!"

But the names that struck me most forcibly were not Tri­nis, but Spaniards, Pao­lo and Pabli­to Pi­cas­so, son and grand­son of the great painter. Pi­cas­so de­stroyed his own son as mag­nif­i­cent­ly as he cre­at­ed art, Robert­son re­port­ed, telling him, "I am the king and you are noth­ing!" The son de­pend­ed on his fa­mous fa­ther even for his dai­ly bread; and Pi­cas­so rarely wast­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty of hu­mil­i­at­ing him. Pabli­to, the grand­son, killed him­self af­ter be­ing re­fused en­try to his grand­fa­ther's fu­ner­al by Pi­cas­so's wid­ow, choos­ing to drink bleach, an even slow­er and more painful death than our own "In­di­an ton­ic," the pes­ti­cide paraquat, mar­ket­ed as gramox­one; it took Pabli­to a month to die. Pi­cas­so's wid­ow and lover both took their own lives; such was the ef­fect, on the peo­ple he was sup­posed to love most, of one of mankind's great­est artists.

And I thought about the bit I'd asked Irvine Welsh to read (page 77 of the Vin­tage pa­per­back edi­tion of Glue) in which two guard dogs, cap­tured in a theft, are tor­tured at the Scot­tish sea­side, one hanged by the neck over a blaz­ing fire un­til it falls in­to the flames; and Juice Ter­ry drawls, "Ye can­nae huv a f---in' beach bar­be­cue with­oot the hot dogs."

Some peo­ple had been hor­ri­fied. But Guer­ni­ca is re­gard­ed by many as Pi­cas­so's best work.Leav­ing the fes­ti­val on Sun­day, I walked through Col­in Laird's beau­ti­ful side­walk lo­ca­tion and un­der­stood that, when the en­er­gy mon­ey the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny it­self puts in­to Bo­cas ends, that love­ly spot would be­come prime va­grant hous­ing.And, in my own heart, I felt the eter­nal Tri­ni tor­ment of fail­ing to de­cide whether we should ei­ther let sleep­ing home­less lie or stand on prin­ci­ple and chase them away from what we hold to be high­er than our­selves.

BC Pires would rather burn dogs than books. E-mail your TTSP­CA mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tions to him at bc@carib­surf.com. Hap­py bir'day Sisi & White Boy Dell.