The comprehensive critique of Nicolette Bethel’s Day of Absence is now live over on Mental Slavery.com. Go on over and check it out. You can download the podcast, get it as a .pdf or a word document, or just read it on the web.

It’s a long essay, and I know you’re busy. So if you want the abridged, and still very useful, version of the essay, you can find it over at Bahama Pundit.com.

And don’t forget the upcoming debate on the Day of Absence and these critiques. It’s still on for January 12, 2010; 6:30pm at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas.

Get reading!

Imagine a day with no artists.

On February 11, 2009, the first Day of Absence was observed in the Bahamas with the above tag-line. This event was the brain child of Nicolette Bethel, prominent Bahamian anthropologist, scholar and playwright. With a demonstration at the College of the Bahamas and numerous blog posts, interviews and radio appearances, the Day of Absence captured the imagination of the Bahamian arts community.

On December 31, 2009, Bahamian writer and artist Ward Minnis, (me) will release a comprehensive critique of the Day of Absence on Mental Slavery.com, and also an abridged version at Bahama Pundit.com. In the essay I question many of assumptions upon which the Day of Absence was based, and while I agree that it filled a need, I also argue that it should not continue in its present form.

On January 12, 2010, at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas at 6:30pm, the merits of both the Day of Absence and its critique will be debated between Nicolette Bethel, myself and the Bahamian art community at large.

What is the role of the artist in Bahamian society? What part, if any, should the government play in the arts? Have Bahamian artists been absent from the wider society?

What do you think?

…shouldn’t have left you.. without a dope beat to step to… step to.

Flick it, flick it…

Good news. The thesis is progressing well. When I last wrote here, I was stuck in a fourth chapter that seemed of infinite duration, and honestly I started to panic. See, for my own sanity, and reasons of Canadian national security I need to be done with this degree by December 31st. To accomplish this I need to keep on schedule.

As much fun as the ‘Viability’ series of articles were, I was being distracted from the main thing for me right now. Once I take care of this thing we can get back to having some fun around here.

So, progress report: I finished the fifth and final chapter last week, and while in that state of euphoria I promptly decided to go and get myself sick. Now I’m (relatively) healthy again and getting into the nitty gritty of editing.

Hard to believe this is a Master’s degree when I’m talking about editing 200 pages of text. Stretch this just a wee bit and I should be able to get a PhD off of this thing. But I’m not going to go there any time soon. (Could it really be worse than this though?)

Expect more posts in the near future as I get back into the writing rhythms. The ‘Viability’ series will continue as soon as the thesis is done. ‘God spare life’ as they say.

Still got lots planned for this year and next. Stay tuned.

Part 4: Laughter is the best medicine…

If you want to be a professional creative writer in the Bahamas you are going to have to be some kind of playwright. It really is that simple.

Poetry is currently back in fashion, but in its raw form, on the page, or performed at small events, open-mike style, it will not make you any money. The only way that poetry can make you money in the Bahamas is if you package it as a play.¹

My good friend Ian Strachan wrote a fantastic novel, Gods Angry Babies. Arguably, the best Bahamian novel ever written. The book was published by a reputable international firm and you can find it in libraries around the world. In ten years, and I kid you not, he has made a total of $1,500 off of that book. For the mathematically inclined thats about $150 a year. Which is about a ten dollar phone card and a twelve ounce soda each month.

Kids, think long and hard before you say you want to grow up to be a Bahamian novelist. And lets not begin to talk about short stories. Larry Smith of Media Enterprises, reportedly the largest book distributor in the country, says that a Bahamian best seller moves about 200 copies per year. Yes, 200.

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1. To be clear, I am speaking about what I call ‘viability’ money here. Which is how can you make a living wage off of your creative work. Read the definition in part three. [↩]

And now for a long overdue introduction…

Well Muddo! The audience has come, and they have voiced their opinion on Part 2 of this series, and after some initial ruckus, it seems that things are settling down to some sort of consensus: Film has potential, but beware of the risk. Thanks to all of those who joined in the discussion, and of course you can still go there and have your say.

Yes, let’s talk a bit about this viability thing. Simply put, what I am talking about is how YOU can make a living off of what you love. For me, what I love is writing and painting. The usual day jobs needed to fund these pursuits are teaching and the graphic arts. I have worked for clients as a graphic artist, and I have spent portions of the last two years marking student essays, and I will tell you, this is not how I wish to spend the rest of my days. I do not want to pursue what I love as a hobby. Now, if you enjoy your day job, good for you. Keep on keeping on. However, if you are like me, and want to do this thing you love more fully, then we can get somewhere together.

See, when I ask is it ‘viable’? I am not asking ‘is it possible?’ Because, of course it’s possible. What I am really asking is this: if this is what you love, can you live off of it?

Not too long ago the lament in Nassau was that:

Bahamians who want to exercise their talents in the cultural industries are faced with the choice of pursuing their callings as hobbies at home, or of leaving home to make a living by their gifts elsewhere. And we are all the poorer for it.

Maybe you remember that time. However, the interesting thing is that people have been living off of art in the Bahamas for at least 40 years. My father, Eddie Minnis, for instance, has been making it in this country as an artist non-stop since 1971. So clearly, it is possible.

Now, see I’m not talking about getting rich, I’m not talking about creating a multi-national corporation, what I’m talking about is you, doing the thing that you love, not as a hobby, but as your career.

The other thing, that bugs me is that a lot of people will give you some platitudes, “Go follow your dream!” or “Ma buhy, you can do this!” But, it isn’t very often that there is any talk of HOW. Maybe you went to school to study art, maybe you are a bundle of natural talent, but how do you translate that skill into a practical dollars and cents living? That is what this series is about. I’m trying to take a closer look at some of those Bahamians, like an Eddie Minnis, like a Michael Pintard, who are actually doing this thing.

This series, also is just the start. I have been interviewing and emailing Bahamian artists, trying to work out these ideas, and get their thoughts. And of course, I’m taking all of your thoughts and comments to heart and in the end I hope to put it all together as a free .pdf guide / booklet.¹ Maybe to serve penance to the film people, I’ll even put some of the interviews I hope to do on Youtube.

Cause see, the way I see it, the more of us there are doing what we love, the better it will be for all of us.

Ok, now that we are, hopefully, all on the same page, back to the matter at hand…

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1. When this will come out in final form is far too early to say. [↩]

Just letting you know that there is a new post over on Mental Slavery dot com. The piece is the guest editorial that appears in the current Spring / Summer 2009 issue of The College of the Bahamas Alumni Magazine. It’s entitled The Bahamian story needs a reality check.

I think it’s worth a quick read. Definitely shorter than some of the recent stuff here.

Part 2: So, you want to be in the movies…

What are we to make of the current passion for movie-making in the Bahamas? Is it possible to apply the logic of Hollywood to our local situation and create an honest-to-God indigenous film industry here? Films made by Bahamians for Bahamians?

This is an enormously appealing prospect and, truth be told, we have a long and intriguing historical association with Hollywood. To start off we have produced bona fide movie stars like Sidney Poitier, the academy award winning son-of-the-soil, and Calvin Lockhart. There has also been a long line of Hollywood films made here, from the 1916 silent film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, to its 1954 remake, to several James Bond films and countless others.

But despite this esteemed history, I believe that hopes of a movie industry by Bahamians and for Bahamians is a pipe dream.¹ I also hope that those involved in making local movies have some kind of well thought out financial back-up plan.

This belief comes from my interpretation of the Hollywood system. As I see it, a single film is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. You might make a good movie, but you can not ever hope to recreate the full system, that is unless you have Bill Gates kinds of dollars to spend and even then you probably couldn’t make it happen.

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1. UPDATE: Up to this point, I have done a poor job of defining what I mean by “viability,” for now let’s just say it is something that can make you enough money so that you can keep doing what you love and live reasonably well. i.e. not sleep outside in a cardboard box. I am not talking about doing the thing you love as a hobby. In the next post I will elaborate on “viability” in more detail. [↩]

When I walked out of Transformers 2 the other day, I had an epiphany. Or more precisely, I had an extension to another epiphany that I had had a few days before.

My revelation was about art, how to be an artist in the Bahamas and most importantly, how to make a living while doing it. Yes, it’s that big a deal.

I’m working out the ideas a little here first and then I will probably put a full, fleshed out essay on Mental Slavery when I’m done. Hopefully, you the audience, will correct me when I go wrong and extend and help transform these ideas in the process and in the end we may all end up somewhere that we didn’t expect. If you consider yourself to be any kind of Bahamian artist, I am talking directly to you; so please, everyone, comment away!

Revenge of the Formulas…

Ok. Let’s start with Transformers. It was bad. Gloriously bad. But having been suckered in by the first film hoping for something grand, I already knew I was going to see action trash.

The amount of money that this thing has grossed in spite of its God-awfulness is nothing short of amazing. As I write this it’s approaching 400 million dollars worth of box office. This qualifies it for top ten all-time honors. And that is only the North American box office, it has made close to a Billion dollars in total world-wide grosses. That, my friends, is a lot of money.¹

How can a mediocre movie gross so much money? This is the typical question in response to a report of such astronomical amounts of money. But I think the question misses the point. I believe the more interesting question really is this: How much more would it have made were it a good movie?

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1. Of course we have to forget that ticket prices have risen so dramatically over the last few years that its actual admissions, i.e. the amount of people who went to see it, is around that of “Men in Black” from a few years back. But this point is irrelevant. [↩]

Well not me per se. I’m not Oprah! It’s one of my paintings that is gracing the present issue of Tongues of the Ocean. Why not take a look and read some of the wonderful poetry while you are there.

The piece which is entitled “Before Someone Sees” was painted as a part of my “Inner Journey” series, back when I was studying fine art at the College of the Bahamas. When you see it you can tell that I was exploring my inner demons. It’s definitely a series I hope to revisit when I’m not so consumed by my academic work. The rest of the “Inner Journey” series is over at wardmin.com.

Peace.

Everyone knows Google. And now it’s hard to think how the web worked without search. I stumbled into something that, in a few years, might become just as essential to our experience of the internet. It’s called Wolfram|Alpha, and although it may look like a search engine, and may have been hyped as a google-killer, it isn’t like anything you may have used before.

The Wolfram people call it a Computational Knowledge Engine, and while Google will give you suggestions, Wolfram will give you answers. If you have a few minutes to kill you should check out their instructional video that gives you some idea of this things potential.

Start off with your birthday. Mine is July 22, 1977. Wolfram tells me that I was born on a Friday; that the sun rose at 6:32 am, and set at 8 pm that day. That it was a clear day with a high of 31°C and a low of 24°C in Nassau and that there was no rain, and the moon was a waxing crescent. Interesting, you say.

I write my thesis in a program called Scrivener that doesn’t divide my manuscript into pages, but simply gives me a word count. Now, how many pages is 33,000 words? Ask Wolfram. It’ll tell you that’s 132 pages, and if you dig a little deeper in the results it will even tell you that if I printed it out I’ll be killing 0.016th of a tree.

How about your credit card? What if you have $2000 credit card debt at 29.9% annual interest. How long will it take you to pay that off paying $50 a month? Ask Wolfram. It’ll not only show you how long it takes to pay the debt off but will also tell you how much money you are paying in interest, and compare that to other monthly payments.

This is of course, only scratching the surface. They say they are just getting started, and as time goes by Wolfram will do much more than it can now. If so, I’m along for the ride. It already has a permanent place on my tool bar.