A Taste Of Honey Jam

Today I put my social life to sleep. It served me well the last few months but since I have a test in two days and I used up all my lime time in the first three weeks I decided to put my foot down, my butt to the chair and my head in my books (well the nerd in me). But alas! The NBA, my saving grace, had its All-Star weekend so you know that work had to take the backdoor. But I'm not one to shut off activities abruptly and without flare so tonight I watched my social life slowly bleed out like honey - that was sweet.

I got a freelance photography job for a showcase called "A Taste of Honey Jam". Honey Jam is a Canadian showcase where women...jam, basically. This was just a test run and much to the disappointment of the crowd, the location was too small. I guess that was the only draw back of having a taste, but it left everyone wanting more. My social life died a happy chap that day - for obvious and not so obvious reasons :o) - as I expressed my Ray-Ray style of photography (no, it's not blind photos it's the other Ray-Ray). But my social life is now dead (or on vacation somewhere in the Caribbean) so let me continue with how it died.

The showcase only featured local artistes, singers and a dancer. The dancer is the first and easiest to describe because she was the lone dancer. I'm not a girl so I don't know what material her dress was - or even if it was white, off grey, pale cream or light off-white - but it had glittery thingies on it that jingled every time she shook her booty. It was nonetheless mesmerizing as she twirled and swayed and wined to an indian rhythm played on the drums. It was like in the movie Alexander, when he went to Asia.

Now I often hear citizens cry down our musicians because of what they do (like Rihanna) or what they don't do. Some people think that there are better things to do than following your risky dreams. Putting yourself in a place where you don't know what will happen next, because anything can happen, seems to very counter cultural in Barbados. So like crabs in a barrel artists get stamped on or have to scrunt for support when living outside of "wukkup". I realised two things today: (1) there's a lot of talent out there and the notion of teaching yourself does not always work. In most cases, the wiser one teaches the fool. (2) What you do is not who you are. I love writing. I write, but I'm not a writer. I also love basketball, drumming, dancing, eating and mathematics. Does that make me a writetdandruheatematician? No. It makes me a human who does all these things. Maybe we should ask the next generation, "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

I say this because some people think that if they sing and get fans and money that they have to abandon everything else that they are good at. So in essence, they can't follow strict rules in a subject and then make their own in another. It's a very one dimensional thinking. In many cases you can do both because we were meant to live, firstly, then live in 3-dimensions; not be an engineer or a guitarist. But what if living was my hobby? Before I digress any further I'll go back to the story.

I'm not a fan of country, I'm not a fan of ancient-modern and I'm not a fan of crazy. Well that's the irony of life, I guess. My favourite performance was Malissa Alanna, a little (in age) country/pop singer. I saw all of these old men come on stage dressed like The Who at the Superbowl XLIV and I thought to myself, "That's strange". Then Malissa came on and the crowd screamed like when Beiber hit that 3 pointer in the Celebrity Game on Friday. And the guitars started...*sigh*...need I say more?

I'm not usually one to be mean with people but you really should have been there. It was one of the few shows that I went to which did not have a bad performance, not even in the relative sense. I bet my social life is smiling up in heaven right now thanking me for a wonderful night. Oh wait, it's on vacation!