I'm Back!

After a week of eating curry (it is the best anti-depressive: It transports me not only back to my childhood, but to Trinidad, as well) I am happy to say I have survived yet another week! Yeah!
I wrote my previous post YEARS ago, so I've actually moved beyond this "mourning"--this loss of a life past. I was on the train yesterday and had a real eye-to-eye with myself, "Well, Lesley, what did you expect moving to Denmark?" But truth is, I hadn't expected the cultural shock, along with the new-mother shock, unemployment shock and let's not forget the just being far away from home shock.
But anyway, I do enjoy my life here in Denmark. It is the only life I have and I have gotten better at being in the present. Enjoying the beauty that I find in the most unlikely of places: In faces foreign to me but in the end, a potential brother or sister.
Last night the unfamiliar sound of my phone ringing pierced the silence of my apartment. "I'm baaaack!" It's my mother. She just returned from visiting my grandmother in Trinidad for her 83rd birthday.
"Lesley, if you see Trinidad how nice, how developed!" My heart kind of sinks. I don't really want Trinidad to change...but I know it's direction we have all tacitly agreed to.
"I had a nice time. We bathe in the sea in Tobago and it was like a swimming pool." That sounds nice! I'm definitely, the Universe willing, going to Trinidad this summer. Most of all because I miss my grandmother! Speaking of which, I called her the other day to ask her how she liked my birthday card.
"It nice but I can't show anyone!" And if there's one thing my Mummy Hildred likes to do is show-off things that I make for her.
"Why?" I ask.
"Because it is a little too honest!"
"But that's the way I write."
"I know," she says, "and it is good."

Anyway, my mother continues, "Les-ley, I watching my stories now and there is a hard of hearing child and some information, www--"
"Not now Mom..." I appreciate the effort but I was half-way asleep.
"I start watching the stories (soap opera) again. I used to watch it when I first moved here and didn't have any friends...I used to be a bit depressed..."
I often wonder about my mother's experiences here, moving here in the 70s...

Black Women In Europe
I found a network of women called Black Women in Europe. The link is to the right, on top. It is a wonderful network and wouldn't you know that Vienna is hosting the first ever annual Black Women in Europe Conference this weekend? I found about it a bit too late, but the Universe willing, I will be there next year! Interestingly though, Ben called me yesterday to tell me that there will be a Pan-African Conference here in Copenhagen tonight. I will be there and will tell you all about it. (I wouldn't be surprised if a Danish person is running it!?!)
But when your son draws himself like this (note the gold tooth):
I am soooo happy that there is a growing, more visible movement regarding and revolving around the African Diaspora. I am relieved.

Shine


Last week I saw Shine perform. Ladies and Gentlemen, Shine has arrived. With it's eclectic cocktail of funk, rock, soul & gospel tinge, Shine is a true representation of the sign of the times: A perfect meshing and uni-versing of the world's music (I swore I heard the soft tinges of High-life guitar somewhere in one of them songs!)When New York's own (His roots are from Sierra Leone as well)Claudius Pratt belts out the lyrics to soulful rants such as in Heretic, he not only commands your body to move, but your mind to think. Songs such as Soapbox and Nyhavn compliment a repertoire that signals a stellar debut album. I'm buying it, don't know about y'all. But check them out at Shine
The band as a whole works really well together & I look forward to writing more about Shine!

I'm gonna start featuring some musical gems I've been privy to--so look out for more on this band, other bands and interviews with fun stuff!

tidbits
On the whole I'm keeping sane (relatively) Listening to Natasja's new album. Natasja is this sister from Denmark (her father is from the Sudan I think) But anyway...she made the whole Reggae thing accessible here to Denmark cause much of her stuff was in Danish. I'm not lying when I say that when I came here, Reggae was not really big here, as it's been in, for example, our lives back in Trinidad or Brooklyn for that matter. I'm also not lying when I say that the way in which it has blown up here recently (I'm talking within the last 4-5 years) you'd think Reggae never existed. And all the reggae parties are full of many Brothers looking for white girls and white girls looking for Brothers...Yawn! But anyway, there are the sincere and Natasja represented one of them. I wasn't really into her in the beginning, you know me, have my suspicions...but this girl could rock the microphone and she sounded Jamaican...which raised my suspicions even more, and then she traveled to Jamaica and won this big Jamaican Reggae competition!!!! Hello! She loved the music and by now you realizing I'm writing in the past tense...homegirl passed on. She was in a car crash a few months ago in Jamaica. Young girl, ready to drop her sophomore album, at the pinnacle.
So, anyway, I take it as a credit to her artistry that I'm sitting in my apartment, writing on my blog and not only writing about her but listening to her cd that's totally in DANISH! I don't do that. But here I am, doing just that. RIP girl, nah, don't rest, live it up wherever you are!
Click here for more on Natasja