Darlington Brown

I can't tell you how many times I have googled my father's name hoping to find some information on him. You see, I grew up hearing my father's Hammond in our Ocean Avenue living room. Sometimes my mother would say, tinged in typical Trinidadian modesty, "Your father has talent, you know." But she didn't need to tell us children. We were surrounded by it. My father made everything from multi-bulbed lamp shades made from graters to our fake leopard print couch that we were not allowed to sit on. He made a spherical fish tank (I kid you not) and once, in order to cool the motor of his Hammond, he even built in a fan.
When I lived in Trinidad I would always hear from my mother's family about how talented he was, but they would always add jokingly that he was from "behind-the-bridge" as if that was supposed to mean something. Although I was young I had already been exposed to the ghetto and was privy to the creativity inherent in living in poverty. I understood that it had something to do with my father's brilliance.
But with genius sometimes comes insanity. To say that my father was mentally unstable when I was growing up was taboo--and if it was mentioned it, like so many other serious issues in Trinidadian life, was laughed away. I remember the cops telling my mother that she had to commit him. It was after one of his big dramatic flare-ups and he had run through our entire apartment building on Ocean Avenue naked. I do not write this to shame my father--there is no shame in being mentally ill. And I do not write this to shame my mother: there is something almost heroic in a woman who refuses to put her husband away. My mother, like my father, were country folk. They did not come from much and hadn't the amount of so-called education I later had access to. But what they did have was passion: for each other, my father for his art. True, it did not translate well with the coming of children, but I know that they tried their best.
My mother once told me that my father had a job in an advertising company on Madison Avenue. It was in the 60s and I have photographs of him sitting over a drafting table. Throughout my childhood I would always dig through closets sealed shut, closets full of Green velvet suits, white Bally slip-ons and art books. Although I did not know it at the time, these were all clues to another life my father had been a large part of. I never realized that as far as a musician, my father was at the top of his game in Trinidad, which is why I suppose he imagined his next stop to be New York City.
But New York did something to my father. My mother recalls that there was a transformation that took a hold on him after he had been fired from his Madison Avenue job. She said he never could get over it. My entire childhood is full of memories of him, sitting in our living room, rolling joints and drinking stout. He played the organ every day, songs with lyrics like "Audrey, where yah get that sugah from?" and a lament of a tune I would later discover to be called Oboe. It wasn't until I grew up and actively listened to artists like Jimmy Smith, Fitz Vaughan Bryan, Clarence Curvan and Jackie Mittoo that I realized the great tradition that my father was a part of.
I've mentioned before one of the greatest lessons learned while working at Marie Brown Associates: That talent does not necessarily equal financial success. While there at Marie Brown Associates, I was privy to the frustrations of the unsung heroes. To live the life of an artist can be blissful and yet it places you in a terribly vulnerable path. Suddenly my father, the lead guitarists of one of Trinidad's foremost bands, Clarence Curvan, was rendered invisible through the color of his skin and his own lack of imagination to navigate a new, relatively unknown terrain.
I'm not saying that the same does not happen to white folks. What I'm saying is that if you a brother--your chances are even slimmer, in terms of immigrating to a new place and taking a chance or even getting one for that matter.
All of this just added to my father's frustration and perhaps fueled his insanity. I remember asking his sister, Aunty Audrey what he was like when he was young and she said she could remember he got a lot of fever. I wonder what that means? I wonder what psychological disease took a hold on him--was it simply a dream deferred?
Despite my father's inconsistencies we got along probably more so than he ever got along with any one else. He had this bad habit of cutting every one off in his life, sooner or later. He held grudges (something I can't do) and was known to get "ignorant" in the black sort of way. But he stayed home with me when I was a baby while my mother worked. My mom says that he'd buy formula for me by the case. He gave me a pride in my color, a bad temper, an appreciation of the arts and quite simply, my creativity. I've always known I wanted to be a writer, so when I wrote my first story at the age of about 7 and ended it with "DN" instead of "The End", that soon became my new nickname in a line of others, with chatterbox being his second favorite.
My father never told me to do things like my homework and when I stayed home from school I remained holed in in my bedroom I shared with my brother and sister while he went out to buy his weed or guiness. He'd come back with a Jamaican patty and roll a joint. He'd get high and together, we'd lie in bed, side by side and watch Tom & Jerry while all the other kids made their way home from school.
He didn't like to open the windows and always kept the dark, heavy curtains pulled shut as if afraid of something. I have a feeling that he was just afraid of life itself, all the things he could not control, all the things that made him feel less than Darlington Brown, that young protege from East Dry River.
And my mother loved him. Truth is, they should have never had kids. They liked to party and have friends over drinking rum & coke and smoking reefer. Although my mother partook in neither of these things she enjoyed the Calypso and Jazz music that my father and his friends would create, right there in our living room. But soon, the party had to end. Two children home in Trinidad needed tending and then there was me, who, to be honest, I still don't really know where I stayed with and with whom when I was a baby. There are just some things a Trinidadian woman will not talk about.
So anyway, I was delighted to see mention of my father in The Trinidad Express
and I cried when I read that one little line with his name in it. Because no matter what, I am Darlington Brown's daughter, The Organist's Daughter and like I wrote in my poem, In the end, you are you in all your perfection. And I thank you Daddy, for teaching me through your own loud mistakes...
There is no greater life lived than one lived through imperfection. And I don't grow sad anymore when I think of how he chose to walk out of that nursing home only to be found dead, unidentified, on that street.
Instead I understand that finally, my father is at rest.
Thanks for reading.
Lesley-Ann