Are There Palm Trees In Heaven?
I’m fascinated about Black love stories… about Black Caribbean folk origin stories. I’m interested in muti-versions of a memory/or varying narratives that contradict another. Family gossip and taboo stories reveal history, provide understanding, share secrets/insight and I'm interested in all those things.
I am investigating and reimagining the dramatic and soap-opera esque love story between my mother and father.
Are There Palm Trees In Heaven explore ideas about storytelling and the longevity of memories that are not tangible. I am creating placemats, shelters for these memories and narratives to live alongside these griot’s voices--creating a home for them.
--The work becomes a collaboration with the prominent griots and bantons in my family--my father, Paul Balo and my mother, Shanika Cash.
--The work is an encyclopedia of my family's history, culture, and tradition.
-- This projects encourages the use and manipulation of recorded documents, portraits of kin, quotes, and family photos—it incites taboos in my tribe’s history.
ATPTH evolves from written work that spans from haiku-to-prose-to short story and dances in the realm of spoken word. This is the creative process to finding a final home for these stories; navigating through various and even culminating and combining mediums. The artwork’s form metamorphose from photography, to found imagery, and digital collage, found material, re-fabrication, installation, sound, video and film.
I’m archiving their lives so their sacrifices meant something, so the children after me, the heirs that come after--know our names..
This work makes me feel real.
I treat my practice like a Ritual Assignment.
This work becomes an offering to my ancestors and their children--this work is my first step to becoming them.
The beginning we start on the school bus: Prelude to- “Are There Palm Trees In Heaven”
The sun tailed Nika on the bus ride to school
and chased her through the windows of the vyann-mi mango colored otobis,
stumbling past palm and date trees–
Their broad, fraught, deep green leaves swung like granmouns taut men dwat
–still the sun kissed each genuflected palm and clung to the windows like swollen-plantain ready to be picked
anfle fwi bannann
///
but,
Mummy's head is like mango seeds.
//
We’re here.
The muses wants to start singing here//
on the school bus,
but we in Mummy’s room.
I’m not there yet, but Mummy’s there.
A frayed mango seed nests under tufts of bedding// and rags// and warm things
like mouchwas and scarves–
and prayer cloths//
like she’s gifting an offering or something.
Nika groans my name like she humming a song
A gritty ‘James’ scummages through moth-gnawed bath towels corking the cracks under the bedroom door
I don’t hear her.
She waits..before she sings my name again,
and lays her worked on and matted mango seed on top of her warm things
and nest there
and feels the stomping approaching her across the room//
behind the door//
down the hall//
and through the living room//
where I am making lullabies with my feet--
The sound of my journey to her.. like laying on hands -- tucks her into bed.
I crack Mummy’s bedroom door and push through the worn and torn towels working like caulking.
Blue light dances on her forehead
and she rests there.
Her fraid mango seed
unveiled,
de-bonnet’d,
and perched.
“Muuummy” I sing back to her through dry lips
and breathe a faux-yawn,
signal weariness,
signal a tired child.
She pays me no mind.
Mummy flutters her eyes--and they don’t open.
“MUMMY” I go louder. A rough soft.
Mummy jolts out of her sleep and stares at this ‘bad man’
this thief in the night who was stealing cool air into the warm Miami april night,
right where I was standing.
The door creaks out a shrill as I push it closed--- pushing out Miami.
This calms Mummy--
she eases back onto her nest of warm things and closes her eyes
she asks:
“James”
“you ain't hear me calling you?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer-- she scratches her scalp..
“are you happy home??”
But it doesnt work its way off her tongue with words–her fingers runs through her hair and I watch her tug and twirl and spin some dance—like laying of hips– she stretches out this braid, plucking at new growth.
“Since you gon’ and left, Jakyra’s green thumb been planting in my scalp”
She teases.
“Aint it long” a grin creeps up
A confession of gossip to Mummy
and she gets the story right
“He talked about ur hands mummy… talked about how wet they were.”
WHAT GROWS HERE?--- PAPA HAS A GARDEN IN HAITI
Like clockwork,
morning dew obied,
the sun stretched
and the roosters sang//
the ceiling fell
God was there,
and so was Nika,
and love stories ‘bout daddy hung from where the chandelier ‘ought have been
and it served as light//
as it served God
and Nika liked it.
Nika thought and Nika dressed//
and Nika danced,
but when Nika spoke
coconuts cracked and Teeths clenched//
and palm trees sweat.
‘You know they called him T-bay?
Yeah, they called him anything from Black Grease, to the gristle in the pot,
but I never knew anyone to call him Paul.”
“What’d you call him, Mummy?” I asked
‘Never mind that’
she says with her eyes more than her words.
She called him ‘Big Daddy’.
Embarrassing,
yes,
in her now womanhood,
but the memory of that young Jamaican-American girl finding good in this vakabon on a school bus is an attractive tale.
‘He wasn’t all bad–’ Nika started. ‘--maybe troubled, but he wasn’t all bad’
The words sat buoyant in the air, and were just still for a moment.
It sounded persuasive, as to convince herself more than I.
And then she continued with a murmur:
‘--but he tended to the weeds, and I watched him play tricks on-top of anthills’
Nika’s Greek Chorus: ‘Date Trees & Grabba Leaves’
(Staccato;)
[chant]
grabb-my tongue wrappin ‘round ya revolver
don’ I kno’ my way ‘round ya revolver
//
a menace under da covers,
a master mother-lover,
a bedroom bully fucking a gutterbutt fucker
thicc mud-pie thighs shaped just like Suzie
‘tig ole’ 3-0-5 cunning-cunt-prized boobies
smuggled bedazzled-coochie
//
pus--sy//dumb//choosy
drenched lips//soaking wet//get sipped on like smoothies.
[chant]
(Staccato;)
Sit back,
let-me-set-off-the-show-sir
SWELL
as-I-grip-on-revolver
GRABBA
watch-my-tongue-like-a--dancer
Proceed,
cuz-she-don't’-wait-for-answers
//
She get moody
busta’--
--won’t confuse ha/
wit no floozy
bottom lip slow dancing with ha doobie
free from da cooties
low hoodie
arm distance from da groupies
race-horse slappable ghetto chicken head booty
cheri, sookie--
sookie? she ain't giving up her cookies..
and she cheeky.
muphuckas cant
take--the way
she //sleek these-
-niggas
‘cross da pavement
TEACH BASIC BITCHES DA BASICS
get hectic!
they call miss cash so nika wreck shit
they tested
feelin plushy up ‘tween his pla-NET
and she manage
body carved
belly tucked in n’ sanded
please the tushie
squeeze
said
Balo gushy and mushy
worth
da fee
the bussy greased
fools drool
drip down to da knees
da monies handed
rings of da world
chummy lil gworls
nana wreak, steamed n’ rancid---lick my world
interior feel like spaceships
makin; limp dick cum quick
finishing first
like she already done had her-ses.
[chant]
don’ I kno’ my way ‘round ya revolver
watch my tongue grabba wrap ‘round a revolver
niggaaaaa
please
-----
Dese dates
They haunt you
Dese dates
They house you
Dese dayz
Ill hold you
Ill love you
If you stay
Lay wit me and
dese date trees
Lay wit me and
dese date trees
Dese dayz
Dey dont see you
Dese dayz
Im witchu
Lay and play
Dream on timoun
Dese dates
Are free
Lay wit me
And dese date trees
Are There Palm Trees In Heaven?
I wonder are there palm trees in heaven and
do they sweat?
Do they lick each word when they speak like my kinfolk do?
Do they dance?
Do they borrow souls for song— do they sing?
I wonder if Mommy sing’ still.
What is she even singing bout’?
Seems like God only sang Colored folk the blues.
Mommy never seemed fit to dream, or sing, or dance, but she did smile.
Smiles that tootsie rolled, and hummed, and dreamt.
Daddy says he used to sit next to Mommy on the school bus just to feel her.
Said he’d feather and spread her fingers apart from one another,
yet, against his,
said they lingered and flooded the room.
His mouth already fixed an apology for his hands, he said Mommy didn't seem to mind.
I think she liked when he held her.
I like when they talk about love, they seem real--they’d never used to in the before,
In the after, they talk about love.
I ask Papa to tell me a story,
Daddy doesn’t speak in poems though,
Papa, e mwe mem ?
Papa,e Manman?
Dad, what about me, Dad, what about Mommy?
I think Daddy looks at his hands, then he closes his eyes as if to see me , then looks back at his hands, and then he tells me he closes his eyes again,
so that he can see me,
and says nothing.
“Papa, Èske ou ka di m 'yon istwa sou renmen? Tell me a love story. Daddy, do you still dream? Daddy, do you think that there are palm trees in heaven?”