A long-time friend of mine, Tradewinds drummer Clive Rosteing, sent me an email this week concerning a news story about the American NFL star Cam Newton who had recently sent a very warm congratulatory note to retiring quarterback star Peyton Manning, publicly praising Peyton lavishly, and citing him as a role model for aspiring athletes. Consequently however – and this was the basis of my friend’s email – Cam’s letter drew a number of responses, lauding him for the sentiments, but criticizing the lack of basic grammar evident in his writing.
My response to Clive was simply “Give the banna a break.” I have long noted that God takes care when dispensing gifts to mankind to spread the good genes around – no one person comes equipped with all the right qualities or abilities; God shares the good stuff. Here we have a young man in Cam Newton who is gifted way beyond his peers on the football field, but definitely not in the upper percentile when it comes to literary expression. Our experience in life should tell us not to expect people to be gifted or blessed across the board. Here’s an example: time and again, we see instances of the Almighty having loaded up a woman with the kind of striking beauty that turns heads in public whenever she appears. Other less blessed women are green with envy, and men practically fall over themselves trying to make contact with the head turner. On the flip side, however, in many instances, to get to know this vision of beauty is to learn that she is sometimes woefully short in the brains department; God was lavish in one area, but very stingy in another.
In my young days starting out as a musician in Toronto – I’m talking pre-Tradewinds here – in a little nightclub on Yonge Street, there was a stunning blonde who was a regular patron of the place. She would come with the same fellow, very attentive to her, and why not – all male eyes in the place, and even some female ones, were turned onto this lady. As a new immigrant, seeing my first blonde up close, I was caught up, too. I’ve told the story before of getting around the attentive boyfriend, but let’s leave it at that, as we say in the Caribbean, I “got through” to the young lady and we started “going out”. (As an aside, I’m always amused by that expression “going out”; when you’re in the throes of a new love, “going out” is not a priority.) At any rate, up close the lady (she was Swiss) was even more beautiful, so that even though she lived about an hour’s drive from me, I put up with the journey. Very early in the encounter, however, it was evident to me that while Switzerland had been blessed abundantly by God in appearance, she had been shortchanged when brains were sharing. The lady was indeed spectacular to look at, sometimes I would find myself just staring at her, but less than ordinary in the area of intellect. Before you criticize, believe me, as the Jamaicans say, “mi try wid de daughta”, but the struggle was uphill. I soon realized that I was involved with what the Americans refer to as “a bimbo”, and as beautiful as she was, particularly to a country boy from West Dem who had seen blondes only in the movies, it was painfully clear that, as the Trinis put it, “ah couldn’t make” with the European. It was my first lesson in the ‘God shares’ philosophy, and it stuck.
As I moved on from those early days in the small Canadian bar to more popularity with Tradewinds, I saw the difference in abilities playing out in various ways. There were bands in the Caribbean, blessed with musical talent, bands that seemed headed for success, but over and over they disintegrated because nobody in the group had any interest or experience in the ‘business’ side of show-business. They were great at music but poor at business. There was at the time in Toronto a Guyanese singer, let’s call him Brian, who possessed a unique voice and stage presence. The young man was also blessed with good looks – he looked like a smaller version of Harry Belafonte who was a heart-throb at the time, and he sang Belafonte songs – and there was palpable reaction among the ladies when he came up to do a number with us in the Bermuda Tavern on Yonge Street. However, it was immediately clear that there was a huge problem. Brian, with his charming voice and breezy style, had no sense of timing whatsoever. Where the melody in a song paused, Brian would sing through; or when the melody moved on he would stand there mute, looking around as if waiting for a taxi. In effect, this apparent star boy would come on stage and mangle a song. However, he had good things going for him, so I decided to invest some time in the guy. We arranged to meet him at the club on his lunch hour and ran through ‘Jamaica Farewell’ over and over, pointing out where he should pause or should not, until he smoothed out the bumps. After two or three sessions, we put him on the stage one night in the club, confident we had fixed his timing problem. Brian came on, made a little star-boy move, leaned into the microphone, and immediately went straight back into his erratic timing, stopping where he shouldn’t and singing where he should shut up; in effect, he brutalized the song. Ironically, to him there was no problem. When I stopped the band to get him back in sync, he was puzzled – “But it sounds right to me, man.” When God was making Brian, He threw away the clock.
Even among the lives of the very special people around us it will show that generally the ‘God sharing’ pattern holds up. So that with some of the most beautiful women it can be, as we used to joke, “what are you gonna talk about in the morning?” In the world of celebrities we know, we see, for instance, that while V S Naipaul is a world-class writer, he is hampered with flaws as a social creature that now form part of his reputation. Chris Gayle is lauded as the most successful long-ball hitter in cricket today, but off the field our boy needs help. And there are several examples of popular music stars in America today whose ethics are in the dumpster. Similarly, Cam Newton has arrived on earth with spectacular athletic abilities, but he is lacking in grammar and syntax; God didn’t bless him across the board. Cut the man some slack, please.
