People often ask me about this column or that, or this song or that. “Boy, where you get the idea for this? What kind of brain you got?” And down the road, there may come a day when I may be able to answer, but as of now the answer, honestly, is “I don’t know.” It’s not as if I go looking for these things; the truth is they come looking for me, landing on me out of nowhere, and sometimes they come from other people and I truly don’t ask. I simply recognize the suggestion as a good one, or it has some other appeal to me, and I go with it, giving thanks for whatever God gave me to propel it.
I wrote a column recently about the nightclub Tradewinds had in Toronto called WE PLACE and the fact that our Canadian fans often referred to it as The Wee Place; “we place” is a construction from Caribbean dialect; Canadians hearing it assumed I meant “the small place” which I didn’t. The idea just came from these immigrant people coming to this nightclub and making it their own; no questions there for me.
While still in Saint Stanislaus College, for example, I came to know a married woman, a visitor to the house I lived in, (this is many years before Tradewinds, of course) and in the interest of space, I will just say we ended up as lovers. Suffice it to say that she was beautiful and wise and I didn’t spend five minutes wondering why this was happening to me; it came, it happened, I didn’t ask why. I certainly asked her other questions, but not the “why me” one. I’m not taking any credit for that; it simply never occurred to me.
Similarly, I recall coming to Guyana with Tradewinds, in a year when we had a hot song, and a reporter from Chronicle, doing a feature on me, stopped in the middle of the interview, with a big smile on his face, and said, “Boy, where you does get these ideas from?” I forget which song it was, but I remember instantly telling him, “I can’t tell you the where or the why; they come and I see the idea has merit, and I go with it.”
Sometimes, the idea is obvious. For instance, BOYHOOD DAYS, or IS WE, or FAMOUS LIES, songs straight out of Caribbean culture, were subjects almost calling for a song, but there are many where the origin is rather obscure, even imaginary, but still it’s not something I seek out – it’s as if the song comes to me, rather than me to it…the brain being the brain, but that is certainly no answer. Clearly I can take some credit for developing the idea once it comes to me. IS WE OWN, for me one of my more evocative songs, was an almost automatic choice, once I recognized the phrase as signifying almost trademarks in the culture; in that case, the culture propelled the song, so to speak.
In general, though, the process of creative song-writing remains for me a mystery. It is an experience I embrace without fully understanding what is going on, but I always remain grateful that it has come to be part of my life and I value it as something beyond my understanding that I treasure. It has been like a beacon in my life – something that others can appreciate while at the same time casting a light for me that I recognize, leaving me always grateful that it has been given to me and is forever an integral part of whatever David Martins is.
