Be original

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation” – Herman Melville

To say I was incredulous after reading an article in the papers detailing Palm Court’s plans for a “majestical ball” drop to usher in the New Year, would probably be the understatement of the year, I think. I was kerfuffled! Of all the ways to celebrate the New Year, of course we have to imitate the Times Square extravaganza? We don’t have the imagination or creativity to come up with our own Guyanese idea of how to do something spectacular for the New Year. Hey, Sydney Australia shows off their unique skyline with fireworks – it’s now shown every New Year, across the globe.
Ahh well… it probably makes sense to decide to drop a ball for the New Year in GT. After all, we absolutely must do something to showcase those ‘skyscrapers’ in Georgetown.
I couldn’t help wondering with how many seconds the ball would take to drop… acceleration of gravity and all that. Two secs? And ironically of course, New Year’s Eve is the time where people decide to turn over a new leaf.
So it’s tragically pathetic that Palm Court decided to celebrate the New Year by perpetuating our old colonial penchant to mimic ‘outside’ practices.
On the day that people decide to change for the better, we have a well-publicised event that highlights that Guyanese don’t really want to change. They’re happy to lap up whatever drivel the media of the new centurions feed them.
So let’s all just forget our identities? Or our quest to construct one? God, what’s next? Shall we celebrate Columbus Day while we’re at it? So what if that led to the near extermination of the original Caribbean peoples.
We’ve lost something vital somewhere along the way – a sense of being Guyanese.
It’s impossible for any culture to remain completely unaffected or influenced by other cultures.
But at the same time, one shouldn’t completely lose one’s own identity.
How many of our national events still even remotely resemble anything Guyanese? Our Republic Day celebrations could probably be mistaken for Carnival with Trinidadian Chutney blaring from speakers to boot.
No one expects us to reject other cultures. But we have to find a way to keep our culture alive.
And that ball dropping thing? That was just lazy. We still have brilliant minds in Guyana, why couldn’t someone think up something original? If they had their hearts set on dropping something, there’re a million other things that could happily be dropped off the roof of a building.
So I’m going to remain optimistic and believe that the ball drop doesn’t signal that there’s no hope for Guyanese remaining Guyanese, because people don’t ever start their resolutions on the stroke of midnight.
Because for persons resolving to diet, it would be rude to refuse the good food being offered to you by friends and relatives, right? So the diet starts on January 2.
So maybe Guyanese have taken a resolution to be more Guyanese and to stop migrating like there’s the Plague in Guyana.
Maybe they’ve resolved to start thinking for themselves and not let the ‘outside’ media do their thinking for them. Maybe they were waiting for January 2 to start acting on their resolutions?