Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
YOU MAY or may not have heard the rumour, seen the report, shared in the invention/intention that somewhere in Europe there is something called a Millennium Dome, something of an architectural wonder that has been sealed and is to remain sealed until the dawn of the next millennium.
I don't know where the key is to be/has been located. The way technology frightening and overtaking man, the dome might just find a way to open itself or remain locked depending on the mood it wakes up in or how it views humanity at that appointed time. You can imagine when de keyman approach de keyhole him see a likkle sign seh, "Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, reboot. Order shall return". Or "Out of Memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, but, alas, we never will".
See a nice one here: "Contents destroyed by friendly fire in the search for weapons to destroy the masses, make that weapons of mass destruction". Prekkeh! As in shock and awe.
On the other hand, in this ever upwardly spiralling square-off between man and machine, man might strategise for a moment when him have de upper hand, an embed someting eena him eye dat all him need to do is blink pan de dome on dat New Year's morning and de whole ting part like de Red Sea, letting through all those who had been presumed globalised into extinction, or too poor to afford de shuttle ticket from Mars, wid dem "Banner pan head, Bible inna han, one and all" come to see de promised dumb oops dome. Double Prekkeh! In other words, more shock and awe.
By fair means or foul, I want de ting to open and I want all of us to be there in spirit or in flesh to behold how third millennium people is going to react when what inside de dome confront dem. Rumour has it that the Europeans in their much-touted superior wisdom have placed in such a dome the one person whom, in their out-of-this-world assessment will not be surpassed in accomplishments, even in another thousand years. At this moment him name Bob Marley, thank you very much Mr. and Mrs Knowitall, Your Eminent Clairvoyances. At that moment I cannot guarantee what him going to name, where him going to did come from and what him goin to did look like.
The tragedy of that kind of behaviour has been that our children have been taught about the pharaohs and Egyptians without once hearing the word black or Africa. They have learnt history without any reference to themselves or their contributions to it. They have been battered into
learning English without once being told about the beautiful languages which they have given to the world.
Poor Claude McKay has been conferred with American birthright by people who tink seh as soon as likkle sense into yu head an yu lan pan American soil, QED, you is American an is de landing dat put sense inna yu head. Aldoagh we know seh de landing very often put soil inna yu head, we call it brain wash. Even Missa Churchill did mek mistake an quote Mass Claude for arrogance did lead to de assumption seh is mus somebody of Churchillian ilk and intention did write If We Must Die an furthermore there being no other war but the one about how to carve up Europe is mus dat de somebody was writing bout.
So I do not know what kind of transmutation an cloning, as in clowning around, dem is engineering inside de dome between de now an de den. We all know that anything can happen and usually does. What baffles me is how dem know dat we who give de world Bob Marley under some conditions that we was not suppose to even give weself one breath of fresh air without tekking out de IMF share first, doan know how to manufacture one ton load more of Highly Blessed fe go chant dung Babylon wid music. And we don't even have to call dem Bob Marley for we nuh short a names.
We have names like Peter Tosh, Tanya Stephens, Determine, Shango, Obatala, "We got Lightning, Tunder, Brimstone and Fire fe mek righteousness cover de eart like the water cover the sea, yea."
Therefore, we need not buy into any limiting notions of our abundant creativity or live in fear of the supposed fact that people who have been known to work dangerous and treacherous experiments pan odda people is capable of the kind of guzzum that will ensure that we don't produce another poet/philosopher/songwriter/singer/storytelling performer like the Hon. Robert Nesta Marley. "For dem soft, I hard, dem soft, I hard, so come we go chant dung Babylon one more time".
BIGGER, BETTER, BADDA
Furthermore we are not a people who are solely about duplicating and replicating. We are about doing everything bigger, better, badda than we did it before. We don't have to make another Imhotep. Him do fe him work arreddi an nuh more like him naw come. We don't have to make another Bob. Him do fe him work arreddi an nuh more like him naw come. Mek adda people gwaan clone around. We just have to acknowledge our foundations and build on them.
We fe use our creative abundance an pop dem. While dem a look fe de base an lock it up inna dome we a put up some superstructure dat "have no fear of atomic energy for none a dem can stop the time".
Our writers, poets, storytellers, singers and players of instruments must really begin to take this to heart and show the world till dem tired fe see we face, that we are unlimited in that which we have been called upon to do.
We are part of the abundance that's available to the universe, in the universe and through the universe. Without each of us fulfilling our mission, the Universe cannot be fulfilled "It's Jah will. BoomBoomBoom, dis yah chune yah a boom!" But we have to take that responsibility seriously. That means first and foremost that we must share the Abundance, create and maintain the atmosphere in which we grow a Bob-Bunny-Peter-Tanya Rebel-Mensenjah that confound dome-builders. We must eliminate the actions and activities that look like we tink seh we is de only one who suppose to be or can be superstar. The one don business leads to creative bankruptcy and ensures that dome-builders are successful.
We must stop put down other people because we tink seh dem tink seh dem is 'Dennis Brown'. Who yu waan dem tink dem is? George Bush? Tony Blair? J-Lo? But see yah! Our Creative Energies must be used to shine light into dark places, fire pan dome, to make it abundantly clear that we are confident 'in the victory of good over evil, yea-good over evil'.
And we love our SoulJahs better when they are alive, so excuse me, ah have a naming ceremony to attend.
