Ant Bites: #BlackWombmyninModernFilm

David Simmons

• I liked Duplain Robert's status so much, I had to borrow it: "A philosopher said as we live life, it looks like random anarchy, one event smashing into another. But when you look back, life looks like a finely crafted novel." Joe Walsh of the Eagles. As you look back on your life, does it look like a novel yet? If so, what kind of novel would it be? 

  Maven Huggins sci fy magical realism of an african traditionalist moving back through time to original systems. is there such a genre?

  • • David Simmons ever seen the movie Sankofa

      
      
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      Maven Huggins

      the ethiopian academic filmmaker.? he showed at MSU...were you there still? yes I do. would you believe i dont remember that film very much. Need to see it again.
      
      Yeah..but interesting enough I am not going back to move forward, but just to gather and correctly orient myself. It is like i am moving forward but making taking time to pick up and gather all that were cast away by my ancestors on their way to arrive me here...that needs another name, doesnt it...?
      
      a Re Membering...

      
      
    • David Simmons re membering is good. sankofa = go back and fetch it, the idea that we have to know our pasts to move forward confidently. and yes, i was there to see it, though i first saw at a screening in accra when it first came out. powerful seeing it on african soil.

      
      
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      Maven Huggins well. i might be talking out the side of my neck cause you know what..i may look back on my life and realize that was this period of time here and now...returning to Trinidad was my Sankofa,...and i dont even have to do it then, i see it now..so maybe...in time i will accept that is all it is. but i was reaching for something else, maybe something else, overreaching maybe...

      
      
    • David Simmons do you see trini as a chapter in your novel, or is it the whole book?

      
      
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      Maven Huggins

      oh my goodness, a chapter, an episode, an epoch, only,. the whole book of my life? it can never be...or maybe cause it is and was always present, just in different ways, recessed in nyc, and prominent now. and an orbit of two others when i was in africa...it will be interesting to see who it is afterwards, after now...peculiar. You ask me things/ questions and i think i know the answer but perhaps i muse it might be another way; yet to be determined and deciphered'
      
      I did write a book about my trinidad now. i was trying for fiction. only a memoir emerged; all my own experiences since 2003. each chapter an experience. I called it ant bites cause i got dreadfully ill of 23 ant bites that i thought was grass on my feet. ended up with undiagnosed insect poison/ it is a wonder i survived...anyway the idea of me thinking i am being loved when in fact i am being destroyed...??? and after i got to over 100 pages, i realized it would make a fascinating film. it is a script more than a story,. I think it would be amazing. think about it: when do you ever see a black women in total flight and self realization, reflection, and not beset with a lot of ugly drama or tragedy?

      
      
    • David Simmons that's deep: being destroyed while you think you're being caressed, loved.

      
      
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