 two books. I was writing a collection of essays and that was going very well. Life was coming in and I was very much able through the skills I had learned as an artist to create something out of that that I could share with people. But we could only share from what we really do have in a way. And while I was doing that, I started to wonder if I'm so good at this thing, how come I can only use it to produce what is called literature? How come I could only produce use it to produce things I could share with other people? How come I could only use it to produce a book that would be published by a publisher, etc. etc. And then I started writing a collection of poems. But the poems were not, I didn't have a publisher in mind, I didn't have in mind any future for them at all. I was trying to write poems of my life and the poems that I was writing started to take the form of what my experience was. They were not trying to resolve it into art. They were not trying to turn it into something. They were not in any way making it conclusive. They were poems that were representative of and moving at the pace of whatever experience the universe felt I had to go through. So when I looked at them, I felt they were very ugly poems. I felt they were the mixture. In poetry, you know, there's a bias many times too and an imbalance many times to light, an imbalance to the idea of beauty and certain ideas of beauty take root more than others rather than a concept of balance. And what I started to see with these poems a lot were very light things, very dark things alongside each other. I started to see, you know, things that normally do not come together start to interact with each other in a way that I didn't feel I could even present it to somebody who is accustomed to seeing poetry in a kind of way, who is accustomed to, you know, who would receive it because whenever you're sending something out, you do have some kind of idea of what the receiver will receive. The journal, the person you'll be reading to, whoever it may be. So I continued with these poems nonetheless and they were just holding space. Some of them would express intense emotion of one variety or another. Some of them were just poems that were holding space and that's the best way I could describe them. So I had these two things and I was not sure how to reconcile them but I saw the difference in what was happening and it made me more and more start to put pressure on my ideas of literature. And I got a moment, I got, I was lucky to get a fellowship at the TS Eliot House and I got a moment of total quiet because New York City is very noisy and to have these two things there as well here. So I got to go and start to really look at what I had in front of me and in looking at it I realized okay, so this is what I had been doing. The ethic collection was very easy. You take something, I could take an experience, an experience of my family and I could very easily be the bright boy or the person who's good at this thing and turn it into that and give it out or I could give something else. So I started to look more closely at this poetry collection that I was writing with these poems that were holding space, these poems that were more about resolving my life than they were about publishing a book, winning an award or anything of that nature. And I started to work with these poems and the more I started to work with them things started to change in my life as a literary person, a poet and they started to open up in a very, very interesting way. I started, you know, as a writer you have a reading habit and you have kind of reading expectations where you probably might read who's the best poet out right now, you know, or, you know, who is doing something technically interesting that I could look at to do it. And I'm sure in any field you could think about that's the approach you would take. Who is doing something? Who is the other guy? Who is doing stuff like this? Or who do I like or whatever? But what I started to get coming to me was who I needed and I was not the one asking it to come. Books were just coming to me in ways where it was exactly what I needed at exactly that time in a series without fail. And they were not, there's a bit of an echo, but they were not literature books only. It started to span out to all manner of books. It started to span out to cook books. It started to span out to all of these, but at the same time I was engaged in a new form of reading them because of my experience, because of my experience. So in reading these books, I started now, my idea of literature started to include almost everything I was reading because I was seeing literature in it and for sure I was also seeing it in literature. So that slowly this partition that is there in one way or another for many artists, no matter how high it is for me or how low for somebody else, there is a sense in which it is there. There's always a sense that the art is going a way to do art and that's where the process begins or that's close to where the process begins or going in his room, going out or as I did, I went on a fellowship. So I started to get in touch with what I felt and what I started to call. It's really just my life, but I started to call it life technology because I realized that it was providing valuable information for me that was applicable to every single thing I could do on this from literature to life to love to every single thing and that's because it was breaking down the boundary that was around literature. If you look at the technology behind me again, you'll notice that it's a void in all of them where something needs to be put in and my relationship to literature at that time was as many of our relationships are to concepts, institutions and so forth. The idea is always of avoid on one side or another. That's why I say it's unidirectional technology one way. So my idea of literature was I need to do this thing for the development of literature or alongside my own personal ones it was like I'm going to do this thing that will change in literature but what is literature? What is it? All of it is life. All of it is life and the more that partition broke down, the more that wall broke down, I realized I started to interact with it in a way where the recognition that all of it was life started to create a very very strong relationship between everything in my life including literature and there was not a way for me to extract literature from it anymore and there was not a way for me to not do literature in life anymore. So with that life technology and that's kind of what I really wanted to share. The difference between this technology which we've created and the life technology which is that which we have inside of us and also to some extent we interact with outside of ourselves in the most mundane everyday ways that don't need to have anything special about it. There is a technological, scientific, artistic whatever you want to call it economic relationship between these things that is constantly going on that I was at least witness to in that period where whatever experience I was having was teaching me things about literature no matter what kind of experience it was and slowly now I was able to open literature to deal with whatever experience I was facing and so I'm saying now to everyone here that whatever experience we're having whatever it's like you are appearing before me I am appearing before you whatever is running this thing is extremely brilliantly technological and it we've given a language you know to kind of navigate it each of us and I realized my language was literature but it was just a language and not the thing itself it was the thing that I was I was gifted with and therefore I could use it to navigate the world not just the literary world and I think that sometimes what happened because what institutions for example share with the technology I'm talking about here is that they to avoid that we create and we enter into them and we bring life what are some institutions educational institutions spiritual institutions government these things are ultimately if you speak of them on their own voids empty and they are filled with you and being right that interaction between life and these things are extremely important so the life technology that we have which is to say my life paying attention to your life at every level every experience that comes before you should be treated like a well-working computer that is doing exactly what it's supposed to do which is what I was resisting in many ways you know you resist experiences but it started to open the way for all that I do and what I found was that literature became like I don't know a circulatory system or energy that I was in a more conscious place of deciding where I deployed whatever this was because the only creative energy within us is creative energy it has no genre it has no particular field that is just a language which means that anything we could direct it to we could possibly do and and and here is the change now the understanding is that because the relationship we have with institutions is very much inverted the idea is I remember come out Brad we're saying yeah why is the word of giving your art to somebody submit use the word submit right and while that we have it please I am thinking that what has happened with all institutions just like these technologies which are more like palpable metaphors for these institutions is that we start to believe more in the reality of the institutions more in the reality of the technology than ourselves and what that what that makes happen is that we start to consider ourselves as the void we start to consider ourselves as the empty space into which the vcr of education will go the vcr of spirituality will go the vcr of whatever it may be will go and if you avoid everything you want in this life you're going to look for it outside of yourself so this helps to create a channel and a relationship that some people benefit from and make plenty money from but it creates a channel whereby what you understand to be your creative essence is always directed outward to some concept which is really a void it doesn't exist without human beings so if I say I want to have I want to push science forward that means absolutely nothing anything that you would like to accomplish it has to involve all of your life and it has to be concerned with the origin forces inside the destination is also inside what you want is not when you get this or that or the other but what you want is the feeling and there are many ways there whatever you want to call it happiness the good feeling and if you understand that that is the aim your approach is entirely different your approach is entirely different so I've sat on that poetry collection for about two years and I feel extremely happy and I've not submitted it anywhere and I'm just in a place where one I'm my own Nobel Prize I'm my own literary journal I'm my own book and all of that I have that feeling inside everything else is extra everything else is a bonus to it but if I will never again be able to locate I know too much now to ever locate anything that has to do with the creative gift I've been given outside and what that means is this because I understand this creative gift I understand that I may be a literary person but that does not mean I'm not a businessman because the creative essence is me could be applied to almost everything I may be a literary person but that does not mean I can't be an economist it means that I may do that at a level that is less because my major language is is literature but it means that more and more of these functions that I would give outside more and more of these functions that I would depend on to happen outside resides within me and it's about having the authority of experience of life and life's technology that will allow you to be able to turn that into almost anything you would like to do and I've seen it happen in my own life that with that knowledge I have been able to do so the last thing I would like to say about this technology in relation to the life technology is this we have two terms that we often use when we talk about technology we talk about the digital and we talk about the analog and often we talk about the digital as something that began not too long ago but the concept the essence of the digital started a very long time ago the essence of the digital well let me start with the analog I came across the word analog I thought about it as related to something that was happening with me and what what I wanted to be and I looked up the etymology of it and I found out that the word analog comes from whatever word that means proportion it means things are always done in proportion to what is needed what is necessary and what is necessary not from an external idea of man as an economic animal man as this animal but what is essentially spiritually necessary for you to feel good and I started to understand well what then is the digital the digital is in contrast to the analog it is about quantity but it does not have the element of proportion which is why it could always go it could go beyond what will be healthy for us the analog relationship is one whereby whatever is happening is aware of the entire ecology of which you are part the entire ecology that you are and that is what the life technology I hope you understand what I mean it's simply your life I'm talking about outside and in the experiences that come to you and what the experiences you have inside and the way you make them relate with each other which is key these are these have an essentially analog relationship meaning that if that relationship is developed in the way that we put efforts into developing technology what you're going to have is a relationship with this technology that is always going to be in in in conversation in concern in everything with exactly what you need even beyond what you know you need the experiences that come before you that is how it works it is an analog technology the life technology the digital technology is something that needs human beings as a check and balance otherwise it will take human beings to where they can't go and this is not to be a doom a doomsday prophet or anything like that or to say that anything is bad it's to recognize that the technology we create and I don't only mean what's behind me I'm talking about institutions our form of technology if these if we don't recognize these as we are custodians of these it could take us very far even looking out at you right now I could enter a digital world by wondering what everybody's thinking do you see this image here this is kind of what the inside of many young people may look like because right now there's a concern of what is one two three four five six seven eight nine ten different people thinking at that time because the understanding is what I want what will make me happy is in front of me is outside is somewhere else but if you understand the origin and the destination to these things to be inside if you consciously start to interact with life as not necessarily as technology but to to respect it as having that level of efficiency even beyond what we have seen in this technology you have the ability with whatever gifts you've been given or chosen to practice to turn it into an information generating machine for how to live all your life if you're truthful about it if you're sincere about it from the inside you are able to turn whether you're a minister or a poet or an ambassador or whatever you may be you start to realize that ultimately these categories are meant to help us enter something to help us speak it to help us give words to it but ultimately you have to remember behind all of it inside all of it whatever it is it's life the categories are all provisional all of the categories are provisional so this is what what what I encountered and this is what has kind of totally changed my relationship to a lot and I find now that not only what I read and take in it's so varied but I had a poetry in all of it but almost everything I'm doing now I do it with a poetry that's slightly different than what I started out doing because in our world especially even in the poetic world now which has kind of linked up with other institutions in many ways you have the sense of seriousness outside the sense of urgency that I need to do this in the world out in the world this is an urgent discussion that we need to have etc and there's nothing more urgent than life itself there's nothing more urgent than life itself and dealing with yourself in that way and the more we start to kind of erode these discourses with our own kind of discourses that are really very basic really just starting to live consciously and always I remember saying to myself and it's such an easy phrase putting life first and if you put life first the poetic principles change there's no urgency there's urgency but there's not as much of it as you're being told one of the principles you have is patience one of the principles you have is understanding that the light and the dark will live next door to each other easily all right the poetry I read a lot of the poetry I read growing up would either show you the the bad with a critique or the dark with a critique or show you the beautiful all in light and very very nice a lot of it I read maybe I didn't read some of what you guys are reading but I feel like I have not yet seen and but I do feel now that I've experienced a poetry that understands that life is about balance that life no matter what comes before you there is a relationship and a poetry and a poetics between these things that that is happening in spite of you and sometimes all you have to do is to be conscious to be true and to look and observe your life and what is happening around you thank you very much thank you mr lucian I would like to acknowledge the presence of our parliamentary representative honourable kensin chasmi okay yes that helps me that definitely helps so yes thanks for joining we now move on in haste relative haste to the question and answer segment of the program it will run for about 20 to 25 minutes and we have arranged two standing mics on either end of the room for your use if you are interested in asking a question please get to one of the mics you may have to cure this based on how excited everybody is based on how excited everybody is to contribute and I will um through me questions would respond to them he will come up and he will respond to them um to make sure that as many people get to participate we're just asking that you as concise not too diluted but concise in your questioning to mr lucian so we may start and if you go to the mic if you're interested you could get to the other mic while one speaker goes so that so that we don't have a delay in the session yes um just want to say a special thank you to mr lucian um for this very informative lecture tonight um question to you well over question and an observation and there seems to be a great dichotomy between what we experienced during covid which for many of us was a moment for us to pause to do some introspection and to go back to uh values that we held um on to maybe uh generations ago um where we went back to basics um sort of like what you have demonstrated there with the technology in a tech person myself um i'm looking at this visa v ai which seems to be a very disruptor not seems to be but really is a disruptive technology that is changing everything that we are doing um whether it's in arts medicine education etc i love the way you piece it together to show the importance of us understanding that it is more about us understanding our roles understanding who we are um um and even your mindset how it changed your your perception in the way that you write poetry the way you understand yourself the way you conduct yourself the way you business etc um my question to you is uh how do you how do you see um i know you look back at technology but how do you see the new technology and its effect on us and do how do you how do you put this all into um context with what you just explained and does it have an even greater meaning for us and the next generation coming who will be disrupted by this technology okay thanks okay it seems like i'm talking on tech now i'm out of my league um but but you know what i was i was trying to see is you know and metaphor actually helped me to kind of process a lot of these things is that you know we talk about analog and digital for example as things that are you know we talk about digital as now coming but these things are ultimately about our relationships to things in our way um ultimately if we're talking about capitalism we're also talking about the digital for example um the digital we could see went into overdrive from the time slavery happened because it was about there was there were no checks and balances there was nothing to see we're going to develop this in this way that is in conversation with the ecology the full ecology of life with our own human beings and so on and so forth the other part of it is and that's why metaphor for example is important because what we say as concrete things metaphor helps us to break open um so for example we'll talk about technology and eventually technology will become refined into talking only about this right whereas technology in one form or another has always been around including human beings as a technology of an intelligence as well as for where things are going um there's an interesting aesthetic actually that you could see for for example on let's say social media right um one of the the images I had in in in an earlier iteration of the power point was um a bunch of squares because ultimately for example you have social media when you look out you have all of these squares usually or rectangles or whatever going down and ultimately you know at least based on how you interact with it what happens is that starts to enter you if you interact badly with it because now you're breaking up into all different forms of identities all kinds of things like that I don't know where the tech is going but um you know I'm I'm I one of the things I learned and I think I could kind of make reference to something funny I heard just kind of barely about what was happening here which was when the Prime Minister spoke about using more green fig and that came to me in a new way when I thought about it because I realized that whenever you start to move away from whatever you move to you go too far into the abstract right that's why I I try to see my life and I don't try to talk about life abstractly because I'm I have a direct interest in this which means it changes the way I'm likely to talk about it on a whole from the time you don't go too far from that I think you talk you you you you are enacting the analog in a way where your use of anything any form of technology or anything that could come about at all even your own emotions your own thoughts are kind of in conjunction with the kind of work that you're doing for self when you recognize that that is the first work that you have to do always and in everything that you do um you know at least and I did have a special interest in young people when I was thinking about this lecture is that I I I don't know what the anchor will be I it depends obviously on their homes and so on but if in the homes which is its own institution continues to have the kind of or continues to emphasize in their lives their relationship with the outside in a particular way then they're gonna go that way um if there is a strong I would put it plainly a strong spiritual base um but not any spiritual a spiritual that recognizes that the child is the first authority on their spirituality if there is an understanding of that and that child's understanding of their inner self that starts to mediate whatever they interact with there because they understand when you say the word work the first thing you think about is not the abstraction work where anybody could pull you into a job and you feel you need it and it could treat you anyhow your first work is here and if you're doing that work your interaction with the other work um has to change right and the same thing with all these very abstract terms including the good ones I could say freedom to you but but for me these things make no sense if I'm not talking about what freedom means directly to me because the information about who you are the information about yourself helps to process filter and to mediate the information that's the experience that's coming from the world into what what what I've called useful knowledge that's the analog nature of it it gives you the knowledge that you need from these experiences and the experiences are not just a bunch of things coming at you you know randomly there is at least an anchor within that allows you to see I'm approaching my experience from here where I'm standing you know um so I think whatever the technologies are and I'm speaking of these concepts as technologies as well it or you have to have some you have to know where your hair is and where you're going to deal with it from so in in in relation to the prime minister's comment of the the green fake I understood in a whole different way the understanding is I remember going to a festival while I was writing this ugly collection I went to a festival in the Netherlands and I was I said I'm going to read this work no matter how I feel about it and the time was coming and I was starting to get a little nervous because I've never read this work to anybody it doesn't feel like anything I know or what anybody knows and I said you know what it's all I have to give and I went I did it and I did it to the best of my ability and went very well because it was what I have to give it was using what I have you know to interact with whatever else I was facing so I guess the short answer is there needs to be a strong sense of the hair and the first hair is inside of you you know um an understanding and and being able to have the opportunity to search that I mean I spoke about other institutions but the family is an institution that in many ways could be failing these children in terms of what understandings of life they give them um by what they encourage so so so that base is particularly important um for that um I guess we normally give our kids technology for for thing but we don't teach them to manage the technology that they are um and therefore they could approach this now with an authority um that knows you know I know who I am kind of thing and you know um deal with it in that way but yeah thank you madam moderator good evening I wish to adopt the established protocol uh Mr. Lucian I just want to first thank you for representing our generation or even the generation before which you are part of and um to give us that sense of technology and poetry my standing here is for you to play two poems for me which is that of basil and the other one of dumb way okay I want to bring out uh basil I cannot recall you being part and parcel of what you spoke of but apparently very young and you may have seen through the windows of your grandparents what is happening in the streets of brosily where you could bring life you spoke of very highly tonight life and death where you got life and back together so I want to explain a little in basil how you made him um coming to full life and walking back into death right that's one question and secondly in the presence of your mother how you that dumb way you know how you got done because you got done with your life the rolling of the hands and no one understood but it's a very strong principle in it which I understood now if you give me your understanding I'll have to understand it more because I'm a very strong reader of your poem as if we have your life yes thank you and um my family knows that very well I'm always in the port in something from your poems you know so I thank you yes I just want to explain these two poems for me thank you okay good and it will it will it will link to this discussion anyway so it's good um the poem I wrote basil in my collection Sound and Ground was I mean I have memories of in brosily um broader and the cobbler shop and people play in dominoes there that's the basic kind of image I have but in basil basil is you know it's a double meaning I mean I use it as it's a regular somebody's name but it's also speaking of a spirit of death but what I saw in in and I think it's important that we guard these notions in the caribbean was I was trying to speak about a certain masculinity that I saw that was useful especially in a time where masculinity is justly being critiqued in different ways for for its excesses but what I saw was I was speaking about guys who in the face of death still had a certain kind of courage about just the way they behave themselves generally um just a certain kind of lack of fear in how they dealt with things generally so the poem ends with the the line saying um about these guys playing dominoes and he's the last one to play and it says um a man don't go home until he's ready which is what you normally hear a kind of man say but it's also about going home as in death you know a man doesn't go home until he's ready so although we don't choose when we die I was kind of admiring the attitude of living life fully in a way in spite of the existence of death you know um so it wasn't just about not going home to his his woman or his wife or whatever it was um the poem domboe which I think would kind of connect with what I'm talking about was uh I was living in Trinidad at the time and um I just really didn't like the Trinidad dumplings too much they were a little too thin for me a little too much like pasta so I was kind of writing an ode to St. Lucian dumpling that was harder and whatever but at the same time writing about something more um which really is about it's about contact and that's why I you know I spoke from my experience tonight and I've been talking about doing things from where you are something about the way we prepare our food you know there is this kind of constant contact between you and and and this food you know especially dumpling as you know you have to knead it and kind of leave it there it behaves like a thing alive you know I mean you could knead it put stuff in it cover it down then it's big like this or whatever um in fact one of the books I read at and I really loved was a book by a Barbadian writer called Austin Clark which was a cookbook talking about food he eat from his mother and it's the kind of food we would eat here like I don't know pig neck pig elbow whatever you know but he was talking about their relationship with this food where his mother you know she would be there when it was being killed the animal was being killed she would buy it ahead of time she would prepare it and he spoke about how she had to make this contact with it and there is something in that that is a perfect metaphor for our lives you know in dealing with what you know and how you how you really gain knowledge is true the true knowledge with true authority behind it is experiential knowledge is what you've gone through you know so there's a way in which you're not cooking far and just chopping and throw it in a pot you're interacting with this dough you you know it's on your hands and no and whatever um so the poem was just an ode really but it ends by saying um uh something only hands could understand so I don't remember the line now my poem but um yeah an argument that should be left to hands is the last thing because it was like an argument with the Trini dumpling but I said it's an argument that should be left to hands and what I meant by that was it is the the knowledge the true information of of whatever is happening there is coming through that interaction of hand with dough just like in our lives as well uh so that's kind of what um the poem is about. Hi Vladimir I just have a quick question so you spoke about I guess more or less um doing things from within right in order to you know have the best experiences as opposed to not being influenced by external influencers so so how did you do that like what do you do to always take the perspective from an internal point of view? Yeah um okay that's a very good question um it's a constant work and that's what life I think is meant to be it's it's good you know the good thing about it is and part of what I think I was trying to convey is as someone who's published a book or maybe published three books there's some point where everything around you begins to see that you're a master something says you're you're extremely competent at this you know your stuff and that creates a certain relationship between you and what you're doing you know I know what I'm doing but there's a different kind of knowledge that comes to you and you have to open up to it in that kind of interaction yes you learn some more but yes it's always going to come with new kind of things that are going to come at you and you're never fully a master you're always a reader of the world as much as you are a writer of it or even more a reader of the world than you are a writer and and there's nothing around you tell you you're a pro at life you know I mean I remember getting simple advice from a friend where she said and it was very good advice but it was literally she said get out of your own head and I was like that's so simple but actually very profound I actually got out of my head I actually like whenever I found my consciousness or myself too much in my head I would kind of come down more to here I would ask myself questions about what do I really want what do I really really want and that want could never be outside hardly ever you know you know I could be in an argument with something with a friend let's see and I would say what do I actually want I actually just want to be happy or peaceful so I might not argue you know what I mean but but the external want is like I want to win this argument you know so sometimes it's about actually literally where you position yourself and I'm not talking high yoga I don't do that but it's like your head in many ways tends to be the place that has kind of been conditioned to work in this way and unless it is kind of assisted by you being honest about what I really want you could find yourself which is why you know intellectuals argue a lot there's always an argument etc and sometimes that argument shows a lack of compassion you know in the way that it may go down so I guess literally that was good advice that I got get out of your head and be honest about what you want and I mean as I spoke about the family earlier parents need to leave room for children to really get to know that because you could be there's so many things to come and just block the way of that what do I really want what do I really deep down want not the categories and da da da da and the ones usually are very simple you know the path there is not always simple but if you're dedicated to it you will go it and you will start to enjoy things you never thought you could enjoy you know I remember in kind of doing that with just kind of getting in a situation somebody said something to me and then I was just pleased that I was able to not respond and I was just as pleased with that as I was with completing a poem you know if that is your work it's the one work I know you'll enjoy you know when people say you know the thing that won't feel like work if and I think many of us start out without that foundation at all I mean I think we have a group of friends from college I talked to we talked to your brother's part of it where we say you know we learned a lot in growing up we were taught to be very very ambitious and ambitious meant going out but then at this point in our life what we're all looking for in our mid-30s is something to ground us amidst all this ambition like you know now we're actually trying to peddle back and try to figure out you know what will just give us these very basic feelings these very basic kind of well-being and to kind of dedicate ourselves to the work of life and and reading the poetry of life I mean I I would see situations come behind come before me and I'd be like hmm it's like life knows exactly what to put so if we approach it as a technology if we approach it as an art coming before us and not random experiences inconveniences all of these things you start to see things I just say lastly I had a nice experience just before coming here where I was heading home on the train and I was in the train and as the doors were about to close I just saw a hand come boom hold the door and tried to pull it open pull it open pull it open pull it open and the person finally got through and when they got into the train the door would not close and it takes a long time for the conductor to realize that the door doesn't close so we were there for a long time and then they came they saw the door wouldn't close they tried to fix it they went we were there for a very long time and until they said the train is out of order and the train that I was taking there was another train just like it's two minutes behind and I was like wow this one small girl who barely looked like she could open that door she stopped numerous trains that are on this track this is the technology in a way our behavior towards it as well you know the rush behavior she stopped it was rush hours so she stopped like hundreds or whatever number of people from I was like in awe I wasn't even upset I was just in awe I was like wow and I was also in awe at the fact that everybody near to her on the train stayed very quiet and didn't see anything to her did not look at her in a bad way at all and afterwards everybody got off the train I went off I had to walk probably six blocks to get the next train but everything was okay you know but it shows kind of about our attitudes to these things and and and how they could kind of bring us into you know very weird places with it as well so I think it's it's about one of the key ways it sounds very simple but it's just kind of being honest with yourself even when it's not what you want to be kind of you know I think that that starts you off on a very very good footing and to just engage the fact that you do have an inner life because many of us actually don't feel that we do if you could be in a room of all these people and still kind of not be fully out doesn't mean you become introverted not at all because you that's part of the interaction but if you could at least have a place where you're standing to interact in a way so to speak I think I think so I don't have all the answers but that's one yeah we know for a fact it's nice to be eloquent it's nice to have a very good command of the English language or the queen's English but my question to you how you intend to translate or transform that challenge into bill paying activity? Oh oh well let me let me put it this way and I think I thought I did I did it in the lecture evidently not good enough I I guess I could put it in a way that might not maybe appeal to everybody but I have and I've come to believe it and I've had the experience of it I've kind of always had what I need provided for me by what I have a talent to do I've always been in that position it's always provided for me it doesn't mean that it provides with the same regularity of everything else but it always works out and but more than that you know I I remember when I remember times when I would look at like stuff around me and I'd be like I have this this this and I just didn't have peace of mind and that started to matter more to me but what the the way things work is the more work I was doing on that the more I was kind of having insights into what I will do to kind of that would provide some bill paying activity or whatever but the other part of it that I think I should see is that in all that I discussed in the lecture it showed me how much more I could do for myself so I no longer have the same relationship with you know poets get no money off of their books no and and it's exactly the thing I'm talking about where ultimately it's the person who owns the technology to be able to create multiple copies and distribute it they will be able their children will be able to eat from it maybe their grandchildren a poet from his whatever they call them no I've never even taken a check I've always just bought books with it but it's because we probably established that as a relationship because everything is about how you relate to it that relationship could be changed and the poet could definitely make more money I'm definitely a believer in that and I'm definitely dedicated to doing so as well I don't have the answer as to how but I know that it could happen because every single thing in this life is about your relationship to it it's the same relationship I said with the technology because ultimately what's owned by the publisher as an institution as somebody with printers or whatever is that and the more and more these institutions actually become linked because for example you can't enter a book in a literary festival if you're self-published which in a way if you're an established poet even who has shown that who has been published by a major publisher I don't think that you could even enter a self-published book in later life to an award scheme which shows you that that in many ways I'm not creating a conspiracy theory but I'm saying these institutions more and more are integrated with each other but it does result in a disempowerment of the artist but it's not them doing it to you it's you doing it to you because I'm not going to stay poor as a poet at all and that's kind of the decision I made I realized that I have the ability to change form we all have the ability to introduce new forms into the world and that form could be the interaction between any institution and yourself just like it could be the interaction between your phone and you are you the master of it are you the master you are all a balance relationship whatever you want to put it that relationship could change I definitely believe it can and I'll I'll send you a check I said um this I don't even know what is what I'm going to say it's not a question it's a it's a wandering out loud because you're speaking from from a process that's happened in you that's made you come to some convictions and you put it in certain metaphors and so on but a process is happening in you and you speak and you're convinced of it and you're speaking from it and I guess what I'm trying to kind of like ponder out loud and wonder if you have any thoughts about is how come that process doesn't happen to a sufficiently strong degree in so many people in so many of us you know what what is it that made it happen in you yeah you speak of sincerity and honesty and so on these yeah I get the words but how is it that some persons or the same person at different times can find it not easy but it can reach a point of sincerity and at another point they can't okay yeah and so you know yeah I'm I'm just yeah I'm wandering out loud okay you know I I don't know that I have the answer but I think my relation I think there is the possibility that these things because I think you're always being spoken to in life you're always being spoken to in one form or another and we could be I mean I spoke of the process and I don't know if I outlined the timeline that it took but it was like it's like it was literally a situation like somebody constantly bumping their head against a wall because it was like constantly trying the same old thing and insisting that it be so and it would feel trying the same thing and insisting that it be so resisting whatever was being said to me until I just had to sit I had no choice but to start to just sit and to look and I think you know if you thought the world is one way it's very difficult for you to let go of the way you think the world is if you thought this is the movement of things this is how things are one of the hardest things to do is to not accept that this is how things always have to be and I think the only thing I could see from my personal experience was maybe my stubbornness because it was the intensity with which I was resisting it that was slowly depleting my energy to fight it and I do think that it's it unlike well in a way like a poet it has the power to make somebody just sit down shut up and listen after a while like a really good poet right and I'm seeing this now and I'm sure everybody in this room may have something to see in one way or another of an experience of that where but what it what I did have and what I think I was grateful for and I don't know if everybody has I don't know if people have but what I was grateful for was I realized that it wasn't just about sitting down and and listening alone but it was like these tools that I've had all along and I've been spending all this time at refining I just asked myself could it be that these things have a way for me to understand what's happening have some kind of answer and one of the things I just took up was metaphor and I was like okay I understand how metaphor operates in what we call reality you know for example I remember um you know some of the kind of things we would have about like stereotypes for example or we would see this group of people really does this and I'm saying maybe this group of people appears to us as a metaphor for that so we could learn what it is the what it is we want to be shown they're being used to show us that so you don't lock the person into that I you know somebody comes to you for example as an enemy let's see looking like that but that person comes to you also as a metaphor or with a strong relationship with something within yourself right and just that shift in perspective allows you to do that differently it doesn't mean that person does not it's not has bad intentions and all of that but reality is a collaborative exercise you know you're seeing this person and you're choosing at some level to see what you're seeing in a particular way you're always writing something on it and I think to Nakita's question as well one of the things I think I also realized was we accumulate a lot of stories we tell ourselves in our minds and these things tend to kind of cloud our ability to kind of read the story that's actually coming to us like look this man just came to do this this that the other that's within our kind of frame of our reality but if the frame of reality is something happened yesterday you open and you're reading this happened this thing is also happening again this man is not only your enemy coming to you he's also a particular experience coming to you that you have to navigate so what I could say to your question kind of I could only say from my experience that it was a very very strong kind of stubbornness and resistance to a lot of things and it it felt like that intensity kind of just completely depleted me of energy until I just really had to look and I had to find like it's like being in a sea you know in the deep sea where you have to find something to hold your flute while you're navigating whatever is happening on that sea and what I had was the tools I'd been using all my life it's what I had to give both in literature and any other feature of myself I I did have other talents as a tennis player whatever but it's about these were the tools I had it was all I had it was like the green fig you know it's what we have what can we do with it you know because and you started to realize less things are arbitrary and and you're not given your gift okay here's a beautiful phrase that from the ifa corpus it says blessings blessing blessing comes from the home outside is where blessing is displayed what you have comes from within and the destination is for is within the marketplace is outside but when you leave your house your your origin and your destination is the same so ultimately whatever gift you've been given you're given it first and foremost to deal with your life that's the first thing you have to deal with it and the beauty of it is in relation to the other question is if you're actively doing that I have a conviction I believe that you will start slowly gradually you'll make your way and everything you you need you really need I might not probably be Elon Musk but what you need will come will come to you yeah thank you Vladimir I'd like to acknowledge the presence of senator lisa's right here I just want here I'm a little nervous tonight so just bear with me yes thanks for joining so I listened to the lecture very intently and I was most intrigued about the conversation on the prevailing unidirectional nature I'm using all the words I wrote it of the interactions between ourselves and external institutions and I think about interviews because you go to a job interview and you so fixated on giving them what they want so you get what you want out of it in some way and the concept of putting life first and really the interaction between the two I grew up being tell um my mom is there I have to say it properly I grew up being told that your talents will create opportunities for you and I listened to everything that you said and beyond being told that I believe that that is what happens and there's something magical that happens when you notice that you had a flat tire but it was for a reason you failed an exam but there was a lesson learned you started a business and it didn't go well or there was an argument in something that delayed a submission and so yes it's really intriguing how it was presented I do not write metaphors but it was very intriguing and relevant to me so I trust that it was for everything else you know I could talk so I'll stop here but um thank you very much Vladimir yes and I'm starting to say thank you that's not my role so I'd like to ask Miss Latolia Duncan she was okay to please deliver the vote of thanks protocols have been established a pleasant good evening to everyone I would first like to start with a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero and I quote gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all the others in keeping I kindly take the liberty to express such a virtue to all who made this event possible thank you Vladimir Lucian for an absolutely insightful and thought-provoking lecture I'm quite grateful that we live in a technological era that can allow this moment to be memorialized thank you all so to the Constituency Council through the Mayor of Grosile Mr. Edward Lucian and the Grosile Nobel Laureate Festival Committee thank you to tonight's coordinator to tonight's coordinator Mrs. Dahlia Faswa of the Nobel Laureate Festival Committee and seven five eight books thank you to our corporate sponsors of Bank of St. Lucia and Baywalk Mall thank you to the art village and the generous individuals who permitted the use of these lovely artifacts you see displayed behind me thank you to NTN for carrying this event alive and to our delightful emcee Miss Sylvone Vodant Daisy and last but by no means the least thank you to you our viewing audience seated here and in various time zones on behalf of the Grosile Nobel Laureate Festival Committee we look forward to seeing you at our upcoming events I still want a bit of that action so thank you very much Miss Duncan so yes as we conclude I want to announce some of the upcoming Grosile Nobel Laureate Festival events I want you to know that all events I won't be repeating it but all events will be held here at the Grosile Human Resource Development Center on Tuesday January 24th 2023 there would be an evening of poetry and spoken word from 7 p.m on Wednesday January 25th 2023 there will be the hosting of the Education District 1 Poetry Festival from 9 30 a.m on February sorry on Friday January 27th 2023 there will be a production called Street Party one Friday night from 7 p.m on Sunday January 29th 2023 the finals of the singing competition will be held from 2 p.m on Tuesday January 31st 2023 there will be a book launch for Mr. Closel Sylvester Closel from 7 p.m and you would have noticed the displays around us there's an ongoing arts and craft exhibition the exhibits are all positioned around us the prices of most the price prices of most things are included several of the items are ready for purchase and most of the items can be further customized and pre-ordered so that was my free pitch in case somebody wants to give me something complimentary from the booths but in principle there's some lovely things and you are free this evening to purchase the photo production the dance production on Friday 27th tickets are on sale this evening and committee members have them we're all over the room so when we're done you could find out who they are and I didn't expect you to remember all of this so there should be flyers around the room in terms of the calendar of events and the stuff are also yes those details are also available on social media let me see what else yes so that's it for me I think we have some refreshments refreshments to the back or refreshments on sale that was just a moment of levity but I'm serious there are refreshments on sale to the back of the room and ladies and gentlemen thanks for having me thanks for being here thanks for being patient and present and this brings me to the official end of this evening ceremony I hope you get home safely and have a good night