Friday, September 12, 2008

Me and DW...Part II


I met Derek Walcott at the symposium he headlined at the Ocean View International Convention Centre. First however, a little bit about me: I am not the star-struck, celebrity worshiping type. If I have a strong desire to meet anyone, it is because I believe we have a certain affinity with each other.

And the people I'd like to meet because of this are few: I'd like to meet Quentin Tarantino most definitely; Eminem; Busy Signal to a certain degree; David Cronenberg and Anthony Minghella. Meeting Walcott was therefore not anti-climactic to me, when he sort of looked at me after a glowing introduction from Ian McDonald and I was summarily dismissed. Derek Walcott is a self-centred, egotistical prick who believes that because he is an excellent writer people need to kow-tow to him; I understand the man perfectly.

Because I am such a big prick myself, I didn't do the "Please can I take a picture with you, sir" sort of thing. I love this man's work, but not even for Derek Walcott - Kerry Washington, maybe, but not Derek Walcott.

The next time I encountered Derek Walcott was at Castellani House at what was supposed to be a master writing workshop but which turned out to be a complete fucking fiasco. Expecting a workshop, I duly printed some of my poems and took copies of my books and was delighted when the Nobel Laureate asked if anyone brought any work. Because no one else did, my poems were left untouched on the table, although during the rest of the class I was a fairly good student.

Wrong, I was the annoying know-it-all student, the type of fucker that everyone else in the class in high school hates including the teacher because there isn't a question that he isn't ready to answer - in short I was a smart-ass. Thankfully, I recognised that I was being a smart-ass and pretended to write down everything Walcott ordered us to write down. The only uncontrollable upsurge of smart-assism occurred when the great man gave the wrong spelling for Finnegans Wake, adding an apostrophe that wasn't there - it was too much for me so I corrected him.

I won't comment on the rest of the workshop because the post would be too fucking long and two-thirds of it, literally, would be expletives. Just to say that I heard so much skunt that I wanted to puke. Long story short, a friend of mine gave me an enthusiastic introduction to Walcott again but I wasn't that bothered - I knew his game by then. The person who received more questions per capita from Walcott was the same woman, a journalist, I could not keep my eyes off of during the workshop because she had the most flawless skin and the most over-exposed breasts in the room.

There was a point in time during the elbow-rubbing afterwards where I politely stood by while Walcott was talking to Sir Shridath Ramphal - when there was a break in conversation, I politely addressed Sir Shridath, whom I had met before, and who came over to me immediately after the workshop to chat with me, asking him about the date of his book launch.

A little later, the beautiful breasted journalist and I were in conversation when Walcott comes up to her and invites her to lunch with himself and Sigrid (she thought he said cigarette) who I've read is notoriously tolerant of his flirtations. He invited her to a movie screening as well, and she invited me along since it turns out she was a friend of one of my friends. I ended up not going.

The long and short of it is that Derek Walcott is a grumpy, arrogant, lecherous old prick: my respect for the man has grown tremendously since meeting him.

4 comments:

Guyana Media Critic said...

Oh geese..

Anonymous said...

think i'm in love...can i be your groupie...or stalker?

Megatron said...

I am amazed that I cannot recall the most flawless skin and the most over-exposed breasts in the room.

Ruel Johnson said...

Dear Anonymous, you can be my body guard and I can be your long lost pal...