Canaan Brown - Portfolio Book

For the Brown Family The Best I Can

CANAAN BROWN A BOOK OF STORIES

The Black Archive of 19th Century Academia

TheNavalSpirit,by Canaan Brown, is a fictional memoir, inspired by the narrative of Joseph Johnson - a Black British sailor who served in the British Navy during the early 1800s, was discharged due to injury, and was not afforded his pension or state relief. A story set in magic and historical fiction, Johnson comes to find he has a supernatural gift, that allows him to communicate with the ghosts of another dimension; spirits; duppies; ghosts who transcend time and space, in order to help us see the conditions of our world, anew.

THE NAVAL SPIRIT

III.

I’ve now resolved to strike the blow For freedom or the grave.

Joshua simpson

THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM

i wanted to be an artist. Performance was a medium that allowed me to express myself and my talents, to reach people through the songs that I had been immersed in during my days as a sailor, and to challenge narrow assumptions of black creativity in the modern age.

I walked there, through the streets of London - observing the bustling congregations and horse-drawn carriages and wandering mendicants - with my crutch tucked under my right armpit to support me, and I sang. I sang, hearty and deep, loud and clear:

From bounding billows, first in motion, When the distant whirlwinds rise, To the tempest-troubled ocean, Where the seas contend with skies.

It was made clear to me, throughout my Naval service, and certainly now following my exit from that service, that freedom was a contested term in this country I called my home. For freedom was a concept that meant different things for those who had built their own freedom from the slavery of others. I knew that the concept of freedom could be used, abused, denied, claimed and corrupted, in this time. Therefore I was determined to perform - to sing for the unsung men, women and children who, like me, felt their lives tied in with a beautiful pursuit of freedom.

Channellingis a story told in four parts - through the perspectives of Joseph Johnson (a Black sailor from the British Navy between the 18th and 19th Century); Professor Canaan Brown (a professor and creator of a fictional archive in Victorian Britain, dedicated to Black excellence); a Zemi sculpture, looted from pre-colonial Jamaica (Xamayca); and the same Zemi sculpture, narrating its experience in the future. A sequential yet simultaneous story, Channelling describes a permeation of time and space - a magical premise, in which the world of spirits and folkloric deities, and our mortal world, are bridged.