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.