vivaldi in the afternoon

In the summer of 2006, my friend Andy and I were teaching English to a group of male Haitian adults in downtown Les Cayes. My impression was that they knew English well enough to produce something such as a thank you note but not well enough to have a successful job interview. The men who came to this class traveled across town, after working for 12 hours that day. Some of the men were agriculturists, others were artists, and some were masons. I am unaware of their ages, but I would guess a range from about twenty-five to forty-five years old.

Having access to reliable electricity, we decided to engage the students in a writing exercise involving music. We played a couple of movements from the Vivaldi baroque masterpiece “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” We asked my students to listen and let their thoughts go where they may while writing in a sort of free-style manner about whatever it is they were feeling or remembering during the listening experience.

I engaged in the exercise too. I sat with my eyes closed. I dreamed about a rabbit running through the hills of upstate New York, chasing a smaller animal. I saw bright greens and blues. The sun was shining. Then the rabbit took a nap under a tree. The gentle breeze blew the weeds in the grass. My thoughts were very peaceful and serene.

The final part of this exercise was to share our writing with the group. Coming out of my day dreams about bunnies and fields, I was not prepared for what my students had dreamed of. Gregory the artist, spoke first. With tears in his eyes he began describing a woman with a child in her womb. He went on to describe her brutal murder by the machete of a ton ton macoute. Still covered in dust and concrete from the day's work, one of the masons said that the song reminded him of being a small child in Camp Perrin, running away from the ton ton macoute, as he tried to hide his little brother in the bushes. A third student shared a similar tale, while detailing the haunting dark glasses and Baron Samedi like outfit of Papa Doc.

I was unequipped to offer my condolences for what happened at the hands of an American supported (understatement) Cold War dictatorship from 1953 to 1986. I didn’t even want to think about what my home country was responsible for since 1986,(or the hundreds of years of sins before 1953, for that matter). I also didn’t know how to express my sadness for having stirred their hearts by playing Vivaldi. It was as if these painful and terrorizing memories remained right under their surface. Perhaps they wanted to educate me about the modern day collective memory of the Haitian people. The role music had in this made me long to ask them questions about the drumming in vodoun ceremonies, but in an attempt toward humility, I refrained.

This story depicts the individual embodiment of unjust social forces such as poverty and violence. The lived experience for Haitians under the dictatorship of the Duvaliers has manifested a terror settled in the depth of their being which is also easily accessible under the surface of a silenced people. In his book Pathologies of Power, Paul Farmer details how in this silence lies the pent-up anger born of innumerable small indignities and of great irremediable ones. Whether heard or not, there exists millions of experiences of sorrow within the greater structural sins of the story of Haiti.

Derrida said, “there is no life beyond the text.” But history can be done better when knowledge is used with personal narrative. The narratives of my students can not be found in the worldly accessible history of Haiti, (with the exception of some pro-Aristide literature which is actively and unfairly silenced and discredited by Haiti's close neighbor, the United States). This is part of the collective memory of a people. As a first step toward reconciliation and justice, their story deserves to be heard.