With Saint Lucia still under King Charles’ shadow, the former magistrate’s final work demands a republic – and a reckoning.
At the launch of his final literary work, Dr Velon John – the inscrutable former magistrate and Laborie MP, long admired and occasionally admonished for his verbal bravura – turned the podium into a pulpit. Between ruminations on love’s paradoxes and death’s “exciting encounter”, he saved his sharpest barbs for the colonial vestiges clinging to Saint Lucian life, not least the national flag itself.
“This event marks the occasion of the launching of my book, Ramblings of a Mind and Pulsations of a Heart,” John, who turns 83 on April 19, told the audience at the Financial Centre, where Prime Minister Phillip J. Pierre sat among literati and students. “It is a compilation of my thoughts on the multiplicity of subjects that constitute, in some measure, the fabric of my existence.”
The book, he explained, is neither fiction nor manifesto but a “reflection of life as I see it, as I have experienced it, and as I have lived it.” Its aphorisms, poems and prose bear a “platonic twist” — a nod to his philosophical propensity. One such gem, born from grief over his uncle’s death after spurning opportunities to visit him after they had drifted apart, reads: “The intention is a fool’s comfort and paradise, if not followed by commensurate action.”
Love
When moderator Chadia Mathurin turned to love, John dissected it as both “rational” and elusive: “It is something you know all about when not asked, but when confronted with the question, ‘what is love?’, you find your assumed knowledge reduced to perhaps, but, and you know.”
For men, he warned, conquest is collapse: “Do not think that the extent of your carnal peregrinations is in direct proportion to your manhood. The contrary is true. As you play the field, you warp your finer sensibilities.” True masculinity, he argued, is staring into a mirror and saying, “I am proud of the man within…
“When you can say that in all sincerity, with all the authenticity of self, then you are a man.”
Death
Mathurin’s question, Does death inspire, frighten, or liberate you? was met with a metaphysical retort. “I embrace death,” John declared, framing it as “transitioning from the metaphysical state of becoming to being.” To him, it’s “the mechanism through which the Supreme Intelligence can be accessed. A veritable exciting encounter. What is there to fear?
“It is the gateway to the unknown, and that I find fascinating. My cosmology may be very different to those of my friends and colleagues, but I am a theist who does not believe that the Universe did not come about by mere chance.”
Colonialism
It was Mathurin’s probe on colonialism that brought some damning responses. “We have not fully dealt with the tension between colonialism and our identity,” he said, zeroing in on the flag: “It is the epitome of our failure to confront our perverse history.”
The Governor-General’s role and court documents “embossed with King Charles III” drew his ire: “Without that stamp, the validity of our legal documents would be questionable. Don’t you think it’s time to shatter the shackles of colonialism?
“Don’t you think it is time that Saint Lucia should be elevated to the status of a republic and thus shatter, once and for all, the shackles of colonialism and its instrumentalities? Don’t you think it is time that we eradicate all vestiges of colonialism from our national life and, more importantly, from our national consciousness?”
His closing salvo left no ambiguity: “Racism is inherent in colonialism. I consider myself enlightened. Are you?”
Ramblings of a Mind and Pulsations of a Heart is available online, with proceeds from sales funding scholarships for Laborie students.
