Making his Mark

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

I’m Mark Lyndersay and I have been doing the photographs for Trini to the Bone since it (first) appeared in Newsday in January 2019.

I’m a St James boy. I’ve lived in Connecticut, Belmont and Woodbrook, but I’m back in St James for the last three decades. Navel-string thing.

Most of my childhood was my maternal grandfather, mother and two sisters. There were some satellite aunts, uncles and cousins, but it was really just the four of us.

Twenty-three years ago, I married the wife I didn’t know I desperately needed. Donna is the best. She makes sense.

I went to my grandfather’s private preschool in Belmont, then Tranquillity Primary, and got yanked out of there to finish primary school at Romilly’s Preparatory. I got a book scholarship to go to Trinity College in Maraval, when it was an orange grove, not “Moka Raton” with the golf course.

My tertiary education is self-directed and ongoing.

I’m a non-practising Presbyterian.

Isn’t the existence of other faiths enough to prove that one’s own faith could not be the “one true way” to God?

What comes next? I worry that we spend too much time fretting about that without paying nearly enough attention to what’s happening now.

I think we would all do better if we worked harder and more sincerely at being humans together in the space we live in.

I think bad things happen to bad people too, as do good things. It’s really about what you do with your experiences. What you learn from them, even when it’s terrible, and what you can do for other people with what you’ve learned from the things that have shaped you.

I am a writer and a photographer. I became the latter because of the former.

When I started as a journalist, I’d see things that I wanted to see as images to go along with the story, particularly at Carnival shows. Most times, there was no photographer, because I was a peewat. So I got a camera and started taking my own pictures.

The night came when I was in a room with Michael Jackson and Penny Commissiong, recently crowned Miss Universe and I was the only photographer there.

After that, I was considered a photographer, albeit one who was cheerfully ripped off by Epic Records, who bought prints for PR.

I suppose I’m lucky to be doing the work I would be doing as a hobby if I’d had a more traditional career.

Though luck really has nothing to do with it. You have to work at the thing you love before it will work out for you.

When I do a portrait, I’m encouraging the person to give me something they don’t necessarily want to part with, a bit of honesty about themselves.

For Trini to the Bone, I’d come along after BC did the interviews, sometimes long afterward. The wretch would sometimes send me a one-sentence indication about what the interview was about. Some people he’d never met in person. I had to meet everyone I photographed.

Sometimes they were afraid. Sometimes defensive. Sometimes over-prepared.

The results weren’t always successful. A couple of subjects didn’t like their pictures.

I never blame the subject and try not to take it personally. At some point I must have misread something about their character or perception of themselves and got the picture wrong, even if I must have liked it to submit it for publication.

Some subjects didn’t like their interviews, even though it’s their words on the page. Both the interview and the pictures are a mirror and there’s no guarantee that the interviewee will like what they see in it.

I really like grey. It’s the midpoint between black and white, but it’s wildly underestimated as a colour. There are a range of shades and hues in grey that pretty much define shape, form and texture in our world.

To relax I read, but of late, my relaxation time comes in briefer snatches. I’ve turned time in the car into opportunities for reading with audiobooks.

I read everything. Except romance novels. I read comics, graphic novels, biographies, science fiction, history. All of it.

Going to the beach is increasingly rare, but always lovely.

When I put my mind to it, I make a fierce stew oxtail, but it takes lots of time, because I slow-cook the meat and the quality of cuts is wildly variable. When it’s done right I could eat it right through. Keith Smith was a fan of my oxtail cooking.

I was an energetic dancer, but I’ve lost that edge.

Music is a soundtrack for me, so the genre changes, sometimes because of what I happen to be listening to at the time or what the mood demands. So I’ll swing from Aretha Franklin to Five Finger Death Punch, but the centrepiece of my musical collection has always been the work of Jimi Hendrix.

That nexus of blues, rock and abstract lyricism informed my appreciation of local artists like Shadow, Lord Funny and David Rudder, who saw calypso as a medium of fiercely individual expression.

I love Carnival as an observer and spent decades in the sweaty, hot thick of it, but I have to admit that Carnival, like theatre before it, did not love me back. I never thought I could walk away from the Grand Stand during Carnival week, that forge of annual creativity, but the casual contempt of the NCC eventually made it possible to do just that. I documented Carnival Tuesday at the Socadrome for its first five years with my daughter, the first three with her perched on my shoulders, something I’d never have considered in the melee of the Grand Stand.

More recently, I slice my appreciation of the festival even more finely, picking bits of it that are neglected and engaging with them.

Fire bun the NCC, even though it’s run by my cousin Colin.

People make me miserable. People make me happy. Sometimes it’s the same people. When it isn’t, I try to stay away from the one and drift toward the other.

If I can’t sleep, it’s usually because of my daughter and sometimes my wife. They are the centre of my life.

The sleeplessness is usually my mind working through a situation and after a couple of fitful sleeps, I usually have an answer. Most often, it starts with me apologising. If you love, you worry about getting it right and doing right.

I have a terrible temper and spent years learning to control it.

It probably helps that I am physically larger than most people, so thinking about expressing my emotions through violence always will end up looking like advantage, which is embarrassing to consider.

I will snarl, though. Not a good look either.

A Trini is a complicated person. Full of ambition and fire, but all too often short on patience and the long view.

I know because that was me until I realised it was a marathon, not a sprint.

There are all kinds of us, but the ones I enjoy the most are the ones who have figured out that caring, right here and right now, is the best solution to every situation.

Trinidad and Tobago is home.

Both of my sisters have lived abroad for decades. I’ve never thought of migrating, not least because so many stories from here haven’t been told.

It’s what I’ve done and will continue to do.

Editor's note: BC Pires died on October 21.