Forgive / feel / get 2 know me? 🇻🇨
✨ an intervention of care, storytime + inspiration station ✨
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✨ In this edition of a space to land, I share:
💿 A heartfelt tribute song as an unexpected source of healing
✨ A tender Soul Train + spam + sacred memory from my childhood in St Vincent & the Grenadines
🎨 Studio ritual glimpses from Paris—featuring discos by the Seine
🎤 A celebration of Caribbean joy and lineage
💌 An open invite to share your healing song + join next week’s online zine workshop
Forgive / feel / get 2 know me cause we’re going to need to talk about this song + performance because i think it has healing powers?!
Let’s not beat around the bush-
Just Another Day by Jon Secada.
-Hear me out!
(and perhaps press play as we continue the journey?)
This man has been a big beaming GLIMMA in my life, i’d say yes, since the release of Just Another Day in 1992, but particularly since it became a daily dance-sing-wail-along tonic, perhaps oddly, upon moving to Paris in 2023. I know. There are vlogs and pictures and MAPS of recommendations and itineraries and things I made to share with you from that time (i am mustering the courage, + also, are you interested?), but what i will say is, this particular BELTER of a song has the potential and capabilities of deep healing. Repair. Release, at the very least. And i’d like to honour it here in its own post because, i like to celebrate things and yeah, it’s likely to connect with a storytime in some capacity.
I’m 12 years old and living in Vincy (St Vincent & the Grenadines / Yurumein / Hairouna) homelands- oy! 🇻🇨 I had one distinct moment of time-off in my busy week studying my arse off, and when not studying, tending to Hamish (my sheep but also best friend, cue: another storytime for another day) and working many hours in my nans shop, evenings and all weekends.
This sacred hour-off was a break during the long Saturday shift in the shop, where it - thank GOD - aligned with the broadcast of Soul Train. Beamed in via our one TV channel, you’ve got it, SVG-TV, which was comprised hybrid local programming and occasional Fox tv (yeah i no) broadcasts.
This was, in one way, good for me, because Saturday late-afternoon Soul Train coincided with my only other ‘time off’, specifically: making my dinner, which usually consisted of a small bread roll with a slice of warm cheese (we didn’t have access to cheese as we know it so it was a rare treat and wasn’t refrigerated) or tinned mini frankfurters or spam, perhaps a bottle of Ju-C and Hairoun (Bitter Lemon) and, if was lucky, a pack of 25 cent biscuits in whichever sumptuous flavour we happened to stock that week.
All this depended what i’d earned during my shifts at the shop, cause the reason i worked in this shop was because i had to pay for my food + keep + bus to school + if i could stretch, school books.
… is that weird?
The older i get the more i’m understanding this is perhaps strange and people give me that look which is like, “you had to pay for your own food and keep as a child?”
Yes. Yes, i did.
And let this not detract but rather create more soft space, offer a mood, a setting of the scene for said song. These slithers of time to myself -an hour a week if i was lucky between school and work- for leisure and pleasure and Soul Train was IT (does this explain my obsession with music videos? …and not being very good at not working?)
Jon Secada is Cuban. An extra celebration as he is Caribbean fam, this meant a lot to see, you know, “out of many…”
It’s one of my great pleasures and to circle back to that Paris reference, creates comfort in wild moments, cause i’d slap this on every morning and have a ferocious and euphoric disco in the artist studio overlooking the Seine (i know, here’s a clip in case you haven’t seen) as i asked myself ‘what is life?’ (yes another anthem)
Let’s study Jon’s official music video and relish in its sepia and periwinkle goodness. Clock Jon’s long-time collaborator Gloria Estefan at 03:39 ✨
BONUS TREAT (the main course, if u will) 🥪
I’d like to also, if i may, reference a particular performance of this BANGER which contains the most pleasing combinations of set and cast. It’s filmed on a show with passers-by understandably stopping to enjoy the performance and it’s great value.
WHAT IS THIS GLORY?
📍Timestamps of note:
02:38 - choo-choo! 🚂
02:58 - oy-oy! 👀
I’m tempted now, to take you down a rabbithole on many more treats, but i'll try to rein it in and offer some nibbles related to the above, in some capacity.
I’m sure this would have made it to a prior Inspiration Station but is well worth a recap but there’s a series on the Soul Train dancers (who were the main thrill of the show every week) and here’s one i enjoyed earlier:
Pre-tty niche reference perhaps but vibing with this iconique Ju-c song. Funfact, i was in one of these adverts back in the day, a background person somewhere near Fort Charlotte. Imagine 😩😂
Stills taken from this wonderful film footage of Carnival Monday 13th July 1992 in the streets of Kingstown, St Vincent & the Grenadines thanks to Gentle Benjamin
A couple of wonderful TikTok videos on: our Vincy language!
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Love galore on this solstice-eve-moment and hope this offered you a little intervention of care and little space for expansion in your day, and also some entertainment getting to know me a little more.
Your turn: Can you share a song which TAKES you someplace healing you’d be willing to share? Post it below cause i’d love us to co-create a little library of healing (to us) songs!
Dionne 💜
PS dear supporters of this multimedia zine, let’s get together and make a physical zine. Online. Wednesday 25th June. Hit reply if you’re interested 💌
