“Excuse me, but what have I done to you to deserve that?” was Blaise’s response. At that point, the great pretender would attempt to remove himself from the situation with “Not you, uh,” as if the six of us present hadn’t noticed clearly that here again was another perfect example of a Joe Ignoramus making us all look bad. I asked Blaise whether he knew the guy from anywhere. Maybe the Salvation Army charity dinner or the NCF telethon where Blaise, our St. Lucian tenor, would have performed. Blaise said he’d never met the guy before.
I met Blaise for the first time in 2005 when the CDF recruited him to host some voice classes for – get this – free. I had heard about him from my St. Lucia School of Music days years earlier. My voice teacher had told me he was an excellent opera singer. At the workshops at CDF, Blaise told us his story: where a female family member told him in his teens that if he left St. Lucia for overseas, to never return without being successful and making his country proud. He told us that he still credits her for that piece of advice. We also learned that he had lived in Bel Air in California and that whenever the late Luciano Pavarotti couldn’t make it to a music gig, Blaise was the first person Pavarotti would recommend to fill his shoes.
Blaise has returned to St. Lucia on many occasions and I often get to touch bases with him. I’ve seen him at Carnival, and one of his main reasons for this latest trip was to be part of a production where he held rehearsals at the NCC last week. At the recent Inter-Commercial House Competition, he came to mind briefly when I recalled that the winner of the competition was a young man Blaise had told during our voice workshops in 2005 to always believe in yourself.
The other reason he was here was to pay tribute to Sesenne. I wouldn’t go into the struggle he had to face before finally getting the opportunity to sing a poignant and spellbinding “Ave Maria” last Saturday afternoon for someone he told me that has inspired him throughout his successful career. As I snapped some photos he had earlier requested that I email to him, I was praying to high Heaven that that security guy was witnessing a proud St. Lucian paying his respects to another. The irony of the situation was a baffling one for me but I sensed that hurt as Blaise was, he was not going to let one bad experience ruin things for him. And, in a sense, I could not let it ruin mine.
While that security guard’s actions do not necessarily reflect what our tourism brochures claim, I think it is imperative that we do not lose what is really important to us – a pride we wear so conspicuously on our proverbial sleeves. However, St. Lucian to St. Lucian, I am sure you would agree with me that a true St. Lucian is a St. Lucian at heart. And respecting each other should be one of the key scruples that define us.

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