By DIANE PHILLIPS

We’ve all done it at least once in our lives, some of us way more than once – let words slip out of our mouth that they minute they’re gone, all we want to do is take them back. 

They left our tongue so easily, unfiltered, and we’re consumed by regret before they fully hit the air. We stumble, stammer, caught in that in-between space where there is no good way to go forward and no possible way to turn back. All we want to do is ball up those words and stuff them back where they came from but it’s too late. 

So we live with the consequences and no matter how many times we either try to explain them away or apologise, we trip. Our only hope is that in time people will forget.

Even the most articulate statesmen slip up on occasion. Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis, whose climate change vulnerability pleas have been heard round the world, knows what it’s like when a few words take on a life of their own.

With all that is on his plate having to run a country not to mention a popular if fractured political party during an imminent election season, it was an offhand remark about wondering if the Leader of the Opposition Michael Pintard ever held “a real job” that turned a few syllables into a maelstrom of malevolent mischief.

Pintard, a poet, author and playwright before he turned to politics and rose to the leadership of the Free National Movement, is a member of the Orange Economy, the sector devoted to the softer side of what makes us human, the arts. Music, dance, poetry, literature, sculpture, photography, film, the performing and visual arts are all part of that almost sacrosanct segment of society.

It is not often that someone slides up (or down) the ladder from the arts to politics, from centre stage in a theatre to centre stage in a government.

Comedian Zelensky

But there are exceptions. Volodymyr Zelensky was an entertainer, a comedian in fact, before he became the sixth president of Ukraine in 2019 and in 2022 would face a brutal invasion of Ukrainian territory by Russia that would try the strength of any small nation. Everyone expected Ukraine to crumple in the grip of an enemy 28 times its size. Yet, to the world’s astonishment, Ukraine has held off strong man Vladimir Putin and his Russian army for more than three years. Though both sides have suffered horrendous losses, the country ruled by a former comedian is surviving against all odds.

The PM’s words may have inadvertently done more good than harm.

While we might have been surprised at a man who normally takes the high road having a totally out of character moment, the comment drew instant, intelligent and massive attention to the Orange Economy and those who contribute to it.

All of a sudden social media was on fire, lit up with reminders of those whose REAL JOBS did not require suits or stockings, uniforms or tools. Its sarcasm hit where it hurt with posts like Guess Ronnie Butler did not have a REAL JOB. Guess Percy “Vola” Francis did not have a REAL JOB. Or Winston “Gus” Cooper, the founder of the modern Junkanoo costume. Guess he did not have a REAL JOB.

Sir Sean Connery, Sir Sidney Poitier

If entertaining is not a REAL JOB, how about Sir Sean Connery or Sir Sidney Poitier? Did they get knighted when they did not have a REAL JOB? Didn’t we name a bridge after Sir Sidney? What about Harry Belafonte? Ray Charles? Stevie Wonder? Barbra Streisand? Tom Cruise? Did they not have REAL JOBs?

Closer to home, did we not just unveil the new Cat Island sign by Jamaal Rolle, a Bahamian artist whose work is seen in public places including gracing Cumberland Street where a mural with a young boy grinning transforms a neglected property and derelict wall into a moment of joy for passersby.

There are Bahamians around the world with REAL JOBs in the arts. One of the most important is a man named Tavares Strachan whose monumental sculpture, The First Supper, occupies the full courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts in London and has been seen by millions, yes millions. Strachan spent four years creating the bronze sculpture coated in gold with black patina, a lifelike re-imagining of Leonardo da Vinci’s famed Last Supper, substituting the original characters with Black and African leaders at the table – Harriett Tubman, Marcus Garvey, Shirley Chisholm and others. As prominent as the Strachan’s London sculpture is, another Bahamian artist, Jamaal Rolle, created a masterpiece even larger. Rolle’s Belong/Brooklyn sits atop the Atlantic Avenue-Barclay’s Center Complex in New York and Strachan’s other works, his historic and cultural story-telling through public art, crisscrosses the globe.

In Hollywood, another Bahamian in the Orange Economy is making waves. Ana Lauryn Adderley has won two CLIO Awards, including one for the promo of the Netflix thriller ‘Hunger.’ She is only 25 years old, often homesick for The Bahamas, but she has to live in Hollywood at least for now because that is where she has a REAL JOB.

So Mr Prime Minister, don’t worry about stuffing those words back in your mouth. By calling attention to it, even accidentally, you did the Orange Economy the best favour anyone could – you made all of us sit up and pay more attention to the intangible value it brings to our lives - the music, the joy, the pleasure we get when we gaze at a painting or photograph that touches our heart or stirs our soul.

We can also think of it this way – we all remember the name Michaelangelo and his most famous work of art, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but we might just have to Google who ruled the papal states when the artist was commissioned.