Riddim Trax

5 February 2011: On my second trip to Jamaica since our separation, my little brother and I make our first “riddim trax” together…and discover a common bond beyond just music.

What do you think about pictures?

My brother asks me a very simple (yet very loaded) question as he discovers family photos he has never-before seen. Until our reunion, Jonathan had but a few baby photos of himself, just 3 pics of me, and only 1 photo of his father.

The 3 “JDPs” (Jonathan David Perkinson, Justin David Perkinson, Jonathan Dent Perkinson) share photos at a hotel by the sea.

What do you say to your 15-year-old Jamaican brother who doesn’t remember you, who speaks a patois language you’ve half-forgotten?

Jonathan:     “Me build de trax, mon.”

Justin:     “You build trucks?”

Jonathan:     “No, me build de trax, mon – de riddim trax.”

And so it begins…

Turns out Jonathan, like the father and big brother he has no memory of, is a musician and composes digital music on his computer.

February 2009: Suzie couldn’t be more right. It is time for my brother to know his brother…and his father.

Two months after Jonathan’s Facebook message, “Doc” and I return to the land of my youth. It’s been over a dozen years since I last stepped foot on “da Rock” or laid eyes on “mi lickle bruddah” (my little brother).

In this second video clip–shot at the airport just a few hours before our family’s reunion–I finally start asking my father the questions I gave up on a long time ago. It was a very powerful experience for me, witnessing my father open up to himself and my camera after so many years of silence…

Winter, 2008: I am on a date in New York City’s Lower East Side. It is snowing. I have not seen or heard from my brother in 12 years. I know nothing about him except my father’s account. Presumably, Suzie and Jonathan live somewhere in Jamaica, although Doc has had no contact with them…save for a newspaper ad he posted in the Jamaican Gleaner a couple of years back, wishing his son a happy birthday—but, oddly, leaving no contact information.

My cell phone rings. I could tell it was an international number – I thought it was a friend in Argentina. I answer it, thinking it’s an excellent opportunity to show off in front of my date by speaking Spanish. And then, piercing the echoed static rings a voice from my past: Do you remembah ya bruddah Jah-nah-tahn? Dis ‘is muddah, Suzie. ‘Tis time ya bruddah know ‘im bruddah. It is time for your brother to know his brother.

I rush home, where I find this Facebook message:

What do you mean vanished? I asked my father this question often as a kid. But I was never quite content with his cryptic recollection of the nasty breakup between him and Jonathan’s mother, Suzie. Nor with his mysterious, hasty flight from Jamaica. According to my father, when his relationship with Suzie went sour, she absconded with 3-year-old Jonathan to another part of the island, for fear Doc would steal her baby and split to America (where she had no legal rights to enter). Shortly thereafter—in an unrelated though equally unbelievable incident—one of Doc’s employees came into his home and tried to kill him. My father knocked the guy out, grabbed his passport and some money, and fled the island for America with only the clothes on his back.

(No, this is not a fictional movie. It’s the preface to my family’s documentary.)

All I know for sure is that every time I brought up my little brother from then on, it would upset my father greatly. I began to adopt Doc’s model of pushing the pain as far away as possible. I went off to college, got myself a girlfriend, started dreaming about the future and leaving the broken past behind.

A decade passes. I wend my way through co-composing a rock opera, to jet-setting for a global consulting firm in NYC, to flirting with the notion of becoming a filmmaker…

…to July 7, 2007, when I shot the following video clip–(the first of this blog). It’s one of my first takes with my very-own video camera. I’m at my dad’s place in Florida, the night before I depart to Bolivia for a solo film shoot that will ultimately convince me to pursue filmmaking and change my world forever. This clip is very important to me, for several reasons. Not only does it document the start of my life’s shift towards a career in film, but it also shows the special, musical relationship my father and I share. It also hints at a deep absence in both of our lives, an absence we had almost grown to forget…but which will soon confront us head-on.

Summer, 1989: I am 10 years old. I stand before a 2-room shack—no running water, stolen electricity—at the base of a hidden ganja mountain in the western-most jungles of Jamaica. This is where my father lives, for the cost of groceries, with a quiet ganja farmer and his gracious wife. “Doc”, as my father is known in these parts, was once a successful oral surgeon in Richmond, Virginia—(where I live, normally, with my mom and step-dad)—until his pet Doberman jumped up into Doc’s chest and broke his back, forcing his retirement. Now Doc convalesces on this third-world isle, in these thick jungles, rereading the Bible for the sixth time and formulating his next move…

But this is merely prologue. The real birth of my story takes place once my father gets better and moves to the sea, starts a bed and breakfast, and finds himself a Jamaican woman – a beautiful 18-year-old named Suzie. In time, Suzie becomes the mother of my father’s second child. I am 14 years old when my half white-American/half black-Jamaican brother, Jonathan Dent Perkinson, enters the world. Jonathan and I will share three joyous summers together…

 And then my brother will vanish from me.