How would you describe yourself? Who is Desiree?
I spent a long time trying to fit myself into different
categories: Rhodes Scholar, medical doctor, academic, historian of
medicine, fiction-writer, Black Bahamian woman, British-Bahamian.
None of these definitions fit. Not really, not completely.
Sometime around 2000 everything changed. The categories -
boxes, I’d locked for myself inside - began to disintegrate. I was
becoming detached from my biography. I had years of my life being
‘this, and not that’, defending ‘this, or that’ position, so it
didn’t happen by my actively rejecting some way of being. It
started with me following my instincts with a greater sense of
urgency, and, in particular, with me following my instinct to sing
solo again.
I had been a childhood singer from the age 5. As a kid I loved
to sing and to perform in public. There’s nothing like that
magical moment, when the lights go on, when you forget who you are
or where you are, or, even the words of the song you’re about to
sing. It’s a moment of total freedom and connection with spirit. A
song may last 5 minutes but when you’re singing from that place,
it feels like your flowing in an eternal stream of energy, like
you’re part of something far beyond your human form.
I was working as a medical doctor in a psychiatric hospital in
London when I had this urge to get back to solo singing. I hadn’t
been singing in years. I remember the feeling like it was
yesterday. I hadn’t been living in London a year. I hadn’t
developed much of social circle yet. I’d started going to a local
Anglican church, for comfort I guess. Something to do on a Sunday
morning, I told myself, though I knew it was more than that.
Anyhow, after about a couple of weeks of having this urge to
get back to solo-singing, I marched into this church one Sunday,
cornered the organist and his wife and asked her to put me in
touch with a good vocal-trainer. A week later I was singing with
an opera singer. Weeks became months, and I sang my little heart
out - exercises mostly – because that’s all she’d let me sing for
the first 6 to 8 months, but I loved it. It was like breathing. I
sang every day, for about an hour during my lunch-times, since, by
that time I’d moved to a flat just walking distance from the
hospital where I worked. Singing made me feel so free: nothing to
achieve, nowhere to get to. Being in this space gave me the
freedom and confidence to follow the next steps.
I began to sing jazz (whereas before I’d always sung classical
songs). I began to perform at amazing venues like Cargo in the
East End of London, to bring live music to the public spaces of
hospitals, to other spiritual beings, to a soul-sustaining
Reiki-meditation group, to eastern philosophies, and the
life-stories of enlightened people from all cultures, it was as my
whole world was on fire, like I’d woken up after a long deep
sleep.
Before 2000, I would have tried to ‘understand’ and ‘analyze’
what I was experiencing, but now, I was letting my head follow my
heart.
The more I lived with my ‘Self’, and came from that place the
more peaceful I felt, and, the authentic being I knew myself to
be. The more I learned to let go of my worries, the more energetic
I felt. I was giving my ‘little self’ less energy. What ensued was
the disintegration of who I thought I was, and a deeper connection
to life itself. Following these small steps took me from the UK,
where I had been living for 16 years, to the Bahamas, the land of
my birth.
So now when you ask me that question, I can see that there is a
‘little me’ - the ego aspect of Me. This ‘little me’ has a
biography, and a personality, and a history, a life-story, family
roots, and more. Afro-Caribbean Bahamian woman, medical doctor,
historian, writer, singer, renaissance woman - all of this is part
of the skin I live in, part of my physical form, but in the end,
all of it, achievements, warts and all, amounts to ‘little me’.
I can smile at this ‘little me’, enjoy her, while, at the same
time knowing that this is not who I truly am. It’s so easy to be
trapped by our ‘little selves’.
That’s the really, really long non-answer to your question.
The short answer to this question ‘who am I’ is simple really:
I am connected to all of life. And all of life is connected to me
What are you working on now?
Well, I’ve got several projects on the go.
First of all, I’m finishing my first album. My first single,
‘Forbidden Love’, came out in June 2005. It’s an original song.
The first song I’ve ever written in fact. Once I’d released the
single, I started working on the album. I’ve been working on it in
chunks, gathering enough funds to complete each phase of the
project. All thirteen tracks have been recorded and mixed. The
album has been mastered, the CD jacket is being designed as we
speak and the CDs will be off to the manufacturers in a week or
two. Everything’s on schedule for the album to be released in July
of this year (2006). It’s been quite a journey.
The second project I’m working on is a collection of short
stories. When I first moved to Nassau, in 2004, I started a weekly
short-story column in one of the national newspapers – The Nassau
Guardian. The column was called ‘People Transform’. The stories
were all new, each one written the week before it came out in the
paper, each one a subconscious expression of my encounters the
week before. The stories were quite popular, more so than I
expected. Hundreds of people from all over the world wrote me
emails about their experiences, things it made them think of,
actions they’d taken in their lives as a result of the stories,
how the stories had made them feel connected to The Bahamas, or to
their childhood. It was so moving. The column ran for a year and
the short-stories have been brought together as a collection,
which is now with an agent in London. It takes so much to release
a high-quality album and to make sure that the distribution is
sorted out for it, so, once the stories had gone to the agent, I
set the stories aside. I’ve finished the first phase of editing,
and now that the album has been recorded, mixed and mastered. I’ve
gone back editing and completing stories for the collection. I’m
committed to the collection being ready for press by December
2006.
The third project is the one that blows me away the most: it’s
a collection of my paintings for November 2006. I’d never painted
before I came back to the Bahamas. I have no formal training in
visual arts. As Amos Ferguson (an internationally acclaimed
Bahamian artist, and a relative of mine) would say, ‘I paint not
by sight, but by faith. Faith gives you sight.’ I am being
mentored by a great and experienced Bahamian artist, Stan
Burnside. He used to teach at University of Penn, but now lives
and works as a full-time artist in Nassau. I love painting. It’s
like experiencing God in your fingers. I’m really looking forward
to my first art exhibition in November. And yes, some of the
paintings will be on sale.
‘My job’, the project that pays my living at the moment, is as
consultant to the Prime Minister and Department of Urban Renewal
(which is in the Office of the Prime Minister). The Bahamian Urban
Renewal initiative is an extremely innovative project. The
initiative began as a small government project in one of the
‘Over-the-Hill’ areas of Nassau. That was two years ago. Since
then, the initiative has expanded to over 14 urban areas on 3
different Bahamian islands, and has won 4 international awards.
The innovation of the project is that it focuses on people first,
and buildings second. In other words, the operating philosophy is:
renewal begins with the mind, and with people, in deprived urban
areas having opportunities to express themselves and develop their
talents, abilities and self-confidence. My focus has been on
empowering people through education, and education about
themselves, about who they really are, and what they are
manifesting in their lives and their surroundings. We do this
through what I’ve called ‘Re-Search’ – looking again at what we
are manifesting in our daily lives, our physical environment, and
in nature. We, myself and my team have conducted a few small pilot
studies, surveys etc using primary sources and secondary
literature. We’ve put these together as published work papers on
the socio-demographic profiles, spiritual transformation, holistic
education for children in urban communities, community development
in the Haitian immigrant populations etc. Recently, I’ve been
traveling around the country with the Prime Minister giving
lectures and presentations on our work so that people can become
more aware of research as a tool for self-awareness, and of the
importance of participating in their own self- development. This
is what you can call my day job, but, I no longer have a life that
is divided into ‘work’ and ‘life’. For me, it’s all apart of the
one path of transformation.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing these past 2 and a half years.
Yes, my universe has been expanding these past but the art
exhibition – entitled ‘Living Colour’ which will coincide with the
official launch of the ‘Awakenings’ album and the official launch
of Performing Cures as an international charity during the first
week of November 2006 will bring all of these separately developed
parts together.
In 2002 I set up Performing Cures, a UK-based health-care
charity to bring a spirit of hope and possibility – new life as it
were - to the heath-care communities through the performance of
live music and dramatic performance in the public spaces of
hospitals and health-care centers. Its international expansion
takes this further, inspiring a further integration of living arts
into the public spaces of hospitals and health-care centers all
over the world. I’ve decided to take Performing Cures global early
on in its development because we live in a global village, and
Performing Cures is as much a vision, a point of connection for
people who see health as a way of being, and a state of awareness
and, who realize that the more people from different cultures
share their knowledge about the art of living, and, in particular
the art of being-well, the better. Art, music, drama, are the
universal languages of consciousness and awareness. Inspiring
people to bring this dimension into the art and living color to
public spaces of hospitals and health-care where the level of
stress and negative energy can be so high is what Performing Cures
International is all about.
As I said before, the launch of Performing Cures as an
international charity will take place during the first week in
November 2006 in Nassau. At this launch the plans for spreading
the word will be unveiled, my ‘Living Colour’ art exhibition and
‘Awakenings’ album will provide opportunities for donation, as
part proceeds from these sales will go to the charity, and the
Performing Cures International teams from all over the world will
introduce themselves to each other. So watch out.
What has been your journey to what you are doing now?
When I was about 5 or 6, I said I wanted to be a doctor. I
wouldn’t have said that I chose being a doctor above a singer. It
never occurred to me to be a singer. Besides, by 16, having
performed at practically every church in the country, and at more
national events and competitions you could shake a stick at, I had
a pretty good idea of the daily-grind, and reality of life as a
professional singer and, I knew it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy
me. There was so much more I wanted to learn about and do in my
life.
I chose to go to university and study science because I found
science intriguing, especially theoretical science. Somehow, I
don’t know why, I felt I could always come back to being a singer,
and life as a musician, some-day, if I wanted to.
I went to study at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I
didn’t come from a well-off family. My mother was a secretary at
the time, my father was a barber and insurance agent, both of whom
were struggling to make ends meet. I knew that any further
education I was to have would have to be funded through
scholarships. I had 2 music recitals and, I was what my teachers
called ‘gifted’ academically, so I won two partial scholarships. I
did well at Chemistry (my major). I loved quantum chemistry, and
started to question going to medical school. I was accepted to
Cambridge University to study chemistry. But my decision, way back
then, had been that I would do medicine. That year, November 1986,
I won a Rhodes scholarship, and became the first Bahamian Rhodes
Scholar, and the first woman to win a British Caribbean Rhodes
Scholarship, so, the next year, September 1987, I went to the
University of Oxford to study medicine.
The first two years of medical school were great – it was all
very ‘heady’. But going to the clinic phase proved to be the shock
of my life. It was one of the best clinics in the world, but my
internal voice kept on saying: ‘this is just so primitive’. And I
began to wonder whether this was really what I wanted to be doing
with my life. I felt like a complete misfit. Something inside of
me felt uncomfortable and resisted the little ways that made you
became a doctor – the walk, the technical talk, the white coat,
the stethoscope around the neck, pontification in front of the
x-ray screens. But, truth be told, I found myself doing these
things, just as well as my fellow colleagues or better – I did
after-all manage to finish medical school with two prizes. I was
doing it, but outside of myself, even in spite of myself, all the
time thinking: ‘wow, that’s bizarre’.
I also lived in this other world of non-medical Rhodes scholars
studying and reading all kinds of clever things. I would talk to
them about my observations and frustrations, and they’d say: ‘oh,
you should read so and so, or this book, sounds a lot like what he
or she talks about’. I lived a very split life for the three years
of my clinical training. In the hospital I was a doctor, nothing
philosophical, I would perform as a doctor. Once I left the
hospital, I would read my philosophy, history, quantum physics,
and all manner of other things. By the time I left med school, I’d
already sworn I’d never practice medicine. I’ve learnt since then
never to say ‘never’.
I got a three year Wellcome Foundation PhD studentship to do my
PhD at University of Cambridge – studying the history and
philosophy of science and medicine. I’d gone to Cambridge straight
after medical school to read, as they say, for a Masters degree in
History of Medicine, I used the third year of my Rhodes money to
pay for my Masters degree, and my performance on the Masters lead
to my PhD. During the four years of researching and writing-up my
PhD, I split up from my husband, and ended up being homeless for
the last 8 months of the writing-up process, I went on the dole.
It was really touch and go coming to the end. I wasn’t yet a
British citizen, all my family lived in the Bahamas, and I had a
limited social network, thank God for my friends because my family
couldn’t really help me. I decided that once I finished my PhD I’d
go take a job as a junior doctor – an intern - for a year so that
I’d be registered to practice medicine and whatever happened in
the future, I’d be able to work as doctor.
Working as an intern, after all these years of academic
research, lectures and writing, was both amazing and terrifying.
I’m so grateful for what practicing medicine taught me: skills in
people management, organising wards, dealing with large numbers of
patients at a time. It is on those skills that I draw to produce
my own album. The people- management skills of a producer are all
the skills I learnt on my feet, falling on my face regularly,
embarrassing myself as a medical doctor. Strange isn’t it? Strange
but true.
What was the turning point?
I would say that the turning point was a point of spiritual
awakening that took place when I started working in psychiatry
(which had followed from the year as a medical intern). I was very
affected by what I saw in the wards, and, as I looked into my
future, I could never really see myself as a medical consultant,
not even an unconventional consultant psychiatrist. Up to that
point I could drive myself to do anything I wanted to, whether my
soul and spirit were saying yes or no – no matter what my heart
was saying, I could force the rest of me to do what my mind
wanted. Around the time I started to work in psychiatry, this just
stopped being so easy. It was like some deep part of me was
rebelling against this form of self-domination.
Lots of little events around that time just stopped me and
forced me to take a look at who I was, what I really cared about,
and what I was really creating with my world. I started to see a
pattern of delayed gratification; I’d try to tell myself: ‘just
wait a moment then you’ll get to do what you want’.
And telling myself ‘one day some day maybe’ I will get to do
what I want once I have achieved all those things that I need to
achieve... I thought: ‘Once you become consultant you’ll have more
time.’ But the more I looked at the consultants and professionals
like them, the more I saw this thought for the lie that it was.
You don’t get more time, you just get more responsibility and
demands filling the space. I saw through this illusion that you
could put life on hold and buy time for the future, and I stopped
believing it. So if I was not going to get any more time, I would
need to do what I want now or give up on it completely – it was
that kind of internal implosion of the cage of ‘must do’, ‘must
be’, ‘must have’ thoughts we place around ourselves, and the
explosive expansion of passion I described earlier, from the
heart, that helps you remember who you truly are, and come from
that centre. So your mind becomes a tool of your heart, rather
than your heart being prisoner to your mind.
What advice would you give to other people in similar
situations as you were in?
• Yes, there’s such a thing called preparation for the fulfillment
of a vision – what I’ve been doing for the past 2 years in the
Bahamas for the launch of Performing Cures is an example of
that—but make sure you are in the now during this preparatory
phase. Make sure you are being in the moment, enjoying and fully
aware of yourself, being with things as they are and as they are
not, and being with the process, rather than being attached to the
outcome.
• Accept the phase that you are in and stop resisting it, stop
saying one day some day maybe, be fully with it as it is and as it
is not – surrender to it
• Every time you hear yourself saying: ‘you should be doing…’ –
ask yourself is this my ego talking or my truth? In other words,
who’s making these requests? Is this something I want to give my
energy, or life-force to?
• Let go of resisting, surrender to the moment and be with both
the beauty and horribleness of it
• Try a form of meditation or yoga to help you find the still
small voice inside. Just taking a few conscious breaths,
meditating on your breath can help. The fog will begin to clear,
and then in time, as your self grows, you will hear what you need
to do, and then take small steps, and you will know what needs to
happen next. But be careful with meditation. Find a good teacher
or light-worker. It’s important that you have people with the
right energy around you during these early stages. Be fully with
every single moment, and wait to get the inner guidance, the
moment of surrendering brings incredible ease and the space you
give it’s coming from who you truly are, not what is the right
next step, intelligence much more vast than your small little
brain – and you don’t have to know where they are leading, just
have courage to follow them in the face of everybody just being
against it
• Take the small steps you feel internally guided to take, as
strange, or odd as they may sound – follow these marching orders
with no attachments to the outcome.
All these things that have blossomed in these few year cames
from trusting and following my inner voice. My contract with the
Bahamas government comes to an end at the end of 2006 – what
happens then? I’ll know then. The connectedness of what I’m doing
will stay the same, the job that pays me may or may not look
different, but whatever it is will be an expansion of the vision
of the transformation and well-being embodied in Performing Cures.
Why? Well, why not?
Stay in tune with what Desiree's up to at
www.desireecox.com
