Love Note T&T

In meh wallet

Money to all people has significance. For those who have and to the others who need, it’s really a method of bartering for the efforts toiled in work. Many individuals spend their entire lives confined by it and others exploit the use of it. To some, money has more value than a human life and people have been killed for it. Nations such as Trinidad and Tobago were born from it. The latter as an exchange in human commodities in trade.

But when the heart needs to part and find its way in poetry, what more to give
your lover a few lines of prose written with a runny Bic pen, and on a paper as fine as legal tender. Then, from hand to hand, pocket to pocket, brassiere to brassiere, bank to bank and ash to ash, your love note will finally complete its journey. The following inscription on a filthy one dollar note:

As we go on

We remember,

All the time we spent together,

As our lives change

Come whatever,

I will always remember you,

love and Hurt,

Always

This specimen is a legal tender note of Trinidad and Tobago. The value of the ink printed on the linen paper is 15.8 cents (copper) to the US dollar. This is the current rate of international exchange on the money market, but not too far in the future, the T&T dollar will show its worth.

Adele's comment;

I have been collecting money with graffiti on it for several years. For the show that I did with Lisa Brice called Paradise, I was actually able to find a dollar bill before the show that had the words escape written in it on the horizon line of the scene on the back of the bill. I have come across a woman expounding the risks of casual sexual contact and its repercussions, both pregnancy and AIDS risk. I have come across bills with numberings in the corner that clearly came from shops who needed to know how many hundreds, twenties and what not that day. I came across the bill stated above, sloppy, sentimental 'love tender.' They all have their stories to tell, and they speak of a nation where currency is a paper that represents as much about emotion as consumption.

Other notable inscriptions

1.One bread

2. Soft candle

3. Lotto

4. Power milk (small)

5. Chicken foot ( 2 packs)

6. Tea biscuit

7. Pack of cheese

I have not found a defaced bill in a long time, but many years ago I did come across a bill that had stayed too long in circulation and separated neatly into two pieces of paper. I did the delicate surgery myself with the intention of using it for a future show on nationalism. So I too have been caught up in the meaning of our pretty money. As I removed the thin strip that looks like pencil down the middle, I felt as though I were performing an autopsy. It was a sacred thing somehow to handle our money that way, and II got rather sentimental as I thought of our independence and pride in seeing Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and not the face of the Queen.