Trisha.

I don’t know much about black culture, nor do I have any particular interest in black creators or innovators above any other race. I’m the kind of person who thought that one or more of the characters from “Friends” was black, until I looked up the show on Wikipedia just now. Call me lazy, not bigoted.

I wrote my submission to this challenge at the end of an evening slumped over my computer, four fifths through a bottle of overproof rum, the familiar and comforting warm sting of urine caressing the seat of my slacks. The evening in question was a blur – or rather it wasn’t, as it depends on your perspective – as I sat semi-conscious, plodding keys, sobbing tears as I curated my observations about how my dog killed a bird, before being destroyed by the authorities.

My wife was not keen on Archibald, as he wasn’t housebroken, frequently and maliciously spreading his colorectal muck all over the kitchen. A couple of years ago she rubbed some of his leavings on her face (accidentally) and, through the associated toxocariasis, lost the sight in her left eye. My wife told me to get over what happened to Archibald, but I am inconsolable. I somehow thrashed out the article and posted it.

After I hit ‘submit’, I was about to log off when I saw the challenge in question. I as I have said, I am not especially interested in black people and don’t really have a ‘blackspiration’, but like the other lazy people on Vocal, but I am interested in a free $5,000. Nevertheless, I moved on, unable or unwilling to simply write anything about an off-the-shelf black person who has had no impact in my life but makes a compelling if predictable read, which most submissions will likely centre on.

The drink was making me drowsy, so I sharpened up by dissolving a few special gummy bears into a double espresso, returning to my emictioned office chair with renewed zeal. I had left Vocal’s challenge page open on my monitor, and I found myself staring at the woman in the photo adverting the black inspiration challenge.

Her learned gaze stirred something in me. The contract of the white background against her skin and clothes suggested to me that she was a stock photo model used by companies and people as a nameless, convenient, and cheap way to further their own causes. A quick Google image search confirmed the worst. This photo has been used many times, such as here, and can be found as a free image via Joanna Nix-Walkup on Unsplash, who happily leaves the poor lady uncredited but has no hesitation in shamelessly begging for money on her Unsplash headline:

“Like my photos? Leave a tip at xxx”.

The lady in question is similarly unacknowledged elsewhere in cyberspace, however hard you might try in shedding light on her background or even a simple first name. The Google image search only labels her as “bespectacled black girl”. Is this what we have come to? Stealing a striking yet, stereotypical image, anonymising the subject and sponging off the rewards is decidedly pre-emancipatory. In lieu of her real first name, I shall call her Trisha.

I found renewed inspiration in Trisha’s story, or lack of it. Vocal has asked us to “Highlight a Black creator or innovator, online or offline”. Trisha is all of these. She’s a creator in such that she inspires and incubates creativity. She innovates through her timelessness and omnipresence, existing both online and offline – the latter easy to overlook – lest we forget that behind the nameless, exploitative stock photo there is a real woman with real dreams, who risks fading into a ridiculed obscurity like András Arató. ,

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that I have selected Trisha as my inspiration, not to win the challenge but to inspire others to come forward and hopefully cast some light on her first name or journey, so we can collectively honour her for inspiring all of us to write about our Black inspirations, even if half of them, will be about Martin Luther King Junior, Nelson Mandela, or Oprah. As per the terms of the competition, I have highlighted Trisha’s photo and attached it to the top of this article.