50 cent, however, is relatively rare in Basquiat’s corpus, in that he envisions that Caribbean people will (regardless of empires or national elites) stay afloat by making use of their own spiritual and creative devices. This view is implied through repetition of the phrases “300 CUBITS LONG” and “THE ARK.” These phrases refer to the dimensions of Noah’s Ark but also evoke images of Agwe (the slave ship and the vodou spirit of water), who possesses a boat and receives offerings in small vessels made of bark and other materials. In relating all three terms, Basquiat references the various means that blacks in the Americas have devised to protect what is cherished in the Caribbean and escape the many “floods” that afflict it, including enslavement, invasion, dictatorship, and ecological threats. Basquiat thus suggests that in facing catastrophe, particularly as a systemic and not an episodic feature of Caribbean, life will depend on the shifting ability to both stand in place and float away, still in defiance of the emptying island.