Sunday, March 23, 2025
9:00 AM |
Remembering the Writers of Iowa, Circa 2010
Last March 6, I read the terrible news I knew was coming. The Trump administration was cutting off its annual funding of the International Writing Program [IWP] of the University of Iowa, of which I am an alumnus, having been an honorary fellow of its prestigious fall residency in 2010, representing the Philippines together with novelist Edgar Calabia Samar.
From the IWP’s Facebook page we read: “On Wednesday, February 26, the IWP learned that its grants with the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, were being terminated. This notification explained that the IWP’s awards ‘no longer effectuate agency priorities,’ nor align ‘with agency priorities and national interest.’ The immediate result was the cancellation of Between the Lines [the IWP’s summer youth program], and the dissolution of Lines and Spaces Exchanges, Distance Learning courses, and Emerging Voices programs. The overall Fall Residency cohort will be reduced by around half due to the loss of federally funded participants; the IWP’s other long-time funding partners, including a combination of donors, grants, foreign ministries of culture, and NGOs, will continue to support writers. We are devastated by the abrupt end of this 58-year partnership...”
I am equally devastated because this program was instrumental in shaping much of what I consider the “mature” phase of my writing. After 2010, I came home to the Philippines, and by 2011, I produced my first two books collecting my short fiction—a book compiling my domestic realism in Beautiful Accidents [published by the University of the Philippines Press], and another one compiling my speculative fiction in Heartbreak and Magic [published by Anvil]. By 2012, I earned my MA in Creative Writing and became the founding coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center. Did IWP help jumpstart my literary milestones? You bet it did, as it has done for many other writers from all over the world since its founding in 1967. Thus I am devastated that stupid developments in the political status quo would cut short one of the best literary programs in the world.
It made me go back to how I chronicled those three months in Iowa [elsewhere in the U.S.] in 2010. Here are excerpts of some essays I wrote of that time.
* * *
From 17 October 2010:
People have asked me a lot, “Why are you in Iowa? What are you doing there? Isn’t Iowa just one huge field of corn?” And sometimes people back home don’t even bother to listen, and attempt hello with “So how’s Ohio?”
Iowa, not Ohio. They’re two different states, I want to correct them. Most of the time, I don’t even bother. I suspect sometimes that most Filipinos find it easier to pronounce or remember Ow-hay-yow than the airy two-syllable conundrum of Ay-wah.
So yes, there’s a lot of corn here. Red barns and silos, too. The whole shebang. When I arrived here in late August, someone native made a jokey reference to the whole area—from Des Moines to Denver—as “fly-over country.” Which meant that this was Nowhere Land for most people in Continental United States, so much so that commercial airliners just “fly over” it.
But what’s in Iowa City? The Filipino writer Edilberto Tiempo asked the same bewildered question when he was sent as a Fulbright scholar in the 1930s to America, and was promptly instructed to get to this heart of the Midwest, four hours west of Chicago. In explanation, he was told something that remains true until today. In Iowa City, you have the best and most influential creative writing workshop in the world. In Iowa City, the world of literature converges to make it the hometown of writers from all over—and that if you are a writer of some note, you must make at least one pilgrimage to Iowa City. In 2008, UNESCO solidified Iowa City’s reputation as a literary capital by designating it a City of Literature, alongside Edinburgh in Scotland, Melbourne in Australia, and now Dublin in Ireland.
The University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, founded in 1936, remains the finest program for creative writing there is, made world-renowned by the poet Paul Engle. (Today, its director is the writer Samantha Chang.) The Workshop has also set the template for how creative writing workshops the world over are structured and ran. In 1961, returning to the Philippines after their graduate stint in Iowa, Dr. Tiempo and his wife the National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo set up what is now known as the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, patterned of course on the one in cornfield country. In its early years, Mr. Engle visited the workshop in Dumaguete—and then invited the Filipino fictionist Wilfrido Nolledo and the Korean poet Ko Won, both fellows at the Silliman workshop, to come back with him to Iowa City. Both writers formed the core that would soon become the International Writing Program, a residency founded in 1967 aimed at bringing international writers to the Iowa campus where they could participate in the community’s literary life and devote three months to their own writing projects. (Today, the IWP director is the poet Christopher Merrill.) I am part of that program this year, together with Ateneo poet Edgar Calabia Samar. It is a privilege that has included such Filipino writers as Susan Lara, Charlson Ong, Marjorie Evasco, Rofel Brion, Sarge Lacuesta, Teng Mangansakan, and Vicente Garcia Groyon III. The IWP’s grandest alumnus so far, among so many luminaries, is the Nobel Prize winner for literature from Turkey Orhan Pamuk.
And so, when people ask me what I am doing in Iowa, I just tell them that as a writer, I am merely going back to the mothership.
Iowa City is easy to get used to, at least for me. Not once did it make me feel homesick, and every single day since my arrival has since become an exercise in trepidation of not wanting to go “home,” because this city already feels so much like home. You see, Iowa City has the same feel as my hometown of Dumaguete City—both are university towns, both are small but sophisticated, both are culturally active in ways that compete with cities bigger than them. In Dumaguete City, we wear porontongs and tsinelas and white shirts like a uniform. In Iowa City, the girls wear daisy dukes and the guys wear flannel and jersey shorts.
“It is my blonde Dumaguete,” the writer Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas—who is both Dumagueteña and Iowan, and so she knows what she is talking about—once said. I agree with her.
The only thing different here is the weather. One day many weeks ago, for example, they said it was the last day of summer in Iowa City. I had supposed they were right about that—but to me they have completely different conception of sun and summer here. The slightest instance of blue and the tenderest warmth here is considered summertime. Once, on a walk across campus on a slightly cloudy, slightly chilly afternoon, I chanced upon a pasty-white college boy who had taken the liberty of taking off his shirt to lie on the grass in front of the Old Senate with its shining golden dome. He was sunbathing. I looked up and there were indeed slivers of sunshine peering from behind the clouds. I found it amusing—the way they may find it amusing that I get so cold at 15ºC. It’s a coat for me at that drop of temperature. “You only need a sweater, or a cardigan!” I can hear them thinking. But my body knows only the vocabulary of humidity—not this dry, crisp chill in the air. Not the shivers that come with the wind.
In my three weeks in the Midwest—a span of time that had been spent in an endless cycle of all sorts of acquaintance and adaptation—my body was particularly slow in its attempt to settle down with this change of climate and circadian rhythm, to the point that I had actually taken to bed, sick with both jet lag and coughing. But I took it as an ironic announcement by my biology that I was—am—alive, that I am responding to strange, but ultimately sweet, stimuli. I knew I was flying into an adventure, and I was determined to wring out the best that I could from it before I would fly back into the familiar humidity of back home.
Still, I must admit that settling down in a new place also requires a certain kind of diligence to get out of an instant habit of cocooning. It is entirely understandable and entirely human, of course, this instinct to carve out a space of warmth and the relatively familiar amidst strangeness. A new place, after all, assaults you with volleys of newness—and the details are sharp: people talk differently here; they do things differently here; they move differently here. The smells and the sounds are new; the texture of things are different; the vistas may be familiar from the movies you have seen, but they suddenly come barging at you with the intimidating shock of proximity. This new place is suddenly your context, your present—and you have not prepared well for that change. Your only resort is to slip out, sink in to that cocoon of your making.
In my case, the cocoon was my hotel room. It is a rectangle of generic space, the type that lends itself well as a canvass for your projections of what makes for home far away from home. There is the one grand window that overlooks the Iowa River, there is the bed with its blankets and pillows and comforter, there is the writing desk, there is the tiny refrigerator that soon gets stocked up with food the texture of which brings back a sense of home, there is the bathroom, there is the closet, there is the television. I stayed in this room for days, barely venturing out.
But when I was finally ready to do battle with all these unfamiliarity, I began to sniff out for that one inviting day that was agreeable. I ventured slowly out into the unknown world that was Iowa City, and then I began to conquer it bit by bit, each step a discovery, each decision an adventure into turning the strange into the familiar.
And so it has. Prairie Lights Bookstore. Linn, Dubuque, Clinton, and all the other streets. The Mill. Bread Garden Market. The Englert. The Java House. A Taste of China. T-spoon. Studio 13. George’s. They have become home, have become part of what is familiar to me. I thought this when I ventured out of my hotel room this morning, after freshening up from a good session at the Fitness East gym: you’ve finally really settled down when you don’t even notice anymore you are surrounded by blonde and blue-eyed people everywhere you go.
* * *
From 27 October 2010:
It is a late Tuesday in the waning days of October, and I am hating the chatter of this couple on a study date in this crowded café. They are on the next table behind me, and try as I might, I become an unwilling eavesdropper into their conversation—something the music piped right into my ears with my earphones cannot even remedy. Sigur Ros, James Morrison, the Hans Zimmer soundtrack from Inception are powerless. The girl is Asian and seems inappropriately giggly; the guy is blonde and strikes a macho pose in his probing questions and corny jokes. The guy says something bland or inane, and the girl giggles and provides chatty fodder for their conversation’s twists and turns, including strange detours into Oedipus Complex and living in Canada. They have gone on with this getting-to-know-you game for a while now, and I am on my second cup of café latte. I am hungry and loaded with caffeine, and I cannot write the story I have sworn to finish today, or else. I can feel a headache coming. It is 7.27 in the evening in The Java House along East Washington Street, a football pigskin’s throw from the pedestrian mall in the center of town. I think about the grocery I have to buy in Bread Garden Market after I finish this cup of coffee. The café’s wifi is down, and I miss the occasional Facebook breaks I take from my writing, where the “occasional” is considerably longer than the actual work at hand. The couple behind me now talks about the “rules” of friending people in Facebook, and I roll my eyes. I think hazily about procrastination, and decide to do something about this habit later. I think about missing gym for four days now. I think about the stories and articles I have yet to finish. I think about the books I have to read, and the films I have to screen. I think about my remaining days in America. I think about time slipping fast.
I think about time a lot these days.
I think about the past weekend in Chicago, and think about how I had spent Monday in a pursuit of cocooning rest. This meant movies and books and general avoidance of the outside world. Outside, Iowa City is getting cold. The cold snap of autumn has gone towards its most extreme. The TV news tells me there is a storm brewing all over the Midwest. There are tornado warnings from the Mississippi to Wisconsin. I find myself dressing in a flannel shirt and a sweatshirt and a coat and a pair of canvas skate shoes. I look at myself in the mirror and think about how, in such a simple sartorial act, I have gone suddenly native.
This is not a usual day for me here in Iowa City. Often, each day is sunny and free of irritating moments—when it does become chilly, the beauty of trees turning gold in the fall offsets it. This is why I am recounting all this in detail, because it is unusual. My stay here has been beautiful, and all that is coming to an end soon, in a few weeks. I think about time a lot these days. And how it slips away so fast.
Here’s what is a part of my normal day here. There’s waking up late in the morning, then gym at the nearby Fitness First, then lunch at A Taste of China along Linn Street (or some other place when rice does not do it for you anymore), then coffee-aided writing at The Java House or T-Spoon, then the library till midnight, then home. On weekends, there’s music at The Mill or beer at Fox Head or Donnelly’s. The bibliophiles among us, who are most of us, go to Prairie Lights or The Haunted Bookstore or Murphy-Brookfield for a relief of their book addiction. We are kept busy some days attending to lectures and readings and film screenings and parties and excursions, most of which are optional. We are told that our primary duty in this writing residency is to write. And so we do. I sleep late at night to catch up on work and reading, aided for the most part by Red Bull in cans, something that is treated almost like water here. I have learned to hate the television a month before; the remote control is hidden behind the set, in an attempt to make turning the TV on a little harder, a mile shy of temptation.
In the rooms around mine in The Iowa House Hotel where we are billeted, the writers are battling with words and turns of phrases—and so must I. It is the best kind of writerly pressure. Compatriot Edgar Calabia Samar is finishing the introduction to his dissertation, an anti-detective novel in Filipino. Hong Kong’s Lai Chu Hon is finished with her novella about girls jumping off buildings, and Russia’s Alan Cherchesov is finished with his novel as well. Indonesia’s bestselling author Andrea Hirata began his fifth novel in the beginning of the residency, and is now finished with it. Singapore’s Thiam Chin O has finished four chapters of his first novel about two couples in an unnamed Asian island after the tsunami. Egypt’s Ghada Abdel Aal is biding her time, having decided not to write at all (except her columns back home!), occupied as she is with pressing interviews and readings and classroom visits. She has so far appeared in The Washington Post, which has done a feature on her as the author of a widely popular television show back in Cairo based on her book I Want to Get Married! She tells me that as a Muslim woman, “sometimes I am treated here more as a symbol than as a person.” Argentina’s lovely (and uncomplicated! she would love that word) Pola Oloixarac, one of Granta’s choices for best young Spanish novelists, makes the conference circuit in Spanish language literature from Boston to Barcelona. India’s Chandrahas Choudhury gives readings of his first novel everywhere. Others are finishing screenplays and poetry collections. We—all 38 of us from far-flung places in the world—are all busy writing, when we are not partying or doing readings or visiting places or meeting authors like James Tate, Samantha Chang, Marilynne Robinson, Mona Simpson, Bo Caldwell, Yiyun Li, Jane Smiley, Xu Xi, among others. We get to travel, too, to get the breadth of America, which is part of the pursuits of this program. So far, there has been San Francisco for me (and Cody in Wyoming, Portland, and New Orleans for the others), as well as Chicago, and soon Washington, D.C. and New York. In those places, the touristy stuff prevail: in Chicago, there’re the architectural boat tour, the art overload in the Institute of Art, the plays in the theater district, the dancing in Boystown, the restaurant-hopping in Wicker Park, the skyline from Museum Campus, the view of the world from atop Willis Tower, the shopping along Michigan Avenue, among others; in San Francisco, there’re Alcatraz and Fisherman’s Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, the winding descent of Lombard Street, the bohemian air of Haight-Ashbury and The Mission, the nightlife in the Castro and Valencia Drive; in Washington, D.C. and New York, there will be more of the same. The goal is immersion in the culture, as well as to write. I came here to write my second novel, but somehow ended up writing short stories instead. I am almost halfway finished with that new collection Where You Are is Not Here, all set in places not in the Philippines. When IWP writers greet each other in the morning, our hellos are often followed by this phrase: “How’s your word count?”
You can say that Iowa City is a writer’s dream. When Teng Mangansakan III, who was a fellow two years ago, told me earlier that this experience would be life-altering, I didn’t know if I could believe him, but now I know for sure. Remember those fantasies you keep about spending your days not preoccupied with such trifling concerns like work, spending only time chasing words and inspiration? The residency in the International Writing Program is the fulfillment of that fantasy—but after its expiration date comes the thought about having to go back to the ordinary world, where you have to take in again all those nagging everyday concerns, which compete with the fact of being a writer. Alas.
But nevertheless. To get a taste of this life, to be given this opportunity, that is enough.
* * *
From 1 November 2010:
It’s the first Monday of November. I have been feeling rather down today—perhaps I am just tired from the previous night’s frenzied partying—that not even a splendid hay ride in a beautiful Iowan farmhouse can mitigate it, and everything now to me seems to run with forbidding shadows. Some things are even hateful in varying degrees. The full capacity of this cafe, for example, when on ordinary days I delight in seeing the constant traffic of interesting faces. Or the fact that it’s cold outside. There’s also my use of the word “mitigate,” which I find utterly pretentious, and I hate it. So is my use of the word “utterly.” It seems that in this down time, I have learned how to perfectly cannibalize myself with little irritations.
I use a lot of excuses, don’t I.
The real reason is the fact that there is something inevitable that stares me at me now: going home. How do you go home after Iowa? After the International Writing Program? But I am, all of us are. We are leaving in barely three weeks, and I don’t think I’m ready to go back to my old life just yet. And yet, there are already missives from and of home that are reminders of this inevitability: emails from family and friends, announcements from work, and the constant moans by O Thiam Chin every single day that this is his “last Friday in Iowa City,” his ”last Saturday in Iowa City,” his ”last Sunday in Iowa City.” I keep mum, always in that posture of denial, but in my head I tell him: “I am counting out my last days, too, and I am sad.”
You can see how sad most of us are. We try to hide this silly sentimentality, of course, with smiles and small talk and good cheer and drunken parties—and sometimes, for some of our men here in the IWP, with a slinky black dress or women’s lingerie for a Halloween night’s excuse to let our hair down. Last night, at the ghoulish gathering at the Merinos’, you could feel that pull for camaraderie among many of the writers in the IWP. There was an acknowledgment in the air that we were indeed counting out our days, that we were saying our drawn out goodbyes in whatever form we want them to take, that we were probably not going to see each other again but that we were glad that, for more than two months, we were blessed with their friendships, their capacity for taking us into their lives and making us part of them.
I will miss Egypt’s Ghada Abdel Aal’s smile, for example, and her constant protests about her cheerfulness. I will miss Argentina’s Pola Oloixarac’s wildfire presence, the way she comes into every room and commands everybody’s attention. I will miss Israel’s Touche Gafla’s playful gravity, and his conviction that he is always the most beautiful person in the room. I will miss Indonesia’s Andrea Hirata’s sudden bouts of laughter, and his mission to photograph himself in every single spot in the United States. I will miss South Korea’s Kim Sa-in’s quiet and calming presence—and his totally terrifying Jigsaw Halloween mask. I will miss my compatriot Edgar Samar and the way he walks around with the security blanket that is his bag. I will miss Hong Kong’s Hon Coco’s quiet air, the way she talks to you like you are the only person in the room. I will miss Iceland’s Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson’s tallness—and his wig and lingerie. I will miss Germany’s Christopher Kloeble’s anecdotes, and the animated way he tells them. I will miss India’s Chandrahas Choudhury’ impeccable sartorial sense and his capacity for elegantly working the room. I will miss Poland’s Milosz Biedrzycki’s secret rock star wish and his electric guitar. I will miss being a visitor in Belarus’ Maryia Martysevich’s universe, and the way she can belt out every single song in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I will miss the United Kingdom’s Laura Fish’s delightful accent, and her Gabriel. I will miss Kenya’s Billy Kahora’s hand gestures when he talks passionately about something. I will miss Kyrgystan’s Turusbek Madilbay’s dancing, and his booming voice. I will miss Mauritius’ Farhad Khoyratty’s Cambridge accent, and the whiplashing wit he carries around with him like a weapon of mass distraction. I will miss Ireland’s Michael McKimm’s giggles and his mission to see birds, of all sorts. I will miss Singapore’s O Thiam Chin’s hyper nature and his pickiness. I will miss Taiwan’s Ying Phoenix’s gushing about film. I will miss Pakistan’s H.M. Naqvi’s swagger, and his allergy to the afternoon sun. (Or just the sun, period.) I will miss Brazil’s Amilcar Bettega’s silence, the way his smile seems to just say everything. I will miss New Zealand’s Hinemoana Baker’s quirkiness and deep soul and Halloweena costume. I will certainly not miss Nigeria’s Ismail Bala’s milkshake addiction, and his obsessive fascination for Twinkies and bookstores. I will miss The Netherland’s Albana Shala’s groundedness, the way she makes you feel at ease around her instantly. I will miss everything about Hinemoana’s fellow Kiwi, David Hill, that darling man.
There are the other writers, of course, all thirty-eight of us, each with a piece of memory of each other. Truth to tell, we only have these scant impressions of each other to work with, because two and a half months are never really enough to know anybody. But it is enough to say that given the little time that we’ve had, we gave the world to each other—and made Iowa City in the beautiful autumn of 2010 an impossible place and time to forget in all our lifetimes.
Labels: iowa international writers program, life, politics, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, March 22, 2025
This always happens to me with subsequent seasons of a TV show I like after the first one gets me hooked [e.g., Game of Thrones, Severance, etc.]. As I watch the rest of the next seasons, my ADHD brain can no longer quite follow the twists and turns, and the myriad new characters. So what do I do? I read recaps of each episode [usually in Vulture] to have them explain to me what exactly is going on. I’ve made my peace with this. It’s a life.Labels: adhd, culture, life, mental health, television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 231.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
4:33 PM |
Portrait by Viviana Riccelli
The Siquijor-based Italian visual artist Viviana Riccelli told me a few years ago that she actually did a portrait of me based on a photo before she met me, and was actually surprised to eventually meet me in person. It took me a while to seek out that portrait, but this is it! You can view more of her art in her
website.
Labels: art, life, painting
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
4:29 PM |
Sleep-Deprived, from a Brownout
I used to be able to function well coming off only a few hours of sleep at night, but sometime ago, I became one of those people who only have energy for the day coming off at least eight hours of sleep. So, yeah, I'm miffed at NORECO's sudden prolonged brownout last night, from 2 AM till the wee hours of morning.
Labels: dumaguete, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
3:47 PM |
Workshop Mode
I’ve been in workshop mode for two [maybe three?] weeks now, and it has been exhausting, sometimes exhilarating. [I’m energized when a particular manuscript is unexpectedly well-wrought.] But there are deadlines and expectations to meet and this has to be done. Padayon.Labels: life, school, teaching, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 16, 2025
9:00 AM |
A Personal Journey to City of Literature
A pipe dream is comfortable. Indulging in pipe dreams is safe, because there are really no risks involved, only pronouncements.
You can just say, “I’ve always wanted to write a novel”—and some sort of satisfaction gets sated in the recesses of your ambitions, the pronouncement given, and that’s it. But there is no novel.
You can just say, “I’ve always wanted to travel around Europe”—and it will feel as if with these words you’ve done a little bit of “getting up” from your life as armchair traveler. But there is really no travel done.
You can also look at someone else’s painting in a gallery, and say, “I can do better than that.” But you didn’t. There will be no paintings done by you. But the pronouncement is there, hanging in the air—and somehow that is enough.
But it really isn’t.
The best fulfilment of dreams is in the tangible, not in their pronouncements and not in wishful thinking. And there lies the rub: because most of the pursuit of our dreams actually involve risking it all—carving time out of our busy lives to fill out a fragile schedule of creation, despite the demands on our lives from other things we have also made commitments to—like work, like family, like friends; committing to accomplish the dirty work of untangling seemingly insurmountable paper work or bureaucracy, generally sweating out the small stuff; and developing fortitude of spirit, because you will meet constant disappointments, as well as the firewall of unhelpful individuals who do not understand what you want to accomplish. The road to dreams fulfilled is never smooth, never easy.
Pipe dreams, on the other hand, are easy.
One pipe dream I had indulged on for so long was Dumaguete City becoming UNESCO Creative City of Literature. As a writer born and raised in Dumaguete, I know—perhaps in the most personal sense—how this city has carved a place for itself as an unlikely capital of the literary arts in the Philippines, helped for the most part by writers from Silliman University, like the Tiempos, who chose to stay in Dumaguete [despite the tangible promises of more fulfilled careers outside of it] and have made it the home for which they could steward, not just their own literary creations, but also foundational institutions that would turn out to be great contributions to the national literature.
In 2010, I was one of two Philippine delegates [the other one being the SEAWrite awardee and novelist Edgar Calabia Samar] chosen as honorary fellows to the International Writing Program [IWP] in Iowa City, which just became a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008. When I was in Iowa for this very prestigious fellowship—for me perhaps the most fitting “reward” an international writer can have in their writing life—it dawned on me that this distinction was also fitting for Dumaguete. Iowa City is small, like Dumaguete. It only has one major bookstore; same as Dumaguete. It regularly hosts international writers and literary conferences; same as Dumaguete. And it has the same vibes as Dumaguete—replace Iowa’s corn fields with the sea, and you will get Dumaguete, with blonde people. In fact, Dumaguete writer Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, who is a resident of Iowa City, calls that Midwestern city as her “blonde Dumaguete.”
Iowa City is also a place whose writing culture is driven by the University of Iowa, the biggest university in town—essentially its own Silliman University. [The writer Robin Hemley, who ran the creative nonfiction program at the University of Iowa for many years, is actually married to a Filipina—from Siquijor.] The famous Iowa Writers Workshop—the grandfather of all writing workshops in America—was the model for the Silliman University National Writers Workshop [SUNWW]; in fact, both Edilberto Tiempo and Edith Tiempo were products of the Iowa Writers Workshop—graduating in the 1950s—Edilberto for fiction and Edith for poetry. And when Paul Engle, the longtime director of the Iowa Writers Workshop, visited Dumaguete in the 1960s to be part of the SUNWW, the idea of establishing the International Writing Program came to him—and he, in fact, invited some of the early alumni of SUNWW to be part of the early batches of the IWP’s famous fall residency. All these literary crosscurrents were already in place when I went to Iowa in 2010 to be part of that fall residency—which is probably why I felt so much at home there.
Since I came back from the U.S., I’d been advocating for the idea of Dumaguete as UNESCO City of Literature every chance I got, including at several editions of the 6200 PopUp, sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry [DTI]—Negros Oriental, as well as in all my lectures about Dumaguete literature in various seminars and fora, including one on the creative economy at Silliman University, sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. In 2014, in my capacity as the founding coordinator of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center, I even curated an exhibit at Silliman Library titled Cities of Literature, which traced the link between Dumaguete and Iowa [already mentioned previously], with the blessings of the IWP’s Christopher Merrill.
In 2018, prodded by former Dumaguete City Tourism Officer Jacqueline Veloso-Antonio, I prepared a white paper for Mayor Ipe Remollo to determine whether we should apply for City of Music or City of Literature. [You see, only the LGU can apply for UNESCO Creative City.] Naturally, as a writer, my bias was clear. The pandemic put these plans on hold.
But when I gave a talk about this very same thing at the first edition of Dumaguete LitFest in April 2024, that propelled DTI Negros Oriental to take the first steps and got me involved in the official application to UNESCO, with the blessings of Mayor Remollo. That’s the story.
We submitted our application on the deadline: March 3.
Now that I’m somewhat rested and have gotten my post-application massage [a combo of body and foot], and now that I’m about to eat my first real [and intentional!] meal in days, I think I can pahungaw a bit: truth to tell, this UNESCO application, which lasted from December to March, took such a toll on my mental and physical health, and by February, I actually found myself getting sick a lot. I tried to persevere [I made sure this did not affect my academic and tourism work], but the anxiety was sometimes just too much to bear. There were promises I made I couldn’t quite keep because of sheer exhaustion, although I still intend to fulfill my obligations now that the big dragon has been tamed.
Was it the sheer ambition of the end-goal, the “internationality” of it all? I guess so. I was so exhausted and anxious I couldn’t even entertain some of the minor blowbacks to the effort from people you would think would be the most supportive. [Some people actually think we are applying for grant money? Where will the money go daw? Like, no, that’s not it. We tried to reach out to the most representative stakeholders that we could contact, and explain what this effort all means. In the end, you really cannot control divisiveness, or miscommunication, or benign disinterest. But most people have been so kind and supportive, even with last-minute asks.]
In my darkest moments, I actually felt I was so alone. That’s not true, of course. In the end, it was a coterie of friends and associates who pulled me out of darkness and together we made it to the deadline. If there is one person to thank, it would be DTI’s Anton Gabila, who was the steadfast keeper of our light, the rock to all our efforts, never mind the mixed metaphors. There’s also the indefatigable efforts of City Tourism Officer Katherine Aguilar, who provided the grease to get the LGU involved in the entire process.
Again, I will take the road of gratefulness.
Thank you, my friends. You know who you are. You have been my light in an anxious world. I have always believed in the magic of trying instead of wishful thinking and pipe dreams; this is our attempt to make things tangible. Here’s wishing all of us luck on October.
Presenting the Dumaguete's bid for UNESCO City of Literature to Dumaguete Mayor Ipe Remollo, with [from left] Anton Gabila of DTI, Ian Rosales Casocot of Buglas Writers Guild, and Katherine Aguilar of the Dumaguete City Tourism Office.
Labels: art and culture, city of literature, dumaguete, philippine literature, UNESCO, writers, writing
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, March 14, 2025
11:00 PM |
The Way of the Wakwak
It is understandable why the color red suffuses much of the atmosphere—and the metaphors—of Pulang Langob, the restaging of the two-act musical play in Binisaya written by Hope Tinambacan and directed by Dessa Quesada-Palm for the 62nd cultural season of the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council. A blood red moon—projected on the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium stage—is a steady motif in the play’s unfolding, and crimson is the shade with which the play’s lighting design chooses to bathe many of its scenes. Then there’s the title itself, which is “Red Cave” in translation. Red is everywhere.
I get it. Red is such a rich metaphor, since it is on one hand, the color of foreboding and danger—of betrayals, of incursions, and of one specific sense of “blood,” which is deadly. On the other hand, red is also the color of life, of pulsating love, and, once again, of blood, but in another specific sense, which is familial kinship. It doesn’t matter. All of these somehow come into play in this story about a teenager’s quest for identity and purpose, set in a mystical place called Isla Tawak.
The island is populated by various creatures gleaned from Philippine lower mythology, including the kaskas, the sigbin, the kapre, the tikbalang, the duende, the mambabarang, and the manananggal. [Collectively, they are known as “wakwaks.”] It is the setting with which a young man named Lukas [alternately played by Dasig Nalam and Cristopher Anasario, the latter of whom essayed the role on opening night] must come to face his destiny, with a two-fold purpose that begins his journey: first, to escape the clutches of heinous men who apparently want him for a genetic gift he is largely ignorant of; and second, to find his long-lost mother, a denizen of Isla Tawak named Kasing [played by the luminous Anna del Prado], who might be hiding in the island. That purpose, of course, ultimately changes when Lukas comes to know the island and its people—and the dangers they face involving the encroachment of human beings, settlers who hail from another island called Owat. [Hahaha, this is a clever pun. “Owat” means “trickery” in Binisaya, of course—but reverse the word, and the letters say, “tawo,” the word for “human.” Ikaw jud, Hope.]
Lukas arrives in Tawak in the company of his father Jong [played by Mark Peter Lacson], who acts as his guide, and as his conduit to both the island’s native creatures and encroachers—both camps to which Jong, a human, has strong ties with. Upon his arrival and his subsequent meeting with the wakwaks, Lukas spends all of the first act being privy to a series of flashbacks—how the island itself is abundant with natural resources [all of it somehow connected to the santilmo, a rich and mystical source of power hidden and protected in the titular place]; how human beings—led by researchers Jong, Belma, and Magal—came to the island to find a cure for a plague that’s ravaging humanity; how these researchers later on paved the way for other human beings to settle in the island, ultimately convincing some of the wakwak to embrace their ways and values, forsaking their own [Junsly Kitay’s Mamumulong is especially heinous as a Bible-bearing con man]; how Jong and Kasing fell in love—a pairing that eventually came to bear Lukas; and how the suddenly villainous Belma and Magal seek ways to control the island by looking for the Santilmo, which is protected by Kasing, the only one who holds the secret in opening the red cave.
Truth to tell, the story can be a bit convoluted—but it’s somehow easier to understand Pulang Langob as an amalgam of other stories: there’s definitely Avatar and FernGully: The Last Rainforest and Pocahontas in the mix here, with a little bit of The Lion King thrown in, and also a smidgen of Avatar: The Last Airbender, especially in how it ends—but I will not spoil that crucial development in this space. Stories about pillaging colonizers and the native communities they affect are old as history, and there is really no getting away from the usual arcs of this narrative if this is the story that has to be told. They are like the oral epics of pre-history, whose stories sung by succeeding generations of bards are familiar to every listener—but each one appreciated only by one measure: the richness and uniqueness of the telling.
In that regard then, Pulang Langob is a winner in the telling. Ms. Quesada-Palm, the founder of Dumaguete’s foremost community theatre group Youth Advocates Through Theatre Arts [or YATTA], knows why she wants to tell this story: “[The play] explores mythical creatures—often culturally regarded as evil and as troublemakers—and portray them as indigenous guardians of this reservoir of life confronted with difficult choices as they interact with ‘outsiders,’ the humans. They bear local wisdom that has sustained them for generations because of their ethics of care for each other and the natural world. But their values are tested because of contesting ideas, interests, and possibility.” This goes to show the many layers Pulang Langob offers as a story, and it is quite providential that Ms. Quesada-Palm is the one to take the lead in realizing it for the Luce stage. She is very much a sensitive helmer of this story, and she gives it the necessary textures to make the play more meaningful, and impactful in all the necessary places. Judging from the audience reaction on opening night to specific scenes and to specific dialogues, that impact is assured. [She also appears in a brief role at the play’s prologue.]
But singular props—all the flowers in the world!—must be accorded the teller of the tale, both as composer and as librettist. Everyone knows Hope Tinambacan as a musician, him being the lead singer of HOPIA and the founder of the Belltower Project. He is also known for his zany TikToks and social media presence, where he nurtures a persistent—and politically discerning—liberal voice that is, for the most part, unafraid. His work as a literary artist [he writes balak] and as a theatre artist [he is a director and an actor and a playwright and the founder of D’Salag Collective] are not as well known, but this is where I actually find him to be in his most well-rounded artistic mode, where he takes the rhythms of his musicality and the convictions of his social media postings and the expressive forms of his literary leanings, and distills them all in the form of a play. He has done as much for earlier plays he has written, like Wanted: Boarders and Alkansing Alkansiya, but in Pulang Langob he has taken greater artistic risks to tell this story about destiny and purpose and environmentalism and folk mythology and inhumanity and greed.
It took Mr. Tinambacan fifteen years to write this story, which was first drafted under the working title of Isla Tawak. The painstaking writing of it was guided through the years by many mentors, including Neomi Gonzales and Jeff Hernandez in the beginning, and later shaped by extensive workshops at PETA with Vince De Jesus, Upeng Galang Fernandez, the late Jojo Atienza, and Meann Espinosa. It finally made its premiere last year at the Luce, and by popular demand, is now back for a restaging, complete with new songs, all of them arranged by his brother, Juni Jay Tinambacan.
What also makes this production special is the way it connects various theatre artists from across the Visayas and Mindanao, truly making Pulang Langob a veritable Southern Philippine theatrical project. The choreography is by Nikki Cimafranca of Dumaguete; the set design is by Ted Nudgent Tac-an of Ozamiz City, executed by Aziza Daksla; the lighting design is by Anj Enriquez of Iloilo, executed by Keith Marvin Delgado; and the costume design is by Marvin Ablao of Bohol, executed by the cast. The excellence in the various crafts has to be noted, because—the play being the product of community theatre—it is the embodiment of YATTA’s testament: “Community theatre is excellent theatre.”
Still there are things I wish were better in this production: I wish the sound design was better executed—sometimes the mics fail, and the actors’ voices are not loud enough to be served well by the Luce’s otherwise excellent acoustics; I wish the set design—here made very impressive by the central presence of a gigantic balete tree that is also a cave—was movable enough to make way for other visual elements required by specific scenes [like the awkward insertion of a sala scene, when Belma confronts Jong and asks him to take a side]; and I wish there was more economy of characters—Vanessa Santuryo as Cousin Hannah is gone too soon and never returns for the remainder of the play, and I seriously do not get where Mateo comes from, even though he is played by one of my favorite young actors, Sean Montebon. This is nitpicking, however, and does not really distract from the beauty of the play’s unfolding.
One strength that Pulang Langob has is in its ability to evoke emotion. There are moments of laughter, where the audience finds joy in the characters’ playful banter, and moments of palpable tension, where the weight of impending conflict hangs heavy in the air. But perhaps most striking are the moments of collective silence, where the shared experience of the narrative creates a bond between the performers and the audience, a testament to the play’s profound impact.
In the end, I must say that it is the songs that reverberate. The ballads truly break our hearts, from Jong’s plaintive “Liwat Ka sa Imong Mama” from the beginning of the story, to the three duets in the second act: “Ang Kasingkasing Mobalik” with Jong and Kasing, “Nahadlok Ko” with Tang Tasoy and Lukas, and “Sa Damgo Mo” with Kasing and Lukas, which also becomes the play’s musical motif, appearing here and there to underline the emotional gravity of certain scenes.
Then there is the scary undercurrents of Act II’s opening crowd song, “Adlwang Domingo,” which gathers in one space both wakwak and tawo, the latter incisive in their corruption of the former. And finally there is the martial beats of the two villains—Belma and Magal—singing “Bahala Na!,” which is the very embodiment of greed and evil in a song.
In the end, when Lukas realizes what he must do in light of a certain sacrifice, he sings “Lisod Huna-hunaon, Sayon Sabton,” a beautiful song that is both about bewilderment and understanding:
Lisod hunahunaon, apan sayon sabton
Unsa ang buhaton?
Ako bang matuman gibiling katungdanan
Sayon sabton, apan lisod hunahunaon
Unta naa ka sa akong kiliran
Unta naa ka aron ako magiyahan
Lisod hunahaon… apan sayon sabton.
Pulang Langob is the second musical spectacular produced by YATTA, following the success of Scharon Mani, which took Dumaguete by storm in 2016. Both musicals are astounding testaments of YATTA’s growth, with this year being the celebration of the 20th anniversary of its founding. Both are also testaments to Dumaguete’s nascent claim as a City of Stories. The plays say, we are capable of excellent theatre; they say, we have a community of artists whose talents are worldclass; they say, we celebrate this rich tradition of storytelling we have in Dumaguete. Padayon.
The play runs until 16 March 2025. For tickets and more information, go to the Silliman University Culture and Arts Council website.
Labels: art and culture, cultural affairs committee, dumaguete, philippine literature, silliman, theatre, writers
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 230.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 05, 2025
10:00 PM |
An 11-Year Belated Inuman
Eleven years ago, before Bing Vee and Karl Villarmea became parents, we had our usual get-together at Hayahay, to do our usual pahungaw about life and work, but we could not finish this flat of Tanduay when it was time to go home. [It was an extra bottle that Karl brought.] We promised each other we would finish it soon. That never happened. What happened was life itself. And kids. These two had kids. And so I kept this Tanduay in my refrigerator for all those eleven years, waiting for our next inuman to happen. [So yes, this Tanduay is older than their children!] That inuman finally happened tonight. I was reeling from the gravity of the UNESCO application, and I said: “I need my old friends with me, I need to drink!” Maygani these two made time, kay busy baya mi. Og kay tigulang na pud mi, we scheduled our Tandy inuman in the late afternoon [5 PM!] at the posh Esturya. And I am so proud nga nahurot namong tulo ang usa ka flat! Hahaha.Labels: friends, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 229.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, March 03, 2025
8:55 PM |
Nahuman Ra Jud
Now that I’m somewhat rested and have gotten my post-application massage [a combo of body and foot], and now that I’m about to eat my first real [and intentional!] meal in days, I think I can pahungaw a bit: truth to tell, this UNESCO application, which lasted from December to now, took such a toll on my mental and physical health, and by February, I found myself getting sick a lot. I tried to persevere [I made sure this did not affect my academic and tourism work], but the anxiety was sometimes just too much to bear. There were promises I made I couldn’t quite keep because of sheer exhaustion, although I still intend to fulfill my obligations now that the big dragon has been tamed. Was it the sheer ambition of the end-goal, the “internationality” of it all? I guess so. I was so exhausted and anxious I couldn’t even entertain some of the minor blowbacks to the effort from people you would think would be the most supportive. [Some people actually think we are applying for grant money? Where will the money go daw? Like, no, that’s not it. We tried to reach out to the most representative stakeholders that we could contact, and explain what this effort all means. In the end, you really cannot control divisiveness, or miscommunication, or benign disinterest. But most people have been so kind and supportive, even with last-minute asks.] In my darkest moments, I actually felt I was so alone. That’s not true, of course. In the end, it was a coterie of friends and associates who pulled me out of darkness and together we made it to the deadline. If there is one person to thank, it would be DTI’s Anton Gabila, who was the steadfast keeper of our light, the rock to all our efforts, never mind the mixed metaphors. Again, I will take the road of gratefulness. Thank you, my friends. You know who you are. You are my light in an anxious world. I have always believed in the primacy of trying instead of wishful thinking; this is our attempt. Here’s wishing all of us luck on October.Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, life, literature, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 02, 2025
9:00 AM |
Prometheus the Pirate
Aside from the basic utilities—electricity, water, internet, and mobile phone—one cannot live without, I have some subscriptions I pay monthly or annually: [1] Netflix, [2] Disney+, [3] WOW Present Plus—intermittently, [4] an Adobe Suite containing Photoshop and InDesign, [5] the New York Times, [6] Letterbxd, [7] Spotify, [8] WordPress, and [9] GoDaddy. You can say that, more or less, I do pay for the things I think need to stay alive and informed in this increasing consumerist world.
But I am also a pirate, mostly of movies, and I make such admission without regret or self-recrimination. As of the moment, I have 14 external hard drives that contain—as of this writing—16,727 movies of all sorts [short films, experimental films, and documentaries included], but not counting TV shows or filmed plays. [I used to do the same for music, but I have done away with that, now relying mostly on Spotify for that need.] This movie library evolved because I do teach Film at the university, and must have certain films at my disposal when needed. It’s also really because I am an avid cineaste. This library has also shifted platforms over time. In the 1990s, I used to collect titles in VHS, often spending godawful amount of time recording things off TV via my trusty VCR. These were my college days, and I used to look forward to the Holy Week, because I could then record the classic Filipino films ABS-CBN used to air over at Pinoy Blockbuster Channel, their movie channel on SkyCable. This was how I was introduced to inaccessible titles such as Kisapmata and Himala and Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon? and Oro Plata Mata—titles you could never rent at your local VideoCity, and titles I only read about but never got to see.
I stopped collecting VHS tapes because of the sheer issue of lack of space that eventually happened. Then I shifted to DVDs. But then I began to notice that the silver plating that held the digital information eventually faded away—leaving only the useless plastic discs behind, and I realized I was hoarding material that faded. So finally I shifted to torrents. Torrents gave me sizable library without the inconvenience of physical storage—with the only concern being the care of these hard drives, which can be easily damaged. I once dropped one such hard drive, and erased 2 TBs worth of television shows.
It’s a painstakingly assembled collection, and a worthy effort. Last year, during the birth centenary of Eddie Romero, a couple of film archivists came to Dumaguete to participate in the celebration, and in their talks at Silliman University, they held out something to the audience that most archivists actually believe: piracy is good, especially for archiving purposes. Pirates are the modern Prometheus.
I think about Prometheus often—the god who, out of defiance and compassion, stole fire from Olympus and gave it to humanity. He did not ask for permission. He did not wait for the gods to share fire and all that it entailed. He simply acted, knowing that the gift he brought down would mean the difference between darkness and light, between mere existence and civilization. And for that act of piracy, he was punished for eternity.
Piracy, I believe, has always been this way. It is Promethean. It is a defiant act of preservation against forces that would rather keep the fire for themselves, letting the rest of us grope in the cold. In an era where digital media vanishes as quickly as it appears, where books go out of print, where films are unceremoniously scrubbed from streaming platforms, and where video games disappear behind a wall of corporate bureaucracy, piracy stands as a quiet, radical form of conservation.
It is no secret among archivists and media conservationists that they rely on piracy to do their work. When HBO Max (or whatever it calls itself now) removes shows from its platform as if they never existed, who ensures their survival? Pirates. When film reels decay, when early television broadcasts are wiped, when companies refuse to re-release or even acknowledge the existence of old video games, who steps in? Pirates.
If not for piracy, the first seasons of Doctor Who—253 episodes in total—would have vanished. Every early master videotape of the program was destroyed by the BBC, which thought that TV shows were at best ephemeral products, and were not worth storing. But these episodes eventually survived, often only in audio form, recorded off-air by fans at home.
If not for piracy, the audio of the TV broadcast of Dragon Ball Z might have been lost because of corporate mishandling. The audio of subsequent airings of the TV show sounds terrible and muffled, because it was in mono, and because Toei decided to use cheap audio tapes and not the actual recording. But pirates recorded the first airing of the show in Japan, and kept them on tape, and soon uploaded online the crystal-clear audio of the first broadcast—and the difference is night and day. The Mr. Potato Head Show was also considered lost for many years, until members of the Lost Media Wiki found all the episodes of the series online. As of 2016, the series in its entirety has resurfaced.
If not for piracy, the pioneering works of French filmmaker Georges Méliès would have vanished. In 1923, when he was facing financial ruin and his studio was taken over by Pathé, Méliès burned his films in a fit of frustration, destroying many of his film negatives stored at his Montreuil studio. Luckily for us, many of his films were duplicated by early movie pirates—which is why we still have a good number of his films with us today, including the great early sci-fi Trip to the Moon (1902).
If not for piracy, F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) would have disappeared. It was plagiarized by the filmmakers from Bram Stoker’s famous book, Dracula, changing only a few details to create their own version. Sued successfully by Stoker’s widow, the filmmakers were ordered to destroy every single copy of the film—and they did. But pirates had already stored away their own duplicates, which is why this great silent German Expressionist vampire film is still with us today.
I actually call piracy—especially in its manifestation as an archiving effort by regular people—to be an act of cultural hoarding. The best example of such cultural hoarder is Marion Stokes, an American access television producer and businesswoman, who hoarded and archived hundreds of thousands of hours of television news footage spanning 35 years, from 1977 until her death in 2012—shows that these television networks never archived. Her effort started in 1979 with the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and soon she amassed an archive of 70,000 tapes of news reports, operating nine properties and three storage units to keep them all. Why did she do this? In Recorder, the 2019 documentary made on her life, Stokes’ son says she was fascinated by “how media reflects society to itself”—and, according to Brooklynn Shively from Establishing Shot of Indiana University, “not only was [Stokes] motivated to record primary news cycles for decades through this fascination, but that she also felt a responsibility to create this personal archive for fear that history would be erased.” She pirated to preserve vanishing news.
The frustrating irony is that the industry that fights piracy the hardest is often the one that fails to preserve its own art. Video games, once released, are often abandoned—trapped behind expired licenses, outdated hardware, and corporate neglect. If anyone wanted to play The Amazing Spider-Man from 2012, there is actually no legal way for me to do so. The game, once sold in stores, is now a ghost, a relic of commerce rather than art. If I were to find a second-hand disc, its downloadable content—pieces of the game that were meant to complete the experience—is gone forever. How can we claim that piracy is theft when, in reality, it is often the only way to save these works from oblivion?
I do not dismiss the concerns of artists whose livelihoods depend on their work being purchased. I understand the impulse to defend intellectual property, to insist that piracy undermines the value of creativity. I am also a creative, a writer and artist, and I do would like to be compensated properly for my intellectual property.
But I also believe that piracy is, at its core, a service issue. If something is available, easily accessible, and fairly priced, people will pay for it. The resurgence of vinyl records, the success of digital bookstores, and the proliferation of streaming platforms all prove that people will support art when it is within reach. But when that reach is restricted, when entire swathes of culture are locked behind artificial barriers, when access is denied simply because a company decides it is no longer profitable—so what choice do we have?
This is not about entitlement. This is about history. The Iliad and Odyssey survive today in written form, but the rest of the so-called Epic Cycle—a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems including the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the Iliupersis, the Nostoi, and the Telegony—are now lost to time. We do treat the written word with reverence, yet we fail to afford the same to digital media, which now consists most of our contemporary outputs. Super Mario 64, the Mona Lisa of video games, exists today not because of corporate preservation but because of cultural hoarding. Most of the early Internet is now gone, except as ghosts in the Internet Wayback Machine. I once moderated the largest collection of everything Philippine literature in a website called A Survey of Philippine Literature in the early 2000s. I hosted it on Geocities. And when that platform was scrubbed in 2009, so did my website—and all the important archive of Philippine literature I placed in it. On 31 January 2024, CNN Philippines quietly signed-off—and with that, their website, which contained hundreds of important news and feature articles that were important to the culture, also disappeared.
Nothing digital in official channels survive—trust me.
Let me end with two stories. When Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper between 1494 and 1498, he did the work in a process that would not keep, and in conditions that were not conducive to the painting’s survival. For example, the wall the famous fresco was painted on was at the back of a busy kitchen, which allowed for moisture to seep through and slowly destroy the painting. Soon, the paint began to peel. Within twenty years, the painting needed restoration. How did restorers know how to bring it back to its original imagery? This was only made possible because copies of the fresco by Leonardo’s students—such as that by Giampietrino—existed, so everyone knew how the original looked like, and Giampietrino’s copy has come to be a great aid in The Last Supper’s constant restoration efforts over the centuries.
I once saved a short story by a writer friend of mine—not only because it had won a Palanca, but also because I happened to love it very much and had included it in one of the anthologies I had edited before. But this was also because I like hoarding pieces of Philippine literature in my hard drive, where you can see them catalogued according to genre, and arranged alphabetically by authors’ surnames. I have tons of poems, short stories, plays, essays, and even novels by Filipino writers in my archive. Now this friend of mine wanted to expand that short story into a novel—but to her horror, she found she no longer had any copy of her original. And so, when she needed it, when she thought it was gone forever, I was able to give it back to her. This, too, is piracy. But this, too, is preservation.
Going back to Prometheus, I think of piracy not as the theft of fire but actually its keeping. It is not an act of destruction, but an act of care. I want to believe that someone, somewhere, many years from now, will still be able to play Super Mario 64 and marvel at the strange, brilliant excess of a civilization that once was. If that means we have to steal fire from the gods for that game to still be around, then so be it.
Labels: archiving, culture, life, media, piracy
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, March 01, 2025
3:47 PM |
Ranking the Best Picture Oscars Nominees
It's the Oscars on March 2. Here is my ranking of the Best Picture nominees, and not a ranking of what I think will win. To be honest, 2-8 all fall into the same slot for me. But I do love
Dune Part 2, and I do
hate Emilia Perez and
Nickel Boys.
Labels: film, oscar
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, February 28, 2025
1:40 PM |
From French Kissers to Small People Adrift
Part 3 of the 2024 Oscar Shorts Considered
It is quite telling that of the fifteen animated short films that were shortlisted for the Oscars last December, the five that eventually made the cut and the nomination—Beautiful Men, In the Shadow of the Cypress, Magic Candies, Wander to Wonder, and Yuck!—only one was in my Top 5. Not that I didn’t like the rest of them. In fact, they are all quite good, and the nominations are totally deserved. I just liked other shortlisted titles better. That is how amazing the animation field—including both the shorts and the features—has been in the past year. As I’ve noted earlier, walang patapon.
I can see why Nicolas Keppens’ Beautiful Men made the cut. It is a beautiful dour, sarcastically funny story about three balding brothers who travel to Istanbul to get a hair transplant, and stuck with each other in a hotel far from home, their insecurities grow faster than their hair. There is always something of this kind of atmosphere in an animated short that makes it a must on the finalist round—as if the animation branch of the Academy feels the need to check themselves and say, “Hey, cartoons are not just for kids.”
But given that, what to make Jean-Sébastien Hamel and Alexandra Myotte’s A Crab in the Pool, which didn’t make the cut? It is a zany and psychedelic French look at puberty and the crushing insecurities and hormonal urges of adolescence, with an equally crushing subterfuge of death and loss, and I fell in love with this short film as soon as I finished it and realized its import: how—in its story of young siblings (an older sister and a younger brother)—we often turn to imagination to make sense of the tiny earthquakes in our lives. And what to make of Torill Kove’s Maybe Elephants, which also didn’t make the cut? It is the story of a globe-trotting family—courtesy of the mother who gets the occasional urge to leave and uproot their lives—and who finally find themselves in Nairobi where their three teenage daughters finally rebel to seek some antidote to restlessness, even as they themselves, as adolescents, find their inner lives turned upside down. It is a mature story about restlessness and roots—with an ending that approximates a kind of peace everyone is looking for.
I can see why Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani’s In the Shadow of the Cypress got the nod. This Iranian short film is about a former captain who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and has chosen to live, with his young daughter, in a humble house by the sea. They live an isolated life together, daily confronting the harsh challenges that come their way—but a gulf remains between them, until an unforeseen event (a whale beaching ashore) somehow changes the course of their lives. The animation of this film is dreamy in its simplicity, and the environmental and psychological story tugs at you because it is rendered so well emotionally.
But what of Tod Polson’s The 21, which didn’t get nominated? Like the war-tinged tale of Cypress, this one is the true story of the twenty-one Coptic men who were martyred by ISIS in Libya in 2015. The animation—produce in the style of Coptic iconography—is beautiful, in perfect contrast to its subject matter, which is horrifying. In the beginning, this short reminded me of the [odious] Chick Tracts I used to read and devour as an evangelical child, which often used the stories of the suffering of Christians in foreign cultures as missionary propaganda—but I also needed to check myself: This story is nevertheless true, and the victims were Coptic Christians under the tyranny of terrorists. In the end I needed to disregard religion and just focus on the basic inhumanity of this story: killing people just because they have a different faith than you is the ultimate inhumanity so far from any divine promise. That goes to adherents of all faiths. And what to make of Iain Gardner’s A Bear Named Wojtek, which also didn’t get nominated? It is another true story about another war—World War II to be exact—about a displaced and orphaned bear who finds itself in the company of a troop of Polish soldiers, forms an inseparable bond with them, and finds itself an unlikely war hero. Unlike 21, this one ends happily—but both remind us about the horrors of war, and the inhumanity it can breed.
I can see why Loïc Espuche’s Yuck! made it to the finals. Adult subject matters may intrude once in a while in the animated short film category, but a cartoon that’s clearly for kids [and the adults who delight in their kiddie charms] will still be a shoo-in for a nomination. This one is a humorous take on kids finding kissing on the mouth—done by gross adults—totally gross. [Kissing in the film is highlighted by the kissers’ lips turning bright and incandescent purple.] It centers on Léo, who laughs at these kissers together with his gross-out friends at a summer camp—but he has a secret he won’t tell his friends: his own mouth has actually begun glistening, and he wants to kiss a friend, who also wants to kiss him back. The humor in this child-centered tale is the magic formula for nomination.
Which might explain why Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi’s Bottle George also didn’t make it. It makes a case for alcoholism and domestic abuse, and it does so by exploring the relationship between George, a man trapped inside a small bottle, and Chako, a young, poor, resilient girl who is scared of her alcoholic father. It has a child at its center—but the subject matter is too dark to be embraced. There is humor too in Goodbye My World [directed by Florian Maurice, Astrid Novais, Estelle Bonnardel, Baptiste Duchamps, Quentin Devred, and Maxime Foltzer]—but it’s about a man dressed in a fish costume, who suddenly finds the world coming to an end—and then he spends the last moments of the world on a wild scooter ride across downtown, crossing the chaos to reach a mysterious tower—to reach his [spoiler]. It’s all warmhearted, but the darkness of the apocalypse might be too much to warrant a nomination.
I can see why Daisuke Nishio’s Magic Candies got nominated. This Japanese short film is a delight! The story follows a boy named Dong-Dong, who never gets invited by the other kids to play—but he does not mind, since he’s fine just playing marbles on his own. Then one day, he buys a bag of colorful candies, which, when eaten, gives him an uncanny ability to see fantastical renderings of things and concepts. It was an enjoyable romp—although it made me think: is this kind of like a pro-drugs allegory? But I might be over-reading.
But what of Don Hertzfeldt’s Me, which is equally surreal as Magic Candies? Hertzfeld has always been one of my favorite animators. His World of Tomorrow and It’s Such a Beautiful Day are both must-sees if you care for animation that is substantive as much as they are fun. In his new film, he creates a more opaque, if tantalizingly non-linear, tale, which he calls “a musical odyssey about trauma and the retreat of humanity into itself.” The film, in its occasional foray into abstraction, is less accessible than his older ones, which might be why he got left off the final list—even if Hertzfeld is a former nominee. Sometimes abstraction can be a hindrance to appreciating a short animated film’s gifts. This is the case of Kei Kanamori’s Origami, which also didn’t get the nomination. Alas, the delightful film can be reduced into being just a playful and abstract romp through the art of paper-folding—even if the animation is topnotch and truly engaging. [But then again, PES got an Oscar nomination in 2012 for Fresh Guacamole, a two-minute abstract Claymation romp about the making of guacamole—not from avocado, but from everyday things found around the house.] Abstraction hindrance is certainly the case for why Anna Samo’s The Wild-Tempered Clavier, my least favorite title of the lot, did not make the cut. The film approaches abstraction in its use of toilet paper as film material, with whatever story there is being painted onto the sheets while the toilet paper is unrolled, like you would a film—all the while using the immortal music of Bach as background. I had no patience for the exercise.
Laura Gonçalves and Alexandra Ramires’ Percebes is an anomaly among all the shortlisted, unnominated titles, because neither is it abstract nor nonlinear. The Portuguese film uses the sea and urban Algarve as backdrop, and in it we follow the complete life cycle of a special shellfish called percebes—the goose barnacle. The animation, while interesting, is a bit off-putting, and the whole film comes off as a dry attempt at a National Geographic documentary. I immediately forgot what it was all about the moment I finished watching it. I understand why it didn’t get the nomination.
This leaves Nina Gantz’s Wander to Wonder, the only film in my Top 5 that also got a nomination. It deserves it, because of its conceit, its style, its humor, and its darkness. A captivating stop-motion animated short that masterfully blends nostalgia with dark humor, it centers on three miniature humanlike characters—Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton—who once starred in a 1980s children’s television program. Following the sudden death of their creator and host, Uncle Gilly, the trio is left isolated in the studio, striving to continue their show amidst growing despair and dwindling resources. Gantz’s direction skillfully juxtaposes the innocent charm of vintage children’s programming with an unsettling atmosphere, creating a unique viewing experience. The meticulous animation pays homage to the era’s aesthetics, while the narrative delves into themes of grief, isolation, and the struggle to find purpose after loss. The characters' attempts to maintain normalcy—such as reading fan letters and producing episodes—are both poignant and darkly comedic.
Wander to Wonder has garnered critical acclaim, winning awards at festivals like Anima Brussels and receiving nominations for prestigious honors, including the BAFTA. Its inventive storytelling and distinctive visual style make it a standout piece in contemporary animation, offering a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between childhood innocence and the complexities of adult realities. I hope it wins the Oscar for Best Animated Short.
Here is my ranking of all the animated short films, including the unnominated titles:
[1] A Crab in the Pool
[2] Maybe Elephants
[3] Wander to Wonder
[4] The 21
[5] Me
[6]Yuck!
[7] Origami
[8] Magic Candies
[9] Bottle George
[10] Goodbye My World
[11] A Bear Named Wojtek
[12] Beautiful Men
[13] In the Shadow of the Cypress
[14] Percebes
[15] The Wild-Tempered Clavier
Labels: animation, film, life, oscar, short films
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, February 27, 2025
6:36 PM |
Gene Hackman, 1930-2025
What a way to go, a mysterious death. It feels very dramatic, if sadly so. Gene Hackman will always be embedded in my young memory as a bumbling villain in Superman, my introduction to him. I have since loved, and have come to respect, the work he did in more iconic films such as The French Connection and Unforgiven and Bonnie and Clyde and The Conversation and The Birdcage, but I actually loved him the most in a disaster movie, The Poseidon Adventure. Like his character in that movie, he always looked like somebody who knew his way through life [or disaster], and stuck to it. That stance is to stan for. His retirement from film was met with much dismay, and we never got to see another film with him with this mysterious death. Rest in peace, Mr. Hackman. Labels: celebrity, obituary
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 228.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, February 23, 2025
9:00 AM |
CityMall and Other Frustrations
Let’s be real—the gentleness of any city has its limits, even a city that takes to that quality as the essence of its popular tagline.
But gentleness frays at the edges when traffic is constantly baffling, when tricycles crawl at a glacial pace, when motorcycles weave through lanes as if traffic rules are optional, when a plague of cars block entire streets. [Honestly, where did all these cars come from? They all just appeared out of the blue, in this number, after the lockdown of the pandemic.]
Gentleness also disappears when Brownout Sundays become a thing, and you are awakened early in the morning to the buckets of sweat covering your body because the electricity is out—and will only come back on twelve hours later. The generator backup? If it exists, it’s probably struggling just as much as you are.
Gentleness takes flight when you go to the public market, and the prices have mysteriously changed overnight. You buy mangoes one day for ₱80 per kilo. The next day? ₱120. Why? The vendor shrugs. It’s market magic in the time of runaway inflation—the prices change depending on who’s asking and how clueless they look.
Gentleness goes on a holiday when garbage collection follows no schedule. You leave your trash out on the assigned day, only to watch stray dogs tear into it because, surprise! The garbage truck decided not to show up. [Or worse, it came early and left before you even had a chance to bring your trash out.]
Gentleness is gone when you realize Dumaguete is still very much a small town, and hence still prone to being an inescapable gossip machine. Nothing spreads faster in Dumaguete than tsismis. Say something in confidence to one person, and by the next day, the entire city has a slightly exaggerated version of your story. Privacy? Good luck with that.
But it’s not always about Dumaguete that gets my goat. Frustrations have no geographical limits.
So I think of overzealous karaoke sessions—someone in your neighborhood belting out an off-key version of “My Way” at full volume.
I think of yet another Grab Food delivery that’s missing an item, or when the driver insists you received everything even though the receipt tells another story.
I think of the passive aggression of some people I know. For some, this is just another sport practiced to perfection, where compliments feel like daggers, and words are laced with saccharine malice. “Oh, I didn’t expect you to get that opportunity. Good for you!” Or, “Wow, you’re so brave for wearing that.”
The worst part? Not being believed. When you speak a truth and watch the person in front of you dismiss it, as if reality were subjective, as if facts were just suggestions.
I think of bandwagon critical pile-up—where the moment a narrative takes hold, it’s nearly impossible to undo, no matter how much it’s exposed as a lie.
I think of hypocrisy. Especially the social media warriors who scream “makibaka” but have vast family wealth to fall back on—those who decry capitalism while lounging in their air-conditioned living rooms, sipping on overpriced lattes. I think of the virtue signalers who rush to condemn but refuse to self-reflect.
I think of the insidious rise of ignorance-as-a-virtue. It’s one thing not to know something, but it’s another to flaunt it like a badge of honor.
I think of the critical bon mot of something, especially art, being “a product of its time,” and no longer worth considering in the appraisal of the contemporary. Why should art speak for all time? Isn’t there value for art’s specificity of time, permitting it to reflect its currency no matter how wrongheaded it may be in the future? Should we only make art that predicts what becomes in vogue fifty years from now? Are we clairvoyants, or are we chroniclers?
I think of Hedwig.
And finally, I think of my current shrine of frustration: CityMall Dumaguete.
It is the pinnacle of inconvenience, the crown jewel of disappointment. On Brownout Sundays, its generator conks out, turning the mall into a dim sweatbox. Its stores? Unremarkable. Its tiled floors? Cracks and ruin everywhere. The comfort rooms? Barely functional, and if you’re watching a movie from its one and only movie theater, you might as well take a pilgrimage when you hear nature calling. The CR, you will find, is located ten thousand miles away.
But the last straw? Last weekned. When we watched Captain America: Brave New World, and after the last full show, went to the second floor rooftop parking—only to find the exit locked up. No warning, no announcement—just a security guard smugly declaring to us: “We close the mall at 9 PM.” Never mind that you’ve watched movies at CityMall and finished past ten before, and this never happened. (How else to get to your parked car? Their answer: go the long way, up the outdoor ramp. Like, WTF.) Never mind that there’s no logical reason for this nonsense. It’s perhaps just another day in Dumaguete, where annoyances can pile up—but somehow, despite it all, we stay.
Why do things annoy us? Annoyance, at its core, is born from expectation. We expect fairness, we expect reason, and we expect reason a semblance of order. We expect our food to arrive as we ordered it, we expect reason our opinions to be considered in good faith, we expect reason our trips to the mall to be convenient rather than an exercise in endurance. When these expectations are betrayed, irritation follows.
I do wish for something to be gained from having to experience these small frustrations. Perhaps annoyances are there to remind us that we care? Perhaps they highlight what matters to us—such as efficiency, honesty, fairness, and consideration? Perhaps they invite us to cultivate patience? Resilience? Maybe even a sense of humor?
I know that to live life—in Dumaguete or elsewhere—is to embrace its quirks, its contradictions, and even its exasperating moments. I hope I can learn to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I hope to find that these annoyances aren’t just obstacles, but are things that make life feel real, unpredictable, and ultimately, unforgettable.
But who am I kidding.
I am never going back to CityMall ever again.
Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 227.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, February 16, 2025
9:00 AM |
The Other Kind of Inflation
At the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, I was one of several people commissioned by the Cultural Center of the Philippines to write the obituaries of artists who had passed on between the pandemic years of 2020 and 2023. It was a grim task, but the rationale was noble: to commemorate the lives of these Filipino artists for their contribution to Philippine culture—big or small—in a time when we were surrounded by so much death, and so much uncertainties. I readily said yes to the task, since I had always been a fan of how The New York Times did their obituaries [in fact, one of my favorite documentaries is Obit, directed by Vanessa Gould and released in 2016, which chronicled the work of these writers and the choice of their peculiar genre of writing]. And for some reason, then and now, I have always felt the need to write the obituaries of Filipino writers when they pass on, because I am often frustrated by how meager the writeups about them often are in mainstream media.
Writing those obituaries for the CCP felt like a necessity. By then, I had developed a system of research that enabled me to write a considerable tribute—scraping all corners of the Internet to find information, and approaching willing members of grieving families for a little bit more I cannot find online. [When is their birthday? Where is their birthplace? Where did they study, and what degree did they earn? Questions like that.] Part of the exercise was, of course, verifying the information I’d get—and this was where I usually found myself chuckling. Because, with all due respect to the dead, a number of them do inflate their accomplishments.
I still remember writing one such obituary for a musician. In his bio, he mentioned having studied in the U.S., and tutored by such and such teacher. This is par for the course of musicians. When they release their biodata for writeups in concert programs, they do mention the music schools they studied in, and the music masters they studied under. This gives credibility to their training, especially if those teachers are world-renowned musicians themselves, or their schools are sacred training grounds for music. I took this dead musician’s biodata, and inputted his claims in my prospective writeup—and then came the verification: it turned out the school he mentioned was not a music school but a high school he attended for one year in an exchange program, and the teachers he mentioned were not musicians but his high school music teachers. Far from my immediate assumption of him studying under masters in an incredible music school! I did not include these details in the final obit I made of him. The rest of what he did in the Philippines was enough.
So, yes, there is such a thing as inflating one’s accomplishments.
Over the past year, I caught two news stories—splashed with congratulatory headlines and with such drama on the media outlets they were published in—that are examples of this kind of inflation.
I remember reading about an author being celebrated for the fact that he was being published by Barnes and Noble! It sounded incredible, and to the uninitiated, truly worthy of praise. But I immediately thought: Barnes and Noble is not a publisher, it’s a bookstore, so how could this be? It turned out, the author being extolled had merely released an e-book, and it was being offered for sale on NOOK, Barnes and Noble’s own version of the Kindle. This is not the same as being published by a major publisher.
I remember reading about a visual artist being celebrated for the fact that she was being exhibited at the Louvre Museum in Paris! It sounded incredible, and to the uninitiated, truly enviable. But I immediately thought: the Louvre is not a commercial gallery, it is a repository of fine arts as collected by France, so how could this be? It turned out, the artist was being exhibited at the Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall that had direct access to the famed museum. This is not the same as being exhibited by the finest fine arts institution in Paris.
This essay was actually occasioned by a tweet from film critic Jason Tan Liwag, who posted on X [formerly Twitter] last February 9: “There's a difference between the Cannes Film Festival and other film festivals simply held in Cannes.” I was intrigued.
It turned out there is a filmmaker that media is currently crowing about, regarding his being “invited” to the Cannes Film Festival—which is truly an honor for any film artist. One headline reads: “How a late-blooming director conquered the international film scene.” The article describes his film as “becoming a finalist at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.”
Nice.
It turned out he was not at all invited by Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux to be part of the main competition, or even in any of Cannes’ official parallel competitions every May, such as the Un Certain Regard or the Directors' Fortnight or the Tous les Cinémas du Mond. But his film actually participated at the Cannes World Film Festival—which is a totally different festival, also held at Cannes every June, with no ties to the official Festival de Cannes. [I also remember another filmmaker crowing about participating in Cannes. It turned out his film was merely hawked at one of those exhibitor markets that are corollary to festivals such as Cannes, and which anyone with a film to sell can join.]
There is a certain species of person who cannot resist the impulse to inflate their accomplishments. You know them. You have seen them. Perhaps you have even, in a moment of weakness, succumbed to this temptation yourself. In faculty lounges, in alumni reunions, in the halcyon corners of cocktail parties, they hold court with grand pronouncements of triumphs often unverifiable. And yet, their audience nods along, some in admiration, others in veiled amusement. The Bisaya word for this is “hambog,” a label so easily affixed to anyone whose self-confidence tips, ever so slightly, into boastfulness. But what compels people to do this? What primal need is satisfied by exaggeration?
Psychologists might tell us that this tendency stems from a deep-seated insecurity. Alfred Adler, that old rival of Freud, would perhaps explain this as a classic case of overcompensation—a defense mechanism meant to mask one’s private feelings of inadequacy. A struggling writer, unpublished but desperate for literary recognition, might inflate the significance of a rejected manuscript by calling it “highly praised” by editors who merely sent a polite rejection letter. A businessman, teetering on the edge of financial ruin, might exaggerate his recent successes to maintain an air of affluence. It is a survival tactic, a way of keeping up appearances, because in a society that equates achievement with worth, to be seen as ordinary is to be invisible.
And yet, there is also something deeper, something almost cultural at play. The Filipino psyche, shaped by centuries of colonial rule and the relentless pursuit of social mobility, is uniquely susceptible to the need for validation. Our histories are punctuated by stories of social climbing—by ilustrados who flaunted their European education, by politicians whose surnames become brands, by socialites who name-drop the hacenderos of old, or by so-called historians who has no published historiography but whose claim to fame is alleged kinship to every single important family in the province. To declare one’s success, even in embellished form, is to assert one’s place in the hierarchy, to ward off the creeping dread of being relegated to irrelevance.
There is, too, the simple seduction of storytelling. The line between truth and embellishment is often blurred, especially in a culture that values wit and oratory. To tell a good story—one that elicits gasps of admiration or knowing chuckles—is often more important than strict adherence to fact. This is why a provincial mayor’s minor government project might be presented as “nationwide reform,” or why an academic’s modest conference paper might be rebranded as “groundbreaking research.” The mythologizing of the self is an art form, honed over years of careful curation. And in the age of social media, where the highlight reel of one’s life is curated for public consumption, the temptation to embellish becomes all the more irresistible.
But what does this do to the people who practice it? If a lie is told often enough, does it not become a kind of truth? There is an inherent danger in believing one’s own exaggerations. To convince oneself that an exaggerated accomplishment is real is to become complacent, to cease striving for genuine achievement. This is why a society that rewards the illusion of success often stagnates. When merit is measured not by substance but by perception, we create a culture of empty accolades, of self-proclaimed experts who have mastered the art of self-promotion but lack the depth of true expertise.
The antidote to this, I think, is a return to quiet competence, to an ethic of humility that values work over recognition. Some of the greatest minds in history have been those who labored in obscurity, more concerned with the quality of their work than with the applause it might garner. The true measure of one’s worth is not found in how loudly one declares one’s success, but in the silent impact one leaves in the wake of genuine accomplishment.
Labels: life, psychology
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
GO TO OLDER POSTS
