Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
5:06 PM |
Why Are We All Still Waiting to Live Our Dreams?
“Why are we all still waiting to live our dreams? ... Our best days are piling up in the rearview, and that hope that keeps us going, it’s wearing down to the bone. Some of us are losing people we love, and just like that, any day now, that turns into too late, gone forever. Because every day that we're not living for now, right now, we’re waiting around dying. One empty promise at a time. I’m not waiting around anymore, and neither should you. The time is now. Regret’s a killer worse than death.”
Steven Yeun: “From my perspective, I’m just doing me. I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to do work that feels pulled from my place. I carry with me so many things — including being Korean and Asian American. I’m glad and happy that I might be contributing to a larger, deeper understanding of who we are to each other. But I’m really just trying to play my part as well as I can. I’m still processing what this is. That’s literally where I’m at: What is this? Especially with the backdrop of this last year. I’m still figuring out what’s happened to us and where we’re at. [The year] has torn a veil off for all of us — removed a layer. In some ways, I’m thankful for that. But I recognize how scary that is. A lot of institutions got seen for what they were — the brokenness for what they were. I’m glad for it, because I think we can rebuild. But I recognize a lot of people are scared, because the safety we thought was there is also revealed to not be what we thought it was. It’s a super f—ed up year. So these are cool things — this nomination — I’m thrilled and I’m so blessed that I get to experience this. But I’m trying to hold both things at once, and it’s difficult.”
Riz Ahmed: “To be honest, I just feel like however people can find themselves in this moment, however they can find a connection to this moment, is beautiful to me. Some people may connect to the fact that it’s the first Muslim, some people might say British-Pakistani, some people might say first person from Wembley in London. What matters to me is that these moments of celebration, these moments of collective recognition, are actually moments where as many people as possible can recognize themselves in it. And so that’s all that really matters to me. And I’m really pleased if this is an opportunity for more people than ever before to connect to a moment like this.”
1:52 PM |
"Look at the Root Cause, We Can't Be Doing Cleanups All Our Lives."
My sobering choice quote from Deia Schlosberg's The Story of Plastic (2020): "Day in, day out, there's cleaning operations going on. It's unending. You can do cleanups and the problem will not go away. You have to look at the root cause, we can't be doing cleanups all our lives."
The documentary is screening for free until July 30. Here's the link.
Choice quote from Lav Diaz from last night’s screening of Chuck Escasa’s Jingle Lang sa Pahina [2012]. This gave me new resolve about cultural work in the midst of the darkness I was wallowing in since the lockdown.
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so..."
~ Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego in Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava's Ratatouille (2007)
“Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium.”
~ Roy Scranton, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization
I thought of Ingmar Bergman's words when I saw this sequence. To paraphrase Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder's glorious take-down of Hollywood (and La La Land's dark cousin), film does not need words, it needs faces.
“I am very moved by the idea that you can meet someone in your life who transforms you and sets you onto a path that is going to finally enable you to be the person you always dreamed of being, but ultimately, you need to go on that path alone.”
“As long as we desire, we can do without happiness: we expect to achieve it. If happiness fails to come, hope persists, and the charm of illusion lasts as long as the passion that causes it. So this condition is sufficient in itself, and the anxiety it inflicts is a sort of enjoyment that compensates for reality … Woe to him who has nothing left to desire… We enjoy less what we obtain than what we hope for, and we are happy only before being happy.”
~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Julie or The New Heloise, Part 6, Letter VII
“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”
“Ang tanong ... ay kung may lubos tayong kakayahan na ipaalam sa iba kung gaano natin sila kamahal. Ang daling sabihin na, siyempre naman, sabihin mo lang. Pero kung iisipin mo, wala namang pag-ibig na may tamang sukat at nakukulong ng panahon. Paano nga ba? Sapat na ba iyong, o, ngayong alas kuwatro y medya ng hapon, mahal kita hanggang dulo ng kalawakan? Kahit baliktarin mo. Maaari mo bang malaman kung gaano ka kamahal ng isang tao? Alam siguro natin na tayo ay minamahal, and we can have assumptions. Ngunit kung paano at hanggang saan parang ang hirap isipin. Meron pa bang mas bibigat sa katagang, kung alam lang nila? Kung alam mo lang... For how can we measure something that is greater than us?”
“There are always men enraged by women’s autonomy, whether women are starring in a comedy reboot or Thelma & Louise; playing rock or video games; demanding their reproductive rights; running for president; or, you know, doing anything that some men don’t want them to do. The depths of this rage betray a deep fear about a loss of male power that’s been central to the cultural, social and political landscape for decades.”
~ The New York Times' Manohla Dargis on the male rage for the Ghostbusters remake
Over at the Philippine Star, Jonty Cruz has done a fine tribute to Luis Joaquin Katigbak -- a good friend, and magnificent author of Happy Endings and Dear Distance -- by cobbling together snippets from Luis' Young Star columns. They are a revelation of the kind of man Luis was -- fantastic writer, music lover, Gen X philosopher, good friend. Here are my favourites:
My idea of teen life had been shaped not so much by actual living as by repeated viewings of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
I got my high school degree from Philippine Science High and my college degree from UP Diliman, but in many ways, what I really am is a graduate of the University of Booksale.
I have too many books, basically. It’s a fact I’ve come to accept over the years. And yet, to this day, not a week goes by when I don’t visit a Booksale or three. Beyond the gratification from the books themselves, the visits impart pleasures of their own. It’s a little bit like gambling, it’s a little bit like hunting. You might find a book you remember fondly from your childhood, or a novel you never knew you really wanted to read. Or you could waste an hour and find nothing more compelling than Sudoku for Dummies or a breastfeeding manual.
The act of reading is where (one first learns how to write), as a form of conversation: the reader is constantly reacting to the words he is reading, always questioning or contemplating or accepting. Whether one is reading fact or fiction, autobiography or poetry, one meets the words on a page with words of one’s own.
What is the purpose of music? If someone asked me that outright, I would feel like doing several things, one after the other: shaking my head, sighing, and, ultimately, ignoring the question altogether. Music needs no purpose, no justification. If we are lucky, it is made — or we make it. At its best, in different ways, it heals and it helps. It reminds us that we are human.
Eraserheads was the band we could all agree on, regardless of social status or even previously declared preferences; theirs were the songs we would all know by heart.
When we talk about 1996, we talk about being too young to know any better. We talk about loves that sparked and flamed and guttered out, about passions that seemed so certain then and seem nothing more than silly now.
Like any secret language, music is a shortcut to friendship. I have waxed ecstatic about The Sundays and Aimee Mann with utter strangers in an HMV, and once gave one of my year-end music mixes to someone I had just met in a bar — who later became one of my best friends. It also deepens already existent friendships: I loved two of my friends a little more after I had long conversations with them about the exquisite neon-lit melancholy of The Blue Nile.
Hip-hop got me through the worst breakup of my life. It’s hard to feel too sorry for yourself when you’re blasting Jay-Z’s “‘The Blueprint.”
Never pretend to be familiar with an artist you don’t know.
Dancing is always a good idea. Unless you have convinced yourself that it is a bad idea.
When you fall for someone, there is music. Not literally, not at that precise moment — unless you happen to be in a club or at a gig when it happens — but there will be a song, or songs, or a specific artist, who will dominate your headspace at the same time your heart is doing somersaults. You will end up listening to this music to the point of obsession, as you relive initial thrills and run headlong through magical possibilities.
I have never dated a girl whose taste in music I abhorred, or who found mine entirely disagreeable. It’s probably a bad idea, more so than dating someone with incompatible taste in books or cinema.
Devastating is not too strong a word for the right combination of song and girl.
I’ve been in relationships with people with different beliefs, and it was rarely ever a deal-breaker, but I think in some sense what people who throw these Big Questions around are trying to figure out is: Will we be moving in the same direction together?
In truth, one year is pretty much the same as another, and then we die. Hahaha, just kidding! Not about the dying part though. We’re totally going to die. That’s going to happen, and sooner than you think. I blame carbs.
We like to believe that we are the sum total of our choices. Perhaps the idea gives us a sense of control, of having a deliberate shape to our lives. This belief is adhered to most fervently when it comes to the choices we make regarding what we watch, what we listen to, what we read, what we eat, and what we wear. In short, what we like (and what we Like). In another time, that would have been trivia. In our day, it constitutes our identity.
Assembling a self is a lifelong process. We make do with the materials at hand. (Sometimes even that doesn’t account for it: Why is my brother a businessman/triathlete while I’m a writer/sloth? We grew up in the same circumstances. We were even both fat comics readers, once upon a time. I suppose only I had the resolve to stay the course.) What we like, or say we like, can serve as guides of a sort — “signposts in a strange land,” to quote Walker Percy again — but we musn’t mistake the signs for the terrain.
Whatever you do, enjoy being young, free, and relatively unburdened in the early 21st century, and draw both solace and regret from the fact that these days will never, ever, come around again.
Your own book: there’s nothing quite like it. Seeing the cover, emblazoned with the title you came up with; reading your name on the front and the spine; and the sheer fact of it in your hands, whether in print or tablet form — it’s something almost all writers, whether aspiring or experienced, dream about.
Creators are monsters. We’re all monsters too, in one way or another. The slaying of monsters is an honorable endeavor with a long history. Let us keep in mind, though, that knowledge is the best sword for such an endeavor, and that the monsters we know best are ourselves.
Writers are liars, as many have observed, but they don’t literally mean that we cheat on our taxes or impersonate policemen for fun. We present a scenario that more clearly communicates the idea that we want to come across — and, if we are worth anything, it is a strong idea, a good idea — rather than cobble together unconvincing attitudes or unedited minutiae.
All I can tell you is this: as much as possible, think about what you’re doing. Think beyond this moment, and beyond the hall of mirrors that is your own skull. Again, in the absence of time machines, we are all traveling in one direction — and no, that was not a reference to the boy band, but thanks for the spontaneous applause — and we all only have so much time. Seeing as how you’re eating up the same amount of hours anyway, you might as well use them in as intelligent and humane and informed a manner as possible. Don’t try to make yourself feel better by assuring yourself that other people don’t know what they’re doing — they don’t, but neither do you, really. Don’t whine. Don’t try to be cool. Don’t be that guy — or that girl.
We are both always and never alone — you carry your influences, you have mentors in the flesh or on the page, you make connections or you don’t — but writing is done by facing the blankness and overcoming it with your own words. That’s where the stress and the satisfaction are.
In conclusion, I would like to leave you with the words that I told myself when I went from kindergarten to grade school, and when I finished high school and entered college, and when I finally graduated from college and started working. These are words that have always been proven true: “This is when the trouble starts.”
1:40 AM |
Music as a Means of Seeing Inside Ourselves
“Our culture deliberately drives people to focus outside [of themselves] so it can control them. Because if you can make people slaves of consumerism, slaves of success, slaves of status, you can manipulate them completely. So the role of music in our culture is crucial because music is the art most sacredly capable of helping us get in touch with the deepest passions and compassions, and the deepest understanding of our ourselves.”
~ religious scholar Andrew Harvey to pianist Seymour Bernstein in Ethan Hawke’s Seymour: An Introduction (2014)
Outside Rocky Balboa's restaurant, before an open van.
Rocky Balboa: I told you before, I just don't want to do it, kid.
Adonis Creed: That's cool, but maybe you could just give me some drills.
Rocky Balboa: Drills?
Adonis Creed: Yeah, things I could do on my own.
Rocky Balboa: You don't stop, do you. You're like a woodpecker. My God. (After a beat.) All right, I got a few. But that's it, okay?
Adonis Creed: Of course.
Rocky Balboa:(Sits down to write on a bond paper.) Five rounds of jumping rope... Three rounds on each of the bags... When you get to the heavy bag, just don't keep throwing your hands because you can hurt them. It's also about using your legs, all right? And then five rounds of ... shadow...
Adonis Creed: "O.W."
Rocky Balboa: There's a "W." Boxing.
Adonis Creed: Boxing, yeah.
Rocky Balboa: And that's it. (After a beat.) All right?
Adonis Creed: Yeah.
Rocky Balboa:(Hands Creed the paper.) There you go.
Adonis Creed: That's perfect. (Takes a photo of the paper with his phone.)
Rocky Balboa: Good luck with that.
Adonis Creed: All right, got it. Hold that real quick. (Hands Rocky both paper and phone. Gets the bag of food purchases from Rocky's van and hands it to the waiting assistant while Rocky looks on. He takes back the phone but not the paper from Rocky.) All right, man. (He starts walking away.)
Rocky Balboa: Wait, you don't want this?
Adonis Creed:(Holds up the phone as he walks.) I got it right here.
Rocky Balboa: What if you lose that thing or it breaks?
Adonis Creed: It's already up in the cloud.
Rocky Balboa:(Looks up, bewildered.) What cloud? What cloud?
“Our mythology is rich. Everything in our world—plants and animals, the sun and stars—has a voice. On our map of the universe, we called the East ‘the space without time.’ We had a Paleolithic skill set yet a boundless imagination. They both existed with a high degree of social conformity. Long after we dispersed, we preserved our beliefs. One precious thing, to me, about the language is its vocabulary of words for love. They change according to the age, sex, and kinship of the speakers and the nature of the emotion. There are things you can’t say in Spanish.”
~ Keyuk, the last speaker of the Selk’nam language
2:01 PM |
Scene From Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Mrs. Hubbard:(Butting in) And I was nearest to his murderer.
M. Bianchi: You mean you saw the man? You can identify the murderer?
Mrs. Hubbard: I mean nothing of the kind. I mean there was a man in my compartment last night. It was pitch dark of course and my eyes were closed in terror…
M. Bianchi: Then how did you know it was a man?
Mrs. Hubbard: Because I have enjoyed very warm relationships with both my husbands.
"What disturbed me, however, was quite a number of callers wondering what was so wrong with martial law. They had heard from their parents and/ or other 'oldies' that people were disciplined during that time, rice was cheap, gasoline was cheap, movies were cheap, the poor were less poor, life was generally easier. According to his parents, one said, prices were fairly stable then, the price of beer didn’t stray very far from the price of rice the way it did now. I said that was true in part. But underneath that lay one of the greatest deceptions of martial law. If art, as Picasso said, was the lie that revealed the truth, then martial law was the truth that revealed the lie. True enough, food was more plentiful then, things were much cheaper then, inflation wasn’t rife then. But all that was paid for by the sacrifice of future generations. Specifically, all that was paid for by the billions of dollars in loans Ferdinand Marcos got from foreign banks, much of which he, his family, and his cronies stole. Which debt doomed future generations to servitude: Which debt we are paying for now. Which debt our children and their children will be paying for tomorrow. Indeed it was paid for by the sacrifice of the generation of that time. The small comforts came alongside huge discomforts, or indeed epic deprivations: the deprivation of lives, the deprivation of freedom, and the deprivation of hope. Martial law robbed this country of its wealth: It was during that time that this country’s forests disappeared. Martial law robbed this country of many of its best and brightest: It was during that time that the youth who had taken to the hills were killed. Martial law robbed this country of its future: It was during that time that the country embarked on the path to becoming the sick man of Asia, subsequently to be left behind while the rest of the continent advanced."
"[We are] still drenched in cultural homophobia, so that ordinary people who individually like the gay people around them, are often homophobic, and oppose gay marriage for homophobic reasons. This doesn’t mean that those people aren’t very likely nice, pleasant people in a multitude of ways, who would happily sit down with their gay friends and neighbors. But they are homophobic, and when they act on their homophobia in the public space so as to try to limit the rights of gay people, it is perfectly fair game to call them out on it. Saying that someone is homophobic is not necessarily to imply that they individually hate and fear gay people. It is to imply that they are prejudiced (whether because of principle, culture, or active detestation) against gay people in ways that lead them passively or actively to oppose gay people participating fully, with full rights, in public and private life."
~ Henry Farrell, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University
[Full article here]
5:11 PM |
What I feel most of the time is the sense of ridiculousness to everything...
