Saturday, December 07, 2013
10:22 PM |
From the Preface of Celebration...
Celebration began in 2008, a few years before the golden anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop, when many among the former fellows of the workshop felt that a commemorative anthology was more than fitting for the occasion. It was a testament, in book form, to how the workshop has shaped much of the national literature. But only upon the urging of Silliman University President Ben S. Malayang III in 2011 did the volume finally take shape, however, when he suggested that a special issue of
Sands & Coral could serve as that commemorative anthology.
The first thing that the editors did was to go over the list of alumni of the workshop, which was a considerable lot to consider, given what is easily an illustrious list of names culled from five decades of Philippine writing, numbering among them a few National Artists for Literature, many Palanca Hall of Famers, among others.
From among that number, we sent out invitations to contribute to those whom we felt were still prolific in the craft, asking each one to follow only one criterion for their own selection of their works to submit to the book project: they had to send in what they felt was best suited for an anthology celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.
The response was overwhelming. The works that we eventually received gave a variety of definitions to our broad imperative: quite a number sent in new works of fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction, and literary criticism, even sequential literature (in other words, “comics”); many sent in what they considered to be their best works in their outputs as writers; others sent in poems, stories, and essays dedicated to Edilberto and Edith Tiempo; still others sent in what could be called “memory pieces” of their stay in Dumaguete.
The final roster of 142 writers include Gémino H. Abad, Ceres Y.C. Abanil, Mariane A.R.T. Abuan, Reinerio A. Alba, Dean Francis Alfar, Estrella Alfon, Merlie Alunan, Isolde Amante, Alma Anonas-Carpio, Gina Apostol, César Ruìz Aquino, Carlomar Arcangel, Francisco Arcellana, Juaniyo Arcellana, Carlos Ojeda Aureus, Isabela Banzon, Romeo Baquiran Jr., F.H. Batacan, Ronald Baytan, John Bengan, Herminio S. Beltran Jr., Merlinda Bobis, Rica Bolipata-Santos, Lilledeshan Bose, Rofel G. Brion, Douglas Candano, Jose Wendell Capili, Miro Frances D. Capili, F. Jordan Carnice, Shane Carreon, Ian Rosales Casocot, Erwin Castillo, Albert B. Casuga, Mark Anthony Cayanan, Luna Sicat Cleto, Mikael de Lara Co, Elsa Victoria Martinez Coscolluela, Vincent Coscolluela, Conchitina Cruz, Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz, Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Ricardo de Ungria, Lourd de Veyra, Nino Soria de Veyra, Noelle Leslie de la Cruz, Ruel S. De Vera, Ida Anita del Mundo, Daryll Jane Delgado, Leoncio P. Deriada, Ophelia A. Dimalanta, Jacob Walse Dominguez, Simeon Dumdum Jr., Indira Endaya, Antonio Enriquez, Marjorie Evasco, Aida Rivera Ford, Mo Francisco, Diana T. Gamalinda, Eric Gamalinda, J. Neil C. Garcia, Jeneen Garcia, Eugene Gloria, Christine Godinez-Ortega, Ma. Romina M. Gonzalez, Vicente Garcia Groyon III, Nerisa del Carmen Guevara, Ramil Digal Gulle, Ken Ishikawa, Carljoe Javier, Nick Joaquin, Ana Maria Katigbak-Lacuesta, Rebecca E. Khan, Marne L. Kilates, Anthony L. Kintanar, Francesca Kwe, Marie La Viña, Angelo R. Lacuesta, Marra PL Lanot, Jose Lansang Jr., Gian Lao, Susan S. Lara, Gabriela Lee, Ricky Lee, AnLi Llego, Francis Macansantos, Monica Macansantos, Priscilla Supnet Macansantos, Petra Magno, Connie Jan Maraan, Edgar B. Maranan, Sasha Martinez, Maningning Miclat, Grace R. Monte de Ramos, V.E. Carmelo D. Nadera Jr., James Iain Neish, Wilfrido Nolledo, Michael U. Obenieta, Charlson Ong, Charisse-Fuschia A. Paderna, R. Torres Pandan, Gerard Pareja, Allan Pastrana, Bj Patino, Maria Elena Paterno, Ma. Elena L. Paulma, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Jose Victor Peñaranda, Padmapani L. Perez, Nicholas B. Pichay, Kerima Polotan, Allan Popa, Baryon Tensor Posadas, Danton Remoto, Danilo Francisco Reyes, Jun Cruz Reyes, Dinah Roma-Santuri, Ninotchka Rosca, Allen Samsuya, Anna Felicia C. Sanchez, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, Tara FT Sering, Oscar Serquina Jr., Vincenz Serrano, Myrza Sison, Lakambini Sitoy, Angelo Suarez, Artemio M. Tadena, Anthony L. Tan, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Edith L. Tiempo, May Tobias-Papa, Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas, Joel M. Toledo, Linda Ty-Casper, Naya Valdellon, Janet B. Villa, Martin Villanueva, Bobby Flores Villasis, Niccolo Vitug, Januar Ernesto Yap, Ernesto Superal Yee, and Alfred Yuson.
There was, finally, no one theme that emerged: the writers wrote about domestic disputes, and epiphanies gained from travel, and gender reassignment surgery, and suggestions of the horror of pedophilia, and the blossoming of first love, and the travails of Manny Pacquiao. The works ranged from traditional narratives to literary experimentations of the first order.
Susan S. Lara sent in a remembrance she wrote of Mom Edith—a piece that she had read for the memorial of the National Artist at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2011, after Dr. Tiempo passed away. Padmapani Perez, on the other hand, sent in an essay that recalled her encounter with Mom Edith years after her own workshop fellowship, as they ruminate over a short poem Padma had written and had asked Dr. Tiempo to read.
But the workshop was not only about the Tiempos. Part of the magic of the Dumaguete workshop is how it has come to be a good mix of all the literary influences in the Philippines—not merely something with a Silliman University mark (which is a tradition steeped in New Criticism), but also the mark of the kinds of writing that was coming out of the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, the University of Santo Tomas, Far Eastern University, San Carlos University in Cebu, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, among many others—Dumaguete’s panelists, after all, were coming from all of these academic centers of writing. So there are pieces celebrating some of these mentors, most notably with J. Neil C. Garcia’s essay dissecting the influence of Tomasian poet Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta on his poetics.
What is also interesting are the works included in this volume written by mentors who have long since passed on. We have included long-lost stories and poems by Edilberto Tiempo, Edith Tiempo, Francisco Arcellana, and Wilfrido Nolledo. Courtesy of the estate of Nick Joaquin, we are including a rousing essay about the strange visit of The Beatles to Manila in the 1960s, which paints a perfect portrait of the Philippines from that decade. We have also included works by the late Jose Lansang Jr., Artemio Tadena, Ernesto Superal Yee, Diana Gamalinda, Maningning Miclat, among others.
In the end, this book becomes, indeed, a “celebration” of the varieties of literary expression fostered by the Dumaguete experience of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. It has been fifty years, but the dream and the legacy of the Tiempos will live on forever.
Sands & Coral 2011-2013
and the special literary issue of the Silliman Journal
are now available for P500 each. Please email us at silliman.cwc@gmail.com for orders and queries. Please deposit the amount + shipping cost over LBC (to be determined over email correspondence, depending on the number of copies) to the BPI bank account of Prof. Warlito Caturay Jr. at 1086-1345-38. Please include in your email a scanned copy of the deposit slip. Labels: art and culture, books, dumaguete, dumaguete writers workshop, philippine literature, silliman, writers, writing
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Friday, November 29, 2013
It is not easy to curate a photography exhibit. Then again, it is not easy to curate anything at all—the careful selection of available works, the creation of a cohesive storyline and theme, the building up of a presentation that best highlights the artistry on display—but it is more so, I think, with photography. As an art form, its biggest challenge is that it is easily the most widespread and democratic, not really good things: because in a world drowning in a glut of images, selecting that which finally transcends towards art—enough to merit a show—is a difficult high wire act. But curate I did, anyway.
I guess it is easier, however, when the photographs one is curating happen to come from two young artists I know whose raw talents I first took notice of only a few years ago when they were still students at Silliman University. They had an arresting zest to their works that became all the more profound as they further developed their skills. I have always considered these two Silliman’s equivalent to the burning talent of Foundation University’s Hersley-Ven Casero. Of course, the past years have only seen more of an unfolding of their quiet photographic genius—and so finally, under the auspices of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, both have finally been given their own show. Finally: Urich and Henz—camera boys with that all too rare “eye”—are ready for the unveiling.
This debut exhibition of two of Dumaguete’s best young photographers, Urich Calumpang and Henzonly Alboroto, easily shows the muscle of their training with the Silliman University Camera Club, under the stewardship of founder Greg Morales. For their first photography exhibit, Mr. Calumpang and Mr. Alboroto explore the peculiar shadows and the interesting geometries of life in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. As avid street photographers, I thought these would play up to their strengths—but it was also fiesta season in the city, and what’s best to show a love for Dumaguete than to showcase it in art.
For Mr. Calumpang, who considers himself a minimalist street photographer by heart, the photography of everyday things that most people take for granted interests most his sensibilities as a chronicler with a camera—and for this debut exhibition, he has gone to the streets to capture everyday symmetry and balance, light and shadows, lines and details, hues and the human element, mostly with his iPhone camera. Mr. Calumpang’s fascination for the extraordinary and the symmetrical in the common defines him best as a photographer—and you see that in his shots of architectural detail, of lines, of geometrical shapes. All these from everyday objects and scenes, of course. This appeals to the obsessive compulsive in him.
For Mr. Alboroto, a photographic sensibility shaped by the works of such people as Henri Cartier Bresson, Steve McCurry, Matt Stuart, and Hersley-Ven Casero, has given him a chance to explore the personal through the things that surround him and captures his camera-ready imagination. For him, his photography—even if in the service of street photography or photojournalism—is, most of all, a vessel for self-expression, for mapping human emotions, which is why there is a certain tenderness that pervades all his works, even ones that is starkly photojournalistic.
In both their works, Dumaguete’s heart has been perfectly captured.
Which seems perfect and ironic at the same time because, though both spiritual citizens of the city, both are actually strangers to it. At least in terms of origin. Urich Calumpang, after all, hails from Tanjay, Negros Oriental. He graduated from Silliman University with a degree in management in 2012. Currently a Dumaguete-based freelance events photographer, his works have been published in international, national, and local newspapers and magazines, including
Newsweek Asia, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines Star, The Freeman, Dumaguete MetroPost, and
The Negros Chronicle. He has given lectures on photojournalism for the Department of Education and several private schools in Dumaguete City, and he is currently the official photographer of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee.
Henzonly Hope Alboroto, on the other hand, hails from Tagbilaran, Bohol. He graduated from Silliman University with a degree in mass communication in 2013. Currently, he works as a network marketer and a freelance graphic designer. He does mainly street photography and photojournalism, and some of his works have been featured in Yahoo! News,
Sun.Star Daily, and professional photography blogs.
Catch their exhibition opening on November 29, Friday, at 5:30 PM at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium Foyer Gallery. The exhibit, open to the public, runs until December 17.
Labels: art and culture, cultural affairs committee, dumaguete, life, photography, silliman
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Tuesday, November 26, 2013
11:01 PM |
Not a Vacation
I had a small accident last Saturday morning, which sprained my right ankle pretty badly, I was advised by the doctor to get some bed rest "and defy gravity." Dr. Yap, of course, was talking about my swollen foot. So there I was in bed, trapped in a cellular dead zone of an apartment without wifi, surrounded by bags of groceries my brother mercifully bought for me -- in pain, immobile, unconnected, unable to do work. This was not the vacation I was longing for. It got me thinking: what kind of a life am I leading that it had to take an accident to get me to rest? Things will have to change.
Labels: life
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Friday, November 22, 2013
1:25 PM |
I Love Dumaguete
There seems to be some newfound love for free-standing, lighted up letter signs in Dumaguete these days. For what seemed like a long time, you could find one at the very heart of the Rizal Boulevard, right before the line of
tempurahans—a proclamation of such electric presence that read: “I [Heart] Dumaguete.” With the swirling Visayan Sea and Siquijor as backdrop, it had proven both romantic and misplaced—but nonetheless, you could see people flock to it in a rage of selfies to be posted in a thousand Facebook walls. The ante was raised even higher by the Dumaguete Tourism Office when it planted a similar sign at Quezon Park—this time a multicolored version that expunged the singular and individualistic consideration of the first sign with the more collective and emphatic, “We [Heart] Dumaguete.”
All and good—because who doesn’t love Dumaguete?
It has its enduring charms that make it a unique place in comparison to other Philippine cities of its size. And it has always renewed itself by the influx of people from other places who come to visit, get beguiled, and then stay. And even if they don’t stay for long, they always come back to this place whose very name—“dagit”—suggests the beguilement of having been captured.
I asked two former students—and friends—why they keep coming back. Even if graduation from Silliman University meant they have gone through the portals and are now living lives somewhere else, secure in careers that keep them busy.
Michelle Eve de Guzman now works for Cebu Pacific, a job which takes her everywhere in the country. But she finds time, somehow, coming back here regularly, for a spell. “I love Dumaguete because it is where I discovered who I am, what I want, what I can do,” she told me. “The city has a certain vibe that encourages people, students in particular, to act on their yearning for adventure, culture and nature. When I was a college student in Dumaguete, everything was possible; everything was within reach.
“Now that I have graduated and live in Manila, I keep coming back to Dumaguete. It’s a place in the world where I am happy, where I can breathe and rest. I can hop on a motorcycle and head for the nearest beach. I can appreciate art while checking out the newest restaurant in town.
“When I was younger, my energies were extended outward, to the world. Now that I’m more grown up, I take care of myself and my peace of mind. In both these phases in my life—Dumaguete.”
As for Dok Timbancaya, his work as an enterprising events organizer for EVO Party Solutions is making him one of the most sought-after party planner in the Visayas and Palawan. He is our Tim Yap, minus the unnecessary frills—somebody with a tremendous sense of party, but knows enough to make the party and not the personality the event itself. He is the ninja of the Visayan party world, but even so, he manufactures all sorts of excuses to keep coming back to Dumaguete—a place that thoroughly sustains him.
“The best touristic activity in Dumaguete is actually living in it,” Dok tells me, “because after two weeks, you may want to stop being a tourist and start becoming a resident instead. The real attractions in Dumaguete are not the tourist spots but the people it.
“Dumaguete is a great community, and everyone comes off with this educated air. It may be a world all its own but it is by no means backward. It is actually a melting pot of culture and interests, which is an ideal intellectual venue for anyone who’s not interested in maintaining useless facades. I’ve met the most talented people in Dumaguete—from the arts, to literature, to performance, all the way down to computer engineers—they’re all there. Most of Dumaguete has refined taste.
“When it comes to having fun and partying, I don’t know of any other cities that know how to have create merry havoc like the people of Dumaguete—but when it needs to be serious, they can be. People here are more real and honest—and nice. Dumaguete is intellectually progressive and is a great place to grow up in. Dumaguete built me and I will always give back to this community that raised me. The city has taught me these values, and I want to share what I’ve acquired in my successes and help it grow more and improve. I want to give it things that we can be proud of. Dumaguete is my happy place. I feel whole here.
And Dok, ever the party wizard, goes on to say: “It’s not about keeping up with the scene. This is about how we do it here in Dumzville!”
Dumzville—which is how the young of the city happily call their beloved city. Happy fiesta, Dumaguete. And may the love of people for you carry you on for a hundred years more.
Dok's EVO Party Solutions is presenting the DUMA Electrique Fest for the 2013 Sandurot Foam and Color Festival tonight, November 22, at Hayahay in time for the Dumaguete fiesta. Grab your tickets and enjoy music by DJ Miki Taka, Clyde Harris, Jack Stone, Rich Rubillar, Ryan Sanchez, Phil Oncenes, Zachary Norman, Robin Right, MC Phat Jay, Team Centerline, and Team Gore!
Labels: dumaguete, friends, negros, party
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Tuesday, November 19, 2013
12:06 AM |
Chronicling a Cultural History
On November 21, a Thursday, we are going to launch the coffee table book,
Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman University, at 5:30 PM at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium Foyer. In attendance will be some of Silliman University’s cultural icons over the years, including theatre actor Junix Inocian, dancer Lucy Jumawan, writers Myrna Pena-Reyes, Lorna Makil, and Cesar Ruiz Aquino, theatre producer Luna Inocian, animator Ramon del Prado, painter Kitty Taniguchi, among others. The event culminates a year of relentless research and writing for many of us in Silliman, under the generous sponsorship of Julio Sy Jr. and the Tao Foundation. It will be a signal for me, at the very least, to finally get some proper sleep.
But I am reminded of what Albert Camus once said: “Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.” It was this clear-eyed perspective of what culture means to society that has kept me going the past year, and kept me sane as I—and editors Warlito Caturay Jr., Sherro Lee Lagrimas, Diomar Abrio, Annabelle Lee-Adriano, Leo Mamicpic, Moses Joshua Atega, Ron Jacob Calumpang, among others—struggled with a project that has consumed us through the best of times and, alas, also through the worst of times.
In 2009, two years before the Cultural Affairs Committee of Silliman University celebrated its golden anniversary, I made an innocent suggestion to the organization that perhaps we needed to take an ambitious step in our commemoration of the 50th anniversary and spearhead a project that would document the rich cultural history of this university.
“Why not make a coffee table?” I said. Alas, in life, the one who speaks out almost always gets the painstaking job of making true what has been hatched in words.
Needless to say, I got the chief editor’s job of compiling, and overseeing, a work of putting together in one volume not just fifty years of the CAC, but also a hundred years of culture and the arts in Silliman. Would I have said anything in 2009 if I had known what it would be actually like to undertake a project like this? Well, if I had only known, I would have quaked in my shoes: but I
didn’t know, and for the most part, an ignorance of what was entailed indeed ironically gave birth to this book.
This book, indeed, constitutes a collective act of remembering. As a work of cultural history, it contains significant fragments of the past fifty years and even more—assembling a cultural mosaic of the locale that paints an unfolding story: over all these years, it continues to shape, instruct, and inspire generations of artists and cultural workers in its own being and becoming. This book, in that sense, thus becomes a work that also invites a necessary conversation involving retrospection and looking forward. Hence, we have titled this book
Handulantaw—a deliberate connection of the Cebuano words
handum/handumanan (“reminisce/keepsake”) and
lantaw (“looking forward”). The
handum part of that spirit is evident enough in this project. The volume is a work that is devoted, first and foremost, to chronicle two things…
First, we aimed to chart, with the persistence of ferocious researchers and archivists, the vibrant history of culture and the arts in Silliman since its founding by Presbyterian missionaries in 1901, when it was still known as Silliman Institute. This includes the ripples that history has made not only in Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental, but also the Philippines and the world. The undertaking of this task has not been easy, however. Much of the data and artifacts of this specifically local cultural history remains unarchived, uncatalogued, and unresearched, which meant we had to search and sift through hundreds of photographs, programs, memoranda, and so on and so forth that have lain undisturbed and covered with dust in countless rotting photo albums and scrapbooks in many houses as well as in dim storage rooms around campus. A herculean task, indeed—for how to shape all of that which we have gathered into a coherent story of Silliman’s cultural tradition? For the most part, what we have also done is to engage in conversation many of the people who have contributed to that cultural tradition over the course of the last century, their voices constituting a veritable oral history of art and culture in Silliman University. We caught National Artist for Film Eddie Romero in his house in Quezon City early in 2013, for example—just a few short months before he died. His story and the stories of Silliman’s other artists and cultural workers were more than ripe for this project. We felt it was about time to record these before many of the bearers of the cultural narrative, too, passed away.
Second, we have compiled a work (which includes essays, profiles, photographs, and graphic design by some of the best writers and artists working in the university and Dumaguete today) that celebrates the first fifty years of Silliman’s Cultural Affairs Committee, which is otherwise more popularly (and affectionately) referred to by its acronym. The salute to the CAC is fitting: it has shaped much of the university’s artistic history since 1962 into a steadfast platform of culture that has fostered local talents and showcased the best of national and international performing groups—inevitably making Dumaguete arguably the Cultural Center of Southern Philippines.
We finally started work on this book in 2012. The idea sprang from what we had perceived to be a simple need to celebrate, in a lasting way, the golden anniversary of the CAC. Fifty years, after all, is a landmark of admirable persistence for any institution: that meant a continuity of its goals, and an unending belief of what it could achieve to make the arts an integral part of the identity and transformation of the community.
Handulantaw was conceived to address an absence since much of the cultural history of this country has involved telling the story mostly from the point-of-view of Manila, the national capital. It is a narrative that paints, if unintentionally, a mute canvas of the cultural wellsprings that exist elsewhere in the country. The way our popular media and our monographs constitute the story of national art, it seems as if almost every artist and artistic production has to be located in the jungles of the capital to matter, or to make a dent in the story. Within that context, Dumaguete City becomes an interesting case study of culture in the Philippines. A small city outside of the economic league of bigger provincial cities like Cebu, Davao, Bacolod, Iloilo, Naga, Cagayan de Oro, and Baguio, it has nevertheless become an unlikely center of culture in the Philippines, helping to shape in definitive ways the literary, musical, and theatrical landscapes of the nation. What other city of its kind could boast of producing two National Artists—Romero for film and Edith Lopez Tiempo for literature? What is it about Dumaguete that makes it a geographic cultural wonder despite neglect—or perhaps just mere cultural mismanagement—by the local government? The answers are unclear, but culture thrives in Dumaguete City anyway. In 2010, the young Dumaguete filmmaker Carmen del Prado sought answers in her documentary,
Dumaguete: An Artists’ Haven, and comes up with one: as a university town of a very specific geographic location (situated in a tropical bosom within the combined embrace of mountain—the Cuernos de Negros—and sea—Tañon Strait) with a very specific temperament (slow, reflexive), the place has become a “place of nurture” for those with artistic sensibilities. The academic environment unique to the place, of course, provides a solid framework for cultural growth, or least sustenance. Thus, to tell the story of culture in Dumaguete, we also have to tell the story of Silliman University. One is intrinsically intertwined with the other.
But it is ultimately the people that make the place for what it is, and in
Handulantaw, we have come to an understanding that the dynamics of art and culture in Silliman and Dumaguete cannot be told fully without considering the individual personal stories behind the development of each artistic field. What is local theater, for example, without Amiel Leonardia or Ephraim Bejar? What is local literature without Edilberto and Edith Tiempo? What is local film without Eddie Romero and Ramon del Prado? What is local music without the generational efforts of the Dimaya and Vista families? This book, thus, attempts to tell the story of local culture through the prism of the lives of selected cultural movers. There are hundreds of them, of course, as is only fitting for a university that has withstood the test of time for more than a hundred years. Our choice of fifty is both arbitrary and specific: the first because all lists must eventually cap its number or risk the chaos of a flood of names without end, and the second because fifty is a good round number that coincides with this book’s celebration of the CAC’s golden anniversary. This list of “Cultural Movers” is a selection of people whom the editors have deemed to be prime movers of culture and the arts in Silliman, culled from a painstaking process that lasted almost a year, with patient consultation with various cultural stakeholders in the community.
In the final analysis, taking note of the general history of culture and the arts in Silliman University and Dumaguete City, as well as the individual stories of our Cultural Movers, we have come to understand, foremost, the passions of the artist and the lengths they go to shape that passion, to see it embodied as an artwork. Often that meant doing battle with forces, subtle or unsubtle, that hinders full expression of that consuming artistry. To paraphrase the observation of a fictional character in a popular animated film, the world is often unkind to artists. The work of culture is often both frustrating and rewarding. And sometimes, the frustration can start to break our spirits—if only temporarily. Once, while doing an Arts Month event in Dumaguete with theater actress Dessa Quesada-Palm, I turned to her with what must have been despair in my voice: “Why do we do this? Cultural work can be such a thankless job.” But she turned to me and said, “Because despite everything else, we love what we do—and we cannot help but share it with everybody else.” She is right, and this book is a chronicle of that imperative.
I am particularly happy that I work with kindred spirits in the Cultural Affairs Committee of Silliman University. Under Diomar Abrio’s savvy leadership as the University Cultural Officer, and with keen support from University President Ben S. Malayang III, the CAC has worked hard in recent years to put structure and balance to the cultural life of the university and the city. This book celebrates that striving for cultural structure and balance in CAC’s first fifty years. Those years have indeed shown remarkable consistency and unflagging faith even as the sands of time continue to shift under our feet, which is perhaps a testament to the Silliman Spirit.
In the end, the legacy of Silliman in Philippine arts and culture cannot be denied.
Handulantaw is our touchstone. This is our occasion to remember and to commemorate. This is our chance to understand what immortality, especially in the arts, really means in our transient world.
But this is nevertheless an incomplete story, as any such project will always be. This story will always remain an unfolding one. But such is the grace of a rich history. The challenge is in the putting together and in the making sense of its parts, and what may seem so disparate, belonging to distant contexts of time and space, are brought together here in a narrative that becomes accessible, real, and meaningful to the present.
This is what we are celebrating: that intractable yearning in each of us to sustain life and creativity come what may. It is, indeed it is, a powerful and irresistible covenant with the Divine.
(This article is slightly modified from the preface for Handulantaw.)
The entire editorial staff of Handulantaw at the Luce Auditorium.
The art and research staff of Handulantaw at the Luce Auditorium.
The writing staff of Handulantaw at the Luce Auditorium.
The members of the Cultural Affairs Committee at the Luce Auditorium.
Labels: advocacy, art and culture, cultural affairs committee, dance, dumaguete, film, literature, music, negros, painting, silliman
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Saturday, November 09, 2013
8:16 PM |
Devastations
Earthquakes, typhoons. You always wake up in the aftermath of these devastations thanking the fates you have lived through the bad, and thanking even the higher fates for how the worst had missed the city where you live by pure accident of geography. Yet somehow it feels wrong to do even the slightest sort of thanksgiving: there are other people and other places who are living through the nightmares you have miraculously been spared from. So what do you thank for, really? Suddenly, to give thanks seem to have become an exercise in selfishness. Silence seems to be the most appropriate response. There will be no talk about the slightest inconveniences of having no electricity, for example. Better that than full-on devastation. So you turn on the television or the radio or the Internet instead, and the full horror of what has happened in the past 24 hours mounts for you in such graphic news clips and sound bites and social media links. The statistics and the pictures do not lie, and you are left to ponder once more the incessant questions about fleeting life, and the helplessness you feel in the glare of natural monstrosities. How do you deal? How do you help? How do you escape the glare of deaths and destruction everywhere and still remain human?
[Photo by Noel Celis/AFP. Read the Rappler article here.]Labels: disasters, life
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Tuesday, November 05, 2013
7:02 PM |
So, Let's Dance, Tom Hiddleston...
Labels: boys, celebrity, dance, film
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, November 04, 2013
7:10 PM |
Some School Stories
It is the middle of the school year, and while most college students are out to grab what little vacation they can have in the wonderful, lazy doldrums of semestral break, I still see the grade schoolers and the high schoolers going about their daily grind in Dumaguete, chasing their after-class hours in their uniforms and constant chatter.
Sometimes, when I’m surrounded by these kids in some café like Poppy’s, their chatter cuts through me two-ways: in equal parts fascination and irritation—the last because, by God, they can chatter so with undiscovered decibels; and the first because they become a kind of time machine to old foggies like me. You listen in, and you are amused by the exchanges that are a mix of bragging, wonderment, and budding ennui, all underscored by a lingo informed by the Internet, anime, computer games, hiphop, and celebrity culture. Often, they speak English with a twang culled from years of watching Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. The young today are different creatures. But then again, each generation marks itself by its dissimilarity from the one that comes before.
I think about the specificity of how I grew up, and I’m horrified to know that my own childhood is something I have not exactly mined for remembrance or analysis, conveniently compartmentalized in a box of memories to be slowly forgotten. I don’t know why this is so, and sometimes I think, “Is it too late to try?”
But there are days when I’m forced to comprehend the memories I have forsaken. Sometimes I read a book, and it ignites a flash of memory that would make me laugh as well as unsettle me, for the very articulation of something I too shared in my past, but have lost in the dimness of adult life.
That happened to me, too! How have I forgotten that? I’d think. Which is why, when I’m able to, I take out Bob Ong’s breakthrough bestseller
ABNKKBSNPLAko! and make it required reading for my Philippine literature classes in the university where I teach. It is the one book that seemed to have been written to map out my own lost memories of growing up in a Philippine public school.
The book’s an easy read, enough to make it as a suitable opener for Filipino writings, which most incoming college freshmen seem to be largely ignorant of, save for Jose Rizal’s
Noli Me Tangere—and sometimes, not even that. The Filipino language of Ong’s book is accessible enough for most people, even for those of us in Negros where English is the preferred second language.
But what delights me about the book is its subject matter: it is a casual and comedic confession about life growing up in Philippine schools, from the competition in pencil sizes, to the fervent collection of “stationery,” from the enterprising teachers who had makeshift sari-sari stores over their desks, to becoming literature through the adventures of Pepe and Tagpi. (In my case, it was Bantay and Henny Penny. A dog and a chicken taught me Filipino and English.)
I don’t remember much, but I remember the intricacies of the “badge” system that fleshed out my school’s policy of “speak in English only.” I remember the
pospas and the nutribun. I remember Mrs. Valencia, my favorite Grade 1 teacher, pinching my ears for daring to disrupt my classmates’ attention by drawing the Super Friends in my notebook. I remember falling in love with this beautiful girl in first grade—let’s call her Dee—and how I stayed in love with her till the sixth grade. I was so in love, I went to my mother sometime in third grade, and declared my intentions: “Mother, I want to marry Dee.” She only laughed. I don’t remember studying a lot, but I do remember reading my first sentence. I remember playing truant lots of time to watch a movie, and I remember one furious fistfight in Grade 2.
One time, during a “gang battle” of sorts in that grade, I threw a small rock at a kid, which landed squarely on his forehead, causing so much bleeding. Later that night, the kid and his mother stormed over to my house, and demanded redress, and my mother had no choice but to shoulder the medical expenses. After the spanking, she turned to me angrily, and gave me some Bible verse about how important it was to restrain oneself, even during a fierce fight. “If you get into a quarrel,” she said, “you should throw bread instead of stone!”
“But I had no bread with me!” I shouted back.
Which made her laugh. Or so I was told.
Then there’s surviving Math class. I just read an article from
The Atlantic Monthly, which proclaimed that “being bad at Math” is largely a myth. This is interesting because I grew up believing I was never a Mathematics person. In grade school, I somehow refused to memorize the multiplication table, for example, because I kept finding myself asking things like, “Why is 2 x 2 = 4?” Always the
why. (Which may be one factor why I became a writer instead.)
So every time we’d get these competition quizzes in class, like pitting two classmates together in a two-lane race—where every correct answer to flashcard mathematical problems gave one a chance to step forward where the teacher (and the finish line) was—I’d lose. The winner got to sit down, and the loser had to go over the race once more, until he or she wins. One time in Grade III, I lost to the ENTIRE class.
(But, whatever, I graduated valedictorian anyway,
ha.)
I was always bad in Math, except when they gave us one of those “window” exams, and for some reason, I’d always rate high. Not until junior high in Silliman University did I learn to love Math. I loved the intense concentration every exam demanded. I loved it, and all because of Prof. Alice Mamhot. She was a patient teacher. She knew the value of listening, and so she refused to have us write down notes while she was lecturing, always intoning to us a sentence in mock Spanish: “No puede calabang en grande de baha.” And after we were done understanding everything she’d written on the board, she’d throw up her hands and say, “Copy break!” And then we’d finally write everything down in our notebooks. Somehow, that system worked for me. I learned to listen, and I learned to love Math with her. And during one periodical exam, I astounded everybody by getting a 99/100. I got a grade in the 90s that year.
So yes, we all have good Math in us. We just need good teachers.
I wonder what else I can remember from those growing up years...
Labels: education, life, memories
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013
8:10 PM |
The Math in You
The Atlantic just published an article that declares "being bad at Math" to be a myth.
This is interesting because I grew up believing I was never a Math person. In grade school, I somehow refused to memorize the multiplication table, for example, because I kept finding myself asking things like, "Why is 2 x 2 = 4?" Always the
why.
So every time we'd get these competition quizzes in class, like pitting two classmates together in a two-lane race -- where every correct answer to flashcard mathematical problems gave you a chance to step forward where the teacher (and the finish line) was -- I'd lose. The winner got to sit down, and the loser had to go over the race once more. One time in Grade III, I lost to the ENTIRE class.
(But, whatever, I graduated valedictorian anyway,
ha.)
I was always bad in Math, except when they gave us those "window" exams, and for some reason, I'd always rate high. Not until junior high in Silliman University did I learn to love Math. I loved the intense concentration every exam demanded. I loved it, and all because of Prof. Alice Mamhot. She was a patient teacher. She knew the value of listening, and so she refused to have us write down notes while she was lecturing, always intoning to us a sentence in mock Spanish: "No puede calabang en grande de baha." And after we were done understanding everything she'd written on the board, she'd throw up her hands and say, "Copy break!" And then we'd write everything down. I learned to love Math with her. And during one periodical exam, I astounded everybody by getting a 99/100. I got a grade in the 90s that year.
So yes, we all have good Math in us. We just need good teachers.
Labels: education, life, mathematics, memories, teaching
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Monday, October 28, 2013
11:21 PM |
The Art of the Teenage Wasteland
Maybe it’s because I’m reading Jon Savage’s groundbreaking exploration of the formation of the culture of adolescence in
Teenage. Or maybe because I just finished watching Sofia Coppola’s
The Bling Ring (2012). But sometimes, the art of Terry Richardson, Larry Clark, Harmony Korine, Brett Easton Ellis, and often Steven Meisel (especially in 1995) clumped together — distinctive for their almost salacious eye on teenage white-trashy abandon, which celebrates and condemns it at the same time — frankly scares me. Or at least unsettles me.
But maybe to unsettle is the point.
Or maybe I’m just getting old, hahaha.
Labels: advertising, books, criticism, film, life, photography, pop culture
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9:55 PM |
A Mountain of Dreams
“It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”
~
John Krakauer,
Into the WildLabels: books, life, quotes
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7:34 PM |
Questions and Interferences
What’s often frustrating about Dumaguete is how—for a place that is supposedly steeped with a fine sense of culture and the arts—it lacks two basic things that would make this claim more truthful than usual: (1) it sorely lacks museums, and (2) there are barely any galleries.
Where is a museum that should be showcasing the best and the most original of Oriental Negrense culture and artistry, ran with professional curators who know how to do their jobs? Bacolod has one from what I’m told, which denies Dumagueteños any sort of excuse except a lack of imagination. From my readings of local history, there have been some attempts to found exactly this in Dumaguete, but there always seems to be a lack of political will, or the wherewithal to slay goliaths that usually spring from such enterprise. How I wish one of the elegant sugar mansions along the Boulevard have been converted to house exactly this collection—but even the mansions themselves are dissolving away into commercial plastic surgery in a city that has not yet learned to appreciate its cultural heritage.
One significant landmark in Dumaguete, for example, is old Silliman Hall. It is the first building in campus, designed by founder David Hibbard himself in the American colonial stick-style architecture. Silliman Hall and the old Bell Tower bookend the very definition of the Dumaguete landscape. But in 1972, there was a proposal for Silliman’s Hall demolition—in the name of progress, of course. (Why is it that “progress” is always evoked to justify the building of ugly new buildings?) But the plan was strongly opposed by one Commodore Jose Andrada. His vehemence was such that he gave a generous donation instead to restore the building’s tower room. The plan was ultimately scrapped, and thank God for that.
Can you imagine Dumaguete without Silliman Hall? I can’t. I don’t think anybody can. Its eventual restoration in the 1990s finally paved the way for many of us to think that an appreciation for heritage can in fact be fruitful in the long term. But think about how the loss almost happened. And look at how our Rizal Boulevard is changing, and how much of our cultural heritage is being erased—without any of us voicing out a hint of complaint.
What museums we do have are of the anthropological and the biological sort in Silliman University—important institutions, of course. But the lack of a city museum focusing on the arts is jarring. We have become a city that has become ridiculously unaware of our artistic heritage.
Nobody knows about Jose Las Piñas, for example—the prime portraitist from Dumaguete in the 1950s. Nobody knows about Francisco Verano. Nobody knows about the rich period in the life of National Artist for Painting Fernando Amorsolo when he used to frequent the city to chase its light and rustic beauty, which eventually informed many of the paintings he did here. (One Amorsolo now hangs in the Office of the President of Silliman.) Nobody knows about groundbreaking work by some of our contemporary artists, from Paul Pfeiffer to Karl Aguila, from Kitty Taniguchi to Amihan Jumalon, from Mariyah Taniguchi to Jana Jumalon, from Razceljan Salvarita to Kristoffer Ardeña, from Jutze Pamate to Mark Valenzuela, from Hersley-Ven Casero to Paul Benzi Florendo, and so on and so forth. Nobody knows what part Dumaguete art has contributed in the shaping of national art. And that’s sad.
There are barely any galleries either, only Mariyah Gallery off Bogo Junction and the one at Sidlakang Negros. The Cultural Affairs Committee at Silliman does put up several exhibitions at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium Foyer Gallery, which sometimes spill over to the greatly unused exhibition space at Silliman Hall. Beyond these, there’s absolutely nothing.
Except for the restaurants.
For some reason, the restaurants are the ones taking up the slack. Perhaps in Dumaguete we admire our art alongside our food? Or perhaps, our culinary entrepreneurs just have a more refined sense of the visually artistic. The regular foot traffic that food brings makes the set-up ideal, too. When Jutze Pamate ran the now-defunct Jutz’s Café, it operated a gallery on its restaurant walls, and offered good art alongside its Tuscan pork chop and garlic fish fillet. Wing del Prado used to showcase artists she loved in a revolving exhibition at Gabby’s Bistro. Mike Butler—who owns an extensive collection of local art, which is housed at CocoGrande Hotel—used to make available the walls of Coco Amigos for local artists. Sanda Fuentes does the same thing in Lab-as, and Babbu Wenceslao in El Amigo. New to the ranks is Iris Armogenia, who has been active of late to use the walls of KRI to exhibitions of artist-friends.
The latest from KRI is
Interference, a small exhibition that gathers together four artists of uncommon brilliance: Elle Divine, Razceljan Salvarita, Jana Jumalon-Alano, and Rianne Dawn Salvarita. It’s interesting to note that they make up exactly the kind of artists who usually thrive in Dumaguete—the beautiful
langyaw, two coming from Bacolod, one from Australia, and another one from Zamboanga. Their disparate roots coupled with distinct visions inform an exhibition that varies in mediums and artistic expressions—and perhaps it is that variety that they truly celebrate. For them, after all,
Interference means “a surge of ecstatic creativity,” a “raw[ness] of infinite possibilities.”
“[It] is a radical frequency,” their collective statement continues. “Taken from a higher realm, it is a positive deviant. It triggers inclusion towards a diversified perspective that caters to a change from monotony… [It] projects a new vision of maturity in understanding the scope of sundry forms of art expressions in the borderless creative playground. It is a virtual ripple that touches the edge of the monotonic zone as it makes a subtle invitation to take bolder exploration in the spirit of creativity.”
In other words, at least in my reading of it, it is a collection by four artists who are breaking new grounds from the kind of art they have always been associated with. And that is evident enough. Rianne Salvarita, whom I have known to do representational art but pushing it into the eerie regions of the visceral, is here experimenting with a sort of cubism that runs away from the old embrace of abstract expressionism. Here, the geometric shapes have shadows; they have an undulating sense of physicality that courts his old representational mode. This is most apparent in “Iceberg,” which is a whitish-blue landscape that echoes its title, but fixed in that geometric rendition that makes it both solid and fluid.
Rianne’s brother, Razceljan Salvarita, on the other hand, has gone away from the mandalas and circles and fiery vulvas of his Bali phase—he had been a fixture in the Indonesian art scene for some time—to experiment in a kind of found art that isn’t. Because there’s still a painterly quality to his assemblage of wood and linen cloth and rope and what-not. Take a look at his “Tapestry in Symphony (in A Minor).” The pieces of repurposed wood he has gathered are wrapped in cloth and placed in a haphazard manner, approximating picket fences, on top of a painted board. The result is both rough and elegant—and together with his other works in the collection, they surprisingly resemble the spirit of abstract expressionism, like a Kandinsky with the flavor of eco-art.
The surprise for me in this exhibition is the revelation of Elle Divine as artist. One of the loveliest women I know, she takes my breath away with “Map of HerStory,” a study in red broad strokes and drippings that I would have described as a marriage of Pollock and Rothko—but with none of their masculine rages. Her painting pulsates with feminine power, her reds carefully textured out with painstakingly placed acrylic dots that give shape to the swallowing hue. All in all, her paintings come off as almost portraiture in nature—but not of the human face, but of the human aura.
Jana Jumalon-Alano, however, takes the biggest leap in her artistic evolution, and lands beautifully. I remember her paintings of pastel-colored nudes before, which imported a sense of feminist didacticism that I admired greatly but wasn’t particularly moved by. But what she does in “Wonder Years,” a portrait of two children peeking out of what seemed like broken wooden panels of a wall, to reveal their nondescript expressions, a gallery of family pictures behind them—is a wonderfully composed work that combines a sureness of craft, a tone of earthiness, and a narrative of the strikingly autobiographical, varnished with a singular warmth that pervades the painting’s affect. Her mixed media piece “Bira Cara Series” is of the same import.
Interference feels like an introduction to four great—but surely separate—exhibitions. Which is understandable, given the capacity of KRI as exhibition space. If only for this wonderful glimpse it offers, KRI is to be highly commended for taking up a cause Dumaguete City itself seems reluctant to.
Interference runs until 28 October 2013. KRI opens from 8 AM to 9 PM.Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, negros, painting
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Friday, October 25, 2013
7:02 PM |
I Already Know Her Name
I kept thinking, while watching Kimberly Peirce's remake of
Carrie (2013): "Where are the boobs? Where are the boobs?" Not because I'm an asshole, but because Brian de Palma perfectly mined the metaphorical relationship between a girl's newfound telekinetic powers with burgeoning female sexuality. There are no boobs in this new version. There is no bite, either, although the film mistakes visceral CGI for dreadful terror. I love the humanity of the new Tommy though; Ansel Elgort is a far cry from William Katt's Ken-doll marionette in the original, and I love that Peirce tries to check the flaws in the narrative logic of the original. But in the original, the malevolence sprang from Piper Laurie's Christian fundamentalist monster-mother -- but Julianne Moore telephones in the role of Margaret White instead, and it is a disappointment to discover that her greatest depravity is the ability to cut herself. But the greatest flaw in this movie is the casting of Chloe Moretz, whose mien suggests plucky rather than bullied-upon. Because of that physical unbelievability, Ms. Moretz hides behind physical acting instead, going about the school with her shoulders haunched to suggest vulnerability. Sissy Spacek never had to do that. You look at her, and she embodies frailty. You look at her again during the beginning of the prom scene, and she embodies girlish delight, the transformation to swan a magnificent surprise for us. You look at her again covered with pig's blood, and she is a fiery fiend whose stare curdles your blood. Moretz tries to do the same thing, and you think, "This girl is cosplaying."
Labels: film
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Thursday, October 24, 2013
1:34 PM |
So, Would This Guy Brighten Up Your Life?
Say hello to Andrew McCarthy from John Hughes's
Pretty in Pink (1986). He keeps breaking into grins in this movie.
Labels: film, memories
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Monday, October 21, 2013
10:27 PM |
Life Quake (Expanded Version)
I finally went home last Tuesday, October 15, at around 7:30 AM, after having grappled with writing an article about Siquijor witches for
Smile Magazine and editing a friend’s short story for an anthology, all of Monday night till the early hours of Tuesday morning, at Qyosko. I have always been a night owl; I work best around the quiet dictates of the midnight candle. And I like how it is when I alone am wide-awake while the rest of the world becomes quiet in sleep. It makes me think of how fragile the world really is, and how beautiful it can be in that fragility. The night reminds me there is an end to all things, and what makes us human is our furious pursuit of loving something that will never last. As the poet J. Neil C. Garcia once said, “It is finitude that makes beauty possible. I guess the beloved is beautiful precisely because he cannot be possessed, or because he can easily be lost.”
And so I was tired that Tuesday morning, and I was more than ready to sleep till noon. That was the plan.
I was beginning to slumber away when the earthquake hit at 8:12 AM. I bolted out of bed, every instinct telling me this was no dream, and the shaking of the floors—a quick dizzying spell that lasted forever—was no nightmare. I could hear people shouting outside.
I live on the first floor of a bulky house, and I could easily imagine myself flattened by all the concrete above me. We have been educated well by the Hollywood School of Disasters—that cinematic language of adversity where we see our movie heroes come to grips with being trapped in a collapsed building, or faced with the yawning knowledge of mortality as natural disasters vent their rage. I did not want to become like one of those movie heroes.
Every human instinct gets boiled down to one imperative:
live.
Getting up, I saw my MacAir by my bedside. For a split second, my heart weighed the consequence of saving possession—but I found there was quiet pride and surprising dignity in instantly letting go of materials things when I found myself thinking: “F*ck the laptop.”
I wanted to live.
I grabbed my keys, rushed to my padlocked gate—only to find the whole thing jammed as the earth quaked some more, and I remember thinking as my fingers fumbled with panicked key and stubborn lock: “Why do I have to die this way, dressed only in my shirt and blue underpants, trapped by this steel gate, with a full view of sky and street?” It seemed comedic, almost—but the quaking did not allow me to laugh.
I wanted to live.
I jimmied away at the lock, turning it this way and that way, until it finally did give way. But by then, the earthquake—which did not seem to wane—was over.
How do you describe the dizziness that comes after an earthquake? And I don’t just mean the physical kind, as your inner sense of balance grapples with the unexpected rattling to your system. Your body, you realize, is perfectly attuned to the earth where it comes from. Your skin senses now the slightest shake. Or perhaps, you tell yourself, those are just your nerves talking. There are aftershocks, yes, but you get to realize your mind creates their own aftershocks as your body settles down to the knowledge it has survived a potential disaster.
My senses were alert—but ultimately my body demanded sleep. Still, it took a while to go back to a slumbering state. It was easier though with the knowledge that my gate was now fully opened, unlocked. Never mind the potential thieves. There was only potential earthquakes still to come to deal with.
The aftershocks rocked. And I did not wake up at 12 noon as planned. My body woke up to the dimness of late afternoon, knowing I have slept away the entire day—and perhaps for the better. For how to deal with a day that had began with dizzying fear? The bed proved to be a comfortable companion. Later on, I would learn the day had darkened with rain clouds, and then it had rained hard. Later on, I would learn from my feed in Facebook and Twitter that people had talked of a possible Apocalypse.
If I weren’t hungry, I wouldn’t have gone outside after waking, but I needed dinner. I had already missed out on lunch. And food was what I needed as a kind of confirmation of life after the news of destruction somewhere else. The death toll was rising by the hour. And my heart bled for Bohol. I scroll down my social network feed, and see the damage of the old churches in Loon, in Loboc, in Dauis, in Baclyaon. All that history and beauty gone in an instant.
When I went downtown, the lights were off—a blackout, I was told. Later, safe in the bright lights of a café, life went on as I booted up the same MacAir I had readily abandoned to the welcome feed of the wifi. There was food before me, there were people I knew around me as well.
And all the while I thought of how life could be so random, so fragile, like the night. I thought of how things could meet their end in an instant even after centuries of having braved everything else.
I thought of how important it finally was to start living in the now. These are not life lessons from an earthquake, just an underscoring of what we already know but often forget.
Labels: life
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Sunday, October 20, 2013
2:38 AM |
A Special Literary Issue of the Silliman Journal
The special literary issue of the Silliman Journal launches on December 6! This special issue of the Silliman Journal -- edited by
Anthony L. Tan,
Marjorie Evasco, and
Grace Monte de Ramos -- honors the legacy of two giants in Philippine letters: S.E.A. Write Awardee Edilberto K. Tiempo, in honor of his birth centenary in 2013, and National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo, in honor of her second death anniversary.
The issue includes a preface by Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, with contributions by Anne Carly Abad, Gémino S. Abad, Ceres Y.C. Abanil, Merlie Alunan, Adlai Amor, Ronn Andrew Angeles, César Ruìz Aquino, Corin Arenas, Cirilo F. Bautista, Randy Bustamante, Erin Cabanawan, F. Jordan Carnice, Ian Rosales Casocot, Albert Casuga, Thomas David F. Chavez, Elsa Martinez-Coscolluela, Jhoanna Lynne B. Cruz, Vida Cruz, Alice Sun-Cua, Zaldy Dandan, N. Adrian de Pedro, Ricardo M. de Ungria, V.I.S. de Veyra, Simeon M. Dumdum Jr., Felix Fojas, Armand Gloriosa, Michael Aaron Gomez, Asterio Enrico N. Gutierrez, Antonio Hernandez, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Susan S. Lara, Francis B. Macansantos, Priscilla Supnet-Macansantos, Lorna Peña-Reyes Makil, Hansel B. Mapayo, Peter Zaragoza Mayshle, Timothy R. Montes, Homer Novicio, Corinna Arcellana Nuqui, Carla Pacis, Allan Pastrana, Myrna Peña-Reyes, Victor Peñaranda, Mary Ann E. Pernia, Noel P. Pingoy, M. Protacio-De Guzman, Deedle Rodriguez-Tomlinson, Dinah Roma, Melissa Salva, Allen Samsuya, Nadine L. Sarreal, Trish Shishikura, Jojo G. Silvestre, Cherrie Sing, Joshua Lim So, Victor N. Sugbo, Brylle Tabora, Michelle T. Tan, Seann Tan-Mansukhani, Roberto Klemente Timonera, Joel M. Toledo, Tim Tomlinson, Denver Ejem Torres, Renz Christian Torres, John Jack Wigley, Januar Yap, Anna Yin, and Alfred A. Yuson. The photo art is by May Tobias-Papa.
Labels: dumaguete, silliman, silliman journal, writers
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013
I went home today at around 7:30 AM, after having grappled with editing a story and writing an article all of last night till the early hours of the morning at Qyosko. I was tired, and I was more than ready to sleep till noon. That was the plan. I was beginning to slumber away when the earthquake hit at 8:12 AM. I bolted out of bed fast, every instinct telling me this was no dream, and the shaking of the floors -- a quick dizzying spell that lasted forever -- was no nightmare. I could hear people shouting outside. I live on the first floor of a bulky house, and I could imagine myself flattened away by all the concrete above me. Getting up, I saw my MacAir by my bedside, and I was actually quite proud of myself when I found myself thinking: "Fuck the laptop." I grabbed my keys, rushed to my gate -- only to find the whole thing jammed as the earth quaked some more, and I remember thinking: "Why do I have to die this way, dressed only in my underpants, trapped by a steel gate, with a full view of sky and street?" I jimmied away at the lock, until it finally gave way. By then, the earthquake was over. It took a while to go back to sleep, my gate fully opened, unlocked. The aftershocks rocked. I did not wake up at 12 noon. I woke up to the dimness of late afternoon, knowing I have slept away the entire day. If I weren't hungry, I wouldn't have gone outside. But I needed dinner. I needed a confirmation of life after the news of destruction somewhere else. My heart bled for Bohol. Downtown, the lights were off -- a blackout, I'm told. But here I am in a cafe with wifi, food before me, and all the while I am thinking of how life is so random, how things can end even after centuries of having braved everything else, and how important it is to start living in the now.
Labels: life
[1] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, October 10, 2013
8:07 PM |
"Let Lips Do What Hands Do"
I couldn't sleep last night, again. Insomnia is a terrible thing, but it makes for a good prompt to do cinematic excursions. And so I decided, for reasons unknown to me, to make a tour of some of my favorite adaptations of William Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet, focusing on one of my favorite scenes, this one from Act I Scene 5, when our two young tragic lovers meet for the first time. I've always found the scene's playful use of hands and lips and kiss and sin terribly romantic, rich in playful metaphor. The original goes this way:
ROMEO [To JULIET.]
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
[Kisses her.]
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
I thought about it, and then asked myself: How did some of our filmmakers render this scene? Because it's a crucial scene, and when it's handled poorly, it will certainly come off trite and corny. Much depends on the tone set by the filmmaker and the chemistry between the actors. And so I ventured into the various renditions of this scene, from Franco Zeffireli's seminal
Romeo and Juliet (1969), to Baz Luhrmann's manic and music-laded
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996), and finally to Alan Brown's magically sweet gay version in
Private Romeo (2011).
So who's the best Romeo and who's the best Juliet of the three?
Labels: film, life, literature, love, queer, theater
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Sunday, October 06, 2013
5:55 PM |
Recalibration
This is me. 5:45 PM, Sunday, 6 October 2013, The Bean Connection.
This rainy day has been an introspective sort. I have to admit I have been of a mildly depressive funk the past few months — ever since 22 December 2012, actually. Since that time, I’ve felt like I’ve already done all I could to make my life beautiful and fulfilling, and there was nothing else before me except heartbreaks and disappointments. I have no idea why I thought that way: but it has been the subtle negative force behind my feelings of utter helplessness since the beginning of this year. It’s a feeling that I have done nothing worthwhile since then, although good friends have quickly pointed out to me that I’ve done so much more than I have given myself credit for. Today, I’m done with giving myself short shrift. I thought about it, and I’m done wallowing. I love life, I love discovering things and making adventures. I love helping people. I love the feeling of endless possibilities.
I will learn to live again, and that starts now.Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
6:54 PM |
The Past Tense of This is Officially Me
Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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