Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
3:24 AM |
Still Memories in the Philippines Free Press
By the way, my creative non-fiction piece "Still Memories, in Ten Shots" is the last literary piece for the year for the Philippines Free Press. The issue is out right now.
Thanks to Sarge Lacuesta, and to all the photo-spirits out there.
The words were nothing more than an honest description of the moment, but something in the lilt of my friend's voice suggested more. We were talking about recent books we managed to have time to read. He had just read my old, old copy of James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy. I had adjudged it as a childish New Age salvation babble for the emotionally lost, and his words tumbled out to me with a peculiar smirky ring, "Talking as a critic again, Ian?" -- in a tone reserved only when people talk about vile lawyers or corrupt politicians.
Now, criticism for me has always been an outlet for that constant searching for the "better" in things. I have this notion that criticism can sometimes (if not often) help in somehow eliminating any chance of prolonged mediocrity of things when the otherwise is a good possibility. Give me a book or a movie, and almost always there is something there that is in need of some constructive criticism, of some impetus for growing.
Critical thinking, old as time itself, has always been ideally about deciding for ourselves what is good for us and what is not. Criticism offers a chance for people to consider their way of doing things (e.g. political activists critical against a tyrannical Marcos machinery), or viewing a certain kind of existence (e.g. Michael Tolkin satirizing emotionally bankrupt socialites in his film The New Age), or help readers benefit from certain things like a good read. It is a slow foundation-building towards a personal standard; if writers were never critical of their own writing, they might still write like they did in high school ("What is love? Love is the strange emotion that one person feels..." Now that is horror). An inching toward a kind of maturity is another good way of describing criticism.
To some, however, criticism is good only when it justifies what is popular. It is considered quite severe when it dares to upset the cart -- forgivable when there is an envisioned possibility of rounding up the critics in an isolated island and blowing it up. When one writes a movie criticism, for example, one gets crucified by taunting suggestions of "setting one's standards too high for anyone to reach." Criticism in all honesty is good exercise, only made to seem ridiculous or superfluous by some people's unfortunate misconception about it.
Movie critic Roger Ebert once wrote a compelling argument about critical writing in his very revealing "A Memo to Myself and Certain Other Film Critics":
There is a gulf between people who go to the movies (the public) and people whose lives revolve around them (critics, movie buffs, academics, people in the business). For most people with [twenty-five] bucks in their pocket and an evening free, there is only one question about a movie that is relevant: Will I have a good time?
That is a problem. Movie criticism helps by putting perspective on the film. When Quentin Tarantino writes that Top Gun is homoerotic, it puts a certain spin about the way we view it. It also helps by telling the reader he might not have the time of his life watching it. I once told a friend not to watch the miserably unfunny Spy Hard. He did. And he came out of the theater miserable for wasting forty bucks.
A good analogy to criticism is that of a weed puller which gives a chance for the real thing to grow. In a society besieged all too often by the mediocre, criticism nurtures what is best by giving due recognition, and by pointing out flaws in something with the ultimate desire to correct it. A film critic feels the need to tell the public that The Queen stands aside from other current movies such as The Island or Deja Vu Day because, as Ebert writes, "it is made by someone with an instinctive mastery of the medium." Hey, even God is a critic: you must either be good or be damned to hell. The extreme to good criticism is simplistic populism, its apotheosis being that of people inquiring how a movie goes, not in the hopes of learning something new, but in the expectation of being told what they already know. Ebert calls this a "form of living death."
Ebert further writes,
Writing film criticisms is a balancing act between the bottom line and the higher reaches, between the answers to the questions (1) Is this movie worth my money? and (2) Does this movie expand or devalue my information about human nature? Critics who write so everybody can understand everything are actually engaging in a kind of ventriloquism --- working as their own dummies. They are pretending to know less than they do.
There are many possibilities in reviewing a book, a music album, a movie, an art exhibition, or a play. Critical writing may be directed at a reader with no previous knowledge of the work. It basically answers the question, "Is it worth my time?" Or it may be for somebody who has seen the work but needs to put his thoughts and opinions about it in perspective. Or a criticism may be just an honest idea broker for the reader to form his own opinion about a certain thing. Or works further by trying to actively shape those opinions -- to provide ways of setting standards of judging things.
And why am I saying all these? Well, the Metro Manila Film Festival is upon us again. Be prepared to slug through the turkeys ahead.
I heard Joel Lamangan's adaptation of ZsaZsa Zaturnnah is really, really bad. Then again, what can we expect from this overrated hack?
Here's another snapshot from Extreme Tracking of how people get to my blog. I find this one even funnier than the last one...
I mean "what kind of sandwiches do youths eat"? Or "jessa zaragoza porn"? Who wants porn starring Jessa Zaragoza? And lastly (this one's for neddybear...), "Vera Wong Parfan". Ahahaha!
There. It's 8 o'clock in the morning. It had taken me all night to clean my pad, which was the very definition of filth. I feel tired, but not sleepy. I have just made myself a cup of brewed coffee. The TV has been on the whole night. I wonder if I should go to sleep now.
I have no idea what to write today. So I'll write, stream-of-consciousness style, about the first Christmas image that pops into my head.
Fruit cake.
I don't get fruit cake at all, or why people insist on giving them out as Christmas gifts. When did this become a tradition? Naglihi ba si Maria sa fruit cake? ("Joseph," she probably said, pregnant and bored waiting for the Star of Bethlehem to shine on her stable, "Joseph, be a dear and take the donkey. I want some... fruit cake.") Often they come in the most dazzling of wrappers, and one year I received one enclosed in the cutest little wooden box tied up with red, green, and gold ribbons. I kept the box and threw away the cake, but not before I told the giver, "Oh, how so Christmassy! Thank you ever so much!" and did the beso-beso tango. But really now, can't anyone just be the normal unimaginative gift-giver and give out handkerchiefs or wallets or ties instead? Or books. Any book would do just fine.
Fruit cake. Sliced, their brown crumbly presence betrays tidbits of unrecalled fruit-meat, and all I can really think of in comparison is bad meatloaf, just add the tangy flavor and the smell and taste of liquor. Fruit cake is the Filipino eggnog.
Christmas for me, I think, begun with fruit cake this year -- my mother calling me up one silent, holy night, and saying she was sending over some batches she got from her sister in Canada. "Please, don't," I frantically said, "The refrigerator in my pad is not working, and the ants are quite ferocious here."
"So eat them as soon as you receive them," she said.
"Ma, I'm on a diet."
"Nobody in their right mind diets on the holidays. It's stupid. Anyway, I'm sending you some." Nobody argues with fruitcake-giving mothers on Christmas.
I ate one or two slices, each piece sliding into my throat like lead. Later, I gave one batch to a friend. "Oh, how so Christmassy! Thank you ever so much!" she said, squealing just too nicely, then gave me the beso-beso tango.
Fruit cakes.
But when did Christmas really begin for me this year? That is a little hard to answer, since I am the type of guy who insists on playing Christmas songs in July, just because I can. My CD players blares out Amy Grant singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" much too-early in the year. And when I do feel a bit depressed, there's always her cover version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," which is probably the saddest, sweetest Christmas song there is. I listen to the lyrics and cry like a nut. In July.
Or perhaps Christmas began when I first heard a Dumaguete store play Nat King Cole sing "The Christmas Song" (or Carol Burnett, or Ray Conniff, or Andy Williams, or Mahalia Jackson...) at the start of the Ber months? Or when I first spied a Christmas window display? Or when the first public decorations came creeping into our consciousness?
Or when I went to Dr. Rico Absin's annual Christmas dinner to ogle at the lights, eat the "best of Negros cuisine" and listen to some bad singer warble a version of "Pasko Na Sinta Ko"? Thank God, it didn't rain that night. I was talking to a friend as some feeling-diva of a fat guy (three costume changes in all!) hostaged us all with a spattering of new age tenor-rific songs and uncalled for Broadway melodies. Otherwise, it was a beautiful evening.
"This is overkill," says my friend.
"I tell you, this is death not by boredom but by Josh Groban."
"Are we having a good time ba?"
"I think so. Are we?"
"Maybe we can go to the kitchen to see if there's wine."
"I don't want to go. There's a dancing Santa in the living room. He scares me."
"Oh, look, the diva's finished singing."
"Okay..."
It is a hot, hot December, a freak of recent memory.
Outside, the heat melts the asphalt roads and the skies are in turns blue and brighter blue, subverting what we would otherwise have called the holiday "festivities." Sometimes it takes a little convincing of ourselves to believe in that last word -- "festivities" -- when all we really want to do is sleep and surrender to the heat.
True, we still breathe and move, and our Christmas trees are already out and overburdened with tinsels. Our Christmas lights are in place in their niches all over our house-beams and walls, or perhaps all over our lawn trees. Our mothers or wives, too, have finished their plans for noche buena -- and have detailed the battle sketches to combat the mob in the supermarket.
The ingredients for the holidays are in place, indeed -- but festive?
No, sleepy.
We do not seek to venture out as much, except perhaps to buy those darn "exchange gifts" for some generic Christmas parties. And so we trudge through the puddles and the mud to jostle our way inside Lee Super Plaza or Cang's, and spend some holiday cheer waiting in line -- forever -- for the simplest purchases, or for gift-wrapping services. Our patience runs thin as Bing Crosby sings "I Am Dreaming of a White Christmas" in the store's PA system.
In parties, too, we ban our diets and gym priorities, and take in the ultimate truth: 4,000 calories on the average for the entire Christmas season, not counting the 3,000 for New Year. Our girths are happy.
Or perhaps all these just might as well: the cold has certainly banished those annual Christmas beggars from pounding our doors searching for answers to their calls of "Mamasko mi," as if holiday generosity is easy to dispense. (It's not.) The other year, my mother insisted on giving out used clothes to The Knockers (how we called these people), instead of money. Later in the day, she found her bag of rummage all over the garbage can down the road. Also, I had my last out-of-tune child carolers from three days ago, and they had given me, ambush-style (and just as I was preparing to go out and buy another blueberry cheesecake for another Christmas party), that now-traditional rendition of "Jingle Bells," the lyrics murdered, and with tansan percussion in place of musical accompaniment. Oh lordy, lordy.
It has been such a long time since I've felt a chill for the Christmas season. In recent years, what we've had was summer carried over to the last month of the year. I once wrote here that "we wake up to these December days, and still feel April or May: the sun's still too hot -- where is winter solstice when you need it most? -- and no amount of Christmas songs from the CD player can create the kind of cool Christmas of nostalgia. I remember thicker clothes and sweaters and the welcome chill of December nights. These days I still parade publicly in my shorts. My dream Santa now wears a red Hawaiian shirt and puruntong. It doesn't look good."
This is how one bares one's soul. By cataloguing one's books -- all of them -- online, for everyone to see (and judge). But what can you say about a library that runs the gamut from Stuart Ewen's All-Consuming Images (read for graduate school) to Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life (given by mother)? (Crazy. Eclectic. He reads that?)
10:18 AM |
Headaches, Beauty Queens, and Selling Placenta Soap
I went to bed last night with a terrible, terrible headache. In hindsight, it must have been the two sleepless nights I spent cataloguing all my books -- and then uploading them into my Library Thing account. (Next goal: do the same for my film library.)
But it must have also been the sudden roadtrip to Bais I took yesterday with Mark. He was part of the caravan tapped to "endorse" Renew Placenta -- and we went there together with Miss Philippines 2005 Genebelle Raagas and Miss Earth Water 2006 Catherine Untalan. (See their website here.) They were lovely, lively, and fun -- although I took it as an embarassment that the local organizers had Cath sleep with her mattress on the floor in the tiny hotel room she was sharing with Jen and two others. Makaulaw kaayo. I didn't want them to think badly about my city, so Mark and I bought them silvanas fresh from Sans Rival this morning.
Arriving back in Dumaguete yesterday, Mark and I took the sudden free time we had that afternoon to have iced coffee and apple pie over at Chicco's. That's when the headache started, a tiny throbbing at first that progressed by the hour. I never got headaches before, so this one felt like an alien burrowing deep into my head. By the time Mark and the girls finished their motorcade around the city, all I wanted to do was go home, take Ponstan, and go to sleep. And I did. Which meant I missed out on their fashion show last night which Mark hosted. I also missed out on their late-night coffee in Why Not? But that's okay. I got my much-deserved rest, and now -- today -- I'm doing my Christmas shopping.
If I don't post for the next two days, that means I'm busy trying to catch the Christmas fever. And if you do see me around the city, you don't have to comment on it: I'm fat, and intentionally so. I've been eating like a pig in the past two weeks because I miss food, but I will go back on my diet promptly on the 26th.
Here's a song my best friend melts to every Christmas...
She was born on Christmas Day, and swears Rudolf the Reindeer was once a pet. She's in Sydney moping, because she misses home (and me!), and is worried about two particular pets: Felix, and Aldwyn. I hope this makes her happy.
Welcome to my new skin for the New Year. I had to get a new look (this one courtesy of designer Zizi Kirihara) -- although I took liberties in tweaking some features. I added a Snap feature as well. (Don't know what that is? Put your cursor over the link.) The old design had to go: it took too long to open, the html was a beehive of chaos, and my archive was virtual hell to navigate. Let's just say that the new look is a nice way of me saying, Merry Christmas, everybody! (And yes, that's me above, when I was a more, uhm, innocent college student. I'm thinking of changing the banner image every month, to suit my always fleeting fancy.)
I'm slowly doing my homework catching up on the films being tipped for the Oscars early next year. Oscar Watch, of course, helps bring all critical consensus together -- but there's nothing like watching the films themselves to firm up what I can believe to be this year's best.
I've already watched Martin Scorsese's The Departed in the theater (not Scorsese's best, but entertaining enough to be a shoo-in; plus, give this genius his golden guy already), but I was not able to catch Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers because, given the choice I had then, I opted to watch the wonderful Inang Yaya instead. (Sariling atin muna!) Stephen Frears' The Queen is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful -- and Helen Mirren will win that Oscar, although I'm also leaning towards Meryl Streep's virtuoso comedic performance as a cold fashionista shark in The Devil Wears Prada. Sofia Coppola's pink-colored Marie Antoinette was boring as hell -- scratch that from all contender's list. I was hoping for The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros to have Oscar momentum after its nomination in the Independent Spirit Awards (and its inclusion in Dave Ansen's "best" list in Newsweek), but that's increasingly a stretch, given that Volver, Pan's Labyrinth, Curse of the Golden Flower, and The Lives of Others (all unseen by me) seem to be catching more fire. (Although that category always springs a surprise, so don't count out Maxi just yet. The Banquet though is a dead duck. What a stupid movie that was.) As for documentary? My heart's still with An Inconvenient Truth. And the penguins in Happy Feet will tap out the automobiles in Cars to get the top prize.
I just hope nothing mediocre like last year's horrendous Crash will prove to be the biggest upset of all.
This is a snapshot of how people get to come to my blog...
Yup, it's mostly literary people I get -- or students with literature term papers. (I'm "the literary blah," remember?) But, in any case, I love the top pick.
11:00 PM |
A Christmas Story For People Having a Bad Day
[emailed in by margie]
When four of Santa's elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones, Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.
Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her Mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress.
Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys.
So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor.
He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom.
Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said, very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn't it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?"
And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.
I just spent the last two months discussing this -- the first book published in the Philippines (in 1593) -- among other things, with my Philippine literature classes, as we browsed over our literary history.
This copy of the Doctrina Christiana can be found in the Rare Books Archives of the U.S. Library of Congress. You can actually "browse" through it as with a real book.
Buti pa ang Kano, they have a copy of our own literary heritage. Do we have one ba? Oh, wait. Ambeth Ocampo writes in one of his colums:
This book is so rare there is only one copy in the entire universe and it is not in the National Library in Manila, but in Washington D.C. Yet, we do not have to fret because the Internet has made it possible for Filipinos in the Philippines to browse through this book and other materials from half the world away. Frankly, modern technology may have made the world a smaller place and research much simpler, but the basic tools of any historian -- curiosity, critical thinking, and openness to the material -- remain the same.
There is one blog whose description makes me cringe everytime I stumble on it. It says: "A personal web site where the author shares, with a touch of wit, her thoughts and opinions on all sorts of things -- may it be politics, current events, web site standards, school issues, Filipino what-the-hells, and other things which she deems important." What the hell?
Verbal diarrhea, the equivalent of nails being scratched on blackboard. Yikes.
I realized that the Don Carlos Palanca Awards website, which I have been maintaining with Fernando Gonzalez -- with blessings from the Palanca Foundation -- needed drastic updates and changes. So I did. And so I guess I just set up what kind of work I'll be doing in the coming days as Christmas Break slowly rolls out: website updates. And there are a lot of updating to accomplish. Will the new Survey of Philippine Literature be up soon? Who knows?
10:09 PM |
A Buggy New Year
