Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
What took me so long to watch this? Tony Silver's Style Wars (1983), the iconic documentary on the early days of hiphop as seen through graffiti, rap music, and breakdancing in early 1980s New York, is a perfect complement to Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning (1990). Between these two films, they've captured a seething and decadent decade, which was also vibrant because of the subculture it was spawning: art and expression from the margins meant to subvert and flip the mainstream. (Sadly, the mainstream always works to consume even the marginal. And will always win.)
Perhaps it was the lure of the lunar bakunawa that finally compelled me to get out of the house and into the open, breaking the godless confinement of the high holy days. Alighting from the pedicab at the boulevard to see the devoured moon up close, I see the spark of my own anguished resurrection.
3:10 PM |
Fellows Chosen for the 54th Silliman University National Writers Workshop Slated for May 11—29
The 54th edition of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop is slated to start on 11 May 2015 at the Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village in Camp Look-out, Valencia, Negros Oriental.
Twelve writers from all over the Philippines have been accepted as regular workshop fellows.
The fellows for poetry are Aimee Paulette O. Cando of Quezon City (University of Santo Tomas), Angela Gabriele R. Fabunan of Olongapo City (University of the Philippines—Diliman), Darylle Luzarita Rubino of Polomolok, South Cotabato (University of the Philippines—Mindanao), and Mohammad Nassefh R. Macla of Davao City (University of the Philippines in Mindanao).
The fellows for fiction are Luis Manuel Diores of Cebu City (University of San Carlos), Patricia Corazon F. Lim of Quezon City (Ateneo de Manila University), Kristine Abelink Patenio of Murcia, Negros Occidental (University of St. La Salle in Bacolod), and Rodolfo Eduardo T. Santiago of Quezon City (Ateneo de Manila University).
The fellows for creative nonfiction are Jona Branzuela Bering of Cebu City (Cebu Normal University), Rowena Rose M. Lee of Manila (University of the Philippines in Mindanao), Miguel Antonio Lizada of Davao City (National University of Singapore), and Edmark Tejarcio Tan of Quezon City (University of Santo Tomas).
Khail Campos Santia of Malaybalay, Bukidnon (Silliman University) will join them as a special fellow for poetry. The names of other special fellows from around the Asia-Pacific region will be announced later.
Four alternates have also been chosen in case any of the regular fellows declines the invitation: Christian Jil R. Benitez of San Mateo, Rizal (Ateneo de Manila University) for poetry, Edmond Julian Y. Dela Cerna of Davao City (San Pedro College) and Matthew Jacob F. Ramos of Cebu City (Ateneo de Manila University) for fiction, and Fritzie D. Rodriguez of Balaga City, Bataan (University of the Philippines—Diliman) for creative nonfiction.
Three applicants have also been invited to sit as special workshop mentees, including Ana Joaquina Adriano of Dumaguete City (Enderun College), Silvin Federic Real Maceren of Cebu City (Silliman University), and Chuckie Perez Manio of Bacolod City (Silliman University).
The panel of writers/critics for this year will also be announced later.
The workshop, which traditionally lasts for three weeks, is the oldest creative writing workshop of its kind in Asia. It was founded in 1962 by S.E.A. Write Awardee Edilberto K. Tiempo and National Artist Edith L. Tiempo, and was recently given the Tanging Parangal in the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
For more information about forthcoming events during the workshop, please email Workshop Coordinator Ian Rosales Casocot at silliman(dot)cwc(at)gmail(dot)com or call the Department of English and Literature at (035) 422-6002 loc. 520. (Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center)
In his later years, Albert Einstein concluded that how we conceive of time is an illusion, a construct we have created to box in the simple matter that everything -- the past, the present, and the future -- exists simultaneously, is happening all at once. All at once. Perhaps this isn't so hard to believe. Last night, for example, I went to Kurambo's for dinner and while waiting for my order to come, I allowed myself to absorb the sight of this newish grill in Tubod, a neighbourhood I used to live in as a kid. I could feel myself occupy two spaces at once: that moment last night while waiting for my meal, and also an entire childhood spent passing by this very spot to go home to the house my family rented somewhere in the interiors of Tubod -- or Springville, as the people who lived here would rather call it. That very spot was once a big old house, now gone, which tottered beside an abundant spring -- the "tubod" of the place's nomenclature. Here, everyday, I'd catch the neighbourhood's women do their laundry by hand. (Many of them worked as laundresses for students living in the dorms in nearby Silliman. No washing machines then, nor laundromats.) Last night, while waiting for my food to come, I closed my eyes and I could still hear those women's loud chattering over the icy spring waters, the sound of their paddles batting thick wet cloth which punctuated their gossip. The spring is now gone. There's only this restaurant built on top of it, the waters below sealed off by concrete. We have become so good at paving over everything. I felt delirious afterwards, having to occupy both past and present at the same time. I saw the boy I was then -- this was easy; but did he perhaps also see me in the shimmer of the spring water soon to be erased, an older form of him forlorn in the future, looking back across the aching gaps of memory, thinking about what we have exactly gained from the loss of so many things, like a spring?
Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman and Oliver Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria are practically the same kind of film but made with different sensibilities. Both are about aging actors (Michael Keaton in one, and Juliette Binoche in the other) preparing for plays that promise to redefine their careers, but are unsettled by the ghosts of old roles that defined them in the first place. Assayas' film is the better movie, I think -- it feels like a sturdier study of being human rather than a prolonged technical gimmick, but guess which one had traction last year? The one about the male actor.
12:02 AM |
Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning (1990)
Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning (1990) has remained for me an essential title for the ultimate in film experience since I first saw it. When I am asked what my favourite documentaries are, this is one of the top five titles I could readily rattle off my head, alongside Microcosmos, Helvetica, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, and The Celluloid Closet. It is a cult film for understandable reasons: it demands repeat viewing, if only for one to spot certain details or drama you've never paid much attention to before; and there is of course its status as a cultural fountainhead. For those of us who became enthralled with Madonna's Vogue music video, directed with incredible panache by David Fincher, this was the film to excavate to find out where the mainstream culled its dance moves from the underground culture it was cribbing.
I see this film perhaps once a year, and often despite myself. I love it, but it is ultimately a sad, heartbreaking documentary, albeit a riveting one. In wanting to capture the underground ball culture of Black Harlem in late 1980s New York, Livingston also managed to capture in film the grittiness of the everyday lives of her subjects, the eventual hopelessness of their dreams and wishes, and the murderous end of some of them. And yet, despite all these, what keeps me returning to this film is the memory I have of how strangely warm this film is, how loving of its subjects, how curious and respectful of their foibles and their glittery lives. Its contradictions are also equally riveting: it is a spectacularly rough film, but also undeniably elegant.
Going through it once more for Nathaniel Rogers' Hit Me With Your Best Shot series over at The Film Experience, I took note of the shots that somehow made me pause, and I realised these were of scenes that underlined for me the film's themes...
The alienation of so many street-bred youths in a city that does not want them, for example, and the search for non-traditional families that would accept for who they are...
The yearning for elegance and beauty that seem perpetually out-of-reach...
The delightful raunchiness of the balls they indulge in, where they all compete in the name of escape, and in the name of being able to live the upper-class dream denied of them...
The sheer inventiveness they have in the language of dance as a showcase for a totally different kind of fighting...
The universality of our fervent pipe dreams...
And the longing for freedom, for becoming comfortable in the skin we want to live in...
But my choice of best shot is this...
A casual shot of one of the film's unlikely heroines -- Venus Xtravaganza of the House of Xtravaganza -- walking down the streets of New York with a determined look on her face even as her eyes betray an innate sense of being lost in a cruel world. The filmmaker's shadow hovers over her figure -- the only time we truly see Livingston's meticulously unobtrusive presence in the film. And somehow the shot also foreshadows the film's one great tragedy. (But no spoilers here.)
It still confuses me how this film missed out on a much-deserved Oscar nomination. Perhaps the queer subject matter derailed its chances? But time is the ultimate arbiter for a cultural product's longevity. Twenty-five years after its release, Paris is Burning still remains relevant and riveting.
10:04 PM |
Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965)
I first saw The Sound of Music -- Robert Wise's arguably restrained film adaptation of the otherwise diabolically saccharine Rodgers and Hammerstein musical -- in 1985 when it barrelled into my hometown of Dumaguete as a 20th anniversary re-screening, an event orchestrated by the local Rotary Club for a charity.
The ferocious hype that attended its coming was particularly memorable: people were going to my grade school to sell tickets to the film, which was scheduled to screen in one of the old downtown movie houses -- the elegant Art Deco-styled Park Theater in this case, which has since been converted into a soul-less department store specialising in ultra-cheap brickbats made in China. To buy a ticket became a badge of being in the wellspring of popular excitement -- and so I scraped up enough from my meagre allowance for my entry to the screening. My allowance was pittance in those days, so it must have been quite an effort to come up with the sum.
I was ten. Movies have always enchanted me, but The Sound of Music came at a time when I had yet to come into my first personal golden era of ardent movie-watching. Up until that time, I had only succeeded in one crucial cinephilic turning point: being able to go to the movies without a chaperone, something I managed to pull off when I was nine, and I had watched Looney-Looney Bugs Bunny by my lonesome at Ever Theater -- a terrifying and joyful experience.
I had no idea what the film was about -- only that it contained some singing, and there were children in it. The poster they displayed at the front of Park Theater had Julie Andrews as Maria traipsing through the Alpine hills with a guitar case in hand. She looked happy and inviting, but my classmates and I were excited by it because of the hype, and the fact that the older people around us were quite excited to see it once more on the big screen. In 1985, only twenty years had passed since its release, and I bet people then still had big memories of the film's original enchantments. These were the pre-Internet, pre-Betamax, pre-VHS days, so watching specific movies was very much a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical affair, and the moment a film had a fill of its run in your town, that was it. The prospect of seeing the movie once more in its full glory must have been an electrifying promise.
Park Theater was packed come screening day. I couldn't find my seat in the orchestra section -- and timid boy that I was, I found a spot near the back of the SRO crowd, never mind the three-hour running time. I remember that night as the first time I was completely enchanted by a movie, to feel for the first time cinema's power as the film unspooled and captivated everyone in the audience. The feeling of amazement was communal. From the moment the Alps and the hills near Salzburg came to view, to the moment when Maria appeared first as a speck in the horizon and then twirled to give us the film's signature song, I knew I was going to be in love with this film for the rest of my life.
It made me a believer in film magic.
Years later, I would learn of course that the film was not universally loved, that it had fervent critics, that its sweetness was an issue for many people. Later on, when I came to my discovery of the criticisms of Paulene Kael, I learned about the brickbats hurled the film's way for being agonisingly saccharine -- even Captain Von Trapp himself was reportedly ambivalent about its legacy. In my more jaded older years, I've come to regard many of these criticisms as true -- and yet a part of me still remains that ten-year-old boy who was so enraptured by the film, he'd go on to buy the cassette tape of the original soundtrack, and memorise every single song in the repertoire -- even the nuns' "Morning Hymn and Alleluia."
In turn I have become suspicious of the easy jadedness of critics when they lament about sentimentality in movies. Not everything has to be muscular and restrained and morose -- masculinist standards that are also responsible for the demonising of romance novels and the films of Nora Ephron. Properly handled, sentimentality has its place in popular culture -- and Robert Wise has done nothing short of a miracle in the handling of it in The Sound of Music.
And what do I remember most about the film that should merit my selection of a "best shot"? This one, if only for its emblematic composition, where Maria comes to near the end of "I Have Confidence" -- a song originally written for the film version of the musical -- and confronts for the first time the enormity of the challenge she has been given.
Here is this massive mansion behind very intimidating gates -- imposing, cold, and seemingly fashioned like a trap. But she goes in anyway, and starts to weave her uncanny magic to dispel all of those things. It is a perfect metaphor for the film: behind its big gloss and blockbusterish juggernaut, it is actually just a tender film about falling in love.
A few years ago, after college, I found myself in a joyride with some friends, five of us in a small car. We were in our early thirties -- adults, in other words. And one of us (me), for some reason, just started humming. And the humming became distinctly words. And the words were Maria's hopeful personal pep talk in "I Have Confidence":
"What would this daaaaaay be like..."
And somebody joined in with: "... I wonder."
It went on: "What would my future be..."
And somebody else joined in: "... I wonder."
And then we just started belting out together the rest of the song:
"This day could be so exciting, to be out in the world to be free! My heart should be wildly rejoicing, oh what's the matter with me..."
And by the end of the song, we were shouting out the melody and the lyrics, giddy with laughter and with our sudden capacity for silliness, unbelieving of the fact that we somehow knewtheentire lyrics of the song.
I think it was a perfect song for a unique moment. I understood in hindsight why we had to sing that song. And I'm glad it came from The Sound of Music.
This post is part of Nathaniel Rogers' Hit Me With Your Best Shot Series over at The Film Experience.
Every year, around this time of the year, this column turns to one constant that has been there for so long, I might as well call this annual space the “vagina’s turn.”
Looking back to all my old columns, it struck me that I have written about VDay every single year since 2001, after having been inspired by the example set by writer/activist Eve Ensler and her groundbreaking play, The Vagina Monologues, which was first staged at the Luce to much controversy in 2001. This also means that, together with Bing Valbuena and Margie Udarbe-Alvarez, I have been part of the movement for thirteen years now, skipping that one year—2002—when things were just coming together, and which led to that big jump in 2003 when Bing started the campaign in Dumaguete.
Reflecting back, I can very much say, with the power of that eternal cliché, many things have since changed, and many things have remained the same. There is change, because we don’t have to fight too much anymore a small-mindedness that prevailed in 2001 and 2003, when the very mention of the word “vagina” proved too much for many in Dumaguete. We couldn’t even put streamers up, and someone threatened to record the whole play in order to serve as evidence of our “depravity.” In 2006, when we unveiled Usaping Puki, the Filipino version of The Vagina Monologues, we received virulent negative feedback—for one, it was considered so inappropriate for us to put up our banner with the word “puki,” in a place that fronted the elementary school.
Now, of course, The Vagina Monologues—and sometimes the alternate play, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer—comes with such annual regularity to our February slate, and no one even questions its staging anymore. In fact, every year, we have no shortage of volunteers to be part of the cast. And we have many more volunteers asking to be part of the whole VDay campaign, and now, since 2013, with the One Billion Rising campaign.
“When I looked through my file of VDay pictures for my VDay Pechakucha presentation [last February 12],” Bing told me, “I realized how I’ve grown with the movement. With its many challenges came many beautiful memories. The challenges were not simple. Many were heartbreaking. A few times I felt like I wanted to quit but every time, there was always one person who would come up to me and ask me about VDay. I would realize that we have come very far on the world we want to create through VDay. Even when unsupportive people continue to come, our VDay volunteers come in multiple numbers. I used to approach friends to ask them to help me in our V-events. Today, both friends and strangers come to me and ask if they can help. More and more men and women come out as vagina warriors!”
And yes, much has yet to be done. Last year, after staging Usaping Puki, an up-and-coming baker in town joined our celebration by giving the cast vagina-shaped cupcakes. When pictures of these cupcakes hit social media—instigated by the Hulagway ug Kasikas sa Dumaguete Facebook page—the comments that came from the locals were vehement in their hatred of the whole day. Which made us think that, twelve years onwards, the battle has yet to be won. There are still many others in the community we have to reach out to.
This year, in honor of the many men who have been part of the VDay campaign in Dumaguete, we are unveiling a new play, The V Manologues. This one, directed by Hope Tinambacan, gathers together monologues by Eve Ensler, as well as a slew of other pieces where men talk about being men in a patriarchal society, where men talk about their lives with women, and where men confront issues that talk about violence against women and children.
Because, in the light of many continuing atrocities, they need to be talked about. And not just by women. Men, too, are part of the solution. That has always been the magic of VDay.
Mr. Tinambacan, who has directed The Vagina Monologues before, and is now directing the new play, reflects: “With the old play, I had to keep reminding myself that I have no vagina, therefore I couldn’t judge the characters of their feelings and emotions based on my experience as a man because the violence they experienced were basically gender-based. To be able to direct Usaping Puki I had to allow myself to feel vulnerable and to empathize with the brokenness of each of the characters, and I knew that in the end it has made me a real person who would continue to stand firmly beside all women and girls who are rising and demanding an end to violence. This year, directing The V Manologues started off as a confirmation that I am not the lone guy who is true to this fight against gender-based violence. This production allowed me to immerse myself in the many emotions and experiences of other men and made me reflect on my own stories and experiences with women. The V Manologues is an affirmation that we men and women, together as one, can win this battle. This show will bring you stories of men and their experiences with women, and how we recognize the fact that indeed men are capable of inflicting harm towards women and that we are also instrumental in ending violence and achieving gender equality.”
And all these now for the One Billion Rising challenge, which is currently in its third year. J Marie Maxino writes: “Another difference is our One Billion Rising campaign. We still visited different academic and government institutions, and taught their members to dance for themselves, their loved ones, and their communities. With nearly 30 schools and organizations participating in OBR Negros Oriental, we will still join 207 countries rise for those one billion women who have been or will be abused in their lifetimes. We will still aim to increase the number of V-Warriors and OBR supporters. We will still dance and rise to stop the violence. This year, however, we made the decision to highlight the involvement of men in the advocacy of VDay and OBR. Using the tagline: #MenRising, we hope to encourage men of all ages and from all backgrounds to be more aware and supportive, to step up and speak up to stop violence against women and girls.
“VDay may have come a long way, with so many changes, but something remains the same: violence still exists. Violence still happens to people regardless of their race, age, religion, sexual orientation, and social and economic status. Violence, in all its forms, still poisons the humanity of both the abuser and the abused. Violence, in its many disguises, still threatens to destroy hope…
“But, that is what we have and hold on to: hope. We hope and believe that things will be better and that equality is possible. We hope and believe that there are always people who will keep fighting for those who have yet to find the courage to fight. We hope and believe that our cause will empower more people to become advocates for a better community and a better world.
“VDay embraces its 17th year with the theme ‘Rise for Revolution,’ and, with these changes to the campaign, we aim to inspire current and future Vagina Warriors and VMen to begin the revolution within—in how they see themselves, each other, and the world. This is a revolution to stop neglecting the responsibility to speak out against violence. This is a revolution to strip ourselves of labels and inhibitions, and see ourselves for who we really are—not as men, not as women, but as humans—humans who are capable of incredible change and exceptional love.”
Indeed, the VDay movement has grown bigger.
It is now in its 17th year, with Dumaguete celebrating it for the 13th year in a row. Last year, we rose for justice. This year, we rise for revolution. Every day, we should finally rise for love.
The V Manologues is directed by Earnest Hope Tinambacan, with monologues adapted from the writings of Eve Ensler, Ian Rosales Casocot, Howard Zinn, L.T. Goto, Mark Matousek, Kris Dave Austero, Nicholas D. Kristof, Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye, Robert Thurman, Kelvin Wu, and Rocky Magaña. The cast include Ian Rosales Casocot, Rey Dote, Warlito S. Caturay Jr., Andrew Marc Alvarez, Nikki Cimafranca, Ron Jacob Calumpang, Kris Dave Austero, Tyler Hoisington, Lee Verdoguillo, Hanz Denzil Villahermosa, Shadid Rodriguez Sidri, Lydio Mangao Jr., Ra’zcel Jan Salvarita, Kelvin Wu, Manolito Saldivar, Rocky Magaña, and J Marie Maxino. Ramon del Prado provides a video monologue. The play opens 14 FEBRUARY 2015, Saturday at 8 PM at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium. Tickets available at the Silliman University Psychology Department at P175.
I like that Glee is just going loco in its last season, relentlessly commenting on itself and all its silliness, but most of all -- by revealing to us Sue Sylvester's "emotionally vulnerable songs" in this episode -- it reminds us about why we grudgingly return to this flawed -- and valiantly liberal -- television series: jukebox musicals get to us because the songs remind us about those days when music was the one true thing that understands us completely. #StayingForTheLastSeason
10:31 AM |
Races to Finish, Mountains to Demolish, Days to Persevere
One time, not so long ago, Saturday morning felt fallow and unremarkable. This happens. Everyone’s lives have days that feel like lead. It had been raining the entire evening before this unremarkable Saturday, and when the daylight finally broke, there was still no let up in the miserable cold and wetness, which soon extended to what would eventually become a whole day affair.
Normally, this would not have been a problem for me: I am built for wet days. For some reason, my personality perks up on stormy days and my body tends to rebel against the return of the sun. When it feels the promise of sunshine in the air, my body breaks down into a variety of malaise that sometimes I am convinced I am allergic to solar brightness and must therefore be a vampire.
So I woke up feeling very tired, and found that I couldn’t move a muscle. This is a dramatic exaggeration, of course. What I felt was not physical paralysis; it felt very much like a spiritual, even an existential, immobility. I was not sure whether it was the familiar black dog of my constant bouts with depression—but there was no dark fog hugging my brain, and it didn’t feel like despair. It just felt like a numbness that consumed and the only recourse was to succumb to the hug of the bed and sleep it off.
I had just survived a most trying year in 2014, I told myself, and one day of numbness like the Saturday I was experiencing was nothing. I had entered 2015 with a resolve I had not seen myself undertake in years—consumed with the belief that one’s happiness can actually become a matter of shrewd negotiations with willpower and undertaking a routine of good things that becomes habit. Good begets good. I learned this well in the murky bottom that was 2014.
So I’ve learned to do certain things guaranteed to make the going feel worthwhile. Striving to stay fit, for example, became a matter-of-course. Staying positive became a must, even with the direst of days. I’ve learned to do a daily extraction of good things written down on slips of paper and deposited in a glass vase—to remind me at the end of the year that while the bad are most remembered for the emotional dent they deliver, the good—softer in their impact—must not be so easily forgotten.
And what of the previous year? Have I easily forgotten the best moments of it? In popular culture alone, there was Julianne Moore moving me with her depiction of despair against early onset Alzheimer’s in Still Alice. There was the surprising ending of The Legend of Korra, where the couple that rides off into the brilliant radiance of a spiritual portal are of the variety that rarely gets depicted in children’s television. (All right, Korra ended up with Asami—much to the delighted squeal of many who have shipped them for eternity.) There was the strange melee of How to Get Away with Murder.
In a more local context, there was the unbelievable beauty of the photographs in exhibition for the South Pacific Photowalk. There was the raw power of J Marie Maxino’s Pechakucha talk on being queer. And speaking of queer, there was iSpec’s approval as an official organization in the university I work for—the first LGBT and straight alliance ever allowed in this part of the world. That’s progress. There’s Hersley-Ven Casero’s new collection of firefly paintings. There’s Romeo Ariniego’s collection of art—many of them by Filipino masters—that he has donated to his alma mater.
There was the explosive climate change march in Dumaguete. And there was the initial offerings in Razceljan Salvarita’s upcycling products. There was Jack Wigley’s revealing talk in the summer of writers. And there was the release of Belltower Project Dos album—which brought Dumaguete music to a higher rung, creating a community and consolidating a sound. There was Dok Timbancaya’s big Founders Day EDM party—a series of parties, in fact—that was a celebration of how youthful and dynamic this city can be, if it really wanted to. And then there was that enormous feeling of vindication that I felt when I sold the last ticket for Lav Diaz’s Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, which had a special screening—spectacularly sold-out—at Robinson’s Movieworld, proving once and for a while there was an engaged audience for these kinds of films in this city.
I’d forgotten these, and many other good things, from 2014, convinced only of the consuming darkness of that year. In proper and more inclusive retrospective, it wasn’t that bad.
And so it was that, near the tail-end of that miserable Saturday, I knew I had to salvage it somehow. Because shit does happen—and the ultimate measure of our humanity is our response to it. Like with this guy I’ve read about named Micke Ekvall. For him, shit did happen, literally. He was running a marathon when he suddenly developed a case of the stomach cramps in the middle of it. Post-race, Micke Ekvall, who finished that 2008 race in 21st place, was asked if he ever considered stopping to clean off. “No, I’d lose time,” he said. “If you quit once, it’s easy to do it again and again and again. It becomes a habit.”
There’s no quitting.
Let shit happen.
Finish anyway.
Here’s the story of another man like Ekvall. His name was Dashrath Manjhi, whose wife died because they were unable to get medical care from the nearest hospital, which was 50 km away from their village in India. In the aftermath of this tragedy, Dashrath Manjhi proceeded to singlehandedly cut down a path through a small mountain that blocked the way and made travel long and difficult.
In 1959, he sold his goats to purchase a chisel, a rope, and a hammer. No one helped him, but every day he moved pieces of that mountain for what must have seemed like an impossible and foolish dream.
In 1981, he finally stepped into the other side of that mountain. It took 22 years. But now only 10 km separate his town and the hospital.
I didn’t have an excuse not to demolish my own metaphorical mountains, including murky Saturdays in the doldrums. And so, with some finality, I got up. And felt so much better.
4:25 PM |
The Man Who Faced a Mountain But Came Through a Pathway
Because his wife died unable to get medical care from the nearest hospital 50 km away from his village in India, Dashrath Manjhi proceeded to singlehandedly cut down a path through a small mountain that blocked the way and made travel long and difficult. In 1959, he sold his goats to purchase a chisel, a rope, and a hammer. No one helped him, but every day he moved pieces of that mountain for what must have seemed like an impossible and foolish dream. In 1981, he finally stepped into the other side of that mountain. It took 22 years. But now only 10 km separate his town and the hospital.
I don't have an excuse not to demolish my own metaphorical mountains.
2:49 AM |
Ricardo de Ungria is new Silliman Workshop Director
Award-winning poet Ricardo de Ungria has been appointed Director-in-Residence for the 54th Silliman University National Writers Workshop by Silliman President Dr. Ben S. Malayang III upon the recommendation of the Advisory Board of the Edilberto and Edith Tiempo Creative Writing Center through its Coordinator, Ian Rosales Casocot.
De Ungria has published eight books of poetry and edited a number of anthologies, for which he has won five National Book Awards. Through a Fulbright Grant, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989. He has received writing grants from the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers and Bellagio Study and Conference Center.
He is a founding member of the Philippine Literary Arts Council, which published Caracoa, the first and only poetry journal in the Philippines in the eighties, and initiated a series of poetry readings that stirred interest in the performative aspect of the literary arts.
In 1999 when he moved to Davao, he founded the Davao Writers Guild that, since then, has held annual readings in the schools and malls in the city and published books by its members and a literary journal called Dagmay that features literary works in various languages by mostly young writers in the Davao region.
He has served as Chancellor of the University of the Philippines in Mindanao for two terms (2001-2007) and as Commissioner for the Arts at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
Dr. De Ungria will oversee the selection of fellows and panelists for the 2015 Silliman Creative Writing Workshop, the oldest of its kind in Asia, which was founded by the late Edilberto K. Tiempo and National Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo in 1962. He will also help in the continuing evaluation of the thrusts and programs of the Workshop, which this year is scheduled for 11-29 May 2015 at the Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village and the campus of Silliman University in Dumaguete City. (CWC)
1:39 AM |
Call for Manuscripts to the 54th Silliman National Writers Workshop
The Silliman University National Writers Workshop is now accepting applications for the 54th National Writers Workshop to be held 11—29 May 2015 at the Silliman University Rose Lamb Sobrepeña Writers Village. This Writers Workshop is offering twelve fellowships to promising writers in the Philippines who want to have achance to hone their craft and refine their style. Fellows will be provided housing, a modest stipend, and a subsidy to partially defray costs of their transportation.
To be considered, applicants should submit manuscripts in English on or before 9 February 2015. All manuscripts should comply with the instructions stated below. (Failure to do sowill automatically eliminate their entries).
Applicants for Fiction and Creative Nonfiction fellowships should submit three to four (3-4) entries. Applicants for Poetry fellowships should submit a suite of seven to ten (7-10) poems. Applicants for Drama fellowships should submit at least one (1) One-Act Play.
Each fiction, creative nonfiction, or drama manuscript should not be more than 20 pages, double spaced. We encourage you to stay well below the 20 pages.
Manuscripts should be submitted in five (5) hard copies. They should be computerized in MS Word, double-spaced, on 8.5 x 11 inches bond paper, with approximately one-inch margin on all sides. Please indicate the category (FICTION, CREATIVE NONFICTION, POETRY, or ONE-ACT DRAMA) immediately under the title. The page number must be typed consecutively (e.g., 1 of 30, 2 of 30, and so on) at the center of the bottom margin of each page. The font should be Book Antiqua or Palatino, and the font size should be 12.
The applicant’s real name and address must appear only in the official application form and the certification of originality of works, and must not appear on the manuscripts.
Manuscripts should be accompanied by the official application form, a notarised certification of originality of works, and at least one letter of recommendation from a literature professor or an established writer. All requirements must be complete at the time of submission.
Send all applications or requests for information to Department of English and Literature, attention Prof. Ian Rosales Casocot, Workshop Coordinator, 1/F Katipunan Hall, Silliman University, 6200 Dumaguete City. For inquiries, email us at silliman.cwc@su.edu.ph or call 035-422-6002 loc. 350.
We measure our lives in years. There is no getting away from that cultural given—even when we do earnestly sing the refrain from the musical Rent that it is best to measure our lives in love.
I wish we genuinely could. How great would it be to live through life with such seasons, all defined by passion and affection? But human nature has such infinite capacity for both light and darkness, and for every kindness we come to know, there seems to be an equal unkindness to encounter. Any visit to Facebook with its steady display of humanity played out in our timelines shows an equal measure of fathomless love and blinding hate—of late: news of the Charlie Ebco massacre lying side by side with a linkbait story about a homeless woman meeting kindness in a fastfood joint. Plus a picture or two of cats being playful.
So we measure our lives in years, because love is often in short supply. There is great convenience, too, in cataloguing the unfolding of ourselves by the years we’ve managed to live through. Some of us do that by believing in the fitting ending of Decembers, with the New Year’s promise of being given a clean slate—and we mark these with resolutions to becoming better. Some of us believe in annual readings of horoscopes, in the mysterious pull on our fates by the stars or by Chinese animals. And some of us believe in taking stock of our days as they pass through patterns we seem to think our lives follow—the ebbs and lows, cycles of turbulences and triumphs: a map of sorts that takes into count both luck and the consistency of our personalities.
I do all of the above, because I figure there’s nothing to lose in subscribing to one or the other: all of these are just expressions of the human need for pattern-seeking in chaos anyway. And life is chaos. So we turn to calendars and zodiacs and psychology to wrest a semblance of control over the uncertainty of what’s to become of us. But mostly I measure my life by the years I still stay in Dumaguete, my nest, my comfort zone, my familiar shore.
A few weeks ago, I was having Christmas lunch with a bunch of colleagues, all of them good friends, in the early days of the holiday season. We feasted on buttered corncobs, pot roast, and magical roasted chicken floating gloriously in some sweet gelatinous thickness. Despite the specter of the rush the holidays engendered, it was a good day in Dumaguete, enough to put us all in good spirits. At one point, as the afternoon turned deeper, someone ultimately pulled out a bottle of white wine and a box of chocolate-flavored silvanas, which proved necessary indulgence for the seriousness of the talk that followed. One of us invariably turned the conversation towards the question of why we have stayed so far in this city. Because we have always been told that, given who we are, the world is our supposed oyster—and so why stay?
There was a flurry of responses to the question. “The world outside isn’t much better. There’s only new wallpaper somewhere else,” one of us said. “ “I like being my kind of fish in this perfect little pond,” another one of us said. True enough, when I make my own reflection, I could be honest enough to admit I find it utterly puzzling that I have not found it necessary to move on, to uproot the anchor, sail the rough seas, become a better sailor, and find a new beach to relax in. Isn’t that the narrative we all teach ourselves to follow? All our literature tells the hero of the story to go out to the world to make his mark. So, if you choose to stay, does that unmake you as the hero of your story? And yet I still remember what National Artist for Literature Edith Tiempo once said in reply to the very same question: “Why do I stay in Dumaguete? I look at its shoreline and I know I’m home.” In many ways, I have come to adopt that line as my own answer. There are days when the questions are particularly heavy—but when I step into the Rizal Boulevard and I see the balance of life played out by the mix of blue sky, green seas, and the quaint promenade lined by Dumaguete’s so-called sugar houses, I always feel that I am living in an unexpressed answer to the question of why I stay.
When I stare into Tañon Strait, with the faint outlines of Cebu, Siquijor, and Bohol in the horizon, I realize that I could either see that blue faint line as either a prison or a gate. It is perspective that can become our ultimate salvation from the worries we throw ourselves into. Sometimes, when I am at a painful standstill or at crucial point in my life, when the cares of the world threaten to overwhelm, I do all that I can to remind myself of that single, most helpful word: “perspective.” “Perspective, Ian,” I tell myself. “Perspective.”
When the last year drew to a close, near the cusp of December 31st, I thought that perhaps this was the ultimate lesson I could wring from 2014’s troubled unfolding. “’Troubled,’ Ian?” I asked myself. “Call it a ‘corrective’ instead.”
But this was not a new insight. Not for me, nor for anyone else. It was something I had come to understand more last year as I went on from one “corrective” day to another. The great Carl Sagan, writing in Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space in 1994, penned the best argument for this—and I was reminded of his immortal lines when it served as a fitting epilogue to last year’s run of the new Cosmos. In that book, Mr. Sagan considered the now-iconic photograph of our planet taken by Voyager 1 in 1990. From a distance of about 3.7 billion miles, the space probe captured our world as being barely the size of a pixel—just a tiny dot floating in the vast emptiness of space, caught in bands of scattered sunlight: “Look again at that dot,” he wrote. “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
The past year crystallized my realization of several things. First, that just because one can doesn’t mean that one should. Second, that life is better lived the way good chefs run their kitchens: to clean up as one goes along. And third, taking my cue from Mr. Sagan, that the world does not revolve around me nor you, and like everything else, you and I are not indisposable.
Perspective.
Dumaguete is what it is: it can be home, or a destination. It can be a nurturing community, especially for artists, but it can also be cruel: it can choose to either love you back, or it can keep you out like the langyaw of legend. I guess it’s the spirit one brings into the place that finally decides one’s fate in it. And I realized that no place on earth, not even Dumaguete, owes anyone their happiness. It’s like asking the world to revolve around you. I have come to consider the rhythm of that world instead, and to learn to dance to its music.
Sometimes I still get unhappy about this place. But I always remember Edith Tiempo’s words, and I also remember that perhaps the only way to become happy, whether you stay or you go, is to measure everything, however you can, no matter how difficult it can be, in love.
Pusheen the Cat on my shoulders watching me as I write tonight.
This should have been done a couple of years back, but I'm now seriously cataloguing all the essays I have written for a planned book manuscript. (Truth to tell, manuscripts for two or three books, actually -- each collection grouped together by a common subject matter. Part of the current challenge is trying to see how I can rewrite many of these essays so that they fit each other to simulate a flow in their book's narrative. I'm always greatly disappointed in books that are mere compilations of columns culled from newspapers and magazines, without the author attempting to create a tome with a common narrative vision.) So I'm basically going through eleven years worth of creative nonfiction and columns -- and some, I find, are quite promising, but a great many are groan-inducing. ("Why did I write about that?" is a constant refrain I hear myself emitting. One column from years back, for example, had me soliciting for Friendster votes for a beauty pageant -- and I cringed, knowing how I stand now regarding pageants of this kind.) But it's enlightening to know what specific subjects I keep writing about, and it's heartening to identify the trajectory of our growing up as reflected by these weekly missives. This is an exhausting project and will probably take a few days to compile. I should have done this regularly.
Near the end of Matthew Warchus' Pride (2014), a grandmother from a down-and-out mining town in Wales goes to London to join a gay pride march, and upon disembarking from her car at the parade's starting point, she calls out with more than a touch of affection and sweetness: "Where are my lesbians? Where are my lesbians?" Whereupon, said lesbians -- dear friends she has made in this story about the unlikely alliance between gay and lesbian activists and striking miners in Thatcherite England -- come upon her, and we get the group hug we knew was coming. Our hearts swell, and knowing that this is based on a true story can only get us having high hopes for the future of humanity again. This, in a nutshell, is the overall design and heart that we get from the film, a feel-good "we-can-do-this-together-as-a-community" narrative that is so well-made and so well-embodied by its huge ensemble of actors that we long surrender to its sentimentality even before we've realised it. And we find that we don't mind actually. This is very much the LGBT sibling of Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty (1997), where comedy meets English social commentary, and makes laughing cry-babies out of all of us while learning a thing or two about social struggles in contemporary history. This is something totally earned by the film, however, and we can only wish that such a crowd-pleaser can attract the crowd it has not so far engaged in the box office.
4:26 PM |
Film #4: Chris Mason Johnson's Test (2013)
Chris Mason Johnson's Test (2013) feels tight and focused, like a chamber piece about dance and the early days of the AIDS epidemic. It shouldn't work, given the claustrophobic nature of its subjects -- there are the endless rehearsals on a small stage, and there are the endless bouts paranoia of a specific kind of hypochondria. But it does work, and I think it has much to do with Johnson's choices of framing this story about a young dancer (Kevin Clarke) who's trying to break into a major role for a small dance company in 1985 San Francisco, while navigating the harrowing realities of a community suffering from a largely unknown virus during a time when the first HIV test was becoming available. Charting the ways these two arcs intertwine with each other, the film feels expansive because of a certain gracefulness in style, helped much by David Marks' beautiful cinematography. Johnson is able to probe deep into his characters' skins so easily, often in lingering close-ups that feel not invasive but intimate and intoxicating; yet he also knows when to pull back -- this he does during the dance sequences -- to make us appreciate the confluence of colour, movement, shape, and composition. It's a rather simple tale, but that doesn't matter: this is a study of mood, and we get this in spades.
12:32 AM |
Film #3: Adam Wingard's The Guest (2014)
I don't know what to make of Adam Wingard's The Guest (2014). Ostensibly a thriller -- and it is: the story is about a grieving family who has just lost a son in the army, and who then welcomes into their home a mysterious, sexy stranger who claims to be their son's friend, but who may not as he appears to claim -- the film manages to be suspenseful and funny and gory, and features a bravura performance by Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens, who unhinges throughout the film like a psychopath you'd love to take home to mother. It feels like a 1980s Brian De Palma movie without the Hitchcockian bent, only the dark comedy distilled into a genre-bending something-something you don't care much to define, only enjoy.
2:31 PM |
An Introduction to Hiphop Art
