Category Archive for: conversations

kultura

notes on TEDx Diliman: ideas worth spreading? #3!

TEDx Talks are independently organized TED talks across the world, which is about “riveting talks by remarkable people.” TEDx Diliman was my first. This is a review of each of the TED talks that were part of it, done in 18 minutes or less, because that’s the time limit of a TED Talk. Read more about TED here, and check out this really good video on TEDx here.

Glecy Atienza on Buhay: Theater for Life

what Ma’am Glecy had going for her TEDx talk were two things: (1) a life lived in theater, and (2) a theater life that has actually affected change in the spaces it has inhabited. these two should be in every TEDx talk, these are its most basic requirements. but also Ma’am Glecy had an anchor here, something that was the premise of and what drove her whole talk: theater as something that evolves from buhay (life) to buhay (live). i’d argue with that last one and say that it might have worked better had she used the term “alive” but that’s really just a matter of style. what’s important is that Ma’am Glecy allowed this concept to function not just as anchor, but as central idea that’s also a clear assessment not just of theater, but of her life lived within it.

this is what a TEDx talk requires, doesn’t it? because an idea worth sharing is not one that we pluck out of thin air, nor is it the stuff of just dreaming. an idea worth sharing is one that has been proven to work, one that has affected change in some form or manner, one that has, in the course of its existence come to terms with what needs to be done in order to reach a goal that’s about change of some form.

here Ma’am Glecy asserts that in the course of her years in theater, the notion of actor has since evolved for her: she is also artist, who does her own research, who teaches, who organizes communities around theater productions that can change the way they view their lives, the way they might see themselves. here, it will be difficult to question Ma’am Glecy’s assertions about the possibilities of change through theater, and this is precisely because she knows exactly from where she speaks.

but too, what Ma’am Glecy proves here is that it is not just years that a TEDx talk requires, it is more importantly about being self-reflexive and self-aware, where one’s limitations are clear, but even more so one’s ability at compromise, and role in change. these are the kinds of things we might all learn from, because these things are premised on concrete change done within real conditions of nation.

in the end, Ma’am Glecy would be one of the few who actually had proof of how art and culture can change our world, which was the TEDx Diliman theme. she would, in the end, be one of three people who’d do that here.

out of 11 speakers. go figure.

kultura

coming up for air: notes on criticism 1

it’s been quiet here, which isn’t to say that it’s been quiet where i’m at. been finishing up an MA thesis that’s gone on for too long, and is more about closure to a life lived in the academe more than anything else. while that’s happening, i’ve had more interesting conversations than usual, including conversations about art and the state of things in this country, ones that are kept off the record, unspoken of. sometimes it’s limited to Facebook, other times it just refuses to engage in decent debate and discourse, distinct from the personal.

yet there are many things to write still, conversations to be had. but it seems even brave statements of distrust and disgust, even ones that are relevant and worthy of discussion, become feed and fodder for the personal. here lies our un-critical dead end: we are a sensitive bunch of people, very few of us can handle criticism. yet in times of controversy, or just given the space to do it (blogs, newspaper columns), everyone becomes a critic in this country, everyone will claim the title.

which is fine too, were we all working with a sense of what criticism requires, what it entails, what it must necessarily work with. in recent conversations, forced to answer questions about the work i do, the blogging and the writing, and therefore my life in general (hah!), i realized that much of what i had to say reverted back to my sense of what’s relevant and important, to a sense that what i say is secondary to that text that’s in front of me, which is also always a text that’s about nation. i will never claim that i get it right all the time, or even half the time; but i will say that i come from a very clear sense of myself as spectator in the context of the tragedies and sadnesses that are in this space we all inhabit, that any cultural text necessarily sprouts from, no matter how removed these might be.

and just in case it isn’t clear, i’d like to think that any critic is a writer first, because every critic lives off of words, too, lives off of choosing the right words for capturing how she has experienced a text. and as with any writer, the only way to have the words to say, and to have a sense of what’s relevant to discuss, is to be within the enterprise of culture in this country, half the time suspending one’s notions of taste and order, the other half suspending all judgement. all the time it requires this sense of how things are never black and white anymore, that these are gray times, where notions of power and oppression are interspersed/diluted/interlaced with things that are prettier or tastier or just downright addictive.

it’s because of this that i find generalizations to be painfully unfair, if not just usually absolutely wrong. after the success of Ang Babae sa Septic Tank, this generalization was dropped —

Before it got made in the mainstream though, Ang Babae sa Septic Tank won over the less-forgiving indie film crowd, comprised mostly of hipster students and educated artsy folk who are used to seeing gritty, neo-realist dramas and have the tendency to be just a tad pretentious.

i’d like to find out where this indie film crowd hangs out, just because this girl’s got it all wrong about the indie, and the indie film, and even just the idea that there’s a crowd. had she read up on the indie, watched the indie for the past decade or so too, she’d know that this “crowd” doesn’t exist, the hipster students she’s so critical of are a recent aspect of it (and the hipsters are everywhere), and the neo-realist dramas that tend to be pretentious aren’t at all of the indie as a category, but of a kind of Pinoy film in general, indie and otherwise.

in direct contrast to such misinformed generalizations is something as honest as pinoy drama rewind which does movie and TV reviews, as well as episode recaps of contemporary soaps and seryes. this might not be the kind of critical blog that’s celebrated, but it sure as hell’s got more going for it than the misinformed being given space(s) in broadsheets like the Philippine Star. in the latter we just perpetuate the notion that all it takes is space to write and an amount of yabang. in the former, there is an effort at actually and truly coming to terms with the cultural products that we create and live with in this country, and there is a sense of humility more than anything else.

one that we should all learn from, critic and writer, young and old, in broadsheets and online, alike.

radikalchick.lit

Lolo Ding

By circumstance, and with a lot of luck, I grew up in homes where grandfathers were fixtures. Today Lolo Ding turns 100.

He died in 1989. I was 13. I used to tell my writing students, I tell the ones who have become my friends: talk to your elders, ask them about their stories, talk to them about their lives. Know that they all lived — parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles — long before we did, separate from who we are, but so intricately tied to what we become, even when we don’t know.

I was too young to ask questions of Lolo Ding. One evening we were alone in Manda and he put an oxygen mask over his nose as I read to him an article from the Newsweek issue in my hands, only interrupting me to say don’t tell anyone about this, which I knew pertained to that oxygen tank beside us. So we sat on that blue couch in Manda, he with oxygen mask, me reading out loud, until he or I fell asleep, or maybe until I was picked up to transfer across the street, where I lived. The next memory is of Papa and I picking up Kuya from a technical rehearsal in CCP, to tell him that Lolo Ding was about to go, he had to say goodbye.

I remember that blue couch now. I’d go settle into it before lunch (or after, school-willing), where the day’s newspaper waited for me, folded carefully to mark the article(s) that Lolo Ding wanted me to read to Lola Nena for that day. The Newsweek articles he dog eared as he read them while on his stationary bike. He listened to me reading to Lola.

There is much reading, and speaking in me still. Maybe still the notion of teaching. As Lolo Ding did, in ways that he might not have known, in his capacity at trusting that I could take in those words without knowing their meaning, in the manner of learning that happens after the teaching.

About music. Lolo Ding enjoyed the perfected Blue Danube piano piece I had to learn, doing a little dance when he chanced upon it, telling me to play it again. He also requested, and often, the song Blue Moon, a piece I learned beyond piano lessons, a song I still know by heart.

About nation. A vivid memory: Lolo Ding holding a huge foam yellow L sign, and waving it up at the sky as helicopters flew over Mandaluyong during a coup against newly installed president Cory Aquino. More vivid a memory: Lola Nena screaming Frieeeend! Baka mapaano kayo diyaaaan! Lolo Ding smiling gladly about his little rebellion. I’m in college, reading Lolo Ding’s first edition Constantino history books cover-to-cover for freshman history class. I proudly hold those worn books with yellowed pages and creased covers in the face of the new editions my classmates had. It is six years after Lolo Ding’ s death.

About poetry. In 1999, the last of my literature electives leads me to a children’s literature class where, told to bring a poem about childhood, I fell back on memory: Lolo Ding made me read from this huge and heavy tome of poetry that came with his Encyclopedia Britannica. “Men seldom make passes, at girls who where glasses” by Dorothy Parker, which Lolo Ding had memorized, which I knew he made me read to tease me, what with my huge plastic rimmed glasses at age 11. He made me read “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, sad and dark as that is, over and over again, as if he was trying to memorize it, as if he wanted me to memorize it, too. In that literature class a decade after Lolo Ding died, I talked about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour” and I talked about a grandfather who did not only teach me my first poems, but who taught me how to read them, with long pauses and drawls in parts, with an amount of excitement and wistfulness in the right stanzas. I read it in exactly the same way to this class of mostly strangers. I was close to tears.

About death. One summer, Lolo Ding began scouring his dusty med school yearbooks, checking it against his old black address book. He gave me yellow pad paper and a pencil, and I listed down the full name and birthday of each of his batchmates. Lolo Ding would then call the number he had for each of them, getting back to me with either of two things: a new number and address for my list, or a date of death. He said it on the phone too often: Ay, patay na? And Lola Nena would ask: Sino friend? Lolo Ding wrote a small cross on each yearbook entry that required it.

About playfulness. Where secret handshakes are fun, and being taught the piko from his childhood can mean most the summer spent trying to beat him. Where he’d tell me to go with him to Imus for All Soul’s Day: Makikita mo ang birthday mo sa lapida! Which I did, because I was the same birthday as Lola Elang. Where he’d always always have some Goya chocolates hidden in the vegetable crisper of his fridge, or some MY San biscuits in the dispensa, not ready for the taking, but ready for giving. Where he’d play sungka and keep his last sigay between his fingers so I could never get a turn. Where every birthday and christmas (as the former happens too close to the latter), he’d give me a local barbie doll wannabe, the point of which is the dress crocheted onto its body, something he ordered from an assistant in his office.

Where he’d give me riddles to solve: Em, Ay, Crooked Crooked Ay, Crooked Crooked Ay, Pee Pee, Ay.

Or: If You Are En, I E, You Are E!

Lolo Ding’s humor, his spirit, is like a reflection I rarely see, one that reminds me of how a grandfather can take credit for much of what’s me, even when rarely remembered. For the ability to take things in stride regardless of difficulty, the openness to drinks and music with friends, the chance I take to read if not buy a copy of Newsweek now too expensive to subscribe to. In that voice I use when I’d read sections of a poem to a class of students and let it drip with feeling, in the hands that play mahjong, the game that Lolo Ding has ended up teaching us all. In that split second that I take the bottle of moisturizer from my dresser and I see the doll with blonde hair in a green and yellow crocheted dress that stands there still.

In that space between listening to Papa sing “Blue Moon” and hearing Lolo Ding sing it as my 10-year old self played it on the piano.

In the moment Mama and I open a bottle of wine, to the music of Mitch Miller, as the clock strikes midnight to Lolo Ding’s 100.

I always say that I use my mother’s last name to pay tribute to her alongside my father. Now it has to be about the Stuart that my Lolo Ding was. We would all be so saved by this gift of play and poetry, music and merriment, home and nation. We would all be so lucky to remember.

kultura

pinoy rap lives!

with  Gloc-9.

radikalchick.lit

the street of my childhood

is victory avenue, quezon city. where a big house still is, owned by family but barely, a space i haven’t seen in years, a street i haven’t even gone into in as long.

but on that street where i grew up, my notion(s) of the world began to be formed. between the padlocked gate, and the poverty beyond it; the old beetle that we played around and not within, and the huge garden that Lola loved; between the death of a rock star and my own cousin found hit and almost dead by one of our trusted impoverished neighbors beyond that padlocked gate; between who we were there, within family and the strangest kind of love, and what we became when we left, with all our things, a time that i remember clearly.

i would later find out that in fact the move was about the daring to strike out elsewhere, on our own as a nuclear family.

seeing this street of my childhood as i was getting P200 pesos worth of gas, because that’s all my wallet had; coming from many things and emotions of the past two years, but literally from five hours of volunteer work in a public school in one of those streets i will forget soon enough; worrying periodically about money and consistently refusing to worry; with much love, too much in fact, for the world; in between celebrating a birth and a death in the three and a half months of every year since 2008.

this street, a full two decades after, has to be serendipitous.

as it is a challenge, showing me what i want, what i need to do, where i must go, and how it shall be done. as it is about the past, even more so about the future. and the now of knowing to see the possibilities of daring.

that street is exactly where i’m at.