Category Archive for: ibang bayan

kultura

Cherie Gil, world class

<…> as with many women, Callas also just wanted love. And this apparently, was her failing. Seeing her teach this master class though, is a testament as well to her spirit. She was stereotype, yes, she was diva, as expected. But too, she’s a woman who knows not to rest on her laurels, and instead actually wants to share it. That soft spot is what’s startlingly overwhelming about her persona.

Cherie portrays Marie

One realizes two things in watching Master Class. First, that the struggles of woman, image and otherwise, public figure or private, are the same in many ways, and that as you empathize with Callas’ story, you realize how sisterhood lives, beyond death, across races, despite differences. Second, that you do not know a world class Filipino performance until you watch Cherie Gil do this play.

read all of it here!

radikalchick.lit

fete dela musique, elsewhere

You were dancing to music you couldn’t understand at all, but isn’t that what music should be able to do? You were there with a boy you barely knew now, but whose life seemed intertwined with yours. He says this is the real fete de la musique, and you smile. Here? In this park? It’s practically empty.

Cue memory number 1: crowds at El Pueblo in Ortigas, to the sound of music overlapping with each other, sweat sweat sweat the name of the game, knowing who’s with the band the rule not the exception. This may be free you think, but there sure ain’t a lot of freedom here.

Bastions Park, in Geneve, Switzerland, seemed to be all about freedom. It wasn’t cordoned off in any way, and without streamers announcing the event or tarpaulins with sponsors and advertisements, it was farthest from your sense of what a commercial event should look like. Make thatcommercialized event. Because as it turns out, elsewhere in the world, closer to France where the fete de la musique began, freedoms are about the lack of capitalist intent.

read up at the music + culture spanking site of Pulse.ph!

radikalchick.lit

paris, without

To go where books and movies brought you, and to find it lacking. Not even art and its contingent romance(s) would allow for the overwhelming. Tell the boy who traveled through three countries to see you that you might cry when you see the Mona Lisa. Four hours after, inside and in tears for reasons beyond catholic art at the Sacre Couer, he whispers, “Buti na lang hindi ka sa Mona Lisa umiyak.”

finally up, in a new space for writing. :) the rest is here.