Category Archives: Art & Culture

Qwertyman No. 67: Business with Culture in Iloilo

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Qwertyman for Monday, November 13, 2023

OVER THE past year, still eagerly emerging from our post-pandemic stupor, my wife Beng and I have been traveling up a storm, limiting ourselves to local destinations such as Bacolod, Virac, Davao, Roxas City, and Iloilo City. We chose these places because we’d never been there before—such as Virac and Roxas—or hadn’t visited for many years.

We were most impressed by the progress shown by Iloilo, whose transformation into a rapidly urbanizing metropolis I had begun to observe well before the pandemic. City and provincial officials, under the initial leadership and with the strong support of former Sen. Franklin Drilon, had managed to unite behind the key objectives of a continuing comprehensive development plan that has straddled several local and national administrations. 

All over the country, you hear about politicians achieving national prominence and power, even to the point of aspiring for the presidency—except that back in their home provinces, they did little or nothing for their constituents, and may even have lost the local vote to an outsider as a result. Drilon never ran for President—a job I think he would have performed excellently, if our voters were thinking rationally—but if he did then he could have counted on a near-solid Iloilo vote for never forgetting where he came from and ensuring Iloilo’s emergence as a model of city planning.

Any visitor to Iloilo cannot fail to be impressed by its dynamic growth, from the minute he or she steps off the plane in the city’s airport in Cabatuan, about 20 kilometers from downtown Iloilo. The long drive to the city down the wide, smooth highway is a virtual introduction to the city’s progress, with new malls, office buildings, car dealerships, hotels, construction depots, hospitals, and housing lining both sides of the road; new bridges and overpasses were rising here and there. A Grab car service just opened this year, our driver said, happy to be lifted by that rising economic tide.

The crown jewel of Iloilo’s renaissance is clearly the Iloilo River Esplanade, now stretching nine kilometers along both banks of the river in its expanded form. Designed by the celebrated architect Paulo Alcazaren, the Esplanade is what we Manileños want our Pasig riverbank to look like, in our dreams, but here in Iloilo, it’s been a reality for over a decade now. From early morning until after sunset, the Esplanade is filled with joggers, couples, families, and tourists who can also duck for a drink or a meal into one of the restaurants and cafes lining the walk. The river itself, once described as a septic tank into which the effluents of the city’s factories, slaughterhouse, and beer gardens drained, is clean and clear, fringed by a healthy belt of mangrove where we spotted egrets taking refuge. 

There’s a point of view that sees malls as the bane of urbanization and the death of small, artisanal businesses, and that’s been true in many places. It’s abundantly obvious that malls and mall culture have invaded Iloilo, with some negative consequences down the road. But so strong is local culture and tradition that it’s almost inconceivable that Iloilo will lose Tatoy’s, Breakthrough, Ted’s La Paz Batchoy, Panaderia de Molo, pancit molo, KBL, diwal, and all the other little things that make the city what it is. Indeed, instead of being pushed out, many of these institutions are now in the malls. At the plaza in front of Molo Cathedral, after a 3-km walk from our hotel via the Esplanade, we had breakfast of mini-bibingkas baked right before us the way they’d been done for decades.

It was a happy coincidence that, during our visit, UNESCO named Iloilo as the country’s first Creative City of Gastronomy, in recognition of its outstanding culinary culture and heritage. This was achieved by the city government under Mayor Jerry Treñas with the assistance of a team from UP Visayas’ College of Management that facilitated a workshop for the city’s food-industry leaders last May. Education remains one of the city’s strengths; its West Visayas State University College of Medicine is now one of the country’s top-ranked medical schools, aside from UPV’s commanding role in the region.

It was UPV Chancellor Clement Camposano who, after dinner in one of the many seafood restaurants that have cropped up in Leganes on the city’s outskirts, drove us around so we could appreciate the city by night. On our way to Molo, we passed through the new Megaworld/Festive Walk business district and were blown away by how smartly designed everything was; it was almost as if we were in Singapore or some such country. It was hard to believe that not too long ago, this was the old Iloilo airport in Mandurriao, and that the road we were traveling on had once been a runway. This is also where the Iloilo Convention Center is located, where the APEC 2015 summit was held (Drilon had negotiated the donation of the site from Andrew Tan, in exchange for the ICC’s being built there).

We returned to this place in the daytime to visit one of Iloilo’s most recent and also most impressive attractions: the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art or Ilomoca, a three-story showcase of both local and national talent. Ilomoca’s establishment in the middle of one of Iloilo’s CBDs demonstrates what seems to be the local formula for sustainability, the merging of the modern with the traditional, of business with culture. You can best see this in the majestic Consing mansion in front of the Molo Cathedral, which was bought by SM but tastefully renovated and transformed into its Kultura shop. There’s no doubt that modernization is coming to Iloilo in a big way, but its leaders are smart enough to know that the city’s appeal lies in what it has built over the past two centuries, which no money can buy.

You’d think that Iloilo has gotten this far just because of political patronage from Manila, but Iloilo was one of the 15 provinces that went for Leni Robredo in 2022. The city’s former mayor, Jed Mabilog, was hounded out of office by threats of tokhang under the previous administration, but the city seems to have weathered the political storms under Treñas, returning to his old job under the National Unity Party. What this tells me is that good local governance matters, whatever may be happening elsewhere. 

Email me at jose@dalisay.ph and visit my blog at http://www.penmanila.ph.

Qwertyman No. 65: Who’s Afraid of Big Bad AI?

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 30, 2023

I NO LONGER attend writers’ conferences and festivals that often, believing that younger writers would benefit more from each other’s companionship and encouragement, but I made an exception last week for the 66th Congress of the Philippine PEN, as a gesture of solidarity with that organization which has bravely fought to defend freedom of speech where it is threatened all over the world.

I was richly rewarded for my effort by listening to one of the most enlightening discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) that I’ve come across—not that there have been that many, considering that ChatGPT—widely regarded today as either God’s gift to humanity or the destroyer of civilizations—has been around for just a year. 

Of course, AI has been around for much longer than that. In pop culture, which has a deep memory for these things, we can’t help but think of HAL, the insubordinate computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey (which actually came out in 1968), said to be a clever play on “IBM,” just one letter to the right. Indeed the fear of technology—what some would call unbridled knowledge—has been around since Faust made his pact with Mephistopheles, reiterated in literature, film, and pop culture all the way to Dr. Strangelove and Spiderman’s Doc Ock. 

Not surprisingly, the panel on “The Filipino Writer and AI”—composed of Dominic Ligot, Clarissa Militante, Joselito D. Delos Reyes, and Aimee Morales, and moderated by Jenny Ortuoste—expressed many of the anxieties brought on by the entry of AI into the classroom, the workplace, and everyday life: plagiarism and the loss of originality, the loss of jobs, indeterminate authorship, and the lack of liability for AI-produced work. With Filipinos being the world’s top users of social media, AI’s centrality in our digital future can only be assured, like it or not, and for better or for worse.

So new has AI been to most people—and so rapidly pervasive—that most institutions from governments to universities have yet to formulate policies and regulations covering its use and abuse (the University of the Philippines has adopted an AI policy, mandating among others that all members of the academic community should be AI-literate, but it has yet to provide concrete guidelines on, say, evaluating and grading AI-assisted work).

Most revealing and thought-provoking were the remarks of Dominic Ligot, a data analyst, software developer, and data ethicist who brought up talking points that many of us miss in our usually dread-driven discussions of AI. I didn’t tape the session, but so sharp were Dominic’s observations that I can recall and share some of them here (employing an endangered resource in this human, memory).

Let’s not forget, Ligot said, that all AI works with (in the literary, journalistic, and academic sphere) is words. It may have a scary ability to amass, analyze, and re-integrate these words, but it lacks the other elements that contribute vitally to creativity: emotion, inspiration, insight (and, may I add, the power of abstraction, the kind of conceptual leap that, say, stimulated modernism in art and literature from the rubble of the First World War). 

Also, the more AI amasses, the more mediocre it tends to be, because it works with averages, and averaging averages degrades the quality of the end-product. Since the products AI spews out from the prompts it receives are plowed back into the system, this spitback reduces the originality of material even further. If it keeps feeding on itself, AI gets even dumber.

Ligot also reminded us that the suspicion and denigration with which AI has been met in the creative community is understandable, given our earlier responses to technology. When photography was invented, he said, painters didn’t see it as a potential competitor; it wasn’t art. 

What separates human creation from AI, he emphasized, could be summed up in three things: agency, inspiration, and liability. Humans make sense of their experience and act on their thoughts and feelings accordingly; they draw on their experience to imagine new possibilities. And lastly, we are liable for what we make, do, and say, for which we have both legal and moral responsibility, while an AI-driven car does not, even if kills someone on the road.

Dominic also noted the inevitable tensions between disciplines and industries that consider AI a helpful if not indispensable tool in, say, achieving more efficiency and economy, and those, like the creative arts, that may feel threatened by the options AI offers.

Overall, the discussion could offer no assurances either way that AI would leave us better or worse, but what it left me with was a desire to continue writing the way I do, while I can, before the algorithms take over everything.

And just out of curiosity, to see what AI can do now for and to the Filipino writer, I gave ChatGPT this prompt: “Write me a sentence in the style of Nick Joaquin about a man grieving over the loss of the woman he loved.” This is what the program came up with:

“In the solemn silence that engulfed his weary soul, he encountered the bitter truth that bereavement lingered like an everlasting shadow, forever haunting his heart with memories of a love that once bloomed in the garden of his existence, now reduced to a withered rose, its petals scattered across the desolate landscape of his grief-stricken days.”

“Solemn silence?” “Weary soul?” “Desolate landscape?” Maybe not bad for a freshman yet to learn about unlearning clichés, but definitely not Nick Joaquin. Of course, out of vanity, I had to ask ChatGPT to do the same thing “in the style of Jose Dalisay,” and it offered this:

“In the depths of his longing, his heart bled like fragmented brushstrokes on a forlorn canvas, for she was the vibrant palette that infused life into his desolate existence, now forever vanished like whispers carried away by a tormented wind.”

Just slightly better than Mang Nick’s AI ghost but still so not me. (Boy, does AI love adjectives!) All this says is that AI’s big mouth and stomach haven’t found and digested us yet, probably because we are not worthy. Cold comfort, but I’ll take it.

Qwertyman No. 63: The Slaughter of Innocents

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Penman for Monday, October 16, 2023

TWO SATURDAYS ago, my wife Beng and I sat enthralled as we watched a brilliant performance of the play “Anak Datu” at the CCP’s Black Box Theater. It was a play that, among other objectives, sought to trace the roots of the armed conflict in Mindanao to a series of massacres perpetrated by the military against Muslims just before and after the declaration of martial law. It began with the well-documented killings of young Tausug recruits being trained in Corregidor for an abortive invasion of Sabah in 1968 and went on to the less-known Malisbong massacre in Sultan Kudarat on September 24, 1974, in which 1,500 men were reportedly killed.

For us—and I’m sure for the packed crowd in the theater as well—it was a harrowing revelation. We had known about the troubles in Jolo and had followed the rise of the MNLF, but to most Manileños then and now, Mindanao was another country, tourist-pretty but woeful, home to exotic fruits, fabrics, and dances, but otherwise mired in poverty, corruption, and bloodshed. The play tries to break through those stereotypes even as it acknowledges the complexities of politics and culture as they apply to Mindanao, especially to people just trying to catch a breath of peace.

In pointed irony, earlier that same day on the other side of the world, Hamas militants had begun to mount an attack on Israel, eventually killing about 1,000 people and taking hundreds more hostage. In retaliation, Israel bombed the Gaza Strip and killed about as many. This nightmarish war of attrition is still continuing more than a week on, with no clear end in sight.

Like many Filipinos far from that war zone, all we could do was to mutter prayers for the dead, the displaced, and the suffering on both sides. On top of the war in Ukraine and natural disasters ravaging the planet, it seemed like the world was in the sorriest mess it had ever been since the Second World War, emerging from a pandemic only to destroy itself with more willful deliberation.

I know that some were not so generous as to seek or see a moral balance, and immediately identified with Israel, invoking the Bible, Washington, and common sense, especially with the reports and pictures of brave Filipino nurses standing their ground and being murdered by Hamas.

For certain, whatever and however long the history may be behind the legitimate grievances of Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation, Hamas’ brutal assault on ordinary citizens will not win them any sympathy, at least in the Western media which we depend on for our news. We know that there has to be another side to the story, perhaps one just as terrifying, but we go with what we see. It could be argued that Hamas’ actions were the result of decades of oppression, like a man running amok; but this was cold premeditation, factoring in the inevitable retaliation it would provoke.

Still, with both Jews and Palestinians fighting for survival, we forget that not all Palestinians are Hamas, and that not all Israelis supported Netanyahu. The guns will drown out the voices of moderation in both camps, those who understand that there can be no real victors in these messy wars, only losers. Lives are lost, the truth is lost, our humanity is lost.

Countless posts on social media claim that the Lord has already taken a side in the conflict. But not being particularly devout, I remember only how often the Almighty’s name has been invoked to kill. The skeptic in me suspects that the Lord is, must be, indifferent, so we can use our own hearts and minds to sort things out; he will not play deus ex machina.

Nothing, not even quoted Scripture, will convince me that the slaughter of innocents in the name of God, Allah, or Yahweh is morally justified. It has happened, it happens, and will always happen because of our brutish nature, but that will be an explanation, not an excuse. The hard-nosed men in the war room will dismiss all this preciousness as so much sentimental handwringing, and raise the killer question: “If the enemy goes for your wife and daughter, won’t you go for theirs?” Revenge and retribution, an eye for an eye, will prevail over reason and compassion, often devalued as suicidal weakness.

Come to think of it, no one ever called the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—in which over 100,000 people died—“massacres.” Most of them were ordinary citizens just going about their business, with little or no say in their country’s militarist policies. Instead, conventional political and military wisdom has always insisted that these deaths were necessary for other deaths—particularly American, in a projected invasion—to be averted. One hundred thousand innocent lives wiped off the face of the earth in a literal flash, and no one in power even blinked, because of course it was justified as the lesser evil, made more acceptable by the savagery unleashed by Japanese soldiers on their captive populations.

In graduate school, I developed a keen and rather morbid interest in a genre of English Renaissance drama called “revenge tragedy” (think “Hamlet,” but there were many cruder, bloodier and frankly more entertaining examples). The object of all those plays was to show that “revengers” begin with a just cause, the victims of insufferable oppression and humiliation. But ultimately they prove little better than the beasts they seek to extinguish, wreaking havoc on the innocent. They cross a line, and lose all moral superiority.

That line is drawn somewhere in the sands of the Middle East, but  just as importantly, it also crosses our conscience. When we recall how easy it was for many Filipinos—even those who professed to be devout Christians—to condone and even applaud extrajudicial killings, thinking that society was merely ridding itself of riff-raff, we see how righteousness and evil can so comfortably cohabit.

I have no easy and firm conclusions to draw from this most recent conflagration, and I feel that we have to look beyond the intricacies of history and politics for answers. Diplomats, scholars, and zealots have tried almost all the formulas at their disposal, to no avail—with the notable exception of the two-state policy, an elusive political solution that will come with its own challenges.

It may be that only the hopelessly naïve or the naively hopeful—and I plead guilty—still imagine that any kind of just and enduring peace can be achieved in these circumstances. But before or while we condemn barbarity elsewhere, we have our own hordes of howling ghosts to confront, coming out of the Chinese pogroms under the Spanish, Bud Dajo, Samar, Corregidor, Malisbong, Mendiola, Maguindanao, and Mamasapano, among others. Let more “Anak Datus” be written, to lift and save us from Facebook’s summary judgments.

(Image from broadway world.com)

Penman No. 455: A Musical for Our Generation

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Penman for Sunday, October 1, 2023

PINOYS WHO came of age in the 1990s like our daughter Demi, born 1974, will swear by “Ang Huling El Bimbo” as their collective anthem—not just the song, but the whole musical and its score by the Eraserheads, who might as well be Martians to Beatles and Woodstock fans like me. On her last vacation her from her long and happy life in California, Demi made sure that she and her cousin KC got to see the show, no matter the cost, and the two girls stepped out of the theater misty-eyed. 

It got me wondering if our generation—boomers, I think we’re called—had something similar to get us all thoughtful and even weepy about what we’d been through. If you were born in the ‘50s, you’d be in your late 60s or in your 70s by now, and that’s a long time to be alive, relatively speaking, especially given that so many of us died so young (read my Qwertyman piece on this from a few weeks ago on “A long grace note”). That usually means college, jobs, marriage, kids, affairs, separations, houses, cars, debts, accidents, ailments, responsibilities, recognitions, disappointments, losses, homecomings, and all the sundry little things that make up a life. That’s what happened to us, and the ordinariness of it doesn’t seem to suggest much worthiness as entertainment material. 

But someone our age apparently thinks otherwise, and beyond just thinking about it, has actually co-written and produced a musical titled “Silver Lining” for our generation—and our children who may want to understand what their folks went through, and why they think the way they do.

That someone is Jack Teotico, better known these days as the man behind Galerie Joaquin, Fundacion Sanso, and other art-related ventures that have opened doors for Filipino artists here and abroad. (When we last met, he was on his way to Madrid to scout prospects for a gallery there.)

Jack and I happen to be friends for half a century now, having met at UP where we were both student activists. We had actually been grade-school batchmates in La Salle Green Hills but hadn’t really connected there. We were both arrested after martial law, and our lives would inevitably intersect every now and then. An economist by training, he headed the Fiber Industry Development Authority at one time, while I worked for the National Economic and Development Authority. We ran into each other more often when he devoted himself almost exclusively to the art world.

Still, it was a great surprise when he told me, at his recent 70th birthday party, that he was staging a musical titled “Silver Lining,” using songs he had written over the years. I knew Jack also loved music and had been performing with a group called Rockitwell.

“I think it’s time to share our generation’s experience,” Jack said. “Not just the political part, but our story of growing up and growing old, the friendships we make along the way, the trials we’ve been through, and what life looks like today from our point of view.” No literary piece touching on the 1970s would be complete or credible without mentioning or implicating martial law, and it’s there in the dark shadows of Jack’s story, but he’s chosen to foreground what to most people were the more familiar rituals and milestones of early adulthood—high school and college life, relationships, love and loss, acceptance, and intimations of mortality. 

Based loosely on real-life events, the musical traces the journey of three high-school buddies who, in their senior years, form a band for their Golden Anniversary homecoming, drawing in their wives and children. They soon decide to work on a musical together—so yes, this a play within a play—and as they do so, the past unfolds in poignant contrast to the present. Even as the narrative unavoidably reaches into the darkest corners of our lives—dependencies, betrayals, disappearances, and such—it ends of a note of hope and redemption.

Working with Palanca-prizewinning scriptwriter Joshua Lim So and musical director Vince Lim, Jack tells these stories through songs with titles like “Brothers,” “Losing Our Way,” “Rambolan,” and “Atin Ito.” The script is in Taglish, given the middle-class milieu of the characters, and the melodies should be easily relatable, reflecting the musical variety of the period covered, from ballads to disco. 

Directed by Maribel Legarda, the musical is headlined by veteran actor Ricky Davao as Leo, Joel Nuñez as Anton, Raul Montesa as Raul, and Nenel Arcayan as Josie, with Krystal Brimner playing a special role as Julia.

As every Broadway aficionado knows (and Jack is one), musical theater is a risky business, but I suspect that Jack really isn’t into this for the money, but rather to leave his signature on our cultural memory. He’s done more than enough to support and promote other artists, and indeed it’s time for him to tell his own story—our story.

“Silver Lining” will have a limited run of only six performances over two weekends  at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium in RCBC Plaza, Ayala Avenue, Makati City—at 8 pm on Fridays, October 20 and 27, 8 pm on Saturdays October 21 and 28, and a 3 pm matinee on Sundays, October 22 and 29. Book your tickets now via Ticket2Me or bit.ly/silverliningmusical.

Qwertyman No. 57: An Invitation to SERVE

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 4, 2023

AT 5 PM next Saturday, the 9th of September, a new book will be launched at Fully Booked in BGC. Published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and simply titled SERVE, the book has 19 authors—yes, I’m one of them—and one editor, the much-respected Jo-Ann Maglipon. What connects all is that they were college editors during the first Quarter Storm of the early 1970s, and survived to go on to distinguished careers in media, education, business, and public service. The book dwells much less on martial law—a previous volume titled Not on Our Watch: Martial Law Really Happened, We Were There that came out in 2012 dealt with that—than with its aftermath, and the afterlife that the activists of our generation were fortunate to have, given how many of our comrades gave up their lives to the cause of justice and freedom.

What did these activists do after martial law? What are they thinking now? Some of the names in this book will be familiar to the contemporary reader, who may not even have known of their activist background (reg-taggers, pay close attention).

Some of us—like Jimi FlorCruz, Sol Juvida, and Thelma Sioson San Juan—remained journalists all their working lives, stationed in very different places and capacities but bound by a commonality of interest in the truth. Others like Sonny Coloma, Manolet Dayrit, Ed Gonzalez, Diwa Guinigundo, the late Chito Sta. Romana, and Judy Taguiwalo took the path of government service, finding themselves in a position to effect real change, although sometimes under very difficult if not adversarial circumstances. Yet others including Angie Castillo, the late Jones Campos, Mercy Corrales, and Senen Glorioso found fulfillment in entrepreneurial and corporate work, applying their progressive values to management. For Elso Cabangon, Bob Corrales, and Diwa Guinigundo, their circuitous journey led to a re-encounter with their spirituality, and to embracing their faith as their personal advocacy. Like many veterans of the First Quarter Storm, Alex and Edna Aquino were able to build new and productive lives overseas, without yielding their investment in Philippine concerns. Quite a few of us—Derly Fernandez, Ed Gonzalez, Judy Taguiwalo, Rey Vea, and myself—chose to pursue our activism in academia, if only to ensure the transmission of critical inquiry to another generation. 

The authors were under no compulsion to conform to an ideological standard, except to extol the spirit of service to the people, the overarching theme of their youth and now their continuing commitment, indeed their legacy. There’s pathos in these accounts, but also humor and, inevitably, irony, perhaps the defining tone of our postmodern age: Thelma Sioson San Juan finds herself seated across Deng Xiaoping’s granddaughter at a Ferragamo show in Beijing’s Forbidden City; Manolet Dayrit learns of his appointment as Secretary of Health on a visit to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Malacañang; Ed Gonzalez becomes president of the Development Academy of the Philippines under President Joseph Estrada, but then joins EDSA 2; Sonny Coloma looks out the window of his Malacañang office to where students like him had demonstrated against Marcos.

With most of the writers here now in their seventies or inching close to it, we could have been chronicling the joys of grandparenting, journeys to far-off places, exotic menus, succulents and bromeliads, and homeopathic remedies for the aches of aging. Having retired from the formal workplace, we thought we had settled into a privileged and imperturbable kind of peace, earned over decades of political, economic, and spiritual struggle. 

We celebrated our seniorhood as the ultimate victory, for a generation that did not expect to live beyond thirty, and not because of some acquired disease but because of the throbbing cancer at the core of our society that claimed many of our peers in the prime of their youth. We may have thought for a while that we had defeated and expunged that cancer, only to realize that it had never left, was always there, lying cruelly in wait for a chance to ravage us again—and not only us this time, but our children and grandchildren as well.

And so—albeit no longer lean and shaggy-haired, perhaps benignly forgetful of car keys and personal anniversaries—we gather again at the barricades we put up against a fascist dictatorship fifty years ago, of which our memories remain surprisingly and painfully sharp. They say that the old remember distant things more clearly than what happened yesterday, and we offer proof of that. The experience of martial law coded itself into our DNA, and even the few among us who surrendered their souls to Mephistopheles cannot shake away that indelible past—one we bear with pride, and they with guilt and shame.

This time our barricades consist not of desks and chairs but of memory itself and, more formidably, of hope, courage, and a continuing faith in the good. Beyond memoirs, more than recollections of our youthful selves, we now present the stories of the lives we built and the paths we took after martial law, along with our reflections on how time and experience have reshaped us, clarified our values, and strengthened our resolve to serve our people in multifarious ways. 

Our view of politics inevitably evolved over time as the world itself changed over the past five decades. These essays and stories cover a wide range of themes and treatments, and demonstrate how “serve the people” has grown and evolved with its advocates, taking multifarious forms from working in civil society and practicing good governance to promoting artistic expression, academic freedom, and insightful journalism. We wish to prove that even the worst of times and the worst of leaders are not only survivable but can be changed, so that whatever lies ahead, the better Filipinos in us will prevail.

Given the number of authors and their families and friends, we expect a full house at the launch, so you might want to wait and get your copy of the book from Fully Booked or from AdMU Press’ online channels. However the book finds its way to you, it will be worth your while.

Qwertyman No. 55: Persona Non Grata

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Qwertyman for Monday, August 21, 2023

THE HON. Victor M. Dooley was in a foul mood, and no one knew that better than his Chief Political Officer and rumored girlfriend, Yvonne Macahiya.

When his whiskers began to twitch like he was about to sneeze—but didn’t—then something was upsetting her boss. He was trying to say something but couldn’t find the words for it, so his pursed lips went this way and that way, and Yvonne understood that it was an SOS from the senator whose maiden speech she had crafted a year earlier.

“What’s up, boss? Looks like you have a great idea trying to wiggle out of your brain.”

“Have you seen the latest surveys? 2025 is coming up and my poll numbers are going nowhere! There’s 12 slots and I’m in No. 16, behind two lawyers with a hair piece and buck teeth! These preschool feeding and rural literacy programs you’ve come up with are doing nothing for me—babies don’t vote, and even their mothers prefer cash!”

She bent low and purred into his ear. “We needed to soften your macho image, to make you look cuddly and caring—“

He put his arm around her waist. “You mean I haven’t been cuddly and caring enough?”

She slunk out of his grip and pretended to dust the plaster Maneki Neko cat on his corner table. The senator liked to wave back to it and giggle when he entered or left the room, feeling like it gave him good luck.

“Boss, you have my vote. One vote. You need ten million more from people who’ll never know how kind and generous you can be when I blow air behind your ears to put you to sleep.”

He smiled at the pleasurable memory and nearly forgot what he was all upset about. But then the Three O’Clock Prayer came on the Senate PA system and he suddenly remembered. Yvonne respectfully lowered her eyes and mumbled her devotions but the Hon. Dooley’s eyes grew wide with  realization.

“Holy Mamaw, I know what we should do! You hear that prayer? You know that—that Luka Luka something who impersonated the Lord and who, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, offended 85 percent of Filipinos?”

“Yes, the drag queen who performed the Lord’s Prayer and who was declared persona non grata by eight municipalities. Why?”

“You see the media mileage he/she/they got?” Dooley had attended an obligatory gender-sensitivity program and was very careful with his pronouns. “It’s all over the news and social media! Even when I’m watching all these sexy reels on TikTok, I keep seeing this, uhm, person!”

“So what do you want to do? Get yourself declared PNG? Are you out of your mind? You want me to dress you up as Mary Magdalen?”

“No, no, no, that’s not what I meant. Let’s declare someone persona non grata! I’m sure it will make waves. Not Luka, that’s done. I hear even Barangay Suluk-sulukan in Tawi-Tawi, which isn’t even Christian, is declaring him/her/them PNG. We need to find someone new.”

“And who might that be? It will have to be someone everybody hates.”

For a minute, the two sank into deep thought. Dooley stared at Maneki Neko as though the white cat had the answers. He had brought it back as a souvenir from an official visit to Japan, tossing aside the Yayoi Kusama teapot gifted to him by the Ministry of Culture to Yvonne, who promptly sold it on eBay.

The Japanese figurine gave him an idea. “You know, with what’s happening out there, everyone in the region hates China. I mean, not Chinese food or Chinese fakes, everybody loves those, just Chinese bullying. So why don’t we declare Xi Jinping PNG?”

“Why, is he coming over for a visit anytime soon? No point in naming him PNG otherwise. And who cares about Xi when we’re letting in 150,000 POGO workers from China?”

“You’re right. Chinese presidents don’t come here—ours go to them.”

“Even exes,” remarked Yvonne. “

“Oh, him?” said the senator. “Now that was one ballsy guy! Imagine him cursing the Pope and calling God stupid? And there wasn’t one barangay or parish that declared him persona non grata for it!”

“Oh, he’s already PNG upstairs for sure, although I guess he already knew that,” said Yvonne.

A new song came on over the PA system and Yvonne recognized it instantly, emoting with its lyrics. Soon she was singing along: 

But she wears short skirts

I wear T-shirts

She’s Cheer Captain

and I’m on the bleachers….

“Who’s that?” asked the senator.

“Who else? Taylor Swift! She has  79 million Facebook fans, and last year Spotify listed her as the most listened-to artist in the Philippines. And she’s coming soon to Tokyo and Singapore!”

“Hmmm, that’s interesting. Why don’t we declare her persona non grata? I’m sure that’ll generate a lot of buzz!”

“Are you crazy? Taylor Swift? She’s not even coming to the Philippines for her Eras Tour!”

“That’s exactly it. We declare her PNG for excluding us from her world concert.”

“We can’t declare someone PNG and stop them from coming here because they’re not coming here—“

“Let’s call it racism or something. No, that won’t work if she’s going to Tokyo and Singapore. Those Tamils are browner than us. Let’s think of something else.”

And then the song changed, and Yvonne went into an even dreamier state, gliding across the floor with some cool stops and turns.

Cause I-I-I’m in the stars tonight

So watch me bring the fire and set the night alight (hey)

Shining through the city with a little funk and soul

So I’ma light it up like dynamite, whoa oh oh

“Who’s that?” asked Dooley.

“You never heard of BTS? No—no, boss, don’t even think about it! They have what’s called an Army, and it’s bigger than all the people who ever voted for you!”

Penman No. 453: The Distance to Brillantes

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Penman for Sunday, August 6, 2023

I’VE OFTEN written about how Gregorio C. Brillantes has been the bane of my writing life, a fellow short story writer and Palanca Hall of Famer whom I never had the pleasure of seeing in second place after me (the reverse has been the natural order of things). When the Ateneo Press recently launched his Collected Stories and asked me to speak at the event, I felt like a jealous juvenile again at 69, with the 90-year-old Greg in a wheelchair in front of me, and cheekily boasted that, at last, I had one over him: his collection had 39 stories while mine (Voyager and Other Fictions, 2019) had 44. 

Of course, it was a hollow boast, because any one of Greg’s stories is easily worth two or three of mine. That’s how highly I hold this man in my esteem, and why I wrote this blurb for him: “Few writers turn me into a blushing fan. Gregorio C. Brillantes is one of them. Like his papal namesake Gregory the Great, who wrote a massive 35-volume commentary on the Book of Job, Greg Brillantes has been an untiring and unsparing chronicler of his time and place…. His fiction is infused with power and luminosity; he surprises, but never screams.” 

In an art card that Ateneo Press used to promote the book, I said further: “More than a master of language, Gregorio Brillantes is a master of our Filipino sense and sensibility, particularly those parts we find hard to put into words or to recognize as our truest selves. We see life in his stories as through a gossamer screen that filters out  the harshest light; that screen is his own sensibility, suffused with a deep and tolerant understanding of pain as pleasure’s shadow.”

(The young Greg with John Updike.)

But really—putting all the fanboy talk aside—why Brillantes? What did I and my students—and what can every young writer of fiction—learn from him?

To get right down to brass tacks, I’ll take one of his best-known stories and dissect parts of it that should show what not only good but masterful writing is all about. 

“The Distance to Andromeda” has been mistakenly described by some as a science-fiction story, but it is not, although science fiction figures prominently in it. Without going into what the story means, what Brillantes demonstrates here, technically, is his acuity of observation and grasp of relevant detail, which is basic to any writer’s armamentarium. Too many young writers fuss over the elements of what their Ultrawave Galactic Terminator Machine should contain, glossing over the seemingly inconsequential gray matter of daily living that congeals into human drama. 

In “Andromeda,” the boy Ben’s post-apocalyptic fantasies are foregrounded by domestic business. See how Brillantes constructs a scene: “He dribbles an imaginary basketball toward the kitchen, skidding on the floor, feints and jackknifes a neat shot through the door. His sister-in-law Remy is giving her baby his supper of porridge from a cup. The child gurgles a vigorous greeting at the boy, and Remy laughs at the wonder of her son’s knowing the infant-accents of his language. The kitchen is bright and intimate with its rich cooking smells: Pining bustles about the old Mayon stove, and the girl with the pigtails smiles her crooked-toothed smile from the lithographed calendar on the wall.”

It doesn’t seem much and the young reader may feel bored by the lack of “action,” but note how, in fact, the scene is full of action—physical and emotional action, of the kind absent from too many stories being written today about morose characters sipping cappuccinos at Starbucks and ruminating over their wayward romances and work-life balance. “Get your characters off their butts,” I always tell my students, and Brillantes does.

A Brillantes story is an accretion of impressions, ideas, and emotions. It’s that kind of preparation that earns Brillantes the right to orchestrate this kind of paragraph later in the story: “He catches the streak of a shooting star from the corner of his eye. Instantly his waiting becomes a sharp alertness: he holds his breath and the strangeness comes into him once more, the echo of an endless vibration. But it is no longer an abstract aching for the relief of words: it speaks within him, in a language full of silence, becoming one with his breathing, his being, and the night, and the turning of the Earth: incomprehensible, a wordless thought, an unthought-of Word: like the unseen presence of One who loves him infinitely and tenderly. The fear has gone, the lonely helpless shrinking he felt on the bridge, walking home: love surrounds him, and no evil can touch him here, in his father’s house.”

For a story written in the author’s mid- to late twenties, “The Distance to Andromeda” already lays out, in full, Brillantes’ talent and vision, his familiar themes of family and love, of doubt and faith, of Rilke’s God “who holds this falling / Gently in his hands, with endless gentleness.”

It is a story that I myself could not have written, as I inhabit a more sordid and much sadder world in my fiction, with little to draw on but my characters’ residual sense of goodness for their salvation. Brillantes celebrates—consecrates—the mundane joys of the middle class, even as he underscores their fragility and transience. I write as well about these people—doctors, teachers, boys on the verge of manhood—but they tend to be more visceral in their responses. My other literary hero and model is Bienvenido Santos, who can make music of melancholy, and I try to straddle the breach between these two gentlemen, although again my characters prefer the low life.

But young writers: read Gregorio Brillantes. Understand what truly breathtaking means by reading two of my favorite stories of his: “The Cries of Children on an April Afternoon in the Year 1957” and “The Flood in Tarlac.” If you read them and still wonder what good fiction is, then you might as well be looking up at the sky to find Andromeda, because that’s how far you have to go.

Qwertyman No. 52: Joe Biden’s SOTU

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 31, 2023

BECAUSE OF a glitch that happened when Chinese hackers tried to hijack America’s C-Span network so they could replace congressional programming with X-rated cartoons (on the theory that no one would miss the analogy), for a few minutes in the early morning of July 24, 2023 (Eastern Standard Time), the channel’s viewers were treated instead to the live coverage of an apparently big event happening in faraway Philippines.

Celebrities and bigwigs were getting dropped off by their limousines and luxury SUVs at some place called the “Batasan,” which a commentator helpfully explained was the building that housed the Congress of the Philippines—the Philippine Capitol, in other words, minus the dome.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was just about to go to bed in his home in Bakersfield—he had flown back to California for the weekend to avoid the screechings of the Freedom Caucus in his ears—and he had been having a hard time sleeping, wondering which was worse, having to deal with Joe Biden or with Donald Trump. Just when he was about to drift off to dreamland, his cellphone rang. It was an aide back in Washington, and immediately Speaker Kevin wondered if something earthshaking had happened—like Biden resigning after being diagnosed with dementia or Trump discovering honesty and humility and turning to God. “Boss, you have to see this. Tune in to C-Span!”

Grumbling, the Speaker did as asked and had to rub his eyes as he watched a woman step out onto the red carpet dressed like some aboriginal priestess, complete with warlike tattoos. Others came in headdresses, butterfly sleeves, heavily embroidered gowns, and sashes with pictures of dead people. “What’s going on? What the hell am I looking at? Is this some movie premiere or what?”

“It’s a live feed from the Philippines, what they call a SONA—the president’s State of the Nation Address, their version of our State of the Union. The president’s arriving shortly to deliver his speech.”

“You woke me up to get me to listen to some political crap in some backwater country? Are you out of your mind? Don’t we get enough of this in DC?”

“No, no, boss, it’s not about the speech—that’s the whole point, forget the speech, it’s about the fashions! Look at them, preening like peacocks and peahens. Look at the coverage, I’ll bet you, tomorrow, all the papers and social media in Manila will be talking about the dresses, not the speech!”

“And so?” Kevin got up from bed, sufficiently intrigued to pour himself a scotch in anticipation of a longer chat. This aide was his top PR strategist, and sometimes the guy came up with truly inspired ideas, like plucking Ms. Horseface away from the Freedom Caucus to boost his conservative credentials and keep the restless natives in check. Joe Biden was the enemy, but his own crew members could be a bigger pain.

“Well, don’t you see, boss? Joe Biden’s next SOTU is coming up, and… we need a distraction. We don’t want him lecturing the American people about how we’re stripping women of their rights to safe abortions, or teaching the young that slavery had some real benefits, or carving up congressional districts to make sure that dark-skinned people don’t get too much sun on election day. I mean, he’ll do that anyway, but these Filipinos know something we don’t—it’s not the speech, it’s the party! We can turn the SOTU into a fashion show and no one will care what Old Joe says!”

McCarthy took a closer look at the screen and listened to the commentators blabbering about this and that gown and comparing it to last year’s versions—the more outrageous, the better. He recalled being canceled back in January for appearing in a picture wearing a blue suit with brown shoes—par for the course in cool Europe but never in redneck America!—and smiled in anticipation of his revenge. 

As it turned out, the Speaker and his aide weren’t alone. Before the footage could be pulled off C-Span, it had made the rounds of the bars around Washington, DC, and someone found even more detailed coverage on YouTube, and when daylight broke over the Potomac it was all that the senators, congressmen, and their flunkies could talk about over their morning coffee. 

“So what are you going to wear to the SOTU?” reporters asked Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as soon as she stepped out the door of her DC apartment. She had a ready answer for that, having pondered the question over her Wheaties: “I’ll come in a long black dress,” she said, “with the word IMPEACH running down the front!”

It didn’t take long for Marjorie’s arch-rival on the right, Rep. Lauren Broebert of Colorado, to announce that she was coming “As Annie Oakley, in defense of the Second Amendment, the biggest victim of all the mass shootings happening in America today!”

Even Kari Lake, who was still refusing to accept her defeat for the governorship of Arizona, revealed that she was attending the SOTU as a guest, and that she was coming dressed as a Mexican muchacha—“Not to glorify diversity or any of that woke garbage, but to draw attention to illegal immigration, which is sucking the lifeblood of this great country and its legal, blue-passport-carrying citizens!”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who had stubbornly and singlehandedly been holding up the confirmation of dozens of generals because he didn’t want the military to pay for the abortions of women in the service, had his own idea: “I’m having myself fitted for the uniform of a Confederate general.” Inspired by something he had seen on a related YouTube clip, he added, “And for good measure, my wife Suzanne will be wearing a gold necklace made from the excavated medals and buttons of Union Army officers!”

Reached for comment at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump declared he wasn’t coming, and fumed when a reporter reminded him that former presidents were invited to the event. “Who’re you calling a former president? That thievin’, lyin’ Joe is a never president—never, never, never! I should be the one giving the SOTU, not him—and I will, again!”

Alerted to the SONA brouhaha by his butler, Joe Biden passed the sugar on to Jill as the video played in the background. He listened briefly to the other president’s speech and smiled. “A New Philippines, hmmm…. How does ‘A New America’ sound to you, honey?”

“I think not,” said Jill. “In fact, we rather miss the old one, don’t we? When America was a kinder and gentler place?”

“That’s George Bush Senior’s line, honey. From the 1988 GOP convention.”

“Exactly. Back when even some Republicans got some things right.”

Qwertyman No. 49: The Best We Can Do?

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Qwertyman for Monday, July 10, 2023

“IS THIS the best we can do?” That question has been ringing in my mind since a couple of weeks ago when two issues came up that, for me and apparently many others, define the level of mediocrity to which governance and decision-making in this country has sunk. Both concerns have already been well ventilated in social media, which is far more scathing and cruel than a Monday column like mine can afford to be—I hate to start my readers’ week with something likely to leave them with an upset stomach—but let’s just think of this as a gargle to relieve our mouths and throats of unpleasant flavors.

First, ex-Atty. Larry Gadon. I don’t know the guy; I’ve yet to meet him and frankly I hope I never have to. I’ve heard the diatribe for which he was rightfully disbarred by the Supreme Court. It’s an awful slurry of verbal excrement that no one but its own source deserves to experience, and there’s doubtlessly more where it came from, disbarment or not. I can live with that, because I know that there’s an even higher court that will render judgment on this fellow and his kind, and it will come with a harshness commensurate to the totality of one’s character. 

What I find more odious is what came after: the Palace’s affirmation of its trust in its appointee as Presidential Adviser on Poverty Alleviation, and Gadon’s own vague reference to certain corporate managerial skills that supposedly qualified him for the job. I had been chatting with a lawyer the day after the disbarment, wondering what Malacañang would do next. “Oh, that won’t get past Justice Bersamin,” he said, adverting to the Executive Secretary. “Just you wait, they’ll take him down.” The next day Bersamin issued a lame press release echoing Gadon’s argument that he didn’t need to be a lawyer, anyway, to take on the Cabinet-level, Salary Grade 31 post, alleviating at least one person’s shortage of cash. (As Full Professor 12 in UP, after more than 30 years of teaching, I retired at Salary Grade 29. Am I envious? Of course I am—shouldn’t anyone be?)

At this point I was pulling hairs off my balding head. So, okay, he doesn’t need to be a lawyer to lead poverty alleviation. But what else does he bring to the job? Is choosing him the best BBM can do? Or does his selection merely confirm what Palace critics believe to be the lack of any genuine commitment to effective and legitimate governance, to give way to the dispensation of favors to political allies? Just when even skeptics were beginning to give their grudging approval to some appointments that made sense—Jimi FlorCruz as ambassador to China and Gibo Teodoro to Defense being two of them—we slid right back into the muck of patronage politics.

Does BBM think so poorly of the poor that he would entrust their fortunes to a man who, using the Supreme Court’s own words, was booted out of lawyering for his “misogynistic, sexist, abusive, and repeated intemperate language”? How will Presidential Adviser Gadon deal with the hundreds of poor women who will be flocking to his office seeking relief for their plaints? Now that he’s beyond the pale of the Supreme Court, will Gadon feel suitably chastened, or will he be emboldened to spread even more nightsoil around the yard? (The dramatist in me is whispering that true character will assert itself, and bring on its own downfall.)

Issue No. 2, the new “Love the Philippines” tourism slogan and the plagiarism mess that followed with its video. I never liked the word or expression “Meh,” which seems a lazy way to express dissatisfaction, but as 99% of social media seems to agree, “Love the Philippines” was triple-meh, totally uninspiring and unimaginative, and visually cluttered. I’m not even complaining about the P49 million reported to have been paid by the government to the ad agency that conceptualized the slogan; we know that the right few words, properly chosen, could make a world of difference in sales, many times more than the investment. (Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, credited to the American Wieden+Kennedy agency, reportedly boosted Nike’s worldwide sales from $877 million in 1988 to $9.2 billion ten years later. We don’t know how much Nike paid for those three words, but its trademark and stunningly simple “swoosh” was drawn by a female college student who was paid $2 per hour in 1971.)

I also understand that we seem to be too self-critical and terribly hard to please when it comes to tourism slogans, maybe because they’re supposed to encapsulate and project our national identity—on which we have yet to arrive at a consensus, a century and a quarter onward. 

Dick Gordon’s “WOW Philippines” and the subsequent “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” earned their share of brickbats. But whatever those criticisms were, I’d have to agree that either one of them is infinitely better than “Love the Philippines,” whose imperative voice sounds tonally off. (Not to mention its susceptibility to parody, which the Palace’s PR watchdogs should have caught—a “Rob the Philippines” meme has been making the rounds, a tamer verb choice than others I’ve seen.) 

Social media is abuzz with what reportedly happened behind the scenes and what a Palace-favored director supposedly did to screw things up—but again, I’m not even going there, and will limit my dismay to the poor result that often emerges when money, politics, and egos get the better of creatives. The use of video clips from foreign sources to prop up a campaign for Philippine tourism was almost absurdly hilarious and totally inexcusable, and it’s hard to believe that a company as experienced and reputable as the contracted ad agency would have done that knowingly, although it owned up to it. 

At any rate, these missteps don’t do any good for any administration trying to earn the people’s trust, and the ultimate question is, what are they going to do about it? The answer will tell more about those in charge than the minor figures in these scandals.