On FacebookI've belatedly come to accept that what Facebook really fosters is not conversation or discussion, or rather, conversation and discussion are the least of the many many many things it offers to its subscribers. With its incessant insistence to like and tag, the obstructive imposition of friending even sixth-degree acquaintances, the fan pages and questionnaire memes, what Facebook really fosters - promotes and celebrates - is yet another continuation of the Culture of Celebrity, and that celebrity is Me. This is not exactly the eureka of the decade, it's meant to be a book with your face on it, and on the surface it is all well and good, but when in the context of less baser things like say art criticism - things that ought to be more open for discussion than the latest quippy exchange you had with your boss over lunch that you just put in as your status message a few minutes ago - that's when the whole thing just simply throws its arms up in the air in disgust and surrender and utter frustration.
The form just can't handle the content: Facebook was built merely to contain personal detritus and ephemera - its search field is only for its online population and not for actual content produced by the same; its turnover of said actual content is quick, often by the hour, sometimes even by the minute, just miss checking it for one day, you're already behind on what's what; it has no edit function for the comments section, which is basically the most immediate requirement in online conversation and discussion; and even in the most liberal privacy settings, ultimately all actual content produced in Facebook are only accessible - reading-wise, commenting-wise - to Facebook subscribers, to the people that you tag, to the people who are in your friends list, and contrary to popular belief, not everyone is in Facebook.
In light of all this, all conversation and discussion in Facebook are merely all exercises in solipsism, all merely - consciously or not - to promote the self as whatever one wants to promote the self. When the conversation and discussion's main form is promoting what is conceivably the easiest reply that requires the least amount of effort, ie the status message and the like thumbs-up button, and when these conversations and discussions are only really visible to your friends, all that really fosters is self-assurance, that one is saying something right and correct and true and likable, and conversations and discussions are never about those things.
On Joel SaludI'm afraid that I've come to realise that as long as I insist on questioning your Facebook poetry modern renga compilation Anthology of Rage along the context of art and society as you continue to insist on talking about yourself as replies to these questions, well, I've come to realise that that will only be a complete waste of my only too precious time in front of the keyboard and monitor. So go on continuing your Persecuted Hero Complex while getting backrubs from Luisa Igloria and Marne Kilates in your comments section. It's all well and good. It's Facebook. It's okay. I'll still continue on insisting on questioning your Facebook poetry renga compilation along the context of art and society.
On Angelo SuarezI live for the day that Gelo - Philippines' number one promoter of Facebook-as-legit-forum-for-conversation-and-discussion - will say something controversial and actually stand by it without his usual safety nets of self-involved pomo paradoxes, the latest being his staunch debased disavowal of the possible role of art on extreme acts of cruelty like the Maguindanao Massacre in the latest High Chair Journal. Again, this is all well and good, maybe even admirable, as this is something a lot of people believe in, something a lot of people far more intelligent than me and Gelo has written about - my own polarities in this debate would be Berger and Oppen, the middle guy more or less being Benjamin - only Gelo's stand is tarnished by his own insistence to paradoxically not talk about it by talking about it in Facebook, pushing that in critical doublespeak up until straining only to backpedal at the eleventh hour, paradoxically - glibly - discrediting his own non-talks with even more critical doublespeak, in effect paradoxically not only failing in not talking about it, but also failing in talking about it as his non-talks only come off as glib and even pretentious and at worst solipsistic - or rather, far glibber and pretentious and solipsistic than if he only just wrote something about it. And as his discussion "enemies" now rally around him as Facebook friends, I find out coldly harshly matter-of-factly just what it all really means. And yet I still live for the day. Yeah, I know, it's a paradox.
I'm in the fringes of my two weeks off of writing. Quite refreshing, this relaxing thing. Been reading lots, shuffling between the gigantic Ballard stories collection, the new Charles Fort collection, some books of the Invisibles and Preacher, and quite ambitiously, David Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress. Replenishing the creative battery, as Eddie Campbell once aptly described it in Alec. Also bought Faber's Dictionary of British Sign Language, all of 1,084 pages for 75 pesos. It's for a future poetry book project.
In the middle of my two-week vacation from writing, Charles Tan finally launched the Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009. Tan read virtually every publication published last year and picked the stories he felt best represented Speculative Fiction. As someone who has probably read about a quarter of the local SF stories Charles has, and as someone who has read every story included in this book, I must say that I agree with most of his choices, and was very surprisedly impressed with some (ie Paolo Chikiamco's dragon story), although the three stories that didn't light my fire in whatever way the first time I read them, well, I still don't like them at all. But with most - aside from Chikiamco's, I should also mention Mia Tijam's weird thing, Dean Alfar's sad thing, Kit Kwe's Brillantes thing - I found really good, really satisfying.
Aside from being the writer of one of the stories chosen, I also designed and laid-out the PDF, and I am not proud to say that it was one of my most unprofessional layout jobs ever, as I was in the middle of a very very very rough month (which finally pushed me into taking this two-week break), I wasn't responding to any of his eMails (to my defense, I wasn't responding to anyone's eMails during those days). I'm really very sorry, Charles, it's not my proudest moment, but I'm happy we got this out relatively okay. Congrats to a job well done.
And also something that I feel is a job well done is High Chair Online Journal #12 the Maguindanao Issue as edited by Chingbee Cruz and Yours Truly, all three parts - here, here, and here - finally complete. I've nothing much to say about this that I haven't said already in the intros and outros and bits of commentary in Fezboobs, not to mention with the choices in what we included for the journal, but I will say this: Chingbee and I came into the editorial job each with our own unique theses for what the Journal ought to say about art and society and their interactions with one another, and we both came out of it with our theses shattered in several million brilliant splinters. I don't agree with or even believe in some of the assertions made by the pieces we included here, but I voted for including them nonetheless because this was not about reconfirming my own belief systems: this was about trying to understand what happened, and to achieve understanding, one needs to hear ideas/notions/beliefs that go against one's own ideas/notions/beliefs. We - the global "we" - were trying to understand what happened that terrible sunny morning of six months ago, what that meant to what we - the global "we" - do, ie art, and what what we do meant to that, and we're all still trying to understand what's what. The operative word is "understand," meaning to perceive and comprehend, meaning to be sympathetic, meaning to learn. I cannot stress that enough.
And to top this linkathon off, I finally made an effort to gather all my komix kriticism essays and post all of them here. The first one dates back to December 2008, and the latest to a month ago but only published yesterday. See if I'm making any sense!
- I talk about Gerry Alanguilan's Elmer
- I talk about Francisco Coching's El Indio in one, two, and three parts
- I talk about the need for komix kriticism
- I talk about Manix Abrera's 12
- I talk about Fidelis Tan's & Mary Rañises's Nailbiter and Jake Aboganda's & Gabriel Jimenez's ∴i2.0
- I talk about Macoy's Ang Maskot
Ayun po. Feel free to eMail or leave comments. I'll reply. I'm taking it easy.
Newest feature in the POC! Something I've been looking forward to reading since I first realised you can put these two things together and come up with something different, ie, since I was a teenager and read about Lester Bangs. These things ought to be put inside a book!
- Katrina Macapagal on Bob Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man"
- Chingbee Cruz on the Beatles' "Blackbird"
- Ina Santiago on Peryodiko
- me on Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping"
- Paolo Cruz on Coldplay's "Viva La Vida"
- Carljoe Javier on Mos Def's "Mathematics"
And still a few more new bits to come. I plan to write about three more of these, less of the critical and more of the creative, if only to stave off my impending insanity. My own humble contribution focuses on the Protest Poem as Pop Song, and it's an accurate snapshot of my current concerns the past few months, namely, my education. It's rough going, but I'm getting there. Leave comments!
I've been sorely neglecting this blog in favour of my work stuff and I've been hating myself because of it, and for that, I've decided to do a regular feature that I'll only do in this blog, something related to my ongoing reread of the Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon epic Preacher: I plan to count all the books' grievous head wounds.
I admit that this is not a new project: back when I was reading the books in singles - thirteen years ago, more or less - there was a Preacher fansite that basically did this very thing, count each and every grievous head wound in the books as they came out month in month out. It was one of the most pointless things I've ever seen anyone do, and due to my wanting to do something truly utterly wastefully brainless for once, and due to the fact that that little legendary website is now defunct, I've decided to count each and every grievous head wound in the books as I read them.
A few rules:
1) I define "head" as the parts of the body upwards from the neck;
2) I define "wound" as any sort of wound that draws blood, so the head wounds in this count will not necessarily be "grievous," although I must say that eight out of ten head wounds in Preacher can be described as nothing short of "grievous;" and
3) I will only count the grievous head wounds that appear on the pages, in the panels, either as they happen or as evidence of what had happened, meaning, I will not count threats of head wound as a head wound, or even implications of head wounds if they don't show even a drop of blood, ie, a first-person POV of a shooter shooting the viewer presumably between the eyes, meaning, there has to be a direct visual evidence of the grievous head wound for it to be counted as such.
And so, to get things started, here is the total number of grievous head wounds in Preacher, from issue number 1 to number 26, ie, a little more than two years' worth of singles, as published in Preacher Book One: Gone To Texas, Preacher Book Two: Until The End Of The World, and Preacher Book Three: Proud Americans -
Total number of grievous head wounds: 110
(the first ever grievous head wound being a decapitated seraphi angel)
Total number of grievous head wounds dealt by the Saint of Killers: 24
(the first victim being an adephi angel shot through the right eye)
Total number of grievous head wounds dealt on animals: 1
(the first being baby Custer's dog nailed to the fence through the head thanks to Jody)
Next: Preacher Book Four: Ancient History, which I think will add a lot to the tally, as this book features the origin of the Saint of Killers, a slapstick send-up of Chuck Norrisy-Steven Seagaly action movies starring Jody and TC, and the origin of Arseface - all grievous head wound stories.
Today's the only real rest day I've had since a month or so ago. For the first time in maybe a decade, I woke up really really really late, nearly lunchtime, which is really really really late for me, as someone who consistently wakes up at around 6 to 7 AM, regardless if I've been drinking or writing or whatever the night before.
I've been endlessly tired as I started a few new things in the POC, things that really utterly drained me, and I still need to write a few things that aren't too draining but still decidedly comprehensive, ie, RaceFail, Song as Poem, a brand new Dialect This, MoFo! essay, and on top of that a design-layout raket for Charles Tan, a book I've virtually finished, just needing a little ratcheting here and there, ratcheting I haven't had the time to do as between writing and doing things for the house and for the people in the house (I do dinner five nights a week), hay, barely enough time to do anything else - haven't even been able to write stuff for myself! I've been writing nothing but work stuff for more than a month, now, and that's a fuckin record for me, ie, not writing anything non-work for more than a month. My genre-writing plans for this year have taken the backseat by necessity, it seems.
Charles! I'll eMail you later tonight, but in case you read this first: I've been ignoring all eMail for more or less a month, now, just really focussing on writing and writing and writing, and I need to do that to get things done, and I've been grossly irresponsible about the design-layout job. I assure you that that's the first thing and basically the only thing I'll do tomorrow. I just really need to go through this day not spending more than an hour in front of the PC monitor. I'm really very very sorry. I promise you that by Wednesday at the latest, you'll have your book.
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