We now have a Benigno Aquino as a president - granted, he's not the Benigno Aquino that we wanted, but he's the Benigno Aquino that we have, and so far, that seems to be okay.
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS - KRITIKA KULTURA ANTHOLOGY OF NEW PHILIPPINE WRITING
Contributions are now welcome for the first special exclusively literary issue of Kritika Kultura, the international online journal of language, literary and cultural studies published by the Department of English of Ateneo de Manila University. This issue is intended to be an anthology of new Philippine writing.
The Philippine literary community has a relatively longstanding tradition of releasing anthologies focusing on young writers. However, it can be gleaned that the notion of the “new” remains unarticulated, as recent anthologies simply focus on the “young,” and what becomes apparent is the persistent maintenance of an aesthetics solidified in various creative writing institutions and workshops, a notion that is rapidly rendered inaccurate by a healthy production of writing that these anthologies do not include.
What this issue of Kritika Kultura intends to accomplish is to represent the kind of writing that is rarely published, the kind that is not often legitimized by mainstream publications. The kind of writing that we, as editors, can confidently call “new.”
New, in this case, as the word that most succinctly describes literary texts that are mindful of—by way of formal response/appropriation and/or thematic confrontation—several cultural phenomena such as the preponderance of piracy, the simultaneous/schizophrenic sociopolitical conditions of the nation, the “new” government that includes so many of the old names, the highly provisional stances in criticism pertaining to society and art, the currency and increasing value of topicality and ephemera (as evidenced by BPOs, SEOs, and Facebook), the persistent dominance of celebrity culture, and the gossip paradigm of discourse. The anthology welcomes contributions that transgress genre boundaries, revise traditional modes and forms, formally engage with the largely oral, nontextual/extratextual literary practices of the Filipino audience, and display a technical alertness to the quandaries presented by blog-driven writing, Facebook fiction, protest poetry, the malleability of languages, the hegemony of academic publishing in “legitimate” literature, the dominion of western literary models, and, in light of these, the strategic and arguably fictionalizing construction of Filipino identity.
Contributions are welcome from Filipino writers who have not yet published books of their own. Submissions can be in any language, but English translations must be provided. Multiple submissions are accepted, but each submission (belonging to a particular genre) has a 5,000-word count limit. Submissions must not have appeared in national publications. When emailing submissions, provide a genre-label (such as Poetry or Nonfiction) for each. Submissions may be emailed to kk.litissue(at)gmail(dot)com. The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2010. The issue will be released in February 2011.
Mark Anthony Cayanan
Conchitina Cruz
Adam David
May panahon para sa lahat. Ngayon ang panahon ng pag-asa at galit: Pag-asa na makakamit kung sisimulan nating magalit ngayon. Dahil nagbibigay pag-asa ang galit.
Nahaharap sa "suspension" mula sa kanyang serbisyo bilang Provincial Accountant ng Marinduque ang nanay ko, si Mrs. Erlinda Saguid, dahil ayaw niyang pirmahan ang purchase order ng transaksyon na nagkakahalaga ng P18 million.
Sa ngayon, hindi pa ito pinipirmahan ng nanay ko, at naniniwala ako na hindi niya ito pipirmahan. Hindi ito pinirmahan at hindi pipirmahan ng nanay ko dahil alam niya na anomalous ang transaction na ito lalo na't papaalis na sa governorship post si Bong Carrion. Bakit pipilitin pa ang mga ganitong transaksyon sa loob ng ilang araw na lamang sa puwesto? Kung ito ay para mabawi ang lahat ng nagastos sa nakaraang eleksyon, mainam na si Bong Carrion ang tanungin.
Hindi ako mangingiming sabihin na maaaring nasa landas ng disgrasya ang aking pamilya dahil ang nanay ko ang susi para mai-release ang budget para sa purchase order na ito.
Kapag hindi niya pinirmahan ang purchase order at masabotahe nang tuluyan ang mga plano ni Bong Carrion at ng kanyang mga kasabwat sa Sangguniang Panlalawigan, alam ko na maaaring may mangyaring masama sa pamilya ko lalo na sa nanay ko.
PERO MAY PANAHON PARA MAGALIT, AT NGAYON ANG PANAHONG ITO. TAMA NA ANG CORRUPTION. MALIIT NA ISLA ANG MARINDUQUE AT ANG PAGIGING MALIIT NITO ANG NAKIKITANG OPORTUNIDAD NG MGA PULITIKONG KATULAD NI CARRION PARA GUMAWA NG LAHAT NG URI NG KABULASTUGAN. PERO ITO ANG SASABIHIN KO SA IYO NGAYON, BONG CARRION, AT SA MGA KASABWAT MO:
HUHUSGAHAN KAYO NG KASAYSAYAN AT NG MGA KABATAANG MARINDUQUENO BILANG SIMBOLO NG CORRUPTION NA GUSTO NA NAMING MABURA SA PULITIKA NG PILIPINAS, AT HINDI KAMI MAGIGING MABAIT O MABUTI SA INYO HANGGA'T NABUBUHAY KAYO.
Mangyari na ang mangyayari. Panahon ito ng galit at pag-asa.
Lalabas na sa wakas ang antolohiya ng erotika ng grupong Katha! For some reason, naisipan nilang isama ang isang lumang kuwento ko, as in circa 2003, sa hetero volume ng kanilang antho. Balak gumawa ng mga patnugot ng magandang sanaysay intro na tumatalakay sa isyu ng erotika/erotiko, at me ineMail sila na Q&A sa aming mga mapapublish na unfortunately ay ngayon ko lang nasagutan. Pasensiya talaga sa inyo Mykel, Ser Roland, Ser Joey, Ma'am Joi. Sana talaga makatulong ang mga sagot ko!
A. Tatlo hanggang limang pangungusap na author's / writer's bio-note. Sa partikular ay ang mga accomplishment sa larangan ng pagsusulat: libro, pag-aaral, pagtuturo, atbp.
Si Adam David ay di nagtapos ng BA Malikhaing Pagsulat sa UP Diliman. Siya ay awtor ng maraming libro na madadownload bilang PDF mula sa kanyang blog na Oblique Strategies. Sa kanyang kabataan, siya ay nakilala bilang isang dakilang critic at satyriatic. Nakatira siya sa Kalantiaw, Cubao.
B. Pakisagutan po ang dalawang tanong na ito sa loob ng 3-5 pangungusap bawat tanong. Note: reader-friendly po sana ang pagsagot rito; conversational lang po:
1. Ano ang erotika/erotiko para sa iyo? Bakit ka nagsusulat ng erotika/erotiko?
Ang erotiko ay kahit anong bagay - teksto, litrato, ideya - na nagbibigay ng matinding libog sa isang tao. Hindi ibig sabihin nito na mga sekswal na bagay lamang ang erotiko: ang bibig na kumakain ng tae at sinusuka ito pagkatapos ay sing-erotiko ng bibig na sumusubo ng malaking ari ng lalake - sa utak ng taong may libog para dito, walang pagkakaiba ang dalawa. Kahit ano ay puwedeng maging erotiko. Ang erotiko ay pantasya. Ang erotiko ay walang moralidad.
Ang pagsulat ng erotika ay pagganap ng mga pantasyang ito na ligtas mula sa hiya, sakit, sugat, mula sa mga samu't saring batas ng totoong buhay. Sa erotika, puwedeng mong kantuting-aso ang nakababata mong kapatid sa samu't sari niyang butas habang dinidilaan ng ina niyo ang bayag mo habang nanonood kayo ng Batibot kasama ang inyong ama na pinagbabatihan si Ate Sienna at pagkatapos niyong masayang labasang lahat nang sabay-sabay, hindi ito masamang bagay, hindi kayo huhulihin ng pulis, hindi kayo makukulong, hindi kayo pagtatawanan ng kapitbahay niyo, hindi kayo ikakahiya ng kaibigan at pamilya niyo. Sa erotika, hindi ito masamang bagay.
May halaga ang kalayaan na'to, ngunit hinding-hindi ito maisasalin nang maayos o malinaw sa rasyonal na pag-iisip o pag-uusap para lubos na maintindihan para lubusang mapag-aralan. Unibersal ang konsepto ng erotiko, ngunit lahat tayo ay may indibidwal na konsepto kung ano ang erotiko, at hangga't ang ugat ng kung ano ang erotiko - kantutan, hubad na katawan, pawisan at nakabukaka at/o nakatuwad - ay mananatiling bastos at nakakahiya at pribado, hinding-hindi natin ito mapag-uusapan nang maayos o malinaw. At hindi ito masamang bagay.
2. Paano ka nagsusulat ng erotika/erotiko?
Hindi lahat ng erotikang sinusulat ko ay erotiko para sa akin bilang indibidwal. Kadalasan, ang mga ito ay pag-aaral sa pagbigay-halaga o saysay sa mga bagay o tao na sa unang tingin ay walang saysay o halaga. Kadalasan, ang aktong pagsulat ko ng erotika ay aktong pagtulak ko sa sarili na siyasatin ang mga bagay-bagay para sa kanilang potensyal na maging binhi ng pansariling libog. Sa madaling salita, sinusulat ko sila na parang mga tula, at sinusulat ko sila na para sa akin lamang. Sa madaling salita, pagbabati sa harap ng maraming tao ang ginagawa ko kapag nagsusulat ako ng erotika.
Sandy Miguel sent me a Q&A on Hipsterdom for an article she's writing. I answered it. I was told it's okay to put it in my blog.
1. What do you think of the growing hipster subculture in the country? How does society benefit from it?
There's always some sort of hipster culture growing wherever, it's only now that they're specifically called "hipsters," more out of specific trends in fashion and music that are now widely accessible to people who don't have to have the required appetite for these things. By "required appetite" I mean, I remember being called a "hipster" in the pejorative sense way back in 2001 mainly because of my then growing fascination for Adrian Tomine and Lomo cameras and my extreme adoration for Belle & Sebastian, which were back then relatively fringe and of course very expensive items - I remember buying all the B&S albums (the first three, at least) in Music One Megamall for 900 pesos each. I even made zines back then, quite regularly. I made my own pins and buttons, taped poetry on my shirts, wrote essays for a webzine, wore Adidas jackets and trainers from various ukay-ukay, Napsterred mp3s based off of recommends from Pitchfork, laughed at the Onion. Ten years back, I probably would have been called "gay." That's as hip as one can be in the Philippines circa 2001 when you're not from Ateneo. That was the price of admission into Hipsterdom.
Nowadays, you don't even have to be as snooty as I am/was to be a hipster, you just need a few shirts from SM, download a few gigs of whatever's playing on the local college radio thing into your iPod, attend a few concerts and read Kiko Machine, torrent Community and 30 Rock and keep a Tumblr blog and a Flickr page in tandem with your Facebook thing you ironically keep and you're all set to be hip. I suppose what I'm trying to get at is that Hipsterdom's turned into just another cool thing to do instead of remaining as what it was, a sort of passive rebellion of intellect and taste, a legit response to the oppressive media-sponsored boneheaded kewlness of what was being passed off as rock/punk during those days, as exemplified by what was then the new Incubus album.
I'm trying my best not to sound like an old man, here, but really, back then, you actually had to be smart and well-read and a bit culturally discerning to be a hipster. I suppose now at least more people are better dressed? Listen to better music? Watch better movies? Read better books? Of course, it's not the hipsters' fault individually as one can only be as what the society dictates one to be, and this society has turned relatively dumber as it turned towards being more mainstream, as what happens to any fringe thing moving to the center.
But one can only really judge these things on whatever culture they're producing, only I've yet to see anything of worth produced by Contemporary Hipsterdom. All the cultural landmarks of such a society - magazines, books, movies, songs - are all still produced by people from Old Hipsterdom. Like I said, at least more people are better dressed and more or less listening to better music. Did the New Hipsters get Noynoy elected? Are they changing the local literary landscape with their hip Twitter ruminations on death, decay, renewal? Any more prominent effects New Hipsterdom would have on society at large, we'll have to give a couple more years to happen. I’m very very very sure it’ll happen, only it’s not happening today.
2. As a writer, how do you benefit from this subculture? (Can we call it that?)
I can’t say I benefit from this culture specifically, truth be told, in the sense that they’re giving me money or media mileage of any sort. Despite the fact that one can suitably argue that most of the things I do, most of the things I used to do, they’re all hipster things, but they’re not solely hipster things, or rather not solely for that slice of society alone, or rather they probably don’t/haven’t even read any of my things, as I don’t really see these things as particularly appealing to them like, say, Gelo Suarez’s Dissonant Umbrellas, or McSweeney’s books (even Nick Hornby’s utterly dreck essays collections), seemingly in the larger part attracting more or less the crowd that wants to be seen with something hip. I don’t really see that happening with any of my things, not in the same way as some bands seem to be, as some gatherings are packaged as.
3. Why are you self-publishing your book/s? What are the works of self-publishing here in the country? How do you manage to do that when you don't have a job most of the time?
I’m self-publishing them mainly because I enjoy the freedom to design the books from the ground up. Bits about the writing and the editing, they’re all secondary concerns to me, things that take care of themselves, being largely self-governing processes, albeit that said, writing and editing are all still part of the design of the whole thing, as I’m talking about design as a holistic thing rather than just the superficial packaging and layout thing.
What I’m really interested in in self-publishing is the author as designer, and the book as object – not even art, just the book as an object – with every little thing in it put in there to propel a certain point-of-view, a certain experience, a certain aesthetic. In my experience working with self-publishers, every single thing is calibrated, even the slightest shift of colour in the cover art, they’re all meant to convey some authorial thing, more so than with mainstream publishers – from big time pop books people to university presses – the attention in book design is more for the market, to sell the book, less for the book itself. Not to mention the often tragic wholesale laziness to just design mainstream books for readability, often choosing Times New Roman as type for the interior pages just because it’s the default setting in Adobe In Design. Because self-publishers tend to be people who’ve already accepted that what they do don’t really sell that well, or won’t have the appropriate market reach, they won’t even bother to consider packaging their things for market appeal, or at the very least, they’re not that concerned with the cover maybe being less-standoffish than it could be.
A bulk of self-published books in the country is poetry books and, until recently, genre books, poetry books being the ass-end of sellability, the genre books being the ass-end of literariness. The majority of poetry books come from High Chair, them also being one of the first serious self-publishers in the country. Being mainly alone and penniless, I do PDFs and hypertexts that you can download or read online for free, and they’re mainly vaguely literary things like poetry and prose, with occasional forays into actual hardcopy publishing. A few new serious online publishers have also made their presences felt online, namely Rocket Kapre and Estranghero Press and also Charles Tan’s annual SpecFic compilations, focused on producing genre PDF books or online zines. There’re also Kestrel’s annual SpecFic anthologies and Kenneth Yu’s almost regular Philippine Genre Stories, which they do as real physical books. All these self-published books online are relatively for free, or in Rocket Kapre’s case, sold for cheap, while High Chair and Kestrel and Kenneth Yu, they sell their books somewhere between 100 pesos to 300 pesos, reasonably cheaper than most books of the same genre and/or quality of production. There’re also the tons of zines and komix produced and sold and read annually through the two or three regular komikons, selling their books somewhere between 5 to 200 pesos. In the zines and komix and High Chair’s cases, their books are reasonably cheaper because they don’t sell them through bookstores, so there’s no need to pad the pricetag. In PGS and Kestrel’s books, they either sacrifice the production quality (not a very big issue, if at all, as they still look very very good) or sacrifice the financial payback, which is more or less the case for all self-publishers.
And I know I’m not only (cheesily) speaking for myself when I say that self-publishers survive because self-publishers have an intense inherent love for what they’re doing, an inherent love – or in more sedate terms, appreciation – for books that they’re willing to shell out valuable time and money to do something that isn’t really paying for itself, and often they’re doing this for free, meaning they don’t get paid to do designs or edit galleys or any of those things, they do this because they love/appreciate these things, despite exactly us not having steady jobs, despite all the (mainly financial) hassle that comes with doing these things.
4. What are the chances of independent publishing/clothing/music outfits of surviving in the country? A brand manager I've talked to said that indie brands should go mainstream at some point to achieve some level of financial success. What are your thoughts on that?
Financial success, surely, of course, one needs to go mainstream for something like that, and in things like clothing and music, it’s certainly a necessity, although less so for music, but yes, certainly, only it’s one measure of success, but certainly not the only measure, most definitely not the only measure of survival, even financial survival, especially when one considers the Internet just making basically everything available to everyone to the point of excess, already having ways to address the machinations an enterprising young writer/designer/musician needs to produce and peddle her wares, normally both in one place, like Cafepress and Threadless, all these pop on-demand mechanically-reproduced-art services. Granted, these things are still largely US-based so still relatively out-of-reach for most, but I’m betting in two years’ time these things will be as easy and as common as Amazon is to us today. So yeah, you can go mainstream, that’s always valid, but you don’t have to go that far, especially when it means you’ll be sacrificing whatever artistic vision you’d been cradling since the outset of your art thing. Co-optation isn’t that big of a monster anymore.
5. Is "hipster" just a term people invented because they can't do what hipsters can? Your opinion on this please?
There’s certainly some jealousy involved, albeit I think it’s a benign sort of jealousy, a few notches lower from calling someone a bitch as she has better lips than you do. It’s a funny disparaging label, and we love making funny disparaging labels, even for people we understand and sympathise with. “Hipster” is certainly far more disparaging than “Jejemon” or the older “Jologs,” those latter two being more plainly funny names – what, they’re supposed to be insulting because they sound funny? – than the implied judgment of “Hipster,” as if you’re only that because you’re trying to be hip, which is like trying to be cooler than cool, trying to be ubercool, which when read superficially just sounds really sad and boring. Some of that’s true, of course, but only as true as some poets do poetry because it’s important and literary, which we all know is partly true and also partly not true. Eh, it’s okay, hipsters have reclaimed the term even before I became one back in 2001.
6. What do you think of Gen Y/ Millenials?
It’s a bit scary when you consider that these two generations – less the Y and more the Millennials – are people who are basically born and living in a time of Excess and Want and Instant Gratification. All these people under 25, I think they’ve forgotten what it’s like to just wait for things. They don’t need to listen to whole albums anymore just to get to that one song that they like. They don’t need to wait an entire two years to know just what Twin Peaks was all about. They don’t need to go to the library and rush through its shelves looking for reference materials. They don’t need to work for money to buy the entire Invisibles catalog to read it. Whatever they want, they get instantly, because everything’s just available. It’s all relatively scary because things like Patience are endangered concepts, replaced by things like Entitlement, a slightly more sedate version of greed only often just as malignant and now often just as prevalent. And I’m not being an old man about this, I’m not suffering from future shock in advance, I love Technology and Progress and Change, but it’s just true, we already have an entire generation made up mainly of brats, in every sense of the word, and there’s always just something to be said for Patience.
I think it’ll do us well to do a reverse Logan’s Run, or rather a friendlier version of Battle Royale on these people: keep a wildlife reserve somewhere off Luzon where we send these kids once they graduate from high school, let them stay there for a month, and it’s this island completely out of touch from everyone and everything else, and it’s all just rooms full of books and cassettes and VHS tapes and rotary phones with partylines and all the TV sets are just showing the Ten Commandments, and on weekends, maybe Pete & Pete, and they should line up for bread and soup every lunch, and bread and soup and bacon for dinner. I want to get Sara Gilbert to run it every summer.
Like I said, I have no issues with Technology and Progress and Change, I embrace these things with open arms and maybe even give them handjobs while I’m at it. I just don’t want us all turning into self-involved self-referential brats at the interim. There’s just something very hollowly inhuman about that concept.
7. How are the past generations learning from us, and vice-versa?
Truth be told, outside of practical things like teaching your mom how to use Facebook, I don’t really know if anyone’s learning anything from anyone else at this point in time, although yes, I wish something like that were happening, something beyond Facebook tutorials. Unfortunately, unlike art and science, society – as in people in droves as a phenomenon – does not progress pyramidically, does not learn from the mistakes of the society before it. Society marches on without it giving a flying fuck about people as individuals, for good or for bad. Society – generations of people – is in a wholly different scale. Those individual hipsters I saw helping out during the Ondoy fallout, they didn’t learn that from their stuffy lolos and lolas who very likely did those exact same things as individuals during World War 2. They did that because they felt they had to do it, regardless of any point of reference to any generation whatsoever. That’s all one can really do. At the generational scale of time and space, things are just happening, and we’re only really here for the ride, all the more reason to hold each other’s hands.
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