Art-necdotes

            There are anecdotes incorporated into many authentic art pieces.  As a matter of note, a collector unabashedly remarked:  “If an art work does not have a story to tell, aside from the one that we can hold in our hands and feast our eyes with, the art piece, somehow, diminishes in value.”

          A professional art broker also quipped: “Some buyers ask for these stories.  Many of these episodes go beyond the document of authenticity, and these add a lot of flavor to any art work.”

          Let us begin with a narrative about some Botong Francisco watercolors.

          It is said that a seamstress became so enamored with the watercolor studies of Botong that were forwarded to the costume department for execution that she began collecting them. Many years hence, those watercolor drawings are priceless and catalogued in the inventory of a prominent broker, all up for sale to the discriminating collector.

          Another one tells of Fernando Amorsolo. 

          In one of his pieces, there is a “Peeping Tom” that the great artist surreptitiously added, painted beside a bamboo grove in quasi-surrealistic mode.  The painting was hanged in the bedroom of one of his grandsons.  Years passed.  Nobody noticed, until one day, the master himself, asked for that specific piece.  Everybody went crazy locating the painting.  It was only after sometime that his grandson realized where the specific painting had been hanging all the along.  A collector heard the story.  He began negotiating for the painting on the strength of the anecdote behind it.

          One female acquaintance, who has just started painting acquisition, also began collecting anecdotes associated with individual paintings.  She is particularly fond of one of her first encounters with artists. She recalls that this occurred when she still had zero-data on what the visual art is all about.  An artist stopped her on the street and insisted that she buys one of the paintings he was carrying under his arms.

 This lady was taken aback.  Perhaps, out of desperation to make a sale, the price went from 10K to 2 thousand pesos. The painting now hangs in her bedroom. It is now worth more than its peso value. It already has the stamp of an anecdote to back its merit and authenticity.

Then, there is an interesting story about a former AAP president who was doing an early morning on-the-spot watercolor painting at a Batangas beach.  He looked at his finished work.  He did not like what he saw.  He crumpled the piece and carelessly tossed it aside.

When the session was over, he did not bring it with him. An onlooker, who happened to be another struggling artist, nonchalantly picked it up.  Somewhere in time, that painting will re-surface, with a delightful art-necdote to go its rounds of art circles.

Buddha's Lotus 

                         

Pieces

Pieces

Ours is period intermediate

Before the end of time brushes over

The heaven and the sea.

Though we be homo diminished

After apocalypse,

Can we still loom larger than life?

Or shall we,

Save for slate skies,

Still clamor for grass blades

Springing forth

When the sulfur rain is done?

And the oceans,

Yea, the oceans,

Will it still hold

Its thousand mysteries

Untold?

Can we still plaster cast

Broken mountain bones?

Will the remains of ancestors

Fill up pits of ravage

And reverse the damage

Wrought to virgin lands?

After the curtain call,

Will new sapiens’ breed,

At least, mull over this fault;

Fill in the gaps;

Perhaps, conclude:

In all these,

There is something amiss,

Save for anthropology’s pieces.

Growing Young with Bob Dylan

             Yes, he is the one who composed Blowin’ in the Wind.

            Yes, Mr. Tambourine Man also. And Like a Rolling Stone. And Highway ’61 Revisited. And a host of poems set into music plus a number of traditional materials that have since been memorialized in countless articles and glowing tributes to his genius. Yes, he also wrote and performed Forever Young for his son.

            Although Bob Dylan has yet to acknowledge “the voice of his generation” accolade, there is irrefutable evidence that he influenced those born after WWII, also popularly referred to as the “baby boomers”.

            A sweep at those who set the tune to the 21^st century reveals that  baby boomers are the ones now at the helm of the so-called international shift in world view. The title also covers many senior citizens as well as those who are at the threshold of nursing homes.

            Be that as it may, Bob Dylan was a virtual lamplighter in those Long Days’ Journey Into Night¹, when equality was just another dream, before and after the depletion of the ozone layer was discovered.

            It was a generation that dreamt of change. It was the era of experimentation.  The fire to set trails a’blazin’ can be gleaned in Al Gore’s documentation titled The Inconvenient Truth ² while The Prophet³ exploded in popularity across the globe.

            The space race was on. In Cold Blood⁴ defined a new literary genre. Richard Burton played The Spy Who Came in from the Cold⁵. Von Karajan was icon and Hemmingway was at the top of the best seller list.

Then, Woodstock happened.

 All took advice of the youth who has something to say and wanting to say it. All noticed how this guitar-wielding amalgam raised funds for Bangladesh and Africa, as current pop icons still get together to raise funds for the children of the world.

Those four decades ante-90’s set the stage for the pc and the global village.  They did and done that, irrefutable as the change that is in itself inevitable.  Seen from the eyes that saw this spawning, change could be and should only be, as they would have it, always for the better.

            A hankering for positive change was the ambiance of those times. Spirits soared. The baby boomers were hopelessly in love – apparently with everyone and everything.

 They are still in-love and seriously proud of moments captured in one-liners on bumper stickers. Reminisce those moments they do, in Forest Gump⁶ scenarios like “Shit happens” and “Just Do It” billboards.

Nobody Does It Better and everyone IS already involved and doing it in the best possible way – mostly thru IT almighty. The answer is perhaps, not blowin’ in the wind but in Face Book, or as proposed by the mud-blood prince.

As for the flower children, love is not merely Il Postino according to Pablo Neruda. It is “lying beside you, dreamless and straight as an arrow.”

 Yes, the baby boomers grew up with Bob Dylan. And as he put it, “It took me a long time to grow young.” ⁷

Growing young, they still are. Ask Yoda⁹, who wrapped up sincerity thus: Try not. Do or do not.⁸

Say you?

*NotaBene:

¹Long Day’s Journey into Night. Eugene O’Neill, Yale University Press. 1956

²An  Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore Documentary.2006

³The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran, Knopf Publishers.1923

⁴In Cold Blood. Truman Capote, Random House.1966

⁵The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. John le Carré, Victor Gollancz & Pan. 1963

⁶Forrest Gump. Paramount Pictures. 1994

⁷Tom Paine Award Acceptance Speech, 1963

⁸Star Wars Saga.1980-2008, Wikipedia

Discography:

"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released on his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Released August 1963 Recorded July 9, 1962, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City, New York

"Mr. Tambourine Man" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, which was released on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. Released March 22, 1965 (album) Recorded January 15, 1965, Columbia Recording Studios, New York City

"Like a Rolling Stone" is a 1965 song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. from the album Highway 61 Revisited Released July 20, 1965 Recorded June 15–16, 1965, Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York City

Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Released August 30, 1965 Recorded Columbia Studio A, 799 Seventh Avenue, New York, June 15, 1965 – August 4, 1965

Nobody Does It Better is a ballad by Marvin Hamlisch with lyrics by Carole
Bayer Sager from the album The Spy Who Loved Me, recorded by Carly  Simon as a single in 1977

Scenes of Domestic Violins*

            Siblings quarrel.  Many would probably agree with the questionable afterthought that sounds like: it is inevitable.

 In the atmosphere of rivalry, kids also grow up.  Take it as you will, mine did.

 In one of those free-for-all seasons when they threw parental control out of the window, the five of them kept at it like warring factions, in constant revolt against each other, as well as against any semblance of authority. Fed up by constant bickering, I angrily asked them to stop. 

The squabbling continued.  So, home-style martial law was declared.  Still, there was no mood shift. In exasperation, my secret weapon to stop this familial warfare was unveiled. An ultimatum was issued: Should they quarrel again, I will sing!

            Silence – deafening.

            Then, pandemonium amounting to:  Don’t even think about it.

            “Heavens forbid,” they echoed more vehemently than necessary.  “Please, mother, the sound of your singing voice is the worst form of violence that you can inflict on the human ears,” they add. (It behooves to ask the question as to why I got married to a folksinger, the answer to which is entirely self-explanatory.)

            If you have heard a malnourished frog croak, you have heard this writer singing in the bathroom as well as on the stage. On the issue of seriously trying hard to carry a tune, my unfortunate children are unanimous: Anything but that. They are firm believers in keeping my singing as a skeleton in the family closet.

            In another setting, when sibling wrangling became literal, I took out my WMD (weapon of maternal destruction).  I forcefully declared “If you do not stop quarreling once and for all, I will dance!”

            Neck-wringing henceforth stopped and fragile peace appeared. Since then, they have kept distance from each other at the dagger-look maximum.

            This is a true story.

Until lately when they discovered my firm resolve at giving the dancing feet a chance.  The revolt instantaneously fomented.

“What? Is this how far your age has advanced?” they asked.  In the same breath, they declared my mental state as bordering on dementia.

            I am now waiting for the inevitable ambush bound to sweep me off my feet.

Kids. . .

*N.B.   This is another true story.

A famous Philippine movie actress, whose English grammar can only be described as sadly wanting, was interviewed on national television.

Q.        How do you feel about the violence in some of your films?

A.         Sir, I cannot answer properly about the violins because I do not even play the piano!

This writer, too, cannot play the piano.

  March 11, 2011

Distinctively SDAI (Or Sons and Daughters on the commemoration grounds)

We will carry on.

                With this motto, the organization, VFP – SONS AND DAUGHTERS, INC. set itself on the path to overseeing that the heroes of WWII will not be forgotten by succeeding generations of Filipinos.

                At the onset, this seemed a formidable task.  At the beginning, the only common denomination of the sixteen founders of this organization was idealism and love of country gleaned from their parents. At the start, they only had a mission: find the proper channel thru which the equity right of the Filipino veterans of WWII might be properly claimed.

                Seventeen years since its founding, SDAInc already maintains a nationwide membership of over 40,000.  Its founding father, former Congressman Eduardo P. Pilapil, is still as youthful as when he and 15 others sat down to organize this collective of the descendants of WWII veterans.  Jerry Adevoso is now Presidential Assistant of Veterans Affairs, he of the somber mien and deep laughter.  At his end of the spectrum, Frisco “Popoy” San Juan still comes to meetings with the aura of an easy rider aboard his big bike.  At any VFP gathering, one inevitably finds anyone or all of them casting their “Is there anything more I can do?” countenance.

                SDAInc was born from the need to take up continuous dedication to the veterans’ ideals.  Since its founding, these leading figures of the organization have initiated projects that underline its commitment – cooperatives and livelihood training programs, continued communication with its members, expanded coverage in terms of recruitment and membership.  It is a collective of children carrying on the unfinished task of asserting the equal benefits promised their parents at the height of Japanese Occupation of the country.

                Most importantly, of late, its officers renewed the pursuit of direct participation in the shaping of national consciousness pertaining to unresolved issues of veterans’ benefits thru legislative channels.

                Against this background, the officers and members of SDAInc attended the 60^th Commemoration activities of the liberation of the Philippines from the Japanese Occupation Forces.  To the meetings called by the Department of National Defense, they attended.  To parade grounds they arrived.  And to their credit, they organized and participated in two major activities that underscore their commitment: 13^th National Oratorical Contest and the Sunset Ceremony.

                During the conference of the national task force under the Defense Department that coordinates the yearly commemoration of Veterans week (April 5 - 12), SDAI Secretary General Liwi Elizares forwarded the theme of the 13^th National Oratorical Contest as the concurrent theme of the celebrations.  It was unanimously adopted.  Thus, printed on the cover of the celebrations’ commemorative issue are the words that underscore the commitment of the organization: Adhikan ng Beterano: Gabay ng Kabataan Magpakailanman

                The incident is proof positive of the organization’s adaptability to and acceptability by groups that can assist in forwarding its aims.  While the issues of the veterans’ equity rights remain unresolved, SDAInc finds ways to update and upgrade its approach towards the matter.

                SDAInc has made its PRESENCE felt in appropriate ways.  And for the 16 who signified their dedication to the ideals of patriotism, fame is not a reward.  Restitution of dignity of the veterans of WWII is the sole measure of success.

*written in 2005, unpublished

HOPE AND MEMORY

One Morning

Two overwhelming monsters

From places deep

Came up to me

And when we met

I found

Lying each to each

Twin illusions of

Hope

&

Memory

Merlin said:

When you lie,

You murder

Some parts of the world

At that moment the world

Was a lizard running away from the ant.

If truth be known,

Truth is as simple as that.

* written 2/9/2007