the zeppelin of burning dreams

i haven't been updating for ages, because i haven't had anything worth writing about. unlike most bloggers who post about their days, rant about their immediate irritations, i don't. i usually try to condense my thoughts into something more sensible and logical, usually something like a philosophical head-trip. sometimes it gets by okay, other times it feels ruined. it's really irritating being this caught up in your own little world of writing sometimes. :D

it's especially irritating if you're like me and are suffering from a complete inability to concentrate for even a minute on what you've been writing. haaay. so two of my short stories are in semi-hibernation, sleepwalking awake will have to wait a bit for revision, the two books aren't improving at all (i swear when i finish with these stories i will concentrate on just the books). most of the writing i've been doing are for essays in skewl. and they're bad. terrible. i can write, but without the concentration, i can't write well.

at least i've come up with some classical-sounding and flamenco-ish music in the guitar. that's kinda consoling.

feels so good to be accepted, don't it? ^_^

que barbaridad. parece que sera un gran loco. pero estoy allegro.


and hey, levi. i got a copy of neal stephenson's zodiac for 45 pesos.

it's funny how we do things on impulse. and i'm not saying that it's a bad thing. but neither am i saying that spontaniety is indeed the key (sorry dudes). say, the radioactive sago project album launching the other night. yours truly saw how spontaniety can help and kill. it helped me, and it killed sago's act, somewhat. i won't elaborate tho, hehe. bottom line is, spontaniety, or inspiraion, is the best as a striker (i've been watching hungry heart. bear with me). they score the goal, but they can't protect themselves worth shit. in writing, it scores the idea. but getting that idea down is quite a different story.

but then, after spontaniety comes hard work. if you just work with inspiration and spontaneous bursts, you won't end up with anything but half-baked ideas. i've got a 2-meg folder with stories that i began to prove how this works. i have come to conclude that the said style only works for utter geniuses. like nuts of chickensisig said, if you can't do improv, don't do improv. however, a little bit of spontaneous thought is required in such cases as writing and the liberal arts and natural sciences. newton discovered gravity by accident. if lightman's imagination is based on fact, it could be trusted that einstein came up with relativity through countless dreams. if you can get your inspiration to share some of the load of hard work for you, you've got yourself a lean mean thinking machine.

but then, after the first draft (or brainstorming session) is over, comes the really hard part. as writers, we have to tear our works apart, to test for integrity. we have to map out a serious chronological arrangement of events. friends and trusted editors must also have a say in how the story runs (if you can't catch the attention of people you know, the chances of you catching the attention of total strangers is even less). you have to surrender your child to the terrors of the most hostile planet again and again until his genotype has been modified in such a way that he can survive for more than a year in the harsh environment.

bloody hell, i need to get a little bit more research in. see you around.

There's plenty of unnoticed talent in the Philippines, so a lot of those critics (and artists) say. While it is true (I'm somewhere in the thick of it, struggling to get to the "self-supportive" and / or "celebrated" area, and so are most of my friends, which is quite funny and reflective of that birds of a feather et al adage), it's partly because the artists themselves are total whoohaas in promoting or producing their art.

First of all there's that art for art's sake misconception. Bruce and I had a huge argument over this some time ago, ending with a grudging draw and wary headaches. The long and short of it was that he presented me with the theory that art for art's sake is nonexistent in any form of published or produced form of media (be it art or not). Meanwhile, I retaliated with a weak defense on artists who work and publish themselves for their own gratification, and managed to get in touch with The Bruce's denser (yet still ever so sophisticated) side. Ouch. Being caught between a rock and a hard place is easier than going head-on against Bruce. My whole point tho, is that he's correct, in the most common sense. Although there might be artists who publish themselves for self-gratification - yeah, there's something ejaculatory about seeing your sweat and blood in the stalls at National or Powerbooks, or even in magazines - publishing, nay, media is mostly art for the masses (and we're not talking ERAP masses here, I'm talking about the whole of humanity that would or could care). And with this as the premise, an artist has to learn how to market and fund his projects. You don't just go out there and yell "I've got a new short fiction collection out. Check it out."

Some of the hungry and suffering artists in the Philippines - in the world, even - have this idea that talent is enough to get you ahead. Hilarious; they'd be better off working with talent and luck, because if talent's all you've got, you're no better than everyone else. You need sufficient connections to promote your work. You need funding. You need to flirt a little with the right people, and work your ass off for the cash to pull it off.

Let's take Lowbright's Derek Kirk Kim and Saturnalia's SpaceCoyote, or even our very own Gerry Alanguilan. Derek's doing freelance drawings and working for a comic store (least i think he's working for a comic store). SpaceCoyote's got people getting her for comissioned (read: high paying) artwork. Gerry's an architect, plus he's a freelance comic artist working for Marvel. The reason they're making so much headway in their art is not because their artwork is fantastic - which is not to say that it isn't. But a day job, "real" work, has given them the opportunity to help cement their work more or less the way they'd like it to be; sure, the work might not roll along as smooth as the consumers would like to have it, but it's easier for the artist; least they've got something to go back to if the art doesn't cut it, or something to help mass-produce the finished product when it's there.

Another example would be the boys of Razorback. They're not exactly sitting the real life out, waiting for the royalties from their albums to skyrocket, although they pretty much do have the talent and the money to make it something awesome in the industry. But hey. Tirso's a haciendero, the manager of a cigar plantation somewhere in Pampanga, I think. Dave's a certified chef. Louie has a recording studio, and is working for Sony as producer and as an all-around session bassist. Kevin's working with Subway. And I don't exactly know what Brian is doing, but he just finished with college.

All that inexhaustible talent in the liberal arts, and voila! we see that the arts isn't even their real job. It's kind of silly for artists to complain about how the industry is unkind and harsh, and for concerned individuals to sigh and lament how unfortunate it is the way so many artists are unnoticed and unappreciated in the country.

Half the time, it would be the artists' own faults anyway.

its not that i've lost the ability to write. no, this constant inability to gently stimulate the voluptuous words into being is not to be blamed on the natural habits of cells to bow to the forces of nature and degenerate, disintegrate and gradually assimilate themselves into the countless billions of dead living thing particles making up ninety-nine percent of the empty spaces that could be found outside solid and liquid extremeties where the voices of countless living things go unheard, shouting advice, our forefathers and those before them in an endless and voiceless scream of advice beyond the grave. this is not my predicament, nowhere does it affect the abrupt pause in between sentences, the grave realization that incoherence is not a virtue and lasissitude is a force to be reckoned with, the isnight that a million stars could be exploding in the sub-atomic universes deep within my epidermis - and then delete, delete delete delete. that is not what Sartre would have said, Murakami would scoff at my logic, them and the gamut of their postmodernist humanist kabal (is it even possible?), Kafka at their head and Gamalinda bringing up the rear. i thank the gods for the computer - the typewriter would make a pauper of me, various mistakes, misprints and the necessity of paper.

to gaze
upon the stars
and grasp
the nebula of
thought.

that is my purpose.

i do not want to be a journalist
i do not wish to be enveloped by newsprint writing.
i curse the teeny bopper magazines that feed on the
talented to satiate the dull.
countless words, morphemes, lexemes, uttered in the silence of the night to a listener

who hears, but does not understand.
who reads, but does not think.
who sees, but does not see.

by a writer who hates, but has to survive.

i wish to write.

to cover the beginning of everyday
with a Valentine of reality
and a Christmas of fantasy.
to invoke chaos.
to transform those words into sounds, movement
pulmonic egressive air that gives life to
every morph, every eme, every school+yard
and with a flash of light ---------

invalidate the reality of modern writing with the madness that runs innate in the blood of every human being, the urge for danger, the adrenalin rush, the pumping palpitating heart, to activate the senses with the fragility of words made strong by voice and spit and babble-rousing and gossip-mongering crowds that sway to the beat of the voice and the hands on the hand-drum and the bonfire of human sweat rising up into the night like a funeral pyre screaming FREEDOM! freedom of the people to express themselves with words that belittle the godliness of the Qu'ran, a freedom to kill the Buddha, crucify the Christ that is the ordered word only to rise again after an ellipsis (. . . ) et al, etcetera, the meandering voices of a multitude of people . . . . !

made real
by the
words on
paper and
the thoughts
in the
mind as
the poet
falls asleep.

i'm evil.