The big chill in Baguio, and beyond

Many of us in the loving tribe still can’t get over the demise of Santiago Bose, artist non pareil, on Dec. 3, at 53. Every day e-mail messages still pour in, contributing to what must now be a golden cache of anecdotes about our gifted, ludic friend who touched our lives with his great good art and incomparable cheer. His daughter Lilledeshan, a highly promising writer, is collating these "imperial messages."

Expressions of grief and smiling reverie keep coming from Santi’s friends and admirers from all over the world. We shared excerpts in our column last week. Here we do the same, from more of the same.

Luis Francia, the poet, essayist and journalist who serves as a contributing editor at New York’s Village Voice, weighed in relatively late. He must have been out of town, or was still too giddy over the Asian American Workshop prize he received recently for his book Eye of the Fish, to open his mailbox. But when he did and learned of Santi’s passing, he quickly sent this note:

"First it was Nonoy, now Santi. Sigurado ako the two are giving fits of laughter to whoever is in charge wherever they may be. Natawa ako sa cellphone exchange. Truly in the spirit of Santi. Pakikuwento naman ang rites over the weekend. At paki sign na rin ang mga pangalan namin ni Midori sa kung anumang libro ang nandoon. And our condolences to his family (ies?)."

Sympathetic word also came from our celebrated novelist Jessica Hagedorn:

"I have just returned from a trip to Havana and am saddened by your news of Santi’s death. He was a long-time friend, a lovely human being, and a world-class artist. I have always felt fortunate to have known him and am happy to have some of his works of art in my home to always remind me of his vibrant humor and strong spirit. Please pass on my condolences and deepest sympathies to his family.

"Maraming salamat – for letting those of us who live so far away know about his passing. I’ll light a candle for Santi and toast his spirit with a good shot of Cuban rum."

I’ve replied to dear Jessica that that’s what I did, too, on my first two nights of grieving over Santi’s loss, except that it wasn’t rum but Glen Edwards single malt whisky, on the first night, anyway, before moving up on the highland spirits scale to Macallan the next night. The same Macallan bottle kept me warm company on the lonely back seat of a van all the way up to Baguio from Friday midnight, soon after UP Prez Dodong Nemenzo had treated to all kinds of whisky at the well-attended and rather blissfully raucous Writers Night at UP.

Missed the grand cañao of a last party for Santi that night, with the faithful tribe gathered in his Quezon Hill haven. But Macallan and me, we were there in spirit. And by 7 a.m. of Saturday, we managed to join up with friends for the last rite in Santi’s Baguio.

From San Francisco, words of condolence also came from writers Oscar Peñaranda and Michelle Bautista.

Santi Bose had so many friends among writers, perhaps even more so than with his fellow visual artists, a number of whom he feuded with seasonally. The feuds or run-ins, really more of tampuhan, elicited much laughter and satiric commentary among common friends of the artists involved. Especially when soon enough we’d see Santi in kapit-bisig mode with his erstwhile katampuhan. Always having lovers’ quarrels with the world, that’s how he was. Cariño brutal was something he practiced constantly with these peers, and it was just their luck to be targeted with Santi’s wildly acerbic diatribes whenever they raised his serio-comic hackles.

But with writers, the Bad Boy of Baguio was ever on his best behavior. It wasn’t so much the notion of currying favor for positive write-ups; many were poets or scholars who were unblessed with a journalist’s or art critic’s byline. He simply loved to exchange ideas with us, and always felt that conceptual sparks would fly whenever he was in our company. That it did, all too often – as with Fil-Am writers Jessica Hagedorn, Eileen Tabios and Angel Shaw – validated his instinctual attraction toward other artists who dealt with other genres in evolving stages of experimentation and, very much like him, in the conduct of pioneering or groundbreaking work.

It was with the same quality of deference and camaraderie that he got along fine with musicians and dancers (oh, with the last he had extra-special relations). The much-hailed Pinikpikan Band, born out of table-thumping wedlock in Baguio’s Cafe By The Ruins, came in full force for the last night of his wake as well as for the tribute held at the CCP last Thursday.

The previous Friday, at noon I got a call from the tribal diva Grace Nono, who was hurrying to make it to Baguio for the last hoo-hah with Santi. Bob Aves, Pinikpikan’s musical director, was driving up with her; would I want to hitch? Still at work, I told her, but I’ll catch up. Heard the day after how she had enthralled the crowd with a moving, a capella rendition of Amazing Grace, right by the dap-ay or stone circle in Santi’s backyard.

The Santi-mental party had lasted into the wee hours, so that it was decided to push back the last rite, originally scheduled at 9 a.m. on Saturday, to high noon at the church nearby.

Breakfast on that day, courtesy of Peggy Bose and her daughters Diwata, Lille and Mutya, we shared with dancer-choreographer Denisa Reyes and photographer Mark Gary. Denisa recounted how she had last seen Santi on a night he sat alone at Penguin Cafe, towards end of November.

Cafe owner Ami Misciano would corroborate this by text: "Santi went there alone last Nov. 26. We talked and when I hugged him, parang weird. Pala nagpapaalam na c gago. So sad. Picture of Santi at Penguin makes my heart bleed w/ memories."

As more friends came up from Manila for the last farewell, countless stories were traded of how Santi had touched our spleens and tibias, and tickled our funny bones, even as the latecomers were told of strangely familiar occurrences during the three-night wake.

One particularly impressive incident happened on the second night, when filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik, aka Eric de Guia, with whom Santi had been at odds of late over how the Baguio Art Group should be handled, stepped into the Bose sala where Santi’s coffin lay. No sooner had Eric addressed Santi than all the lights went out. All of Baguio had a blackout. Kidlat, ngayon! And everyone tittered in the dark, not all too nervously. But the minute Eric took his leave, after teasing Santi over the matter of bygones, of course the lights came back on. Ah, Shaman Wars, everyone quipped.

Boy Yuchengco, who had helped sponsor an impressive, wrap-around mural Santi did for St. Mary’s High School in Sagada, way back in the early ’80s, had installed a homage altar in the anteroom leading to where Santi lay in state.

Direk Butch Perez, also often Baguio-based, came early as well, and together we pored over the wondrous new book Vestiges of War, published in New York, which had a Santi Bose cover. A copy was sent to Butch by Anvil Publishing’s Karina Bolasco just as he was about to drive up for the wake, with explicit instructions from co-editor Angel Shaw (together with Luis Francia) to make sure the copy joined Santi for cremation.

No, Butch didn’t think any book was fit to be tossed into flames. He rang up Angel to say so. The widow Peggy was in accord; the book should come to better use when handed down to a grandchild. So there the handsome tome lay among the manifold mementoes of a zanily productive life, for everyone to marvel at for the nonce. And John Batten, Santi’s friend who ran a gallery in Hong Kong, was all praise for it, too.

Bob Dylan and Carole King took turns providing music the entire morning. It was as if Santi was happily at work on some painting or incipient print.

Peggy led us to one of his last works, a large, squarish, rather ghoulish mixed-media in domineering red, with black skeletons arrayed across the canvas. But let us have Boyu tell it in his own eventual e-mail write, shiver me timbers and all:

"His last work was called ‘Dance of Death’ (images of skeletons dancing). There was a small clock on the painting which read 1:30, which was the time he had his first attack. He also ‘ended’ the 6th Baguio Arts Festival which closed at the very time (3 p.m.) and day (3rd) of his death... (which) turned out to be the last performance of the... festival."

As the mirthful company commented over that last oddment, "Take that, Kidlat!" The Baguio-born shamans were always at it, cannily upstaging one another. The nodding consensus was that since Eric had ran the 2002 festival in a fashion Santi had disagreed with, he in turn made sure he’d have the last say on the matter, with his own unscheduled farewell performance for a finale.

Boyu would write further: "Thursday night, after coming from his place, there was a beautiful white butterfly waiting for me at the door (resting on the door frame; it didn’t even fly away when I opened the door). Butterflies don’t normally come out at 10 or 11 at night."

For me it was a firefly that said goodbye, on Writers Night at the edge of the lawn of the Executive House at UP, where the carousal led me at one point to pee by a fringe bush, under the myriad stars. I hadn’t seen a firefly in years. But there it was, flickering around me as I passed water, under the Santi Bose bridge of memory. And it was the hilltop cabin at Bangaan, Mt. Province once again, which Santi had rendered in watercolor and gifted me with, and on which upper frame now lies a chrysanthemum plucked from one of the wreaths at his wake. From firefly to mum, Santi always flickered, flamed and burst into radiantly joyous yellow yellow yellow…

At noon the convoy went down Quezon Hill for the final church blessing. An hour later a smaller convoy took Santi to Dagupan for the cremation. Su Llamado would text those of us who stayed up and had moved on to lunch at Cafe By The Ruins: "The Dagupan parlor has an ongoing promo for cremation. Talagang si Santi, oo – kuripot to the end!"

And so we laughed again around a cozy table, and relived big-chill memories – cinematographer Boy Yñiguez and restaurateur Mitos Benitez Yñiguez, grand chef Louie Llamado, writer Karla Delgado Yulo, Denisa and Mark, Boyu and Butch and I. Boyni recounted how Santi had introed him and fellow artists of the Development Academy of the Philippines, such as Papu Leynes and Boboy Yonzon, to Boyu and me in a cafe in Sagada, mid-’70s. Yes, yes, and which happenstance meeting eventually led to Ermita Magazine’s first issue, with Santi’s pointillist pen-and-inks adorning Sylvia Mayuga’s signature piece on Sagada.

Louie and I dropped in on Bencab later, there to marvel briefly at how Baguio’s grand patriarch had just drawn Aubrey Miles and Jenny Tan, beauties both, in the buff. Both in one afternoon. Inggit si Santi, we chorused with Annie Sarthou as Bencab grinned from ear to erotic ear.

Then it was sundowners with Baboo Mondoñedo who offered fine red wine along with cottage cheese and foie gras. And something Santi would have loved to share any minute. The toasting soon led to an appropriate epitaph for the "Bad Boy": "Here lies one who believed that humor should always come at the expense of others, especially his friends."

Later that night, the Macallan and Baboo’s give-away still served us in good stead, this time in the company of Boyu, Shant Verdun, Kawayan de Guia and RJ Fernandez. The long farewell would take a full weekend.

More messages flooded the mailbox upon our return to Manila. Lille would post a request for friends to contribute their anecdotes about her father. And they came.

From her friend and contemporary, the young poet Eduardo G. Geronia, Jr., I was enthused to receive a tribute of a poem, perhaps the first to honor Santi in the afterlife. Here are the last two stanzas of "Jaguar."

"I hear your voice clicking like a loaded .38 paltik/ You‚ve been chanting in Quiapo latin again/ Sator aredo tenit odira rotas// What front haven’t you secured in your watch?/ It isn’t one man’s job but you take it as your own/ Despite the uncertainty in the changing of the guard."

From Glenna Aquino, a follow-up note: "You mentioned a cremation in Dagupan before a Manila service. I remember now a conceptual work of his (70’s) – ‘Bones’ –bones in boxes made of branches tied together, 4 or 5 boxes traveling from Baguio down to Manila, that was exhibited in several venues and on the road. Ray Albano loved it and made sure we documented it properly. Those were the most exciting and stimulating times of my curating years."

From artist Papu Leynes in Toronto: "It took a while for the news of Santi’s death to sink in. Santi’s e-messages were full of his dissatisfaction with the state of the country and his disappointment with the Baguio art club. I tried dissuading him from doing so but he was intent on emigrating to somewhere. As recently as last summer he wrote to say that his papers were already going through the mills at the Canadian embassy. I was expecting his arrival in Toronto by summer 2003. Having seen pictures of his works and having read accounts of his stay in Australia, I suggested he might be happiest there. I’d like to think that he is happily in dreamland."

From editorial cartoonist Dengcoy Miel in Singapore: "Got your Philstar article on Santi – nakadaupang palad at nakaututang dila ko siya when he had his ‘Eyes of Gauze’ art exhibition at the Metropolitan and then again in Singapore more than a decade later, where we had a good time exploring Singapore’s kili-kili at night with Bogie Ruiz et al. I would like to echo everybody else’s sentiments – we will miss him, and the loss is greater because it is right after we had lost Nonoy, Franz, Mang Larry and Doreen F."

From New Jersey, artist Sammy Sta. Maria wrote anew: "Thought about one jocular anecdote Santi related to me on his arrival at LAX from Manila for an exhibit two years ago. Minutes before his trip, he had despedida ganja with some friends, then boarded the plane. On disembarking, he passed airport screeners, and an ATF K9 sniffed the residues of the outlawed foliage that had stuck to his clothes. The dog promptly stationed itself beside Santi as if to say, ‘He da man!’ So off to the security room he was hustled, where he was told to strip and his belongings thoroughly searched. To the ATF’s consternation, nothing contraband could be found. Not even after careful ‘analysis.’ Looking at the perplexed hound, Santi offers, ‘It must be getting a scent of its canine compatriots on me. You see, in the Philippines they make delectable entrees.’ And that was how Santi was quickly sent on his way. I’m sure others have similar accounts involving our quirky amigo."

Yes, Sammy, and they’re pouring in. But this one takes the cake thus far, as how Denisa recounted it during our big chill on Quezon Hill.

She and Santi attended an ASEAN artists’ do in Jakarta, where every morning they were greeted "Selamat pagi" by their hosts. Soon enough, Santi saw fit to place the artist-hosts in a huddle, and explained how morning exchanges were conducted in Pinoy-land. From then on, Denisa recalled in stitches, everytime they joined up for breakfast, Santi would greet their Indonesian friends, "Selamat, pangit." And they would cheerfully chirp back, "Selamat, pogi."

Mwahaha redux, my friend.