But another writers’ workshop, you say? Don’t we have these workshops coming out of our ears, with just about every university or institute offering a workshop or other, catering to the same twentysomething faces dying to win their first Palancas?
That’s exactly what the ICW associates (as the institute’s members are called) thought when we sat down to plan the ICW’s activities a year ago, at the same blessedly restful venue – the Soka Gakkai International conference center (what used to be, in its previous incarnation, Villa Adelaida) on the Tagaytay ridge overlooking the volcano.
I remember observing then that given the proliferation of workshops for the same young writers – a luxury we never had in our time – we were encouraging a regime of diminishing returns, with workshop-hopping becoming something of a fashion and the benefits from each exposure dwindling in the process. Why not, I suggested, review the UP workshops of the past five to 10 years, select their best graduates, and invite them back for a mid-career chat about life and literature? The other associates agreed enthusiastically, and that’s how the Kumustahan seminar was born.
I call it a seminar rather than a workshop because no manuscripts were evaluated and savaged in Tagaytay, no egos shredded, no tears shed. The usual and always testy master-apprentice relationship you find in Baguio and Dumaguete was replaced by a more relaxed peer-to-peer sharing between and among drinkers at the same well. Every Kumustahan fellow – chosen by the associates because he or she would have won some major prizes and/or published a worthy book since becoming a UP Workshop fellow (and, as an informal rule, was just about or below 40) – was asked to make a 30-minute presentation on "My Work," whatever they construed that to be. (My original plan would have included the associates in this personal accounting as well, but we had to give it up for lack of time; maybe next year.)
The first batch of Kumustahan fellows comprised Becky Añonuevo, Joey Baquiran, Mayette Bayuga, Wendell Capili, Luna Sicat Cleto, Mike Coroza, Mia Gonzalez, Vince Groyon, Ramil Gulle, Sarge Lacuesta, Marx Lopez, Paolo Manalo, and Allan Popa. Some others were invited but couldn’t come, for one reason or another. (I gave the invitees a few months’ notice to make themselves available for the full stretch of the seminar.)
What a wealth of insights and experiences Kumustahan turned out to be, as the following excerpts from the presentations will suggest. I think we have enough people who meet the Kumustahan criteria to make up another batch for next year, but the associates are agreed that we won’t regularize it for its own sake. I hope the Kumustahan seminar – whether it’s held every two or every five years – can be something that young, talented, and accomplished Filipino writers can look forward to past Baguio, Dumaguete, Iligan, and the other workshops of their early writing life: Another mountain past the immediate horizon.
Many thanks to SGI director general Yasuaki Niitsu and his ever-gracious staff for their hospitality. See you again, we hope, same time next year.
Joey Baquiran: May isang canteen sa labas lamang ng kampus ng AMA na nagtatanghal ng isang aquarium. Nasa loob ang isang fully-grown arowana. Napakagandang tingnan ng arowana na walang tigil sa mabining paglangoy sa loob ng tangke. Napag-isip-isip kong maganda lamang itong tingnan sa perspektiba ko. Paano halimbawa sa perspektiba ng iba? Araw-araw ko rin itong napaglimian. Ang may-ari ay naglalagay sa aquarium ng sandosenang goldfish na sa aking pagbalik kinabukasan ay anim na lamang. Nakita ko kung paano lamunin ng arowana ang isang walang labang goldfish. Sabi ko sa aking colleague na kung isa siya sa goldfish, ano ang gagawin niya? Ioorganisa raw niya ang ibang goldfish para labanan ang arowana. Isang mainam na opsiyon. Ngunit mas iniisip ko ang existential angst ng walang labang tao. Isang uri ng thrownness, isang anxiety sa harap ng hindi makokontrol na kalagayan na kinakatawan ng arowana. Sa madaling sabi, ang isang uri ng relasyon ng Diyos at ng tao ang inaakala kong naitanghal ko sa "Arowana."
Mayette Bayuga: Pinili kong maging freelancer para makapaglublob sa iba’t ibang mundo. Napakalawak ng karanasang nabuksan sa akin ng mga trabaho sa market research, sa NGO, pati na sa media, bilang freelance researcher. Marami din akong mga sariling pagliliwaliw, kung saan-saan ako nakarating at kung anu-ano ang pinaggagawa.
Inuulit-ulit ko sa sarili noon, na mula sa samut-samot, sari-saring mga karanasang iyon ako huhugot ng bawat salita, ng bawat ideya, ng bawat kwento. Pero nang magkapatung-patong na ang mga karanasan, hindi ko na kayang harapin. Patak-patak lang ang mga salita. Tuyot ang mga ideya. Sa madaling sabi, walang kwento.
Sa wakas, kailan lang, tinanggap ko ang isang aralin sa proseso ng pagsusulat: Hindi dapat panghinayangan gaano man kayaman o kakaiba ang karanasan kung hindi ito mabuong kwento, dahil hindi lahat ng karanasan ay dapat gawing kwento o isama sa kwento. Sinunog ko ang ilan sa mga naipong materyal, pati na ang ilang kwentong sinimulan pero alam kong di na matatapos pa kahit kailan.
Jose Wendell Capili: In relocating my boyhood years in Sampaloc during the late 1960s to the early 1970s, I crossed genres from poetry to creative non-fiction because I wanted to construct narratives using scenes, dialogue, close, detailed descriptions and other techniques drawn from politics, kinship, religion, economics, history, sociology and the other disciplines. I wanted to put together research, exposition, prose, a strong emphasis on ideas instead of language (traditional elements of pure journalism) vis-à-vis the feel of a literary voice, the elements of narration, characterization, instinct, a strong sense of place where facts come alive as well as a strong, personal engagement with my chosen subjects (literary elements). By writing "Sampaloc Boyhood: Passages and Predilections," I hopefully arranged intimate, personal, local pasts outside public "official" histories of my boyhood years during the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Mike Coroza: Ang totoo, ayaw na ayaw kong pumasok sa special education classes na pinangangasiwaan ng mga propesor mula sa isang tanyag na pamantasan ng mga guro. Hindi ko kailanman naibigan ang kanilang mga itinuturo. Nakapagpapabobo para sa akin ang kanilang mga prinsipyo at metodo. Bunga ng pagkakadalo ko sa workshop, lalong nawalan ako ng interes sa pagkuha ng nasabing mga klase.
Nang makaharap at mapakinggan kong magpanayam sina Nick Joaquin, Bienvenido Santos, Franz Arcellana, at iba pa, nabuo sa isip ko na may higit na mataas na antas ng karunungang dapat kong maabot na hindi maipagkakaloob sa akin ng mga klase sa edukasyon. Sa loob ng sampung taong pananatili ko sa Southridge Night School, hindi ako nakakumpleto ng kahit isa mula sa anim (katumbas ng labingwalong yunit) na kailangang kunin ng isang gaya ko na hindi nagtapos ng kursong edukasyon ngunit nagtuturo sa hayskul.
Vince Groyon: The most useful insight I arrived at after struggling with the form of the novel and trying to know it is: The novelist must not know where his plot is going, or how it will end.
Having been trained in the art of the short story, the tightness of which demands the writer’s absolute knowledge of the outcome, I was stumped by the boredom that sets in during the writing of a long narrative whose end I already knew. The obsessively detailed chapter outlines I had prepared in plotting Dimas, and which I clung to when the writing threatened to overwhelm me, worked against me in the end. It became a chore, a labor, to lay the story down on paper. Towards the end of the drafting process I felt like I was squeezing toothpaste out of a spent tube.
In the revision of the novel, I noticed that I tweaked plotline endings more than beginnings, trying to surprise myself with inevitable but fresh ways of bringing the narrative to a close. I experienced the happy moment when characters begin determining their own fates, and gratefully gave them free rein.
Paolo Manalo: First, to share some light, the collection or poem that people know me for by now ["Jolography," which won first prize in this year’s Palancas – BD] originally began with the letter H – holography, referring to the "method of producing three-dimensional images of objects by recording on a photographic plate or film the pattern of interference formed by a split laser beam and then illuminating the pattern either with a laser or with ordinary light."
Sa madaling salita, isa itong ilusyon, dulot marahil ng liwanag ng silver and television screens. Showbiz – it’s what makes our world go round, it’s what shapes our consciousness. Somewhere along the way the "H" became a "J" because to some Filipino ears, the two sound alike – nagkariringgan. To some Filipino eyes, they look alike – namalikmata. And so… I’m now called a jolographer, whatever it means, and the work I’ve made, an example of jologs or jologspeak with all its misconceptions.
Luna Sicat: May ibinibigay na insight ang panonood kong ito ng Masayang Tanghali Bayan — kung tunay bang masaya tayong manananghali sa piling ng mga shows na kagaya nito. Isang bisyon ng Pilipinas ang lumalabas — tayo’y mga henyo sa panggagaya, tayo’y mga masusunuring mga tagapanood, tayo’y mga game na game na contestant, marunong tayong tumanaw ng utang na loob sa mga naggagantimpala sa atin ng limpak limpak na salapi, sabay pagbati sa ating mga kaanak na nanonood din ng telebisyon, na parang natagpuan na natin ang ginto sa dulo ng bahaghari, ang ginto na itinago ni Yamashita. Telebisyon ang kaaway ko sa aking pagsusulat. Sa halip na tutukan ko ang paksa, nahihirati ako sa panonood.