Music and medicine

The Holy Week will be over by the time you read this, and some of you may even have made the trek up to Baguio — though God knows Holy Week is the worst time to be up there among the teeming hordes of refugees from the lowland heat. If you were there last Saturday and happened to drop by Camp John Hay Manor for a nightcap, you would have been treated to the best musical show north of Manila (heck, let’s include Manila as well).

We go up to Baguio every year for the UP Writers Workshop, but I have to admit that for a good many years now, the city’s best attraction for me hasn’t been its piney scent or sweater weather, but a trio of singers going by the moniker On Call. The name comes from the fact that Jett Acmor, Mari Laoyan, and Ivan Cruz — as well as their musical director, Dr. Dennis Flores — are all medical professionals.

I’ve followed them around Baguio from corner to corner — last year’s Pilgrims Café on Leonard Wood Road has gone Korean, like many places in that city — and have never been disappointed by their exquisite blending of voices and a repertoire that’s guaranteed to make you wonder whatever happened to music and lyrics, especially if you’re over 40 and have some memory of the art of the singable song. On Call’s Broadway and Carpenters medleys are to die for, and my two gin-and-tonics (somehow, I felt the moment deserved something smarter than beer) went perfectly with the group’s two sets.

If you want to catch them, however, better be at the Manor’s lobby bar by 9 p.m. on a Saturday — that’s the only time and place they perform, having other missions in life; the place was packed when we got there, so come early or make reservations. On Call’s music was pleasantly potent medicine, and our little party of poets and fictionists marched back uphill to our hostel with a spring in our step and a song in our resuscitated hearts.

* * *

One of the sidelights of this year’s UP Writers Workshop — which took place March 25 to April 1 — was a symposium on "New Trends in Philippine Literature" sponsored by UP Baguio and featuring five of the workshop panelists: Jing Hidalgo, Rene Villanueva, Jimmy Abad, Bien Lumbera, and myself.

Since these distinguished colleagues were all experts in their fields — fiction and nonfiction, children’s literature, poetry, and regional literature, respectively — it fell to me to find something else to speak on, and I chose alternative literature, specifically, the blog as a new literary form.

I don’t know exactly how many Filipino bloggers there are, but I’m sure they must be in the tens of thousands. We’re one of the world’s largest users of social-networking services like Friendster and Multiply, so the blogs they spawn can’t be far behind.

I’ve written about blogging in this corner at least twice before, so I’m not going to go over the basics again, except to remind the uninitiated that blogs (from "Web logs") are online journals maintained by people all over the world. I started a blog in November 2005 (you can find its Internet address below), after some initial misgivings, but now I think I can say that I understand why it appeals to both writers and readers.

What attracts people to blogs and blogging?

First, it’s democratic, to the extent that the Internet can be accessed by (some, admittedly not most) Filipinos. Once you get online, blogging is free in terms of hosting and of the software you need to produce a blog. It’s your dream realized of becoming a columnist, editorialist, commentator, reporter, analyst, and critic — and nobody can tell you what to write; you can choose to rave about your new curtains and your cousin’s indie film, or rant about dripping faucets in Binondo and vanishing rainforests in Brazil.

Theoretically, blogs give you a broader reach than newspapers, reaching people around the planet with a tap of the "enter" key. But even more important than the size of this audience is its specificity. Certain blogs — certain personalities and subjects — attract certain people. Your audience can be very faithful, following your postings from week to week; but they can also be very demanding, and will be quick to let you know what they think about what you think.

That’s because most blogs are interactive, featuring comment spaces that allow readers to chat with the blogger and with fellow readers. Interactivity enhances the blog’s democratic character, creating small communities strengthened further by links and cross-postings. (I’m the autocratic exception, having decided from the start to turn off the comment feature — which I feel invites vexatious chatter — in favor of e-mailed messages I can review and post selectively.)

Another feature of blogs is their anonymity — or at least the option to remain anonymous or to create an online persona such as the "Sassy Lawyer," "Rambling Soul," or, in my case, the "Pinoy Penman." This persona (Latin for "mask") isn’t necessarily you — it’s your public face, maybe smarter-sounding and sharper-looking than you really are.

Blogs are meant for today, this week, maybe this month — certainly not for all eternity. If a virus or a hacker wipes out your Website and you didn’t back up, it’s gone forever, lost to the great trash can or recycle bin in the sky.

Blogs are extremely flexible and variable in terms of form and language; you can have blogs with pictures, you can have blogs with nothing but pictures; you can have blogs in English, Filipino, and Taglish, all in the same place.

The question some people might raise is, yes, it’s a blog, but is it literature? Of course it is; it’s writing; you just can’t find it on a paper page. Whether it’s good or bad literature depends on what standards have yet to arise for this kind of literature, but I have a gut feeling that bloggers don’t particularly care; 90 percent of blogs may be a digital form of navel-gazing, but hey, it’s my navel. Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine, and that’s all there is to it, at least for now.

(Incidentally, the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards were due to be given out last Saturday in the following categories: personal, technology, travel, entertainment, home and living, socio-political, news and media, business and entrepreneur, sports and recreation, fashion and lifestyle, photo blog, and podcasts. It should be interesting to see what Pinoys value in blogs — and how they’re evaluated, in the first place.)

* * *

I’d like to take this opportunity to announce that the Philippine Science High School National Alumni Association (Lord, what a mouthful!) will be holding a general membership meeting at the PSHS Main Campus in Diliman on April 14, Saturday, at 2 p.m. Important amendments will be discussed and voted on by members in good standing. For more details, check out the PSHSNAA website at www.pshsnaa.org. (I’ll be away for my daughter’s wedding — oops, that’s another story! — but if you’re a PSHS alumnus, I hope you can attend this meeting to see how we can best help S&T advance in this country, if only for our grandchildren’s sake.)

* * *

Going briefly back to music, let me acknowledge all the people who wrote in to inform me that the Celeste Legaspi album of Rolando Tinio’s translated songs has been reissued on CD. Pete Lacaba also reminded me that Celeste had apparently already recorded a Tinio translation of Sabor a Mi. I look forward to savoring these rare delights — and if On Call ever goes down the salinawit road, I’ll be in double heaven.

* * *

E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.