The adventures of the artful logger and the E63
It leaves me in stitches. Sometimes I stir up the mental stew and think of the great figures of art and literature toying with a mobile phone. Call it technical ecstasy of sorts. Marlow traveling upriver on a doomed ferry — amid cannibals, rotting hippo and darkened hearts — sending an SMS to a missing Kurtz. Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo going on a mad, corrosive trip to Las Vegas in a hurrying car and with nerves powered by ether. Duke takes a break from the hallucinations to record those strange memories — all his fears and loathings — with a mobile phone voice recorder. Does the Mona Lisa have that inscrutable smile because she saw a naughty MMS? Will Whitnail, who loves to ruminate about Hamlet, scribble “2B or not 2b” in the Note pad. Is it inevitable for Stravinsky to use The Rite of Spring as his ring tone?
But you know what? If we are to believe James Joyce, then all of us — right here, right now — are living heroic, mythic, lives filled with literary garnish and artistic relish like, say, Odysseus’ or even Daedalus’. Gives one a good feeling, doesn’t it? And I mean everyone — even someone as uncool as me, who (through some bizarre perambulations of the Fates) has landed for himself a career as both writer and visual artist (beats my initial dream job of being a mortician). The demands are tremendous, though.
As The STAR’s Art & Culture sub-editor, I work under Ma’am Millet and make sure that the important announcements from the CCP, NCCA, PETA, Repertory Philippines, New Voice Company, the various museums and galleries are given good space in the section. That means constantly checking e-mail for those all-important releases, whether it is about the Virgin Labfest or WiFi Body Festival at the CCP, or a re-visitation of Jose Rizal’s classics by Tanghalang Pilipino. The rule of thumb is, anything that enriches the mind should be put forth to the public. And then we also have our stellar columnists who cogitate artfully about anything from lost Nick Joaquin writings to fountain pens, from transcendental nine-hour Lav Diaz movies to LeBron James.
Most of the time the e-mails come flying in just as I leave my trusty Mac at home or in the office. That’s a universal occurrence: as if the e-mails are lying in wait, just like those mischievous harpies waiting for the precise moment to come snatching out of the dark. “Did you get my e-mail?” Krip Yuson or Juaniyo Arcellana would ask, as I nurse my eleventh beer and ninth headache of the evening in some blind corner of Malate.
For the longest time I was saving up for a mobile phone that I could use precisely for such occurrences. What a drag it is: Sitting at the backseat of a taxicab, gazing straight ahead at some apocalyptic traffic, no means to find out if my Yahoo Mail already contains Butch Dalisay’s or Danton Remoto’s column for the following Monday. No way I am getting off the cab and meandering through a side street to look for an Internet café to check my e-mail and risk being in an infernal room teeming with kids blasting the bejesus out of each other in CounterStrike. Like Apocalypse Now in there, I tell you.
Since I got the Nokia E63 my life has become less like Mr. Hyde’s and more of Dr. Jeckyll’s. No more getting monstrously stressed out over inaccessible mailboxes. Everything is swimmingly in order.
For starters, the design of the E63 is so elegant. Mine is a sleek black one, not unlike a handy minimalist sculpture. It has a QWERTY keyboard, same with my old mobile phone, but the latter is like a silver brick and with famously limited features. The Nokia E63 boasts features I never even knew existed in a mobile phone: Internet Radio, Podcasting, connection via WLAN, and with its Office menu offering Zip, Intranet, and Adobe PDF functions. The user can download applications, graphics, tones, and even a poker clock. The amount of memory the micro SD carries is awesome.
Since e-mail is essential to my daily duties, I was gladdened by the fact that checking e-mails on the E63 is quite a cinch with this device. All I needed to do was sync my Yahoo Mail and G-Mail accounts (igandbayan@gmail.com) into my Messaging folder, and I could write, send and read electronic mail, plus download attachments anytime — even if I am in a collapsing beer joint in Manila, or on the Rue Saint Honoré in Paris looking for the ghost of Victor Hugo. As Nokia says, “You’ve got e-mail in your pocket.” Rightly so.
When abroad I could readily forward the e-mailed announcements from CCP or NCCA to Ma’am Millet or Kathy Moran to be used for the Monday issue. I don’t have to run the strasses of Berlin looking for a computer with English keyboards. I could relaxingly check e-mail under dead German trees frequented by a murder of crows, do my correspondences with my Nokia, and then visit the contemporary galleries Berlin is famous for.
Now with the E63, I could find out where Kupfergraben is by simply lugging it out and using mobile Internet. (Can’t wait to try the Nokia Maps function when I travel).
Same when I am in Pasong Tamo, in SM Megamall, anywhere there’s Mag:net, or in the shambolically appealing Cubao X. I could just take my mobile phone, surf the Net, and find out whose works are on view at the moment. An art-lover such as myself wouldn’t want to miss an exhibit by the likes of Manuel Ocampo, Jojo Legaspi, Louie Cordero, or Ronald Ventura.
One website I keep track of is http://manilaartblogger.wordpress.com/. Here’s the deal with this blog: It keeps you updated on what’s happening in the Manila contemporary art scene. No mention of those artists who have made a living out of repeating past glories. Manila Art Blogger does its reportage on artists that do matter. How guys like Kawayan de Guia and Neal Oshima in their Silverlens show revisited old photographic techniques when photographers didn’t rely on modern tricks but on lighting, weather, and the Moment. And by using my Nokia E63, I could learn about Rodel Tapaya’s show in China or Jose Tence Ruiz’s forays in Singapore, see the recent works by Geraldine and Nona Garcia, or find out what goes on in the mind of Jayson Oliveria.
The other two blogs I have bookmarked are those by Jessica Zafra (http://jessicarulestheuniverse.com/) and Butch Dalisay (http://www.penmanila.net/). Jessica has been pumping irony since forever, purveying her own twisted take on world domination, pop culture, and, well, Roger Federer. And Butch lately has been chronicling his “days of Dextrose” and “waddling like a diapered duck.” Great stuff.
On YouTube, I never fail to check if there is a new edition of “Word of the Lourd,” hosted by my friend Lourd De Veyra. If you’re a poet and you compare yourself to this guy, you’d end up like Salieri the patron saint of mediocrity. The Sago leader is always on, like Anthony Bourdain when he has partaken of too much pulque. In WOTL, Lourd masticates about everything — such as art (with the gospel delivered by the host in a toilet), woeful drivers, and bad diction (“soupdrinks”), among other topics. With the Nokia E63 you’ll never miss out on the latest “wasak na” episode.
And all these — art websites, literary blogs, streamed videos, e-mail access, etc. — enjoyed while aboard a side-winding bus, or giving in to a caffeine fix in a sidewalk café, or waiting for the biblically scary Manila floods to subside. With the Nokia E63, I will never be disconnected from everything that’s art — or something like it.
Didn’t William S. Burroughs write something about words just falling out of the sky? Now, that’s prophetic.
