In our senior years, attendance at wakes has turned into a regular feature in our calendar. The invites and alerts are of course on the dark side of spontaneity, our resolve to commit attendance something we can’t plan ahead.
Used to be, a decade or so ago, that we joined customary vigils at funeral parlors and chapels to honor our friends whose folks had passed on ahead. These days the earthly parade takes a continuing toll on our own contemporaries, or as in recent instances, friends who are even much younger than us.
I mourn the passing of artist and Beatles fan Carlos Filart, whom we called Dennis. I hadn’t seen him for years until we met again at a social function hosted by his close buddy Erwin Castillo, the writer and shooter extraordinaire, with whom Dennis had worked for long years at McCann Erickson the fabled San Mig group that gave us the deathless slogan “Iba na’ng may pinagsamahan.”
That group had its own internal slogan: “Walang iwanan.” Thus, when Dennis did take his leave last month, everyone was present at his wake, with most abiding by his request to come in Beatles shirts.
I recall Dennis playing the guitar Lakay Erwin’s birthday party held on Oct. 3, 2010 a most memorable date taking us through an extended version of Hey Jude, one that never ended. Last year Dennis was diagnosed with the Big C, and his countless friends helped him mount a retrospective show of his gamut of art, from humongous murals to small erotic portraits, at Art Circle Gallery in UP Diliman. A raucous sing-along party took place, deep into the night.
I consider myself fortunate to have acquired a Filart, one of his lovely “Free of All Prudery” series, subtitled “Orange Curtain” acrylic and gouache on board. It now hangs close to me at night, on a corner wall. “Dennis the Many” as friends had labeled him for the myriad permutations of art he accomplished with finesse now stands guard in my bedroom by way of an unblushing nude.
Another friend, Mario Taguiwalo, also left us bereft late in April. Weeks before, he had sent a farewell letter saying that he was content to embrace his fate in the company alone of his beloved wife Beaulah and their only remaining son, Freddie aka Homer. Not too many of his friends were privileged to shake his hand a last time.
I met Mario through our common kumpare Peque Gallage way back in the mid-’70s. Mario submitted an essay titled “What is EDSA and why is it doing these things to me” for publication in Ermita magazine. It proved extraordinarily prescient, as 10 years later, we all found out what EDSA could do for our country.
So many are the remarkable memories of friendship with Mario, who was primarily a thinker and visionary, and by extension, a systems man, an integrator, a writer, an actor, a funnyman with the legendary genius to blur the lines between a guffaw and a cackle.
One night we found ourselves at Hacienda Escudero for a shoot of a Peque Gallaga and Lory Reyes thriller for Mother Lily, Aswang starring Joey Marquez. We were given bit parts as the usual suspects: a gang surrounding Joey around a drinking table, al fresco in the countryside, drunkenly singing pop tunes and trading outré jokes until we guffawed and cackled, before hearing a piercing scream from the forest nearby.
That must have been in the early ’80s. A few years ago I was happy to receive jpg images by e-mail, from Mario himself if my memory’s not entirely shot. That series of vid grabs I now treasure.
Subsequently Mario and I got together as part of a media advisory group that serviced then President Fidel V. Ramos, thence his supposed “anointed,” thence a Vice President who became President. In 2006 I asked Mario to render the essay on Gen. Renato de Villa as one of the 20 EDSA heroes for the commemorative book Heroes published by Fr. Tito Caluag’s group, Alay sa Bansa.
He wrote: “In one possible narrative about the 1986 EDSA revolution, the military made itself the might of a righteous people by denying the dictator’s wish to stay in power despite the loss of the people’s support. But when other leaders misused the power granted by the people, the nation, including its uniformed defenders, lost the path of righteousness.
“It may again be time to raise the people from demoralization and despair, to gather again the energies and aspirations apparently confused and thwarted, and to reconnect these to new reform impulses and clearer revolutionary initiatives.”
Again, how prescient.
But no matter how serious Mario could get when it came to reflecting on affairs of state and the nation’s fate, it was the image of him as a hail-fellow-well-met that sticks forever to mind and heart.
At a shoot for Peque’s Richard Gomez starrer Kid, Huwag Kang Susuko, which script I wrote, then Heath Undersec. Taguiwalo paired with then Education Undersecretary Victor Ordoñez, another friend who has since passed away, to play the parts of big-time bettors in an underground arena for martial arts combat. Oh, Tita Cory’s undersecretaries were both so funny as Method actors of a fine madness.
I must also share this favorite anecdote: how one morning we found ourselves standing in the receiving room of Rene de Villa’s residence, and Madame Monet came out of the kitchen to size up the arrivals, a meat cleaver in hand. Mario threw up his own, actually both, in a gesture of surrender, while intoning mock-plaintively. “Ma’m naman, binibisita lang po ang asawa niyo!”
Two Fridays ago at the Heroes Hall in Malacañang, friends paid tribute to Mario. Among the speakers were his first boss (at Medical City), former Health Sec. Dr. Alran Bengzon, Ging Deles, DOTC Sec. Mar Roxas, and our President, who acknowledged having to chuck several written drafts and chose to speak spontaneously on his own memories of Mario. My, how PNoy can be so articulate, and very funny, in Filipino and Taglish, making us wonder if his comic timing was one talent he had imbibed from a workshop session with Mario Taguiwalo.
Both guys, Dennis and Mario, were only in the threshold of their golden years. Their departure makes our country poorer. But we can still fare well against any adversary, even putative invaders from mighty China, armed only with our sweet memories of song and laughter. Farewell, Dennis. Farewell, Mario. Many thanks for the powerful memories.
Our lifetime buddy Pandy Aviado, sui generis among Pinoy visual artists, premier graphic artist but also a multi-media and now digital art maestro, has a current tandem exhibit billed as “Within You, Without,” with his own daughter Diana as co-exhibitor.
Their show opened at Galerie One Workshop at LRI Design Plaza on Nicanor Reyes St., Makati, on May 3, and will be up until May 16.
Twenty-three-year-old Diana displays several photographs, mostly of mushrooms. She says of her work:
“Whenever I take a picture, I think about abstract painters, their flow in making art, never forcing a meaning on a subject, but instead letting the subject tell its own story.
“The Philippines has always been full of biodiversity, although ironically many Filipinos know the names of the foliage and animals of other countries and many times overlook the beauty of our environment. We have been so brainwashed that we believe other countries are more beautiful than ours. We tend to abandon our land and resources not realizing what we are truly losing.
“The mushrooms and earthly growths are my tribute to the wonder of my own environment and I title them according to the emotion they make me feel.”
Her dad Virgilio aka Pandy, my classmate in Philippine Women’s University’s College of Music & Fine Arts in the mid-’60s, has been there and done that, including becoming an outstanding Atenean who designed special stamps commemorating AdMU’s sesquicentennial.
Sexy Pandy writes of his own current preoccupation, digitally reworked images of artist-friends:
“It was while working on a book by Nonoy Marcelo that I started to learn and use digital technology on images I made with my digital camera. I collect pictures of friends and acquaintances. The images are always works-in-progress because of the endless possibilities on how I want the images to look. Much like printmaking, digital art is now part of Fine Printmaking.”
Happy Mother’s Day to a father whose peer and colleague in his latest exhibit is his own talented daughter. But then each day is a day of and for mom and pop, even as we begin to lose some of them along the way.