James Reyes’ years of magical thinking
Through his aesthetic, the real James unravels. The warmth his work exudes thaws slowly the chill that has stayed with me since I held his cold body. He was as beautiful as his drawings.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. – Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
In my paranoid adult life, I had been preparing for moments when life could abruptly end for myself and my loved ones. Minding where to exit should fire break out. Having some sharp object by the bed for an intruder. Posting emergency numbers on the fridge, on the phone. Even living close to a hospital ER.
We had been living near the ER but on that fateful Saturday midnight, James Reyes’ sudden heart attack caught me off guard. Even if the hospital were just next door, it was all too late. His end came hard and quick, and he took his last breath in my arms, not at the ER.
It’s been a fortnight since, but the clearest memory I have of him was his final struggle — the loud wheezing, the gasping for breath, then lifelessness. Everything else is a blur. For grief unhinges, unsettles, deranges. Grief is a dark cloud that hovers on a hot day in March, obliterating details I’ve shared with my loved one in the last 24 years.
Our life together has been a string of details, devoid of dramatic highs and lows. I’m sure they were all colorful even in their ordinariness. But the gloom is making them fuzzy and gray. So I turn to pictures to remind me of the colors and vibrance which his world painted.
He’s left behind plentiful of artworks — sketches for his couture clients; costume design for the CCP, Repertory Philippines and Ballet Philippines; paintings in acrylic; photographs from his travels; layouts from years of advertising work; and my favorites — drawings done during downtime, un-commissioned and unsolicited.
Our place, his atelier and his bags remain filled with pens, pencils and paper. He just kept on drawing. His impressions everywhere he’d been were documented on paper. Two statuesque African-looking women garbed in the brightest of reds, wearing high stilettoes about to hit cobblestoned Le Marais. Autumn leaves falling on kimono-wearing Japanese women holding ornate parasols. Details of our ancestral home in Pampanga, told in alphabet form, from A to Z. Reimagining a new logo for CCP. Capturing his friends’ personas (designer Jojie LLoren, hairstylist Henri Calayag, choreographer Denisa Reyes, fashion director Jackie Aquino, lighting man John Batalla, jeweler Candy Dizon) in logo form. Injecting whimsy into the terno, the baro’t saya and barong, with the hope that he’d get to mount a Filipiniana show at his second home, the CCP. The work is sparse, silly, uncomplicated, unpretentious, original. They’re all joyful.
My prayer is that we continue to honor James by living with kindness, generosity, daring, spirit and joy.
Through his aesthetic, the real James unravels. The warmth his work exudes thaws slowly the chill that has stayed with me since I held his cold body. He was as beautiful as his drawings. The beauty transcends the face, defined by a ready beauty-pageant smile — to quote his friend and favorite bottled-tuyo donor Bibeth Orteza — that would break into laughter every time he’d watch synchronized dancing Pikachus and Judy Ann Santos’ cooking show gaffes. His life-force was even more beautiful and affecting. He was the quintessential repository of information, both profound and inane, which figured in his work. And he just had to share it across several sectors he moved in – La Salle Greenhills, UP Fine Arts, advertising, fashion and theatre. His work was an invitation to friends and colleagues to celebrate life: Life is fun, life has meaning, life can be prettier.
But the beautiful child is gone. Those pens will soon dry up. The paper will turn brittle. Sadness displaces the comfort from our daily connection. It gathers up in all the corners of my body, even if I manage not to show it at work, at family functions or wherever.
In my mind, I don’t want grief to destroy me. I want to realize that grief is the final act of love, or the price we have to pay for loving someone deeply. I’ve been told repeatedly to “embrace the pain and burn it as fuel to my next journey.”
I must prepare myself when a small sketch of James’ slips from my drawer. It’s not a reason to wail louder, or nurture the emptiness. First, he’d hate the drama. Second, it’d be disrespecting the sanctity of his talent, the magic he shared through his inventive mind and deft hands.
James was a great loss to all the communities he loved and served. He was loved back, as seen from the throngs of people who went to his wake. May that love last longer than the usual sympathies. My prayer is that we continue to honor James by living with kindness, generosity, daring, spirit and joy. Silliness and laughter, too, just because life’s too short.
