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Bildungsroman, Kunstlerroman, and The Age of The New Wave


2011
06.24

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Posted in Books, Filipinos, Life, Music | No Comments »

Bildungsroman, Kunstlerroman, and The Age of The New Wave
(March 14, 2007, from my old friendster blog:
http://xn3ct.blog.friendster.com/2007/03/bildungsroman-kunstlerroman-and-the-age-of-the-new-wave/ )

Yesterday, I got to watch “Live Aid” (July 13, 1985). Brought me back to my growing up years… I saw Sting performing with some saxophonist named Marsalis (probably the brother of Wynton Marsalis, a trumpeteer who came to the Philippines in 1998, got to watch him live at the CCP). They played “Roxanne… You don’t have to put on the red light…” Saw Bob Geldof (he who organized Band-Aid and Live Aid) of the Boomtown Rats singing my favorite “I Don’t Like Mondays.” Saw Sade singing “Your Love is King.” Saw one of my idols Bono sing “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and “Bad.” He was wearing what looked like a military suit with vinyl pants and knee-length boots. Wow! He looked like a conquering general!

Tangna! Wala lang. Made me think of the time I was in high school, an innocent teen-age boy of thirteen/fourteen, starting to listen to Depeche Mode, China Crisis, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, and XB102 (anyone remembers that radio station? circa ‘84-85… way, way before NU107)… A young seminarian having a difficult time reconciling my growing appreciation of rock music and the lectures we’d be having from our prefect of discipline, saying that rock and roll is the “music of the devil.”

But what has this got to do with “bildungsroman” and “kunstlerroman”?

Of course, you’re quite familiar with J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye.” That’s an example of a “bildungsroman.” If I’m not mistaken, it means a novel that tackles the coming of age of the protagonist. I never liked the protagonist of “Catcher in the Rye” (What’s his name again?) Holden Caulfield. He seemed to me like a spoiled brat. Well, if not spoiled, a brat just the same. An angry brat who wants to take on the world for its supposed “fakery,” “inauthenticity,” or something like that. Ewan ko, it’s just me.

On the other hand, I love Leonard Cohen’s “The Favourite Game.” Also a bildungsroman. But more properly, a kuntslerroman. (The words “bildung” and “kunstler” are German for “culture” and “artist.” Yata.) It’s about the coming of age of a poet. The introduction to the book says that it’s probably semi-autobiographical. Leonard Cohen has a deep bass for voice and I think he’s released his recorded poems/songs. (I heard one, I forget the title… something about “something coming.”) In one interview, he said that his roshi (he practices zen sitting meditation) told him to “be more sad” when he was relating about his experience of sadness.

Most of Hermann Hesse’s novels are bildungsroman: Steppenwolf, Siddharta, The Glass Bead Game, Demian, and one, Narcissus and Goldmund, could be classified as a kunstlerroman. (That’s probably the reason why a lot of teenagers and college guys with a philosophical bent love Hesse.)

Which brings me back to why I thought of all these stuff… I read sometime in January a cute little novel, a bildungsroman, by some guy named Stephen Chbosky (not too sure about the name). I borrowed it from my cousin Aeon. It’s titled “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

Unlike the hero of “Catcher in the Rye,” the protagonist here doesn’t rage against the so-called inauthenticity of the world. Instead, he finds himself crying for a number of reasons. He’s also precocious, and yes, a little fucked up in the head.

He breaks down towards the end of the novel. Won’t tell you the reason.

It’s a compassionate novel. And the insights of the hero are quite okay. Reflecting on his being “fucked up” inside, he realizes that you cannot blame the past (whatever has happened to you in your childhood) for your present difficulties and hang-ups. Well, yes, the past has certainly a definite bearing and influence on who (what kind of person) you are. But you cannot use it as a scapegoat once you do realize its influence on your personality.

And of course, the novel talks about “mix tapes” (in the age of ipods, who remembers about casette tapes and “mix tapes”?).

Wala lang. With a certain wistfulness, I wonder: What if I had a wider exposure to the music that I loved and love until now? Would I be a better person? A better artist?

“Keep me searchin’ for a heart of gold… and I’m getting old.” (Neil Young, “Heart of Gold”)

Wala lang. Am getting old.

“Well, we were younger then and the days were long and slow/ But were we wiser then? I couldn’t say, I wouldn’t know…” (The Chameleons, “Tears”)

But as good old Fritz (Nietzsche) would say: “Was that life? Then, once again! Da capo!”

From the beginning!

best regards,
ian

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A Letter to Sands


2010
10.17

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jan. 11, 2006
>
hi sands,
>
that was macbeth himself who said that (“out, out brief candle…”) in his monologue, after learning of lady macbeth’s death (“tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/ creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”). you were thinking about lady macbeth’s other monologue with the “out, out damned spot” (or something like that) when she tries to wash out the imagined stains of blood from the killing of duncan.
>
yeah, it’s that time of year when thinking about death and life, and its meaning and worth becomes heightened. finally read marquez’s “a hundred years of solitude” and jeanette winterson’s “the powerbook” and “the world and other places” during the holidays and alternated between joy and depression.
>
i told someone that i’ve been in a depressive state for about two years now… that may not be entirely true. it’s probably more of frequently alternating between states of joy and sadness/depression.
>
yes, all human creation could be seen as an attempt to overcome the destruction of death. we will all die and be forgotten anyway. so why bother at all?
>
“ars longa, vita brevis.” so they say. “art is long, life is short.”
but even works of art, no matter how monumental, no matter how seemingly eternal, will suffer the ravages of time.
>
time devours all his children.
>
why bother at all?
>
because……………………………..
>
best regards,
ian

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On Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, Signs and Symbols


2009
08.21

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Brown’s devices are rather stilted… contrived… Although I laughed at that scene when Brown was thinking of some woman in the past and then the police driver who fetched him asks: “Did you mount her?” The Eiffel, of course… harharhar!

One particular scene that I loved (not for any “high”/literary reasons but for the seeming naturalness of the playfulness of the characters) in “Foucault’s Pendulum” was when the narrator, Casaubon, was reading up on the Rosicrucians in bed, with his girlfriend Amparo. There are no narrative descriptions about what goes on. But Casaubon from time to time remarks, “Stop that!” or Amparo gets some food and eats and feeds Casaubon, too, and repeats a curious word or name or detail from what Casaubon reads aloud, and you know that they’re teasing each other and having some kind of a foreplay. Parang si Dumas din sa “Count of Monte Cristo.” Alam mo kung ano’ng nangyayari sa dialogue lang… sa tone, sa manner of responses and counter-responses… wala nang description o (kung sa play, stage directions).

Wala talagang binatbat ang “Da Vinci Code.” (A comparison can’t be avoided because both works talk about the knights templars, rosicrucians, the grail myth, conspiracies, etc.)

best regards,
ian

—

An excerpt from “Foucault’s Pendulum” (This is Lia, Casaubon’s girlfriend (after Amparo) and mother of his child, talking to Casaubon.):

…she patted her belly, her thighs, her forehead; with her spread legs drawing her skirt tight, she sat like a wet nurse, solid and healthy — she so slim and supple — with a serene wisdom that illuminated her and gave her a matriarchal authority.

“Pow (Lia’s pet name for Casaubon – ian), archetypes don’t exist; the body exists. The belly inside is beautiful, because the baby grows there, because your sweet cock, all bright and jolly, thrusts there, and good, tasty food descends there, and for this reason the cavern, the grotto, the tunnel are beautiful and important, and the labyrinth, too, which is made in the image of our wonderful intestines. When somebody wants to invent something beautiful and important, it has to come from there, because you also came from there the day you were born, because fertility always comes from inside a cavity, where first something rots and then, lo and behold, there’s a little man, a date, a baobab.”

(I’m reminded of an exhibit by Gabby Barredo at Hiraya Galler in 1998 or 99. There was a monstrance (the thing where priests put the sacred host during an exposition of the holy sacrament), but instead of a host, what you find inside was a vagina. – ian)

“And high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesn’t stink as much, because it’s better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something above — you really have to be in an attic — while you often hurt yourself falling. That’s why up is angelic and down devilish.

“But because what I said before, about my belly, is also true, both things are true, down and inside are beautiful, and up and outside are beautiful, and the spirit of Mercury and Manicheanism have nothing to do with it. Fire keeps you warm and cold gives you bronchial pneumonia, especially if you’re a scholar four thousand years ago, and therefore fire has mysterious virtues besides its ability to cook your chicken. But cold preserves that same chicken, and fire, if you touch it, gives you a blister this big; therefore if you think of something preserved for millenia, like wisdom, you have to think of it on a mountain, up, high (and high is good), but also in a cavern (which is good, too) and in the eternal cold of the Tibetan snows (best of all). And if you then want to know why wisdom comes from the Orient and not from the Swiss Alps, it’s because the body of your ancestors in the morning, when it woke and there was still darkness, looked to the east hoping the sun would rise and there wouldn’t be rain.”

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Still on Dan Brown’s Recuperation of the Sacred Feminine


2009
08.19

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Posted in Art, Books, Filipinos, Gender Issues, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy | No Comments »

Cultural symbols have some kind of consistency. And rightly or wrongly (I mean, one could always present arguments that would show the inappropriateness of a symbol or sets of symbols), the associations have been formed and set through the millenia. One cannot simply do away with a symbol that has been passed and accepted by cultures/traditions, etc. One can, however, question and undermine the seeming “naturalness” that these symbols have come to acquire (like what Nietzsche, Derrida, among others, have done).

The association of “black” with “male” and “white” with “female” (at least, symbolically) is not consistent with, and I’d even say, goes against the grain of, tradition of symbolical associations with gender archetypes. Check it out for yourself. Research on this topic.

Even the very moral association of “black” with “evil” and “white” with “good” is consistent with the disparaging of the “feminine principle” that Brown himself presents in his novel.

Which leads me back to Nietzsche… the earth/matter, feminine, black, deceptive, as opposed to the spirit, male, white, beholden to the truth… and which does he champion?

Neither.

Rather, he asks, probably with a grin on his face, “What if truth were a woman?” (which can be read as “what if the truth were lying/deceptive?”)

So, again, rather than simply overturning the tables or reassigning the good values with the opposing pole (i.e., saying that “male” is “evil” and “female” is “good”), one gains an insight into the interconnection/interweaving/inter-reliance, complexity, and perhaps, even complicity of the bipolar signs/symbols into our understanding of this world.

The world is to a large extent, amoral, and because of this, both cruel and innocent. It is us humans/cultures who assign values, depending on our perceived needs/wants in given situations. It is when these values harden/ossify that they become dangerous to life/living.

best regards,
ian

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On Deliberately Ignoring Something Because of the Hype


2009
08.15

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Posted in Art, Books, Education, Filipinos, Gender Issues, Life, Love, Movies, Philosophy, spirituality, Translation, Writing | No Comments »

I loved the Matrix and Moulin Rouge, despite their being hyped. On the other hand, I did watch Lord of the Rings 1 & 2, but stayed away from 3. Tried reading book 1, but just managed a few paragraphs, and then stopped… (Well, perhaps someday…)

Did “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” have that much hype? I love that novel, have read it twice, and think of it as the kind/type of novel I’d love to write if I ever get the chance of writing one. (Haven’t seen the film adaptation with Daniel Day-Lewis…)

As for “The Da Vinci Code,” if you find a copy lying around, it’s worth reading din naman. For one thing, I do subscribe to the recuperation/rehabilitation of the “sacred feminine.”

One other reason why I stayed away from Dan Brown’s novel is that I’ve read Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” and from what I had heard about “The Da Vinci Code,” it seemed to me to be a “Foucault’s Pendulum”-wanna-be.

I’m currently re-reading Eco’s novel. (I read it years ago, mistakenly thinking that it’d help me write a paper on Michel Foucault. Wala palang connect. Ibang Foucault ‘to… Or, meron din, if one looks at the obsession for power and techniques of power…)

(more…)

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What Does It Matter! (On the Da Vinci Code, Foucault’s Pendulum & Other Matters)


2009
08.13

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Posted in Art, Books, Education, Filipinos, Gender Issues, Life, Movies, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality, Theater | No Comments »

Read “The Da Vinci Code” in 2005, after deliberately ignoring it for quite some time because of the hype. And then saw the movie later.

Well, the wealth of information (esp. regarding symbols) is generally sound. But it doesn’t hold a candle to the erudition of Umberto Eco’s “Foucalt’s Pendulum.” (I have yet to understand the elaborate explanation of how Foucault’s Pendulum works…)

One thing I liked in the novel is the rather sympathetic portrayal of the head of the Opus Dei, Bishop Aringarosa. (Not so in the movie.) I’ve heard a lot of negative publicity regarding the Opus Dei and their founder Jose Ma. Escriva. (From the late Larry Henares, in his TV show and Philippine Daily Inquirer column, as well as from a Filipino priest who studied in a university run by the Opus Dei…) Bishop Aringarosa may be ultra-conservative in his theology but in the end, when the time came for his faith to be tested, his heart proved to be ultimately in the right place.

Also, it had a more hopeful, happy ending than “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which was darker and more poignant. Eco’s novel bewails the lack of understanding that so-called believers/enlightened ones have. Parang si Elsa sa Himala: “Walang himala! Ang himala ay nasa puso ng tao!”

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Because I Cannot Sleep by Rumi


2009
08.11

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A poem by Rumi:

Because I Cannot Sleep

Because I cannot sleep
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one whose face has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a good reputation nor disgrace.

A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have run a thousand miles away.

The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The stars and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe is getting tighter and tighter.

The moon says, “How long will I remain suspended without a sun?”
Without Love’s jewel inside of me, let the bazaar of my existence be destroyed stone by stone.

O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces.
O Love, You who shape the faces of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris, give me a glass from Your bottle, or a handful of bheng from your branch.

Remove the cork once more.
Then we’ll see a thousand chiefs prostrate, and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
The the addict will be freed of craving and will be resurrected, and stand in awe till Judgment Day.

(translation by Kabir Helminski and Lail Fouladvend)

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Ano nga ba ang Isang Tula (What is a Poem?) by Miguel Hernandez


2009
07.25

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Ano nga ba ang isang tula?

Isang marikit na kasinungalingang binihisan. Isang katotohanang ipinararamdam lamang. Tanging sa pagpaparamdam lamang nito hindi nagiging kasinungalingan ang katotohanan. Isang katotohanang ‘singhalaga at ‘sintago ng miniminang yaman.

Sino nga ba ang nakakakita na, sa katotohanan, kulay-asin ang dagat?

Walang sinuman. Gayunpaman, nagpaparanas ito, wumawagayway, ipinapakita at sinasalamin ng mga binuo nitong bula ang kulay ng gasuklay na buwan. Nasa kanyang hiwaga ang higit niyang kagandahan.

Hindi maaaring tumambad sa atin ang tula nang hubad. Mga buto ng tula lamang ang taglay ng mga tulang hubad. At ano nga ba’ng mas papangit pa sa mga pawang kalansay lamang?

Ingatan, mga manunula, ang diwa ng tula: isang espinghe. Hayaan n’yong matuto silang bakbakin ito tulad ng balat ng kahoy… Ay, tulad ng dalandan! kaylinamnam ng itinatago nito sa loob ng kanyang mala-planetang kabilugan!

Ingatan ang inyong sarili, mga manunula, laban sa mga bungang walang-balat, mga dagat na walang-alat.

Kailangang umubra ang tula gaya ng sa banal na misa.

Kailan kaya darating ang manunula na hawak sa kanyang mga daliri ang tula gaya ng paring tangan-tangan ang ostiya at nagsasabing: “Ito ang Diyos!” at maniniwala tayo?

- Miguel Hernandez, spanish poet, 1910-1942 (Tagalog translation by Ron Capinding)

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The Lover’s Passion


2009
07.17

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I love Jeanette Winterson!

It’s true, and every lover knows this deep in his/her heart to be true: when one loves, one becomes a stalker of sorts…

With the regretful sigh and the little blush of a lover,
ian

—

The Lover’s Passion
by Rumi

A lover knows only humility
He has no choice
He steals into your alley at night
He has no choice
He longs to kiss every lock of your hair
Don’t fret
He has no choice
In his frenzied love for you
He longs to break the chains
Of his imprisonment
He has no choice
—

It was easy for me to get in, the door was unlocked. I felt like a thief with a bagful of stolen glances. It’s odd being in someone else’s room when they’re not there. Especially when you love them. Every object carries a different significance. Why did she buy that? What does she especially like? Why does she sit in this chair and not that one? The room becomes a code that you have only a few minutes to crack. When she returns, she will command your attention, and besides it’s rude to stare. And yet I want to pull out the drawers and run my fingers under the dusty rims of the pictures. In the waste basket perhaps, in the larder, I will find a clue to you, I will be able to unravel you, pull you between my fingers and stretch out each thread to know the measure of you.

- Jeanette Winterson, “Written on the Body”

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Excerpt from “It’s Here Now: Are You?” by Bhagavan Das


2009
07.09

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From “It’s Here Now: Are You?” by Bhagavan Das, pp.82-83:

The spiritual path gives you a choice to use your power for either good or evil. Many are tempted to use it for evil — that’s human nature. We must overcome this temptation. This is why the spiritual life is called the razor’s edge. The more realization you receive, the more power you’re given. But if you don’t remain humble and compassionate, you may find yourself slipping into some very deep, dark spaces. And kindness is essential.

The Lord’s Prayer says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus wouldn’t have put that into the most famous prayer in the world if he hadn’t known that a hundred times a day we need to let go, we need to forgive. When we do, the next moment arises fresh and clean. There’s no victim; no one did anything to anyone. And most important of all, one must forgive oneself, too.

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