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From “The Book of Lights” by Chaim Potok:

“From the age of fifteen until the age of twenty-one he lived in the apartment world of his aunt’s whispery talking and his uncle’s coughs and brooding silence, and he did not know which was more frightening. For a while after his cousin’s death he thought his family had somehow been singled out for a special curse. But he talked to friends and found that throughout the neighborhood ran a twisting river of random events: parents died in slow or sudden ways, children were killed, relatives slipped young from life. The world seemed a strangely terrifying place when you really thought about it. He tried not to think about it too often.

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Tags: , Art, Books, Chaim Potok, religion, Writing
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A reaction on

Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

Posted in autografitti@yahoogroups.com, August 5, 2003.

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I can understand the dislike that Sontag has for hermeneuts and their penchant for reducing a work of art into its purported meaning, especially when such meaning is made to appear as esoteric and accessible only to initiates. I’m inclined to think that this is the same dislike that we have for so-called experts, academicians, philosophers, and intellectuals. These personages are supposed to illumine life but most of the time they only succeed in clouding and cluttering it with hot air, pollution and garbage.It is interesting to note that Michel Foucault argued for an “ars erotica” vis-a-vis the “scientia sexualis” in Volume I of The History of Sexuality. Of course, he was not talking about an “erotics of art” but an “art of erotics.” But he, like Sontag, is wary too of hermeneutics and its promise of getting into the “depth of things.” (The truth/meaning of things.)

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Tags: Art, Education, Foucault, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Life, Nietzsche, Philosopyhy, Sontag, Translation, Writing
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the sequel to “reading with/and understanding”

from autograffiti@yahoogroups.com, may13, 2003

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Is the concern for a reader/interpreter’s having the “right attitude” tantamount to a so-called “primacy of the reader”?

I don’t think so.

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Tags: Alterity, Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Meaning, Objectivity, Perspective, Philosophy, Prejudice, Reading, Subjectivity, Text, truth, Understanding
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a post in autograffiti, may 9, 2003

I once gave a remark:

“Read and read, until you understand.”

Rather harsh?

But it wasn’t meant to be a slight on anyone’s intelligence. Understanding (a text) is not necessarily premised on one’s intelligence. Tama ba ‘yon?

My point is that you need more than intelligence to be able to read and understand. You need a sympathetic ear, a willingness to “hear” what the other has to “say.” More than intelligence, you have to have the right attitude for a better understanding.

Hermeneuts like Schleiermacher (a hermeneut is one who specializes in the philosophy of understanding/interpretation) began with the presumption that there is always the possibility of MIS-understanding. That is why there is a need for hermeneutics (the art of interpretation).

Gadamer, following Heidegger, turned this around and said that we always already understand. All of us come from a fore-knowledge/fore-understanding of things which become the very basis of any future understanding. In other words, we all have biases and prejudices which determine the way we look at and understand anything in the world.

But lest we say, “Ah, we don’t need to make the effort to understand, anyway we always already understand,” Gadamer didn’t stop there, one’s “prejudices” (literally “pre-judgments”) is corrected by hearkening/listening to the otherness of the text.

That’s why the injunction “to read and read until one understands” is meant for all of us, especially when difficulty in understanding comes.

Reading and understanding is always meant to be a dialogue, a dialectic, a to-and-fro motion between the familiarity of our own assumptions and the strangeness of the otherness of the text.

It is definitely not masturbation.

best regards,

ian

next: the primacy of the text

Tags: Hermeneutics, Interpretation, Philosophy, Prejudices, Reading, Understanding, Writing
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We’ll be in Intramuros tomorrow to participate in the opening activities of the NCCA for the Philippine Arts Festival. Am posting our statement on the project and its Tagalog translation.

best regards,

ian

ARTISTS’ STATEMENT on

“URBAN WONDERLAND: THE TURO-TURO PROJECT”

The Neo-Angono Artists Collective presents new spheres of visual engagement through “Urban Wonderland: The Turo-Turo Project” – a site-specific zone intervention work wherein the group collaborates with the local community and residents of Intramuros. Graduating from the original concept of a “mural,” the work aims to transform several parts of the façade/structure of a chain of stores and eateries situated across the National Commission for Culture and the Arts building on Gen. Luna St. Appropriating the theme of “Public Art” as a modern allegory, the installation work reflects the geographic mosaic of location and identities. The work would touch on some episodes of Philippine history side by side with present social realities. The jarring juxtaposition of disparate elements in the work represents issues of displacement and the blurring of boundaries while hinting at questions regarding the nature of power and the use of art as a mechanism for social change.

As a descriptive reference to the “public,” the collective’s work hopes to serve as a contemporary rhetoric, integrating art into the public realm. This would be experienced on the day of production (February 1, 2008), when the group places life-sized and free-standing images of personages and characters scattered along the front parking lot of the work’s site. As a way of examining contact zones presented as dioramas of site-responsiveness, the public is invited to interact with the free-standing images by inserting their heads through some of the figures, to be photographed and integrated into the “scene” as a vital part of the project.

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Tags: Art, Filipinos, mural
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Dug this up in my files. In 2000, I was still teaching in Adamson University. I taught mostly “Logic” and “Philosophy of Man.” From time to time, I’d be given subjects like “Art Appreciation” and “Rizal.” One day, I was approached by a co-teacher from the English Department. She was coaching a student who was about to enter a speech contest of sorts (a declamation contest?). Either the topic was about Rizal or the new millenium. (Remember, this was the year 2000.) She asked me to write a piece for this student. I sort of liked the topic and so came up with this piece. The repetition of one sentence in the last paragraphs was done precisely because this was written as a kind of “speech.” Hahaha. I even picked up Fidel Ramos’s “pole-vaulting into the new millenium” crap.

best regards,
ian

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THE PHILIPPINES WITHIN A THOUSAND YEARS
by Michael Ian Lomongo, January 31, 2000

More than a hundred years ago, Dr. Jose Rizal wrote an essay in which he asked what would become of the Philippines within a century. In this particular essay, he argued for the urgent necessity of basic reforms such as the institution of a free press in the Philippines and its representation in the Spanish Cortes, that is, if Spain wanted to preserve the Philippines as a loyal colony. Still, with the penetrating insight of a social analyst, Rizal more than just hinted at the independence that the Filipinos would eventually seek. It was just a matter of time — and a question of whether the separation between Spain and the Philippines would be marked with gratitude and love, or hatred and resentment.

That question, of course, would be answered less than a decade after the essay “Filipinas dentro de cien años” was published in “La Solidaridad.” Now, with our freedom having been finally won and our friendly relations with Spain having been restored, we ask – as Rizal once did, if not with the same insight, at least with the same urgency: what have we, as a nation, gained and learned in the past century, and what can we look forward to in the coming years, in the advent of the new millenium?

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Tags: Education, Filipinos, Jose Rizal
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A TEACHER’S PRAYER

by Michael Ian Lomongo, January 2003

Dearest Lord, you are the true teacher that leads us from the darkness of ignorance into the light of wisdom. You have deigned to call us to follow your footsteps and become like you in this respect: a guru, a sensei… a teacher. Inspired by the teachers we’ve had, and loving the wisdom that we desire to have and share with others, we heeded your call.

And so, we became teachers. And in the process of sharing whatever knowledge, skill, or wisdom we had, we happily found our joy, passion, and compassion growing.

But there are times when teaching seems to be mere drudgery, a drag, a dreary, thankless job. There are moments when our responsibilities seem so huge and overwhelming, we cannot but feel small and puny. Moments come too, when we even question the meaning and value of what we do.

During these moments, help us remember the joy we felt in our initial discovery of something new and amazing, and in the realization that we had the power to share this with others. Help us keep our hearts and minds open, ever-ready to receive and learn from our experiences, mistakes, our colleagues, students, and the people around us. For even as teachers, we know that we never cease from being students.

Help us remember, Lord. Inspire us, that we may keep inspiring others.

Help us remember, Lord. That remembering, we may become true teachers.

Amen.

Tags: Learning, Prayer, Teaching
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The sequel to my article on “Acting as a Path to a Spirituality of Compassion.”

best regards,

ian

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On Teachers, Teaching, and Learning

by Michael Ian Lomongo, May 31, 2002

“When the student is ready, the teacher will come.”

In a previous essay that I wrote, I reflected on the spirituality of acting (and of any art for that matter) and the question of a possible incongruity between the excellence of one’s art (craft/skill/talent/competence) and one’s life (the great Art of one’s life). A friend commented that my question comes from the tendency to confuse two different realms, which may fortunately coincide, but need not do so. The level of a person’s artistic maturity is not necessarily an indication of personal (integral) maturity. Simply put, quite a number of Great artists can be real MAJOR-assholes.

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Tags: Acting, Art, Learning, Love, spirituality, Teaching
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