Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote that our lives are nothing but drops of blood that form parts of the portrait of God. And Joseph Campbell asserts that at the end of all our life journeys, the only thing that matters is the story that we can share and leave behind. If there is anything that resembles a response to these two soundbytes I can muster only this: that my story, my share of the face of divinity, will be told, in carved wood, with marks of chisels. Other than this I have nothing else of value to offer.
I realize now, after more than a month in New York and getting confused with all the many things it has to offer for an artist like me, the plenitude of experience appears as dense as wood. It offers resistance against any preconceived notions as it conceals all sorts of surprises. Yet as a woodcarver I know that resistance is the material, not wood. The good carver knows how to work around regions of fullness, and density and resistance. Often the challenge of the carver is how to form a carved path that embraces the whole matter without too much wastage, and allowing volume to play with light and shadow. The carver's mentality is one of subtraction and elimination. And with material, as it is with life, I use the language of elimination, of overcoming the superfluous, until I have only the useful mass of experience that allows play with the internal and external elements of existence. Therefore I need the practice of carving, not just to work, but also as an instrument of comprehension, of phenomenological engagement.
It appears that this approach runs counter to the culture of aggregation and accumulation that marks post-industrial life in the metropolis.
As we say in Filipino, I am contra pelo, to New York City.
Because the language of the subtractive, of wood and of the organic elimination isn't top news to a place where everything is available. Yet, instead of feeling contra pelo all the way I take the advice of St. Francis of Assisi and acquire the mind of a monk in the middle of the city. To be the spoke on the wheel, he says, is where the mind should be, and not on the periphery where you are tossed round and round. Because any city like this one distraction is de rigeur, on the way to a sale or trade.
Case in point: three guys in the No. 5 subway this afternoon suddenly began a loud exchange about animals do not ignore each other. Then followed a performance on drums and the bantering of the guys with some well-placed accomplices in the crowd. The ruse works and they get money from some people in the car. When some refused, they were told that animals again do not ignore each other. When they left, I felt like hollering after them: True, but the animals that take notice of and watch over others are usually predators.
It is not that I do not appreciate street performances. In fact in Paris there's nothing more fascinating in the Metro experience than listening to Bach or Saint-Saens resonating in the tunnels. The difference between Paris and New York subway performers is that the former knows the art of enticement, the art of drawing people in. New York subway performers like to use subterfuge and spectacle - sleight of hand and bombastic surprise on the senses. Well it cant be helped I guess. The good ones are unheard and unseen. Pardon my preferences, but I do hate when I feel my senses assaulted, especially with loud voices with phrases dotted with words like "fuck" and "shit", two most common words in New York vernacular (in addition to "okay" and "yeah"). And music is something you cannot possibly stop filtering into your system. When it begins it resonates as if from nothing and its vibrations pass through your body.
Im such a whiner. I know. Remember: contra pelo.
My gallerist called me up last night and told me that it seems while in Europe I was nothing but inspired (read: infatuated) while in the US theres something that's eating me up. I told him that everything here is up for some sort of "sale"or market. (Quite apt for a city of merchants). All cultural experiences - in sports, news, technology, art etc - seemed to framed in all sorts of shop talk. And I am not easily convinced. No amount of shop talk, to my reckoning, can match the weight of tradition and history. Yet so hung up is the metropolis in selling the future, the new as BETTER, (Get a new car, its better - ignore the fact that many new models are recalled. Get a new house, its a better life, disregard the fact that you have to work double time to pay mortgage) I say, well f***, (ode to Ginsberg) dude: who said new is better? Its simply, NEW. Who said contemporary is better? Its just a marketing promo period. Dude, Lady Liberty's slip is showing and I think its not by coyness or accident. Why do I get the feeling that I am being shoptalked all the way, every way, all the time?
Here I go again. Contra pelo. Be on the hub, not on the wheel.
That's why I relish the time I go away from Manhattan towards the peripheral boroughs, to the edges of the city. Yesterday my uncle drove me and his family to Long Island and I simply went gaga over this small town of Roslyn for its sense of quaintness and its proximity to a duck-filled lake. We found our way to Long Island Sound facing Connecticut. The sea was choppy, noisy, but delightfully peaceful. This is what I like about nature or places in the suburbs, and in the provinces: life simply is. I have never encountered a mountain that was selling itself or a sea that was giving shoptalk about its breeze.
Now its just a matter of taking back the sea to East 44th st between 1st and 2nd avenue.
So, like a carver that I am. I have taken away the superfluous: the sense of gimmickry and spectacle (in addition to curatorial and connoisseur patronage) as an excuse for bad art, the shop talk of the new as better, the boombastic Barnum-and-Bailey sense of what is considered entertainment, calorie-counted food...
I have retained what is (at the moment) expedient and essential to my wholeness: I guess in many ways I think thats how I survive the sense of estrangement in these months away from home. I carry within me the image of the beaches of Ilocos, glaring in the heat of summer, pierced with the smell of brine and coconuts, gay with the sound of the distant ocean rain and the sonorous trumpets of a funeral procession. I also take with me the diesel-clogged streets of Marikina, Cubao and Makati, inasmuch as my tongue retains the saltiness of pork rinds, fishballs, bagoong and the suicidal saccharine tendencies of sago, palamig and halo-halo.
That is what I call sculpting an experience.
Oh hell. In journeys, such as this one that I am doing for the sake of my career, its not where I am going or where I have been. Its all about what I take back home. For a Filipino, this sense of pasalubong-giving, is what defines who we are. And I cannot help it, as a habit so deeply ingrained in my soul. As essential as f*** and sh** is to a Manhattanite, p***** i**, I say. I cannot but be, Filipino.
I realize now, after more than a month in New York and getting confused with all the many things it has to offer for an artist like me, the plenitude of experience appears as dense as wood. It offers resistance against any preconceived notions as it conceals all sorts of surprises. Yet as a woodcarver I know that resistance is the material, not wood. The good carver knows how to work around regions of fullness, and density and resistance. Often the challenge of the carver is how to form a carved path that embraces the whole matter without too much wastage, and allowing volume to play with light and shadow. The carver's mentality is one of subtraction and elimination. And with material, as it is with life, I use the language of elimination, of overcoming the superfluous, until I have only the useful mass of experience that allows play with the internal and external elements of existence. Therefore I need the practice of carving, not just to work, but also as an instrument of comprehension, of phenomenological engagement.
It appears that this approach runs counter to the culture of aggregation and accumulation that marks post-industrial life in the metropolis.
As we say in Filipino, I am contra pelo, to New York City.
Because the language of the subtractive, of wood and of the organic elimination isn't top news to a place where everything is available. Yet, instead of feeling contra pelo all the way I take the advice of St. Francis of Assisi and acquire the mind of a monk in the middle of the city. To be the spoke on the wheel, he says, is where the mind should be, and not on the periphery where you are tossed round and round. Because any city like this one distraction is de rigeur, on the way to a sale or trade.
Case in point: three guys in the No. 5 subway this afternoon suddenly began a loud exchange about animals do not ignore each other. Then followed a performance on drums and the bantering of the guys with some well-placed accomplices in the crowd. The ruse works and they get money from some people in the car. When some refused, they were told that animals again do not ignore each other. When they left, I felt like hollering after them: True, but the animals that take notice of and watch over others are usually predators.
It is not that I do not appreciate street performances. In fact in Paris there's nothing more fascinating in the Metro experience than listening to Bach or Saint-Saens resonating in the tunnels. The difference between Paris and New York subway performers is that the former knows the art of enticement, the art of drawing people in. New York subway performers like to use subterfuge and spectacle - sleight of hand and bombastic surprise on the senses. Well it cant be helped I guess. The good ones are unheard and unseen. Pardon my preferences, but I do hate when I feel my senses assaulted, especially with loud voices with phrases dotted with words like "fuck" and "shit", two most common words in New York vernacular (in addition to "okay" and "yeah"). And music is something you cannot possibly stop filtering into your system. When it begins it resonates as if from nothing and its vibrations pass through your body.
Im such a whiner. I know. Remember: contra pelo.
My gallerist called me up last night and told me that it seems while in Europe I was nothing but inspired (read: infatuated) while in the US theres something that's eating me up. I told him that everything here is up for some sort of "sale"or market. (Quite apt for a city of merchants). All cultural experiences - in sports, news, technology, art etc - seemed to framed in all sorts of shop talk. And I am not easily convinced. No amount of shop talk, to my reckoning, can match the weight of tradition and history. Yet so hung up is the metropolis in selling the future, the new as BETTER, (Get a new car, its better - ignore the fact that many new models are recalled. Get a new house, its a better life, disregard the fact that you have to work double time to pay mortgage) I say, well f***, (ode to Ginsberg) dude: who said new is better? Its simply, NEW. Who said contemporary is better? Its just a marketing promo period. Dude, Lady Liberty's slip is showing and I think its not by coyness or accident. Why do I get the feeling that I am being shoptalked all the way, every way, all the time?
Here I go again. Contra pelo. Be on the hub, not on the wheel.
That's why I relish the time I go away from Manhattan towards the peripheral boroughs, to the edges of the city. Yesterday my uncle drove me and his family to Long Island and I simply went gaga over this small town of Roslyn for its sense of quaintness and its proximity to a duck-filled lake. We found our way to Long Island Sound facing Connecticut. The sea was choppy, noisy, but delightfully peaceful. This is what I like about nature or places in the suburbs, and in the provinces: life simply is. I have never encountered a mountain that was selling itself or a sea that was giving shoptalk about its breeze.
Now its just a matter of taking back the sea to East 44th st between 1st and 2nd avenue.
So, like a carver that I am. I have taken away the superfluous: the sense of gimmickry and spectacle (in addition to curatorial and connoisseur patronage) as an excuse for bad art, the shop talk of the new as better, the boombastic Barnum-and-Bailey sense of what is considered entertainment, calorie-counted food...
I have retained what is (at the moment) expedient and essential to my wholeness: I guess in many ways I think thats how I survive the sense of estrangement in these months away from home. I carry within me the image of the beaches of Ilocos, glaring in the heat of summer, pierced with the smell of brine and coconuts, gay with the sound of the distant ocean rain and the sonorous trumpets of a funeral procession. I also take with me the diesel-clogged streets of Marikina, Cubao and Makati, inasmuch as my tongue retains the saltiness of pork rinds, fishballs, bagoong and the suicidal saccharine tendencies of sago, palamig and halo-halo.
That is what I call sculpting an experience.
Oh hell. In journeys, such as this one that I am doing for the sake of my career, its not where I am going or where I have been. Its all about what I take back home. For a Filipino, this sense of pasalubong-giving, is what defines who we are. And I cannot help it, as a habit so deeply ingrained in my soul. As essential as f*** and sh** is to a Manhattanite, p***** i**, I say. I cannot but be, Filipino.
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