(Editor’s Note: The following is the author’s foreword in the coming book, Encounters in the Arts. To reserve copies, call 09065104270 or email: artsnewsservice@gmail.com)
This is my second book after my first book of poetry, Love, Life and Loss, Poems During the Pandemic.
It summarizes my life as a performing arts writer and impresario in the last 48 years!
Although I admit to being a voracious book reader, I’ve always been a reluctant book author. Until friends started reminding me and didn’t give up.
I decided to have a second book — not to aspire to be a celebrated book author — but to document what remains of my life as it is.
In the last three years, I already did my farewell concerts in Iloilo City, Manila (at Manila Pianos), Science City of Munoz (Nueva Ecija), Baguio City, Catanduanes.
My last concert in Bacolod City was in 1999 and my last in Davao City (all with Cecile Licad) was in 2002. My last in Zamboanga City in the 90s were with violinist Joseph Esmilla and the former piano prodigy Makie Misawa.
My last in Catanduanes featured tenor Nomher Nival, clarinetist Andrew Constantino, classical guitarist Aaron Aguila and Samuel Asistores and pianist Gabriel Pagurigan.
As I write this, I plan to do my farewell concert in Antipolo City on May 16, 2024. The artists I brought there were cellist Victor Michael Coo, Joseph Esmilla and again, Cecile Licad.
I did my farewell concert at Nelly Garden (deserving of the title Queen of Heritage Houses in Iloilo) in 2019 and at University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo City in 2022.
Almost all of those farewell concerts ended in standing ovations.
Then I reminded myself: enough already.
As an arts journalist, I realized I have written about the best and the brightest in the realm of the performing arts since 1975 in various publications.
Then it dawned on me: time to collect those memories.
It was ominous that when I said goodbye to my concert audiences at the Nelly Garden in Iloilo City in December 2019, more earthquakes would unsettle Mindanao, Taal Volcano erupted, corona virus would start claiming lives and nevertheless I’d see the best — and probably the last—good production of Lucia di Lammermoor where my favorite tenor got a rare rock star treatment.
In August 2019, it rained pretty hard with floods everywhere cancelling air and water transport.
On my second concert at Nelly Garden, I imagined concert goers wading through flood waters to the venue.
On the day of the concert, the skies cleared.
There was an unbelievable audience reception for the then 12-year-old cellist Damodar das Castillo.
On our way back to the Iloilo airport, the cello prodigy said, “You don’t look 70. Do you dye?”
“Of course, I do,” I answered. “I am not ready to age gracefully like Pen Medina (the actor) and Randy David (the writer and educator) and Jose Dalisay (the writer -poet). If I don’t dye, I’d look like Methuselah who lived for 969 years and looking it.”
But the cello prodigy (now 16) and his mother probably thought I was invincible doing one-man job from promoting a concert, begging for funds, finishing the souvenir program, booking air tickets, attending to invitations and car passes and supervising rehearsals and then overseeing ushers and usherettes, video man and photographer on the night of the concert.
What they didn’t know was that I had a hard time coping with hotel temperature, I get momentary dementia not knowing which knob to turn for hot water and begging the piano tuner to assist me.
Many times, I would lose my balance and nearly ended up on shower room tiles — helpless like a baby.
In my last concert in Iloilo City, I asked the clarinetist to help me with coping with the air conditioner as I find the room temperature too cold.
Again, I reminded myself: you can’t push too much and pretend you are still 16 going on 17.
You have to stop multi-tasking and leave the herculean tasks to the younger ones.
On the night I thanked my Iloilo sponsors, I also added that December 7, 2019 concert was going to be my last in that historic venue.
As far as your body is concerned, you are still productive as you beat weekly deadlines for national, provincial and online publications.
This is your life ever since high school as you religiously follow your favorite writers in your favorite weekly magazine. You don’t know where it will lead but as you break into national publications and finally getting paid, your forge a contract with yourself that this is going to be your life.
Never mind that writing (for all the noble things it signifies) is a virtual vow of poverty. Because doing PR is not exactly your cup of tea and you can’t write good speeches and you are perfectly useless working in advertising agencies.
Turning 75 is a good time as any to start writing your memoir and collecting some of your passable outputs into a book.
You get this reminder from your readers, from your editors, from FB friends and some well-meaning acquaintances. But you don’t take them seriously as you are too busy doing weekly deadlines and making ends meet.
Back then, I told myself you can’t stop writing just to focus on a book that publishers will find strange.
Who will read a book about artists and musicians when everybody is too busy texting, instagramming and Facebooking than attending concerts?
But many artists (young and old) will always have fans who will die for their idols and can buy books by the bulk. But you hate computing the way you figure out what it takes to fill up a concert hall.
I figured that the first order of the day would be contemplating if publishers love music that much to bother about a book on the performing arts. I perfectly understand why they should doubt why such a book should even exist.
You recoil when a much-seasoned book writer tells you how much she earned in copyrights and how even rich relatives hate buying books. I once volunteered to collect from a publisher for a writer (a great mother who wrote about her great daughter). When I saw the figures, you tell yourself book-writing will be another invitation to poverty.
After taking another look at my insignificant writing life, I finally considered writing a book even if it meant another chapter of a lifelong vow of poverty.
Since I will not wait for months and years for publishers to decide if I am a worthy book author, I decided to self-publish this book.
I am at my age when people think of leaving a legacy, of thinking how he wants to be remembered and to restate that cliché, how to make a difference.
Honestly, I don’t know what legacy means.
Legacy is something you connect with, something you have lived with and something you want to carry all your life. It is not anything you keep restating in your curriculum vitae as you fantasize being nominated for this and that award.
I love one artist in this book because she lived for her art as she honestly, she lived her life. She acquired world-wide following without having to pay publicists who will sing endless alleluias about her world-class status. Her fans did that for her.
Of course, she doesn’t lose sleep over awards which she more than deserved. One time she told me, “Pablo, if you nominate me for that award, I’ll shoot you.”
At age 75, I am ready to die.
Because in my book, you earn what you deserve and not by keeping a stable of publicists and PROs whose pronouncements are utterly predictable.
Because it is tragic when a national artist is announced in a big gathering with no less than 20 people able to connect with his art and life. To be sure, the musicologists love him, but he produces the kind of music that can only be edifying to people in the run for a doctoral degree.
What I am saying is that you can still live a simple life at 75 and above without losing sleep over re-imagined legacy or its equivalent. Legacy is something your followers will live on to remind them of the person as artist and human being. Legacy is the memory of good concerts or a good book or an unforgettable film that elevated you beyond your mortal self.
A life simply lived will resonate in what you write and not how you are expected to behave during your lifetime. You had your good moments and bad ones, even tragic ones, too.
But as the wise men say, there is no such thing as a perfect human being. You can fall, stumble and only you can bring yourself back to living a borrowed life.
Encounters in the Arts sums up my life in the last 75 years.
I want to credit friends who didn’t give up on me until the first book launching happens.
On this my second book launching, I want to credit Babeth Lolarga for braving to edit mountains of manuscripts and Jennifer Patricia A. Carino for book designs and the photographers who contributed to cover and inside photos namely Jon Unson, Floyd Evangelista Flores and many others.
I also credit the publications where these stories originally appeared: Philippines Free Fress, Expressweek, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Vera Files, Positively Filipino, CoverStory.Ph and Diarist.Ph.
Many thanks to those who contributed advance notices on the book, Lito Zulueta, Susan Lara, Alma Cruz Miclat, Jaime Fabregas, Pennie Azarcon, Dr. Patrick Azanza and Nestor Cuartero among others.
Special thanks to writer-poet Jose Dalisay for the book introduction.