(FROM THE EDITOR, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN SENSE&STYLE, WOMAN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE, AUG2008)
Among the Chinese around the world, the seventh month of the lunar calendar (lunar July in our calendar this year is between the seventh of August to the sixth of September) is regarded as the ghost month, dedicated mostly to ancestral worship. During this period, “when deceased ancestors emerge from the lower realms to visit the living,” important events like weddings, inaugurations, and construction are avoided at all costs.
BLURB
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex—Oscar Wilde
For us in the media, August, like the latter part of July, is a time to take a breather from our media circus, which will promptly resume in September and, I expect based on experience, will not slow down until around July next year. But this month, at least, we need not run around like headless chickens with brunches and lunches, high-teas and cocktails, dinners and nightouts to tick off our daily schedule. Because thankfully the economy never comes to a standstill, there is, of course, always the occasional invitation or two that you cannot turn down even in this slow month.
I’d like to think that ancient Chinese wisdom has been validated that in August, even among us pragmatists, hardly any brand launches a new product and many designers are away on holiday. Whatever the reason, August’s gift to us is the luxury of time, which this magazine in your hands encourages you to spend wisely, taking stock of what is truly essential in your life.
Under the theme, “Back to Basics,” this special, collectible edition trains the spotlight on the key ingredients of a life well and wisely lived. Of course, there’s no denying that there is pleasure in our excesses, but without the fundamentals, we find ourselves empty when all the things we don’t need are no longer there to close up the hole. So this month, we focus on what is vital to our existence.
Health, for instance, demands constant, unfailing attention, as exemplified by nurse Jenny Yoro (“Order of the White Caps,”), whose profession is a vocation rather than a practical career choice.
Although it remains a luxury for too many of our brethren, education is also non-negotiable in the pursuit of a meaningful life. Here we salute young teachers like Mia Villavicencio (“To Ma’am, With Love,”), who make it as much fun to teach as it is to learn from generations-in-training.
No longer confined to the laboratory, science or the awareness of it among us laymen is now integral to day-to-day living. Scientist Rochie Cuevas (“The Cereal Scientist,”) is dedicating many of her young years to the study of rice, the most basic of Asia’s basic diet. Who knows her cereal chemistry project might yield the solution to the rice shortage that threatens to exacerbate the problem of starvation around the world?
Incidentally, one of our fashion editorials (“Rice is Gold,”), emphasizes the value of rice and the need for a consolidated effort to keep it a staple, therefore affordable and available, on every table in the Philippines, in the region, and other parts of the world, where billions depend on it for daily sustenance.
But back to basics, inspiration and self-realization are crucial, too. Wrapped in the arresting package of beauty and glamour, not to mention height, our cover girl, New York-based Ford supermodel Charo Ronquillo (“Model Behavior,”), calls attention to these basic ingredients of the life worth living. Within her recipe for success is yet another recipe that combines in equal measure hard work, humility, a sense of gratitude, and the desire and energy to keep dreaming.
Love of others, especially in this day and age of economic turbulence and environmental disaster, is doubtless a fundamental virtue. In preparation for this issue, my staff and I, upon the prodding of associate editor Hector Reyes, threw an afternoon party for the children of the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) in Quezon City (“Happy Days,”). Partnering with Diether Ocampo’s K.I.D.S. Foundation and seeking the support of our own friends, such as the brothers Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato and Lynn Sunico of the Skyline Group, as well as the lovely mascots Sergeant March and Lionel at SM Storyland, we endeavored to give joy to over sixty children, along with their families, if only to give them momentary relief from the pain of broken bones and the boredom of being tied to their beds for months on end. We know there’s so much more to giving than a whole afternoon of entertainment, but I take consolation in the fact that people like Diether and his group, whose key members include the lovely lawyer Karina Tañega and the musician Mondo Castro, are constantly at the service of these children in need.
Ours was barely half a baby step to civic consciousness. I believe we derived more benefits from this excursion into sharing than the children at POC, who are sadly in need of many other basic necessities, such as new beds to serve as their entire world for extended periods of time.
Indeed, we were privileged to have spent a few hours with these children in need, if only because now we know caring for others is a basic need. Without others to care for, to worry about, to dream for, each of us will be such a small world inhabited by nobody but ourselves. I do love me but if it were just “I, me, and myself” in the universe, what’s the point of infinity?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Friday, July 25, 2008
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AND OTHER ALTERED STATES
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 25 JULY 2008)
I have since last Saturday seemingly developed a hypersensitivity to alcohol. It isn’t exactly an allergy, except on Sunday morning, when in the shower at 7 a.m., 30 minutes after I got home from a long night of drinking, I thought I could smell alcohol from my body wash and thereafter from my face cream. As a result the shower didn’t seem to sober me up. Instead, it sent me to bed feeling as though I had one more shooter to force down my throat. And I did, but let’s talk about that later.
BLURB
It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it a perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van. —Malcolm McDowell as Alex, A Clockwork Orange, 1971
Last Saturday would have been a long night, except that we were having fun. First order of the evening, following a few hours at the office, was dinner at Grappa’s on N. Garcia. The place was nothing special, but, like a preview to what the rest of the night had in store for us, the dinner was. I’m not at all new to this restaurant, but for the first time I was literally licking the plate clean of every last bit of my puttanesca and my Quattro Formaggi.
Next door, at the Purple Feet Wine Depot, Diether Ocampo was hosting a degustacion for his birthday. It was a quiet, intimate dinner, contrary to our expectations, which was the reason we had dinner elsewhere. This party was not for the celebrity, but for the person or, to be more precise, for the charitable soul behind K.I.D.S Foundation. How refreshing it was that over glasses upon glasses of red and white—not to mention course after course of continental dishes, which we skipped—the conversation revolved around public schools that need help in Benguet or the children’s wards at the Philippine General Hospital and the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC). Incidentally, only a few days before this party, Style Weekend and our monthly magazine Sense&Style collaborated with K.I.D.S Foundation, along with our friends, Lynn Sunico of Makati Skyline, Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato, and SM Storyland, in throwing a kiddie party at the POC children’s ward, replete with balloons, an ice cream station, hot dogs, spaghetti, chicken lollipops, the mascots Sergeant March and Lionel, face painters, and gift bags full of books and toys.
From Diether’s dinner at Purple Feet, where we were happy to have drunk to better, more charitable days with Diether and Karina Tañega of K.I.D.S Foundation and many of their avid supporters like Nike’s Mia Trinidad, Mondo Castro of the Pin-Up Girls, The Good Earth’s JP Castrillo, and Kate Torralba, we moved to fashion photographer Charles Lu’s farewell party nearby.
Over the years, we have collaborated on countless fashion and beauty editorials, and not a few of our cover pictorials for Sense&Style, with Charles and now that he is ready to turn a new leaf, transporting his whole life hook, line, and sinker to New York, it would have been a crime if we failed to say goodbye.
What a send-off it was! Held at a bachelor’s pad owned by Charles’ cineaste friend, Jardine Gerodias, it was a throwback to those college club parties, where strangers stood next to each other, bound by drink after drink after drink. In one room, some people were playing the Nintendo Wii game Rock Band. In another room, some were shooting the bull and horsing around. In yet another, the smokers converged, packed like a can of sardines in a steam room. But the center of it all was the bar, set up by the Sober Club and lined with an endless number of shot glasses full of alcohol in all manner of form and flavor, not to mention all the colors of an Akira Kurosawa movie or at least a chapter from his Dreams, especially once alcohol began flowing through your bloodstream.
“Choose your poison,” said Soda Club owner Jenny Peregrina, gesturing with a sweep of her long arm toward her multicolored collection: Ibiza Grapes, Peaches, Citrus Attack, Orange Crush, Mojito, Apple Concoction, Silver Spider, Quicksand, Shark Attack, Pink Slush, Jell-O Shots, and so many others. Our favorite was the Boracay Mocha Blends, but most exciting was what the bartenders called “The Flamers,” a drink that’s lit up directly in the drinker’s mouth.
Needless to say, we were, to borrow from Morrissey, “happy in the haze of a drunken hour” that stretched from way past midnight to way past sunrise on Sunday morning, particularly when Jardine the bachelor of the pad, a film graduate from Berkeley, took us through his extensive collection of all-original movies and music videos, both artful and commercial. The best part of it was I left the party, squinting in the punishing sunshine, with some loot, a copy of Michel Gondry’s latest release, Be Kind Rewind, and the ’70s cult classic from Stanley Kubrick. Of course, I swore to return them and I will, though I made the promise—and Jardine received it—in an altered state.
So I came home on Sunday morning just before seven and, feeling as though there was alcohol even in the air I was breathing, I didn’t sleep until much later, allowing myself to get lost in the future-shock scenes of Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ controversial novel.
Soon, at last, the party was over, as the curtain that was my eyes fell on the end credits of the DVD. I drifted into the REM stage, most probably humming either Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” or Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” from the soundtrack of this deeply engaging, entrancing, powerful, and downright stylish film, A Clockwork Orange.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
I have since last Saturday seemingly developed a hypersensitivity to alcohol. It isn’t exactly an allergy, except on Sunday morning, when in the shower at 7 a.m., 30 minutes after I got home from a long night of drinking, I thought I could smell alcohol from my body wash and thereafter from my face cream. As a result the shower didn’t seem to sober me up. Instead, it sent me to bed feeling as though I had one more shooter to force down my throat. And I did, but let’s talk about that later.
BLURB
It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it a perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van. —Malcolm McDowell as Alex, A Clockwork Orange, 1971
Last Saturday would have been a long night, except that we were having fun. First order of the evening, following a few hours at the office, was dinner at Grappa’s on N. Garcia. The place was nothing special, but, like a preview to what the rest of the night had in store for us, the dinner was. I’m not at all new to this restaurant, but for the first time I was literally licking the plate clean of every last bit of my puttanesca and my Quattro Formaggi.
Next door, at the Purple Feet Wine Depot, Diether Ocampo was hosting a degustacion for his birthday. It was a quiet, intimate dinner, contrary to our expectations, which was the reason we had dinner elsewhere. This party was not for the celebrity, but for the person or, to be more precise, for the charitable soul behind K.I.D.S Foundation. How refreshing it was that over glasses upon glasses of red and white—not to mention course after course of continental dishes, which we skipped—the conversation revolved around public schools that need help in Benguet or the children’s wards at the Philippine General Hospital and the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC). Incidentally, only a few days before this party, Style Weekend and our monthly magazine Sense&Style collaborated with K.I.D.S Foundation, along with our friends, Lynn Sunico of Makati Skyline, Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato, and SM Storyland, in throwing a kiddie party at the POC children’s ward, replete with balloons, an ice cream station, hot dogs, spaghetti, chicken lollipops, the mascots Sergeant March and Lionel, face painters, and gift bags full of books and toys.
From Diether’s dinner at Purple Feet, where we were happy to have drunk to better, more charitable days with Diether and Karina Tañega of K.I.D.S Foundation and many of their avid supporters like Nike’s Mia Trinidad, Mondo Castro of the Pin-Up Girls, The Good Earth’s JP Castrillo, and Kate Torralba, we moved to fashion photographer Charles Lu’s farewell party nearby.
Over the years, we have collaborated on countless fashion and beauty editorials, and not a few of our cover pictorials for Sense&Style, with Charles and now that he is ready to turn a new leaf, transporting his whole life hook, line, and sinker to New York, it would have been a crime if we failed to say goodbye.
What a send-off it was! Held at a bachelor’s pad owned by Charles’ cineaste friend, Jardine Gerodias, it was a throwback to those college club parties, where strangers stood next to each other, bound by drink after drink after drink. In one room, some people were playing the Nintendo Wii game Rock Band. In another room, some were shooting the bull and horsing around. In yet another, the smokers converged, packed like a can of sardines in a steam room. But the center of it all was the bar, set up by the Sober Club and lined with an endless number of shot glasses full of alcohol in all manner of form and flavor, not to mention all the colors of an Akira Kurosawa movie or at least a chapter from his Dreams, especially once alcohol began flowing through your bloodstream.
“Choose your poison,” said Soda Club owner Jenny Peregrina, gesturing with a sweep of her long arm toward her multicolored collection: Ibiza Grapes, Peaches, Citrus Attack, Orange Crush, Mojito, Apple Concoction, Silver Spider, Quicksand, Shark Attack, Pink Slush, Jell-O Shots, and so many others. Our favorite was the Boracay Mocha Blends, but most exciting was what the bartenders called “The Flamers,” a drink that’s lit up directly in the drinker’s mouth.
Needless to say, we were, to borrow from Morrissey, “happy in the haze of a drunken hour” that stretched from way past midnight to way past sunrise on Sunday morning, particularly when Jardine the bachelor of the pad, a film graduate from Berkeley, took us through his extensive collection of all-original movies and music videos, both artful and commercial. The best part of it was I left the party, squinting in the punishing sunshine, with some loot, a copy of Michel Gondry’s latest release, Be Kind Rewind, and the ’70s cult classic from Stanley Kubrick. Of course, I swore to return them and I will, though I made the promise—and Jardine received it—in an altered state.
So I came home on Sunday morning just before seven and, feeling as though there was alcohol even in the air I was breathing, I didn’t sleep until much later, allowing myself to get lost in the future-shock scenes of Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ controversial novel.
Soon, at last, the party was over, as the curtain that was my eyes fell on the end credits of the DVD. I drifted into the REM stage, most probably humming either Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” or Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” from the soundtrack of this deeply engaging, entrancing, powerful, and downright stylish film, A Clockwork Orange.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Monday, July 14, 2008
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 18 JULY 2008)
I can’t get over it. It’s been over a month since my DVD weekend, the most memorable, dreamiest two hours of which unraveled like visions during R.E.M., as scene after scene I followed Versailles-born filmmaker Michel Gondry on his journey into the imaginative mind, The Science of Sleep (Warner Independent Pictures, 2006), originally entitled La Science des rêves, which literally means The Science of Dreams.
BLURB
First, we put in some random thoughts. And then we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day… mixed with some memories from the past. —Gael García Bernal as Stephane, The Science of Sleep
On the subject of dreams, I simply cannot resist musing about this dream of a movie again and again. But then, The Science of Sleep is one of the few movies you can watch over and over again.
Starring Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg and set as much in Paris as in the mind of its lead character, Stephane, Michel Gondry’s quirky, quixotic film is a love story as awkward as first love and almost as pathetic as obsession. To Bernal, who plays Stephane, a transplant from Mexico, a “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night,” who dreams in pictures as well as in English, French, and Spanish, it is a film about rejection. For Gainsbourg, who plays Stephane’s object of affection, Stephanie, “the characters are meant for each other and would find a way to be together,” but rather than a logical declaration, her statement, as she herself is quick to clarify, is in fact only a hopeful sentiment.
Indeed, even the lead actors can only guess. This clever film has none of the clichés, so that from start to finish, as the viewer confuses fact with fantasy, reality with reverie, he finds that a huge part of the film, particularly the ending, is subject to interpretation.
Like any work of art, The Science of Sleep is full of inspirations from its maker’s past. Gondry’s recurring childhood nightmare about giant hands has, for instance, woven itself into the fantastical visual of the film. So has what I assume to be his fond memory of S.E. Hinton’s iconic The Outsiders, if only because in his film, Golden the Pony Boy directly alludes to the lead character in the 1967 novel.
Indeed, even in Gondry’s references, real, unreal, and surreal intermingle. But really what separates fact from fiction? What separates imagination from actuality? Think about it: A sequence of delightful images makes up most of this 106-minute masterpiece by Michel Gondry, all unfolding in a city of dreams that is so much like Paris, albeit with paper boats afloat cellophane waves under cotton clouds and with skyscrapers and skyways crowded with cardboard cars and cardboard trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls. So why can’t an expanded sequence lasting anywhere between two and eight hours per night over the course of a lifetime, not counting the hours spent more consciously in daydreams, make up a life? After all, even the universe might have started merely as a figment of God’s imagination—or still is, unless God, too, is only the sum of all our dreams, the most depraved and the most divine, the lowliest and the loftiest, the best and the worst.
Or maybe I’m putting too much thought into what is designed ultimately as a dream, a chain of images, as defined in the Encarta World English Dictionary, “that appear involuntarily to the mind of a sleeping person, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events.” What am I doing trying to unearth reality from this phantasmagoria? Like those images in the subconscious, The Science of Sleep is in parts cryptic at best, meaningless at worst. If there were any linear progression of events, it is only because, as Stephanie puts it in one of the scenes, “randomness is hard to achieve [and] organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention.”
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
I can’t get over it. It’s been over a month since my DVD weekend, the most memorable, dreamiest two hours of which unraveled like visions during R.E.M., as scene after scene I followed Versailles-born filmmaker Michel Gondry on his journey into the imaginative mind, The Science of Sleep (Warner Independent Pictures, 2006), originally entitled La Science des rêves, which literally means The Science of Dreams.
BLURB
First, we put in some random thoughts. And then we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day… mixed with some memories from the past. —Gael García Bernal as Stephane, The Science of Sleep
On the subject of dreams, I simply cannot resist musing about this dream of a movie again and again. But then, The Science of Sleep is one of the few movies you can watch over and over again.
Starring Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg and set as much in Paris as in the mind of its lead character, Stephane, Michel Gondry’s quirky, quixotic film is a love story as awkward as first love and almost as pathetic as obsession. To Bernal, who plays Stephane, a transplant from Mexico, a “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night,” who dreams in pictures as well as in English, French, and Spanish, it is a film about rejection. For Gainsbourg, who plays Stephane’s object of affection, Stephanie, “the characters are meant for each other and would find a way to be together,” but rather than a logical declaration, her statement, as she herself is quick to clarify, is in fact only a hopeful sentiment.
Indeed, even the lead actors can only guess. This clever film has none of the clichés, so that from start to finish, as the viewer confuses fact with fantasy, reality with reverie, he finds that a huge part of the film, particularly the ending, is subject to interpretation.
Like any work of art, The Science of Sleep is full of inspirations from its maker’s past. Gondry’s recurring childhood nightmare about giant hands has, for instance, woven itself into the fantastical visual of the film. So has what I assume to be his fond memory of S.E. Hinton’s iconic The Outsiders, if only because in his film, Golden the Pony Boy directly alludes to the lead character in the 1967 novel.
Indeed, even in Gondry’s references, real, unreal, and surreal intermingle. But really what separates fact from fiction? What separates imagination from actuality? Think about it: A sequence of delightful images makes up most of this 106-minute masterpiece by Michel Gondry, all unfolding in a city of dreams that is so much like Paris, albeit with paper boats afloat cellophane waves under cotton clouds and with skyscrapers and skyways crowded with cardboard cars and cardboard trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls. So why can’t an expanded sequence lasting anywhere between two and eight hours per night over the course of a lifetime, not counting the hours spent more consciously in daydreams, make up a life? After all, even the universe might have started merely as a figment of God’s imagination—or still is, unless God, too, is only the sum of all our dreams, the most depraved and the most divine, the lowliest and the loftiest, the best and the worst.
Or maybe I’m putting too much thought into what is designed ultimately as a dream, a chain of images, as defined in the Encarta World English Dictionary, “that appear involuntarily to the mind of a sleeping person, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events.” What am I doing trying to unearth reality from this phantasmagoria? Like those images in the subconscious, The Science of Sleep is in parts cryptic at best, meaningless at worst. If there were any linear progression of events, it is only because, as Stephanie puts it in one of the scenes, “randomness is hard to achieve [and] organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention.”
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
THE FETUSES
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 11 JULY 2008)
Fresh from college, young people converge at an advertising agency, all equipped with what they learned from top universities in Manila and with a vision of a future in which they each will play a role no less than the lead.
BLURB
I live in that solitude that is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. —Albert Einsten
The oldies, or so they called themselves self-deprecatingly, are happy to take young blood under their wing, if only to inject something new into the stream of day-to-day routine. Some, for sure, have only the best interest of the kids in mind, at least according to their own personal notion of what’s good and what’s bad, and look forward to sharing what they know to the so called emerging generation, the next in line. Others take it simply as a matter of course: The workload is getting heavier and there is a need for help and, taking into consideration the company budget, they settle for greenhorns, hoping against hope that eagerness and enthusiasm will more than make up for lack of experience and potential will eventually translate to performance.
To the young ones, ranging in age from 19 to 21, the workplace is a brave new world all compressed into two floors of a building in the central business district. Instinctively, they look around, hoping for a glimpse of their own future in the way the bosses carry themselves and the way they carry out their tasks, as well as in their things, their cars, their clothes, the words and gestures they use to communicate, what they prefer for lunch, where they go in the evenings, and whom they go with.
Some may have found an inkling of what’s ahead: This is the life I’m going to have when I reach the top, but most, based at least on the turn of events later on, decide this is hardly even step one of the ladder and the top is yet beyond view.
In the meantime, the cravings of youth cannot be sidestepped on the road to the more adult goals of success and security. Inevitably, with so much in common, the young ones band together, first maybe over coffee at Greenbelt, then regularly over lunch, merienda, dinner, after-dinner drinks, midnight snacks following late-nights at the clubs, breakfast in the wake of all-nighters, and weeklong adventures out of town and even out of the country.
At this particular advertising agency, the friendship that forms among the entry-level employees is more than a case of the culture of fraternities and sororities extending beyond the college campus. It becomes a clique that soon grows into a collective force the executive office, from the creative directors all the way to the president and CEO, soon begin to acknowledge. Affectionately and almost officially, they name this young group The Fetuses, but, at least according to one senior vice president during a drunken moment at a beach company outing, these fetuses not only have teeth, but fangs, too. True enough, not only does this clique exclude some unfortunate others during lunch breaks and after-work fun, it also, to some extent, decides how happy these “barbarians,” especially if they belong to the same age group, will be and, often consequently, how long they will stay in the company.
On a stormy evening, taking advantage of the “rare privilege” of having one of the fetuses in his car for a free ride home, one of these unfortunate outsiders confesses, “Maybe you think I don’t care, but I feel so sorry for myself that when you guys are at the audio-visual room and I cannot seem to bring myself to join you or that when you guys go out for lunch, I always have to be left behind.”
Suddenly moved by their conscience, The Fetuses slowly integrate this outsider into their inner circle, although many of them who went to university with this “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” admit they could never have imagined having a beer bong with him in college. “Well,” argue the more reasonable members of the gang, “this is not college anymore. We are ‘professionals’ now.” Reason among the majority, who also have fangs to show when they find the need to snarl, prevails and soon this outsider is in the club. But, sadly, not for long: One wrong move and he is back in the same predicament, feeling sorry that he has to stay behind when The Fetuses break for lunch.
Fast forward and this is the future that does not look anything like what practically all of the Fetuses glimpsed back then because they now belong to industries outside of advertising, where every single one of them is on top of their game. The members of the clique remain friends, now godfathers and godmothers to each other’s children. At the workplace, where some of them reign over as top executives, many now have their own Fetuses. During get-togethers, they wonder if like they used to do, today’s fetuses also make fun of the “old fogeys” behind their backs. As for “the boisterous, obnoxious fat guy,” who almost but never did belong to their group, no one knows much about, although there is every reason to believe he also made it in one piece in this “future.” Looking back, The Fetuses have no regrets but wish they were kinder. The people who make up your life are not always your choices, except perhaps at higher, metaphysical levels, but your friends you at least reserve the right to choose.
Still, The Fetuses can only heave a collective sigh of relief that karma did not choose to activate itself. After all, they were young, invincible, therefore reckless. But now that they are older, supposedly wiser, they know it’s a small world. Easily, along the way, the “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” could have been the devil boss or the evil client and who knows how it could have changed the future?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Fresh from college, young people converge at an advertising agency, all equipped with what they learned from top universities in Manila and with a vision of a future in which they each will play a role no less than the lead.
BLURB
I live in that solitude that is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. —Albert Einsten
The oldies, or so they called themselves self-deprecatingly, are happy to take young blood under their wing, if only to inject something new into the stream of day-to-day routine. Some, for sure, have only the best interest of the kids in mind, at least according to their own personal notion of what’s good and what’s bad, and look forward to sharing what they know to the so called emerging generation, the next in line. Others take it simply as a matter of course: The workload is getting heavier and there is a need for help and, taking into consideration the company budget, they settle for greenhorns, hoping against hope that eagerness and enthusiasm will more than make up for lack of experience and potential will eventually translate to performance.
To the young ones, ranging in age from 19 to 21, the workplace is a brave new world all compressed into two floors of a building in the central business district. Instinctively, they look around, hoping for a glimpse of their own future in the way the bosses carry themselves and the way they carry out their tasks, as well as in their things, their cars, their clothes, the words and gestures they use to communicate, what they prefer for lunch, where they go in the evenings, and whom they go with.
Some may have found an inkling of what’s ahead: This is the life I’m going to have when I reach the top, but most, based at least on the turn of events later on, decide this is hardly even step one of the ladder and the top is yet beyond view.
In the meantime, the cravings of youth cannot be sidestepped on the road to the more adult goals of success and security. Inevitably, with so much in common, the young ones band together, first maybe over coffee at Greenbelt, then regularly over lunch, merienda, dinner, after-dinner drinks, midnight snacks following late-nights at the clubs, breakfast in the wake of all-nighters, and weeklong adventures out of town and even out of the country.
At this particular advertising agency, the friendship that forms among the entry-level employees is more than a case of the culture of fraternities and sororities extending beyond the college campus. It becomes a clique that soon grows into a collective force the executive office, from the creative directors all the way to the president and CEO, soon begin to acknowledge. Affectionately and almost officially, they name this young group The Fetuses, but, at least according to one senior vice president during a drunken moment at a beach company outing, these fetuses not only have teeth, but fangs, too. True enough, not only does this clique exclude some unfortunate others during lunch breaks and after-work fun, it also, to some extent, decides how happy these “barbarians,” especially if they belong to the same age group, will be and, often consequently, how long they will stay in the company.
On a stormy evening, taking advantage of the “rare privilege” of having one of the fetuses in his car for a free ride home, one of these unfortunate outsiders confesses, “Maybe you think I don’t care, but I feel so sorry for myself that when you guys are at the audio-visual room and I cannot seem to bring myself to join you or that when you guys go out for lunch, I always have to be left behind.”
Suddenly moved by their conscience, The Fetuses slowly integrate this outsider into their inner circle, although many of them who went to university with this “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” admit they could never have imagined having a beer bong with him in college. “Well,” argue the more reasonable members of the gang, “this is not college anymore. We are ‘professionals’ now.” Reason among the majority, who also have fangs to show when they find the need to snarl, prevails and soon this outsider is in the club. But, sadly, not for long: One wrong move and he is back in the same predicament, feeling sorry that he has to stay behind when The Fetuses break for lunch.
Fast forward and this is the future that does not look anything like what practically all of the Fetuses glimpsed back then because they now belong to industries outside of advertising, where every single one of them is on top of their game. The members of the clique remain friends, now godfathers and godmothers to each other’s children. At the workplace, where some of them reign over as top executives, many now have their own Fetuses. During get-togethers, they wonder if like they used to do, today’s fetuses also make fun of the “old fogeys” behind their backs. As for “the boisterous, obnoxious fat guy,” who almost but never did belong to their group, no one knows much about, although there is every reason to believe he also made it in one piece in this “future.” Looking back, The Fetuses have no regrets but wish they were kinder. The people who make up your life are not always your choices, except perhaps at higher, metaphysical levels, but your friends you at least reserve the right to choose.
Still, The Fetuses can only heave a collective sigh of relief that karma did not choose to activate itself. After all, they were young, invincible, therefore reckless. But now that they are older, supposedly wiser, they know it’s a small world. Easily, along the way, the “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” could have been the devil boss or the evil client and who knows how it could have changed the future?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
LIKE THE WEATHER
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 4 JULY 2008)
Nowadays, the weather is often bad news.
BLURB
What a cold and rainy day! Where on earth is the sun hid away? —“Like the Weather,” 10,000 Maniacs, 1988
On a particular day in the aftermath of the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars off Sibuyan Island in Romblon, if I remember right, it was 28 degrees in Paris, a lovely summer day, but it was all that was lovely on the CNN Weather Report. In California, a lightning storm triggered forest fires, but there was zero wind in most places, so thank God for that, as we cannot bear a repeat of the Malibu wildfire that set California in flames barely a year ago. Elsewhere in the United States, the weather was exacerbating the worst US Midwest flooding in North America in 15 years, with the Mississippi River submerging up to two million hectares of farmlands and sweeping away entire towns across the north-central states. Among the neighbors of France, the weather wasn’t as friendly. In Vienna, it rained on the Euro 2008 parade, dampening spirits particularly at the Germany-versus-Turkey semi-finals, whose viewers across Europe were denied television coverage, as the storm, unleashing lightning, high winds, and heavy rains, caused massive blackouts. In Asia, the typhoon that caught the Philippines unawares two weekends ago, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless, was now wreaking havoc over parts of China, having just left a trail of wet misery in Hong Kong.
How strange that, as of this writing, we are supposed to be well into the rainy season, but the sun heated up the day as though it were the height of summer, interrupted only by the briefest of rainshowers. Thank God for that, too, as at this point, so many days after typhoon Frank caused yet another tragedy at sea, rescue squads are still hoping against hope some survivors would still emerge somehow, while Sulpicio Lines, on the other hand, is digging its own grave, forgetting that sympathy, rather than appropriation of blame and more than monetary compensation over lives and limbs lost, is indispensable at a time like this, particularly to their survival as a corporate entity.
But as of late last week, even as Sulpicio announced the release of P200,000 per victim to the bereaved, whether or not there had been a confirmation of death, government officials in areas where bodies were being found, such as in Masbate and Camarines Sur, were still irately and desperately calling the attention of Sulpicio officials toward what should have been their key role in the search and retrieval operations. To think that during the crucial first days of the rescue operations, spokespersons, mostly rude, unemotional lawyers, at Sulpicio kept saying the focus was on the search, leaving the victims’ families, already burdened with worry and grief, to their own devices. During a maritime disaster involving one of their ships, WG&A, some years ago, made it a point to care for the victims’ families, flying them to the vicinity of the tragedy to help identify—and claim—their dead and taking charge of their hotel accommodations and meals through their darkest hours.
I used to love the rain and, yes, even the howling winds, when I’m tucked in bed, warm beneath the sheets, safe in a perilous world. After a shower, there used to be romance on wet, slippery roads, with the grey skies reflecting off silvery puddles and raindrops sliding off leaves or otherwise launching themselves like teardrops off the eaves.
Now it’s all guilty pleasure. If only we could return to kinder times, when the girl group The Toys was a major hit, we could still, without guilt, hum along as Barbara Harris with Barbara Parritt and June Montiero rhapsodizes, “How gentle is the rain/That falls softly on the meadow/Birds high up in the trees/Serenade the clouds with their melodies (“A Lover’s Concerto,” 1965).”
But life is more complicated now. When Madonna muses, “Wash away my sorrow/take away my pain (‘Rain,’ 1993)” or when Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks laments, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining (‘Dreams,’ 1977),” there is a chance a boat is sinking somewhere or a family is being buried alive in a mudslide or the old and homeless are cold and dying on the pavement.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Nowadays, the weather is often bad news.
BLURB
What a cold and rainy day! Where on earth is the sun hid away? —“Like the Weather,” 10,000 Maniacs, 1988
On a particular day in the aftermath of the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars off Sibuyan Island in Romblon, if I remember right, it was 28 degrees in Paris, a lovely summer day, but it was all that was lovely on the CNN Weather Report. In California, a lightning storm triggered forest fires, but there was zero wind in most places, so thank God for that, as we cannot bear a repeat of the Malibu wildfire that set California in flames barely a year ago. Elsewhere in the United States, the weather was exacerbating the worst US Midwest flooding in North America in 15 years, with the Mississippi River submerging up to two million hectares of farmlands and sweeping away entire towns across the north-central states. Among the neighbors of France, the weather wasn’t as friendly. In Vienna, it rained on the Euro 2008 parade, dampening spirits particularly at the Germany-versus-Turkey semi-finals, whose viewers across Europe were denied television coverage, as the storm, unleashing lightning, high winds, and heavy rains, caused massive blackouts. In Asia, the typhoon that caught the Philippines unawares two weekends ago, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless, was now wreaking havoc over parts of China, having just left a trail of wet misery in Hong Kong.
How strange that, as of this writing, we are supposed to be well into the rainy season, but the sun heated up the day as though it were the height of summer, interrupted only by the briefest of rainshowers. Thank God for that, too, as at this point, so many days after typhoon Frank caused yet another tragedy at sea, rescue squads are still hoping against hope some survivors would still emerge somehow, while Sulpicio Lines, on the other hand, is digging its own grave, forgetting that sympathy, rather than appropriation of blame and more than monetary compensation over lives and limbs lost, is indispensable at a time like this, particularly to their survival as a corporate entity.
But as of late last week, even as Sulpicio announced the release of P200,000 per victim to the bereaved, whether or not there had been a confirmation of death, government officials in areas where bodies were being found, such as in Masbate and Camarines Sur, were still irately and desperately calling the attention of Sulpicio officials toward what should have been their key role in the search and retrieval operations. To think that during the crucial first days of the rescue operations, spokespersons, mostly rude, unemotional lawyers, at Sulpicio kept saying the focus was on the search, leaving the victims’ families, already burdened with worry and grief, to their own devices. During a maritime disaster involving one of their ships, WG&A, some years ago, made it a point to care for the victims’ families, flying them to the vicinity of the tragedy to help identify—and claim—their dead and taking charge of their hotel accommodations and meals through their darkest hours.
I used to love the rain and, yes, even the howling winds, when I’m tucked in bed, warm beneath the sheets, safe in a perilous world. After a shower, there used to be romance on wet, slippery roads, with the grey skies reflecting off silvery puddles and raindrops sliding off leaves or otherwise launching themselves like teardrops off the eaves.
Now it’s all guilty pleasure. If only we could return to kinder times, when the girl group The Toys was a major hit, we could still, without guilt, hum along as Barbara Harris with Barbara Parritt and June Montiero rhapsodizes, “How gentle is the rain/That falls softly on the meadow/Birds high up in the trees/Serenade the clouds with their melodies (“A Lover’s Concerto,” 1965).”
But life is more complicated now. When Madonna muses, “Wash away my sorrow/take away my pain (‘Rain,’ 1993)” or when Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks laments, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining (‘Dreams,’ 1977),” there is a chance a boat is sinking somewhere or a family is being buried alive in a mudslide or the old and homeless are cold and dying on the pavement.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
ART ATTACK
(FROM THE EDITOR'S, SENSE&STYLE'S "ART-ISH," JULY 2008, senseandstyle.net.ph)
In my editor’s letter for a travel magazine back in 2005, I wrote that life, more than simply its inspiration, was the essence of all art. This is also the bedrock of this special, collectible edition in your hands, whose aim is to help open your eyes to life as an art form, which, to borrow from that same letter, is “often overlooked because it is neither framed nor gilded nor hung on a museum wall.”
Randomness is hard to achieve. Organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention. —Charlotte Gainsbourg as Stephanie, The Science of Sleep, 2006
Putting these pages together, I find it truly inspiring that there is so much art around us, whether or not we care to distinguish a world of difference between a B-brush and a Filbert. Sure, it would have been grand if we all had the wherewithal to go for a piece of divine genius at Sotheby’s, but more often than not, all it takes is to live our lives with our eyes wide open or—in the case of Stephane, Gael Garcia Bernal’s character in Michel Gondry’s dream of a movie, The Science of Sleep—with our “eyes wide shut,” with apologies to Stanley Kubrik.
To Bernal, who played “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night” in this hip, heartfelt love story, The Science of Sleep is a film about rejection, but to me, it is as cleverly and delightfully hopeful as its wonderland version of Paris abuzz with cotton clouds, paper boats, cardboard cars, and cellophane waves, not to mention skyscrapers and trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls.
In the magazine world, where reality and fantasy necessarily collide almost every day of the workweek, movies like Gondry’s quirky, quixotic, and inventive masterpiece are a wellspring of inspiration. But so is reality. In preparation for this issue designed to acquaint us with the art that surrounds us, I sent my writing stable of twentysomethings out there in search of content. They came back with more than a generous helping of artful lives, from graphic designer Chicho Suarez (“Art & Schisms,” page129) to poet, songstress, and lyricist Aia de Leon of Imago (“The Music and the Message,” page128), from book author and sommelier Ines Cabarrus (“Vin de Siecle,” page 131) to painter Camille Ver (“When All Is Still and I Can Dream,” page 133), from thespian Cathy Azanza (“It’s Showtime!” page 132) to indie filmmaker Sigrid Bernardo (“The Suspension of Disbelief,” page130). What a blessing, indeed, to have such amazing talents inhabit our everyday world!
For Sense&Style associate editor Hector Reyes, whose main duty as fashion and beauty editor compels him to step up as a creative director as well, generating ideas for the more visual aspects of this magazine, this month’s issue is a welcome challenge. He and his team of pretty young things, many of them artists waiting to unfurl their wings, have spent the past few months in close collaboration with photographers, makeup artists, hairstylists, and fashion designers, such as Cary Santiago, Oskar Peralta, Danilo Franco, and Francis Libiran. In pursuit of Hector’s vision to give not only fashion but also hair and makeup their rightful place in the realm of art, these venerable designers created for this issue the most beautiful black gowns, most of which, paired with the makeup artistry of ArtDeco’s RB Chanco (“Behind Beauty,” page 65), I find as hauntingly shadowy as Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow or, better yet, as his design inspiration, Mario Bava’s La Maschera del Demonio. Why, like fashion, like most pieces of art, makeup and hairstyle also seek to turn mundane into magical.
Another such collaboration was with EveryWhereWeShoot, with whom we sought to bridge the gap between photography and lomography (“Digitales/Lomostories,” page 78), not that we saw any real difference between the two disciplines, except perhaps in terms of general appearance and technicalities that are beyond us. It’s quite refreshing to work with these young photographers, who wear their artistic credentials and creative potential on their sleeves or, in the case of Garovs Garrovillo, from her waist down in the form of a pair of checkered Jodhpurs that disappear into special-edition Adidas.
For this month’s cover, featuring Miss Earth 2004 Priscilla Meirelles with young actors Rafael Rosell, Brent Javier, Marco Alcaraz, and Jay-R (“Body and Broadway,” page 119), we have a double dose of art appreciation, celebrating the human body, a divine creation that has all the elements of balance and harmony, and cloaking it in little touches borrowed from our favorite larger-than-life tales on the theater stage.
Indeed, despite the protestations of the purist, art finds expression in many forms, which now include even practicalities, such as clothing, what with so many of our couture and prêt-a-porter masters drawing inspiration from or working closely with painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, and architects. Maybe art, like life, is also about moments, fleeting as they are. Maybe the Mondrian dress that the late Yves Saint Laurent—for whom we have a tribute this month (“Au Revoir, M. Saint-Laurent,” page 104)—created using wool jersey in color blocks of white, red, blue, black, and yellow was only meant for a particular season sometime in the mid-Sixties, but as we know now it has had its pride of place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Speaking of New York, our senior writer Krizette Chu, who is in Manhattan at the moment, dispatches a report (“Superman Wears Moschino,” page 58) on her coverage of “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” an exhibition ongoing until September at the Costume Institute at the Met. In this report, at the risk of displeasing the purist yet again, she might have found the core of true art, which, like the marriage of fashion and superheroes in this exhibition, allows us, to paraphrase its curators, to fantasize and escape “the bland, the ordinary, and the quotidian.”
And so, in the quest of palatable, everyday art, may I also invite the purist to a gourmet tour of Paris (“Wish Upon A Michelin Star,” page 35) because, like a Picasso or Swan Lake or a passage from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor or a 150-word Proustian sentence or The Marriage of Figaro, a good meal, whether or not fanciful, requires fine skill and produces a sense that all is beautiful in this world, too.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
In my editor’s letter for a travel magazine back in 2005, I wrote that life, more than simply its inspiration, was the essence of all art. This is also the bedrock of this special, collectible edition in your hands, whose aim is to help open your eyes to life as an art form, which, to borrow from that same letter, is “often overlooked because it is neither framed nor gilded nor hung on a museum wall.”
Randomness is hard to achieve. Organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention. —Charlotte Gainsbourg as Stephanie, The Science of Sleep, 2006
Putting these pages together, I find it truly inspiring that there is so much art around us, whether or not we care to distinguish a world of difference between a B-brush and a Filbert. Sure, it would have been grand if we all had the wherewithal to go for a piece of divine genius at Sotheby’s, but more often than not, all it takes is to live our lives with our eyes wide open or—in the case of Stephane, Gael Garcia Bernal’s character in Michel Gondry’s dream of a movie, The Science of Sleep—with our “eyes wide shut,” with apologies to Stanley Kubrik.
To Bernal, who played “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night” in this hip, heartfelt love story, The Science of Sleep is a film about rejection, but to me, it is as cleverly and delightfully hopeful as its wonderland version of Paris abuzz with cotton clouds, paper boats, cardboard cars, and cellophane waves, not to mention skyscrapers and trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls.
In the magazine world, where reality and fantasy necessarily collide almost every day of the workweek, movies like Gondry’s quirky, quixotic, and inventive masterpiece are a wellspring of inspiration. But so is reality. In preparation for this issue designed to acquaint us with the art that surrounds us, I sent my writing stable of twentysomethings out there in search of content. They came back with more than a generous helping of artful lives, from graphic designer Chicho Suarez (“Art & Schisms,” page129) to poet, songstress, and lyricist Aia de Leon of Imago (“The Music and the Message,” page128), from book author and sommelier Ines Cabarrus (“Vin de Siecle,” page 131) to painter Camille Ver (“When All Is Still and I Can Dream,” page 133), from thespian Cathy Azanza (“It’s Showtime!” page 132) to indie filmmaker Sigrid Bernardo (“The Suspension of Disbelief,” page130). What a blessing, indeed, to have such amazing talents inhabit our everyday world!
For Sense&Style associate editor Hector Reyes, whose main duty as fashion and beauty editor compels him to step up as a creative director as well, generating ideas for the more visual aspects of this magazine, this month’s issue is a welcome challenge. He and his team of pretty young things, many of them artists waiting to unfurl their wings, have spent the past few months in close collaboration with photographers, makeup artists, hairstylists, and fashion designers, such as Cary Santiago, Oskar Peralta, Danilo Franco, and Francis Libiran. In pursuit of Hector’s vision to give not only fashion but also hair and makeup their rightful place in the realm of art, these venerable designers created for this issue the most beautiful black gowns, most of which, paired with the makeup artistry of ArtDeco’s RB Chanco (“Behind Beauty,” page 65), I find as hauntingly shadowy as Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow or, better yet, as his design inspiration, Mario Bava’s La Maschera del Demonio. Why, like fashion, like most pieces of art, makeup and hairstyle also seek to turn mundane into magical.
Another such collaboration was with EveryWhereWeShoot, with whom we sought to bridge the gap between photography and lomography (“Digitales/Lomostories,” page 78), not that we saw any real difference between the two disciplines, except perhaps in terms of general appearance and technicalities that are beyond us. It’s quite refreshing to work with these young photographers, who wear their artistic credentials and creative potential on their sleeves or, in the case of Garovs Garrovillo, from her waist down in the form of a pair of checkered Jodhpurs that disappear into special-edition Adidas.
For this month’s cover, featuring Miss Earth 2004 Priscilla Meirelles with young actors Rafael Rosell, Brent Javier, Marco Alcaraz, and Jay-R (“Body and Broadway,” page 119), we have a double dose of art appreciation, celebrating the human body, a divine creation that has all the elements of balance and harmony, and cloaking it in little touches borrowed from our favorite larger-than-life tales on the theater stage.
Indeed, despite the protestations of the purist, art finds expression in many forms, which now include even practicalities, such as clothing, what with so many of our couture and prêt-a-porter masters drawing inspiration from or working closely with painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, and architects. Maybe art, like life, is also about moments, fleeting as they are. Maybe the Mondrian dress that the late Yves Saint Laurent—for whom we have a tribute this month (“Au Revoir, M. Saint-Laurent,” page 104)—created using wool jersey in color blocks of white, red, blue, black, and yellow was only meant for a particular season sometime in the mid-Sixties, but as we know now it has had its pride of place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Speaking of New York, our senior writer Krizette Chu, who is in Manhattan at the moment, dispatches a report (“Superman Wears Moschino,” page 58) on her coverage of “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” an exhibition ongoing until September at the Costume Institute at the Met. In this report, at the risk of displeasing the purist yet again, she might have found the core of true art, which, like the marriage of fashion and superheroes in this exhibition, allows us, to paraphrase its curators, to fantasize and escape “the bland, the ordinary, and the quotidian.”
And so, in the quest of palatable, everyday art, may I also invite the purist to a gourmet tour of Paris (“Wish Upon A Michelin Star,” page 35) because, like a Picasso or Swan Lake or a passage from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor or a 150-word Proustian sentence or The Marriage of Figaro, a good meal, whether or not fanciful, requires fine skill and produces a sense that all is beautiful in this world, too.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MORRISSEY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 27 JUNE 2008)
There were times when I could have murdered her/But you know I would hate anything to happen to her —“Girlfriend in a Coma,” Strangeways, Here I Come, 1987
A co-worker of mine recently retrieved music from the archives of my youth. With The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” playing in the background, I have thus spent the past few days shuttling between now and my teen years, when passing through an angst-ridden phase, I thought Morrissey was as dark as the kohl we put under our eyes at Saturday night New Wave parties to separate ourselves from the “normal, wholesome” kids.
In my life/Why do I give valuable time/To people who don’t care if I live or die —“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
In my youth, I lived a double life. On certain nights, I would hang out with a group of friends in mainstream places like Rumours, Culture Club, Faces, and Mars, dancing to Madonna or George Michael. Other nights I would spend—and equally enjoy—with another group of friends in the “underground,” drinking Pale Pilsen in places like Mayric’s or Club Dredd, where, as the indie bands covered the likes of The Smiths, I sought the meaning of life.
I am the son/and the heir/of a shyness that is criminally vulgar —“How Soon is Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
That was when I was young and Morrissey was just a beautiful, sad voice articulating beautiful, sad feelings on the radio or my Walkman or the turntable at home. Now that I’m older, I realize that Morrissey, born Stephen Patrick Morrissey in Manchester, England in 1959, is, like his idol Oscar Wilde, an iconoclast who made music to make a stand in a language that is at once cryptic and familiar, erudite and plebian. Even at the height of his fame, he was beyond celebrity. Based at least on his own pronouncements, music was his only currency, the medium with which he expressed his ideals or, more pronouncedly, all that he found ill in this world.
And if the people stare/then the people stare/Oh I really don’t know and I really don’t care —“Hand in Glove,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
More than open and honest, Morrissey was forceful with his feelings and opinions. As a result, he had more than a “hatful” of enemies, including then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom, in a public statement, he said, “could be destroyed,” as “the only remedy for this country.” Among his other enemies were David Bowie, Madonna, and Elton John, whose lyrics he generally described as “pointless and more concerned with celebrity than with music,” as well as Robert Smith of The Cure, whose antagonism toward Morrissey was just as seething. Attacking Morrissey’s animal rights crusade and his vegetarianism, which he had adopted as a way of life since he was 11, Smith once said, “If Morrissey says, ‘don’t eat meat,’ then I’ll eat meat because I hate Morrissey.”
When will you accept your life?/The one that you hate —“Accept Yourself,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
But then, while he did not beat around the bush when it came to his displeasure of others, Morrissey had always been circuitous about his personal life, which, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, made him “a peculiar heartthrob,” having created a “compellingly conflicted persona.” In some of his songs, such as “Hand in Glove” or “Handsome Devil,” it might seem easy to conclude that he is gay, but as The Times critic Tom Gatti argues, “Morrissey’s music offers an infinite capacity for interpretation.” In 1984, The Smith’s vocalist and lyricist said he refused to recognize the prefixes homo, bi, or hetero in defining human sexuality. “People are just sexual,” he said. “Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs.” Prior to that, in an interview, he “claimed to be a kind of a prophet for the fourth sex” on grounds that “he was bored with men… and bored with women.” Through it all, he maintained that he was asexual, disclosing only in 2006, without offering any more detail, that he was no longer celibate, hinting at “a late-blooming sex life.”
You ask me the time/But I sense something more/And I would like to give/What I think you’re asking for —“Handsome Devil,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does it really matter whether he was gay or not? Back in high school, it didn’t. Even my “homophobic” rocker friends, who were as macho as they were big fans of The Smiths, did not seem to entertain the question. That was because Morrissey was a musician more than a celebrity, who graced magazine covers, endorsed lifestyle products, and traipsed around red carpet events with a lover in tow. But then that was then and this is now, where, to have room in the music industry, the paparazzi and a multi-million-dollar advertising contract are sometimes as important as talent—and definitely more important than having something to say.
So please don’t stand in my way/Because I’m going to meet the one I love/No, Mamma, let me go! —“Shakespeare’s Sister,” The World Won’t Listen, 1987
The Smiths broke up in 1987 due to irreconcilable musical differences between Morrissey and his longtime collaborator, The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr. As a solo act, Morrissey has since produced many songs with his signature depth and longing, including the 1994 hit “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get” from the number one UK album Vauxhall and I. There is talk that a new album is in the works, supposedly slated for release in September this year, and that there is a 40-million-pound offer for Morrissey to reunite with Marr, but Morrissey dismisses the rumor, calling it a hoax.
Haven’t had a dream in a long time/See the life I’ve had/Can make a good man bad —“Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does Morrissey still have a place in today’s musical landscape, dominated by the likes of American record producer, composer, and singer Timothy Z. Mosley, aka Timbaland? I heard over the radio a few years ago that Timbaland once threatened to retire from the music industry that he found boring and not challenging enough. Maybe, especially if one could earn riches and respect out of such celebrity-obsessed lyrics as “People know me/As the Great Timbaland (Timbaland)/Been brought in the slums but I ranned (But I ranned)/Been boning girls in the Scooby Doo van (“Naughty Eye,” Under Construction II, Timbaland & Magoo, 2003).
He’s not strange/He just wants to live his life this way —“Vicar in a Tutu,” The Queen is Dead, 1986
Maybe, like the dead queen’s, Morrissey’s time is up. But music, like life, goes on.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
There were times when I could have murdered her/But you know I would hate anything to happen to her —“Girlfriend in a Coma,” Strangeways, Here I Come, 1987
A co-worker of mine recently retrieved music from the archives of my youth. With The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” playing in the background, I have thus spent the past few days shuttling between now and my teen years, when passing through an angst-ridden phase, I thought Morrissey was as dark as the kohl we put under our eyes at Saturday night New Wave parties to separate ourselves from the “normal, wholesome” kids.
In my life/Why do I give valuable time/To people who don’t care if I live or die —“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
In my youth, I lived a double life. On certain nights, I would hang out with a group of friends in mainstream places like Rumours, Culture Club, Faces, and Mars, dancing to Madonna or George Michael. Other nights I would spend—and equally enjoy—with another group of friends in the “underground,” drinking Pale Pilsen in places like Mayric’s or Club Dredd, where, as the indie bands covered the likes of The Smiths, I sought the meaning of life.
I am the son/and the heir/of a shyness that is criminally vulgar —“How Soon is Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
That was when I was young and Morrissey was just a beautiful, sad voice articulating beautiful, sad feelings on the radio or my Walkman or the turntable at home. Now that I’m older, I realize that Morrissey, born Stephen Patrick Morrissey in Manchester, England in 1959, is, like his idol Oscar Wilde, an iconoclast who made music to make a stand in a language that is at once cryptic and familiar, erudite and plebian. Even at the height of his fame, he was beyond celebrity. Based at least on his own pronouncements, music was his only currency, the medium with which he expressed his ideals or, more pronouncedly, all that he found ill in this world.
And if the people stare/then the people stare/Oh I really don’t know and I really don’t care —“Hand in Glove,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
More than open and honest, Morrissey was forceful with his feelings and opinions. As a result, he had more than a “hatful” of enemies, including then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom, in a public statement, he said, “could be destroyed,” as “the only remedy for this country.” Among his other enemies were David Bowie, Madonna, and Elton John, whose lyrics he generally described as “pointless and more concerned with celebrity than with music,” as well as Robert Smith of The Cure, whose antagonism toward Morrissey was just as seething. Attacking Morrissey’s animal rights crusade and his vegetarianism, which he had adopted as a way of life since he was 11, Smith once said, “If Morrissey says, ‘don’t eat meat,’ then I’ll eat meat because I hate Morrissey.”
When will you accept your life?/The one that you hate —“Accept Yourself,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
But then, while he did not beat around the bush when it came to his displeasure of others, Morrissey had always been circuitous about his personal life, which, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, made him “a peculiar heartthrob,” having created a “compellingly conflicted persona.” In some of his songs, such as “Hand in Glove” or “Handsome Devil,” it might seem easy to conclude that he is gay, but as The Times critic Tom Gatti argues, “Morrissey’s music offers an infinite capacity for interpretation.” In 1984, The Smith’s vocalist and lyricist said he refused to recognize the prefixes homo, bi, or hetero in defining human sexuality. “People are just sexual,” he said. “Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs.” Prior to that, in an interview, he “claimed to be a kind of a prophet for the fourth sex” on grounds that “he was bored with men… and bored with women.” Through it all, he maintained that he was asexual, disclosing only in 2006, without offering any more detail, that he was no longer celibate, hinting at “a late-blooming sex life.”
You ask me the time/But I sense something more/And I would like to give/What I think you’re asking for —“Handsome Devil,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does it really matter whether he was gay or not? Back in high school, it didn’t. Even my “homophobic” rocker friends, who were as macho as they were big fans of The Smiths, did not seem to entertain the question. That was because Morrissey was a musician more than a celebrity, who graced magazine covers, endorsed lifestyle products, and traipsed around red carpet events with a lover in tow. But then that was then and this is now, where, to have room in the music industry, the paparazzi and a multi-million-dollar advertising contract are sometimes as important as talent—and definitely more important than having something to say.
So please don’t stand in my way/Because I’m going to meet the one I love/No, Mamma, let me go! —“Shakespeare’s Sister,” The World Won’t Listen, 1987
The Smiths broke up in 1987 due to irreconcilable musical differences between Morrissey and his longtime collaborator, The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr. As a solo act, Morrissey has since produced many songs with his signature depth and longing, including the 1994 hit “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get” from the number one UK album Vauxhall and I. There is talk that a new album is in the works, supposedly slated for release in September this year, and that there is a 40-million-pound offer for Morrissey to reunite with Marr, but Morrissey dismisses the rumor, calling it a hoax.
Haven’t had a dream in a long time/See the life I’ve had/Can make a good man bad —“Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does Morrissey still have a place in today’s musical landscape, dominated by the likes of American record producer, composer, and singer Timothy Z. Mosley, aka Timbaland? I heard over the radio a few years ago that Timbaland once threatened to retire from the music industry that he found boring and not challenging enough. Maybe, especially if one could earn riches and respect out of such celebrity-obsessed lyrics as “People know me/As the Great Timbaland (Timbaland)/Been brought in the slums but I ranned (But I ranned)/Been boning girls in the Scooby Doo van (“Naughty Eye,” Under Construction II, Timbaland & Magoo, 2003).
He’s not strange/He just wants to live his life this way —“Vicar in a Tutu,” The Queen is Dead, 1986
Maybe, like the dead queen’s, Morrissey’s time is up. But music, like life, goes on.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
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