The wacky, showbiz side of Gilda Cordero Fernando
Distinguished writer Gilda Cordero Fernando breathed her last on a Thursday, Aug. 27. She was 90.
The news found me hiding from my grandson and making sure he didn’t hear an old man sobbing.
The last time Kerima Polotan, Carmen Guerrero Nakpil and his ninang Marilou Diaz-Abaya died, he saw me unabashedly crying like a baby.
But dear Gilda was one not given to melodrama even in real life.
She is one wacky character who was just herself. She can rap. She can figure in a fashion show and once modeled for Ben Chan to launch her book, Pinoy Pop Culture.
Did you know that she even staged an imaginary wake for herself eight years before her death to the shock and horror of her close friends?
She wrote of that “horror” project thus: “Those must have been ghoulish days when all I had on my mind was my wake. Not because I wanted to control it with instructions like what glamour pictures to display or where to stash my ashes, for later dispersal on mountaintop or sea, etc. The kids did a pretty good job with their father — a tasteful and proper wake, complete with choir and catering.
“I was pretty sure they’d do the same by me — if I didn’t subvert the whole business. It would be a major freak-out for my sons if I told them what I really thought was a great wake. They would find it a terrible embarrassment to carry out. That’s how I decided to hold my wake now, while I was still alive. Besides, I wanted to enjoy it!”
How prophetic!
We, her friends, had no choice because she passed away at the time of the pandemic which prohibited group gatherings.
What do I remember of this woman of substance carrying well-deserved titles? Writer, publisher, producer, artist, fashion designer and cultural icon?
The writer as rapper?
Well, dear Gilda rapped with National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag at the CCP in another wacky production many years back.
In one fashion show launching her book, Pinoy Pop Culture, sponsored by Bench, Gilda had Jesse Lucas doing a modern twist from Yoyoy Villame’s Mag-exercise Tayo and made ramp models out of personalities from arts, culture and politics namely Boy Abunda, Odette Alcantara, Teddyboy Locsin Jr., Babeth Lolarga, Ambeth Ocampo, Satur Ocampo, Pepe Smith, Kidlat Tahimik and Jessica Zafra, among others.
Nick Joaquin once described Gilda as a writer “capable of such sublime nonsense.”
Some eight years ago, a friend asked me if I could participate in an event “roasting” Gilda on the last day of her art exhibit.
But how do you roast a kind soul like Gilda Cordero Fernando?
My arsenal of biting irony and sarcasm was already emptied when I dumped all of them to someone who did not proclaim Nora Aunor as National Artist.
And they can’t possibly apply to Gilda.
I loved the writer so much since my high school days and taking part in that “roast” was to me tantamount to parricide.
What I promised was that I could cover the event without participating in it.
When Gilda arrived, she looked like she was in fur swathed in light green and almost yellow hues of thick attire like a costume from Pinocchio.
“The Roasting” attracted substantial figures in the writers’ milieu.
Tall and statuesque Gemma Cruz-Araneta made heads turn, Satur Ocampo and Bobbie Malay looked like they never aged. This was indeed a literary-cum-arts and cultural soiree as you saw Sylvia Mendez Ventura, Julie Lluch, Edel Garcellano, Maribel Ongpin, Deanna Ongpin Recto, Lynette Villariba, Celine Cristobal, Anna Leah Sarabia, Ester Dipasupil, Nonon Padilla and Fe Arreola, among others.
With Gou de Jesus and Kris Lacaba as emcees, the “roasting” looked like it lacked enough charcoal to keep the roasting fire burning.
The “roasters” output sounded more like pages from the common essay, The Gilda I Knew from Way Back When.
From the very beginning, “roaster” Ventura made it clear she would be very kind. She recalled the years when they were still into ballroom dancing. She recalled a DI lifted Gilda in what looked like a crucial pas de deux only for the writer-dancer to realize she forgot her underwear.
End of “roasting.”
On the whole, the “roasters” succeeded in portraying Gilda in her various involvements, including as eco-warrior and friend of political prisoners.
At the end of program, Gilda demurred, “Parang hindi naman roasting.”
Indeed, it wasn’t.
The speakers’ recollections of Gilda sounded more like paeans of love from friends who didn’t see her as a subject worthy of roasting.
I couldn’t roast her either. I recall the time she was watching pianist Cecile Licad and cellist Antonio Meneses in an intimate concert in San Antonio, Zambales with a garden setting. Then she overheard the pianist turn to me, “Pablo, please buy me (sanitary) napkin quickly or else this Beethoven sonata will flow on stage.”
“Pati ba naman yan ginagawa mo, Pablo,” Gilda snickered at me.
I said I like doing these things for an artist, especially for harbingers of music of her caliber.
I didn’t tell her that the first time I set foot in Manila decades ago, my dream was to meet the author of The Butcher, The Baker and The Candlestick Maker in person.
And I did!
To dear Gilda, enjoy your last journey unto the stars.
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