Reading in the rain and other ‘Lit’ socials

Well, make that a drizzle. But it was still quite a sight: Marra PL Lanot and Dinah Roma reading poems under umbrellas, together with Spanish writers on a visit for Semana de la Letras Españolas: La Huella y El Viaje (A Week of Spanish Literature: Traces & Journeys) mounted by Instituto Cervantes.

The setting last Wednesday evening was the Zen garden at Greenbelt in Makati. Sax soloist Tots Tolentino opened the program and did more sexy numbers between the sets of readers. His empowering music lofted over the greenery, helped us win out over the extended sermon from the chapel nearby; else it could have been a standoff. The UP Singing Ambassadors, a score strong, made gentler, kinder sounds than the pile-driver at work beyond the screen of bamboo reeds that back-dropped the dais.

Earlier in the week Dinah and I, joined by Jing Hidalgo and Jessica Zafra, had engaged the eight visiting Spanish writers in a roundtable discussion on travel writing at the Instituto Cervantes hall. This time, with no roof over our heads but a fickle sky, Pete and Marra Lacaba joined in for readings in three languages; no, make that four, as I believe a couple of the Españoles read in Catalan, to add to Spanish, English and Filipino.

The drizzle only tested our and the crowd’s resolve. But everyone stayed on, until the skies cleared anew, and we achieved closure an hour before midnight. Of course our collective poetry was no match for the solo sax. But glad to serve as your front act, Tots; anytime for that sort of seduction.

And so the Greenbelt had another winner that night. A good thing, too, as I was ready to write off part of the good spot when I was shocked to consternation, the Saturday previous, to be asked to purchase a ticket before I could eyeball Gabby Barredo’s exquisite works at the Ayala Museum. It was my first time to step into the place, and wasn’t aware that it charged fees for viewing contemporary art exhibits.

Now, Barredo’s undoubtedly a genius, besides being a distant relation of mine (which probably explains it; I mean, you know… as Pepito Bosch would’ve said). Us family, we don’t charge one another when sharing our works. That family includes all Filipinos, sometimes even foreign firemen.

Let me go back one more night, to Friday, when National Book Award winner for Children’s Literature (The Christmas Fireflies, published by Anvil) and Nick Joaquin’s fave chanteuse Girl Valencia had a birthday party spiking up her usual Friday-night gig at Richmonde Hotel’s Exchange Bar.

Anvil’s Karina Bolasco brought an Australian friend, poet Kelvin Brown of Adelaide, to join the Lacaba brothers et al. for the fete. And he raved over three things he had been treated to in Manila: Girl’s vocals; the chocolate cake at the Museum Café, which he said was the best he had tasted, ever; and Barredo’s show at the Ayala Museum. I made a mental note to check out the last two at the next opportunity.

Thankfully, a can’t-miss book launch was scheduled at PowerBooks Greenbelt the next day. And daughter Mirava had a PowerBooks gift check for her story that came out in Read magazine (which you should all check out: the story and the mag). So we made a date to first pass by the museum so we could proudly claim kinship with the artist (my fave maternal lola, whose birthday, was yesterday, bless her soul, was named Victoria Barredo Aguinaldo) while viewing his latest savant works.

But a guard stopped us from entering the viewing hall, where the ethereal works were on display, as could be seen anyway from the entry point. Mr. Polo-barong tried to direct us to a ticket counter. I said something like I don’t believe Third-World countries should ever allow any charges for public viewing of contemporary exhibits, and that I could view them anyway from where I stood, so I’d just exercise my powers of ocular magnification and trust him not to push me out of the museum, right? Poor fellow. Took him sometime to translate all that, since I expressed it in Catalan. So he just nodded.

In any case, yes, Gabby Barredo’s works are a must-see, and ought to be exhibited all over the world’s great capitals, if only. Tourism Secretary Ace Durano can recognize a world-beater. In any case, to celebrate our kinship with this great artist, Mirava and I treated ourselves to the next best thing: a close-up encounter with the Museum Café’s chocolate cake, whose secret turned out to be Chocnut! An inspired creation, indeed. See, I have nothing against the Ayalas; they’re good great folks.

But at the launch of Huling Ptyk: Da Art of Nonoy Marcelo, edited by Pandy Aviado, Sylvia Mayuga and Dario Marcelo, the talk at the post-presentation merienda somehow got steered back to how it was such a pity that Barredo’s art can’t be seen by more people, art students and the like, especially, since they can’t afford 300-peso tickets. Someone even recounted how he was mistaken for a foreigner, and might even have been charged more. The guy who said that looked like another of our great visual artists. Bencab yatang tawag sa kanya.

Suffice it so say, anyway, that you should all get a copy of the Nonoy book, as comic geniuses aren’t born every day. Or leave us bereft regardless of antic season. It’ll be a long time before another of Marcelo’s likes, sui generis as he was, will come our way.

Hours later, most of the crowd at that Anvil launch reassembled for another launch, a twin one this time at Podium’s Atrium, of Gilda Cordero Fernando’s The Last Full Moon (UP Press & GCF Books) and Sylvia Mendez Ventura’s A Literary Journey with Gilda Cordero Fernando (UP Press). That both titles sold out at the launch can only speak volumes of the drawing power of literary witches. Uhh, make that bewitchers.

Future space might allow us a review of these books’ literary worth. Suffice it to say for now that Sylvia’s is a fine collection of historical and aesthetic evaluations of Cordero Fernando’s writings. And that… Full Moon is in turn a well-structured selection of memoir-type pieces as only Da Gilda can essay them: memorious yet still little-girl charming, in a wonder-woman type of way. You think that’s oxymoronic of me, then you don’t know how Gilda can put everyone to shame when it comes to being the creative yet dedicated housewife.

My nitpicky gripe is over what the title seems to imply, that this book is a sort of swan song, ironically enough from the Grace Kelly of Philippine literature. Gilda doesn’t quite realize her own indestructibility, as a doyenne of culture and craftsmanship – whether it be with short fiction or high fashion, as political joke factory or painter or dancer – and just as importantly, as a fount of youth and vivacity from which we should all draw energy if not lifeblood, time and again. Methinks she will keep writing well beyond this long love letter to her families and her inspiration, no less than my Tito Elo. Mabuhay kayong pareho!

To end this chronicle of a social whirl through the week that was, let me mention last Thursday’s launch at MagNet Katips of Truth and Consequence: An Anthology of Poems for the Removal of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, edited by Joi Barrios, Danton Remoto and Jaime Dasca Doble, published by Congress of Teachers (CONTEND) and Alliance of Concerned teachers (ACT).

No tanks or APCs came to Katipunan Avenue; no water hose was in perilous sight as eminent literary, academic and political personalities such as Bienvenido Lumbera, Ricardo Malay and Rep. Ria Hontiveros Barraquiel took turns onstage to read and sing and laud the modest, immodest volume, its contents and grande cosa both. And, as they say, a merry time was had by all.