Pilgrims’ progress

We left Baguio at the end of the UP Writers’ Workshop last April 8, just in time to avoid the crush of about 150,000 visitors the city expects every Holy Week. But if we had nothing else to do – no work, no family, no meetings, no deadlines – I’m sure many of us would have stayed on for a few more days of real rest and rejuvenation, so intense was the workshop itself and the post-prandial binges where some of the most interesting discussions typically took place.

We did manage to squeeze in a couple of evenings of blissful relaxation in the one place we can’t afford to miss in Baguio: Pilgrims Café, which has moved from its old location on Session Road to the corner of Leonard Wood and Brent Road. We were lucky to be there over a couple of weekends, so we caught the best crowd-drawers of the place, a trio going by the name "On Call."

The name’s not surprising when you learn that the three of them – Jett Acmor, Mari Laoyan, and Ivan Cruz – all work in the medical professions, as does their brilliant musical director, Dr. Dennis Flores. On Thursday nights, Ivan does a Broadway program all by himself – and a great parade of showstoppers it is, too – but on Fridays and Saturdays, the highly talented and versatile trio does everything from "Cats" to Cayabyab. For sheer listening pleasure, I can’t think of many acts that can top On Call – all for the price of about three beers. Their arrangements are fresh without being strange; their voices blend effortlessly one into the other, and they can make even the saddest song sound hopeful.

We’ve always enjoyed the nightlife in Baguio – from way back in our high-school-conventioneer days doing the "sweet" with willing accomplices at The Basement to our more riotous years of second bachelorhood and then on to mellow middle age, these days of Michel Legrand and Burt Bacharach and Andrew Lloyd Webber. There’s something about the coolness of the air, the tang of Benguet pine, the sheer distance of the place from the clamor and the alarms of lowland life that makes music resonate even more warmly within you, like good wine swilling at the bottom of a glass.

There’s a fly in the ointment, however, and it’s Baguio’s own new ordinance that requires bars and other places of entertainment to close at 1 a.m. We heard that this was occasioned by a rash of juvenile violence and rowdiness in another of the city’s more popular hangouts. Certainly no one wants trouble like that to tarnish Baguio’s reputation (not just for the sake of visitors, but of the residents themselves). But wouldn’t you think that fielding more police patrols at night would be the better answer, than restricting bar hours in one of the country’s most popular vacation spots? Pity us poor pilgrims, who drive seven or eight hours from Manila for a little night music in the mountains, only to be sent home just when we’ve begun warming up to the songs.

Because of this ordinance, singers like On Call can get only two sets into the evening’s program, when the more customary three sets could have brought in more people buying more food and drinks and boosting the city’s economy. It might be wise to reconsider this curfew, well intentioned though it may have been.

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Before it’s too late, let me remind my fellow writers that the deadline for submitting entries to this year’s Palanca awards for literature is April 30, less than two weeks from now.

No, I won’t be joining – haven’t done that in six years, and I seriously doubt if I ever will, again – but I strongly urge new and young (and I should add talented) Filipino writers to take part in this annual contest, now on its 56th year. (For the rules and entry forms, visit http://www. Panitikan.com.ph.)

Like all competitions that involve subjective judgment, the Palancas are hardly a foolproof gauge of one’s literary merit, and they aren’t meant to be the be-all and end-all of one’s labors.

They have, however, provided a fairly reliable indication of what and where the best of our literature is at a given time. It’s practically a cliché to call them a rite of passage for the Filipino writer (and quite a few good and great ones have never won a Palanca, nor sought one), but the fact is that most practicing Filipino creative writers today have been helped along by one or two (or a dozen) Palancas. Sure, it’s a boost to the ego – and who doesn’t need one? – but it’s also a challenge to produce more and better work, not so much better than the other fellow’s but better than your own from last year.

Let me say this again for the benefit of the fainthearted: I won my very first Palanca at the relatively young age of 21 (teenagers win them these days), making me feel like I was God’s own gift to Philippine literature – and then I lost for four straight years, sending me into as steep a tailspin of doubt and despair as you can imagine. But it was in those years of writing, joining, and losing that I think I learned my craft. You never really lose, if you write not just to win a prize but to commit a worthwhile thought to paper.

The contest sponsors – the Carlos Palanca Foundation, led by the indefatigable Sylvia Palanca Quirino – have suggested to me and some other Palanca oldtimers that a comprehensive review of the awards and its mechanisms may be undertaken soon. I can only agree that it’s about time this was done, to burnish the prestige of the awards and bring them up to the realities and artistic challenges of this new century. I’d be very happy to contribute my thoughts to that review.

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Let me end on a note of farewell and congratulations to someone who’s become as much an institution at the Institute of Creative Writing as any other writer who’s walked in and out of the ICW’s doors from back when it was still the old Creative Writing Center at FC 1003. I’m not talking about a National Artist, but about a guy who’s seen them all: Anthony Franklin V. Serrano – "Mang Tony" to generations of UP workshoppers – who’ll be retiring next month after a quarter-century of service as the CWC/ICW’s administrative officer.

Himself a published poet, Tony chose to lead a life of quiet clerkship – in the words of the citation we gave him in Baguio, "minding the memory of the place and enriching its character." Tony certainly made the place a lot less forbidding to the young writer, whom he regaled with literary lore (all of it colorful, some of it probably and forgivably apocryphal). There was melancholy in his smile – or make that a smile to his melancholy – and he could always be depended on for faithful company, and for an introduction to arts as esoteric and arcane as old Tagalog and basketball statistics.

We’ll miss you, Tony – but now’s the time for that second book of poetry.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at http://homepage.mac.com/jdalisay/blog/MyBlog.html