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On Artistry


The inaugural Philippines Writers Festival 2009 was celebrated last week and I was able to attend one of the talks held as Marikina Shoe Expo. It was about how international workshops can affect aspiring Filipino writers with their craft. I was hoping to attend the talk about the emergence of blogging and online publishing as an avenue for writers to achieve validity in their works, but I was nevertheless satisfied with the talk I attended.

Listening to the esteemed panelists discuss their passion for arts and seeing the audience consisting of open-minded undergraduates nod in agreement with the insights delivered have reminded me of how much I enjoyed the craft back then. I had a blast reading and writing literature and trying to grasp concepts from primary philosophical texts assigned for class (you gotta hate Kant). Difficult but nonetheless rewarding experience, just as much as it is a treat to do.

Looking back at all those things from years past kinda makes you wonder how life makes for a bad comedian. My inclination towards the arts has slowly lost the slant due to the fact that I have been busy chop-socking the bollocks as a full-time employee in my current work. I know, it's dreadful.

Don't get me wrong, a 9-5 job has its perks, but the maintenance of a choice lifestyle through salary may, nay, should be the only reason why everybody has a job. What I'm referring to here is how a streamlined life has a tendency to destroy or hinder at the very least one's aspirations to live their real passions. Not funny at all.

I get envious when students from our class talk about writing a novel, having it published, and winning an award for it because I wish I still possess their idealism of how life operates outside the confines of the academe. After getting my feet wet in the corporate world, I immediately get my head dunked in a used toilet bowl after discovering its horror: it's a controlling world that not only fashions the way you look, feel, and act, but also prohibits you from living.

Ah, living. Such a big word. Life is so much more than sitting in front of your computer while enclosed in your cubicle. Life is outside the walls of enclosures: the traffic jam, the smog, the rain, the beauty of despair, the profundity of emptiness and ennui, the happiness of being, the boredom. The boredom. The experience of knowing that there are other things out there that needs to be seen and felt.

And yet I'm still here, doing the exact opposite of what I just preached. The students will be next.

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