Book Review: THE BROKEN ROAD (Book #3 of 3) by Patrick Leigh Fermor

The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh Fermor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"One is only sometimes warned, when these processes begin, of their crucial importance: that certain poems, paintings, kinds of music, books, or ideas are going to change everything, or that one is going to fall in love or become friends for life; the many lengthening strands, in fact, which, plaited together, compose a lifetime... This journey was punctuated with these inaudible reports: daysprings veiled and epiphanies in plain clothes."

This third book in the trilogy was never completed nor polished the way the previous two books ("A Time of Gifts" and "Between the Woods and the Water") were, for Paddy Fermor died as the project neared completion. And what a project it was! The ambitious eighteen-year old's "Great Trudge" in 1933 was truly something only someone so young and idealistic would undertake: walk across Europe, from Holland all the way to Constantinople.

And here's the interesting thing: the book was published after he died as a 96-year-old, having accomplished so much more after his long walk. He became a war hero in World War II, and was the author of other delightful books, always a lover of all people from all cultures and faiths. Paddy speaks in this third and last volume with a voice so funny, so full of life, that it truly feels as if one was listening to a youthful Adonis in the prime of health and vigor.

I enjoyed this last book best of all the three. Always humorous, this one showed Fermor at his funniest, by far, and was also the one that seemed the least polished (although the sentences are still marvelously wrought). It also seemed the most realistic, somehow, because of the number of predicaments that he encountered, some of them life-threatening. I did wonder at how lucky and blessed he seemed in the previous two books, to encounter so few travelling headaches. In Book 3, he nearly lost life and limb, encountered a madman stalker, was threatened at knifepoint by a roommate, and nearly fell to his death as he scaled mountain ranges. Despite these events, the innocence of the times showed in the confusion and outrage he felt when he returned to a cafe, to find the bag he left behind had been stolen, or when some Bulgarian peasants charged him money for letting him travel in their wagons despite his obvious injury.

To read Fermor is to be his companion as he walks across mountains and plains, sleeping sometimes with less than savory characters (one of the funniest bits was when he innocently took shelter in a house of ill repute, thinking it was a clean inn!), sometimes amongst well-to-do pals.

I particularly enjoyed the last part, when he describes spending a night or two in seventeen (!!!) monasteries on Mount Athos, Greece. Despite the best of intentions of travelling every day, he would be "forced" to stay longer for one of two reasons: bad weather, but also endearingly, Fermor had the bad habit of reading Byron or Dostoevsky in bed until it was far too late in the day to travel safely.

What a beautiful series! And so fitting for year-end reveries. Fermor, after all, did all of this within a year.

He lived in one year more than many of us live in several decades. And this makes Fermor a must-read for everyone who wishes to drink deep of the sweet well of life's waters.

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Book Review: BETWEEN THE WOODS AND THE WATER (Book # 2 of 3) by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“It was a season of great delight; all seemed immeasurably old and at the same time brand new and totally unknown.”

I shall remember this book always for having a uniquely heartbreaking coda. After lavishly describing all the gorgeous places and people, in breathtaking detail, and ensuring that the readers have fallen in love as deeply as he did… Paddy breaks our hearts by telling us in the end that all that he had written of was now drowned in man-made dams. History and beauty wiped out en masse by economic demands.

“On Foot to Constantinople: The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates” is volume two of Paddy Fermor’s “Great Trudge,” when, as a nineteen-year-old dropout, he sought meaning in life by going on an almost impossible trip: walking from Holland to Istanbul (which he determinedly called Constantinople.).

I read volume one (“A Time of Gifts”) a year ago, and it is not the sequence of events that stick to memory now, but an overwhelming impression of landscapes and vistas, leaving the reader a general feeling of mental refreshment without the physical punishment of actual travel. Book 2 echoes this feeling well.

There is also this bittersweet tang of nostalgia permeating both volumes, but especially pronounced in BTWATW.

For what can be sweeter to youth but to travel amongst beautiful new friends, and occasionally falling in love amidst the castles and plains of Hungary, Transylvania and Rumania (Fermor’s spelling)? The nostalgia is to be expected from a man writing this second volume in his seventies, of events half a century removed (he wrote Volume One only ten years earlier).

This second volume is less walkathon and more of “this is how my privileged friends” live, what with generous benefactors gifting horses (!!) and sponsoring car rides across Transylvania, with all manner of mischief known only by those privileged enough to afford these luxuries.

The best parts are the ones when Fermor is alone, walking through the Carpathian mountains and meeting gypsies and shepherds, sleeping under the stars and spying upon golden eagles and majestic deer. The wisdom of the elder merges with the sensual delight of the younger Fermor, and the result is page after page of luminous remembrances.

This delight makes Fermor an ideal vacation read, as each turn of the page is to be savored, passages read and reread for sheer pleasure.

Until he breaks your heart at the end. “Myths, lost voices, history and hearsay have all been put to rout, leaving nothing but this valley of the shadow.”

Nothing lasts, Fermor reminds us. So seize the memory of each day. Better yet, write them down. For all become lost, except when saved by resurrective words.


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Movie Review: MAESTRO

                                            (Movie poster borrowed off the Internet)

MAESTRO is a dragging mess of a few beautiful music-making scenes sprinkled with disjointed scenes showcasing skillful acting of two of the finest actors today.

The highs are truly high. No one can watch that Mahler scene in the cathedral and remain unmoved. “There is no hate in your heart,” Bernstein’s wife whispers in his ear after the performance, blessing and forgiving him for adultery done right in front of her, with lovers being brought in their home and introduced to their children. 

But the lows outnumber the highs.

Sadly, the overall message I got from the movie was that it was a defense for geniuses to spit in society’s rules, as if great gifts are any excuse for living beyond the pale.

It could have been so much more, indeed. There was no build up, no introduction of the main characters that mattered. It is as if the filmmakers assumed that the audiences already know who Bernstein is. We are told, not shown, that Bernstein and Felicia are talented individuals, but that Bernstein’s were by far the superior artistic gifts. The body language and smiles amid the chatter show the intimacy of lovers, but without giving the audience time to root for them. It’s almost a documentary in its quick succession of scenes and events. Fall in love. Raise a family. The challenge of infidelity. Sickness. Then Bernstein pulls through and cares for his ailing wife. As if caring for her at the end could make up for decades of sleeping around.

One of the last scenes shows Bernstein flirting with a man thirty? forty? years his junior in a disco club. And it struck this viewer as inexpressibly sad, especially when the end credits roll to the second movement of Chichester Psalms playing in the background and actual footage of the Maestro conducting near the end of his days. (By the way, don’t trust the Netflix captions! They said that at that point the overture of Candide starts playing, but no, it’s still Chichester.)

When we sang Chichester Psalms in college for Chorus class, what struck me was the purity of the soprano line (originally meant for a boy soprano, as there is no purer tone on earth as he sings “The Lord is my shepherd”) and how Bernstein’s infamous trademark leaps and minor sevenths seemed like someone reaching for heaven. And yes, there are parts in it that are truly of this earth (like when the male singers come roaring in, war-like, nearly shouting in the middle with “Why do the nations rage”), but then the boy soprano line returns and the choir echoes him, like souls who have lost their way but are ever straining to return to goodness. The sacred, and the profane. A fitting piece to end the film.

There are bits of the sacred in this movie, but sadly, the overall messaging belonged to the latter and not the former. 

I worry that the film will help Leonard Bernstein be remembered for the wrong reasons... or rather, for incomplete reasons. 

Book Review: THE METHOD - HOW THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LEARNED TO ACT by Isaac Butler

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"To theorize about acting is to theorize about what a human being is and how a human being works. It is to theorize about what good art is and how good art is made."

I did not expect that this 2022 book on the history of Method Acting would end up becoming one of my favorite reads this 2023, or for that matter, for all time.

If this was a play, then its spine (or supertask, to use the book's jargon) is simple enough. It tells the history of hallowed names in theater - those of Stanislavski, Strasberg, Adler, and Meisner - and how a cultural shift that began in Russia spread to America, and continues to impact how we view all acting in theater and film today.

To this reader, who experienced studying under different "theories" for different fields (in music, Kodaly and a smattering of Dalcroze ... in education, Montessori versus the traditional one... and in theater, the more traditional and strict style taught in universities versus the more easy-going, interior style in other workshops), the book was an utter revelation not merely of how impossible it is to safeguard a method against all other influences, but to what it says about human nature when people are passionately for or against one style of teaching as opposed to others.

Butler writes as a former actor does, infusing theory with practical examples that are nuggets of gold to any theater aficionado. He infuses cultural history writing with a dramatist's flair for conflict, making the historical figures come to life in a nonfiction book that was so exciting to read! It's quite possibly the best written nonfiction book I have ever read, never sacrificing academic rigor (the bibliography and notes alone took nearly half the volume) for artistry.

I put the book down with gratitude that it exists. It's a must-read for anyone teaching or involved in drama, for anyone who wants to give an intelligent response to the question "What IS good acting?"

But acting was never merely a form of entertainment.

Butler showed how actors, playwrights, in plays and films, crystallized and voiced the agonies of their current generation. Art as a mirror of its time. And thus, this fine book is more than the story of a pedagogical system. It is the story of humanity itself, and its struggle to overcome each decade's troubles.

And what about us humans, the audience of today? Butler writes:

"We live now in a Time of Performance. In this era, due in no small part to social media, we are more conscious than ever that we are performing for an audience of other people. We are also aware that we are the audience for everyone else’s performances, and we rate them, not with applause, but with hearts and thumbs-up, with emojis and retweets... it is unsettling to always be at least slightly aware that nothing is real, least of all ourselves... Today, the major challenge to an actor is not being heard, or seen, but seizing and holding an audience’s attention... Now acting and writing head instead toward clarity, worried that a surfeit of mystery and subtext risks committing the cardinal sin of art: boring the audience... This leads to the postmodern actor’s paradox: At a time when everything feels a little bit inauthentic, we crave simplified, clear acting that presents characters as coherent and easily knowable. We crave, in other words, a comforting lie about who we are."


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Book Review: A MEMOIR OF MY FORMER SELF by Hilary Mantel

A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"George Orwell (there’s a man who might interest you) said that every life, viewed from the inside, is a series of defeats. I would amplify that, say it is a series of enforced compromises, slippages from our own standard: shabby little sins."

Few authors are able to completely submerge readers into the Past. Mantel did so with her Wolf Hall trilogy and that unbelievable first book of hers on the French Revolution.

She lived to see her books reach Classic status, and proves with this last one (a collection of essays on different topics) that a great writer is not bound by small things like genre.

From academic ones describing her process and respect for history, to reflections on the nature of royalty and our fascination with it, to book reviews and movie reviews... she CAN write it all. And sustain the reader's attention all throughout. In these little pieces are "the great of the truths written on the bodies of the small."

Similar tomes had me skipping an essay here, focusing on a specific essay there. But one doesn't do that with Mantel. For with her gifted pen, no topic is too banal. All feed into the great theme of the past (ghosts in a secular sense) co-existing with us, the living.

She isn't perfect. The self confidence of the British intellectual will out, with statements like the one she wrote on Saudi Arabia: "When you come across an alien culture you must not automatically respect it. You must sometimes pay it the compliment of hating it." Or her point about a movie: "All in all, it provides a stimulating evening for those who can jettison the “cultural baggage”; and a pure delight for those of us who have never had any culture at all."

But then she also writes delightful funny phrases like "How nice, then, to go to Waterstones and not to have to disinfect yourself when you get home," comparing the luxury of a bookstore selling brand new books versus bookshops selling old books.

If the woman wasn't perfect, the writer nearly was. Such passion in her phrases, coming from a life filled with pain. Her beautiful books were her children, and they will live on in glorious testament to their mother for all time.

"The point about our human nature is that we must go to work on it... The pen is in our hands. A happy ending is ours to write."

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Ballet Review: CARMEN AND OTHER SPIRITS by Alice Reyes Dance Philippines

 

Soaring leaps, and utterly fearless dives.

Those are the two overwhelming visceral images that this audience member clearly remembers from the evening watching Alice Reyes Dance Philippines’ CARMEN AND OTHER SPIRITS.

An evening with ARDP continues to be a cut above other ballet offerings, not just because of the high level of technical difficulty (such precision in the ensemble’s angles of raised legs), but mainly  because the dancers combine skill and grace with absolute fearlessness. When a dancer jumps without hesitation off the third rung of a bleacher (eliciting gasps from the audience), such confidence and trust is only possible because of countless hours spent at rehearsal with her fellow dancers. This visual placing of one’s life in the ensemble’s hands was the unforgettable starter in a four-course offering, done to mimic the dive of a swimmer.

In SWIMMING THE ILOG PASIG, choreographer Alden Lugnasig created a movement piece that seemed, to this former competitive swimmer, utterly authentic in its recreation of movements meant to propel our earthbound bodies through water. What struck me most, apart from the visceral shock of the life-defying leap at the beginning, was the celebration of the power of rippling muscle. There is grace, yes, but power above all. This is the resolution of human will made manifest through sinew as we defy land-bound constraints and forge our way through unfriendly water. It’s an artist’s bold vision of a possible future dependent on how much collective will we muster.

Reeling from the first dance, audiences were next treated to a pas de deux by Ronaldson Yadao accompanied by strains of Vivaldi, simply entitled TWO. Utterly lovely, it proves that one does not need grand sets nor dozens in the corps de ballet. All you need is two, if they’re this good, this true to the artist’s vision of going through life with an echo of one’s soul.

The third offering, for me, was the best jewel in the evening’s four-star collection. And it was a good thing that the intermission came afterwards, because Lester Reguindin’s NOW tore at our hearts and had many audience members frantically sniffing back tears. 

We’ve all seen and heard environmentalist Greta Thunberg, perhaps to the point of apathy because of so much exposure over the years.

But to hear her words again, played over the beautiful music by Olafur Arnalds and Luke Howard, and to see the visualization of one tiny girl against all those corporations and grown ups in suits, was to strip away the veneer of familiarization and experience them as if for the first time. To truly hear her passionate pleas is to feel them hit with all the force of a bullet, and to realize the urgency of acting now, to save this world with such glorious dance and art in it.

This third piece is what will linger in memory, for it showed the best of what art can be. This is art on a mission, art with a purpose. Art that truly touches hearts.

An intermission allowed us to discreetly dry our teardrops from the front of our LBD’s, and we were prepared to be impressed when the curtain rose with National Artist Salvador Bernal’s set. 

From the beginning, it was clear that this was markedly different from the more familiar Bizet opera. We begin in a dark prison cell. A despairing Don José starts to tell his story to a writer before his execution at dawn.

The set brightens to reveal sun-soaked Seville, and we see Carmen in flaming red dance brilliantly, all toned leg and wide hips, drawing all the males’ gazes (and the audiences’, as well).

Macel Dofitas truly was Carmen, as her beauty came from her power and essence, and less from superficial facial symmetry. This is a woman of fire, a woman who cannot be tamed (though Richardson Yadao as Don José tries). 

I was struck with the passionate elegance of the choreography. A lot of opera productions now show Carmen as vulgar and sensual. However, Macel Dofitas managed to portray the sensuality without coming off as cheap, still dignified despite her all-consuming free love. In her, Carmen is full of grace, her love adding to the sum of her being instead of cheapening her.

The familiar story then plays out like the opera, with the ballet ending a bit differently with an execution. This, then, is what it means to die for love.

The only note that marred an otherwise perfect evening was the splicing of the different tracks for Carmen. To its credit, ARDP looked for arrangements of the familiar arias with Spanish guitar instead of the orchestral accompaniment, although there were still a few pieces from the opera itself. However, one could really hear the awkward and abrupt silences where tracks were cut, which temporarily distracted this viewer and brought me back to reality. This happened several times over the course of the evening. Still, this is easy enough to fix. 

Also I think I saw a male danseur stumble badly enough to be unable to disguise the pain. But this is a testament to the breathtaking stunt-level choreography, and ARDP’s dancers’ commitment to give their all.

CARMEN AND OTHER SPIRITS teach us audiences that ARDP performances are unmissable, as they combine a rare degree of technical near-perfection with the unmistakable brand of Filipino artists’ passion. Synchronicity is a given, as is the commitment to excellence we have learned to associate with National Artists like Alice Reyes. Brava, maestra! And bravi, ARDP!

Thank you so much to Theater Fans Manila for the ticket!

Book Review: THE SEVEN MOONS OF MAALI ALMEIDA by Shehan Karunatilaka

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“You know why the battle of good vs evil is so one-sided? Because evil is better organized, better equipped, and better paid. It is not monsters or yakas or demons we should fear. Organized collectives of evil doers who think they are performing the work of the righteous. That is what should make us shudder.”

In the Booker we trust.

THE SEVEN MOONS OF MAALI ALMEIDA, on its own, is something I would never have considered reading, if not for the fact that it won the Booker Prize in 2022. And I realize it comes across as snobbish, but honestly, it’s just a function of my limited teacher’s salary budget on books! It’s a huge help to have a trusted prize winning body like the Booker committee separate the kanin from the bigas, and say, this is worth your time and money.

Why would I have decided against reading TSMOMA if left to my own devices? In my ignorance, I thought it too foreign. The blurb told me the protagonist was a homosexual gambler involved in politics during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Sinhalese by blood, though neither Hindu nor Buddhist in practice, Maali Almeida describes himself on page 1 as “Photographer. Gambler. Slut.”

But the weight of the prize lent the book a golden hue, as well as my own many happy experiences with Booker winners past. And despite my thinking that I had nothing in common with this character, I opened the book and found myself moved to tears by its profound end hours later, my poor coffee left untouched as I was too rapt to drink.

For Maali Almeida was all these things, yes. But he was a war photographer on a mission. He took photos of atrocities committed in the name of peace. He took pictures that, when seen, would make his country burn.

“I was there to witness… All those sunrises and all those massacres existed because I filmed them.”

I read this on November 1, the day we remember our dead.

Almeida begins the novel as a spirit, freshly dead but unable to remember why and how. He realizes that the disorganized bureaucracy that haunted his native Colombo in life is still how it is (dis)organized in death, and tries to choose between those spirits egging him to find his killers and deal them justice from beyond the grave, and those who invite him to find the light.

He only has seven moons to solve his untimely murder at the age of 35, and make peace with his less-than-ideal life and loves left behind.

I would have been OK if I never read this book. But then, I wouldn’t have known the literary horizon that got extended because of this remarkable novel, and my life would have been the poorer for it.

If I hadn’t read this, I would never have been struck with awe by author Shehan Karunatilaka’s accomplishment: summarizing Sri Lanka’s violent and messy history in one book, making something so contemporary transcend the boundaries of time and place, striking deeply into the heart of our universal longing for life and death to have meaning.

It’s troubling yet transcendent, painful yet profoundly healing. And I’ve read enough crap to realize how rare this is, and what a blessing it is when such a book is found and read.

It offers answers to all people, of all faiths (or none). Despite its unflinching take on the horrors of modern murder and torture, the appalling truths of state-sponsored violence, it manages to show a way forward, without coming across as peddling religious panaceas to political upheaval.

The way forward, Karunatilaka seems to say, lies in our ability to choose. To forgive or to revenge. To enable or resist. To exist without a cause, or to live fighting for a righteous one.

But always, always, to choose life above all. To choose saving innocent lives above politics.

I’m glad the Booker chose this book, which led to me reading it. This was a November 1 to remember.

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Book Review: THE PRAISE SINGER by Mary Renault

The Praise Singer by Mary Renault
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We look for music, first in the heavens, then on earth in the laws of its creatures, chiefly in man; in himself; in his dealings with his fellows, in his body politic."


Again I entered a time travel machine to Ancient Greece by cracking open a Mary Renault. While this stand-alone novel wasn't quite on the same plane as the incredible THE MASK OF APOLLO (about the actor Nikeratos and his firsthand account of how Plato tried to teach Dionysios how to rule Syracuse) nor THE LAST OF THE WINE (about Alcibiades, Socrates and the Thirty Tyrants), it still bears the Renault stamp of excellence. Renault is formidably gifted as both storyteller and scholar, and no one entertains and educates quite like her.​


To my mind, these three stand-alone novels form a separate trilogy, different from her Theseus novels, and her famous trilogy on Alexander the Great. I admire how she analyzes the push and pull between monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy in each of these three novels, while simultaneously immersing us in the daily life of different city states.


THE PRAISE SINGER was written last of these three, and features a similar frame narrative of rendering a specific generation's experiment that we continue today, 2500 years from the novel's setting. It's the grand experiment called politics, that mystery of which type of government would best allow men to live freely, as befits the dignity of free citizens.


In TPS, Renault chose Simonides as her protagonist, the poet best known for the epigram “Go tell the Spartans…”


The city in focus? Athens, the center of the world, she who attracted the best poets but was also home to the Peisistratids, a family of tyrants in a time when the word did not yet carry the negative connotation it does today.

"It seems to me there is law here, and justice too."
"Truly. While the Tyrant consents. He is still a man with a spear while we have none."

It’s so easy to label men as good or bad when reading a one-paragraph summary of their lives in encyclopedias. But what Renault does best is show how multifaceted we all are, shining her light on tyrants and thralls, kings and slaves alike.

In this book we see how a father brought justice to his land, and brought forth two similarly minded sons who ruled generously at first, but were corrupted over time, and ultimately laid low by lust run afoul.

The ending proved surprising, as her previous novels had me expecting a lengthy summary. “That’s it?” I shouted at the book, disappointed at having finished possibly the third to the last Renault. Two more to go. This is, then, the twin joy and pain of having sought out a favorite author's books.

Thank Zeus for rereading! Renault is top tier writing, regardless of genre, and the world is better for having her books in it.

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Musical Review: SILVER LINING

SILVER LINING is an ambitious and well-intentioned original Filipino musical that gave itself a tall order: present the political and personal struggles of two generations of Filipinos, highlighting their similarities to bring boomer parents closer to millennial offspring.

And while we can’t help but applaud the effort, there is a lot of polishing and work that the musical needs. One hopes that in future reruns of the show, the plot can be further revised.  

From the very start, the show was tainted with triviality. The very frame narrative was problematic. The limited nature of the stakes in “let’s put up a musical for our 50th school anniversary reunion” set the bar very low in terms of emotional investment from the audience. 

And this tendency to trivialize every meaningful sentence that even bordered on depth or gravitas was particularly evident in the script, not even allowing the audience a breath to appreciate the nuggets of intergenerational wisdom being exchanged, before a snarky comment would be uttered.

There was an attempt to present the sheer scale of the troubled decade that was the ‘70’s, as well as the painful tribulations of failed marriages, drug addiction, and the financial troubles that plague every family. But it seemed that SL focused more on the flirtations of boys chasing pretty girls engaged in political movements, and not so much on the human rights abuses that necessitated activism in the first place. 

SL also focused more on the play-within-the-play, using it as a metaphor for true-to-life historical revisionism (in the reunion’s play, an actor is determined to take out important scenes or rewrite endings). SL assumed everyone knew that Martial Law was bad, and didn’t bother spelling out why until the very end of the musical. By then, however, we had stopped caring about a central character, because her portrayal made her hardly sympathetic, no matter how pretty she looked, nor how prettily she sang.

It gave this audience member mental whiplash in some parts, as the script in Act II made illogical leaps as actors spoke lines jumping to conclusions, uttering emotionally-laden phrases seemingly out of nowhere, lacking context that would have grounded the lines and plot in real life.

The silver lining in the show can be found in the silver hair of the older veteran actors, whose joy in singing and dancing was so apparent, it filled the auditorium. There was wit to spare in Act I’s many humorous lines, and the soaring vocals of Raul Montesa, Krystal Brimner, and Jep Go infused the songs with more warmth and charm.

With the hodgepodge of good elements that lacked the cohesion of a watertight plot, and the script's confusing seesaw between comedy and gravitas (sometimes in the same breath), it seemed as if we were watching a golden anniversary reunion musical, except with a grander budget (evidenced by the number of talented singers and dancers in the cast). But audiences looking for a musical shedding light on a dark period of our country’s past (either in the ‘70’s and the more recent pink political movement) won’t find it here.

At least, in the show’s current form.

We look forward to a rerun that will correct the first iteration’s plot holes, that currently make it seem like one grand nostalgia trip. One of the joys of watching live theater is that it’s never the same, twice. 

I read a similarly themed play some years ago, and couldn’t help but compare SL to SOLOMON’S CHOICE by Azucena Grajo Uranza. 

Both plays had similar themes of families being torn apart by politics, and a missing girl during Martial Law.

It is not a theme to be taken lightly, and we hope that SL embraces the weight of the dark in its rerun. To borrow a line from SL, “kung nais mong makita ang ilaw, yakapin mo ang kadiliman.” Sometimes, the light of the dawn shines brightest after forcing the audience’s gaze on the dark of dusk.

Book Review: LIGHT BRINGER (Red Rising #6) by Pierce Brown

Light Bringer by Pierce Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Slag it but P.B. has gone and done it again. Our modern Homer writes of war, and of our favorite fallible hero, Darrow, he who fathered a revolution and was tainted by the corruption of absolute power, but is now fighting for peace within the solar system.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Life is just a series of years spent waiting for the next addition to the Red Rising saga.

Book 6 is obviously a post-pandemic book. I don't want to post anything, but there are parts that make you go, "P.B. has been touched by death."

As have we all.

We read P.B. because no one writes action like he does, no one mixes philosophy and political science with the intrigue of realpolitik versus classical ideals.

And far from escaping our modern world, P.B. does what the best scifi authors do: make visible the cracks in the real world by painting parallels in the world of his art. And shining a light on a possible path forward.

Forever and always a fan of this author, and this classic work.

Decades from now, the series will be hailed as a masterpiece.

One more book left?!?! I don't know how I'll wait that long, but I must. Reading this book over the course of two weeks remains a highlight in a lifetime spent with books.

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Book Review: TRUST by Hernan Diaz

Trust by Hernan Diaz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"History itself is just a fiction - a fiction with an army. And reality? Reality is a fiction with an unlimited budget... And how is reality funded? With yet another fiction: money... An illusion we've all agreed to support."

There's nothing quite like that sweet feeling, upon closing a book, when you loudly proclaim (to your book club, if you're lucky enough to belong in one; or to the air for an audience of one) "No wonder it won the Pulitzer!"

Hernan Diaz takes the unreliable narrator and gives you four of them, trusting the reader to form our own version of events from the four novellas in this single one.

Music plays an important role in the narrative. Imagine a fugue of four separate motifs, some interweaving with others, but ultimately, only the reader/listener can determine which notes ring true, and which are false.

What exactly is TRUST all about? It's a very original take on the power of narrative, simultaneously a story of a marriage, and of the American economy in the early 1900's. It's about money, and how powerful those with money are. Powerful enough to change reality itself, or at least, the prevailing narratives. A history rewritten, with people in power having undesirable events erased from all records, as if they had never taken place.

This book has special resonance for me, as our country is in the middle of a controversial educational overhaul, and one subject in particular seems to be affected. That's right. History.

And this is the beautiful thing about literary fiction, of which TRUST is one of the best exemplars. They're like whetstones for the mind, training us to sift through the daily barrage of mediated news and content, teaching us how to piece together a cohesive truth from the bits and pieces of crumbs we get.

History, after all, is a kind of a story. And we need to study it, if there's any hope for future generations to avoid repeating mistakes of elections past.



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Book Review: THE GO-BETWEEN by L. P. Hartley

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"What did we talk about that has left me with an impression of wings and flashes, as of air displaced by the flight of a bird? Of swooping and soaring, of a faint iridescence subdued to the enfolding brightness of the day?"

I was twelve years old. It was my second year of journal writing. I remember waking up every day, feeling like each one was one grand adventure. I'd see my crush in school and invent all sorts of reasons to "accidentally" pass by his classroom. I'd prop up a fiction book behind my textbook in class and read it (and get sent to the Principal's Office later for my bad behavior, tsk tsk!). I'd bring my wooden top (we called it "turumpo") and decorate it with pretty dots using a marker, that turned into beautiful wavy lines when spun.

All these memories came back in full force, thanks to this beautifully moving tale of a child turning into a man, caught in a tangled web woven by manipulative adults he falls in love with.

"In most people's lives tragedy has been the rule, not the exception."

Remembrance is a funny thing. The child is the mother of the woman/ father of the man, after all. I look back and remember a stream of halcyon days of industry and learning, naughtiness caught out, the penitent sinner straightened out, and am grateful that my parents sheltered me from the harsher realities of life because I never had a problem bigger than studying for that exam, or preparing for that swimming competition.

L.P. Hartley's fatherless protagonist, however, wasn't as lucky. And though he spent a summer in the estate of a rich classmate, his innocence wasn't as well preserved as mine.

The teacher/protector in me is saddened and infuriated by the callousness with which he was treated by those who were old enough to know better than to manipulate guilelessness. Since they didn't have telephones at the turn of the century, two lovers from different social classes asked a poor child to ferry love letters to and fro (hence the title, "The Go-Between."). I have nothing but pure admiration for the way Hartley structured his novel, which crescendoes to a climax memorable in its intensity and poetic brevity.

"I was no longer satisfied with the small change of experience, which had hitherto contented me. I wanted to deal in larger sums... I must act on a grander scale."

Despite the scandalous set up, Hartley was able to write something sensual yet not salacious, elevating what could have been a tawdry tale into a haunting meditation on meanings we create out of social contexts, and how a childhood trauma can close an open heart to future love.

I particularly appreciated the ending, set several decades after the tumultuous summer. It comes with a call to action for readers of this book. Live each day, yes, but be careful. For a life can be unmade or made within seconds, a heart destroyed by a letter.

What we do matters. Every day. 


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Book Review: THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE by James Rebanks

The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District by James Rebanks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"This is my life. I want for no other."

If you had told me that I would love this autobiography by a sheep farmer in England, I would have scoffed.

But the magic of books is that, if you give them a chance, they just might suckerpunch you in the gut.

I loved this simple story. I can't possibly tell you how much.

It's the sort of book one reads with the heart, not the mind. It won't win any prizes, but to read it is like putting a soothing balm on a soul one barely registers as wounded by the little cuts and bruises we get in modern society.

It is the anti fad book.

It speaks of unfashionable things.

Family. Duty. Honor. The importance of loving where you are planted. The blessing of waking up every day, needed by many. The sweetness of resting only when deserved, after a long day of physical labor.

"A person’s life was not a thing of his own invention, a new thing on a blank slate. We are bound by our landscape. Shaped by it. Defined by it... We are, I guess, all of us, built out of stories."

This is a deeply moving book, a rare jewel to be held close inside my heart.

"In that moment I’m not just a grandson. I am the one who carries on his life’s work, I am the thread that goes to the future. He lives in me. His voice. His values. His stories. His farm. These things are carried forwards. I hear his voice in my head... Everyone knows he was a major ingredient in the making of me, and that I am the going on of him. It was ever thus."

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Book Review: GENEROSITY - AN ENHANCEMENT by Richard Powers

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Technology changes what we think is intolerable."

I've stopped keeping track of how many Richard Powers books I've read. I only count the ones I have yet to read.

Reading his books needs to be spaced out between months, nay, years. Because whoever one reads afterward will ultimately suffer by comparison.

Powers' power lies in merging wordsmithing with science and technology. He blends the knowledge of a physicist by training with a humanist's eye towards the arc of civilization, and the dangerous places it can go.

In GENEROSITY, our main character is an Algerian refugee who astounds her college professor and classmates, and eventually, the whole world, with her seemingly unshakable happiness and love for life, despite going through the most harrowing of terrors.

Can we genetically code for joy? Just how much of our personhood is genetically determined?

In novel form, Powers summarizes both sides of the debate between nurture and nature, between those who would use Science to basically play God and select only good genes for future generations, and those who shrink from this frontier as annihilation of what makes us human.

Ultimately, Powers' book says, all life is already a gift we take for granted, and our generation's tendency towards despair is partly a result of the deadly yet popular practice: a performative life streamed live 24/7 on social media, numbing us to the miracle of being, already "luckier than all those who are unborn."

We all have it in us to reshape our stories, and our destinies, Powers believes. And the greatness of the human soul cannot simply be divided nor found in molecules.

Powers is no religious author, but in his faith in humanity and in our ability to use our collective knowledge to chart a better future is a bright infection well worth catching.

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Book Review: THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM (Remembrance of Earth's Past # 1) by Cixin Liu

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"To effectively contain a civilization’s development and disarm it across such a long span of time, there is only one way: kill its science.”

I attempted to read this book way back in 2017. A dear friend generously lent me her copy, but I had to return it after reading about a third only. "I'm not smart enough," I told her ruefully.

Fast forward to now, and with the Netflix adaptation only months away, I felt compelled to revisit this challenging book (the first in a trilogy).

Perhaps it's the added wisdom from the extra years (I've become a substitute Science teacher, in the meantime), but I managed to more than power through... I enjoyed myself immensely!

It's truly worth the difficulty of the occasional Googling, as the author assumes the reader has a good grasp of physics, astronomy, and general science. This is scifi, so of course not all of it is true. But a great deal of it is! Which grounds the book in a reality jarring in its cruelty.

"Reality brands each of us with its indelible mark. Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains," wrote Cixin Liu.

What can turn a human against her fellow humans? Cixin Liu gives a convincing response. He began with our antiheroine's girlhood during the Cultural Revolution, where she goes through unimaginable horrors.

The novel takes place across decades. In modern times, a mystery is afoot. Scientists are dying left and right, and a mysterious computer game seems to be at the heart of the problem. But who is behind this? And towards what end?

What elevates this book from a mere entertaining beach read to classic is the scope of Liu's vision, and the extensive world building. He basically came up with his own brand of physics for a new world.

Highly recommended for fans of RF Kuang and good scifi, as it has the immense weight and power of the best of them. Dune, Foundation, Ender... this series is more than worthy to stand beside these great classics.

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Book Review: MY NAME IS ASHER LEV by Chaim Potok

My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Do you hear the pain carried on in the wind? It is the cry of wasted lives. Who dares add to that cry? Who dares drain the world of its light?"

Classes got suspended today, which gave me time to pick up this 1972 book that had been languishing in my TBR for months, one I'd heard so much about but never got around to reading until now. Foul weather allowed me to finish it in one sitting, it was THAT compelling! But it's one of those books whose ending I hated, with equal passion to the love I feel for the earlier chapters. I will admit that any book that gets a rise out of its reader is good, even if that goodness is incomplete.

It's a bildungsroman about a Hasidic Jew growing up in Brooklyn in the '50's (as the author did; later on I find that the book is biographical as Potok was also a Jewish artist who painted his own crucifixion, thereby causing pain to people of his religious tradition). In an ultraconservative world such as his, art has no place. But the Master of the Universe has given Asher Lev an enormous gift, which completely consumes his life to the point that he makes terrible choices.

The interesting thing about this book is how it will reflect your own values, as a reader. Perhaps it's the Filipino/Asian upbringing I've had, one that tends to prioritize the community over the individual, which explains why I hate the ending so.

How is a life to be lived? the book asks.

"Many people feel they are in possession of a great gift when they are young. But one does not always give in to a gift. One does with a life what is precious not only to one's own self but to one's own people," says Asher Lev's father, echoed by his uncle, and mother, and rabbi.

But then his art teacher puts goyish ideas in his head, dangerous ideas like the superiority of the individual over the herd, the innate rebelliousness of the artist throughout the ages.

Does art matter, in the modern world? "What was a drawing in the face of the darkness of the Other Side? What was a pen and paper, what were pastels, in the face of the evil of the shell?"

Asher Lev, as a child, weeps and cries YES, and continues to do so even as he grows older.

And this is why I detest the end. There is so much selfish egotism in the genius impressed with his own worth, believing his own life and feelings matter more than everyone else's. There is very little self-growth despite the passage of years. Asher Lev at the end is a childish adult who knowingly hurts others and finds his cruelty justifiable, and this is what makes me angry.

"You must not dislike God's world, even if it is unfinished," the book reminds us.

I do hope Asher Lev grows up in Book 2. It's a credit to Book 1's utterly hypnotic nature that I immediately got a copy of the sequel. Despite my dislike, I care about Asher Lev and what happens to him twenty years later.

I do wish I get the chance to watch the play version of this! I wasn't able to catch the 2017 Manila run. It would make for a very fascinating experience, I'm sure, especially in a post-pandemic world.

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Book Review: DVORAK'S PROPHECY by Joseph Horowitz

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music by Joseph Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Dvořák's Prophecy" is a very erudite (if sometimes a bit self congratulatory) book by scholar and music critic Joseph Horowitz, which raises important questions on the role of race in a nation's classical music history. Classical music still comes off as elitist and white because of its beginnings, despite efforts to democratize it and make it accessible to all. Horowitz highlights little known composers that aren't, as of now, included in the canon, and explains why that is.

When the great Czech composer Dvořák came to New York to help found a school of music, he stayed for a few years and fell in love with what he heard and considered to be truly American: Negro and Indian music. With the black spirituals especially, he prophesied they would become the foundation for a unique classical music, the bedrock of identity for a young continent still looking for itself. "“In the negro melodies of America," he said, "I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."

The book came out in the pandemic, amidst all the chaos in American society. With all this madness going on globally, why bother to read this very niche book? Why even care about a genre that is considered passé, or utilized by a ruling elite to emphasize the cultural divide between haves and have nots?

As a Filipino watching a vernacular translation of Rossini's and Mozart's Figaro operas this past weekend, I had similarly themed questions in my mind. To be honest, they've been unanswered questions for decades. But reading this book shone a light on the form this problem takes in my own country.

To be Filipino and to love classical music seems almost unpatriotic, given our colonial background. It may come across as studying how to be white underneath the brown, to some. But, as the author reminds us, music and beauty belong to all mankind, regardless of skin color.

To be moved by the beauty of classical music is to partake in the cause of shared humanity itself, one that believes "that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins," and that "there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man."

But to appreciate a common legacy is one thing. To drive a beautiful art form into the future, or to make it come alive to new audiences, is another.

Quoting W.J. Henderson in his book, Horowitz writes: "Art addresses itself to humanity; it cannot be monastic, nor can the artist live a hermit life. What he has to do is to study his own people and his own time and strive ever to bring his inner life into harmony with them."

And as for singing opera in vernacular Filipino? "Only in this way can a musician express the true sentiments of his people. He gets into touch with the common humanity of his country."

Opera is only one form in a tradition that includes so many combinations of instruments. Horowitz takes us on a musical journey, introducing composers that, to my shame, I've only heard of for the first time in this book. He points out the performative nature of the Eurocentric classical music world, which is bad news for composers. He indicts institutional bias against gifted black composers like Florence Price, Nathaniel Dett, and William L. Dawson (to name but two of many), and lampoons art institutions themselves that are partly to blame for the failure of memory, the failure to make sense of past events, settling for too-easy narratives that divide American music into "jazz vs. not jazz" and focusing exclusively on Gershwin and Copland.

The language is very learned, which narrows down the audience for this book. And a lot of it is self-referential, requiring the reader to seek out the author's other books.

But it is worth the read, if only to be reminded of the danger classical music faces all over the world: beware the purist's pride in exclusivity, for it leads to a shrinking audience and a possible death of a form of art.

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Book Review: THE CHRYSALIDS by John Wyndham

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We are not dogmatists teaching God how He should have ordered the world."

I find it hard to believe that this novel was written back in 1955. It rings too true, too "now."

Fresh from reading about Oppenheimer and his atomic bomb, reading this felt like a sequel that has more realistic elements than fantastical ones. Religious paranoia, society's condemnation of anyone different, are rampant in this world as well as Wyndham's made-up, post-apocalyptic one.

When humanity nearly destroys itself after unleashing its weapons that assure mutual destruction for all sides, the world is vastly changed. Scrambling for order, survivors build settlements and wipe out any form of mutation, an integral part of evolution.

Our hero's childhood is one surrounded by religious sayings pasted all over his house: "BLESSED IS THE NORM, and IN PURITY OUR SALVATION" and "THE NORM IS THE WILL OF GOD."

When he dares to question, out of innocent inquisitiveness, he is punished harshly, and told: "You blasphemed, boy. You found fault with the Norm."

All his life he is told that anyone and anything who looks different must be destroyed, and best by fire. But then he discovers that he himself, and several others, possess an invisible gift that marks them out for destruction. Never mind that the difference is one for good, an improvement on the race. To hide a brightly burning light amidst the darkness, one risks being burnt.

And so we have the setup for one of the tightest and best written novels I've ever read. Part mystery, part thriller, and only partly scifi, it is as potent and powerful a critique of modern society as the best of them. And it's short enough to be read in one sitting!

The book had surprisingly beautiful phrases about God's role in a changing world: "God doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be dead. But He isn’t dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that’s alive."

This book is a powerful call to review organized religion's stances on science and technology's myriad gifts, and a reminder that what authorities claim to be lawful is not always what is good.

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Concert Review: DANCING IN A NEW WORLD by the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group

 

Why do some of us have the tendency to put down our own? Why do some consider folk dance a lesser form of art than ballet, than dance with “real training” involved? Is it a weird form of elitism, some twisted colonial mentality?

Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. We recall our own school days with haphazardly put together Buwan ng Wika performances and think, if we could do it, then it must be easy. And if it’s easy, then it must be inferior.

But that ignorant belief shatters when one beholds the grandest dance recital ever: ROFG’s 50th anniversary concert featuring choreography by four of the Maestro’s loyal students (Jhunnard Jhordan Cruz, Lyle Eymard Villahermosa, Marciano Viri, and Cherry Ylanan-Villanueva). It was a staggeringly epic mix of old and new in seven sumptuous suites, each one outshining the next. Legacy merged with technology in an all-engulfing feast for eyes and ears, and heart.

Director Floy Quintos proves why he is the most in-demand director in the business with his straightforward yet moving script that strung together all the suites in two acts. There were times this audience member’s emotions overwhelmed her as a tearful waterfall, deeply moved by the elegant direction and a script that enlightens, explaining complex societal and historical issues in words every Juan can understand.

Back in 2019, he almost single handedly changed the narrative about the Southeast Asian Games, causing the media to stop focusing on our screw ups as a host country, and zeroing in on the truly magnificent opening ceremony which showed the history of our country in the form of dance suites. People who had been ashamed of their country suddenly became the proudest of Filipinos after Quintos and his team stunned and amazed the world with that historical opening program.

Having watched the glory of that accomplishment via screen, it was another thing entirely to see that same all-encompassing vision on a smaller scale (100+ dancers instead of a thousand on the stage of the Metropolitan Theater). Smaller, but not necessarily less in importance, nor less in sheer artistry. That’s still a lot of dancers! No review can do justice to the magic of seeing all of them move as one, draped in robes of every hue, dancing so proudly the steps of our ancestors as researched and documented by National Artist Ramon Obusan.

With the aid of Stevenson Tantiongco’s graphics projected onscreen, dramatic lighting by Meliton Roxas Jr., the simple yet tasteful set of Ricardo Eric Cruz was utterly transformed. It was amazing to see a primarily empty stage (a must when you have that many dancers at one time) become moving canvases and glorious masterpieces. One appreciates how, despite the grandeur of the lights and graphics, they never detracted from the main attraction: the dancers themselves.

Suite I (Dancing with the Masters) was the grandest opening one could wish for. Portraits and landscape paintings by the likes of Hidalgo and Luna were projected onscreen, then made flesh by groups of dancers. Each time the art work came to life, the painting’s image within a frame (imitating how it might be displayed in a museum) would zoom outward, eliciting sighs of pleasure from the crowd as we felt ourselves inside the moving picture from such a pretty idyllic past.

It’s that feeling of inclusion that struck me from the very first, and it lasted until the end.

And this is what makes ROFG different from all the other ballet companies’ offerings.

Filipino music and dances were a way of life, an integral part of the waking world. It wasn’t strictly a performance, as understood in the Western context with the never-bridged divide between performer and audience. Filipinos made no distinction between the two while we sang as we worked, or danced as part of a sacred rite.

This is the context that Filipino dance must not be removed from, or else it runs the risk of commodification that cheapens, or make it seem like part of a school Buwan ng Wika program.

What ROFG does so well is perform our people’s songs and dances (they sing WHILE dancing! And mostly with live accompanying rondalla and agung music) in as close to the original context as possible. Their founder, after all, spent years amongst the different indigenous peoples, taking videos and recordings of chants and dances, living amongst them instead of merely watching them. This is dance as a part of life.

Six more suites followed, ranging from the traditional dances of the Tingguian, Blaan, the Tausug and Badjao (to name only some), but showcasing Hispanic ones as well. Who can forget that incredibly moving “Mutya ng Pasig” that paid tribute not just to rich mestizas, but the working women who did their laundry and bathed in the river waters?

A highlight of the show was the third suite (Walang Bastusan), which was wonderfully edifying as well as theatrically thrilling to watch. Jhunnard Cruz highlighted the babaylan of our precolonial past, when men wore women’s skirts to honor the masculine and feminine (our own yin and yang). It is still being done among the Umayamnon of Bukidnon and the Inagta of Negros Occidental. Next, a montage of festivals with phallic symbols were presented, from the Baliw-Baliw of Olanggo Island, Cebu, to the Dyanggo and Lukayo of Cagayan Valley and Laguna.

While some dancers onstage were dressed in the traditional white robes of a solemn Catholic procession, others crossdressed and carried giant members, tossing them joyfully about, only to be silenced momentarily as the oppressive sound of the church bell rang. But then the party resumes as the dying peals faded away.

I was deeply moved by the fifth suite as well (Lumin-awa: A Kalinga Festival). Marciano Tiri recounted how the youth in Lubuagan still joyfully dance in modern clothes, even without traditional attire.

In an inspired piece of directing, we see a teenaged barkada take a cellphone groufie, and suddenly a century-old black and white photograph of an ancestor appears on the screen behind them. At the same time, three rows of Kalinga, arms intertwined, dance and sing Salidummay behind the youth. My tears fell then at this visual representation of what lies behind every Filipino, every selfie. In our faces we can see theirs. Our forefathers live in us.

I especially loved how dancers of all ages and body types were represented, with the more dignified ROFG alumni for more stately quadrilles, and the younger students doing the faster and physically challenging stunts. This is truly dance as part of life, where everyone who can move is a dancer, and not merely when you were born blessed with a waifishly thin torso.

Now that the school year starts at the end of August, which allows for little to no time at all to study national dances for Buwan ng Wika programs in schools, ROFG’s mission is ever more vital. To preserve, yes, but also to adapt and make old dances fresh again. As the curtain fell, the dancers cheered, “Ang kultura ay buhay at magpapatuloy!” and it was a joyful prophecy we can believe in, for as long as ROFG is there. This is art at its most democratic and patriotic. Few shows make me want to get up on the stage and dance along with the performers. Salamat, ROFG, for this most joyful gift!

Book Review: GOOD BEHAVIOUR by Molly Keane

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Grief possessed me, but I would and must behave. No mourning. No whining."

What manner of book nearly wins the Booker but loses to Salman Rushdie in 1981?

A most unique one! So beautifully written it's almost painful to read. ("Leaving the sea at evening is a death – a parting of worlds." and "I was resistless in the strength of a river that had no source and reached no sea.")

This book has several different interpretations, depending on how observant the reader, and how cynical or innocent their view of the world is.

Our Unreliable Narrator is a single plus-sized lady (these details MATTER) who lives in a bygone era of genteel poverty in rural Ireland. We begin with the death of her mother. Murder? Accident? Who can say?

She then recounts what leads to this most horrific beginning, taking us to a childhood and adolescence filled with hazy misrememberings, and trauma hidden beneath the veneer of Good Behavior.

"I don’t need to have everything spelled out. I know how to build the truth."

When you've finished, let's compare and see if my version of events matches yours. But let's not argue, oh no. Instead let us mutually admire this masterpiece of the English language, its exactitude and nebulousness, its beauty and vulgarity.

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Concert Review: FOR LIGHT I CLOSE MY EYES by Aleron

There are groups that, once one sees their name on a poster, one reorganizes one’s life to watch. No excuses. Aleron is such a group.

This is an exceptional choir from its inception. Tied to no church, no school, founding director Christopher Arceo formed an all-male choir with the most powerful binding thread of all: a common love for excellent music-making. This is idealism of the highest level, as Aleron dared to tackle challenging music that used to be similar to the repertoire of other excellent choirs, until commerce forced these other groups to alter their repertoire to suit the tastes of the paying public.

Aleron did not, and does not, follow suit.

To listen to an Aleron concert is to be uplifted and enlightened. Even the most avid choir concert-goer will find new songs, new repertoire that excites.

Take this latest concert of theirs: a valedictory one as their brave leader leaves the homeland for further studies abroad.

The price of entry includes one of the most well-made and comprehensive programs I have ever come across. Arceo’s program notes, the detailed descriptions of each piece, and the complete lyrics attached at the end show that this group is bent on education. “Sing,” they seem to encourage. Maybe not at the live performance itself, but perhaps squeezed in between meetings at a busy work day, a beam of light and joy to illuminate the sameness of each passing sun.

I’ve always said I’d travel great distances for this particular choir, and I did. When work did not permit me to watch them perform this same repertoire in the CCP last Sunday, I braved the commute North last night. To miss this performance is Not. Permitted.

Especially when the esteemed director Floy Quintos is involved. The whole experience, then, becomes so much more elevated. Quintos understands that the music comes first. As the incredibly difficult singing does not permit a whole lot of physical action, Quintos has the choir walk onstage whilst acting, or merrily cheer and pump their fists in the air, or close their music books at the same time and throw them down violently at key moments that had us jumping in our seats.

Combine this with the sparse yet gorgeous and effective lighting of D Cortezano, and thankful audience members leave with an unforgettable choral experience.

Aleron’s first all-secular concert has a remarkably diverse repertoire. Arceo wanted to feature the duality of man, both his doom (our penchant for violence) and his salvation (our longing for peace). Act I featured songs of aggression, featuring Chilcott, Britten, Mahler, and lesser known gems by Veljo Tormis and Henrik Dahlgren. The second act starts with commentaries on war, then moves to songs celebrating unity and life. Medieval madrigals, anthems from Romantic composers, and Tavener’s mystical song on a Greek wedding are followed by a Blaan lullaby from Mindanao, set to music by Krina Cayabyab with spoken word poetry by Kevin Maske. The evening ended with a song by one of Aleron’s very own, Karl San Jose, as collective voices illustrated lipad, liwanag and ligaya through radiant song.

The musical highlight of the evening for this audience member was Mahler’s Urlicht. And with this jewel of a song, I dare to contest Arceo’s claim that this was an all-secular show.

There is nothing mundane about this piece. There is nothing earthly about Aleron’s singing of it.

When Urlicht ended, I was in tears, and frantically trying to keep it together, as it won’t do to break down in public.

This is the visceral effect Aleron has on people.

One does not emerge from an Aleron concert untouched. Their concert title reminds us of the artist’s mission: to dream while awake, and to sing a better world into being. Helped by this incredible gift of souls shared through song, we are able to dream again of what can be. And judging from the sold-out show, with the star-studded audience (including a National Artist and the most respected conductors) giving Aleron a standing ovation, it looks like I’m not the only one.

Book Review: CHESS STORY by Stefan Zweig

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Anyone who has suffered from a mania remains at risk forever."

Short but horrific.

An unknown, a no one, dares to challenge the reigning world champion in chess.

He wins the first round.

But what happens next has us reeling and wondering what on earth could possibly happen to make someone so good in this game.

The things we learn to escape pain and torment leave a lasting scar, compared with things we learn to merely be entertained.

This book means I will never look at a chess board the same way again.

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Book Review: THE OPPERMANNS by Lion Feuchtwanger

The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"One man may ask: ‘Is this thing safe?’ The second: ‘Is it right?’ Their queries show us in one phrase, which free man is, which a slave."

It was in Anne Frank's diary that I first encountered the horror of reading about liberties taken for granted, taken away bit by bit. The slow dehumanization of an entire people is not the work of one man, nor accomplished in one day. I remember being so appalled as a fourth grader, I couldn't stand it, I had to talk about it with all my classmates, who accused me of making it up. Such was the horror of childhood innocence in the face of such evil.

This fresh horror was renewed when I read The Oppermanns, written in real-time by one who was actually subjected to this furious hate, but was lucky enough to live to tell his tale.

The Oppermanns is a family story. Growing up in comfort, in a civilization they were proud to count themselves members of, they were slow to acknowledge the signs when they first began, until the small became a tidal wall of unstoppable violence that swept an entire continent into a world war.

It was the mistake of overly civilized folk to think that "the Nationalist movement merely stood for a brutal agitation, stirred up by military and feudal elements who hoped to derive a profit from the low instincts of the small citizen."

What makes this book a horror is how contemporary it sounds. How obvious the rise of barbarism is in these unkind times.

The most heartbreaking story within was, for me, about the Jewish school boy who was unjustly persecuted by a Nazi teacher, and how ineffective the school headmaster was to counter such blind fanatic hatred, passing itself off as nationalistic virtue.

It hits close to home, when there are those who also try to spread fear based on lies around. Feuchtwanger ominously warns that "lies and violence went hand in hand."

Feuchtwanger wrote this as a warning to the rest of the world, of how easy it was for such a great country of poets and musicians, of elevated consciousness, to be taken over by the illiterate thug who, "due to an inferiority complex, had encased himself in an armor of the cheapest nationalism, through which not a ray of common sense could penetrate."

And yet, for all the fire breathing, there is amazingly still hope that man is better than the beast within.

Over and over, so often I've lost count, the quote appears in the book: "It is upon us to begin the work. It is not upon us to complete it.”

This is an important book, especially in 2023, and deserves wider readership.

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Book Review: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF GREGORIO C. BRILLANTES

"For certain things, like love, there was only so much time."

There are authors who are put in the canon for a reason, whose works are analyzed and studied by English majors for generations.

Reading Gregorio Brillantes' 500 page collection of 39 short stories is just like seeing the past 90 years of Philippine history through the eyes of a caring grandfather, eager to pass on his wisdom to the younger generation.

He was born into a comfortable life, and wrote of what he knew: exclusive private schools, witty repartee in soirees with the inevitable teenaged wild ride in a fancy car... and also, the loneliness of growing up feeling alien in one's home town, the soul-tearing quest to remain committed to ideals when the grown-up world demands compromise.

It's difficult to pinpoint a favorite when several have similar themes and characters. So it's the ones that are very different that stand out. Despite middle-class comfort, there are always the extremes of violence and passion that erupt. The stories show how one cannot escape from the river of history, despite the buffer that financial security offers.

I thought one of the most hopeful was THE DISTANCE TO ANDROMEDA. A young boy from Tarlac watches a scifi movie and feels what Catholics call "the communion of saints," that feeling of being connected to the vast universe all around us.

Some of the stories are terribly poignant, one can't help but shed a tear as a doctor to the barrio ministers to patients who have lost newborn babes, or a middle-aged man realizes his daughter's friend so closely resembles a lost love.

The story I found most moving was FAITH, LOVE, TIME, AND DR. LAZARO. A phone call in the middle of the night rouses a doctor duty-bound to try to save the children of others. He knows that he can't save them all, but he perseveres nonetheless. When desire wavers, duty and honor are there to see us through. 

"The sparrow does not fall without the Father’s leave...but it falls just the same. But to what end are the sufferings of a child?"

The funniest for this reader was EXCERPTS FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A MIDDLEAGED GHOSTWRITER WITH INSOMNIA, with all the tongue-in-cheek references to other Filipino authors and their works. Bookish folk might wish to award themselves points for every real name decoded, every title unlocked. Perhaps some of my book club friends would care to try? And if one gets a low score, that means you need to read more Filipinana! 

No one goes through Life, the war, and Martial Law unscarred. Brillantes' vivid descriptions of the Filipino middle class existence prove this. For Death and Decay visit each man alike, and it is this universal sphere of sorrow that Brillantes explores, highlighting darkest lusts and most piercing pains, helping us come to a fuller understanding of self and country.