Posted on December 19, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated December 19, 2010 12:00 AM Looking out from my car at the countless people on the sidewalks, or walking through thick crowds in a mall, I am overwhelmed by the realization that every person has a story to tell. I have met and listened to enough so-called ordinary people to come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an ordinary person with an ordinary life. In conversations with OFWs, waiters, students, young and old people, I have had been surprised, amazed, and impressed at the stories I have heard them tell. This article is a tribute to “small” people and the extraordinary episodes in their lives that they have generously shared with me through the years. Sometime in the late ‘80s, I was in Rome at the Termini, the train station, where many of our kababayans like to hang out on weekends. Many of them stood beside their cars with the trunks open from where they sold various types of Filipino food to fellow Filipinos and a few Italians. There was one young woman who caught my fancy. She was around 22 years old and had been in Italy for about three years. What drew my attention was not what she had in her car. In fact, she had no car. She carried a basket with a cover, hiding the goods she was hawking. In a voice that transported me to Anywhere, Philippines, she chanted “Balut!” so melodically and with gusto, attracting our countrymen to buy the delicacy. Thoroughly amused, I went to talk to her about the balut and penoy she was selling. Where did she get them? Where they imported? How much was she selling them for? Was she selling them only to Filipinos? I can’t remember her name but let us call her “Grace.” Grace was from Navotas and was formerly a balut vendor in Manila. She went to Europe to work and landed in Italy where, she said, she found a duck farm not too far from Rome and made friends with the owner, which is how she was able to make balut and penoy to sell. She said she normally sold her products at the Termini and outside the churches where Filipinos congregate. She always sold everything she made. At the Termini, vendors are not allowed; their presence is merely tolerated by the police, and so they are not able to sell there all the time. But Grace said the police looked kindly upon her because some of them had actually tried the balut she peddled and liked it. She said she was working hard to send money home to finance her husband’s schooling. She had married early, and vowed to her parents that she and her husband would make it in the world. I sometimes wonder about Grace. Did she ever come back to the Philippines? Did her husband finish his studies? Is her life better now? Another person who made an impression on me is a woman who had called to make an appointment to be photographed. She was from overseas. She said she wanted the pictorial to be daring; she was going to give it to someone special. On the day of the photo shoot, I met this rather good-looking young lady in her very early 20’s accompanied by her doting gay brother. I remember watching her hand mannerisms and being so charmed at how womanly she moved them. We began the session. Soon, she was posing in different stages of undress and before long, she was totally nude. As a photographer, I went for really elegant angles, which I would occasionally show her brother who was quite delighted with them. They were talking throughout the session. Around 15 minutes into the shoot, it dawned on me from snippets of the verbal exchange going on that my very womanly subject was, in fact, not what I thought she was. She had undergone a sex change. She was a transgender. I giggled inside at the novelty as I realized what was going on. Soon, I got in on the conversation which had turned quite candid and asked her who she was giving the pictures to. She said she was giving it to her Japanese boyfriend as a token of gratitude since he had financed her operation. Her brother explained that his “sister” had always been a “girl” since he/she was six years old. Hers was the classic “woman trapped in a man’s body” story. Soon we were talking about the more intimate aspects of her new sexuality compared to what it was when she was still a man. She said her physical pleasures were more intense then but she found more psychological authenticity, and felt truer, feelings-wise, in her new body. It was an awesome moment being with someone who had shown complete vulnerability to me and had asked me to photograph her in her reconstructed beauty and glory. Contrary to how some people might imagine such a situation, it was not in any way funny or even close to anything that invited derision. It was, in fact, an epiphany for me which expanded my understanding and compassion for the complicated human condition. That was quite hard to forget. These are just two chance encounters with “ordinary” people. But how ordinary are they, really? Perhaps we merely categorize everyone outside of us as ordinary or regular people because we have not had the chance to know them, and hear their human stories. To them, we are perhaps ordinary as well for the same reasons. It’s easy and quite normal to classify people and put them in boxes based on their socio-economic class, gender, the school they went to, etc. We do this all the time not realizing that a person is not just a one-dimensional statistic. And when we do, we diminish our chance to hear their real stories and thus deprive ourselves of something that could touch our lives in a real way. Every person in the world is a carrier of stories. If we just stop and appreciate every person’s uniqueness, we will find that there can never be enough of their stories to enrich our lives. The next time you see some stranger in the street, or the office, or anywhere, remind yourself that he/she has parents who actually have histories of their own. He/she has probably loved and has experienced being loved in turn, has cried and laughed, and has faced troubles just like you. We don’t have to befriend everyone. Besides, it is just impossible to do so. But by extending the specialness we feel about ourselves to others, we make a world with less strangers and distrust. That should somehow make for a better planet somehow. A night of passion Posted on December 05, 2010 by jimparedes [e] HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated December 05, 2010 12:00 AM 
I like things mildly dangerous, and sometimes even on the semi-wild side. I like saying yes to things I am not sure about. Sometimes, when I am traveling, I like hopping on a bus, destination unknown, and sometimes end up getting lost. It beats just staying in my room. In cyberspace, where I spend a lot of time talking with people I don’t know, I sometimes take a few risks. I like to go beyond the comfort of talking to someone from a distance, someone I can opt to respond to or not, and actually meet him or her in the flesh. Once I invited seven random people I had never met for dinner at my house in an event I called, “Seven People You Meet on Earth.” It turned out to be a great evening. Last Friday, I hosted another such event that I called “Night of Passion.” Through Twitter and Tumblr, I posted an invitation to anyone who was interested in talking about their passion over wine after dinner. I said I was looking for people from certain types of professions or backgrounds — travelers, lawyers, businessmen, scientists, etc., but I also said I was open to junking the rules depending on the responses I got. I asked them to email me their stories from which I would chose eight people. I got close to 80 replies. Most of the people who wrote in were very interesting and seemed like the type I would actually want to meet. But I had a limit of eight and so after I weeded out the applicants who did not seem “right” for one reason or another, I randomly chose eight people, making sure that both sexes were adequately represented. When Friday, the 26th came, all eight showed up at my doorstep for the after-dinner tête-à-tête on the topic of passion, and everything else. After everyone said their tentative hellos, we sat down around a table and I asked that each one of us talk about what we were individually passionate about. It was interesting being in the presence of Jorenz, a lawyer, who was animated about his passion for stereo equipment, his recent acquisition of old and rare vinyl records, and his love for biking. And there was Karen, a call center supervisor who shared with us the many facets of her work, which include giving advice, inspiring, firmly disciplining, mothering among other things, the diverse personalities who work under her. She also mentioned that her real passion is film and that she plans to enroll at the UP Film Institute next year. There was Steffy, 22 years old and an advocate of child education, who radiated her love for her students in the GK center. She went through quite a number of twists and turns deciding what she wanted to study in college, changing courses until finally deciding on education. Her idealism was refreshing. Erika, an astronomy buff, talked about her rather obscure favorite topic with much passion, telling us about how photos she took with her telescope were shortlisted among 2,000 entries in an international contest. Myles, a businessman, techie and graphic designer shared the joy of his creative process making designs for small and big businesses. He described the “marinating” process in his head which leads to something good enough to present to clients, sometimes just hours before the deadline. Aicca is a nurse doing part-time work for a music promotions company, a place where she feels may have found her real calling. More than nursing, she loves everything about her work and is quite conflicted about whether she should still pursue nursing as a career. There was also Jumax, a Cebuana mother of two who works all week in Manila and goes back to Cebu where her partner and their children live, on weekends. Lastly there was Sanndra, a traveler who relishes every place she visits. She has traveled in many modes — from first class to tightly packed provincial buses. She has hiked up mountains, swum with the butanding, earning enough credentials to talk about the joys of travel with some authority. What struck me was her sharing that she finds inner peace, a kind of centering amid all the movement and action, when she is on the road. Throughout the evening, we flowed seamlessly from one topic to another — from the possibility of extra-terrestrials being real to transvestites in Bangkok, to photography, Steely Dan, Zen, living in other places, climbing mountains with the elderly, life in Cebu, our Ondoy experiences, earthquake fault lines, global warming, my bizarre adventures in Kathmandu, creativity, spirituality, etc. In the midst of the animated conversation, I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was already 1:30 in the morning. How quickly time flew! None of us realized the late hour because we were all lost in each other’s passion-telling. But I had to end the party because I had an early meeting in Makati the next morning. I thanked everyone profusely for showing up, hoping hey did not find it to be a waste of their time. It certainly wasn’t a waste of mine. In fact, I was giddy at how well everything turned out. What are the chances that eight people who don’t know each other and whose only common ground is that they share the gift of passion, can come together around one table and affect each other’s lives by talking about their interests? When they were leaving, I felt that I had been with a great group of people who could actually become my real friends. A few minutes later, the nine of us were tweeting about the fun we had being part of this experience. Jorenz, the lawyer, offered to host another gathering if everyone was up to it. The others tweeted in agreement. This experiment tells me that that there are lots of people out there who are “friends-in-waiting” and who could be our real friends if we made the effort to seek them out. Jumax and Karen, in separate tweets and messages, expressed how the “Night of Passion” made them come alive, as passion is wont to do. The great Dr. Albert Schweitzer put it so well: “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” I thank my eight new friends for a great night of magic, wonder, and the contagion of passions shared. I will definitely do this again… and again.
Posted on November 28, 2010 by jimparedes [e] HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated November 28, 2010 12:00 AM Having the power of choice is generally good. To be able to choose one’s course in college, or one’s career, or one’s spouse is an exercise in freedom. Making a choice makes one feel good and powerful. It makes one feel alive and autonomous and responsible. I often marvel at the many choices open to today’s kids. Their baby-boomer parents have made them the generation with the most alternatives and choices. Today’s kids have more choices about what they can eat and wear, how they look, how they want to be entertained, what educational path to pursue, and how they want to live their lives. There is no dearth of lifestyles they can adopt. Many things that used to be inaccessible because of cost considerations are now open to them. They have easy access to cars, gadgets, computers, etc. Even in their love lives, the conservative norms and strict rules of courtship have been largely relaxed and kids have more exposure and interaction with the opposite sex than their parents ever did. As an adult, my generation, too, has had more choices open to us than our parents ever had. We had generally better education, and had more opportunities open to us in ways not possible before. And yet as much as I value the importance of having choices and making the right decisions, I have on occasion made the choice to put an end to the possibility of changing my mind in the future. One might say, I have made final immutable choices and I made them consciously. Before I got married, I learned that a marital union can be annulled even years after if there was proof of hesitation in any of the spouses before they got married. I was told by an expert that hesitation, or doubt before getting married, could be interpreted as not having gone into the union with full consent, and therefore was not binding from the outset. It was not a union of free persons making free decisions. Having heard that, I went to my mother the week I was to be married to tell her that I was so sure I wanted to marry Lydia and I wanted my mom to be my witness. In effect, I was closing any possibility of our marriage being annulled because there was full knowledge and full consent on my end at the time I got married. I also made another decision that I thought would permanently seal my fate in some way. In 1989, at the height of the biggest, most dangerous coup against the Cory government, I went to the US embassy bringing my green card and those of my entire family to inform the US authorities that I was not interested in living in the US anymore. In effect, I told them I was giving up our green cards to live in the Philippines, much to their amazement since the officer who received the cards said these were much desired by many Pinoys. I gave them the vague excuse that there were many things I needed to do in the Philippines at that time. But my real reason was I felt that as an EDSA1 veteran and a minor but committed player in the regime change that overthrew Marcos, I had to be like everyone else who gambled on our new democracy and hoped to make changes in the country. To my mind, there was something not right with the idea that I and my family had an escape hatch, so to speak, and could leave the Philippines any time things got out of hand. In effect, by returning our green cards, I made a major decision to simply stay put here through thick and thin. Or so I thought. Years later, when Erap won as president, I was depressed about it in a major way. I told my wife that if she was game, we could skip the Erap years and pick up our aborted plan of living abroad even for a while like we had planned on doing years earlier as a newly married couple. We were still young enough to do it. But EDSA 2 happened and that plan was postponed. Years later, after Lydia’s bout with cancer and the death of her parents by cancer, we decided to finally migrate. It would be a perfect respite for her and an opportunity for the family to heal from all the sickness and death we had recently experienced. And so we ended up moving to Australia. It is hard making major or final choices. But the way the world is now, deciding on something with finality is no longer as final as it used to be. Life continues to present choices even after we think we have made our final ones. The ease of travel has made moving to another country less drastic, less “final” and thus much easier. With cable TV and the Internet, the Philippines is a click away. One no longer has to leave the old in exchange for the new. One can now have both. But even so, decisions mean commitments we should honor. Making a choice makes us committed to one range of possibilities while letting go of others. The hardest thing to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn, as writer David Russell pointed out. With many bridges come many decision points. I think of Ninoy who gave up the comfort of family life in the US to come home. Sometimes, I wonder whether having choices is a blessing or a curse. These days, my choices are getting simpler. I know I am probably in the last 20 years of life and I decide a lot of things based on that. On the whole, I choose to do things that matter, in line with what I believe in. While I haven’t lost the need to pursue and acquire material wealth, it is no longer as urgent and burning as it used to be. More and more, I find that teaching, mentoring, writing music, articles and books, spending time with family and friends are increasing in importance and even in urgency. On what causes to espouse, I tend to choose those that will leave a greater positive impact on the most number of people. Albert Camus wrote that our lives are the sum total of our decisions. A life well lived is made up of good experiences, culled from the choices we make, even if, ironically, such experiences may have been the result of previous bad decisions. The point is, even when we make wrong choices, or find ourselves in situations where we seem to have no choice, trust that there always is. We can always learn from everything. It’s our choice. * * * My last workshops for the year. Songwriting Class: Learn the rudiments of songwriting. Learn what makes a good song. And yes, actually write songs during the workshop and after. Dec. 4 and 5, 1 to 6 p.m. Student must play guitar or piano. Fee: P5,000. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com. In Sydney, Basic Photo Workshop on Dec. 18, 1 to 6:30 p.m. at 4 Harcourt Grove, Glenwood, NSW. Call 98363494 or write for reservations, AU$100. For info on all workshops I offer, go to http://jimparedes-workshops.com. Category Uncategorized
Posted on November 14, 2010 by jimparedes [e] HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star)
Updated November 14, 2010 12:00 AM A few weeks ago, I was asked by the staff of Sharon Cuneta’s new show Star Magic if I could make a guest appearance and give an inspirational talk to the young performers who were vying for the chance to be the Megastar’s own pick to succeed. I grabbed the opportunity since I have much to share with these young ones who are just about to embark on the exciting and crazy journey I began 41 years ago. From the outside, showbiz seems like a glittering community of winners who have armies of adoring fans, make a lot of money and have an easy life. What I tried to tell these young performers is that this image is largely illusory. It is illusory in the sense that things do not necessarily come that easily to anyone, and that no one and nothing is preordained or destined to succeed. Things can and do go wrong. Not everyone is able to achieve what they set out to do. But great things do happen and have happened to “successful” stars, largely because they put a lot of hard work and good attitude into the mix. I listed some rules on how to survive, succeed, thrive, and most importantly, remain sane in Tinsel Town where, from the point of view of many fans, the harsh rules of real life seem to be suspended and another set of magical procedures operate. If you plan to get your feet wet in showbiz, it would be best to know these rules by heart and heed them. They have worked for me over the 41 years I have been in the biz. 1) Accept that you will never stop auditioning. No one ever gets big enough to be rejected. While it may seem that shows and movies are made around certain big stars, there are instances when these same “special” people also face rejection. Leah Salonga and Charice Pempengco still audition. It is part of the job. The point is, you never stop proving yourself. 2) Be kind to people on your way to the top; they are the same people you will meet on the way down. I am talking of the scriptwriters, directors, production people, makeup artists, musicians, production assistants who bring you water and make life comfortable on the set, technical people, alalays, etc. — the mainstays in the business who see careers come and go and watch stars rise and fall. Someday, they will tell a story to other people about how you treated them. They will remember and talk about your acts of kindness as well as your fits of brattiness and ill temper, not to mention your delusions of grandeur and egotism. So be nice to them. 3) Practice, practice and never stop practicing until your performance becomes completely “accident proof.” It is tedious and hard work to keep doing the same songs through the years, but believe me, it pays off. Even performers who are less talented than others can make themselves more “accident prone” to perfection by simply practicing constantly. Practice makes you really good, even great. And great performers, even on a bad night, still deliver the goods. 4) Treat fellow performers with the greatest respect. But reserve the highest respect for your audience. Your audience is king. Always give your best. Your audience will appreciate the effort you put in and will be loyal to you throughout your career. 5) Continuously recreate or re-imagine yourself. That’s how to remain competitive. Always be ready to create and project “surprise and delight.” In showbiz, one who remains static cannot hope to be always employed. 6) The net effect of all performance is to take your audience to a place where they have never been. For a long career, make sure you take them to places they will want to revisit again and again. Take them through different emotional states with new songs, stories, ideas, revelations and engage them with topics that truly matter to them like the timeless mysteries of life, love, humor, sex, friendship, conviction, etc. Show them that your act defies the average and the ordinary. 7) Always be present and paying attention. The world is full of opportunities and things to exploit and transform into material to entertain. But be fully aware that a slip of the tongue or careless action can easily spread and ruin you, so watch yourself as well.  Always come on time. “On time” means 30 minutes before the designated time. If you make this a habit, you will be loved by production people and will earn a reputation of being reliably present. They will want to work with you again and again because you do not cause trouble and destroy schedules. 9) Say what you mean and mean what you say. It may not seem like it, but a lot of people inside and outside the entertainment world can and do detect bull**** when they hear and see it. How many corny birthday tributes have you seen on TV that really moved you? How often have you seen through the insincerity behind the “heartfelt” greetings delivered by showbiz people? In the same vein, accept that not everyone will like you. But act in a way where as best as possible, you are being true to yourself. 10) A truly great performance always comes from a true place. Be sincere, honest, and learn to express yourself in the best possible way. Honesty is always refreshing. How does one make an honest performance doing the same material over and over again? You do this by being present and adding a new element each time. It can be any small thing like adding a melodic inflection where there used to be none. You do this to make it “true” for you. The philosopher Heraclites said that you never cross the same river twice. He may as well have talked about performances. It’s a different audience each night. You can also project a different aspect of you each time. 11) Don’t believe your own press releases. Humility will always serve you well. Pride will ruin you. Be grounded. Many people get carried away by adulation and end up living a life of grandiosity of self that is nowhere close to what they are in real life. Know how to tell the difference between who you really are and what you are projecting. 12) Learn from every performance, your own and others’. Learn to be a good audience so you know what works and what doesn’t. 13) Take valid criticism graciously and learn from it. The only way to improve is to always be open to valid criticism and suggestions. 14) Know that nothing lasts forever — not fame, not wealth, not even talent. But know that this also applies to failure. You can pick yourself up when you fall. You will always have another chance. And when it is time to go, leave with gratitude. 15) When you sing, just sing. A performance is just a performance. This may be puzzling, but it is really simple. Don’t muddle up the task by trying to make it bigger or other than what it is. 16) Have a life outside of show biz. Many people I know live only in this crazy world and have no respite out of it. There is a bigger world outside that can ensure your sanity and remind you of more enduring values than what you live with in showbiz. 17) Save your money. If you can, set aside 60 to 70 percent of what you earn, and do this religiously. Nothing is sure in this business. You could be here today, and gone in 15 minutes. 18) Never do drugs. Stay away from vices. Some people think they perform better with drugs. That is pure delusion. They just feel they do but in reality, they do not. Avoid toxic people who do drugs. 19) Know when you are “on” or “off.” Showbiz is about performance and projecting to your public. That’s when you are “on.” But make sure you are not “performing” with friends and close relatives. No drama, pretension, affectation and projecting here. That can be annoying and disturbing to people who really care about you. 20) Always make time for your own personal enjoyment and rest. Everyone needs some downtime and privacy. This also means you must limit what you share about yourself with the public. You need your quiet private space to be able to discern what is true and what is not. And no, the public does not need to know your pap smear results, or about your toxic relationship with your mother. 21) Pray before every show and start the prayer by saying thanks for the last one. This was the APO’s practice from the beginning of our career until our last show in May. Praying centers you to the performance you are about to do and makes you perform better. And inviting Providence to participate in the show is always a great thing. And gratitude is always good. * * * Please join me in these workshops I have scheduled. 1) Photography Workshop in Dumaguete on Saturday, Nov. 20. Meeting place at AVR-Grade School Dept. St. Paul’s University. It will be from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fee includes lunch, certificate. Please call Chinky at 0916-4305626. 2) Basic Photography Class on Saturday, Nov. 27, from 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Cost is P3,500. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com. 3) Songwriting Class: Learn the rudiments of songwriting. Learn what makes a good song. And yes, actually write songs during the workshop and after. Dec. 4 and 5, 1 to 6 p.m. Student must play guitar or piano. Fee: P5,000. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com.
Posted on November 21, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated November 21, 2010 12:00 AM 
I am writing from Dumaguete where I have spent practically all my waking moments this week with young songwriters and my not-so-young colleagues who have gathered here at the Bahura Resort and Spa to conduct a workshop. It’s been quite a week. Our wonderful benefactor, Jun Sy’s Taos-Puso Foundation, has picked up the tab for the entire project. 7101-Music Nation, the music arm of the foundation, thought of this unique workshop they call ‘”The 1st Elements National Songwriting Camp” that has brought young guns and accomplished mentors together to learn, enjoy each other’s company and be inspired. There are 60 young songwriters who came from all over the Philippines, and two Fil-Ams. All were chosen after auditioning an original composition online before a screening committee. Aside from Ryan Cayabyab and myself, the mentors are Louie Ocampo, Jonathan Manalo, Noel Cabangon, Gary Valenciano, Gary Granada, Angelie Valenciano, JV Colayco, Ricky Ilacad, Quark Henares, Debbie Gaite, Jimmy Antiporda, Chito Miranda, Ebe Dancel, Gabby Alipe, Joey Ayala, Joey Benin, Yael Yuzon, Jungee Marcelo, Trina Belamide, Top Suzara and many others who talked about various aspects of songwriting. The topics included the history of the Kundiman, the birth of OPM, the elements of songs, the making of song videos, the legal aspects of commercial writing, electronic and digital media, and a whole lot more. It has been a continuously fun and inspiring experience for everyone since the first day of the workshop. In fact, the camaraderie started immediately after our first dinner on the beach on Monday night when people spontaneously broke into dancing and partying accompanied by a percussion band. And the sessions had not even started yet. When we got to the sessions the next day, things got even more exciting. The creative energy charged the room; the sharing of insights, the performances, the sincere interaction between people in the same profession just blew everyone away. Artists can be fun, but they can also be perplexing. They can be magical and yet cynical, cerebral yet emotional, and quite moody. They can be light and funny, but can turn serious in a snap. They can be both generous and selfish. But I saw none of this duality playing out in this workshop, at least, not in any big or disruptive way. There were no oversized egos running amuck, not even disagreements that could tear the conference apart. Many times, we found ourselves close to tears listening to each other’s songs. There is something so plaintively simple yet disarming about listening to composers sing their material in acoustic form. Songs that are usually heard in commercial CD form were presented in their naked rawness, devoid of the glitzy perfect sound of a full orchestra and great singers, accompanied only by a solo guitar or a piano. The sparseness was pure delight. I was watching something so natural presented in its basic truthfulness. Nothing added, no frills, no distractions, non-fat and sugar-free. No embellishments whatsoever. In the presence of such magnificent talent, I found myself simply saying “thank you” for these moments of abundance. It was like tapping into the very source of a power that, although high voltage by nature, embraces you without hurting you. Instead of a lightning flash that turns you into toast, it is a loving light that heals. And these artful emotional expressions culled from personal experience and often conceived, midwifed and paid for by their creators dearly, with pain and rejection, were performed unabashedly with full gusto and equally received with intense appreciation and gratitude. In one exercise, the participants were told to collaborate with four other people and create a song in the genres assigned to them. They drew lots choosing among the categories of love songs, novelty, inspirational and nationalistic. They had less than 24 hours to write the melody and lyrics and rehearse to present a decent performance. Now, one thing I know is that it is difficult and thus rare for songwriters to work together in groups of more than two. A song is a living thing and it is takes extraordinary patience for a songwriter to get into primal creative mode while having to listen to other people’s take on how it should be done. In a similar type of workshop I attended about 20 years ago at the Sundance Ranch in Utah where artists from all over the world were instructed to work together in groups, one artist expressed his exasperation by declaring, quite succinctly, “An ‘artist committee’ is a contradiction in terms!” But things turned out differently in the Dumaguete workshop. Disparate people versed in different genres just naturally “volted in” and got the job done with a minimum of tension, while having lots of fun in the process. The final outcomes were pure ear candy. It was wonderful to hear great songs coming from group effort. At mealtimes and during free periods, it was exhilarating to see the Manila artists, though more “polished,” more self-conscious and more famous, easily bonding with their fellow songwriters from other parts of the country. But what amazed me no end was how many of these young artists had al-ready pretty much defined their sounds even before being signed by record labels. Their work sounded like it was created by people who do not listen to the radio or watch shows on the mainstream media like ABS-CBN. I mean this in a good way. Their music is not derivative of anything that has been playing on radio in the past 10 years, so different from the work of the commercial artists who have dominated the airways. Their music reflects the culture instead of subverting it, the way cutting-edge artists do. Could it be that there are among this intrepid motley crew, “organic” artists like Bob Dylan or the Beatles were in their milieu, who will set the pace of culture instead of chasing existing trends? What an exciting thought. Songwriting, in the entire scheme of all things cultural in the Philippines, is a hand we Filipinos have yet to play really well. Whereas in other more culturally enlightened countries, songwriters and composers are appreciated enough to be given their rightful material rewards, here, artists are just starting to get some recognition. I was already around when music originators were paid as low as P250 for compositions that they signed away completely and absolutely, never to receive any royalties from the work ever again. Many of the songwriters who wrote the soundtrack of our Filipino life and times have remained poor or died penniless despite their valuable contributions to our culture. It is quite encouraging that things are getting better for songwriters. We now earn royalties in a more regular and systematic way through a collection organization called Filscap. Composers are starting to reap benefits that their predecessors never enjoyed. This is one reason I feel less guilty about inspiring young musicians to pursue their hearts’ passion, compared to how I felt years ago when things seemed dire and hopeless. We have shown the world that we have some of the best singers on the planet. Everywhere you go, you will find Filipino bands playing in top clubs and they are generally considered to be very good. Perhaps it’s time to show that we have something more to contribute to world culture, apart from our musicians. I believe we have come of age and we should now be playing and singing our own songs, not only in our country but elsewhere in the world. I just know that among these 60 songwriters, there are those whose songs you will someday hear being sung in places outside the Philippines. They are original and creative enough to make songs that will click with an international audience, the way other artists in other countries have made their music appreciated by the world. # # # 1) Basic Photography Class on Saturday, Nov. 27, from 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Cost is P3,500. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com. 2) Songwriting Class: Learn the rudiments of songwriting. Learn what makes a good song. And yes, actually write songs during the workshop and after. Dec. 4 and 5, 1 to 6 p.m. Student must play guitar or piano. Fee: P5,000. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com.
Posted on October 30, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated October 31, 2010 12:00 AM ) The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. — Albert Einstein I am often captivated, awed and fascinated by the great mysteries, the unknowable, the unanswerable questions that challenge us from time to time. These questions have the ability to stalk and nag us. They challenge us then leave us stumped. It is almost as if our spirit goes into a fit, screams these great questions and then waits for an answer which is supposed to come from paying attention to everything and anything that happens — the wind blowing, the silence that is deafening, the darkness that blinds our eyes, and the deeper darkness where our soul sometimes finds itself. We can ask for guidance from others who are wiser than us, and it is sometimes given, and we have enough satisfaction to silence our restless spirits — but only for a while. Often, the answers to these questions are ours alone to figure out. And they demand a lot before answers are given. They want us to feel the isolation and alienation of the dark night of the soul before they are revealed. To my mind, these tumultuous periods come when our spirit gets bored with our existence and wants the earthly ride it is taking with us to be more exciting. I once read a description of spirituality as something that is not “suburban” in feel, but more like a “wilderness.” It is definitely not a paved road. And it is not given to us pre-chewed or processed. We are supposed to figure it out ourselves. That is the spiritual journey, and woe to those who are called to take it amid much pain and suffering. Sometimes, the important questions come rushing at us in the midst of inexplicable, unfathomably tragic situations we find other people (and sometimes even ourselves) in. Tsunamis, floods, calamities of all kinds, great tragedies, senseless acts of violence and hate inflicted on the innocent and undeserving — such cataclysmic events can animate these questions from the depths and stare back at us, wanting answers. In the midst of chaos and mayhem, we find ourselves asking: Why does God allow such horrible things to happen? And how can God not prevent them when innocent lives are involved? Is there a God? If so, what are all these senseless, crazy tragedies telling us about God? Throughout history many have asked these questions and have gotten various answers. And always, the answers they have intuited pretty much described, summarized and solidified the core of their belief system and the kind of God they believed in. There are those who take solace in the idea of a “punishing God.” There are some Christian fundamentalist pastors in the US who subscribe to the belief that tragic events like the World Trade Center bombing in New York happened because God was punishing America for its sins, notably those committed by gays and lesbians, drug users and those who engage in abortion and sexual promiscuity. Others ascribe to the “explanation” that God’s will is too hard to comprehend because we are only human. As the saying goes, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” We may not understand it but everything happens for our own good. To be honest, I have never found comfort in this. It doesn’t explain anything. There was a time when, searching for an answer to why bad things happen to good people, I was prompted to write a book that led me to meander into the spiritual world. And yet I only wrote around four pages in which I directly tried to answer my original question. I do not presume that my answer will provide solace to anyone except myself. But in my own journey, this is how my soul read the configuration that life seems to have presented as “the answers.” First of all, I believe there is a God. And in my lucid moments I know that there is nothing that is not God manifesting Him/Herself. Why? Because everything comes from God. And this is easier to accept when we don’t judge immediately. And yes, God allows horrible things to happen. In fact, God may even be causing some of these tragedies. But why does He/She do it when God is love and all that? Let me just point out that perhaps we have been reading life wrong all along. Human existence is not the main gift that God cares for. As spirit, we have been around, even before we were born as humans, and we will be around after we die — for eternity. Our human life is a mere blip in the field of time around the vast timelessness. Our lives are like little boats tossing in the ocean and they are not the main thing. The ocean is the big story. But our problem is, we see ourselves in the small boat instead of the vastness of consciousness that is the ocean itself. It’s a case of mistaken identity. The greater gift of God is the timelessness and eternal spirit and consciousness that precedes and follows human life. This is why life, and all its material goodies, and the physical attributes of the human body are all perishable. They don’t really matter in the end. If they did, they would have been made to last forever. The great questions are meant to awaken us to our bigger identity — our timelessness and eternal spirit. And these questions often surface when our small earthly self is threatened. Have you noticed how we become bigger and better persons when tragedy strikes? We share our material gifts as if they are of no value because we wake up (if only temporarily) to the bigger truth that they are really of no value. Don’t get me wrong. I celebrate life and all its blessings. But I also understand that all these — including what we call bad and good and everything in between — are manifestations of The Timeless Entity at play in the field of time. When my wife Lydia was diagnosed with cancer seven years ago, I tried to understand why God would do such a thing to us. After much reflection, I intuited that the physical “us” that was asking the question and complaining was not the bigger entity that is eternal. That epiphany affected me profoundly. It is a realization that I have to process often to help me cope with all the crazy stuff going on in this vale of tears. But when I am awake, my crazy spirit can shout a hearty “Praise God” with authenticity, in acknowledgment of everything that happens in my earthly existence — the good, the bad and whatever. I won a new car in a raffle. Praise God! A relative I love died. Praise God! It’s crazy. But it all makes sense in the larger scheme of things, since everything is spirit manifesting in whatever way it wants to. Whatever shows up is coming from the same source. * * * 1) Photography Workshop in Dumaguete on Nov. 20. Meeting place at AVR-Grade School Dept. St Paul’s University. It will be from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fee includes lunch, certificate. Please call Chinky at 0916-4305626 2) Advanced photo class in Manila on Nov. 13. This will be held outdoors. It’s a walking class. Venue to follow. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com. 3) Basic Photography Class on Nov. 26, 2010 from 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Cost is P3,500. Call 426-5375 or 0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com. On becoming a man
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated October 17, 2010 12:00 AM I am reading the book Wild at Heart by John Elredge who writes about how men today are not being raised the way men should be raised. Men these days, he says, are too soft, too weak of character and too shallow. Generally, Elredge asserts, men of this generation and all the generations after World War Two, are failing the substance test. Men today, probably because of how their equally weak and lost fathers have raised them, have lost the grit, the courage, the passion and the long-distance runner dedication to be true to the causes they believe in. This intriguing book, recommended by a psychologist friend, is a very interesting read for someone who is a) a man, and b) a father to a son. He laments the fact that many boys have been emasculated by the society that has raised them. Every day, schools, families and society in general, assault the rough, strong and active masculine energy that is innate in boys. It is a control issue. There is too much taming and domesticating going on, resulting in boys that are too “nice” because they have been denied an outlet for their innate roughness. Elredge points out that more than raising boys to be nice and decent, we must also allow them to feel that they are “dangerous,” which, he says, is one of the strong essential points that comprise male energy. He relates how his son felt when they wrestled and the boy cut his father’s lip. Elredge says that after the initial shock of seeing blood on his lips, and upon hearing him say it was all right, he saw his son strut — not just walk out — but strut out of the room in triumph. And that was good. There are three symbolic things a man must do to be a man, Elredge writes: “A man must fight a battle, go on an adventure and get the girl.” Reading this, memories of my childhood role playing came back to me, dressed as Davy Crocket with my air gun, or Jim Bowie with my authentic Bowie knife, I explored the empty lot beside our house in Cubao, in search of wild animals I could kill. I also loved to go camping, building a fire and cooking the small birds I had shot down.
I cut myself a few times while playing with knives as a Boy Scout. I had fistfights in school. I even shot myself accidentally with my own air gun but I never told my mom about it because she would surely confiscate my gun. I also played with dangerous things like firecrackers. I was quite adept at tying knots with a rope, a scout’s skill I took seriously. Once I attempted to swing from one tree to another using a rope and got a bad case of “rope burn” because I could not really carry my own weight. My palms were scraped and raw, and were unusable for almost a week.
All of the above, I suppose, are enough testimony to the adventure part of Elredge’s checklist on being a man. The “getting the girl” part was something I did quite well once I got over my initial shyness. I must have kissed my first girl at around nine or 10 years old. Even at that age, I felt I was on cloud nine. A large part of it must have been about “male conquest,” that primal feeling where you sense that you are as manly as you could ever be, even as a boy. If I could shoot a bird, I could get a girl! And in life, it isn’t just one girl. The whole idea of conquest is mythological and large. The ritual of dating and all that it entails has many implications on becoming an adult male. One is really in search of the woman to whom a man can be a hero. My “fighting a battle” experience came in college. While it is true that as young boys, we fight many small battles like shyness, discipline and the “devil” as we try to control our urge to sexually express ourselves solitarily, the real battle for me began in college with my political awakening. This was expressed in small skirmishes with authority by joining demonstrations against the Marcos government and speaking out against martial law. The battle was a long one that seemed to culminate in EDSA in 1986, but it continues to this day. Elredge writes about how a man can retake his manhood and be a more complete person. Every man, he says, is wounded as he is growing up. It is a wound that can slay his true masculinity, the power source, and makes him aim lower, or not at all, cower before the challenge of life, or even fall into addiction. Pornography is popular, he says, because it is one way a man “gets the girl.” But it is a false promise that, in many ways, a man pays too high a price for because he risks being addicted to it and ends up feeling more emasculated after. Men are looking for the answer, and they think it is in women. But while a woman can validate a man, she can also invalidate him. And so, he suggests that perhaps women may not be the “one” who can bestow on men the hero status that they crave. There is a strong Christian orientation to this book. It has a lot of scriptural quotations that do not exactly appeal to me. But I can relate with Elredge’s idea of boys being raised to be too “nice,” safe and not feeling “dangerous” enough. It is certainly something worth pondering. When sons bond with their fathers, they talk and do more daring, challenging things than when they interact with their moms. I liked the idea of delaying my son’s circumcision until he was 11 because it was a clear initiation, a ritual that separated him from the younger boys. It was a physically painful threshold he crossed and that was good for him. Physical breakthroughs are important because they tell a boy that he has what it takes to be a man. Since my son was eight years old, we would often race when we saw an open field, and I would beat him, of course. But it was really just a matter of time before he grew big enough and the day he beat me, he had something to crow about. And he sure did! I remember how he once showed a lot chutzpah in challenging himself to learn the lead guitar parts of the song Ventura Highway on the first day he held a guitar. He still had to learn his first chords and he was already aiming for the hard stuff. He asked me to play it a few times even when I repeatedly told him the song was way beyond his league. To my great surprise, the kid stayed up all night and proudly played it flawlessly before me the next morning! I would often tell him that physical discomfort, like lack of a heater during brownouts, walking long distances, or missing a meal was good because it helped build character. My wife on the other hand would always make sure all her children were safe, fed and comfortable. I guess that’s where masculine and feminine energies play out differently, as they should. Masculinity is about exploration, extension, conquest, while femininity is about comfort, relating intimately and keeping things within boundaries. In my view, a man must honor both energies since in truth he possesses both of them. A man needs to be both dangerous and nice, bold and sensitive, and tough and soft, when needed. In this age when society works to make things very safe for children, it is important that fathers and mothers do not deny their sons their natural expression of masculine adventures. Sure, boys must be guided and disciplined but it is not enough that we raise them to be just moral and decent. We need them to be passionate about life as well. We need bold and tough men (and women, too!) to tackle the bold and tough battles that humanity must face in the new world. * * * Workshops 1) Creative For Life Workshop (Two-Day Run). This used to run for six separate sessions. Now it is compressed to two days but still with the same punch and impact you will feel for life. This will be held on Oct. 23 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and Oct. 24 (1:30 to 5 p.m.). Fee is P5,000. Visit http://tappingthecreativeuni-verse.com for FAQ, syllabus and testimonials. Call 426-5375, 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie. Write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for questions and reservations. 2) Basic Photo Workshop in Dumaguete on Nov. 20. A day in the outdoors! Call 0916-4305626 for details and reservations.
Posted on October 10, 2010 by jimparedes
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated October 10, 2010 12:00 AM
What a weekend it was.?In just a few hours, cyberspace was abuzz with comments on the issue of Reproductive Health. The President’s expressed support for family planning, which he affirmed at a town hall meeting in the US, put the Philippine bishops on DEFCON 3. They were angry, armed and ready for war.
Government’s desire to curb population growth has always been met with outright hostility from the Catholic Church. Each time the issue has been brought up, the entire cabal of Church spokesmen from the CBCP and the clergy are ordered to read pastoral letters spewing threats and imagined dire consequences about the Filipinos’ impending moral decline if any method of birth control, apart from the natural, is encouraged. P-Noy’s insistence on challenging the stand of the Philippine church and doing the practical thing is the proverbial straw that has broken the camel’s back. And they have attacked him with everything they’ve got. How dare he support something so unconscionable and despicable? Doesn’t he know it is against the law of God? Why doesn’t government give our people jobs instead of condoms? Besides, do we really have a population problem? They even delved into conspiracy theory. This, they said, clearly has something to do with the CIA and the $400 million Millennium Development Fund he received from the US government, which supports its own pharmaceutical companies that make all these evil birth control devices to control the fertility of third world countries. In short, they threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at P-Noy. They also threatened mass actions and a civil disobedience campaign against the government. And finally, the head of the CBCP casually dropped what must have been intended to stop the President in his tracks: the grave threat of excommunication. Almost simultaneously, as the chatter built up in cyberspace, rising like the floods of Ondoy, tour guide and artist Carlos Celdran pulled his stunning “Damaso” caper right before the CBCP hierarchy during an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral. At this point, cyberspace, TV news, and everyone’s conversation became riveted completely on the topic and the conversation reached fever pitch. The series of events that transpired last weekend was a deadly brew boiling in a piping-hot cauldron with three of the most potently explosive ingredients one can think of — politics, sex and religion thrown in together. What could possibly come out of this toxic mix that would provide nourishment? At best, it produced the most painful and acrimonious discussions among the faithful, many of whom expressed disappointment at the simplistic argumentation of the men of their Church. People throughout history have gone to war many times over politics, religion and sex. From the Crusades to the World Wars, civilizations have clashed over these issues. Which is not surprising at all since these topics which can be reduced, at their basic essence, to one word: power. It is life’s greatest obsession. In this case, P-Noy is exercising the power granted him by the people to create measures that will ease aspects of our lives, specifically outcomes relating to our sexual activities, and their relation to poverty and environmental ruin. The Church, on the other hand, is using its power by flexing its muscles and threatening P-Noy to make sure he toes the Church line so government does not offer the people any choice with regard to their own fertility control, except the natural method that the Church propagates — albeit half-heartedly. For as long as family planning has been debated here, I have yet to see a full campaign by the Church to disseminate information on natural methods in the scale that it is well capable of doing. The people, whom government and the Church claim to help, protect and nurture, are also exercising their power. At this juncture in our history, they are clearly appreciative of government finally standing up to the Church on the issue of family planning. If you don’t believe me, look up the results of the surveys, both scientific and anecdotal, that have been conducted in the past five years. In the age of people power, greater democratization, and unbridled, open information, it is patently dictatorial, even fascistic, to deny people the right to judge for themselves what is best for their own individual life situations. It also smacks of a medieval mindset to deny the science and effectiveness of, say, condoms in preventing pregnancies and protecting people from HIV. I really wonder how the Pope could proclaim that condoms are porous and thus ineffective, in effect using his moral authority to propagate misinformation and thereby condemning the populations of HIV-infected poor countries to the risk of infection. It is not rocket science to see that there is something factually wrong with this statement. It also doesn’t take a psychiatrist to recognize the unbridled exercise of moral power at work here to instill guilt and fear among unthinking and unquestioning people. While I respect people who follow the Church line on natural family planning, I have a problem when they cannot respect the rights of those who disagree with them, and then seek to deny those people the right to choice. There is so much breast-beating in the Church about being “pro-life.” But I sometimes wonder if they are really “pro-life” or just “pro-birth”? Aside from the charity work the Church does, there is hardly any talk coming from them about real solutions to national problems relating to hunger, homelessness, malnutrition, lack of educational opportunities, joblessness and environmental degradation that a runaway population has wrought on us and continues to do so. While it is true that corruption in high places has and continues to ravage our poor, it is intellectual dishonesty, and a militant denial of reality, to be dismissive and say it is all the government’s fault that so many people are poor and live wretched lives, and then condemn government when it explores solutions that will empower people to ease their lives through family planning. The “Damaso” incident at the Manila Cathedral sheds a lot of light on what has been going on since the time of Rizal to the present. There is something Damasonic about how the bishops are handling this issue of reproductive health. And we, the Filipino people, are caught in a religion which on one hand manifests as oppressive, medieval and superstitious, but also open, and humanly liberating on the other — depending on the issue. Many of my younger priest friends are pained by the pronouncements of the bishops and have quietly expressed this through texts and veiled and cryptic Facebook and Twitter messages. I can only wish that more of them were handling Church policies. I have often wondered why the Church can be so open and enlightened on many social issues but so irrational when it comes to sex. I do not want to open a can of worms here, but the pitched Internet chatter over the weekend makes one thing clear — that there is great wisdom in the principle of the separation of Church and State. As someone wise and compassionate once said: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and render to God what is God’s.” * * * Announcing the following workshops you may want to attend. 1) “Jim Paredes Second Songwriting Workshop.” What makes a good song? I will teach you the basics of songwriting and actually challenge my students to try their hand at it. Students must play an instrument such as guitar or piano. Workshop is on Oct. 9 and 10 from 1 to 6 p.m. Fee is P5,000. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. 2) Are your pictures a hit-or-miss experience? Learn everything you need to know about your camera so you don’t just point and shoot. Must have a DSLR Camera. “Basic Photography Workshop” is on Oct. 16 from 1 to 6:30 p.m. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Fee is P3,500. 3) This used to run for six separate sessions. Now it is compressed to two days but still with the same punch and impact you will feel for life. “Creative For Life: The Two-Day Run” is on Oct. 23 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and Oct. 24 (1:30 to 5 p.m.). Fee is P5,000. Visit tappingthecreative-universe.com for FAQ, syllabus and testimonials. Call 426-5375, 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie. Write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for questions and reservations. Posted on October 02, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated October 03, 2010
 A bustling city teeming with millions of people and cramped into a small space. It is a land of contrasts. Every part is full of life as people go about their business. There are the few rich people who glitter as they cruise luxuriously on the streets with their big cars. One also sees the working class wage earners and the students packed in trains, buses and all manner of transportation on their way to work or school. But one sees more of the plain drab and dirty poor people who loiter around selling stuff, any stuff, begging or doing whatever is possible as they try to eke out a living in any way they can. There is perennial traffic and it is almost always heavy, tiring one’s patience as it saps a lot of one’s energy while sitting and waiting for the lights to turn green. These are scenes we see in our cities daily. I’m not talking of Manila per se, mind you. This could be happening in many other cities — Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, New York, New Delhi, Bangkok, etc. Consider that in the past few weeks, Manila’s residents were shaken by the bus hostage crisis, the rioting that followed the demolition of squatter homes at the North Triangle and southern end of EDSA, the law exams bombing at La Salle on Taft Avene. Last year, there was Ondoy. On a smaller scale, we are unexpectedly harassed by seemingly insignificant events such as sudden flash floods, Baclaran day, “midnight madness” mall sales. etc. that also cause some havoc in our daily living. When things like this happen, it seems like every Filipino and his mother are jolted out of their comfort zones and are forced to watch or listen to all forms of media — radio, TV and the social networking sites — to adjust their schedules and lives accordingly. In a way, big cities all over the world have become very much like Gotham City of Batman fame. The run of daily life can and often gets disrupted, altered, shaken, stirred and disturbed in many little ways but sometimes in big shocking ways. Think of Rolando Mendoza, terrorists or any villain of the moment, and then think of Gotham City’s various nemeses — The Joker, Riddler, Penguin, or any other villain that Batman has to fight, and you will see the striking similarities. Think of Osama Bin Laden bombing the World Trade Center with passenger planes in New York City, or Timothy McVeigh launching his deadly terrorist assault in Oklahoma, or extremists blowing up trains in Madrid and London. Imagine Tokyo paralyzed due to Sarin gas poisoning in its subways perpetrated by some religious cult. “Holy crap!” one is tempted to exclaim, like Batman’s sidekick Robin would probably do in real… er… reel life. The sheer size of the city and the number of people one can affect by doing something disruptive like a hostage taking or a bombing is a setting for the perfect storm desired by publicity seekers. As the Joker said in the latest Batman flick, The Dark Knight, “Gotham City always brings a smile to my face.” Why? Because it is a megalopolis sprawled out and set up for the shocking, the jarring and the diabolical intentions and acts of any committed villain! In this age when the lives of the great masses of people can be severely affected by a few dangerous loonies, like Gotham City residents, people are looking for leaders who can offer quick deliverance when great disruptions happen. These are powerful, skillful operators who are daring enough to take chances to normalize situations. For sure, the SWAT team and the PNP are not the people I am talking about, as of now. Neither are Mayor Lim, USEC Puno and the other incompetent clowns who mishandled the hostage crisis. They will need a lot more training, commitment and a greater sense of personal responsibility to be able to untangle messes such as the Rolando Mendoza caper, with dispatch and accuracy. For sure, the extreme negative reaction of the public to all that bungling is pointing to a clamor for a new type of governance. And this is where P-Noy and his people should be paying attention. Everyone knows that our new president is a nice, decent guy, and that is a good start. But what most everyone is expecting is that he should also be able to solve problems immediately and satisfactorily. In other words, not only must P-Noy be of good moral character, of which there is already a consensus, but he must also be decisive, efficient and fearless. Nice is nice, but he should be more. I notice that for those who rabidly campaigned for P-Noy, it’s a roller coaster ride every few days. When the President does something good, they cheer and praise him with much enthusiasm. But when they feel he has made a wrong decision, or there is perceived inaction or fault on his part, there is much criticism and disappointment. He is, for all intents and purposes, the hope that everyone is looking at right now. Just like Batman in Gotham City, the citizens’ expectations of P-Noy to succeed are very high. And with practically every aspect of life in the Philippines begging for major reforms, people expect much and are ready to support a leader who will be fearless in doing what needs to be done. The President is getting much support on the issue of family planning by standing up to the age-old opposition of the Church and declaring that it is government’s duty to offer choices to the people. But on the De Lima report, it remains to be seen whether he will show real leadership by ordering heads to roll — including those of his closest friends — as he has promised, or cave in to friendship and be soft and forgiving. His fans await a principled decision with bated breath. But here’s some advice from the TV Batman as he made his closing statements during the trial of The Joker, which might be good for P-Noy to heed: “In the interests of law, order, justice, good fellowship and the flag, you must convict them to keep our streets safe from evil persons. Thank you.” Truly, it is hard to run Gotham City and please all of its residents all of the time. But P-Noy has promised a lot and people believe in him. Is he the Batman that will deliver us from the craziness that engulfs our Gotham existence? Let us hope he and more people like him can free us from the dark night. As a citizen of Gotham once said, “Bless you, Batman. Every law-abiding citizen of Gotham City goes with you today in spirit.” That’s what a lot of our people pray every day. * * * I am offering three workshops this October: 1) Jim Paredes 2nd Songwriting. Workshop on Oct. 9 and 10 from 1 to 6 p.m. Fee is P5,000. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Visit 2) Basic Photography Workshop on Oct. 16, from 1 to 6:30 p.m. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Fee is P3,500. 3) Creative For Life: The Two-Day Run on Oct. 23 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and Oct. 24 (1:30 to 5 p.m.).Fee is P5,000. Call 426-5375, 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie. Write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for questions and reservations.
Posted on September 26, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated September 26, 2010 12:00 AM
 I have always been a believer in democracy. The clans I come from the Misas and Paredeses are intensely politically opinionated and have always had democratic leanings. A great many of us were anti-martial law activists. We expressed our indignation at the Marcos regime in various ways, to the point that members of my family were incarcerated. Democracy, as EDSA and other events have shown us, is something we Filipinos have repeatedly and collectively expressed a desire for. There is a strong egalitarian constituency in our country that believes in equal justice and equal opportunity for men and women, rich and poor. And I think that is a good thing. Sadly though, while this constituency can be easily coaxed into voting for certain candidates in every election, it has been largely unserved by the candidates they elect, and by appointed officials. I must confess this makes me doubt my belief in democracy, sometimes. Today, I want to talk about egalitarianism and democracy, not to extol, praise or defend them but to point out what I feel are their annoying flaws. While I have always chosen the democratic approach to everything, I have to admit that I can be a complete snob in many ways. To declare oneself as a bit of a snob can hardly be construed as egalitarian. Visions of Marie Antoinette and her unguardedly contemptuous statement urging the masses to “eat cake” when there was not enough bread to feed the poor, easily come to mind. No, I am not in any way charmed by her insensitive rhetoric. But yes, I risk being misunderstood by declaring myself a snob at the outset. One can be a snob in many ways. And some of them may be healthy. I am far from being of the bejeweled, perfumed elitists that often come to mind when we think of the word. But I am a snob when it comes to my taste in music, TV shows, food, or almost any craze that the rest of the world goes for. For example, I may initially like a song or a musical group or talent, but the moment the world discovers and goes gaga over them, that’s the kiss of death as far as I am concerned. I almost immediately distance myself and change my allegiance. The easiest way to turn me off is to try and sell me something by saying it is the latest craze or fad. The only way I will subscribe to something is when I know I am one of the first to do so. So it is not hard to imagine that I was an early Mac user in a PC world and one of the first to have an iPhone, iPod, iPad and other such delightful gadgets. It’s not so much about brand loyalty but more of being ahead of everyone else in discovering the next big thing. I am thankful that some of my favorite musical artists like Caetano Veloso and Joyce have not gone mainstream in the Philippines. Otherwise, I would have a hard time professing my undying love for them. But being a professed snob notwithstanding, I can spot trends, and know quite often when something will make it or not. I can read trends even if I do not always subscribe to them. In politics, for example, I have been largely successful in predicting who gets elected, and knowing which issues will catch on with the public. My annoyance with egalitarian practice is not that it gives the unconnected, nondescript poor the opportunity to join, participate and lift themselves up from poverty. As a matter of fact, I praise that and wish there was more of this going on in our democracy. What gets my goat is the crazy idea that everyone, the unthinking, the idiotic, “even the dull and the ignorant” (as described in “Desiderata”) can have their voices heard, and yes, even taken seriously. Now, that can really make me want to rethink the idea of democracy. Just look at the chismis shows and much of the stuff on TV. On cable, there are the Jerry Springers, Howard Sterns and a lot of what passes as entertainment or what is supposedly “media-worthy.” Ironically, the hallowed concept of freedom of expression can and often manifests as shock TV, scandals and hyped-up mediocrity. It belies the value of democracy as a noble system of uplifting the masses, portraying it instead as a circus attraction. The people we really need to be hearing from, the unique and exceptional talents, crystalline thinkers, creators of astounding beauty, and people with deep but practical perceptions are exceptions in every society, whether democratic or not, and are hardly ever heard. They are the precious grains taken from tons of chaff. They are society’s crown jewels. In short, they are the true elites, rare and valuable human assets whose gift of brilliance should be shared with everyone. Do you see many of them in media? Of course not. Media executives will point out that there is little demand for them. The media have long subscribed to the monetary value of the shallow circus masters than the cultural value of the true elites who have something great to contribute. The result is that ordinary viewers can now hardly recognize TV fare that can elevate.
In other words, they have been anaesthetized into a stupor that they can hardly detect, much less appreciate good taste, breeding, intelligent points of view when they encounter them. I once asked a top TV executive who was so ratings-driven that it hardly mattered to him how shows in his station were selling warped values if he would give Jesus a show were He to suddenly show up. He looked at me with great annoyance and disdain. While a circus may be entertaining, it would be good to balance this with exposure to other kinds of shows, books, ideas, events that stimulate the spirit, mind and senses and give audiences a higher sense of awe and thus be inspired. I say give the “elites” more exposure. We should be hearing and watching more of them. We need people who are distinguished because of their depth of intelligence and talent. They have something important to share that can change and elevate us. They are the salt of the earth. They spice up our lives. We need more people like Cheche Lazaro and Winnie Monsod. More National Artists exposed on TV. More museums, libraries and less malls. More servant leaders like Jesse Robredo and Leila de Lima instead of the trapos that inhabit many government posts. We need elites from the academe, showbiz, arts, politics, media, sports and religious sectors to expand our sense of what is possible for us as a society and as a nation. “Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance,” wrote James Conant. And I appreciate democracy when it does exactly this. I am hoping more Pinoys become “snobs” and show appreciation for the brilliant and the true instead of the dubious, scandalous and mediocre elite. We must choose our icons and beacons if we want to go up notches higher than where we are now. * * * 1) Jim Paredes 2nd Songwriting Workshop on Oct. 9 and 10 from 1 to 6 p.m. Fee is P5,000. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. 2) Basic Photography Workshop on Oct. 16, from 1 to 6:30 p.m. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. 3) Creative For Life: The Two-Day Run on Oct. 23 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and Oct. 24 (1:30 to 5 p.m.). Call 426-5375, 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie. Write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for questions and reservations.
Posted on September 26, 2010 by jimparedes] By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated September 26, 2010 12:01 AM 
MANILA, Philippines – For a travel destination to be something to crow about, it has to have many things going for it. For one, it has to have infrastructure to accommodate visitors. Two, it has to have people who are hospitable and friendly. Three, it has to have great cuisine. Four, it has to have fantastic sights and events. Five, it has to be safe. And six, it has to offer a wonderful shopping experience. I can say with no reservations that Thailand has all of the above in abundance. And for exotic uniqueness, it even has a King!
I recently visited Thailand as a guest of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) whose marketing representative for the Philippines is Dave De Jesus. I was there for a tourism trade show — where buyers and sellers of tour packages meet and connect to do business — with other writers Stefanie Cabal, JJ San Juan, Jackie Oiga and Buddy Recio. On the first night just a few hours after we arrived on Thai Airways and checked in to the Siam City Hotel, we watched Siam Niramit, an extravaganza in a beautiful cultural complex built just for these events. It was an eye-popping theatrical showcase of Thailand’s history, customs, dance, music, humor and religion presented in all its glory and majesty with marvelous light and sound effects and gimmickry rivaling Las Vegas and Cirque du Soleil. With a cast of close to a hundred (not counting the elephants and goats), it was nothing short of spectacular. I was so impressed by it that I told my travel mates that this show alone was already worth a visit to Bangkok. The next day was the official welcome day. The trade show had its usual cocktails and entertainment. The day after was when the trade booths and conferences officially began. Thai tourism officials rattled off statistics about the country’s tourism growth rates in the past and their projections for the coming years. They proudly pointed out that Thailand was voted Best Leisure Destination in the Pacific in 2009, and Best City Tourist Destination in 2010 by tour organizations everywhere. Their “Amazing Thailand” branding, as they explained it, seeks to balance monetary and emotional value for tourists. It makes sure that the visitors’ hearts and minds are charmed, and that they are more than satisfied and want to return again. Their aim is to fully captivate tourists with everything the country and people have to offer. The charm offensive seems to be succeeding very well. It is clear that Thailand’s short- and long-term tourism programs are much better thought out and executed than ours in the Philippines and the rest of the region. They have something to offer almost any kind of tourist: golf, water sports, events, conference settings, weddings and honeymoons, medical tourism, film destinations, etc. I could only sigh as they described the giant leaps in their visitor traffic. We Filipinos have a long way to go.
The awesomely imposing Sanctuary of Truth in Pattaya Lately though, they have been leaning heavily on domestic tourism to offset the negative fallout brought about by occasional eruptions of political instability — quite recently, the recent Thaksin-funded rallies that left the Bangkok Central Business District paralyzed and invited negative travel advisories from foreign governments. In the next four days, we went shopping around Bangkok, enjoyed its varied local cuisine, got a luxuriously relaxing massage at the Rarin Jinda Wellness Spa Resort and spent an extra two days in Pattaya, a resort town two hours’ drive by car. Massage is a great tradition in Thailand. It is a well-developed hospitality industry that many visitors enjoy. There are many types of massage — shiatsu, Swedish, Thai, etc., from luxurious ones that cater to tired bodies and (as many tourists know) even erotic ones that offer much more. Even within the trade show, one could get a quick massage to feel re-energized. I had two massages while I was there. The first massage in Bangkok was the traditional Thai massage where one is stretched, pressed, folded, bent and squeezed, and let me tell you, it was wonderfully refreshing. My second massage was in the Pattaya branch of Rarin Jinda. This time, I tried the hot stone treatment. Frankly, I was not ready for the pleasure it gave me. One and a half hours of pure bliss went by so quickly as the masseuse scrubbed a smooth hot stone on my oily body. That experience seems to have moved my pleasure threshold a few notches higher; I am not sure if I can still enjoy any other type of massage the way I used to. I felt like a new person as I walked out to the lobby. The people of Thailand — how can you not love them? They are naturally helpful and hospitable, so eager to please foreigners. Every person you meet, from receptionists to waiters to greeters, vendors, sales ladies — everyone welcomes you with the traditional palms-in-prayer position and with a nasal voice, says “Sawasdee” in greeting. Even this jaded traveler got the feeling that the gestures were mostly heartfelt and genuine. There are also the much-talked-about transvestites of Thailand who are not just tolerated but quite accepted and, sometimes, even admired. We watched the world famous Tiffany show in Pattaya and it was quite entertaining. It had a little bit of can-can, burlesque and Broadway all wrapped up in one big cabaret show. The dolled-up “girls” sashayed, danced and sang onstage, and afterwards, they even greeted the audience and posed for photographs at the lobby. Throughout the performance, I surrendered all doubt and suspended all my disbelief and simply enjoyed the beauty of the “women” parading before me.
Siam Niramit, the theatrical extravaganza is worth going to Bangkok for. I even heard some women in the audience express their insecurity upon seeing the beautiful transvestites. The success of Tiffany’s and shows of this sort which have been going on for years speak volumes about Thai society’s tolerance of all forms of sexuality.
The highlight of the trip for me was visiting the Sanctuary of Truth in Pattaya. It was absolutely breathtaking to see this gigantic wooden palace by the sea that stands majestic but unfinished. Started in 1981 and scheduled to be completed by 2025, this project was conceived and designed by the late Mercedes Benz dealer and Thai millionaire Khun Lek who also built a museum. His children continue the work he began. A team of 250 woodcarvers now works non-stop to make sure every square inch of the palace will have a carving by the time it is finished. As I gazed at the palace, its massive wooden pillars and ornate sculptures, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the magnitude and breadth of the originator’s vision. Buddhas, bodhisattvas, deities, sacred monkeys, Ganesh figures, and many others were abundantly and artistically present everywhere. Surely he knew that the seaside is not an ideal place to construct a wooden palace, considering the effect of the salty sea spray on timber. Which suggested to me that constructing and then preserving the palace may be a never-ending job. There is something poetic and ancient about such an effort. I would not be surprised if the Sanctuary by the Sea becomes a world heritage site. There are a lot of words to describe Thai cuisine and “boring” and “bland” aren’t among them. Thai food runs the gamut of hot to burning hot! It is spicy, rich in taste, texture and aroma. Whether one eats at a market stall, a seaside tourist restaurant, a bus stop, a fast food place or at the Four Seasons Hotel’s Spice Restaurant, the experience is scrumptious, and delivers endless thrills to the palate. There is nothing subtle about Thai food. It screams out loud as if to celebrate the joy of eating. Thai cuisine is simply one of the best in the world. There is a story that the King himself shared the royal recipe with the public, to more or less standardize the taste of Tom Yum, Pad Thai, takho, and other dishes served in Thai restaurants everywhere. I have been to Thailand three or four times before this trip for a one- or two-day stay. I have always found it pleasant but this is one trip when, as a traveler, I have fallen in love with the place. There is so much more to see and experience in Thailand than I ever imagined. Whether it is culture, shopping, eating or clubbing (like we did as we enjoyed a unique and literally freezing bar called Minus 5 in Pattaya), there is something for you. Thailand’s charms manage to work their way deep into a visitor’s being. 
“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living,” wrote the traveler Miriam Beard.
I must say that I am now smitten and I am craving more. * * * For more information, call the Tourism Authority of Thailand at 911-1660 or e-mail tat_mnl@yahoo.com or tat_mnl@pacific.net.ph. Category Uncategorized
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Posted on September 19, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated September 19, 2010 12:00 AM 
My many travels and travails: The author Jim Paredes found himself alone in a train station in Tokyo and couldn’t find an English speaker; in Vienna he rode a bus with lots of “white” tourists; and in Nepal, a shopping bag he left in a shop was returned to him.
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I am an avid traveler. I love the idea of being in a new place. Somehow the world of what is possible becomes infinitely bigger simply because I am in an unfamiliar place. In a setting where millions of people do not know me, and I know practically no one save for my fellow travelers, the air is filled with excitement and potential. Everything is foreign — the language, the currency, the people, the place. Except for the few familiar clothes I have with me, everything is practically a first-time encounter. My room is a hotel room. There are strange accents everywhere and the people I encounter do not share anything with me, except perhaps being human. It is in situations like these where I get fresh insights into humanity. Here are a few discoveries I’ve made during a few travels. Once in Tokyo, I found myself standing alone in a train station, feeling quite lost. I had fallen asleep and missed the station where I was supposed to get off. People were rushing everywhere and I was standing in the midst of this human traffic, unable to comprehend the Japanese signage that told which train went to which destination. Knowing that there are very few Japanese who can speak English, I thought that perhaps I should look for a Caucasian among the crowd to ask for directions. After a few minutes, it was clear that I was probably not going to find an English speaker, and so I went up to a Japanese lady and tried to ask for directions in the best way I could. She smiled and bowed in usual Japanese fashion. I mentioned the station I was going to. By her reaction, it seemed that I was quite far from where I had wanted to be. She promptly took me through two escalators to a different platform and stood with me in silence as we waited for a train. When we saw the train coming, she motioned with her fingers that my stop would be three stations from where we were. I thanked her profusely. It was only after I had entered the train and the door closed that she bade me goodbye and turned around to go where she was going. The whole episode must have delayed her for about 15 minutes. I was quite embarrassed knowing that she must be a busy person like most everyone in Tokyo and yet she took the time to be helpful and accommodating to this foreigner. Her kindness has made Tokyo quite a special city to me. In the late ‘80s, the APO and our wives were traveling through Europe. We were in Vienna where we had just arrived from Germany a few hours earlier. After asking for directions to where we wanted to go, we hopped on a bus. It was quite an experience for the new travelers that we were to be in a bus where everyone was white and looked so different from us. I must admit, we were uneasy being “different” from everyone else on the bus. Matters got more complicated when a bus inspector came and started checking for tickets. We did not know that we should have gotten our tickets before riding the bus. We took out our wallets and, to our embarrassment, we realized that we had not changed currencies since we had just arrived three hours earlier. We tried to explain our situation to the inspector and offered to pay in US dollars or deutschmarks. To our pleasant surprise, people on the bus started taking out coins from their pockets and bags and paid for our tickets. All we could do was show gratitude by smiling and saying thank you. I can never forget that moment because of the kindness people showed to the strangers that we were. It’s hard not to have faith in humanity’s goodness when something like this happens to you. In 1997, my wife and I took an adventure trip to Nepal. We wanted to go to a totally new place where we could just go with the flow of whatever was waiting for us there. We wanted the thrill of seeing and experiencing something that was outside the usual Westernized destinations we had been to. The only assurance we gave ourselves was making sure we checked into a good hotel. If things turned out too rough for comfort, or if worse came to worst, at least we would have a refuge where we would be comfortable. We took a plane from Bangkok and landed in Kathmandu. Kathmandu was quite pleasant actually. On the first day, we found ourselves in the shopping area, a collection of mostly makeshift stalls that sold handicrafts, antiques and curios that Lydia likes. It was quite a charming market that sold what looked like medieval stuff — brass works, old wooden antiques, prayer wheels and, curiously, horns made of human femur. It was exhilarating to be in a place that seemed to be lost in time. Carrying bags of stuff we had bought, we waited for transport to take us back to the hotel. Then we remembered that we had inadvertently left a bag of goods in one of the stores. We turned around and in a rush, we went through the labyrinthine pathways frantically trying to remember where the store was. When we finally found it, the saleswoman was apologetic. She gave us back our bag explaining that she had been looking for us for the past hour. Nepal is not a rich country. In fact, the value of their currency at that time was one half of the peso and the goods were so cheap, even without discounts. We would have charged it to experience if the woman had told us that the bags were not there. And so it was heartwarming to experience the honesty of this humble Nepalese store clerk who made our first visit there extra memorable. Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote that “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” He is absolutely right. And it is those moments when local people in a foreign land break the barriers by showing to visitors things that are familiar and desirable to everyone everywhere — friendliness, honesty, kindness, hospitality. A warm smile can make one feel very welcome. The writer Dagobert D. Runes said it even better: “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” Humanity is the same everywhere. And the marvel of it all is, what we find commonplace at home can be a big deal when we encounter it in some unfamiliar place. Travel makes us awaken to an inner destination that lies within us. We leave home to find it everywhere. * * * Here are four exciting workshops I will be conducting. 1. “Creative For Life workshop” at the Fort (six-session run). Sept. 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 at 7 to 9 p.m. Venue is at Meridian International College, 1030 Campus Ave., 2F CIP Bldg, McKinley Hill, Fort Bonifacio. Call 223-6468, 426-5375. Also call 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for inquiries. 2. Glamour photography — Sept. 25 at 1 p.m., Bulb Studios, Molave Compound, 2231 Pasong Tamo ext. near Nissan and Allied Bank. Call 0917-8974865, 0918-8121967. Models Jean Harn and Che Ram. 3. Jim Paredes 2nd Songwriting Workshop on Oct. 9 and 10 from 1 to 6 p.m. Fee is P5,000. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Call 4265375 or 09168554303 and ask for Ollie. Write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for questions and reservations. 4. Basic Photography Workshop on Oct. 16, from 1 to 6:30 p.m. Address is 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Call 426-5375, 09168554303 and ask for Ollie. Write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for questions and reservations. HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated September 12, 2010 12:00 AM 
Illustration by REY RIVERA
The only positive thing I can say about the hostage- taking crisis is that it has made it clear to us that much of our way of life and governance is severely dysfunctional. For many years now, we have been getting the feeling that there is a new social order waiting to be born but, for some reason, it hasn’t been delivered. This recent international incident has made it clear that the old order is almost beyond repair and we must put the new one that we have been yearning for, into being. And it should be done now. Changes in our society have come way too slowly and in increments. It’s time to speed things up. Many are still hopeful that P-Noy’s ascendancy will change things. At least, we are assured that he is personally not corrupt. But that alone will not change a lot of things. A whole lot more needs to be done, quickly and decisively, if we are to see drastic changes in our country within our lifetime. Although EDSA happened 24 years ago, I believe that it is still playing out. EDSA has many themes: good versus evil, dictatorship vs. democracy, old vs. new, etc. But its meaning and intensity is different for everyone who speaks for it. Clearly there is a great divide between the impressions of a trapo, a sitting politician and the governed. I belong to a group called Artists’ Revolution that is calling for a cultural revolution. We are calling for a change not only in the personalities who govern our country but also in the very structure of our society and the paradigms that run our lives (with the latter being the most important). A cultural revolution will require a radical change of values and mindset that will result in a realignment of priorities at all levels of society, in government and in the way we live our lives. To simplify, here are a few key points that define what we mean by a cultural revolution. 1. Modernization. We need to take many big steps to become a fully modern state. To continue with the present inept and inefficient ways of governance is unsustainable. The system is clearly breaking at the seams. Our people need to be served efficiently. Life in our country, most especially in the urban areas, can get disrupted so easily by floods, traffic and police matters. The system is so fragile that even Baclaran Day or a midnight madness sale in a big mall can cause vehicular gridlock in the city for hours, wasting hundreds of thousands of hours of productivity. Our people are ready for the introduction of, say, a national ID system like they have in Singapore that will facilitate citizens’ transactions not just with government but with banks and other private sector businesses. We responded quite well to commuter trains and automated elections. Many ordinary Filipinos are quite tech savvy and already are living modern lifestyles. But we certainly need a better-trained police force. And yes, we need the Reproductive Health law to manage our population. So much needs to be done. We should be able to adapt quickly to a more systematized way of doing things. Modernization and innovation should be key policies of this government. Modernization is the next big wave as more and more people articulate their desire for greater efficiency, productivity, affluence and comfort. 2. Excellence. As I watched in horror at the bungled attempts by the police to end the hostage crisis, this mantra kept playing in my mind: “Casualness produces casualties.” There was obviously a lack of seriousness in dealing with the situation. Strategies were not well thought out and so the event was not managed properly and it ended tragically. Hindi na pwede ang pwede na. Let us put an end to this culture of mediocrity. Years of a mindset content in delivering (and receiving) the minimum or merely passable quality of goods and services have caught up with us. We have not studied or learned to keep up with the latest in technology, systems and governance. Thus, we discovered to our horror that our so-called SWAT teams are unprepared to deal with an emergency. They have no gas masks, no bulletproof vests, no guidelines, no discipline, no real training. The list is endless. If we begin, each one of us, to personally adopt the discipline of doing our best to deliver world-class services and goods to our countrymen, would certainly put us in a much better place as a nation. For too long we have been content to live with things that are below par, like media content and government services. We have tolerated inaction and even corruption and the general decline in governance. And when we try to explain this to ourselves, we get mired in excuses that no self-respecting people should be using. I particularly hate the phrase, “Only in the Philippines.” It is a patently racist remark, ironically heaped by Filipinos upon themselves. Also, I believe we have long gone past the expiry date of using our colonial past as an excuse. Other countries have had it worse and they are moving past us and progressing towards a quality of life we can only dream of. 3. Pride in being Filipino. This is not the usual platitude we like to hear to feel good about ourselves. This is a survival skill we need if we are to make it in the world. It is important for a people to be grounded in who they are and be comfortable with themselves. Our present damaged culture sends so many wrong signals to our people. I particularly despise those ads that espouse white skin as desirable and a mark of beauty. I also look down on people who laugh at our countrymen when they cannot speak English well. We are Filipinos. It is not only regrettable but a great injustice that many from the educated classes cannot communicate well with a great number of our countrymen in our lingua franca. P-Noy’s frequent use of Pilipino in his public statements will go a long way in changing this anomalous situation. I also have a problem praising, without qualification, Filipino artists who make it big abroad on pure talent alone. Sure, I applaud them for their accomplishments. They certainly deserve the adulation since they are among the world’s best. What I am ranting about is our inability to see the treasure within ourselves. The truth is, we hardly noticed Charice and Arnel and even Lea Salonga when they were singing their lungs out here. Only when America and the UK took notice did we, as a people, give them a second look. Even having said that, I must point out that I believe that if we are to contribute to world culture, we must go in there as ourselves, promoting our own culture. The Brazilians, Jamaicans, Africans and other peoples gave their music to the world in their own languages. We still have to duplicate Freddie Aguilar’s singular success with his song Anak which made it big in Asia and the rest of the world. We already know that the Filipino hardware (talent, ability) is something to crow about. Let us begin to also take pride in our cultural software — our cuisine, our songs, dances, paintings, sculpture, movies, fiestas and cultural themes that comprise who we are. These are just some of the elements that we need in order to fast track our coming into our own as a self-respecting nation and people. It is already beginning to happen in little ways in some areas. But we need a conflagration that will burn down our old paradigms and structures and securely build these new ones. We need a cultural revolution. * * * I will be holding four workshops. Two are in Cebu and two are in Manila. 1) “Creative for Life Workshop” (one-day run) is a cutting-edge course to permanently awaken your creativity. It will be held this Sept. 17 (Friday) 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Convention Center of Cebu. Registration
fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks and lunch. 2) “Basic Photography Workshop (The Second Run)” on Sept. 18 (Saturday) from 1 p.m. – 7 p.m. at Mountain View Nature Park. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks, shuttle back and forth from JY Square. Call (032) 415-8056 or cell number 0909-1112111. Or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for reservations or queries. 3) “Creative For Life workshop” at the Fort (six session run). Sept 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 at 7 to 9 p.m. Venue is at Meridian International College, 1030 Campus Ave., 2F CIP Bldg, McKinley Hill, Fort Bonifacio. Call 223-6468/ 426-5375. Also call 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for inquiries. 4) Glamour Photography—25 September 2010 at 1PM, Bulb Studios, Molave Compound 2231 Pasong Tamo ext. near Nissan and Allied Bank. Call 0917-8974865 and 0918-8121967. Models Jean Harn and Che Ram.  This will be the first time I will run a Glamour Photography session. I will have two other photographers assisting me and two models. This should be fun. The Creative For Life workshop will be running at the Meridian School at the Fort in esponse to requests from people who live closer to this part of town. See you guys!  Cebuanos, here are two workshops for you guys. I GUARANTEE you a great time. This is something you will take home for life! One is a Basic Photography Class and another is a Creative For Life workshop. 
 ‘Awit ng barkada’
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated September 05, 2010 12:00 AM Comments (0) View comments 
We planned the event three weeks earlier and we were glad we did. It was the respite that we all needed after the tragic Quirino Grandstand massacre. We all seriously needed the break, even just to get away for a while from the madness that the crisis had inflicted on the nation. Eight original APO members from high school (Sonny Santiago, Gus Cosio, Tato Garcia, Butch Dans, Danny Javier, Boboy Garovillo, Lito de Joya and myself) decided to take advantage of the long National Heroes’ Day weekend and get together in Tagaytay. With our wives and a common friend Lanelle Abueva, we all bunked in the homes of two members who have weekend residences there. It was something we were doing as a group for the first time going out of town with this many of us in attendance, bringing our wives along and even staying overnight. And it was just great! High school friends are, quite simply, the most enjoyable companions one can have especially at this age. For one, we were part of each others’ wonder years when we experienced our primal moments like first love, first guitar, first kiss, first beer, the transformation of our bodies and the awkwardness and insecurities that accompanied the ugly duckling stages we all went through in puberty. Looking back some 41 years later is sweet and wonderful because we long ago processed all the teenage angst that made us so self-absorbed and perennially “problematic.” We are all in our late 50s now with grown-up children. Some of us even have grandchildren
already. All our impetuousness and adolescent concerns are so charmingly remote, and even irrelevant, except as material for teasing and ribbing. And what a great time we had reliving all those precious moments. Memory is a wondrous thing. What’s amazing is, even when you have been out of high school for 41 years, you realize how easy it is to get back the old feelings especially the good ones. For the most part, the bad feelings, words uttered and actions done which aroused guilt and shame and made us feel bad, have been processed and defanged by time. Whatever residue is left now seems insignificant and benign. What seemed like big issues, fights or ill feelings then have metamorphosed into petty and funny memories. In a way, one might say that much of the conflict we had was unavoidable and even necessary, a part of growing up together and finding our place in our little circle. On the other hand, the good feelings, sanded and polished by time, memory and maturity, are more golden than ever, and the sweet remembrances bring a twinkle to the eye and a lightness of spirit. And all who remember them are blessed. At one point, I took out my guitar and started playing some of the songs we loved to sing when we would hang out in the classroom during lunch break. As everyone sang along, the lyrics became mnemonic devices that brought to the fore old anecdotes, stories, even mind-sets that had been part of our shared past. From where we are today, some of the songs have definitely changed meaning. Where, once, the lyrics of some tunes seemed way cool, they now sounded sophomoric and juvenile. But there were also songs that were strikingly beautiful and defining then that continue to define us now. Much of it was Beatles’ music. The passage of time has imbued those songs with even greater intensity. It must have been quite a revelation to our wives seeing us all seated around a table just exchanging stories and opinions with the greatest of candor, ease and casualness. I imagined them realizing that these guys are the people who know their husbands as much, or maybe even more, than they do. On the first night, we talked, sang, laughed and reminisced deep into night and early morning. The next day, as the women went shopping, we lounged around the sala and just talked for about four hours. Not too strangely, even when the conversation went through a whole range of topics, it always returned to the one issue that has remained as intensely interesting to us today as it did in high school----sex! We thought that was funny, but it only proved that we are forever high school boys trapped in our now 50-something bodies and lives. Someone once remarked that friends are the siblings God forgot to give us. For some people, friends are even more valuable than family. In my case, I have been lucky to have friends who can sit with my family and everyone at the table is good with that. Dr. Tony Dans, an eminent Atenean and a good friend, once pointed out in a high school commencement speech that high school classmates are our friends for life. You will find that they will be your lawyers, doctors, business partners, etc., when you grow up. When you go abroad, you will most likely stay in their homes, and vice versa. They are the people you will trust and entrust your life and fortunes with. Some people say that time spent in high school counts as the best days of anyone’s life. I disagree. Last weekend, I learned that some of the best times of life will be spent years after high school when, wizened by experience and mellowed by age, we can truly, genuinely appreciate and accept our barkada and yes, even ourselves warts and all. * * * I will be holding three workshops. Two are in Cebu and one is at The Fort. 1) “Creative for Life Workshop” (one-day run) is a cutting-edge course to permanently awaken your creativity. It will be held this Sept. 17 (Friday) 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Convention Center of Cebu. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks and lunch. 2) “Basic Photography Workshop (The Second Run)” on Sept. 18 (Saturday) from 1 p.m. – 7 p.m. at Mountain View Nature Park. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks, shuttle back and forth from JY Square. Call (032) 415-8056 or cell number 0909-1112111. Or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for reservations or queries. 3) “Creative For Life workshop” at the Fort (six session run). Sept 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 at 7 to 9 p.m. Venue is at Meridian International College, 1030 Campus Ave., 2F CIP Bldg, McKinley Hill, Fort Bonifacio. Call 223-6468/ 426-5375. Also call 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for inquiries.
Posted on August 29, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated August 29, 2010 12:00 AM Comments (2) View comments There is a toxic attitude or mindset among us Filipinos that surfaces every time we face a major challenge or crisis as a nation. It is the belief in the worst in us as a people accompanied by a self-righteous gloating, finger pointing and blaming when bad things happen. We delight in Filipino–bashing, a kind of self-flagellation that seems to come from an unwarranted pessimism about the Filipino’s capabilities, or lack of them. And we take a prideful “I-told-you-so” stance as if to explain why things are as bad as they are. We seem happy and affirmed about our being so negative about the Filipino when things go wrong. In a way, one might say it is a distorted self-esteem in motion manifesting as meanness of spirit. I call this “Philippine Exceptionalism.” I borrowed the term from an opposite but similar view in the US called “American Exceptionalism.” The American brand of exceptionalism is a concept and phenomenon that dates back to its immigrant roots where its citizens felt the United States was a unique country because of its diversity, and therefore believed it had a special perch among the community of nations. Later, this morphed into something even bigger in its expression, especially when the country began to have colonial ambitions. The US started to believe that it was “above” or an exception to the law, specifically the Law of Nations. Among the Republican right, American Exceptionalism is the creed by which America has tended to deal with the rest of the world. In the words of conservative presidential bet Mike Huckabee, “To deny American Exceptionalism is in essence to deny the heart and soul of this nation.” The belief in “Manifest Destiny” is part of this peculiar self-expression and part of the US justification for annexing the Philippines as a colony. To some Americans, this explains their sense of pride about who they are as a people and justifies their place in the world. For better or for worse, the rest of the world has seen this national pride play out in different arenas of human activity everywhere. It is debatable, of course, whether what is good for the US is always good for the rest of mankind. While some Americans may argue that American Exceptionalism is a celebration of the American spirit, Filipino Exceptionalism is the absolute derogation or downgrading of the Filipino spirit. It explains why its adherents see nothing right about Filipinos and the Philippines. What they see is proof positive of why we are such pathetic failures who will never rise up and become anything great. This negative exceptionalism manifests itself in many ways, from the benign and the subtle — like when we make self-deprecatingly funny or amusing comments about our own uniqueness and inadequacies — to out-and-out expressions of disgust and contempt of ourselves as a nation. There are many examples of this in Filipino humor. One example is the expression “Only in da Pilipins” to explain in a shallow way our inexplicability to others. There is also the joke setup where there are three nationalities involved and they are tasked to do something, and it is the Pinoy who carries the punch line because he is the one who breaks the “rules.” And the Pinoy always wins the game because he avoids the rules through some sort of “palusot.” This palusot is usually a ridiculous, exaggerated response to the situation that is, in reality, a “failed” but funny response. However, these jokes do not bother me as much as the toxic expressions of disgust and hopelessness that we declare about ourselves when things go awry. We Filipinos are — you guessed it — the most rabid Filipino Exceptionalists. While watching the tragic blunder of media, the police and government during the hostage crisis at the Quirino Grandstand on TV last Monday, both my Facebook and Twitter accounts were overrun with comments from all over. Many condemned the actions of media, the police and the violence that could have been prevented. That was expected and understandable. But what really bothered me were the comments that implied that such a tragedy, such incompetence and insensitivity could only have come from Filipinos. The failure, in their view, was caused by our very nationality. During my travels, I have actually met such extremists (yes, they are extremists!) who actually believe that we should kill a whole generation of our countrymen “to start anew” if we are to have a chance to progress as a nation. Unbelievable! I have always subscribed to what the late historian Horacio de la Costa, SJ wrote that no people have a monopoly of good and bad traits and characteristics. And these characteristics, whatever they are, are not permanently theirs. Societies change, and they do, sometimes, drastically. It is interesting how many of us take personal shame in what happened last Monday. That includes me. I actually feel that I should personally apologize to the victims who came here to enjoy our country and instead ended up traumatized or even dead. I believe it has something to do with the genuine hospitality we feel towards foreigners. How can something that so defines us go so wrong for our visitors? But I am immediately sobered by the fact that aberrations like this happen in every society. Every nation has its fringe elements. It just so happens that sometimes they play out big-time, to the shock of its own citizens and the world. I am not sure if Rolando Mendoza had real reasons for doing what he did. Was he suffering from insanity? Was he a victim of injustice? I do not know. What I know though is it is not justified to take anyone hostage. And in his situation, it was foolhardy. It was just not the way to resolve his grievances. Another thing I know is that Rolando Mendoza and his actions are exceptions to the rule. We are a peace-loving, friendly people and we are generally welcoming towards visitors. And we do condemn his act and the incompetent and crass handling of it by the media and the authorities. I am confident that we will rise above this national tragedy. While we have a lot of things to learn and internalize, let us not forget that every country screws up at one time or another. In recent history, China had those melamine deaths and Tiananmen, Germany had its Munich Olympics, not to mention the Holocaust, The US has had its school shootings and other massacres that the police could neither predict nor prevent. Individuals in every society can and do act up. We are not an exception. Let’s not beat ourselves up so much that we lose hope. The thing to do is to make sure it does not happen again. We have many things going for us as a people. We will learn from this and we will move on to achieve greater things that will restore our collective sense of national pride. Like other peoples in the world who have undergone such crises, we shall overcome. * * * I will be holding three workshops. Two are in Cebu and on is at The Fort: 1) “Creative for Life Workshop” (one-day run) is a cutting-edge course to permanently awaken your creativity. It will be held this Sept. 17 (Friday) 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Convention Center of Cebu. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks and lunch. 2) “Basic Photography Workshop (The Second Run)” on Sept. 18 (Saturday) From 1 p.m. – 7 p.m. at Mountain View Nature Park. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks, shuttle back and forth from JY Square. Call (032) 415-8056 or cell no. 0909-1112111. Or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for reservations or queries. 3) “Creative For Life workshop” at the Fort (six session run). Sept 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 at 7 to 9 p.m. Venue is at Meridian International College, 1030 Campus ave., 2F CIP Bldg, Mckinley Hill, Fort Bonifacio. Call 223-6468/ 426-5375. Also 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for inquiries. Posted on August 22, 2010 by jimparedes HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated August 22, 2010 12:00 AM Comments (0) View comments
 I was talking with a teacher-friend and she remarked about the great gap between the values she teaches in her classroom and what kids have to contend with outside the school. She has been a teacher both in the US and in Manila. As a parent and a teacher, I have often wondered how to handle the gaping divide between what I want the kids to know, what values I believe they should embrace, versus the stark reality of how things are run in the real world. No one who is born into this world and lives long enough is spared from this big contradiction. We all have to deal with the chasm between what is, or how things are, and what should be. There are those who surrender their ideals and values readily because it is inconvenient to go against the ways of the world. One can call them many things, but they like to think of themselves as “pragmatists.” They fancy themselves as realists. I often wonder how readily they can let go of whatever they profess to stand for in the name of practicality. Many of us adults try to resolve this disconnect between what we teach and how we live by telling our kids to “do as I say, not as I do.” And it is quite foolish of us to believe that our children will be blind to the contradiction and follow our advice. Even at my age, I find that it is not easy to just give up some of my long-held values. Sure, I have changed some of my attitudes, often quite radically, and I have even abandoned some of my beliefs through the years, but there are values that I hold dear and I will probably not change as I get older. In fact, through the years, I have seen their value grow more and more. One of the things I’ve noticed as a teacher who works with young people, is that there seems to be a hunger for real values as modeled by adults in real life. Many students have told me quite indirectly during candid moments that their parents have failed them and so they look outside the home or even to media icons for role models. If I could teach just a few values to my kids that I hope they imbibe and hold on to for the rest of their lives, these would be some of them: 1) The value of education. I am not just talking about finishing formal education, but pursuing learning for the rest of one’s life. I believe that an inquisitive, open mind can constantly adapt to new things and will continue to grow at any age. I am in awe of people past 50 years old who enroll in school to learn something new, or those who discover and indulge in new passions that give them a sense of purpose even in the last quarter of their lives. It has everything to do with keeping the mind fresh, adaptable and capable of understanding complexity. I’ve always judged the age of people not by the wrinkles on their faces but by how fixed or unbending their minds are. The cantankerous and the old are those who have become didactic and absolutist in thinking. I am not even talking about the need to be trendy or modern, but about being objective and intellectually disciplined enough to look at the pros and cons of an issue dispassionately. As Aristotle said, ‘It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” 2) The value of honesty and accountability. One of the ways I appraise a person is how he relates to money. It’s not so much about how he spends money but how accurately and honestly he can account for it. When my kids were growing up, I would drill into them the importance of giving back exact change and being totally trustworthy when handling money. There is no room for suspicion in this department. As far as I am concerned, there is no difference between stealing one peso and one million pesos. A thief is a thief. Many relationships between friends, relatives and business partners have gone sour because of money and how it is handled. 3) The value of compassion. Love for one’s fellowman is probably the highest value and compassion is its most active expression. It is not difficult to see that the minimum of love is justice, and the full flowering of it is compassion. I have no problem accepting the value of justice. In fact, living in the Philippines, we have been so deprived of it, we probably will not complain if we have more than enough of it. What I have been trying to work on is being able to love and show compassion for people in general, especially those I am not emotionally connected with. Compassion is probably the most universal of values found in Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and other religions. I believe that it is the single element that could be the game changer in creating happiness in our individual and collective lives. Compassion breaks barriers and creates space for a more human experience. There will always be a “disconnect” between our values and those of the outside world, and it is important to try and bridge this gap. The coming together of the opposing edges has been the general direction of man’s historical struggle in the past thousand years. Sometimes, man pulls closer to idealism, while at other times, he is pulled towards practicality. Our effort to shape the world to our values is probably what spiritual practice should be all about. Forgive me for quoting the atheist Karl Marx, but he did make a lot of sense when he said, “Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” That is what it means to bridge the gap. * * * I will be holding three workshops. Two are in Cebu: 1) “Creative for Life Workshop” (one day run) is a cutting-edge course to permanently awaken your creativity. It will be held this Sept. 17 (Friday) 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Convention Center of Cebu. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks and lunch. 2) “Basic Photography Workshop (The Second Run)” on Sept. 18 (Saturday) From 1 p.m. – 7 p.m. at Mountain View Nature Park. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks, shuttle back and forth from JY Square. Call (032) 415-8056 or cell no. 0909-1112111. Or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for reservations or queries. 3) “Creative For Life workshop” at the Fort (six session run). Sept 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 at 7 to 9 p.m. Venue is at Meridian International College, 1030 Campus ave., 2F CIP Bldg, Mckinley Hill, Fort Bonifacio. Call 223-6468/ 426-5375. Also 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for inquiries.
Posted on August 15, 2010 by jimparedes [e] HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated August 15, 2010 12:00 AM I have always been a team player. Being part of a family of 10 siblings and a few cousins who lived with us, I learned early on how to fit in, survive, and even thrive in most setups. Because of the number of people staying with us at home at any given time, I learned to live in a system that was not necessarily tailor-made for me (or for any of my siblings for that matter), and which did not bend backwards to fawn over or pamper any individual. It was one treatment for all of us. Everyone was given the same food, cafeteria-style (without the line), and each one managed to meet their individual needs by sharing equally the same meager resources. No one got special treatment unless he or she got sick or was having a birthday. We were a big family living under one roof, and so we had to give in to the collective rules and duties. Then there was my singing group. My entire career with APO spanned 41 years. It started in high school in 1969 where, at one time, we were a group of 12 — and ended last May 29 as a trio. Again, as part of a group, I naturally shared everything with the members, including our collective career planning and execution. The whole challenge for us was creating a group identity and making it pay off. Luckily, we did quite well. When young performers ask me what is the secret of APO’s longevity, I have two answers: a funny one and a serious answer. The funny one says the reason for our long and successful association was that we never had sex with each other. The serious one is about how we were able to dissolve our individual egos in favor of a bigger collective one. It meant we were first and foremost APO before we projected our individual identities. It was the only way we could make it work. I cannot recall ever having encountered an APO fan who said something like: “I really like the song Jim wrote which Danny sang solo while Boboy did second voice.” We were one unit even if there were three different persons in this group each contributing unique gifts. The collective always ruled. Every good and bad thing was an APO effort first before anything else and we jointly shared in the glory and the occasional criticism. Now, after so many years, I suddenly find myself working alone since APO ended last May. And while I remember how, years ago, I feared that this day would someday come, now that it’s here, I am finding that I enjoy going it alone. Even before APO retired, I was already doing many things without my two friends. I did workshops and taught in college, and now continue doing these more regularly. These were diversions then; now they’ve become the norm. Contrary to how I initially imagined it would be, I am surprised to find not just great comfort but amazing discoveries in going solo! For me, it is a chance to tap fully aspects of myself that used to take a back seat. Now I am expressing more and more not my team spirit but my individuality. No collective effort needed. No holding back. No waiting for others. There are only my own thoughts, concerns and passions to consider and fuel my work. It is an entirely new landscape. Currently, I am doing an album — something I wanted to do for a long time with APO but was unable to. During our last years, I found it more and more difficult to convince my two friends to do new music. There were our individual interests and ventures; golf took up a lot of their time, which I could not possibly compete with. These days, I find it weird and exhilarating that I am by myself alone in the studio doing all the work getting an album started and finished. I am writing all the songs, working with my arranger Ernie Baladjay, and deciding on the song treatments without having to consult anyone. I alone do all the vocal parts and interpretations, and I am not altering the lyrics or digressing from my creative vision to accommodate anyone else’s inputs the way I used to. I am now on solo flight. No co-pilots, crew or passengers. I am not even working with a record company. And really, it is a great feeling! It is wonderful to be 100 percent in charge, answerable and responsible for my artistic creation. In the past, I hardly felt this much responsibility since I shared the time and effort doing albums with Danny and Boboy. Now it is my vision through and through. It’s not that I was ever not responsible for our collective output before, (nor was I ever an “unserious” artist). But the difference between then and now is, in the group setup, one could always pass on any weakness or vulnerability to the collective rather than own it completely. In a solo flight, one goes it alone, one signs the flight logbook and navigates the endeavor alone. I could crash. But then, it is my crash! I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else, but to me it is an exhilarating thought. I have written four books and countless columns in this newspaper and another publication in Sydney. I know what it is to express individual thoughts publicly and subject myself to public scrutiny. I know what it feels like to go out on a limb expressing one’s opinions and attracting detractors, and even answering them. In truth, those things were quite easy for me because I’ve always felt that I am a musician first and a writer second, and so the occasional heat that my writing attracts does not matter as much. But with music, it has always been different. Music is something I have been doing for the greater part of my life. And even if there were periods that I was hardly as engrossed or passionate about music as I should have been, I have always felt that my output matters not only to the followers of APO, but most importantly to myself. Music is my primary expression, my first art, my irreplaceable love. I am midway into the album work, and like every musical project, it has its challenges. There are some songs that seem to be so easy to do while some are taking me through twists and turns before they begin to show their charm. But from experience, I know that when I pay attention and work on them, they eventually transform as if they had limbs coming to life and wings taking them to flight. Working on an album always has its surprises and delights. Many times in the past, I was willing to bet my fortune on certain songs which I thought would easily make it big in the market, only to be disappointed later, while other songs intended to be mere album fillers took off gloriously with little effort. That’s really just how it is in this crazy business. Creations are living things and can behave so independently. But whatever and however this solo project turns out, I am in an inspired mode. Even without the security blanket of APO’s synergy to pull things off, I am feeling good doing this alone. It is a deliberate act of pure joy. This time, I see no one looking over my shoulder, from my left or right. I am not giving away lines or apportioning lyrics or waiting for my verse to play before I sing my part. I am not asking anyone what they think. I am going by my instincts. I am claiming full paternity for this batch of new musical offspring. I am out here on my own. And loving it! * * * 1) Last call for “Basic Photography Workshop” on Aug. 21, from 1 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, QC. Please call 426-5375, (03)0916-8554303 or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for reservations or queries. 2) I will be holding two workshops in Cebu in September: “Creative for Life Workshop” is a cutting-edge course to permanently awaken your creativity. It will be held this Sept. 17 (Friday) 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m. at the Grand Convention Center of Cebu. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks and lunch. “Basic Photography Workshop (The Second Run)” on Sept. 18 (Saturday) From 1 p.m. – 7 p.m. at Mountain View Nature Park. Registration fee is P1,000 (non-refundable). Workshop fee is P4,000 inclusive of handouts, snacks, shuttle back and forth from JY Square. Call (032) 415-8056 or cell no. 0909-1112111. Or write me at emailjimp@gmail.com for reservations or queries.
Posted on August 07, 2010 by jimparedes Humming in my universe Philippine Star August 8, 2010 Jim Paredes
 I am spending a lot of time these days with my grand child. Let me tell you, that’s like saying I am trying to co-exist as best as I can with a phenomenon like a typhoon or an oil spill, or something that demands total attention or up-to-date info, response and reaction. There is nothing low key about Ananda. She is like New York (the city that doesn’t sleep), or Shinjuku district in Tokyo which is perennially teeming with activity. She is always up to something. She can bombard you with questions which I normally do not mind answering except when I am writing. Right now she is asking me why an Ipad is expensive and why she can’t have one yet while I am trying to finish this article. And she won’t accept a simple not-so-well-thought-out answer by a careless, impatient adult like me who merely wants to shut her up for now. In fact, I already decided to drop the previous topic I was supposed to write about since she has once again totally taken over my attention span with her questions. Before all this, she was asking a million other questions which when I don’t reply can get her to be even more incessant in asking, demanding for answers. Ananda can be tiring during moments like this. It is difficult to finish anything if one is constantly disturbed or bothered with things especially when they are off-topic. I am writing about her. That’s half the problem solved. I know I have no choice but to make her my subject since she is too large and too loud to ignore. I cannot recall when I was growing up to ever being as curious as she is. Or maybe I was but it was an age when we pretty much answered our own questions. I can’t recall any adult I could comfortably badger 24/7 with questions and comments quite the way Ananda can do it to me or any of her Paredes relatives. I often try and put myself in her place just to be able to muster some patience when she is on a roll and wanting to engage everyone. I remind myself that I was a kid once and how one can only imagine what an interesting place the world is in a child’s eyes and how novel everything can seem. It is a world of endless stimulation, awe and wonder that makes her curious and curiouser about everything. I must seem like an old, boring man to her when I cannot match her fascination about everything. I always have to remind myself to be more tuned in or more understanding, and involved in her world to be able to shape her into a human being who likes to inquire about life and everything it offers, instead of constantly reigning her in and killing her drive to understand things. She is a fast learner. And that is an understatement. Her language skills are far way advanced, and now that she has learned to read better, we can’t even spell out words anymore when we want to talk but keep her in the dark about certain subjects we do not wish for her to understand. She is also quite physically active. She is constantly traipsing, dancing, or just moving about the house and never seems to get tired. While I am happy about her state of health and the fact that she is an active child, I have gone past being amused when she expects me to respond in the same light, active way when she pulls me into her world. My 58 year old body is much slower than her 6 year old one is now. And I know the gap will only get worse! Right now, I can still carry her to bed, and manage when she wants to ride my back. In a few years, this will be impossible. Thus, I am enjoying it now while I still can. Lydia, my wife is quite happy and relieved that despite the fact that our grandchild lives in an age of television, DVDs, internet, gadgets, and instant gratification, the kid likes going with us to mass. She likes being in the adoration chapel, and also enjoys the majestic, joyous singing that the choirs in the Church of Gesu at the Ateneo deliver. She likes the communal activities, people kneeling all at the same time and responding together in prayer. We also have a small altar in the house, and to my surprise one evening, she suddenly insisted we all pray, and that has become an almost nightly ritual before she sleeps. She likes the whole idea of the lighting of candles, reciting pre-set prayers, and then blowing candles after. Ananda can really work me up both as an adult and as a kid. An unknown writer once described grandparents as just being antique little boys and girls, and nothing can be truer. With Ananda, I can often break out of my grown-up patterns of thought and my physical routines and engage her at her level. She especially enjoys banter—smart ones—where for example, she insists we talk in rhyme or avoid certain letters when we use words to talk. Or sometimes, it is a game of imaginary, invisible gifts we bring to a table and gift each other with, or a game of hide and seek. At times, she can ask the most serious things like ‘what do you mean when you say, ‘that’s life?’, that can leave me dumbfounded and speechless. As a grown up, we sometimes think we have the monopoly of knowledge and experience compared to people as young as Ananda. Thus we can get impatient, and even treat them in a trivial manner. But a Welsh saying which goes that ‘perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild’ can make us want to look at how we really relate to them. A child is quite a compelling creature. Why? because he/she is so powerful. When they cry, we are forced to drop everything and check to see what’s wrong. When they gift us with something they made such as an awkward drawing, a clay figure, or anything at all, they can melt our hearts. When they get sick, we are beside ourselves with worry and ready to negotiate with heaven and give everything we possess just to assure they get well. Perhaps I should relax more when it comes to Ananda so we both can enjoy each other more. After all, she has a mother who is already responsible for her. ‘Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends, ‘ said writer Allan Frome. I always carry that sweet thought in my head when I see how excited she can get when I come home. She likes to wait behind the door to scare me with a big ‘boo’. And as her grandfather, I look at my feigned surprised reaction as one of the duties I must happily perform. In every human community, grandparents have a special place in the rearing of generations, and vice-versa. ‘Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being’, observed sociologist Margaret Mead. As I live out the afternoon of my life while Ananda’s bright and early morning is unraveling, I imagine we are a perfect match. We are fulfilling a mission, a sacred pact to make us both have a greater experience of being human. And what a great time we are having doing it! # # # I have two workshops coming up. One is a Songwriting Workshop: A lot of people through the years have asked me about writing songs since I have written so many, including hits, over four decades. I have long wanted to conduct a workshop on it. The workshop will be held on Aug. 14 to 1 from 1 to 6 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. The workshop fee is P5,000. It is a requirement that participant in the workshop must know how to play an instrument — guitar or piano. The other is a Basic Photography Workshop will be held on Aug. 21, 1 to 7 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Seminar fee is P3,500 * * * Please write to emailjimp@gmail.com to reserve a slot for any or all workshops. Or call 426-5375/ 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie.
Posted on July 31, 2010 by jimparedes 
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes (The Philippine Star) Updated August 01, 2010 12:00 AM
Redford White: The author’s friend was a fellow diver with a private passion for charity.
We were doing a noontime TV show together some 13 years ago. That’s how I got to know Redford White. I had met him years before but we never went beyond the customary “Hi.” Looking back at the way our friendship played out, I never imagined that I would ever get close to this Bisoy (Bisayang Tisoy) comedian. We did not hit it off working in front of the cameras. I was probably too serious and he was way too funny. It was behind the cameras where we got along. In fact, it was the lure of the depths of the sea that made us friends. We were both divers and one time, I invited him to join G Toengi and a few other people to a dive. After just one adventure under the sea, we knew we were kindred spirits. Far from his public persona, Cipriano Cermeno II, better known as Redford White, was actually quite a serious guy. People would be floored, as I was, if they knew that he liked to talk about philosophy, religion, Christianity, Buddhism and other such topics. Red was a searcher of truth. A no-frills guy, he liked to get to the bottom of things, exploring questions about life and its meaning. Sometimes, he liked to talk but there were times when he just wanted to be silent. It was during those long drives and deep conversations to Anilao and back where I discovered that Red and his wife Elena had been involved in community and charity work for a long time. In their property in Novaliches, they had built, over two decades, a community of more than 150 people where they took care of batches of kids whom they generously housed, fed and sent to school. Some of them have graduated from college and now work successful jobs and careers here and abroad. Redford and Elena even built a beautiful Church inside the compound with the help of the people they have helped — neighbors and devotees of the Santo Nino de Maligaya, to whom they dedicated the entire charitable effort. I was dumbfounded to discover that this comedian, whom everyone loved for making them laugh their heads off, had a much bigger life outside of how the world knew him. In fact, this life of service and giving was his main life, something that he kept low-key and shared only with a few friends. He liked things quiet, simple and without fuss. In this way, he was, to me, a pure soul. Once in a while, he’d talk about his and Elena’s work helping flood or calamity victims by organizing relief efforts, or their travels to places where they set up shrines in honor of their favorite Santo Nino icon, in Guam, Canada, the US and other places. When Red shared such stories, I sensed a deep humility and a sense of fulfillment that no amount of success and fame in showbiz could give him. Sure, he enjoyed and took pride when his TV shows got high ratings; but he knew that the world of showbiz was impermanent and while he relished the highs while they lasted, he felt no real attachment to them. His true fulfillment came from somewhere else. With the number of hours we shared talking in the car on the way to Anilao and back, which averaged around six hours at a time, plus the number of dives we made (160 to 170) not only in Anilao but also in Davao, Cebu, Bohol and Tubataha, it is no surprise that we became really close. Maan de Ocampo, Jon Santos and I were Red’s closest dive buddies. The long trips and the time in between dives, the meals and the bumming around, were precious bonding moments. Such deep camaraderie and friendship is easily developed among diving buddies since, when you think about it, diving under the sea can be life-threatening. No one can be casual about diving because casualness can cause carelessness which can have deadly results. Under the “buddy system” rules of scuba, we were responsible for each other. We were always looking out for each other’s safety. This reality made us all present and quite open to each other. The last time I saw Red before he got sick was in December 2009. Our meetings had been downgraded to lunches and dinners since he had developed high blood pressure and Elena had asked him to stop diving. He had become a heavier smoker. We had lunch at Adarna restaurant in QC with Maan. There was the usual exchange of jokes, storytelling and catching up with each other’s lives. Red was his usual self — calm and attentive, easy, accepting, sometimes deep, but also hilariously funny. His eyes had that twinkle, especially when he made funny comments. After that meeting, I called him a few times, texted him, but got no reply. I figured maybe he was abroad, or busy, or just wanted to be by himself, which he was sometimes wont to do. It was only last July 20 when Matt, Red’s assistant, texted me a message that disturbed me deeply. It said, “Kuya Jim, kelan kita pwede tawagan tungkol kay Red?” I immediately replied. That night, when Maan and I met with him, he told us that Red had finally requested that we be informed he had a brain tumor and lung cancer, which were diagnosed last February. “Why did he wait this long?” I asked. Because, true to form, he did not want friends fussing or worrying about him. The very next day, Maan and I went to Red’s Novaliches compound with a cake in a red box that had a white diagonal line on it which made it look like a diver’s flag. When we entered the room, we saw Red on his bed, his face bloated due to steroids. He didn’t look good. The twinkle in his eyes had dimmed. We went straight to him, had a group hug and he started to weep. He shed tears of relief, sadness, joy and love, all thrown in together. Then he uttered with both a chuckle and a seriousness, “P’re, malapit ko na makita si Lord.” We hugged each other even tighter. I whispered to him to prepare the way for us since we would have many things to answer for before we could probably get in. After a few minutes, he seemed more relaxed and we talked about this and that, just like before. Maan and I knew our friend was in a bad state and would not last long. After about 25 minutes, we bade him goodbye so he could rest. I had one more opportunity to see Red on the day before he died. I had asked a priest friend, Fr. Arnold Abelardo, if he could borrow Tita Cory’s rosary which was given to her by Sr. Lucia, the visionary of Fatima, that I wanted to bring to Red. On that final visit, Red looked worn out. He could hardly breathe. We said a prayer as Red clasped the rosary. Lydia and I also gave him a wooden holding cross. Throughout the meeting, he kept saying, “Love you, p’re,” as we held each other’s hands. Before I left, I looked into his eyes and reminded him that a rule in diving was, if dive buddies lose each other, each is obliged to go up and wait for the other for a moment before he starts any rescue effort. I told him that since he was going “up” first, to please patiently wait for me. For a brief moment, I saw his eyes twinkle, and amid his laborious breathing, he let out a hearty laugh, loud enough to be heard outside the door. I then held his gaze one last time, clasped his hand, hugged him tight and said, “Ingat pare.” I had to force myself to turn away and walk out the door, knowing that was our last goodbye. He died at 6:47 the next morning. I found myself spontaneously awakened about the same time and feeling refreshed despite having slept late. After a few minutes, I got a text from Matt saying that Red had passed away. Redford, I just want to say that I have not met a more decent man than you. You taught me many things by simply being you — simplicity, humility, dedication, lightness of being, deep uncomplicated friendship, laughter and the great capacity to love the manifestations of God that may not even be readily attractive and lovable. Love you, P’re! Wait for me, please. * * * Here are my workshop schedules: 1) Creative For Life: A cutting-edge course to permanently awaken your creativity from Aug. 2-6, concluding on Aug. 9, from 7 to 9 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Seminar fee is P5,000. 2) Songwriting Workshop: A lot of people through the years have asked me about writing songs since I have written so many, including hits, over four decades. I have long wanted to conduct a workshop on it. The workshop will be held on Aug. 14 to 1 from 1 to 6 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. The workshop fee is P5,000. It is a requirement that participant in the workshop must know how to play an instrument — guitar or piano. 3) A Basic Photography Workshop will be held on Aug. 21, 1 to 7 p.m. at 113 B. Gonzales, Loyola Heights, Quezon City. Seminar fee is P3,500 * * * Please write to emailjimp@gmail.com to reserve a slot for any or all workshops. Or call 426-5375/ 0916-8554303 and ask for Ollie. | |
