the brewing machine

Why did the disciples abandon their families to follow Christ?  Why did Aldus Santos choose to be a rock star over being an industrial engineer despite his superior IQ?  Why did Gary Granada pursue his musicianship instead of being a metallurgical engineer? Why did Christopher Philips choose practicing philosophy in coffee shops instead of being an esteemed professor in the academe? Why did Shaira Luna opt to be a photographer instead of an MD? Why did Bobby Fischer prefer obscurity over fame?

Why did I quit medical school on my graduating year? There had to be a catch to it right, or else I’ll be the first person in our family to be crucified.

I have gotten tired of trying to explain the whole rationale of my decision?  I feel like a convicted felon trying to prove my innocence every time. 

To give you an idea how close my decision was to being the most dim-witted I’ve ever made, these were the facts at the time I buried the idea that I’ll be writing prescriptions while dressed in white for the rest of my life.

I have spent a total of four years and six months in my medical training. 

My parents have invested, or should I say squandered, easily over 400,000 pesos.

And probably the most underrated of all, I’ve endured stress, failures, pressure and melancholy in those four and a half years more than in the 20 years before that. 

I was less than a year from finishing Medicine Proper, and about two years from being a licensed doctor.  What the fuck was I thinking?!

I don’t intend to make this article look like a legal document by enumerating my arguments and discussing them in details.  Hence, my explanation will be in the form of an analogy.  Geez, even Jesus Christ used parables.  Forgive my frequent allusions to the guy.  He just happens to be my biggest idol.

Now think of a person you admire the most. Someone you don’t know personally and not acquainted to.  Better if he’s a public figure and also admired by many others.  It could be Ninoy Aquino, Jessica Zaphra, Oprah Winfrey, any member of The Beatles, Bono, Michael Jordan, or even Britney Spears if you want to.  Suit yourself. 

So do you have yours already? 

Imagine meeting this person in a coffee shop.  Just you and him (or her), jabbering about anything under the sun.  He wants you to ask any question you wish because he likes it that he can talk to someone honestly and off-the-record.  He shares his thoughts on his personal life and on his line of work.  Things he has never shared with anyone besides his closest friends.

Then he asks you what you think about him.  What is it that you like about him.  He listens to every word you utter.  You sometimes catch him agape in surprise to what your saying and even bursts into laughter now and again.  For the most part he just smiles, enjoying every insight from you. 

After four hours he says he’s got to take off, but suddenly asks you if you’d want to tag along.  Apparently the day won’t just end with that marathon of a conversation.  You can actually spend the whole day with him and experience a typical day in his life.  He’s not anyone special anyway, he’s just the person you admire the most in the known universe!  Of course you say yes.          

At the end of the day he asks you if you could be flat mates.  Dizzying as it may sound, you have a chance to be a legitimate part of this person’s life.  Surreal but true.  Then again, of course you say yes.

When it rains it pours.  You learn that someone is writing a biography about your idol.  And now that you’ve become friends with him you’ll be a part if it too! 

When the roller coaster has reached the topmost of its course, the next is the big drop.  It’s the law of physics.  Nothing can contest it. 

After two months of leaving on the same roof with this person, you decide to move out.  The writer who’s doing the biography tells you he’s removing you from the story if you go but you don’t care.  There’s nothing that can make you stay.

Why?  What did we miss!? 

In those two months you got close to your idol, you learned some things about him that you know you can never live with. 

First, he is a sex addict who has impregnated 47 women and forced them to have the fetus aborted at gun point.  (Or if she’s a girl, she has committed abortion 47 times if that is even physiologically passible)

Second, he has a temper problem and sadistic tendencies to his house helpers.  He batters them every time his instructions are not followed to the last drop.

Lastly, he’s also a wife batterer.  He unintentionally killed his wife by beating her to death after a heated argument.  And you witnessed that happen in front of you.

These things you learned don’t take away what ever it is about him you admired.  If he is a writer, he remains to be that eloquent writer who wrote those rousing stories you’ve read.  If he’s an actor, he is still that handsome guy next door you’ve watch over and over on the silver screen.  If he’s a public leader, he’s still that brilliant dynamic person that people consult to for societal direction.

          But at the same time he is also those horrific things you never could have known without living with him.

For four and a half years, I was in a marriage with Medicine. 

I still appreciate the mystic of the profession.  God-like knowledge and abilities, unparalleled confidence from people (only medical doctors are trusted by their patients to have their bodies cut open and their internal organs stitched together), and social respect that is only surpassed by the priest. 

I still remember the romanticism I had for the profession.  Law students say they want to make a difference by putting the scoundrels in society behind bars.  That by the power of the law, they would protect the innocent and chastise the guilty.  To slay dragons in short.

The dragon I intended to slay was the hepa virus that causes infected people to glow yellow, the notorious cholesterol that clog cardiac arteries causing myocardial infarction, or the enigmatic protein molecule causing prion diseases like the Mad Cow disease.  Of course there are hundreds more.     

I had to be intimate with Medicine to unearth its full nature. 

And just like what happened to you and your idol, I also discovered things that made me pack my bag.  Like I said, I do not intend to enumerate them.  Suffice to say that there are.  If you know me enough, you know I wouldn’t leave without a valid reason.

Right now I’m happily back together with my first love—Psychology, Philosophy, and music.  It’s bliss being polygamous. Hehe.

I admit.  I may have wasted the last five years of my life.  But at least, I saved the rest of it.

           Awake in a snap of a finger. Awaken by an unknown cause.  Yanked out from the world of Morpheus and dumped back into the world of reckless abandon called reality. 

            “Open your eyes”.  Someone whispers to me.  And like a knee-jerk reaction, I open the windows to my soul.  Only this time it is my soul that takes a peek outside.

            Sunrays cut my room.  One corner lies asleep, cradled by the dark that is now stealthily drifting away.  And another corner gleams, jolted by the riveting light…nature’s caffeine.

            Under the stringent scrutiny of the sun, and ditched by the mystery rendered by the night before, my room reveals its unruly nature.  A place ransacked by the frustrations I carry with me from behind that door, and confusions I drag with me from beyond these walls . 

             It’s a filthy room, but it’s loyal to me so I like it.

           Outside this anarchic space, greater chaos awaits, tempting me to join the bandwagon of the cutthroats disguised in…

            

            coats…

            ties…

            handshakes…

            and smiles…

            Busy streets.

            Busy phone lines.

            Busy feet.

            Busy hands.

            Busy people.

            It’s a fast-paced world trapped in its own game—a race.  One big sophisticated race for survival.  And the world has become dependent on it.  It’s like dope.  The more you sniff, the more you need to go faster.

            In this uncompromising empire if you don’t move you’ll die, and if you start moving you have to continue moving.  It gives new light to Newton’s Law of Inertia.

             Lately the race has become more and more injurious.  Those who cannot keep pace have been trampled upon by the ruthless stampede of the unsympathetic majority.

            I can hear it outside.  The deafening horn of the jeepnies.  The roar of engines, which I imagine comes from smoke-belching buses.  And a manong hollering putang ina mo magnanakaw ka!

            Yes, it’s another day and the race has begun anew.

            

             I have a theory.

          

            One day, if this chase doesn’t slow down, the world will have a heart attack and die.  If it doesn’t pull-over to pick up those who have been crushed aside, it will stumble on its own feet.

            

             In this room time is frozen.

            

             I can stare all day at the dust particles floating in the sunrays and no mad dash will step on my face to crush me.  I can have my daily arcane contemplation on my purpose in all these madness.

            I like it here.

           I like it here because after painstakingly joining the pack of the racing mob outside all day, I enter this room and everything…

            …stops on a dime.

            So what about life do I find ironic?  To begin with, everything.  (That’s one of the perks in watching Cameron Crowe movies.  You get to hear great one-liners.  But he was talking about music in his autobiographical masterpiece Almost Famous. ) Irony is a ubiquitous fact that we have to live with.  Not that It’s bad.  It’s just too much all over us that we don’t see it stare us in the face every minute.  Kinda like the Matrix.

            

            Just think of this article as a dose of the red pill. 

            

            We’ll break the ice by talking about one of life’s essentials—music. U2, not the clothing line but the rock group, has been the greatest rock band in the last two and a half decades.  They’re numero uno, deities of the rock-and-roll world, and have been standing on their pedestal for so long now that it’s almost ridiculous.  Yet they don’t practice hedonistic rituals etched in a stereotypical rock star lifestyle.  Drug use, ala Sodom and Gomorra orgy sessions, trashing of hotel rooms, spitting or puking or pissing (All of which were enjoyed by Sex Pistols gig goers) at the audience, getting arrested for being sociopaths, killing of one’s self (Better to burn out than to fade away eh, Mr. Cobain?), etc. 

            

            In fact, these four Irish ambassadors of coolness are apparently advocates of love, peace, and good will.  Mushy?  Nah, just plain helpful.

          

           Great men in history and geniuses of our times are my next cases in point.  There are hearsays that Adolph Hitler, the most feared and loathed man to set foot on earth, is gay.  He was also rumored to be a stutterer as a child, but became one of the most eloquent speakers in history. 

            

            The great Albert Einstein flunked math and was a dyslexic (a person with a cognitive impairment that enables him to understand written symbols), but later on became the greatest physicist to ever live.  What’s wrong with this picture?  He was a physicist for crying out load.  Those guys converse, chat, and argue using written symbols as casually as we talk about traffic on EDSA.  We eat fried rice for breakfast, they breathe advanced math from sunrise to sundown.

          

            And what about Mr. John Nash?  Another god-mathematician who became a delusional schizophrenic?  Russell Crowe made to life this man’s story in A Beautiful Mind.  It’s interesting that the brainier these guys were, the more defective their minds got. 

          

           We all know the story of Vincent Van Gogh, a gifted painter who was blighted by psychosis. I’m sure there’s lots more similar stories of scientists, philosophers, artists, writers, and musicians. I guess there’s really a fine line between genius and lunacy.   

         

          In our local history, Ninoy and Bonifacio have something ironic in common.  They were both patriots who were killed by kapwa pinoys.  The irony on Erap is the fact that the least competent presidentiable in the 1998 elections was enthroned to the most important job in the country.  It sucked.

            

            Let me quicken the pace now. 

            

            Muhammad Ali once possessed the fastest pair of hands and mouth within the four corners of the boxing rink, but now can’t even talk nor move fast enough to live a comfortable life.  Parkinson’s is knocking him out and it’s sad.  Christopher Reeves, the Man of Steel, is now dead.  Morpheus, god of the Dream World, was the one who woke up Neo from the “dream world’ yanking him into the shitty real world.

            

             Here’s more.  Pops Fernandez, tagged as the Concert Queen, is the most unskilled, melody-swerving, tune-sabotaging singer in the local music scene.  Traffic policemen, first-line defenders of the law, accept bribes most often. 

         

            And there is the enigmatic psychiatrist.  Experts of the mind, the psychological and emotional facets of man, and the one from whom suicidal people seek help.  You would think they are the most stable of people.  News flash, their suicide rate in the US is ten times higher than the ordinary man.

          

          Want to dig deeper? 

         

         How about the theological?  I heard in the international news on cable that due to the sprouting of complaints in the past decade, the Catholic Church has generated the most sexual harassment charges in the whole world.  For Christ’s sake!  If you can’t stand celibacy, then get outa there man!  Less you don’t mind burning in hell.  So much for advocating morality.

            

            There was a scene in the The Devil’s Advocate where the Devil gave an audacious monologue about God and alluded to a point that struck me right between the eyes, stamped deep in my mind.  He said that The Creator endowed man with incessant urges such as sex, aggression, vanity and greed then formulates rules in opposition to them.  I must admit, the Devil has got some logic savvy going for him.  Tricky tricky old devil. 

            ]

             And alas, the irony of all ironies.  Jesus Christ was considered heretic in his time.

            

           Wheeew!  So what’s my conclusion to this world-has-gone-mad observation?  Sorry buddies, but just like The Matrix series, I have no satisfactory conclusion.  My best guess is this.  Irony is not the icing on the cake.  That one stands for mug toasts after a job promotion or for getting a brand new car after finishing college. 

          

             More appropriately, I think irony is the Tabasco sauce on you pepperoni and cheese pizza or the wasabe on your salmon sashimi sauce.  It doesn’t contribute to good taste, but it’s essential to the experience of eating your pizza and your sashimi.  It’s something you can’t explain, but definitely makes the taste more interesting. 

            In any case, Ms. Morissette noticed it years ago.

I wrote this article for madchicken.net two years ago.  Hold on tight.  This one’s a jolter.

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What ruled me that night was the same thing that killed the cat.

An hour after dinner, we went straight to It not knowing how much streaks of profanity-induced laughter cost. This was Holy Wednesday so we concluded that that was the explanation for the sparse crowd, considering the buzz it has been causing the last couple of years. A mesh of black metallic chairs and tables occupied most of the front, while the back, which was elevated for the audience to see, had a bunch of less cramped seats.

Two scents registered every time I breathed in, cigarettes and newly cleaned airconditioning. And of course there was the stage, bordered by curtains on top and on the sides similar to those of Shakespearian plays. But instead of such classic plays, the performers do a new-age kind of an act: stand up comedy that ends with putang-ina mo every five minutes.

 

Every vulgar remark was like a razor-sharp blade stabbing my ear. The act started with a set of songs. After which, they talked about anything they can insert ulol, tanga, or putang-ina as their punch line. Their style is eclectic. They told stories and jokes, impersonated, did skits, or just plainly babbled without forgetting to say an obscene remark every now and then.   

 

It wasn’t only the words that were obscene but so were the topic themselves. The subject of lust dominated their conversation 90 % of the time. Hence, words like libog, titi, pekpek, and chupa are said with the same nonchalance as with saying hi or hello. The only other social group where people feel at ease with such vulgarity is their barkada. Apparently, these clowns feel that the entire crowd is their barkada.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I found the act funny. No, let me rephrase that. It was very funny. I burst into laughter every time they said ulol, gago, or tangina mo. But it wasn’t just their vulgar words that did it, mostly it was their timing. I must admit, they are very talented apart from being very bastos.

They all sing well enough to pass as vocalists for most showbands today. And talking about talent, the one they call Anton has loads of it. Before seeing the show, I heard he sings like Regine Velasquez, with the eardrum-trembling melodic shrieking and all. And after hearing his version of the Asia’s Song Bird’s newest, a nod followed by a big clap was my reaction.

I’m not talking about the entrance fee at the gates. The cost I’m referring to is a social one. The first thing that jolted my instincts was its effect on our moral sense. Corny as it my sound but morality, we must admit, is integral to us Filipinos.   

First question: Why is that when Ely Buendia hollers "’di ba tang-ina" or "ako ay nabuburat na" people find it offensive while they respond with laughter to Pretty Trizsha’s (one of the stand up comics) "tang-ina mo, ang libog mo" punch line.

A lot of those in the middle age demograph said that rock music with loutish words is bad influence, conveying subliminal messages. Hence, my second question: Doesn’t a show with ten times more vulgar words than any rock album in history exert worse influence? 

Profanity in rock music may be justified because it’s a form of self expression. Song writers get vulgar to show hate, rebellion, disconformities, etc. These comedians don’t have that artistic justification. However, it’s ironic that people find the show less disturbing than Ely Buendia’s obscenity in Pare Ko, Lourd De Veyra’s chant of blasphemy in Love Ko si S…, or Johnny Rotten’s mockery of the queen of England in God Save the Queen. My guess is because they serve obscenity with a new dressing–comedy. More deceitful, more acceptable, and more effective. But probably as dangerous.

People say that for obscenity to avail of poetic justice, it must be done in good taste, which brings me to my next point. In a time when the Philippine entertainment industry employs a quality control system run by retarded businessmen pretending to be artists, an act devoid of taste is the last thing the Filipino audience need. 

A brief recap: the recording artist with the best-selling album last decade was Idol ng bayan April Boy Regino, the most watched movie in last year’s Manila Film Festival was Lastic Man, and MTB, one of today’s top-rating noontime shows, invokes the mass appeal of the python to improve its rating! "Wow pare, laki nung ahas o!", yelps a manong zealously watching the televised circus act. 

And now comes a show where performers don’t have taste in their vocabulary. To say that it undermines the audience’s entertainment preference, or what’s left of it, is lame. I think it drags it to the ground then beats it to non-existence. These all happen inconspicuously because it’s coated in laughter. The operative word here is subliminal.   

My nightcap for Holy Wednesday was a show that had nothing to do with being holy. I watched it over a bottle of beer, and I laughed as much as I expected. I also heard as much putang-ina’s in three hours as I did during High School.   

Curiosity didn’t kill me.

Although, It made me realize something. Over that place in Timog called Laffline, 125 pesos can give you three hours of saliva-splattering laughter, but the deal might come with hidden charges. So as you hit the sack and close your eyes, succumbing to the call of unconsciousness, you’re ignorant that on that night of pun and wisecracks, the biggest joke was on you. Hehe. 

My first post.  A post that has no point to make. Just for the heck of it.  No literary police is invited.  No critic is welcomed.  Expression can be so senseless yet be of service to its purpose at the same time.  Just as I am lost with my personal life right now, so is this post with its thesis.  For once let us deconstruct our minds of the default it has.  The default of trying to make sense out of everything.  For once let us be like the candy in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…a thing without a point.  Freedom from structure and rules is bliss.  For once, just this moment.  Let me communicate with you, just for the heck of it.

I feel better now.