Sunday, March 15, 2009
On passion, performances, and performers (batu-bato sa langit, ang tamaan MAMATAY)
I miss the days when people actually believed in the power of brainstorming. There is nothing more comforting in creative work than to see your fellow man and woman, like-minded or otherwise, thinking along with you, participating in this collective creative process which churns out projects so beautiful that they would have strained the sanity of a single individual.
I miss the days when people maintained enough humility, and probably enough faith in how effective developing muscle memory is, to actually attend practices; those who, in spite of the knowledge that they have a lot of things to do (don't we all?), are still willing to dedicate whatever time they have left for the project's cause. After all, time is never wasted in a meeting: the time between practices and brainstorming sessions allows one to talk, and perhaps bond, with the people you work with, and a performer knows that these bonds will endure way after the ephemeral high of the performance itself has worn off. Nowadays, all we have is a bunch of primadonnas who are OBVIOUSLY so talented that they don't need practice, and show their smug faces only on the night before a performance, or worse, on the morning, or worst, on the afternoon of the performance itself. I don't even know which one is worse: showing up late, or backing out of a performance? What, may I ask, ever happened to hard work?
I miss the days when people did volunteer work because of an itch, a passion for creating beautiful things for their supposed audiences, and not for a fucking grade. I miss people who perform for the sake of performing, for the high that you can only get from close to a thousand people's eyes and attentions (which, I may add, are a wonderful source of motivational energy) turned towards you. Who cares for a .25 incentive, when supposedly you have been given an opportunity to bring art to those who may bask in it, and may probably be inspired by it, making you one to be remembered in the process, a reward not even a flat 1 can replace.
Jackie, Eljay, Pen, Tin, Anjai: Thank you.
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