Having spent almost the entirety of summer writing a morally empty music (which I haven't even finished yet), I have most of my time walking around like Beethoven in the woods searching for that fleeting stint of inspiration. Only in my case, a roaring river of traffic, dodging my way through a forest of non-existent sidewalks and forgotten trash.
But care have I none about what surrounds me.
Probably one of the heaviest question to swagger it's way to my consciousness is that if being a composer, or any artist, would still matter at all in a world where political problems push arts and culture further and further away from the people's attention. I have dedicated my entire young adult life to the creation of new music, and sometimes I cannot help but stop and think; What's the point?
As I was sitting in a coffee shop at UP Ayala Technohub, I would bet with my life that from where I was sitting to a radius of about 100 meters surrounding me, I was confidently certain that I might be the only person within that circle who have heard of the name Robert Rauschenberg. Maybe even 300 hundred meters, not to brag. But who cares right?
Ninety-five percent of what occupied my head were severe questions i.e., What is the purpose of life? What is beauty, art? etc., while the rest of the percentage lingered on the less important questions e.g., what will I do for a job? How will I make money? What will be my next Facebook status? More or less the same questions that occupied the same people in that circumference.
Nobody cares about art anymore. Gone are the days when reckless artists and their drunken bohemian circles lead monumental artistic movements, inspire the next generation of immortality-crazed, experimental hordes, and change the world forever. After all, with the emergence of the industrial revolution in the early 20th century, the whole world was open to change. From Einstein's scientific breakthroughs to Picasso's radical departure from aesthetic conventions, everything was a growing foundation that helped mold an entire new world. Until one century later, when the establishment of this new world begin to backfire from the inside, everyone now is preoccupied in a constant debate over who is the bitch that stole the people's money, leaving the rest of us, with our spare-time, to helplessly listen..and rally, as if it does anything.
Whatever happened to the appreciation of beauty? I speculate that it sits quietly beneath the shadows, waiting, perhaps in vain, for the prodigal artist of the 21st century, that would one day breathe life to it's wings and once more soar gloriously for all humanity to sigh. Sigh.
And did I say "care" in my previous paragraph? Let me restate that sentence; Nobody KNOWS what art is anymore. And to the music students, fine arts students, artsy-fartsies, don't you worry, I'm not talking about you. Today, whether we like it or not, we live in a world immersed in the glamour of popular culture, which bombards us with deceptive ideals of beauty. That's why we call them "artists". Who? Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and the likes. That's why call them "art". What? Those redundant paintings of pretty flowers on a calendar. That's why we refer to them as "composers". Who? The pop songwriters who believe they wrote thirty songs when in fact they've only written one song thirty times.
I could go on but the point is; so long as we ALL participate in this mass-cultural delusion, so long as we ALL settle for the mediocrity of wanting nothing more than just earning money and raising kids, and more importantly, so long as we post unfathomably pointless "selfies", the 21st Century will swiftly pass without leaving behind even a single piece of art that manifests the beauty and greatness of it's people, that would illuminate the fire of enlightenment for the next generation.
How surprised I was with the thousands of people who flocked the Cultural Center of the Philippines during the Pasinaya 2014. I was among those who waited in a long line to "see" the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. Having the least priority, I was seated at the balcony where I saw thousands of people sit bluntly and silently throughout a Rossini Overture, and screamed in delight to Gary Valenciano's Kailangan Kita. Actually, an hour before that I checked out an art exhibit, where the greatest works of the National Artists for visual arts hung quietly to the white walls. One thing I could never forget was when I overheard a man, staring at one abstract painting, broke his long silence and said:
"Itong mga artist talaga, sila lang nakakaintindi ng mga works nila."
Bothered me for months, until I wrote this blog entry.