Te El Bimbo Variations
also by Adam David exticles Crows & Rages Bikini Idolatry the Long Weekend Weekend Instructions For Te Inclined A Week Week of Kindness (contributor) Borrowed and Never Returned (orthcoming)
ISBN: 978-971-691-833-5 HE EL BIMBO VARIAIONS © 2008 Adam David All rights reserved. Published by HE YOUH & BEAUY BRIGADE an o-the-books, utterly shoestring, extremely young and incredibly beautiul bookdesignand-publishing outt operating within and around the immediate Cubao area. Printed on Demand by CENRAL BOOKS SUPPLY SUPPLY INC. Phoenix Bldg., #927 Quezon Avenue, QC Tey are ecient workers and should be b e praised or giving fedgling writers and artists ar tists an economically-viable way to party in the Philippine Print Paradigm. As everyone knows but is araid to admit: the Future o Philippine Literature is in the Small Independent Press. Don’t ght it. Instead: grope it and grab it; kiss it with an open mouth, biting, licking, tongues and all. Overall book design and layout by Jun Cruz Na Ligas. Tird Printing, 2009. One o two hundred and seventy-ve printed book copies.
Te El Bimbo Varia Variation tionss
Adam David
Te author and this book have no connection whatsoever to any o the members o the Eraserheads, except or maybe Buddy Zabala, whose good wie Earnest is a riend and staunch supporter o the author. Te writing or this book began as an exercise in dexterity, like “Chopsticks” or pentatonic scalings, and ended on Christmas Eve as a git o sorts, or more accurately, a present , in all the meanings o the word. Tis book is or Delilah, or the lie-long artist residency.
And or these three liers, unwitting co-authors o the book, glorious in their teen-year-old radiance. Te author would also like to thank Daryll and Weng or timely providing much-needed space or nishing the book, and to Joel and Drey or the initial audience.
Introduction o write ninety-nine versions o a single line sounds like the idle boast o a literary geek in response to a drunken dare. Tough endearing in its brain-over-brawn daredevilry, it smacks o absurdity, the chances o its successul execution slim. Up the ante—pick a line rom a well-known and well-loved song, one that hardly needs rewriting to begin with— and the stage is set or the author o the boast to lose the bet, ending up naked, injured, or broke instead. Unless, that is, the literary geek in question is Adam David, who, in writing Te El Bimbo Variations , turns what might be dismissed as a harebrained idea into a hilarious, thought-provoking read. Te charms o Te El Bimbo Variations are as numerous as the risks it takes. What it gains in attention and anity by using “Ang Huling El Bimbo” Bimbo” as the basis o its ris, it stands to lose i unable to yield gits other than the strategic choice o the popular Eraserheads song. A wrong turn in the handling o the material can send it speeding down the highway o what David himsel calls “videoke literature,” where the pieces are, at most, excellent covers o the superior originals. Should the author’s imagination prove—however slightly—decient, how easily the book’s boldness can slip into olly, the sequence remaining all too amiliar, the variations redundant, and the ninety-nine times they appear excessive, to say the least. Tat David manages to overcome these risks—even cultivating in the reader the contradictory impulses o savoring every line and nishing the
book in one sitting—is no small eat. Courtesy o a acility or linguistic acrobatics, an ample vocal range, and a decadent sense o humor, Te El Bimbo Variations is an impressive stunt its author pulls o, where every page averts the perils o amiliarity and repetitiveness, oering instead, and consistently, an occasion or surprise. Whether tongue in cheek, brooding, caustic, or earnest, the variations are, on the whole, playul, emanating sheer pleasure in turning a thought again and again in one’s head and nailing the words with which to convey each turn. Te pleasure is immensely engaging, and more importantly, I think, quite contagious. By the time you hit number ninety-nine, the book, though nished, isn’t sealed shut, not when your mind is wide open to possibilities, ready to cook up other, other, urther variations. It is precisely the book’s peculiar and congenial approach to language as an experience, or perhaps more accurately, accurately, an adventure in itsel that makes it ar more complex and rich than the stunt it appears to be. Te El Bimbo Variat Variations ions is steeped in playulness, but it is certainly not mere play. It does not all prey to the sel-indulgence to which some works written in the same strain are prone, where ancy ootwork exists or its own sake, sans the inorming intelligence necessary to push it beyond the simply novel and ultimately perishable. Resistant to paraphrase, comortably bilingual, and casual in its blending o high art and pop culture, it conronts and provokes big questions about language, orm and content, originality, and other such matters while remaining lighthearted, entertaining, and accessible. Tis I nd absolutely rereshing, rereshing, especially when read against works addressing similar concerns which opt to be dense, pedantic, and obscure. David is clearly well-read and Te El Bimbo Variations highly literary—Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, and Matt Madden are obvious infuences, many o the writing constraints eatured in the book are drawn rom Oulipo, a number o variations make use o local and oreign poetic orms, and the book reerences canonical cano nical writers such suc h as William William Blake and James Joyce—yet Joyce—yet the book wisely avoids making a spectacle o its knowledge. It is rst and oremost a delightul read—it is evident to me that the author enjoyed writing it—and as we plumb its depths and pursue its questions, we are constantly reminded to delight in the process.
I Te El Bimbo Variations were the outcome o the literary equivalent o a dare, then no question about it: Adam David is keeping his clothes on, his limbs intact, and his money in his pocket. CONCHIINA CRUZ
Contents Reductive ......................................................................................... 1 Antonymy ........................................................................................ 2 Another Point O View ................................................................... 3 Subtle Insight .................................................................................. 4 Synonymous .................................................................................... 5 Permutation ..................................................................................... 6 Parsed Parsed Sentence ................................................................................. 7 A Dierent Generation ................................................................... 8 Déjà Vu ............................................................................................ 9 Forgetul ........................................................................................ 10 With One Letter Altered .............................................................. 11 With One Letter Missing ............................................................. 12 With One Word Altered ............................................................... 13 With One Word Missing .............................................................. 14 Unconrmed Rumour .................................................................. 15 Conrmed Rumour ...................................................................... 16 Exclamatory .................................................................................. 17 Doubtul ........................................................................................ 18 Derogatory .................................................................................... 19 Sarcastic ......................................................................................... 20 Insistent ......................................................................................... 21 Conessional .................................................................................. 22 Knock-Knock Joke ........................................................................ 23 Single Contradiction ..................................................................... 24 Double Contradiction ................................................................... 25
riple Contradiction ..................................................................... 26 Dude .............................................................................................. 27 Expletives ....................................................................................... 28 Interjections ................................................................................... 29 William Blake ................................................................................ 30 Gertrude Stein ............................................................................... 31 James Joyce .................................................................................... 32 American Haiku ............................................................................ 33 Koan ............................................................................................... 34 Snowball ........................................................................................ 35 Diona ............................................................................................. 36 anaga ........................................................................................... 37 Dalit ............................................................................................... 38 Limerick ......................................................................................... 39 Acronymic ...................................................................................... 40 Square Poem .................................................................................. 41 Beautiul Outlaw .......................................................................... 42 Beautiul In-Law ........................................................................... 43 Jose Garcia Villanelle .................................................................... 44 Cento .............................................................................................. 45 Denitional ................................................................................... 46 ALGOL .......................................................................................... 47 HML ........................................................................................... 48 Six-Word Story .............................................................................. 49 Ad Copy ......................................................................................... 50 elegram ........................................................................................ 51 Linear Logical Analysis ................................................................. 52 Circular Logical Analysis .............................................................. 53 rue Philippine Ghost Story ........................................................ 54 Fantasya ......................................................................................... 55 SpecFic ........................................................................................... 56 Murder Mystery ............................................................................ 57 Erotica Blurb .................................................................................. 58 abloid News Clipping ................................................................. 59 Map Directions ............................................................................. 60 Epitaph ........................................................................................... 61 Experimental Teater .................................................................... 62 Let-Handed .................................................................................. 63
Right-Handed ................................................................................ 64 Lipogram On “A” .......................................................................... 65 Lipogram On “E” .......................................................................... 66 Lipogram On “I” ........................................................................... 67 Lipogram On “O” ......................................................................... 68 Lipogram On “U” ......................................................................... 69 Univocalism On “A” ...................................................................... 70 Univocalism On “E” ..................................................................... 71 Univocalism On “I” ...................................................................... 72 Univocalism On “O” .................................................................... 73 Univocalism On “U” ..................................................................... 74 autogram On “A” ........................................................................ 75 autogram On “E” ........................................................................ 76 autogram On “I” ......................................................................... 77 autogram On “O” ....................................................................... 78 autogram On “U” ....................................................................... 79 Olactory ........................................................................................ 80 actile ............................................................................................. . ............................................................................................ 81 Auditory ......................................................................................... 82 Gustatory ....................................................................................... 83 Anatomical .................................................................................... 84 Sound Eect .................................................................................. 85 Moral Lesson ................................................................................. 86 Homophony ................................................................................... 87 Anagram ........................................................................................ 88 Syllabic Cut/Up ............................................................................. 89 Homovocalism ............................................................................... 90 Homoconsonantism ...................................................................... 91 Word Shards .................................................................................. 92 Crossword Puzzle Clues ................................................................ 93 Mathematics For Beginners .......................................................... 94 Te Art O Te Possible ................................................................ 95 Gashlycrumb iny ...................................................................... 101 Comic Strip .................................................................................. 102 Chordbook ................................................................................... 106 Artist’s Rendition ........................................................................ 107 Notes On Tese Pages ................................................................. 109
Te El Bimbo Variations
Reductive Kamukha mo dati si Paraluman.
1
Antonymy Hindi niya kamukha si Paraluman ngayong sila ay matanda na.
2
Another Point O View Kamukha ko si Paraluman nung kabataan namin.
3
Subtle Insight Maganda ka dati.
4
Synonymous Kahawig mo si Atang dela Rama nung may gatas pa tayo sa labi.
5
Permutation Nung bata pa tayo si Paraluman ay kamukha mo.
6
Parsed Sentence
7
A Dierent Generation Kamukha mo si Joey Albert nung tayo ay bata pa.
8
Déjà Déjà Vu Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung tayo ay bata pa si Paraluman kamukha mo.
9
Forgetul Kamukha mo si ...
10
With One Letter Altered Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung tayo ay data pa.
11
With One Letter Missing Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung tayo ay bata, a.
12
With One Word Word Altered Altered Kamukha mo si Paraluman nung ao ao ay bata pa. p a.
13
With One Word Word Missing Missing Kamukha mo si Paraluman. ayo ay bata pa.
14
Unconfrmed Rumour Uy, alam mo ba, dati daw, kamukha niya si ... Paraluman?
15
Confrmed Rumour noon.
16
Oo, totoo ’yun, medyo kamukha nga niya si Paraluman
Exclamatory Oh my God, dude!!! Kamukha mo noon si Paraluman!!! DaFuuuuuck!!!
17
Doubtul Kamukha daw niya dati si Paraluman. Daw.
18
Derogatory Yuck. Paraluman.
19
Sarcastic Angganda-ganda mo kasi, e.
20
Insistent Sobrang sobrang soooobrang kamukha mo dati si Paraluman! As in! Ibang klase! Putsa, puwede na nga kayong ipagpalit sa isa’t isa, e! alaga! May nagsabi sa’kin dati, tapos ayokong maniwala hangga’t sa Ginoogle ko ’yung litrato ni Paraluman tapos tinapat ko sa litrato mo nung bata pa tayo tapos ... hayup! Kamukhang-kamukha mo talaga! Dapat makita mo minsan!
21
Conessional Alam mo ba, matagal ko nang iniisip na ... dati, nung bata pa tayo ... kahawig mo si ... Paraluman ... crush nga kita nun, e ...
22
Knock-Knock Joke “Knock-knock!” “Who’s there?” “Kamukha mo! ” “Kamukha mo who?” “E ’di si Paraluman!”
23
Single Contradiction alaga?
24
Double Contradiction Si Paraluman? Ows?!?!?
25
riple Contradiction Kamukha mo nga ba siya nun? Si Paraluman nga ba talaga? Nung bata pa tayo?
26
Dude Well, yeah, y’know, you I mean - yeah ...
27
Expletives Kakantutan mo sa puke nung titi ay bayag-bayag pa.
28
Interjections Hm? Oh? Ah! Pt!
29
William Blake a Serpent’s bite in Youth’s Delight
30
Gertrude Stein Stein Gleam seems merely violet.
31
James Joyce riverrun, past Why and I, rom swerve o Gee to bend o Eh, brings us by a sea o recirculation back to Genuine Amour and Co.
32
American Haiku Recognition Sparrows Sparrows in fight scattering light You: Paraluman
33
Koan your ace beore your parents were born is shown
34
Snowball A si Ely dati crush batang kasayaw maypagka Paraluman
35
Diona Damdamin sa’yo’y sa’yo’y litaw lit aw,, O, paruparong ligaw: Paraluman ko’y ikaw!
36
anaga Babaeng lusog-hita (Sa El Bimbo’y bihasa) Sino ang ’yong kamukha? “Paraluman “Paraluman (nung bata)!”
37
Dalit Noong bata pa lang tayo Mahawakan Mahawakan lang ’yong suso Sinayaw ko ang El Bimbo Noong bata pa lang tayo
38
Limerick Tere once was a girl rom Bulacan Shook her hips like no other girl can o cha-cha and boogie Bebop and rocksteady Back when she looked like Paraluman
39
Acronymic Exuberant loneliness: bosoms in motion beyond observation.
40
Square Square Poem Poem Kamukha Mo Si Paraluman Nung ayo “Ay,” Ay,” Bata Pa Mahal,
mo si Paraluman nung tayo ay bata pa. nga siguro ako para ihambing sa isang aktres, Paraluman pa!” Kung alam mo lang, mahal, ikaw ng Puso ko, Gilda Gales ng Buto, at ang indak at indayog mo sa El Bimbo. Dati, gusto lang ang magkasama, magkasa ma, walang ibang gagawin gagawi n kundi ang bulong minsang natapakan. natapaka n. Minasahe ang paa:“Baka lang tayo, walang alam sa buhay, buhay, pag-ibig, sa kung-ano pa -halik-halik lang, dila sa dila, mahusay ka rin dun, at ang galing-galeng mong sumayaw, sumayaw, mapaboogie man o
“Mahal at ang galing-galeng mong sumayaw. mapaboogie!” mapaboo gie!” man, o cha-cha!
41
Beautiul Outlaw My ex: to see you here dozin with Jim, you with fy open, him dunkin donuts in coee cups, without question unbecomin, listenin to the grooves o Iron Butterfy, begs a reminiscin to happen: there was a time, once, stackin Zs like this, you awoke with a start, caught me by your jugs in a very questionable position where I began to explain but you, very much not yet “ex”, simply unbuttoned blouse, then queried oxily “why stop jigglin?”, so bein teen, no will nor question not to continue, I replied “OK” then went zoom-zoomzoom on st ’n knees with you, boogiein til mornin, til neighbors were mouthin.
42
Beautiul In-Law Alab ng pangarap sa pag-ibig na tapat Nagmula lang pala sa bulang alaala.
43
Jose Garcia Villanelle Oh,youth,and,beauty, in,a,ew,years,ade. Such,sorrow,to,be, once,to,have,been,her: so,sublime,and,ey! Oh,youth,and,beauty, both,let,her,barren, by,the,end,o,day. Such,sorrow,to,be, a,repeat,sinner, o,kiss,grope,and,ee, (oh,youth,and,beauty) with,a,home,to,run, and,baby,to,eed. Such,sorrow,to,be, not,there,to,own,her, nor,love: spit,and,e! Oh,youth,and,beauty! Such,sorrow,to,“be”! 44
Cento Kamukha nang isipan mo in-love na naman si kamukha mo si Paraluman nung (ilang oras pa ba bago tayo ako ay - nung tayo ay bata nung ikaw ay bata pa.
mo si nung tayo ay bata pa tayo pang dalawa ay magkita?) walang lakas ng loob pa
45
Defnitional the one being addressed had an appearance that betted or accorded with Paraluman in a ormer act or state o ineriority in age
46
ALGOL LIBERAE HRU PROCESS DEFINE EVEN AND AACH VALUE HEN WRIE WIH WI H RUE RUE CAUSE
47
HML
Ikaw /paraluman.jpg”>Ikaw
48
Six-Word Story Katanungan pagkagising: “Paraluman “Paraluman ng panagimpan, nasaan?”
49
Ad Copy PARALUMAN Goat Placenta Para sa may nais ng diwatang-kutis!! *NO APPROVED HERAPEUIC HERAPEUIC CLAIMS* CL AIMS*
50
elegram ADA SOP BAHAY KAGABI BISIA SOP HANAP YEARBOOK LUMA SOP KAAWA KAUWA SOP PARALUMAN HAWIG MO PALA SOP SIGNED BUENDIA
51
Linear Logical Analysis So: Si Paraluman. Isang aktres. Na maganda. Nung Dekada Singkuwenta. Para sa Sampaguita Pictures. Kamukha mo siya. So, maganda ka. O, at least, sa opinyon ng ibang tao, maganda ka. O, at least, sa opinyon ko, maganda ka. O, at least, mestizahin. Nung bata pa tayo. So, maganda ka lang pala nung bata ka. So, hindi ka na maganda ngayon. Matanda ka na kasi, e. So, panget ka na.
52
Circular Logical Analysis 1) Mahilig ka sa pansit nung tayo ay bata pa. 2) Walang Walang batang mahilig sa pansit ang kumakain ng spaghetti. 3) Walang Walang batang mahilig sa spaghetti ang hindi madungis. 4) Ang batang malinis ay kamukha si Paraluman. 5) Walang batang kamukha si Paraluman ang hindi mahilig sa pansit.
53
rue Philippine Ghost Story “Pero kasi, mahal ... ako si Paraluman, e ...”
54
Fantasya “By Ba’ala’s Beard! Renege this ruse, oul asuang! Te AllSeeing Eye o Aguimat has negated you glamour’s power over me!” Liquid light, like molten metal, surges rom the triangular stone in A’Dun’s hands, ebbs towards the asuang, and fakes o its feshsuit, exposing, underneath, gossamer wings and alabaster skin. It shrieks the Shriek o the Trice Cursed, the Trice Damned, and on the horizon, almost to the vanishing point, dark shadows fock incessantly towards A’Dun the the Reaver Reave r. He grits his teeth at the sight. He prepares himsel or the rain nally about to all on the arid ground o the Bu’Lakan Bu’Lakan Desert. A rain o re. A rain o tears. A rain o blood.
55
SpecFic As she massaged her dehydrated dermis to what can only be described as a septuagenarian amphibian’s thick-lipped, disapproving scowl, she nally put three o her arms up in disgusting surrender: this is not the Calayan NanoPly Cream that she knew in her youth.
56
Murder Mystery yster y Mr E holds the thin, yellowing photograph between shaking ngers ... the hair, hair, the dimples, the lips ... could this be her? Sweat beading by his brow, E fips the photograph, and suddenly sucks in air: scrawled in ink red as blood still resh ater hal a century, century, a name, glowing, glowering in the blankness ... “El Bimbo.”
57
Erotica Blurb L. E. Rue, Julie En Chine (2008) Follow gorgeous bosom-heaving Gallic buxom heroine Julie in her titillating travels across the Chinese continent in ... Julie En Chine ! HEA-UP! ... in intrigue as Julie humps the hot and wide Mongolian Desert in search o ... the Manchurian Candidate! SALIVAE! ... in excitement as Julie straddles the long and legendary Great Wall o China in pursuit o ... the Dreaded Doctor Fu Manchu! HARDEN! ... in horror as Julie barebacks the cold and hard Yeti! peaks o Nepal in a hunt or ... the Happy Yeti Don’t dare miss these three classic L. E. Rue adventures o Julie in Julie En Chine , now available in English or the rst time ever!
58
abloid News Clipping 13 April 2005 BABAE SA ERMIA PAAY SA ESKINIA!
Isang ’di-pa-nakikilalang babae ang natagpuang patay kaninang umaga sa kanto ng Del Pilar at Soldado, sa Ermita, Maynila, biktima umano ng hit-and-run. Base sa preliminary investigation ng pulisya, nagtatrabaho ang biktima sa isang ’di-kalayuang nightclub bilang GRO. Salaysay ni SPO1 Edilberto Buendia: “Malamang taga-rito lang siya, kasi wala siyang bitbit na gamit, kaya minabuti naming magdoor-todoor sa area para tanungin kung merong nakakakilala sa kanya.” kanya.” “Naglakad siya papauwi at ’di nakaiwas sa paparating na kotse,” dagdag nito. “Madilim kasi talaga dito ’pag gabi, kaya dapat nagiingat talaga ang mga tao ’pag naglalakad sa lugar na’to.” Para sa mga taong maaaring makatulong sa pagkilala sa identidad ng biktima, ang bangkay ng babae ay kasalukuyang nakahimlay sa Ermita Catholic Church. - Vic Blanco 59
Map Directions Just go straight down this lane, parallel to the river, river, and when you reach the third corner you’ll see an old kiddie park and beside that there’ll be a street hairdresser’s. Go right at that corner and ater a ew houses’ worth o walking, you’ll be there.
60
Epitaph ADA LOPEZ May 25, 1984 ~ April 13, 2005 MOHER * DANCER DAUGHER * FRIEND Paraluman Paraluman ng Ermita she dances with angels
61
Experimental Teater Characters: ~ couples in ancy dresses and pressed suits ~ audience Props: ~ cardboard cut-out masks o Paraluman’s ace (as many as needed) ~ eggs (as many as needed) Instructions: Te couples are given two masks and an egg each. Te couples wear the Paraluman masks as they dance to a nonexistent beat while balancing eggs between their oreheads. I a couple drops an egg, they will remove their masks and hand them to a new couple in the audience. Te new couple will then t hen wear the masks and in turn dance to a nonexistent beat while balancing an egg between their oreheads. Repeat process until either all eggs are broken or all the couples in the audience have taken their turns in dancing.
62
Let-Handed Vacated by grace ~ a dreary ace barraged by sad years ~ eyes raw ~ bares rare tears!
63
Right-Handed on nil.
64
Hip on hip? Pink lip on pink lip? I hum, mull on moll, hopin’
Lipogram On “A” My thoughts: persistently perturbed by memories o you.
65
Lipogram On “E” Not to look at, not to touch, not to talk to, not to kiss: all that is - was - now wisps.
66
Lipogram On “I” Our ballroom days are over!
67
Lipogram On “O” And regarding the ace: is this Age’s cruel reward?
68
Lipogram On “U” What is Love?
A longing or kind. No? Tis love is.
69
Univocalism On “A” “What was that?” “Tat was a lass’ last waltz. A sad chap’s fashback as drama.” “Ah. Art .”
70
Univocalism On “E” When cheerless bent men remember hens, they pen these senseless texts. Yes, even the best esteemed gents!
71
Univocalism On “I” His sti li’l girl is still kicking in his ill li’l mind. Isn’t it sick?
72
Univocalism On “O” “Oh, God, no, don’t go!” Old Boy longs or Joy, Joy, now lost to ghosts o old olks; ood to rogs, to dog gods, to gross brown worms.
73
Univocalism On “U” Lug mulls luv’s mug.
74
autogram On “A” Another absurd aesthetic appreciation activates anew as an artist appropriates an ancient actress’ actress’ aethereal appearance as artul analogy.
75
autogram On “E” Ely’s elegant eulogy eectively evokes everyone’s emotional earthquakes.
76
autogram On “I” I-Love-Yous ignore imperections. It is inherent in Idealization.
77
autogram On “O” Originality o outlook oten obuscates otherwise obvious objective-correlatives.
78
autogram On “U” Utilizing utmost urbanity, underdog überpoet - ultimately unloved unbosoms unencumbered ursine upwellings; utterances unsaid, unbeknownst.
79
Olactory Earthy strong bouquet, smoky nutty, nutty, with wi o painty gum wating.
80
actile Flu pu supples crunches marbly smooth.
81
Auditory Crystal fange in G sustaining in choral ourth and sixth octaves ascending to trebly thick A and C sustaining in D/G.
82
Gustatory Firm sour cold roundness yielding light sugar explosions, casky, eventually warm.
83
Anatomical curling rontalis occipitalis olding masseter medial and lateral pterygoid smoothly tugging
arching
labii superiosis levator and depressor opening
genioglossus styloglossus back and orth galea aponeurotica nasalis almost
84
monozygotic
mentalis the entire zygomatic
Sound Eect *sigh*
85
Moral Lesson Youth is Beauty
86
Homophony Cow-moo come-on: “See? Farrah Farrah loom ’n junta you, eye-butt tapper!”
87
Anagram “You pun?!? ” Si Alan, batang mataray, pa-amuk-amok!
88
Syllabic Cut/Up Cut/Up Kamu si Yokha, bamo ay para nuan ng tata pa! Lum?
89
Homovocalism “Ang ulam mo! Ikaw ang umatupag, o!” “A, na naman?”
90
Homoconsonantism “Kimi ka, ha? Mis, puro lamon!!!” “Naniig tayo!!!” “... uy, ba’t api ... ?”
91
Word Shards PAR ALU MAN
92
à à à
allelism begins here par allelism Alunsina the rst stirrings o Alunsina man without regrets a kundi man
Crossword Puzzle Clues Across
Down
... 12 ... 36 ... ... 65 ...
your spitting image a Philippine muse
our wonder years
93
Mathematics For Beginners x = y y = √196 x = ?
94
Te Art O Te Possible
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96
97
98
99
100
Gashlycrumb iny
101
Comic Strip
102
103
104
105
Chordbook
106
Artist’s Rendition
107
5th September - 20th November - 28th November 3rd December - 15th December - 19th December - 23rd December
2007 23rd August
2008 12th November - 18th November
2009
108
Notes On Tese Pages Te El Bimbo Variations owes a great debt to Raymond Queneau,
Georges Perec, Matt Madden, and the entire roster o the Oulipo. Teir books lay the oundation upon which this book is built.
Oulipo stands
or Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop or Potential Literature. It was ounded by Raymond Queneau and François le Lionnais in France in 1960, hoping to address the apparent potential o using ordered logical systems (i.e., mathematics) to produce literature. I say “apparent” because at that time, Queneau and le Lionnais were working on Queneau’s 100,000,000,000,000 Poems , which is, briefy, a collection o ten sonnets written and published in such a way that the reader can actually potentially create 100,000,000,000,000 permutations o those same ten sonnets. Te project presented presented a lot o problems problems or Queneau (who was an amateur mathematician) and le Lionnais (who was a proessional one) and also a lot o insights about the advantages o marrying math with lit. And so, the Oulipo was born. Te group swelled to accommodate both writers and mathematicians, amateurs and proessionals alike, and together they developed quite a number o constraints they encourage artists to use to produce their own works. A collection o these constraints (an encyclopaedia, actually) is available as the Oulipo Compendium, as edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie.
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Te denitions that I’ll use as way o explaining the Oulipian constraints are all paraphrased—i not lited wholesale—rom the Oulipo Compendium. I can only hope Mathews and Brotchie (and a hell o a lot o other guys who worked on the book) will see the genuine love and admiration I have or Oulipo and orgive me. Please don’t bludgeon me with baguettes. Te order o denitions is not alphabetical. Instead, it ollows the order o the book’s contents. Only the more obscure ones are dened, or at least, the ones that I think I have to say more about. A ew words on this book’s lineage: one o the Oulipo’s most important texts, maybe even its most important ever, is Raymond Queneau’s Exercices de Style , translated by Barbara Wright in 1958 as Exercises in Style , where Queneau takes an unexceptional event he witnessed in a crowded bus at midday and proceeds to retell it ninety-nine times. Ater orty years, Matt Madden begins 99 Ways o ell A Story: Exercises In Style , his comic book ri on Queneau’s original Exercises , where instead o using literary orms to retell a mundane exchange between him and his wie Jessica Abel, he uses the extremely underused idioms o comic book narratology. And now, ten years ater Madden, ty years ater Wright’s translation o Queneau, we have this book.
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Parsed Sentence
Tis is still disputable, partly because despite the strong similarities, Filipino sentence construction does not necessarily ollow English sentence construction, and sentence parsing as an activity is largely an English-language practice. Te shaky validity o this variation wholely rests on my assertion that in this sentence, “mo” is the subject that “Kamukha” modies, urther complemented by “Paraluman,” acting as a predicate nominal, which is then modied by “nung tayo ay bata pa.” Like I said, it’s disputable and shaky, but I elt the variation was valid enough or inclusion. But i someone wants to school me on how parsing works in Filipino, eel ree to send me an eMail. William Blake
Visionary poet and artist. I he was alive today, he’d be making zines with his poems poems in them. I wrote wrot e this as one o his “Proverbs From Hell,” Hell,” rom his book Te Marriage Of Heaven And Hell . He had a habit o eclectic capitalisation, biblical imagery, and absolutely delighted on using the word Delight . I have one o his “Proverbs” tattooed on the inside o my right arm: Exuberance is Beauty , based on his handwriting in Te Marriage , which he drew and wrote by hand. I he was alive today, he’d be making zines with his art in them. I he was alive today, he’d be making comic books.
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Gertrude Stein
Innovative writer and, more amously, a salonist. Mentor and guide to the Lost Generation o expatriate American writers, including Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Friend to Picasso, too, whose Cubist works she tried to emulate in writing with her book ender Buttons Button s . Echoing Picasso’s reduction o still lives to their most basic visual shapes, Stein reduced poems to their most basic units o meaning— words—and in doing so attacked the “denotation o words ... She repeated words, recast them, rhymed them, and strung them together in unusual combinations ... the reader is orced to question the meaning o words, to become reacquainted with a language that Stein thought had become dulled by long use.” One o her shorter (and better) ones in ender Buttons Button s is A PEICOA A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.
Tis variation was written in emulation o that voice. Her concerns with the issue o not conusing looking with remembering in writing sort o inormed my process with the Sensory Variations (more on them later). James Joyce
Modernist writer. All he wrote about was Ireland, even when he spent most o his lie away rom it, but then again, there’s this writerly romantic notion about only being truly able to write about someplace (or someone, or something) when you’re at least at an arm’s length rom it. Finnegans Finnegan s Wake Wake , his other novel, was his last and in my opinion best book. It was the Night to Ulysses ’ Day, written in waves o word play and word games, mining Joyce’s knowledge o myth and legend and oreign languages to tell a story about Civilization. Its rst sentence is in/amously the second hal o the last sentence o the sixhundred-pluspage book, and is in one level about a couple, and in another level about Ireland, Ireland, and in another level about Civilization. Tis variation is a play on Wake ’s’s rst sentence, rewritten with unortunately only really two levels o meaning signicant only to people who know the track listing or the Eraserheads’ album Cutterpillow , know how to play the guitar, and likewise have read Finnegans Wake
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(i.e., me), but then ater thinking about it somewhat I realised that that sort o in-jokeness is a very Joycean thing to do, so I was still actually very much in keeping with Wake ’s’s tradition. American Haiku
American, as opposed to the traditional Japanese haiku. In the Japanese tradition, the haiku has the 5 - 7 - 5 syllabic count, and a requirement to season - nature imagery. In most haikus, there is also the ormula o concrete imagery - abstract imagery - convergence o imagery. imagery. Te Americans, most notably Jack Kerouac, did away with the syllabic count, somewhat played around with the ormula, but still kept with the season - nature imagery imag ery.. It comes across as a very logical thing thi ng or me seeing as Nihonggo uses a very dierent syllabic system and syntax rom English, and thus the English-language English-language (and (and Filipino, Filipino, and whatever else else language in the world) haiku shouldn’t strictly adhere to the traditional syllabic count, but I think the season - nature imagery should still be a requirement. I mean, i you still want to call it haiku. Anecdote about the season - nature imagery: I only vaguely remember Kerouac’s American haikus as being focked by sparrows, so I wrote my El Bimbo Haiku Variation (then called Jack Kerouac) with a sparrow analogy. I went online and Wiki’d haiku and lo and behold the rst example or American haikus is Jack Kerouac and his sparrows. Koan
A paradox to be meditated upon to train Zen Buddhist monks to abandon dependence on Reason to gain Enlightenment. Tis particular koan sort o answers the Original Face Face strand in Buddhism. Te Original Face is (this is only my reading, o course) one’s rue Nature, one’s Identity beyond identity. One o the more amous koans about it goes: Show me your original ace beore your parents were born.
I thought it was unny how the El Bimbo text converged with this particular concern o Zen Buddhism (ace = kamukha, Paraluman Paraluman = old actress beore your parents were born) and so with this I decided to try to answer that.
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Snowball
A orm o verse, already practiced in Classical times, requiring the rst word o a text to have only one letter, the second two, the third three, and so on, as ar as resourceulness and inspiration will allow. One can also make snowballs based on syllabic count or sentence count. Variations o snowballs snowba lls exist. One is the the Avalanche Avalanche, which is essentially a sequence o snowballs organised according to a supplementary rule r ule o progression. For For example, an avalanche o three parts would ideally have the rst part contain two words, the rst o which having only one letter, letter, the second having two; the second part would contain three words, the rst o which having only one letter, the second two, the third three; then, the third part would contain our words, the rst word having only one letter, the second two, the third three, and nally, the ourth our. Another variation is the Melting Snowball, which is essentially the normal snowball written in reverse. So, instead o an addition in the number o letters, there is a subtraction. Also, a melting snowball can ollow an expanding snowball to create the third variation, the Diamond Snowball, and i you reverse the diamond snowball, you get the ourth variation, the Hourglass Snowball . Diona
raditional orm o Philippine Poetry. Tree lines o seven syllables each, with a rhyming scheme o aaa. It’s one o the more obviously ormulaic orms o poetry in the Philippines: set-up - elaboration punchline. One can, o course, mix them up, but upon reading, they will still ollow the most basic narrative fow. anaga
One o the most used o the traditional orms o Philippine Poetry, maybe because o its squareness. It’s our lines o seven syllables each with an aaaa scheme. It’s a solid, reliable orm o poetry. It’s a rock. Dalit
Or Korido. Another traditional orm o Philippine Poetry. Four lines o eight syllables each, with a rhyming scheme o aaaa. Tere’s a sort o pattern emerging here with the traditional Pinoy poetic rhyming scheme, the regularity o it, the seemingly unadventurous vibe. Tird-
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hand inormation about it: according to Virgilio Almario, it’s because o our ancestors’ reading o their mundane/reliable existence in the barrio: the sun comes up in the morning, blazes at noon, and is down by evening. It works, but it strikes me as being too simplistic. Limerick
English traditional orm. A light or humorous poem o ve lines o which lines one, two, and ve are o three eet, and lines three and our o two eet. Its rhyming scheme is aaabba. Like the diona, another ormulaic orm observing the set-up - elaboration - punchline fow. fow. Acronymic
Poem in which the letters o a given word urnish the initials o the words used in each line. Square Poem
Pioneered by Lewis Carroll. A poem in which the initial words per line make up the rst line, and the nal words per line make up the last line, orming a rame o words enclosing the poem body. A personal avourite. Beautiul Outlaw Or belle absente. Te “outlaw” in question is the name o the person
or subject to whom the poem is addressed. Each line should include all the letters o the alphabet except or the letter appearing in the dedicated name at the position corresponding to that o the line. It recreates the acrostic as an absence instead o a presence o a name.
Beautiul In-Law Or beau présent. A poem in which only the letters rom a given name
can be used, but the poet isn’t pressured to use them all. I restricted mysel to the sixteen letters rom the original El Bimbo text (but I didn’t use all o them): a, p, t, b, y, o g, n, u, m, l, r, i, s, h, and k . Jose Garcia Villanelle
Based on a couple o ormal innovations by expat poet Jose Garcia Villa, the Comma Poem and Reversed Consonance, and o course the tried and true villanelle, with a bit o tweaking here and there. 115
In Villa’ Villa’s own words, the commas “appear in the poems unctionally unction ally,, and thus not or eccentricity; and they are there also poetically, that is to say, not in their prose unction ... commas are an integral and essential part o the medium: regulating the poem’s verbal density and time movement: enabling each word to attain a uller tonal value, and the line movement to become more measured ... the result is a lineal pace o quiet dignity and movement.” With Reversed Consonance, Villa’s concept was to introduce a new rhyming scheme ounded not on the usually mainly-vowel-based phonetics (e.g., s ee and he ) but on the reversal o the “last sounded consonants o the last syllables, or the last principal consonants o a word” o a preceding line or its corresponding rhyme in the poem. Under this scheme, the rhyme or “bee n her” would be “barr en,” and the th e rhyme or “ f ee eed” would be “and f ie,” and so on. I know. Villa’s a genius. f ie,” Cento
A poem made up entirely o lines quoted rom another poet or poem. In this variation, I decided it’d be apt i I quoted lines rom other Eraserheads songs. Defnitional
Each meaningul word in a text (verb, noun, adjective, adverb) is replaced by its dictionary denition. Te dictionary I use or my denitional texts is Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary enth Edition. ALGOL
Te acronym or Algorithmic Oriented Language, a language or computer programming invented in 1960. Its original lexicon consisted o only twenty-our words but urther research revealed that there are actually one hundred and six words in ALGOL. Some o these might be amiliar to people who, like me, learned computer programming through MS-DOS. Tere are thirty-ve such reserved words in the standard Burroughs large systems sub-language: ALPHA, ARRAY, BEGIN, BOOLEAN, COMMEN, COMMEN, CONINUE, DIREC DIRE C , DO, DOUBLE, ELSE, END, EN D, EVEN, FALSE, FILE, FOR, FORMA, GO, IF, INEGER, LABEL, LIS, LONG, OWN, POINER, PROCEDURE, REAL, SEP,
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SWICH, ASK, ASK, HEN, HE N, RUE, UNIL, VALUE, WHILE, WH ILE, ZIP. ZIP. Tere are seventy-one such restricted identiers in the standard Burroughs large systems sub-language: ACCEP, AND, AACH, BY, CALL, CASE, CAUSE, DEALLOCAE, DEFINE, DEACH, DISABLE, DISPLAY, DIV, DUMP, ENABLE, EQL, EQV, EXCHANGE, EXERNAL, FILL, FORWARD, GEQ, GR, IMP, IN, INERRUP, IS, LB, LEQ, LIBERAE, LINE, LOCK, LSS, MERGE, MOD, MONIOR, MUX, NEQ, NO, NO, ON, OPEN, OR, OU, PICURE, PROCESS, PROCURE, PROGRAMDUMP, RB, READ, RELEASE, REPLACE, RESE, RESIZE, REWIND, RUN, SCAN, SEEK, SE, SKIP, SOR, SPACE, SWAP, HRU, IMES, O , WAI, AI, WHEN, WHEN , WIH, WRIE. Noël Arnaud contributed several strict ALGOL poems to the Oulipo, together with others, in which he expanded the available vocabulary rom the initial twenty-our words by combining them into words not included in the vocabulary. For example, ABOO rom A(BLE) and BOO(LEAN). Six-Word Six-Word Story
Once, in an interview, Ernest Hemingway was asked which o his stories he thought was his best. He said his best was a six-word story he wrote that went “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I’ve written some and have actually designed and co-published a ew six-word stories (written by other people) as a series o zines called SAIS back in 2006. Erotica Blurb
Tis variation was written as a Brazzle. Te term comes rom a story rom Vladimir Nabokov’s ime And Ebb. A brazzle is a short prose piece that describes—in the language o book dust-jacket copy—an imaginary work by an imaginary author. Te name o the author and the title o the work are obtained by transorming real names and titles according to a three-stage process. Te procedure to making brazzles goes: 1) a homophonic translation o all or part o the original name or title; 2) semantic extrapolation— whether by similarity, association, or opposition—o the terms created in the rst step; and 3) the smoothing-out o results o step two or the sake o plausibility and naturalness.
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For my brazzle, I played loose with the rst step, seeing as to how Filipino Filipino is already generally phonetic. It went like this: Ely Buendia, “Ang Huling El Bimbo” First Step: Ang à Huling à El à Bimbo à
Chinese Julie elle ditz
Second Step: Ely à Buendia à
L. E. avenue
à
Frenchwoman
à
street
à
Rue
Tird Step: L. E. Rue, Julie En Chine
Te resulting ctional author and book title reminded me o the 1960s risqué French bande-dessinées, o which the most amous is probably Barbarella (which was made into a movie starring Jane Fonda), where their respective heroines seem to rapidly/gradually (depending on the story) lose their clothes in every subsequent page and adventure. Te stories always had single-entendre word plays in the plot i not in the dialogue. Tis variation is an emulation o that. Let-Handed
Tis is a text written using only the let hal o a standard PC keyboard, namely the letters q, w, e, r, t, y, a, s, d, f, g, z, x, c, v, b, and also the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , and the symbols ` ~ ! @ # $ and %. Te spacebar can be used but I limited mysel rom using the ENTER button or paragraph breaks, as it’s on the right-hand side o the keyboard. Right-Handed
Tis is a text written using only the right hal o a standard standard PC keyboard, namely the letters u, i, o, p, h, j, k, l, n, m, and also the numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, and the symbols ^ & * ( ) _ + - = \ | [ ] { } ; ‘ : “ , . / < > and ? . Both the spacebar and the ENTER button can be used.
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Lipogram
A text that excludes one or more letters o the alphabet. In his study o the history o the lipogram, Georges Perec observed that, unlike the acrostic or the tautogram, the lipogram passes unnoticed unless it is announced. It should be mentioned that Perec wrote the novel La Disparition, which he wrote without once using the letter e . It was translated into English by Gilbert Adair as A Void . Tis sequence o lipograms center on vowels. I decided against doing them as ull lipograms—using all the letters in the alphabet, even the consonants—because I already did that with beautiul outlaw, and I was sort o gunning or something more poetic in look and breadth, as opposed to the more prosy beautiul outlaw. Lipogram On “I” is a Jim Morrison line lacking only one letter, rom “When Te Music’s Music’s Over”. We’ We’re re both ans a ns o Blake Blak e so I thought th ought maybe may be he wouldn’t mind it too much. Also, he did lit his band name rom an Aldous Huxley book whose title was lited rom a poem by William Blake, so what goes around comes around, I suppose. Something worth noting: contemporary thinking regards the letter y as a vowel when used in words like baby or boytoy , but not when used in words like yes and yadda yadda yadda, though it isn’t canonical. Univocalism
A univocalic text is one written with words using only a single vowel. It is, consequently, a lipogram on all the other vowels.
autogram
A text whose words, or at least the principal ones, all begin with the same letter. It is alliteration taken to its logical limits. I’m actually using this constraint or a novel I’m writing.
Sensory Variations
I mentioned in the notes or Gertrude Stein that her eorts into not conusing looking with remembering inormed this series o variations. With her rst books Tree Lives and Te Making Of Americans , she tried to create portraits o people rooted solely in the present moment, but as she progressed she realised that with looking, “... human beings ... inevitably carried in its train realizing movements and expression and as such orced me (Stein) into recognizing resemblances, and so orced 119
remembering and in orcing remembering caused conusion o present with past and uture time.” With ender Buttons , again Stein produced portraits, but now they were “portraits “portraits o rooms and ood and everything because there I could avoid this diculty o suggesting remembering more easily ... than i I were to describe human beings.” With these variations, I set about trying to rewrite the rst lines o “El Bimbo” as i they were sensory experiences using idioms centred around the given senses. What I was trying to achieve was somewhat a reversal and a urthering o my understanding o what Stein tried to do with ender Buttons : I say somewhat a reversal because I had no plans on merely echoing her style, copying how she did her portraits in ender Buttons (I already did that with the Gertrude Stein variation). Stein didn’t merely stop with just inventing phraseology based on the visual (using words like colourul, or garish, which she didn’t do, and which I didn’t want to do, either) but instead opted on stripping words to their core, to what they look like on the page, and how they sound like musically, their physicality, in essence, how they look. But as avantgarde as she was, the majority o her portraits in ender Buttons were still rmly grounded on the visual (which ought to explain me calling these variations a urthering o Stein’s experiments). One o the limitations o poeticky idioms and imagery in general is o their being primarily based on the visual, even when one is trying to evoke an extravisual sensory experience (a density o sound, a wave o colours), and so with these variations, I tried to see i it was actually possible to write lines without using a single visual idiom or image without seeming too contrived or cute, to strip words to their most basic meanings but still keeping to heart their musicality and physicality and also, to exercise my capacity o developing phraseologies seemingly inherent to the senses discussed. I’m I’m not too sure i I pulled it o, but at least the images come o as crisp and vivid and sure. Syllabic Cut/Up
Beat writer Wild Bill Burroughs supposedly invented the Cut/Up when it was actually his artist riend Byron Gysin who accidentally stumbled upon it while cuttering paper or his collages, but nevertheless, it was Burroughs who made it popular, with his Cut/Up Book rilogy Te icket icket Tat Exploded , Te Soft Machine , and Nova Express . 120
Te idea is to take a given text and cut it up in whatever way you want (per word, per sentence, per paragraph, or, as in this variation, per syllable), take the pieces o paper and mix them all up, and then randomly tape them together to orm new text pieces. During September - October 2007, I assembled quite a number o Cut/Ups based on US’s Dapitan: Prose 2006 and typed them up as We, Without A Susurrant Breath. Some o them were published in the Philippines Free Press as poetry. Burroughs wrote about the liberating eect Cut/Ups had on his writing, not to mention mental condition. According to Burroughs, theoretically, one can see into the uture with the Cut/Ups, seeing as to how the actual physical cutting-up o paper is also a metaphorical cutting-up cutting -up o ime and Space. Space. Te uture leaks through, he used to say. say. Not too sure about the uture leaking, but when I was doing an immense Cut/Up o Paz Marquez Benitez’ “Dead Stars,” I actually suered rom regular nightmares, panic attacks, stuttering, and (brie!) impotence. I would also wake up in the middle o the night and have these strange paranoid Big-Brother-Is-Watching ideas in my head. I would’ve chalked all these things up as just me being weird, but all o these things (as in all o these things) stopped as soon as I nished doing the immense Benitez Cut/Up. A ragment rom the Benitez Cut/Up: Cut/Up: Father and son would go crunching up the less slender, not so eagerly alive, yet poet lurking in the heart o every man? Judge’ Judge’s wie invariably oered them opposite her, looking thoughtully, voice somewhat distinct. Te road repose—almost indolence—disturbed did not. Ater a hal hour or so, the out the home town about this and that o mystery somewhere and he was trying to get Alredo. And Julia Salas would go out to conversed with increasing ease, though tamarinds lay the road, upturned. A last spurt o hot blood, nish, you will miss it. Someone had seemed to mock and he in a rocking chair and there at all. He could not take his eyes red while an errant breeze strayed in. Few would certainly credit Alredo on the shadow o Love and deluded by he, enjoyed talking with her and it. Was Was the loss his? He He elt an impersonal sounds as o voices in a dream had amusedly diagnosed his blood as humanity rom time immemorial. In the yet what eeling there was between girl must have noticed or her cheek is so brie evidence. all and slender, he moved to Esperanza. Matter o course. Only when Esperanza
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under straight recalcitrant hair, a dim lives? Greed, he thought, was what visits. Did some uneasiness creep into pressed her hand at parting? But his the mystery. Slow, dreamer’s eyes, and astonishing into a moment all the enjoyment it. Did she still care? Te answer not nd it. Appearance betokened little o exuberance the emotion it will yield. Men commit humor, a astidious artist with a keen, so sacricing possible uture ullness, he rose and quietly went out o the excitement. Greed—mortgaging the Fate.
I later realised that the symptoms I was suering were akin to a really awul, really bad drug trip’s. I thought about it some and concluded that the Cut/Ups actually hacked my body through my logical reading processes, much like how a drug would i taken orally or intravenously. What are drugs but inormation at the chemical level interacting with our body at the very same chemical level, and what are words but inormation at the visual and logical levels interacting with our body at the very same visual and logical levels? I you disrupt the body’s body’s natural processes o these kinds o inormation (chemical, visual, logical, genetic, aural, tactile—any kind o inormation, really), surely, surely, weird things will happen. It was interesting to have my body react with words pretty much the same way as it would have i I had taken illegal pharmaceuticals. Homovocalism
Te sequence o vowels in a source text is kept while all its consonants are replaced. So, i applied to the El Bimbo source text, the resulting vowel sequence will be auaoiaauauaoaaaa . Homoconsonantism
Te sequence o consonants in a source text is kept while all its vowels are replaced. So, i applied to the El Bimbo source text, the resulting consonant sequence will be kmkhmsprlmnnngtyybtp. Word Shards
An innovation by Marcel Bénabou. Te notion underlying the project is that when certain cer tain words are broken, other words appear among their ragments. It then becomes possible to combine the greater and lesser words by dening the lesser in a particular way.
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Te Art O Te Possible
itle o a book by poet and ellow Yasunari Kawabata-an Kenneth Koch, which is a collection o pieces he liked to call “comics mainly without pictures,” yet another study o the physicality o words and punctuation, paired with the physicality o the page, how page layout can actually aect our reading and experience o a piece (which is more o a comic book thing, really, but in terms o literary history, it has shades o cummings and Villa, in a way), which was what I tried to do here. Gashlycrumb iny
Ater artist and cat-lover Edward Gorey, who wrote and drew dozens and dozens o utterly utterly utterly bizarre books during his eightyyear-lietime. One in particular, his most amous, I think, is called Te Gashlycrumb inies , and it’s a sequence o drawings o little children and the circumstances o their deaths written in verse and ordered alphabetically. It has to be read to be believed. Tis variation is a tribute to that amazing eat o poetic gallows humour. Back in 1998, Gorey was interviewed or a eature in the online bookstore Amazon.com and they asked him to recommend books he elt people simply have to read, and right o the bat, the rst book he mentions is Raymond Queneau’s Exercises In Style . What goes around comes around.
Tese are not the denitive Oulipian variations, nor are they the only ways to do them. Tis is just an outline to show people how I did these variations. variations. Tis is just my way. It’ll do us all a great deal o good i, based on these constraints, you yoursel come up with your own way o doing these things, and write a whole book about how you do them. Ater all, that’s what Art’s or. ADAM DAVID DAVID 24th December 2007 Project Four, Cubao, Quezon City 123
I’ve always seen this book as the girl rom Cubao with the awkward nose and the knobby knees and the well-thought-out proposal to achieve World Peace who will always lose out to the girl rom Parañaque who marches in step while waving a baton in her two-piece bikini. Apparently, Apparently, I was wrong. Te El Bimbo Variat Variations ions won the 9th Annual Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award or the publication years 2007-2008, in the Englishlanguage category. category. It was the rst sel-published, the rst bilingual, and the rst book o poetry that ever won the award in its category. Te judges were David Bayot, J Neil Garcia, and Angelo Suarez. One o the issues that was brought up about the book was about beauty , and it being seemingly not the book’s main preoccupation, the assumption there being beauty is poetry’s main preoccupation. My answer is this: “I’ve always seen this book as the girl rom Cubao with the awkward nose and the knobby knees and the well-thought-out proposal to achieve World Peace who will always lose out to the girl rom Parañaque who marches in step while waving a baton in her twopiece bikini. Apparently, I was wrong.”
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Art Begets Art Tis book currently enjoys a print existence thanks in no small part to the Howlin’ Fund, which is, briefy, a semi-quarterly publishing grant or Brave New Lit in the Philippines. Te Howlin’ Fund was ounded on the singularly inspired artistic vision o the late great savant-garde diskjock Howlin’ Dave, more humbly known as Dante David, born on the 16th o July 1955. Back in the Seventies, while in his late teens, Howlin’ Dave provided much-needed airplay support to such bands as the Juan dela Cruz Band, Sampaguita, Anak Bayan, Isagani Ibarra, Ibarra, and Asin (and others), and in the Eighties in his mid-twenties with Urban Bandits, Tird World Chaos, Aunt Irma, the Wuds, and the Jerks (and others), propelling them, respectively, to Pinoy Rock and Pinoi Punk history, and into legend. Howlin’ Dave lived a lie that’s ull, a lie o uncompromising excess and exuberance driven by a Love best described as the unconditional love o a genuine an or the Arts, a liestyle which eventually caught up with him as he lay surrounded by blinking whinnying machines in an ICU bed on the 26th o May 2008. He was 52. Te Howlin’ Fund was ounded on the scal excesses rom the various tribute concerts and money drives that were held to help pay or Dante David’s hospital and uneral expenses, to which many were eager to show support, namely Baba Balce, Wally Gonzales, Bingo Lacson, and Jose Mari Chan. It was mainly their generous contributions that helped establish the Howlin’ Fund, and all books published under the Fund will have them in mind. It is simply an amount o money one cannot—should not—use or personal issues, be it to pay or rent or school or even ood. It can— should—only be used to help urther what Howlin’ Dave considered as his First and Consistent and One rue Love: the Arts . All books published under the Fund will have him in heart. For more inormation about the Howlin’ Fund, including how to qualiy as a recipient and how to donate much-needed nancial support to the Fund, send eMail to
[email protected] with “Brave New Lit” as subject heading.
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Adam David lives in Cubao, Quezon City. He has been a zinester and a bookmaker by trade since 1999. He writes criticism or the Philippine Online Chronicles , a Pinoy culture webzine. He regularly maintains a weblog called Oblique Strategies , which can be monitored every now and then on http://wasaaak.blogspot.com
