Bricolage

Bricolage

(7/7/2011)

Because
You remind me of different things
The darker corners in a Caravaggio painting
The warmth of the moon on early February evenings
The lo-fi violin strings and vocal phrasings
Emanating from a Billie Holiday recording
The taste of lost languages
The delicate creases of dried tulips
My first reading of Dead Stars
The gravitational pull of black holes
And the inevitable implosion
Looped coffee shop conversations
About how the book was way better
Than the movie adaptation
Threadbare handwritten letters
With its nervous grammatical errors
Locked away in unfamiliar drawers
A box of broken colours
Splinters of glass
From fractured bathroom mirrors
Grace of a butterfly knife
The space in vacated apartments
This poem, fragments.

Subflex

I won't be performing on this one since I'm still in my hometown. Like most AMPON events, there is no entrance fee. Yeah, it's in Alchemy (haha) but you don't have to pay anything to watch.

For the purpose of tagging labels on every aspect of life, I'd like to categorize this event as an audio-visual performance art exhibit of art-core hip hop, avant-hop, and sound art. To be honest, this eclectic offering is an acquired taste. But if you want to broaden your palate, then do drop by, support this left-field excursion, and critique if you must like an insecure schoolboy.

Philosophy and movies: a pedagogical proposition

It is not an unfamiliar state of affairs when students consider philosophy classes as stale, tedious, and humdrum. This misfortune could be attributed to the pedagogical ineptitude of the teacher, the inaccessibility of the content-knowledge involved, and the inability of the student to relate to the topics or issues due to the lack of real-world manifestation of the subject’s inherent theoretical abstractions.

With the use of movies, it would be possible to make philosophy as a class lively and interesting. A lot of movies have philosophical ideas embedded in their narrative. In other words, movies are an excellent repository of philosophical ideas portrayed visually, thus rendering them within the grasp of today’s predominantly visual learners.

Allow me to cite movies that can be potentially used in this course. We have the popular Matrix Trilogy which makes a good case-in-point in studying the dualism of either Plato or Descartes. Even the movie adaptation of Fight Club can be used in discussing both Freud’s and Nietzsche’s opposition to the repression of man’s primitive desires. Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal can be utilized in a discussion on existentialism. I am extremely confident that there are numerous movies available for this approach of teaching philosophy.

This method should be explored by academics and university curriculum committees. Seriously, how great it would be to discuss Bertolucci's The Conformist, specifically that scene when the movie's protagonist Clerici, a Fascist supporter sent to assassinate his former philosophy professor, closed the blinds of the professor's Parisian office in order to prevent the light from coming in as he and his former professor discussed his unfinished thesis on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. HEHE.

CPR

I will revive this blog.

Last night, I've decided to take blogging seriously. In the past, I blogged for the purpose of attaining a cathartic cyber bitchfest taking-a-shit experience.

Expect better entries from hereon. Aside from poems, I'll start posting movie/album reviews, short stories, academic essays, and articles that I consider worth reading.

The change of template is a good start. Cookies and a cup of coffee anyone?


Marlowe Uy

NothingElse...Is Out There EP

NothingElse…Is Out There

When NothingElse dubs his first solo outing “NothingElse…Is Out There”, you dear listener should be aware that he is tinkering with the gray matter inside your brain. One of the pillars of the AMPON Collective, NothingElse polishes every facet of the EP in order to unveil an AMPON oeuvre—a quality synthesis of form and content.

But before we barge in with the details, let us clarify a few notions first.

· There are no R&B “singers” featured in this project.

· No one is pretending to sing only to hit the wrong notes.

· No animals were harmed in the production of this EP.

· But yes, NothingElse, whose name is a play of words in itself, is ingenious in his songwriting.

· Literary devices such as allusions, alliterations, metaphors, and similes appear without fail.

· The chosen language is bilingual—Filipino and English.

· Repeated listening of the EP is also very rewarding.

· Your mom and dad will definitely love this record.

· Your cat? Perhaps.

The EP gate-crashes with the Caliph8 produced “Bulag, Pipi, at Bingi.” NothingElse bombards Filipino verses over a minimalist experimental beat that has a drum pattern unorthodox in Hip Hop standards. It is then followed by another Filipino track titled “Episode IV”. On this track, NothingElse collaborates with beatsmith Chec and lyricist extraordinaire Gabby (also known by many aliases such as Latchbox, Shroomy, and his most recent persona fishoutsidethebowl). “Kawawang Bata” wraps up the Filipino component of the EP. Not to be outshined by DJ Red-I’s beat and methodical turntablist technique, NothingElse weaves lines like “ang lahat ng ma-enkwentro’y nag-iiwan ng bakas, kahit kaila’y di mababaklas, kahit antayin pang matapos ang palatastas.” Then as an interlude between the Filipino and English division of the EP, Chec’s “Unitide” beat smoothly serves as transition. The English component then commences with “Count your Chips”, a collaboration with two self-exiled AMPON members—Bacolod-based emcee Six and Vancouver-based producer Flexx. “Microphone Mesh”, produced by Skarm, is where NothingElse brandishes an underground Hip Hop aesthetic form that only few Filipino emcees and rappers can equal. Then in “Reference Rap”, DJ Skid of the Hawaiian crew Audible Lab Rats creates an atmospheric beat which provides NothingElse a means to exhibit uncanny wordplay and a postmodern collage of various juxtaposed images.

And dear listener, I leave you with the same line written by Dr. Malcolm Long in his journal after his therapy sessions with Walter Joseph Kovacs:

“There is

Nothing

Else”

Anonymous

April 20, 1985

Download the EP here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dzfhdmy5mzi

cLOUDDEAD - The Sound of a Handshake

Yoni Wolf of Why?, doseone., and Odd Nosdam used to form the now defunct cLOUDDEAD.

The Rapture

Okay, the dreadful has just happened.
Don't tell me it was unexpected.
You knew it would come
like the cliches in your poetry.

She just told you:

"pero parang nagugustohan ko na rin siya"

A whisper to the ear can be a scream
to the soul. How emo
in your writing can you get?

She knew you were into her.
Remember the unsent messages
inside your college dorm drawer?
What about the song in the key
of memory minor?
You wrote that for her last year.

Of course, she told you then:

"parang hindi mo ako kilala"

Now, write an elegy in sonnet form,
if you can.
But you were never good at it,
never good enough--
the poetry, the songs,
the dead language, the coffins of wind,
even the proper exhalation of smoke

There's a gray sunset.
(It was a yellow afternoon)
Take a picture.
Maybe, it would feel better--


Now you know why
April is the cruelest month.


P.S. Your writing style is pathetic. Fix it.