Remote
By Danton REMOTO
10/13/2009 12: 45 Americium
www.abs-cbnnews.com
Perspectives and analysis
Naturally, there is no such thing. Any kinda writing-be it a poem, or a short tale, a novel, a drama, or yes, a characteristic article-involves some kinda battle. The poetT.S. Eliot named composing `` this unendurable wrestle with words, '' and I cognize you will concord with him.
The Random House Lexicon delimits a characteristic as a `` paper or mag article or study of a somebody, event, an facet of a major event, or like, oftentimes holding a personal angle and composed in an single fashion. ''
I love to compose features. They make n't hold the cold objectiveness of word, or the stiff logic of the column. Course, we can reason that word penning by itself is n't `` nonsubjective. '' By our pick of words entirely, by the angle we take, by the very fact that we are somebodies with our ain prejudices, makes n't vouch the `` objectiveness '' of intelligence. Course, the column can too touch lightly, like plumages against the cutis. But there is ever a way, something unappeasable, in the column.
In senior high, I pent a good deal of features for the school newspaper: harmless small articles that holded no teeth in them. In college, I write of the Subject Assembly ( Batasang Pambansa ) and named it a `` puppy parliament '' that followed every impulse of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In a heroic shot of satire, I would subsequently work as an Editor for the Secretariate of the Batasan.
My officemates were great, but I slaved in this occupation. I rectified the transcriptions of the plenary Sessions. I redacted lines like `` Pardon me, Your Award, but you 're barking at the incorrect train. '' Either that or this line: `` We should be careful with the national airline, Mister Utterer. The aeroplane I took yesterday nearly gived. '' It was impossible. Every afternoon, I would go into in a motorcoach full of employees in their spic uniforms. I would gaze at the Sun beginning to drop behind the mounts, and experienced sad because I holded indited nil again thereon day.
After college, I used for a business at the Subject Media Production Heart, which desired to resuscitate Archipelago, the art and civilization mag of the Authority of Subject and Foreign Info. For my application, they inquired me to question the now-departed historiographer Teodoro Agoncillo. His wife, Anacleta, who was a medical physician, told I could make so.
`` But but for an hr, Mr Remoto, '' the good medico told, `` since the Prof is busy penning his following book. '' So I read what I could somely him-his CV, his old interviews printed in assorted mags, one of his books. Hence girt, I attended his house.
Prof Agoncillo and his wife sleep in a large, white house beside busy Quezon Avenue. Their house was a fashionable version of the Filipino Nypa ( grass ) hut. The inclining roof was painted crimson, though, and the walls were done of thick concrete knock off Caucasian. His wife, a little woman in specses, opened the gate and showed me inside the house. Prof Agoncillo was wearing a loose, white T-shirt and light-brown trunks that gained downwardly to his genus. He holded thick spectacles, and a stupor of black, overly black, and wavy hair.
The prof was in his constituent, slashing at his critics with the scythe of his glossa. I sipped my java with trembling mitts. When I enquire him about the five-volume history of the Philippines that Mr. Marcos was purportedly inditing, the prof told he read the recently-published volume one. And what is his forecast? `` It Holds beautiful, it Holds a beautiful piece of fiction. '' He laughed merrily, so admonished me not to cite him verbatim, things being what they were at that clip.
What about the volumes of history printed by another prof whose politics angle to the Left? `` Well, I read them excessively, '' told the good prof. When his eyes commenced to blink with something that hinted of iniquity, I cognise he would relinquish another salvo of words.
And what, I enquire, is his forecast on the gentleman 's books? `` Oh they 're splendid, they 're fantabulous pieces of political analyses. '' But most of his remarks were off the record, he monish me, so I simply posed downward my pen and paper, turned forth my tape machine, and savored the residual of the afternoon in the wide front room.
This, after all, was the man who composed The History of the Filipino People which, so as now, is the standard text on Philippine history postulate of many college student. This, after all, was the champion poet and short-story author who turned his generous gifts into research-and the penning of tomes on the state 's history. This, after all, was the man who write of history from below, from the point of position of the misfortunate and the colonise, and not from the point of position of the coloniser.
But Prof Agoncillo was likewise a man capable of great tenderness, especially when he talked about his youngsters. `` One of them, '' he told, `` spues. We hold shoulded take attention of him since he was immature. A begetter loves all his nestlings, but he is rattlingly the one that my wife and I love the most. ''
His wife gave me merely one hr for the interview, but the good prof and I spoke and spoke for three hrs. I was all too glad, because I holded a good deal of stuff for my feature.
He even conveyed me to the 2nd flooring of his house, to his library full of books and mags date from to the Twentieses. He besides demoed me the first drafts of his books, which he holded stuck in black leather, and the awardings he holded haved. Merely so maked I find that the historiographer, Prof Agoncillo, likewise desired a spot in history. Nil incorrect therewith. We all compose because we hold that subdued hope that our books will survive us.
I think one secret in questioning for a feature is to make your preparation. Hold you read the writer 's books? Make you hold a transcript of his CV? Who among his friends could throw in an anecdote, an episode, which could illume the topic 's interior life?
All of us hold interior lives that travel along and on, sometimes in contrast to the masks we wear publically. Good journalists should enquire the right enquiries, examining but not prise. If they are sensitive plenty, or lucky plenty, the theme will tell or make something that will open a door to it interior life.
But I questioned the prof ages ago. Now I myself learn English at the Ateneo, write columns, work part-time in publication. When I can snap myself from all these, I compose my poems, narratives and essays. And oh yes, I sometimes have a look at my first novel, with an optic for alteration. Time and time again.
But I will ne'er leave journalism, even when some wits name it `` literature in a haste. '' If had best, it Holds still literature. The glorification of the byline is one of the few pleasances in life. As the Random House definition provinces, you can position your ain unerasable cast onto your characteristic; you can strike your pollex score thereon. That Holds why good journalists should ever be watchful, their noses whiff for word day in and day out, and for the possible characteristic narrative behind that intelligence.
Furthermore, their mental musculuses must hold definition and tone. Sadly, many immature journalists today look to hold flaccid heads. I still get phrenetic calls from editors of day-after-day papers enquire me to redact natural transcript for them fulltime. Aside from sound grammar, characteristic authors, as Kerima Polotan once told, should be able to capture the hour, the theme 's emotional conditions, and do them awake before the reader.
How to make all these?
Assay to utilize the tools of fiction in your features: chip duologue, the stating point, description with the limpidity of H2O. Read Truman Capote 's Music for Chameleons, and acquire the art of New Journalism. Goodly, not rattlingly new, but still helpful.
Observe people with the acuteness of a spy, with the delectation of a lover. Open the pores of your cutis. Listen to gossip, but make n't believe them. Believe the litterateur Michel Delaware Montaigne when he stated, `` Nil man is alienated tome. '' Write with dare and with panache.
Live.
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