Briefly, An Interlude
By: Iris P. Concepcion

No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm troubled sphere;
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
-Emily Bronte-

This really happened:

It began with a simple text message from a
teacher-friend who teaches at the public elementary
school where I graduated from. She asked me where I am.

I replied, the house, of course. Minutes ticked slow. After which, this compelling
message flashed. If I may fruitify this, it elicited both alarm
and suspended responsibility from me:

"Can you write a script for our Valentine pageant?"

Dear readers, how does one Barbara Cartlandize grade school students?
How does one brainwash kids in the territory of Mills and Boon world?
That is the question. I came from a long line of history that involved me being planted in the props artistry of my deceased father.
If you see my kiddie pic sitting on a giant frog, that was the Prince circa 70's as designed
by him. Last year, if I am to recall with awe,
the pageant script had a scene where the only cure to the illness
of lovers is a skin torn off from a lion.

I need to preserve history. Personally, this is a very tall order.

I managed to string the words together, in "makatang Pilipino"
(I imposed upon myself the need to be poetic in our national language
which is naturally lyrical). My mother checked the
final draft. It is my curse, not being able to write fluently in
Filipino which is a very expressive language, phonetically---
swimming with the plains and valleys of numerous vowels.

Someone told me that every creative output is derivative. I rage against that before,
protecting like hawk the originality of one's mind. But we are on a time table; the world is
all agog about love; there are four days to go before
practice proper; my computer monitor, in one
fashionable way of breaking down, totally crashed.

To derivative inspiration therefore, I succumbed.

In long hand I drafted the scenes. You take off from
Zeus to Nativity to Monsters to Musicals to Trials
and you have a pageant. You cannot cmplicate this with a
Romeo and Juliet tragedy. You do not want parading
heartbreaks like grilled gizzards in full view of young minds.

This is my first time to tackle this kind of creative undertaking.
I do not have a background whatsoever to boast of in
theater or playwriting. Words I chew, spit, mold, make, create. Actions?
Zilch.

I realized the importance of a) voices b.) sound effects
in this creative engagement.

We tapped the services of one guy to handle sound engineering. He does
computer and is a total greenhorn on this aspect like me.
We felt like newly-hatched eggs. I need wind, I need rain, I need jungle
sounds, I need baby cries as if I am speaking from the
Book of Genesis.

And this guy immaculately delivered. All performers
were kids. They were amazing. The teachers directed
them, slicing off scenes like committee hearings (you are in charge of this and that).

During the rehearsals, the King of Hearts who was tiny
you can hold him with the palm of your hand cried
not just rivers but the Black Sea. Appeased by the father, he kept
on working on his tear ducts nonetheless. The teachers
explained he was afraid of the monster who is a fixture in the 'tree of life' scene
(the would be queen was raised by her parents in a tree house where
mongrels roam around below). The mask looked terrifying indeed.
The wearer, one time, took it off and when asked by the teacher-directress why he removed it
he simply said: "It stinks."

Two days of reahersals and we have somewhat mastered when to put in the sound effects. I was
with this sound guy all throughout because everything
hinges on the proper mix, turning up background music,
all that pop jazz. The audio equipment we used during the rehearsals
was not the unit to be used on the pageant itself. To any artist in
a live act, this is quite terrifying. What if it will conk out? It will surely ruin
the whole caboodle. Besides, we have to choose songs for the Prince and Princess
to sing. That's always my creative slant. There should be music humming along
with the spoken words.

Pageant Day itself. The Queen arrived late. Someone was asked to sing, plucked from
among the audience. And this is where I saw this year's
greatest Valentine story, at least, for me.
The boy who sang is the son of the teacher who tasked me to write the script.
He belted out a Mariah Carey song. The notes were
impossibly high. He forgot the lyrics, the mic didn't function well.
He bravely sang nonetheless while the mother on the sideline kept on cheering on:
"You can do it. You can do it." Mother left the stage
and carefully wiped the tears, dropping loosely from her
eyes, straight to the hankie. I asked, why? She said "I pity my kid."
But the song was rendered heartily. That is motherhood I surmised.
Shielding. It is all about shielding a child from any torrent
of unlove.

Finally, the queen arrived. The pageant began with wind blows
(weirdly, an egoistic attempt to elevate myself to the status of a rock star).
It was great to my ears. I love watching young people
totally immersed with the actions. They were like ambulatory tourist spots.
They laughed, were spooked out, They hooted when scenes got loving. It is a stage out there and the inheritors of this Earth are there watching. Since I know what
my words are all about, I revelled in viewing the varied
reactions from them.

It never truly hit me until now what a serious responsibility writing is, or what a serious responsibility teaching is.

I adore the kids. They are obedient; they ask the proper, often funny questions;
they are respectful. They can be a handful (you have to compete
with their marbles, rubber bands, toys) but these people are
rewards themselves. Now I understand Eggers, his
creative theory more than ever.

The sound effects, narration and acting worked smoothly
in the end through the help of the Great Divine Planner.

In one story titled " The Destruction of the Goetheanum",
a line there tweaked me. It goes : "The shapes sang to him.
It was a fortification, a terminal, an observatory from which one could
look into the soul."

This pageant as a wondrous experience made me connect the pliability of human
shapes. And they sang to me.Their souls bathed in their
flexibility.

Creativity moves; it melts; it enriches; it provides a great
playground to embrace minds; it fulfills the cycles of humanity.

Another point I got from this experience: Do not begrudge The
Beatles for preaching "All You Need Is Love". After all, we
all came from this powerful word in four melodic letters.

And this likewise happened:

I was marketing for catfish in a market and then came a lanky person with truly distinct and definitive features, looking straight at the writhing fishes. He was viewing the peddled water creatures in the observant microchips of his eyes. I paused and thought, he looked like someone I know from law school. But he is towering. My mind was traveling in and out of onions, tomatoes, peppers---a real spicy deliberation. At that precise moment, I did not fully grasp the extent of what was being ingested by this visual realization.

This creature, dismembered perhaps from a long queue of godly creators, simply walked. He could be a ghost, a clone, a Jupiterian (Martian is so yesterday), an inferno, who knows. When he was near me, he wasn't exactly looking at me so he must have detachable or portable eyes on his ears or chin---one could not speculate how he combs his world irisfully---but on instinct, I crinkled my nose. I do this when I am carrying heavy bags. Without looking, he likewise crinkled his nose.

Before this hilarious mimicry of my little self, we shared a rather fishy moment. We were both piously staring at this array of catfishes being chosen for a semi-Marie Antoinette (the vendors in my country usually hit their heads with wood) beheading , like we are both thinking of verses and porcupines and even Hitchcock. We stood there, frozen, smartly dumbstruck, looking like curious portraits. It was truly dramatic, now that I am writing this as recalled. Beckettian even. We are waiting for Godot through the eyes of a catfish. I think we looked funny, if one were to infuse our backgrounds with samurais crossing over our poker faces while the song of Styx blares "the two of us were quite a pair" and the catfish's head being violently pounded for my dinner. The song will of course refer to the wood and the catfish. It is such a happy tragedy. I got on with my marketing, he got on with his business and when I hit home, I asked : "Was that the Cyprus son?"