DYLAN IN THE PHILIPPINES
By; Iris P. Concepcion
"The centerpiece of "Born To Run" is the title track, a blasting anthem that, again, takes up the theme of running away from your town, finding freedom on the open road."---Bob Dylan as quoted in Scott Garceau's column in Philippine Star today.
IT WAS ORIGINALLY fueled by a hunger pang for pasta. It gradually extended onto a streetwalk discovery of artworks.
If one has settled long enough as a wanderer in Quiapo, you could get used to its fleet of diploma mills that reproduce everything from marriage certificates to "cedulas". If an alien frog ever lands here, it might find alarming the riches of duplications thriving as business enterprises. It could have wished as well to have been elsewhere instead of this Neanderthal manufacturer of badges. It could hop, hop and hop away to a happy hopping area.
It need not look far. Beyond this are artifacts refined suddenly under the hands of the mysterious Creator, him who had sprung from Springtime and who returned as Autumn.
Thus, my gastronomic trek starting with a platelette (is this what you call a small plate?) of spaghetti worth below the price of ham and cheese, ended in a view of sunglasses displayed in empty shoeboxes. In between are paintings not necessarily museum-bound in strokes but are definitely superior than what you may normally see in mass production.
Compared with the often hilarious "stuck paint" on canvasses (they are like miniature hard balls of antique paint), the type of huge frames sold for a fortune in these roads, these new materials are an incredible leap to the unbeknown best.
These creators are cruel creatively in that, they never leave any natural entity unimproved. I have seen karitons, diplomas, bread carts and bakeries, gowns, generators, poetry on hankies, prayers, transcript of records, even eyebrows rendered in another shade of quirky, visually appetizing production. I wonder when they shall be doing electrical sockets next.
The designs are tremendous.
The uppermost photo in this entry is an abandoned theater at Evangelista Street in Quiapo that had been left unattended. It has a beautiful facade but was never refurbished. Whoever was heading the local government in the past ought to be cleansed from biases. I love this present President because he opened a lot of doors to artists and craftsmen in shaping our future as a Nation. If from the onset, these been given to the people who made the Rizal Park look what it is right now, we might be experiencing less traffic and more opulent visual bursts.
We are only realizing the extent of our nonchalant behavior, of accepting what is just passable when we may be worth, as tax-paying citizens of this country, (I am currently a bum which exempts me from doing my monetary share hence, this blog) more than this total display of mediocre works.
It can be done. Even a small bookstore can look like a million buck nook worth the side trip.
Walk and discover. Afterwhich, glide. Just glide.