The World in Pixies: Life without facebook
I am now easing into a new life as a digital copywriter for a major advertising agency. As I like telling people, “What else do you do with someone who wastes a lot of time online?”
But well, it’s still an office. I settle in and find out that facebook is banned on most of office’s premises. It poses new challenges, and new frustrations to this vocation. I mean, we do facebook pages with limited access to facebook.
For the first few days, as I was given the grace of waiting for a job order. I was baffled on what to do with my time. The “sparklies” of tumblr can be blinding after awhile, the overabundance of pictures and posts make it the digital equivalent of pixie sticks.
On the other end of the spectrum is G+, but with limited users, there’s only so much you can take in from the chronicles of the social media wars.
Yes, there is twitter, and in this event: thank god for twitter brand accounts, up until they post a facebook link.
So-called “free time” has become my nerd time. I caught up on online reading in between pages of the copy workbook.
Anyway, other sites you can use, rather than waste time on:
Trendhunter – Think of it as social-anthropological tumblr. It’s a crowdsource determining what’s buzzing in real life and online, with some very interesting results.
Mashable – The news source for tech, social media, and more.
Blogherald – More news, and compelling editorials on consumer behavior online.
I realize that while I am a copywriter at heart, I am also nurturing an inner semi-frustrated digital planner. That’s what I get for socializing better online than in real life.
And of course, I get my dose of features on music, art, etc at Salon and The Rumpus. If I feel a little silly, I check in at Cracked or McSweeney’s.
If there’s anything to thank the great facebook ban for, it’s for reminding me that there’s a life outside of facebook. WWW still applies, it’s a world wide web after all.
I am the horcrux
I had written this after an unexpectedly emotional reaction to Deathly Hollows part 1. It is now mere weeks before Mom’s death anniversary, and just days before Deathly Hollows part 2.
Harry Potter was with me throughout high school to the tail end of college. Funny as always, how the end of the movie series also comes at a time of transition. As I confided in a Tita over lunch, if I was told last year I’d be in this place today, I wouldn’t have believed it.
But here I am. I’ve made the transition from journalist to copywriter for an ad agency. Mom spent almost her entire adult life in the agency world, and it was only during my time as an ad journalist that I uncovered her battles for big ideas. She also suffered for it. My family is not big on making dynasties, so this is a very big shift.
I remember Potter, awkward about the legacy of his scar. Each year in Hogwarts is a battle. He is marked, he struggles, he lives to be the boy who lives. I feel like I’m in the same boat, now that I’m “following” Mom’s footsteps so to speak. It’s not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of circumstance. I may not have the scar on my forehead, but I carry it. I struggle. I live to live, and live for another.
I hate that it sounds like I’m pitching a Hallmark film, but it really is my life thus far. I lament that I have very few friends that get even the slightest idea on what it’s like. It is that point where you risk every moment every time things just happen.
Potter gets his happy ending in seven books. In real time, It will probably take me about 7 years, hopefully.
Thus is the tale of the girl who lives.
The rainbow connection: Kylie in Manila
I cannot get over what a rich year it is for theater and entertainment in Manila! With CCP Tanghalang Pilipino and Writers Bloc’s Virgin Labfest 7, Atlantis Productions’ ‘Aida’, Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Varekai’ in Manila, and then Kylie finally decides to make a stop: how do I begin to choose?
I finally got ‘Aida’ and Labfest out of the way, as I want to keep on supporting local talent. I just happened to be pulled into watching The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber concert for work, which was a blessing, though it was not a must-see for me this season.
It then came down to Varekai versus Kylie. Only one can be accomodated by the currency I have on-hand, and it was a painful decision to make. I ended up choosing Varekai for the simple reason that I have already seen a Cirque du Soleil show, ‘Alegria’, some years back. Who knows when Kylie will next swing by?
I admittedly am not as familiar with her more recent albums, as I am still very much stuck in the ‘Fever’ era. Still, based on the videos of her Showgirl tour, I had faith that this fabulous demi-goddess would not let us down.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z-cjxaZNiw]
Oh what a circus, oh what a show! A fellow Kylie fan said that the Manila production is slightly scaled down to accommodate budget and location, but it certainly didn’t show. It was a spectacle of light, dancing, costumes, and ripped men wearing next-to-nothing. Kylie herself was the light fantastic, taking us through the sea, space, and time. Take note: the electric fan was dead center stage, for an ethereal effect when she sings, dances, or simply addresses the audience.
The “impromptu” ‘Especially For You’ duet she shared with the audience was a great way to make up for the years she hadn’t visited. I only wished she had a little more faith in us and had us sing it out, we didn’t need a voice over to sing with. But we appreciate the thought!
Other songs I recognized: ‘A Night Like This’, ‘Spinning Around’, ‘Love at First Sight’, and ‘Can’t Get You Outta My Head’ from Fever; ‘Especially for you’, ‘Locomotion’, and ‘Better the Devil You Know’ from her classic era; then ‘Slow’, ‘Wow’, and of course ‘For the Lovers’.
The audience was very into it, not a single hand was down during ‘Especially For You’, and in true Filipino fashion: for the classics, not a single word was missed.
If that doesn’t guarantee a return sometime in the future, I don’t know what else will. Maybe we’ll get ‘Lucky’ next time?
But above all, thank you Kylie, for gracing us with your presence. <3 Wowowowow!
Below is the Aphrodite concert performance of ‘For the Lovers’ in Melbourne:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZEKCAetddA]
Of catfood and songs
The Catfood Fiasco
[Read on the Rafa Santos catfood fiasco here]
Thing is: that isn’t the first time I heard the catfood analogy to theater pay. I’ve heard it before, from someone else in rehearsal room banter. That’s really what makes the difference: there are jokes you tell your friends, then there are the ones you don’t print or show.
Remember, remember, Joan Rivers and the eat your dog joke. It’s equivalent to the N word: fine and fun among friends, but it’s a media grenade onscreen.
While I’ve accepted his apology, and I do hope all the best for Rafa Santos, I also hope the community considers the repercussions of the statement. It takes guts to wade through the theater and freelance creative industry, especially one in a developing country. So far, I’m amazed that we continue to churn out talent and shows. We’re only as good as the gigs we get, and we’re very thinly protected by the labor laws.
For the most part, it’s a wild, wild, world out there. What I wish is that it gets us thinking of a standard for all engagements and companies to follow. We have the passion, we just need the regulations to allow us keep working at it.
Off into the world we go
Speaking of regulations, from what I know from working the trenches of the stage, I can take a guess as to why they imported a cast for the Songs of Andrew Lloyd concert. Abby wrote about the concert here, which also sums up my sentiments.
So, why the import? Let’s just say that just say that some companies didn’t abide by the fine print way back when, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
It’s a pity though, I remember before Miss Saigon got staged in Manila they’d frequently stage even grander revues with Philippine talent.
I enjoyed the show, but I firmly believe Pinoys could have done it better. I’m also slightly miffed that they got bigger showbuyers for it when they could have gotten a full show of equivalent, if not better caliber, for a competitive price.
Call me naive, but for all our accomplishments in the theater scene, I daresay we can market ourselves. It just needs the right push, and I haven’t seen that push in a long while.
Louder than words
“The sound you are hearing is not a technical problem. It is not a musical cue. It is not a joke. It is the sound of one man’s mounting anxiety. I… am that man.” -tick…tick…boom!
I remember a 60 year old woman who sat in our poetry class back in college. The woman – for the life of me, I forgot her name – spent most of her life abroad as a nurse.
After her retirement, she decided to go back to painting and literature, passions she put on hold when she pursued nursing and raised a family. She sat in different lit classes around Ateneo, soaking up everything from lit theory to poetry to creative wrting.
“You will always have time,” she once told me when I divulged anxiety about not having the time to achieve everything I wanted. ” look at me, I’m doing all this and I’m already 60!”
In time, I remind myself as I go through my schedule and tick off my to-do list.
In time. I have to think as I grit my teeth and tackle the drudgery that comes with a job.
In time, I sigh, as I struggle to put together the rhythm and lines I once weaved with ease. It will come, I tell myself, to shoo away little mental vampires that cackled in glee at the scrawls on my paper. Emily Dickinson’s poems were valued more after her death.
I remember Johnathan Larson’s “tick…tick…boom!”. Over time, it has spoken more to me than “Rent”. My sister criticized “Rent” for embellishing a life of deliberate poverty, of featuring spoiled “hipsters” who thought honest living was much too mainstream. tick…tick…boom! was more honest, I believed, having had the chance to see both shows. In tick…tick…boom! lay the moral lesson of making the most out of our talent, and the choices we make around them. Even if it takes us away from them.
“the tick tick booms are softer now. I can barely hear them, and I think if I play loud enough I can drown them out completely.”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHBMxhxMYIg]
You can read more about it at the show’s wikipedia page.