Random Notes, Unfinished Writings

Julie Lluch

It is somewhat strange that the invitation that came was for me to write and not to craft a sculpture piece in clay as a fitting tribute to Marj, my esteemed friend and colleague. I thoughtfully consider how the strands of our separate tapestries, to use a worn and almost exclusively feminine metaphor, have interwoven into each other, through years of perfervid creativity.

Marj has unrolled a vast mat of exquisite design out of which cascade her poetic evocations of exceptional beauty. She had fondly reminisced the way her mother and her Nanay Tinay spread their own homespun mats on the floor during the long early days of rain and sun in Bohol island birthing in her  “moontouched” songs and verses, “goldened tongues” of vowels, consonants and syllables, traipsing in the wind through bamboo chimes. I see her dragonfly fingers tracing words on the crystal pond silently following the movement of her thoughts.

Her oeuvre is poised, a gentle exhortation to once more pick up the challenge of a life of art, demanding one’s personal response. But already I am captive even before my mind could begin to grasp their inarticulable meanings – maybe it never could, nor ever have to.

I am moved by a daring impulse to answer art with art!

I never had a yearning for a vocation in writing. I was happy enough that I kept in my heart a modest cache of high school poetics, a “throbbing” love for poetry instilled there by a magnificent English teacher  who made our class giddy over the English Romantic poets whose verses we proudly recited from memory, and the incredible Victorian women writers and novelists — Elizabeth Barret Browning, Jane Austen, and the gothic Brontë Sisters.

We also loved the Americans including the forlorn Edgar Allan Poe who taught that the saddest sound in the English language is the letter “O” as in Lenore and Nevermore; and the loveliest sound is the letter “L” as in Love,  and Bell. From him we learned a funny, musical word: “tintinnabulation” which he probably invented.

But the preeminent favorite, mine at least, is the sophisticate Emily Dickinson who wrote pithy poems from the inescapable confines of her Puritan society.

Looking back, learning poetry and literature did not really demand tremendous intellectual acuity; in fact it seemed a most fun and engaging activity for the teeners. 

Poetry or writing didn’t beckon to me as a career, or an "industry” that one could pursue for gainful living. And yet, enrolling for a college degree in university, I ended up choosing Literature and Philosophy, because to be honest, there were no other options for me.

On Marj’s works from her first volume of poetry, the venerable Edith Tiempo writes:

                      “Each one is a seeking, a struggle to master into shape what  is essentially

                       a process of becoming.”

I thought the inverse of this process may also be plausible:

                       “Each word progressively and existentially shaping the artist into being – from poem to poem, song to song, line to line—a flower slowly unfolding, an exotic fruit splitting open to reveal seeds of love and painstaking labor.”

 A poet is as good as her last oeuvre; she is all her oeuvres in totality.

 I have often declared in the passion of youth the inseparable Unity of Life and Art,  put myself up as  its walking manifesto, in true bohemian fashion. In my autobiographical narrative works, the identification between artist and artwork has become so complete as to make the work seem artless. Literally I can point to my self-portrait and say,  “That clay sculpture of a woman cutting onions is me , and I am she. What makes us different is that I am flesh and she is clay. But we are both real , and the stories that we tell are the same.            

                                                                     Her Story in Clay, 12 Women Artists, 

                                                                                                        Thelma Kintanar

My father kept a sizeable library of classical and baroque music, stacks of LP vinyl records which he meticulously annotated and catalogued according to title and composer. His music kept our house humming all day. He passed on to me valuable vignettes, little lessons on how to tell if a performer is “schmaltzy”  [which Heifetz never was], how to distinguish a waltz from a mazurka, both in 3/4 time; he taught me how to dance the tango, weaned me from the clutches of the sentimental Romantics to appreciate the abstractions of Bach’s counterpoint, and helped me understand the meaning of “inevitability” in composition. 

Papa loved his music with an eccentric zeal, sparks of which I like to believe rubbed off on me like spiritual osmosis.

In the evening after family dinner, when everyone had retired to the bedrooms and the lights in the living room had been dimmed, Papa would turn to the old phonograph, pick a Mozart or some brooding Russian, sit comfortably on his favorite coach, sip wine, lean back, close his eyes and listen. Papa’s listening was always deliberate, like a ritual, never careless. Curious about his solitary pleasure, I snuggled close to his side, warm and comforting, leaned back, closed my eyes and listened.

Thus was launched, unsuspectingly, my lifelong love affair with the classical masters, thanks to my dearest Papa!

A privileged early grounding in the classics, no matter how rudimentary and parochial, was tremendously liberating to a young girl. It was like growing wings to soar, or being bestowed power. 

To harness, shape and tame the swirling wild chaos inside, and falling crazily in love with, of all subjects, Algebra and  Geometry, that one was supposed to hate. 

But lacking wisdom and humility, I must have transformed into a pedantic bore, insufferable surely to the boys, particularly those who wanted to pay court but whom I wanted first to convert to poetry and art. I even had the temerity to invoke the Apostle Paul, who by his own account, was translated to the third heaven [2 Corinthian 12:2], where he saw and heard of ineffable joys and exceeding pleasures, and coming back down to earth, a changed man, became a force unstoppable, the fire in his bones unquenchable!

I cradle myself in the lap of beauty, worship in the cathedrals of art. But I tremble at the thought that as an artist, I myself do not burn in the same sacred fires!

How terrible to suffer the fate of Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron who lithely worshipped at the Tabernacle, daring to burn incense with strange fires, and instantly were stricken dead, summarily executed by the wrath of the most holy God  [Leviticus 10:1-3].

How tragic to presume annointing when in truth there never was oil in the lamp, nor burning coal in the lampstand. 

Where is this altar where I may burn a holy fire?

 “Woe to me, I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King. Then one of the Seraphs flew to me with live coals which he has taken with thongs from the altar and with it touched my mouth,”  [Isaiah 6:5-6]

 I was fourteen when my elder sister, the magnificent English teacher gave me a book to read, The Quiet Light, a novel based on the life of St. Thomas Aquinas written by Louis de Wohl. It must have impressed me that much because it moved me to write a review for our school paper, my first ever published.

Later in college, Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor whom G.K. Chesterton also called the Dumb Ox because he was huge, became the centerpiece of my philo studies making me a bona fide Thomist, handling with great reverent care the hallowed pages of his Summa Theologica which I borrowed from the special section of the library, the largest and thickest book I have laid my hands on. I was to baptize my first-born daughter after Raissa, wife of Jacques Maritain, most eminent interpreter of the thought and teachings of Aquinas.

St. Thomas it was who wrote the exuberant poem  Pange Lingua Gloriosi [“Sing My Tongue, the Savior”s glory, Of His flesh the mystery sing..!”, which set to Benedictine chant, we sang during Maundy Thursday Rites of Holy Week, for I was then a member of the church choir. 

My sister also lent me a thick volume, the Autobiography of Teresa of Avila — that medieval landmark of Christian mysticism in which she narrates in detail the moment of swooning ecstasy when the angel pierced her heart with the arrow of divine love, sensuously captured in high renaissance marble by the sculptor Bernini. Much later she introduced me to other mystic poets and contemplatives — John of the Cross, Meister Ekhart, Julian of Norwich who was really a woman, and others — much too heavy stuff for me. 

It was obvious what spiritual trajectory my sister had in mind for my young soul. When she left home to enter religious life, I acquiesced with a heavy heart, saying that for all her beautiful gifts, she belonged only to God. 

Sister Mary Aquinas Lluch met her Bridegroom not long ago at the age of 85. As she lay on the hospital bed near death, the most beautiful sounds and utterances escaped from her mouth: “Beloved, come, my Beloved!”

Throughout my artistic life a dream kept coming back, actually a pair of them like two sides of a coin, occurring either one or the other, in countless variations, but the same dream all the time.

It wasn’t unlike the story of Jacob contending with God on the banks of Jabbok River, wrestling with a stranger all through the night  until the break of day, and overcoming, prevailed on the angel to reveal his name and pronounce a blessing! [Genesis 32: 22-32].

The dream stopped to haunt me when finally I came to understand what it was all about.

The First Dream

The dream is in monotone color, close to black and white. I am a girl of eight.

The mingling scents of damp earth, candles, sweat and wilting funeral flowers hang heavy in the air, as a small crowd of men and women, most of them clothed in black, gather around a freshly dug pit. Beside it floats a wooden coffin bearing the dead artist’s body. 

He was a our neighbor who lived across the street from our house who made a living by painting billboards for the downtown cinema — sweeping pictures of swaggering  swordsmen, galloping  horses and battleships, larger than life, glamorous women and men in passionate embrace. I frequented his studio, watching in fascination while he worked on his paintings even if he reeked with cigarette and alcohol. He often asked me to sing and I would oblige obediently as I loved to sing.

One day he made me promise to sing at his funeral when he dies. 

“Sing for me when I am dead, my sweet child. Or I will come for you at night and my ghost will grab you by your feet and pull you off your bed!”

He said with cruel humor.

Not long afterwards, he met his death violently, stabbed by a crazed drunk right in our neighborhood. My young eyes and ears had witnessed enough of that bloody afternoon to sear my tender soul for many years to come. 

The sun is beating hard on the cemetery ground. The old priest is sweltering under his dirty cassock. 

After the ritual sprinkling of holy water on the coffin and on the people gathered near, he nodded his head signaling for me to step forward.

Holding back tears, I sing Schubert’s Ave Maria, my frail frame trembling in fear and buried anger because death’s face is ugly and shatters my happy little world. But sing I must, and sing beautifully with all my might, lest the gaping, yawning black pit swallows me up into the grave where the phantoms grab my legs and I am damned forever!

The Second Dream

I am a wisp of a fairy named Aurea, guardian of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow somewhere deep in the forest. It is actually a scene from a stage play titled Rainbow Gold which is now about to end.

The sun is going down, the gold will soon disappear, to be stashed away for another hundred years, after which it will appear again for only a single day to give foolish, avaricious mortals another chance to find it.

With a graceful motion, I pull back the rainbow from the sky. The lights on the stage fade out softly, the mists from the fog-machines rise from behind mock-up bushes and flower beds. The atmosphere is dreamy and magical, a bit forlorn. Then I begin to dance  to an exquisite Debussy arabesque, my nimble limbs moving ah so lightly and delicately as though strangely  the room has no ceiling nor floor. It is joyously perfect as perfection can be — no miss steps or missed lines, no nervous stutters, no technical glitches or tripping on floor wires, no thoughts of tomorrow. There is just this singular moment of pure poetry, so unbearable in its ethereal beauty. My soul is begging that this dream would never end.

Then the music stops, the curtains descend,  and I hear thunderous applause filling the whole school auditorium, rising to the beams , to the rooftops and out into the whole world!

In the end, what good has beauty done to my life?
Am I a better human being for it?

I do not blame myself for boasting about encounters with sublime beauty in one’s youth. Great poets and artists themselves have told about how man has carried his talents to heights perilously close to divinity which presumptuousness God has confounded time and again as narratives  from mythology and religion abundantly show, talk of Icarus, Prometheus, or Nimrod.

Is it possible that God himself is jealous of this creature man, as the Serpent subtlety hinted at the Garden? Some intrepid theologians like to think that art belongs properly to man, not to God; that it is man’s exclusive domain, produced by his own human hands, his own human feet, eyes, ears, vocal chords, assiduously learned, cultivated, minted, molded, perfected; then passed on to the next artist, and down the succeeding generations.

Where would Beethoven be apart from Mozart? Brahms without Beethoven? Hadn’t Haydn been taught by one of the sons of JS Bach? The transmission goes on down an unbroken line in glorious strides. With an exception perhaps of Gustave Mahler who I discovered just sprung out of nowhere with his searing Jewish anguish. Why hadn’t my father known about  him? I wondered why.

How does poetry come anyway? Is it not from wandering through desolations, in the arid wastelands where water and the blood  of the poet is squeezed out from a stone or a lifeless tree?

“Is beauty not just another consumable? Like wine? One drinks it in, one drinks it down. It gives one brief heavy pleasing feeling, but what does it leave behind? The residue is, excuse the word, piss, what is the residue of beauty?”  J.M. Coetzee

Christianity overtook me in midlife with its quiet invasion of transfiguring grace. I was drawn irresistibly to this all-consuming fire, a love-as-strong-as-death, succumbing to its sweet invitation of absolute forgiveness that led  straight to the Wedding Feast!

                         “Take me away with  you – let us hurry!

                           Let the King take me to his chambers!”

                                                                    Song of Songs  1:4

The wind of the Spirit blew away the meshes that entangled the mind like cobwebs, swept like floodwaters the strongholds of overarching passions, and in its wake, the second-rate pursuits and issues of the heart fled like blind bats from dark alleys. 

The alien force at first threatened the very survival of the artistic life. Becoming Christian, I had decided that Christianity was the exact antithesis to the life of the senses and had resigned myself to what Thoreau described as a life of quiet mediocrity. “Aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands,” [1 Thessalonians 4:11] until grace, for it is always by grace, uncovered the futility of he devil’s lie. No, my art didn’t perish, nor become lame and constricted, I merely stepped into a realm of paradoxes and a relentless engagement with a life too intense even for art!

Emily Dickinson, in one of her poems, referred to the Bible  as an “arid” book, an “antique” volume written by “faded” men and wished it were written by someone like Orpheus. Her ambivalence regarding her Christian faith baffled and bothered me for a time, but it was also something familiar to my own personal experience as a Christian artist. I have also acknowledged the natural tension, an incongruity that exists between art and faith which quite often is eventually quietly resolved. As I do at times, Emily perhaps bothered too much about doctrine or theology which, after all, is not what saves and which in fact often supersedes the beauty of simple faith. 

 It strikes me that she wanted Orpheus to have written Scripture. Surely she must have known her Bible by heart, and must have loved the literary parts like the Psalms, the majestic poetries of the Book of  Job, Isaiah, and most assuredly, the sensuously beautiful Song of Songs!

Did Emily come to a point in her career that she had to choose between her art and her religion? Shouldn’t it suffice that her works are marvelous and truthful?

Why should it even matter to me at all?

 It is possible that it is to the epistolary writings that Emily refers to as an “arid” book. But to be fair to the Apostle Paul who wrote most of the letters in the New Testament, he would now and then burst out in ecstatic poetry, like a man intoxicated by the love of God and His glorious truths! 

But in all this discussions, a heavy feeling of shame is coming over me and I beg forgiveness. Who am I to to even think the Apostle Paul needs my faint apologetics, and as for Emily, how can I think a matter of religion could mar the purity of her art and needs my self-righteous defense?