Hail our new National Artists!

We’re glad that Malacañang finally decided to confer the National Artist Awards on seven deserving artists, whose elevation to the exalted ranks has long been an open secret among big and little birdies since the middle of the year.

Of course there’s always no telling if the finalized list approved by the joint boards of the NCCA and CCP would stay as is, especially since previous administrations have tampered, in ways big and small, with the selection process.

Almost a decade ago, a grave anomaly even had some National Artists and the arts community in general protesting the shameless manipulation before the Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of decency and due process.

That was a time when our highest magistrates still regarded those factors highly. Their decision righted the course, albeit the shudder in the machine still affected the continuum by way of unwarranted delays.

Then the next president threw another spanner in the works, by denying a popular awardee her due, something that is said to have been repeated this year.

Well, the Chief Executive remains well within her or his rights to meddle in the process, but just a bit, that is, short of dropping properly processed names in favor of others that had not gone through any vetting.

Imaginably, too, a president might have such scant interest in the matter that he would simply nod acceptance of whatever his Executive Secretary deems best to convey — about yet another set of awards in a country where such honors are even more frequent than public holidays.     

“Sir, may drug arrest record, eh. Kung yung dilawan nga, hindi tinanggap, kayo pang war on drugs ang national policy?”

“Ah, oo nga, ’no. Sige, kayo na’ng bahala, maghanap pa ko ng tamang ointment.”

Such anecdotal dialogue may not be apocryphal, given the narratives of casual power we’ve become familiar with.

In any case, we’re glad that the seven final choices are as acceptable as magnificent samurai, gaining both popular and critical handclaps. Personally, it also enthuses me that most have been friends to a certain degree for much of a lifetime.

It may have been Resil Mojares I’ve known longest, having met him way back in 1968, half-a-century ago, in Cebu when Eman Lacaba, Donel Pacis and I hopped over straight from the Dumaguete summer workshop.

That early, Resil struck one as a no-nonsense writer of extraordinary intelligence and literary acumen, one who also comported himself modestly and affably. His early fiction published established him as creative writer of high merit. He eventually concentrated on critical studies and cultural research.

As a scholar and international educator, he has authored several award-winning titles, from political biography to incisive thematic studies on aspects of Philippine history, literature and culture. While heading the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos, he has also taught at a number of American and Asian universities, and consistently gained international foundation grants and prizes for social science research and history.

A conversation with Resil always allows for appreciation of a keen intellect and dispassionate discourse, with his gentle demeanor barely shading pleasant humor. No airs. He knows that he knows, but never makes a show of it.

I might have met Eric de Guia at about the same time, but more likely when the 1970s came in. By the mid-’70s he had jumped into the indie filmmaking wagon that was actually begun by Mike Parsons in Baguio and Henry Francia in New York and Manila.

Eric turned into Kidlat Tahimik as he started on his wildly inventive films that spoofed an oriental innocent’s fascination with Western tech, including space travel. His humor was over-the-top in a faux-naïve way, and it was always a delight to hear him spinning plans and scenarios that never took any timetable seriously.

I still recall him fiddling around with a Steenbeck flatbed editing machine at his family’s original Baguio residence, which eventually kept moving as he and wife Katrin raised three boys who upheld the playful genes. Kidlat Sr. was a canny sprite, with a homegrown credo that had native ingenuity and genius ever pulling the rug from under everything that was First World.

A major memory was of his sportive comic talent as the native shaman pitting unworldly skills against Pepito Bosch and Boy Yuchengco as the Western and Chinese wizards — in the experimental short film Shaman Wars produced in the early ’80s by a gang on a Baguio laugh trip.

The last time I savored his performance as an all-around artist was at the Singapore Arts Festival of 2013, when he delivered a speech onstage while clad in an academic gown over his usual T-shirt and G-string. He was armed with a makeshift bamboo film camera. He then dramatically cast the gown aside (as he had in his youth), picked up a gong, and led kids through a romp of a snake dance that wound up in the audience section.

Amelia Lapeña Bonifacio was a fixture at UP Diliman’s Faculty Center where I used to hang out in the early ’80s. At some point she served as director of the Creative Writing Center, before it became an institute. We always called her “Ma’am Amel” — this genial lady who had pioneered in local puppet theater.  

Ryan Cayabyab we also became familiar with at UP Diliman, especially when he engaged in collaborative work with some poets for a reading cum concert. Through the years we’ve cheered on his career as a pop musician of the first water.

Larry Alcala we must have exchanged a quiet word with decades ago, although the thrill was mostly confined to spotting his figure in his Slice of Life cartoons. With the formidable fellow legend, architect Francisco Mañosa, and the prolific Hiligaynon novelist Ramon Muzones, this is such a good crop of NAs.

Not even the Chief Executive’s typically puzzling and infinitely pathetic speech of no-connect at their conferment honors in Malacañang could dim the broad acceptance of this cultural exaltation.