A storm in heaven

On the back of my edition of Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs, New York Times’ bestselling author and Sandman creator Neil Gaiman provides the blurb: "The Land of Laughs is a book for anyone who has ever believed that a favorite book could be a safe place to go when things get hard." In the novel, the schoolteacher Thomas Abbey finds solace from his failed life in the books by the reclusive author Marshall France, so much so that he undertakes the task of writing his biography and traveling to his hometown. I relate to the flawed hero of the book, abandoning any hope of a career in painting after seeing works by a college classmate named Rom Villaseran.

Strangely enough, I find much comfort looking at the sketches that I stole from his studio one day and which I keep near my writing table. Compared to all the visual sewage that litter the billboards of Metro Manila, I find myself wishing myself into one of Rom’s never-never lands, losing myself at its mythical beauty and hoping for some purchase on their creator’s coattails. I write his story to be part of it.

Coincidentally, Carroll’s book also happens to be a horror novel.

Award-winning filmmaker John Torres filmed Rom for his lauded short Salat and introduced his scene by saying in poetic verse that his "friend painted a view of heaven" before showing the painter in front of his work both ecstatic and pained at its completion. Yet anyone looking for an inferno will surely find several in the same canvases. These are bloodied paintings. Rom himself will not help you, not playing at being Virgil or Beatrice to your Dante. I guess if you spent a good part of one year doing one painting – in many instances describing details into its surface using a magnifying glass – you wouldn’t want to give up the ghost that easily.

Rom was on his third year as an architecture student in the University of Santo Tomas before he decided to shift colleges and study for a degree in Visual Communication at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman. We met during our second year while lining up for a subject. I told him that I was into the surrealists and Jackson Pollock; he said he liked comics and the Renaissance Painters. Did I have any of my stuff with me? (Of course not.) Did he? The moment he let me peek into his world I was convinced that I would rather be a part of it rather than make weak reflections of it.

After getting his certificate, he opted to start work, doing groundbreaking album covers for popular bands like Cheese, Greyhoundz and Slapshock, making Rom a rock star in his own right. Eventually tiring of peddling his work to commercial galleries, he put up a bar and created his own alternative Sistine Chapel – one that boasted also a vision of the Apocalypse just left of the men’s comfort room. However, Rom soon tired of the scene and retreated into his studio, cutting off contact with almost all of his friends and acquaintances (including me) for two years to concentrate on becoming what he always wanted to be: a painter.

Since then, he has had three major shows to date. (A show was slated for last year but – to Rom’s delight and surprise – he sold out the whole collection even before he could book a gallery.)

This year, I was at the Neil Gaiman "rally" and sat as pompous as the rest of the media and the VIP’s in our special seats when Rom’s name was announced as the winner of first prize of the art competition that the sponsors of Gaiman’s trip, Fully Booked, organized. He had been disqualified, according to the bookstore’s top honcho Jaime Daez, but Gaiman did not hesitate and declared it the winner. According to other sources, Gaiman said something to the effect that he had a hard time choosing but he knew upon seeing Rom’s piece that no one would object to it being awarded the top trophy.

Typical of Rom though, he wasn’t even there when his name was called. (He did have dinner with Gaiman, bringing along his lovely girlfriend Nina. For Gaiman, Rom gave a painting that the author said he, "would hang in a happy place in my home.")

I congratulated Rom by phone and he was just thrilled at having met one of his heroes. Gaiman gave him an original page of art drawn by Michael Zulli from their graphic novel inspired by Alice Cooper and drew a cartoon chimera on Rom’s sketchpad. He says it’s now valuable. I tell him it always was.

His most recent exhibition of paintings called "Paalam Na Buwan" is a bittersweet one for Rom. "I lived with this world for the past couple of years," he says. "I feel have to move on (and I am) but I know I’ll miss it somehow." More than any other name perhaps, that place might have just been simply home.