THE SECRET WORLD, PART II
In drama's theory of mode beginning with the theatre of ancient Greeks, tendency is twofold: by a character's integration to his society - which is comedy, or by his isolation therefrom - which is tragedy. The distinction was carried through all ages, up to now and might as well be till the end of performance arts, that showbusiness might forever bear the symbolic hold of the two-mask, where one expresses the joy of laughter, the other, the agony of solitude.
Jose Saramago would occassionally say in introspecting a dichotomy of ideas, This is true in life as well as in literature - eliminating the distinction between reel and real, the pages of a book and the pages of one's life, but still germinating separate worlds in contrast to Emerson's charge, There is no such thing as facts, only arts.
Amidst these I often ask myself, Where does my loneliness stand? Is it an imitation of art, or does it simply lend credence to the integrity of the arts? Or is my life a projection of two masks, wearing one to hide the opposite emotion? Or instead of two-mask is it really two-face, one face magnifying the real emotion, as big as the screen, or as they showbizly claim larger-than-life?
I hate the notion that my life is a showbiz, or that I am a product of literature. The strength of my shoulders and the weakness of my knees are the results of my own juice, ruse, carouse, or abuse, as the case may be, though on second thought they may have been directly affected by what I watch, listen, and read.
For Jobert's sake, let me organize this confusion of thoughts.
I am simply trying to trace the path to my secret world of loneliness, and in the process, darn it, I am being led to the world of arts.
In recalling moments of dialectics at home - my mischief and unrule to my dad's discipline and strict military rule, ending in the synthesis of his belt and the quagmire of genuine leather, leaving a stinging impression on my skin that literature may otherwise declaim as being cast in stone - I recall not the loneliness of pain but of sharing it with the audience of my punishment, my dear mom. And henceforth Albert Camus' The First Man tells it as it is, like I am Jacques Cormery some generations after, on that moment when he was being beaten by his grandmother, in the presence of his mother: "...all his life she had the same manner, fearful and submissive, yet also distance, the same look she had thirty years ago when she watched without intervening while her mother beat Jacques with a whip, she who had never touched or even really scolded her children; there was no doubt that those blows wounded her too, but she could not intervene because she was exhausted, because she could not find the words, and because of the respect she owed her mother; she had not interfered, she had endured through the long days and years, had endured those blows for her children, just as for herself she endured the hard days of working in the service of others..."
Ahhh, my loneliness must have been pervaded by a secret bondage with my mother, formed by contact, eye to eye, breath to breath, whisper to whisper, hush to hush, violent shake to a twitch of muscle, sullen anguish to a whiff note of broken heart. And after each military exercise I sought for her embrace not only to console my crumbled body and spirit but to blurt out the repressed by-product of pain: a perfect opportunity to cry.
Did you ever see The Hours and remember the kid who sits by the window, consumed by loneliness, eaten up by premonition that his mother will never come back? In a way that was me, in a way I was that kid, in a way I was that kid all eaten up by sorrow by the daily departure of a mother. I was 3 or 4, I remember, when everytime my mom went to work each morning I rushed by the window to see her image get smaller by the second, each second represented by a bigger degree of loneliness, a degree of loneliness brought about by a belief that her absence warranted a repression of my emotions towards pain, an absence that fully negated every single opportunity to cry.
So alas this is my secret world, where my loneliness leads to a relationship with my mother (in strict fairness to my dad, I do not, never did, bear any hatred towards him; I respected him all my life and I would probably not be where I am now if not for his iron fist and leather belt.) My fixation for loneliness is delivered through a fragrant path right into a motherly embrace. And if this is so, for their warm embrace that gives perfect reasons to cry on to, then sad stories like Sargent Hall's The Ledge; or sad songs like Ron Sexsmith's Secret Heart; or sad films like Chaplin's City Lights, are all my mothers, too.
Yes, in life as in literature...
I can cry out, for crying out loud!
