“Dr. Armonson stitched up her wrist wounds.
Within five minutes of the transfusion he declared her out of danger. Chucking
her under the chin, he said, "What are you doing here, honey? You're not
even old enough to know how bad life gets."
And it was then Cecilia gave orally what was to
be her only form of suicide note, and a useless one at that, because she was
going to live: "Obviously, Doctor," she said, "you've never been
a thirteen-year-old girl.”
-
Jeffrey Eugenides, The
Virgin Suicides
There are two ways you could have read that. I
can imagine the Cecilia sympathizers feel a pang in their chest because they
know just what it means to be misunderstood being the special snowflakes they
are. At the same time, I hear you out Dr. Armonson's of the world—kids can say
the darndest things.
The middle-class art school students talking of "hustling"
with a self-seriousness devoid of any self-awareness. The unpaid intern who
thinks nothing of coming in late but complains at the slightest hint of
overtime. The new bands taking over the live gig venues from one's youth. Cue
eye-rolls for The Millennial, please!
Yet once upon a time, the punks and hippies were
someone's kids. In their happily ever after, they grew up to be the pissed
parents themselves. The "cool" mom/dad would decry the verdict, but
at one point in everyone's existence regardless of length, we have been guilty
for crimes of rose-colored retrospection.
In these amnesic days of Marcos apologists, it's
easy to be excessively reverent for the past. Film, vinyl, Martial Law... Have
the best years of our lives truly passed us by? The digital revolution was the
EDSA that democratized movies and music for all. Ours is a cultural education
made possible by piracy. Thanks to the Torrent Gods of Good Taste, we have
access to works we would otherwise never acquire on our own. These are
developments of the new. It is said that the Internet went on to kill
Television which killed Cinema which killed Theater. The year is 2016 and the
only thing that has died are the arguments delegitimizing the bastard offshoot
art forms that once threatened their predecessors.
Age, I've found, is the best bulletproof vest/anti-venom
against criticism. There are professors with artistic dry spells even older
than the median age of the classes they instruct. With portfolios last updated
in the 80s, whatever they pass on by way of technical know-how is nothing more
than a time capsule on how things used to be. I guess tenure is the most
powerful force there is in the world though, next to love. I teleported to the
future! In the apocalypse he was still talking about the glory days.
Along the government front, our worldly Titos and
Titas are now the self-appointed leaders of the cultural sector. Much in the
same way the Oscars were so white (Congrats, Leo!), the circle jerk clubs that
are these councils and committees have issues with diversity, age-wise. See,
some of these key roles are raffled off to individuals on the strength of how
long they've been around or who they know, not necessarily for what they can
offer. Wisdom? That's nice, but I wish it came with a side of Catching-Up-With-The-Times.
I emo-cry a little every time funding is funneled
into projects that don’t even benefit the other stakeholders (or go unspent
altogether in bureaucratic chokeholds). What of helping enforce policies
already passed by the law that protect the interests of actual practitioners
(here's looking at you, Entertainment Tax of Cebu!)? Why all this fancy talk
about reviving some Golden Age if the living creators are fighting tooth and
nail just to put their work out there? You know, so this scene we've got could
actually become a sustainable industry?
Post-Great Recession, millennials have had to fix
an economy they inherited from the previous generation. However, still
emblazoned upon every quarter life crisis sufferer is the scarlet letter E for
Entitled. It makes one wonder why the adults—in charge, more experienced, of infinite agency to
incite change beyond hashtags—instead
lay on the blame game thick on the kids for failing to clean up after the mess
they left behind.
There's this parable about a young artist
demanding fair compensation. In exchange for his services, his client insisted "exposure"
would be enough to feed him, pay the bills and cure cancer. When he refused, he
was swiftly replaced with young artist #2 who had yet to awaken to his own
worth and was willing to work for free. The End. Moral lesson: It's hangyo their
way or the highway, you little ingrate.
We have breathed long enough in this world to see
the best men of our time—Bill Cosby, Jimmy Savile, Bikram Choudhury, that guy
from Subway—turn out to be pretty gross, like shriveled raisins on what you
thought was a chocolate chip cookie. Brigitte Bardot and Donald Trump could be
bedfellows with their anti-Muslim rhetoric. The Pacman is only your friend if
you're straight. Two local design schools have historically waged word wars in
what is seemingly a masterclass on how not to social media. The seniors
who hire you will pull a Houdini when it's time to pay up, stalling with
excuses no worse than "The dog ate my homework!". This despite giving
you hell for missing revision deadlines. Kill your idols, so they say. Your
elders might just be babies too, except with deader bodies.
Friends across different life stages, this is not
youthful hubris hate mail. Thank you for birthing us into this world. Had it
not been for your efforts, none of us would have grown up to be the smug
know-it-alls we are now, writing rants against you for our blog to get lots of
hits. A toast to the pioneers and cheers to the offenders, rule-breakers and
eyebrow-raisers! May we all one day see the light from each other's eyes.
Words by Mariya Lim
Illustration by Bayani Acebedo