The street in Angeles, Pampanga where I grew up holds many good memories. Foremost were the times when the moonlit night would occasionally be filled with the gentle sound of a string instrument lilting in the air. It stood out from the usual din in our neighborhood.
It drifted from a two-story house in the middle of that street. It was the home of a middle class family. The name of the head of the household, if I remember it right, was Tino de la Rama or Tatang Tino, for short. He was a very respectable man of the old school and an amateur violinist.
Our informal gang of adolescents would suddenly stop our banter and just listen. The cacophony of loud voices arguing and radios blaring with a diversity of radio evening dramas, pop songs, and variety shows would gradually quiet down.
It was certainly different, but we were all captivated by the melodious strains because it was pleasurable to hear it in a strange, unexplainable way.
Our street was not a classy neighborhood. The residents there were mostly struggling families. I didn’t understand it then but now I realize that, through his violin, Tatang Tino was performing an essential role of art in our world, which is to help “lift people up, not lower them down” as someone puts it.
That was my first encounter with so-called classical music, or should I say highbrow art. Even for some fleeting moments, the music made our ordinary commonplace street seem more beautiful and joyful. There’s now a term for what we felt then: “aesthetic pleasure.”
Of course my appreciation of music and the arts have become more sophisticated and expansive through the years. For one, I married a woman who was educated to be a concert pianist. I have made friends with painters, filmmakers, literary writers and sculptors. My love for literature and music helped restrain me from becoming solely focused on material pursuits.
People don’t realize that we need art like we need our basic needs. It is that essential something that has been feeding our inner spirit all this time, without us being aware of it, touching and shaping our everyday lives in many ways.
Don’t we listen to music to put us in the mood? Don’t we love watching movies and TV dramas? Or play computer games? Why are some of us still addicted to reading? Why do we keep watching people singing and dancing?
What moves us to go to art museums or walk in beautifully landscaped gardens?
Why do we paint? Write poems? Design homes and buildings? Why are we picky with the clothes we wear?
That’s because we live in a world of art, in all its forms. It is actually everywhere if we go by the definition of art as “creating design out of chaos.” We feed ourselves with art to keep us living meaningful elevated lives. Didn’t Picasso say, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Take away art. Kill all the makers and creators of art. What are we left with? There would be nobody who would paint, make movies, music or write novels or poems. It would be a world empty of things that trigger our sense of thrill, fun, wonder, and joy. We would probably put an end to our pathetic lives because as the poet T.S. Eliot says: “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
So let’s get our enjoyment of art from wherever we can. Yes there are all kinds of art. Each to his own taste. We respond differently. That is what art is. A dialogue between the creator and the responder.
That’s why I’ve stopped categorizing the way we appreciate art. Why can’t we derive pleasure from art that is highbrow as well as lowbrow? Why bother classifying what gives us aesthetic pleasure?
Why can’t Mang Terio the tricycle driver not attend open-air concerts by the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra and sing the videoke versions of songs composed by George Canseco, Willy Cruz, and Ryan Cayabyab while at home?
Maybe some art forms are just a mood setter. That’s alright. For others it is something to live for.
Just ask the hubby of my sister in law. He has hampered mobility because of a stroke he suffered several years ago. Now he has taken up the brush again and is having the most uplifting time of his life rediscovering his talent for painting and delighting his friends on social media with his finished canvases. He has discovered what the Japanese call his “ikigai”, a sense of purpose that makes you want to get up in the morning, providing inspiration to people who like him have been struck down unexpectedly in the midst of life.
Take it from an artist: “Art can’t solve our problems, or make up for our losses. But it can help us transcend them.”
This is why I strongly believe that the more messy our world gets, the more we must have art. The more art, the better. What we should look for is not what is great art and what is a minor form of art, but what and who keeps art alive.
Only by supporting our young artists and encouraging them to create and perform art can we hope to increase our people’s art consciousness and the demand for the substantive over the superficial. Not only in art but also in our individual lives.
If some cynical friends would ask “what’s art got to do with life anyway” I probably would tell them about my beginner’s experience of art to our fiddler in Padre Zamora Street. That’s where my elevated sense of life was awakened.