"I asked him if a good angel was therefore Western looking (liwat ug Amerikano). This point he gave emphatic affirmation. I asked him what would happen if he made his angel's nose flat? He did not credit this question with a reply. It was simply too insulting.."
THE PUG-NOSED ANGEL
I am searching for a vocabulary that could somehow define my working philosophy as a wood carver. This vocabulary I slowly enrich in my dealings with other carvers. Once, I did an interview with a santos-maker (makers of religious figures). I discovered that a few of them may still be found especially at the southern neighborhoods of the city. My initial observation was that most of them have not been too well treated by the run of history. Doomed to meager pay and considerable poverty, they might be the last practitioners of a dying art form.
The pressure brought upon him by these conditions might have been the reason why Romeo (call me Meyot) was not interested enough in our conversation to interrupt his work. And so we found ourselves arranged this way: him bent over his piece of Santol wood; while I watched him holding in my hands my 96 leaf, spring-bound notebook and ballpen ready to record whatever interesting comment he might make in the course of the interview. I found this situation ideal as I could watch him at work even as we talked. But he made sure through apparent signals of unfriendliness that he did not want me to stay too long. Most likely, his current work must have been running many weeks late already. But many years of part-time work with media had taught me how to ignore those signals and react instead with dogged and shameless persistence. I continued to make a pest of myself despite my "victim's" rising irritation.
He continued to hack away into his wood as if his strokes were numbered. Many years of carving the same piece had predetermined his measures and charted his approach to the shape he was after. My initial observation was that he was practicing a carving method steep in the classical western traditions. He was not searching for a shape. This shape was already well-established in his head. He had done this work many times and, in any case, the strokes he would need to produce this shape were well rehearsed after many years of repeated experience. He knew exactly what he was doing with the sureness of a machine.
Which was why he was using an inch and a half -wide knife which produced a half-crescent cut. This was also why the wood was flying away in almost all directions and all about him, landing invariably in my hair. I would not be amazed that within the short time of this interview which was about 30 minutes he would finish his angel and I would learn two items of information that would become invaluable to me as a practitioner of wood carving.
The first was the term paga-an. This term Meyot used to describe the primary steps of shaping the wood. This Visayan term literally means to "make lighter" or to take away unnecessary weight from the wood. The term seemed to me only vaguely consistent with western classical norms and so this led me to wonder instead if this term would have roots to pre-Spanish traditions of carving. There are historical records to show that Filipinos carved boats long before the Spanish came to the islands. The main frame of the boat called "kasko" was invariably carved from a large and heavy piece of log. The interior portion of the kasko was, of course, gouged out with an adze in a process that would make the whole assembly light enough so that it would float over the water. This was at that moment just surmise but I was happy to recapture a word. Having reacquired the word I could appropriate, as well, a method which hopefully, in the course of time, may give me a philosophy to guide my own work.
But I was also curious how Meyot knew he had arrived at the shape he wanted. I was wondering of the aesthetics which guided his work. And so I asked him what were the qualities of a good Angel? To which question he answered that it must look like a real angel, lawom ug mata unya hait o pino ang ilong (deep-set eyes with sharp or fine nose). I asked him if a good angel was therefore Western looking (liwat ug Amerikano). This point he gave emphatic affirmation. I asked him what would happen if he made his angel's nose flat? He did not credit this question with a reply. It was simply too insulting. The interview was definitely ended at that point.
I am wondering if Meyot's sense of the aesthetics of an angel is to blame for the waning of his art. My own post-colonial biases quickly tell me it is certainly related to the stagnation of local culture.
Westerners carved armies of angels for themselves. At one time in their history they must have felt a sense of spiritual affirmation every time they looked at angels at their pedestals. The angels looked, after all, like them. Did the angel animate something inside their beings? They might have affirmed something inside them which was alive and made them feel good about themselves. Before the coming of the Spanish, Filipinos also put anitos outside their villages to guard against evil. When Filipino children gazed into these anitos did they likewise summon the same feelings?
Meyot's angel, on the other hand, did nothing of that sort. It was just a piece of wood shaped and eventually painted into the likeness of a foreigner. This was not to say that Meyot's work was anything less than the angels which might have been carved in Europe. Indeed, Meyot's workmanship as well as of many local carvers like him are quite fine and polished. If their products seem less alive and spirited than their Western counterparts it must be for the lack of elements other than skill.
But what would an angel truly look like? Our response to this question would be quick. Easily our minds bring forth images we have grown all too familiar with. All our angels invariably have deep-set eyes and lean narrow noses and so we find we are not better off than Meyot. It should not be unexpected that we all eventually fail to realise the need for angels. In the worst cases, angels become for some of us an image related more to the cemetery than to the home. This thought would not be bothersome for me if I were not also convinced that this waning need for angels might only be an extension of the growing disinterest in art in our society. This fuels the belief that while art is okay it is not at all essential and necessary. In a society trapped as we are in the troughs of poverty, what, after all, is the purpose of angels and art?
I dream, nevertheless, of my pug-nosed angel flying somewhere in these heavens. It would be nice to give this angel shape. Perhaps my children gazing into its form might recapture an old feeling we have not felt in a long time. At one time, many years ago, Pintado children followed the winding paths to their village. They came eventually to the carved wooden shapes of the anitos which stood guard over the village entrance. What did these shapes have to say to the children? The shapes told them: their lives would be forever guarded and that there was something inside them which was alive and spiritually joined into the living fabric which traversed the expanse of their world and their universe. And they all felt the better for it.
For his column, "Thought Balloon;" Sunstar Weekend magazine
Other article by the author on this site.