This is the last event. I'm here late. I ran into APAture OG Robynn Takayama outside. She was going to meet Michael Cheng (second year committee member) for dinner, and we went together. After nearly an hour of waiting at two different restaurants for a table for pizza, it finally occurred to me that they'd get a table much quicker if I just came back to KSW, so here I am. I had forgotten why I avoid the Mission on weekends.
Don't know what I missed yet. I'll reconstruct it by process of elimination later.
7:52 - No idea when they started. I walked in on a South Asian woman reading (with a lot of energy and personality, thank oG) a memoir-sounding piece about a girl arriving in ... the US? She's learning to shave her legs. Wow, that's investing a lot of meaning in leg-shaving.
7:57 - Chris Brown: That was Bina Patel. I remember the first time I shaved my legs. Calls for Wilson Wong. Chris has embarrassed Wilson at past APAtures by taking his hat and passing it around as a collection basket. Intros Wilson Wong, presented at film/video last year. We also know him as a musician. He's been a great KSW/APAture supporter.
Wilson: comes out with guitar. Wilson, you bettah bring it or I'm gonna be mean! Even though I said I wouldn't.
First song "Homeland." Whoa. He has a voice. Okay, I've only heard two chords so far, he's just going back and forth between two chords. Okay, the bridge. Was another set of two chords. We need some music theory on this.
Wilson shouts out to me and gets me a round of applause. Then says to say something nice about him. No pressure, though ;)
Singing a Chinatown blues now. More a traditional song structure. Story of couple in Chinatown, working. Good voice, needs to have more confidence in it. Has CDs for sale. Very grass-rootsy.
"Still Trying to Sort it Out" another bluesy number. Very Dylan-y. He's even going a little nasal-y on it. Okay, he gets extra points for the line "well, filial piety is a bitch." Mostly works except for the title line, which is awkward rhythmically.
Taking it back to the nineties. (Called himself on the Dylan stuff.) What's he covering? Is this a cover? If it is, I don't know it. But it is very nineties-esque. Very so-and-so unplugged. Actually, this one does sound a little familiar. So, Sally can wait ... oh. It's Oasis. Funny, he's much more confident with this song. Dare I suggest he's more familiar with a song he didn't write than with the songs he did?
8:17 - Chris takes Wilson's hat and passes it around. Intros the Weather Undersound.
(Mark Jaramilla comes over and takes a picture of us together. Mark has been volunteering at APAture since the beginning. At APAture 2, I arrived at SomArts at 10 in the morning, thinking I'd be the first person there, and Mark was waiting for me there. When I closed up the building at 3 in the morning, the last person I let out was Mark. Yes, he was there the WHOLE TIME. He tells me he's working for SFSU now, organizing events. Perfect for him.
ETA: Mark was in the Filipino fraternity XPO--pron. "expo"--when he started volunteering at APAture. XPO is a service-oriented fraternity and members need to do a certain amount of community service every year, so for the first few years of APAture, XPO contributed 5-10 huge guys to do our security. I'm not joking: I thought for years that a prerequisite to membership in XPO was that you had to be built like The Rock.
These guys were great. They'd just show up, handle everything, and then leave at the end. No drama, no fuss. And they gave us a lot of love. They were just really interested in all the things community members were doing and wanted to be a part of it. I love that. Anyway, last night, Mark explained to us that the "X" is the mathematical variable, and the "PO" means "Philippine Origin," which means that anyone of Philippine origin can be a member of XPO--as long as you're male, that is, since it is a fraternity. Cool.)
Weather Undersound: one of the MCs read at the Youth Speaks event. One of the MCs spits a pome (Delrokz). Pinoy empowerment.
Now the other two are rapping over music. Mandeep Sethi (the one who was at the Youth Speaks performance) and the other one, whose name I missed (RTQLT?). They're doing Mandeep's spoken word piece from the YS performance but rapping it instead. Interesting, especially after today's hip hop workshop, to compare the rap to beats with the spoken word version. Yes, I like both. And it's a qualitative difference. Funny that the rap is slower than the spoken word. Easier, more relaxed. Mandeep is a lot more comfortable tonight. He's not alone, but maybe he's more of a rapper as well?
Now they're doing call and response. They're not getting a great response, but they're pumping themselves up, and getting their own energy up, and taking us with them. That's quite a trick. Beats are good. Standard, but good. Mandeep freestyles off "Kearny Street Workshop." That's right. He said it.
RTQLT ends with spoken word. Soapbox people, coop people, dope spot people, botox people. That's right. He rhymed it with Don Cheadle. Sweet.
8:37 - Chris: pitches catalogue. Intros May Nazareno. She intros herself. She's here because of Chris. She's from New York and new to the area. Solicited her application. Because of Chris, Glenn and Ellen. Playwright, actor, producer, singer. Was in Manila doing research on Jewish community in the Philippines. Ai ja, "hopefully you'll find some of yourself in what they have to say."
Starts singing. Sits down and does character, Juliette, talking to May about Duende (little elves, not Lorca's duende.) Raised in Philippines during war. Manila looked like Stanford University before the war. Born in Shanghai, English father importer. Different from Jewish refugees from Europe. They came earlier. Childhood memories. Then Japanese came for them. Took them to Santo Tomas. Not going back home anytime soon. Gives a letter with money to a driver who brings them a mattress. There for 3.5 years. Japanese fed them banana once a week. Their clothes are in shreds so a woman gives her a strong dress for when they get out.
After Tagaytay guerillas attack, Japanese take them to a different prison. Eventually she sees parachutes and pulls out dress and it's being eaten by termites. They're taken to San Francisco. (She's singing "take my heart to San Francisco." Strong voice, but I don't think she knows what melody she's trying to sing.)
New character Zvi. Jewish community in PI was too small for anti-Semitism. It was there, imported with the Spanish church. There are always people who hate Jews. They're always fearing hatred. They're coming out of it. But it takes a long time. She thinks it's like the African Americans. Why do they always see things as being against their community? People forget they've seen centuries of enslavement. And they're probably partly right.
But she doesn't feel that in PI. All drama queens. But not judgmental. Her feeling is that if Jews had gone through what the Filipinos had gone through with the Japanese, they'd be more uptight about it. They haven't forgotten, they just have a way of looking at life. And this has changed the Jewish community here. They feel Filipino. They feel part of this society. Children grow in a certain place and everything in your life will always come back to the place where you grew up. Hebrew poet: man is molded by his landscape and it never leaves you.
She's traveled to the South in the US. Visited synagogues. Very different kind of America. It's different from Filipinos, in the South you have a strong undercurrent of racial history. All the synagogues are abandoned because in the 60s Jews weren't welcome. It's so sad to see an empty synagogue. It used to have life and now it's just a monument. Like in Iraq. The war exposed all those beautiful synagogues in Iraq. They've been there for thousands of years. I wonder if this generation will pick up where their parents and grandparents left off.
Singing again. A hymn. New character. Has a head scarf. When you are married, you always cover your head, because hair is very attractive to men. Born Catholic. Rosemary. Biomom gave her up for adoption at 1.5. Changed name to Rosario Wang. Father Chinese. Went to convent school and wanted to become a nun. Switched to another school, wanted her to get married. Grace Christian HS run by American missionaries. Why had to pray to JC before everything else? Not to God the father? Baptist: no saints, no rosary. Okay, I'll try this religion, but wasn't satisfied. Not gonna be a buddhist (no god) or a muslim (a god but totally different and very confusing.) Not desirable according to mother. I don't ask questions.
Joined missionaries in our school. Met husband and they got married. He never went to church. A lot of questions in his mind that he could not answer. He wanted to learn about Judaism because of one God. Shabbes changed to Sunday because of the resurrection. Why should the son of God die such an insulting death? No logic to that. Never occurred to her. No one would help them. Private place and didn't feel welcome. Bought books in New York about it. Didn't know any Filipinos like them.
In 1985 house burned. She sings and asks the wind to blow in another direction and the house is saved. 1996 finished a cooking course. Wants to open a restaurant. Husband says she can't open the restaurant b/c he wants to go kosher. So she decides to go kosher. Buys 21 pails of pork, duck and seafood, and kilos of salt. Mother-in-law furious b/c all the blood is removed and everything turns out white. Has to segregate Mother-in-law's food. Still eating shellfish and pork. Very happy because they're eating kosher now. Sing hymns from church.
Goes to see Suki (the one you buy everything from.) Buys a tape of Fiddler on the Roof. That night she and her husband are up until 4 am arguing. So she goes to watch the video. And she starts crying. Never realized how beautiful Judaism is.
Sings again. (That last part was too long and detailed.) She also needs to learn to use a mic when singing. Hold it farther away from her mouth.
9:11 - We're at 35 minutes and she's starting another character. I'm kind of done with this, actually. It's really good--really interesting: she's very professional and polished, and her characters are distinct without her having to ham it up at all; the writing is really strong and the material is unique--but I'm not ready to concentrate this hard for this long. Too much about religion all at once. And she's not dynamic enough; she's not moving. She's sitting.
I've completely ignored this last character. Sadly. This is a scheduling/curating issue. You have to take the attention span of your audience into account. These are working adults so they can multi-task and they can focus on one thing for a long time. But asking them to do both in one night is unfair, both to the audience and to the performers. For a variety show you have to keep each piece short. That would have been perfect at 20 minutes or 30 minutes.
9:17 - Chris introing final performer of the festival. Aimee Suzara. She has a workshop coming up. Aimee is doing one called Writing to Remember with Aimee Suzara.
Aimee: she's feeling a little under the weather. You can't tell. She's beautiful and has a really nice energy. (Not that the previous artists weren't beautiful, too :P) Has everybody say "mabuhay." Excited to do the workshop. Loves getting people to bring out the stories within. Going to do three short poems from her chapbook "The Space Between".
A lot of her poetry comes from visiting the Philippines. Military situation and toxic waste.
"Some Days?" Poem about the effects of toxic waste on her family. This is good. I'm done with this blog. I'm gonna shut this down now and just enjoy the last couple of poems.
G'night.
just felt like live-commenting on the live-blogging.
it started around 7ish? Nick Ng, the first act, who played three songs on guitar with a friend whose name i missed, was awesome. he came on before Bina. Nick's also a ksw intern, but that's not why he was awesome. i'll let someone who's better at describing music describe his music. Nick? mebbe you can comment on this comment?
the only other stuffs was an announcement about the Locus-KSW wedding, and a proclamation or award from a politician's office - i think congresswoman jackie speier and someone else.
Posted by: ebuhead | September 27, 2008 at 08:13 PM
best exchange & line of the night:
upon leaving at 12.03pm
CLAIRE LIGHT aka APATURE LIVE BLOGGER EXTRAORDINAIRE breezes past MARK BAUGH-SASAKI without hugging.
MARK BAUGH-SASAKI says: "yeah, fuck you too."
CHRIS BUCOY "flirts with chicks at bars" BROWN says "now those are hapa issues if i ever heard 'em."
Posted by: ebuhead | September 28, 2008 at 12:06 AM
oh, it was fine when i was comparing you to joseph beuys, but NOW it's an issue?
Posted by: claire | September 28, 2008 at 02:12 AM