Friday, July 06, 2007
Had a long conversation with V today; she came (from LA) to submit her manuscript for one of my writing projects. V recently finished her MA in Indigenous Mind from Wisdom University. It is encouraging and inspiring to meet with the likes of her - a young Fil Am woman who has come full circle and is asking all the right questions:
How can we (as decolonized Fil Ams) create aesthetic, cultural, political bridges in the diaspora? How can we use the arts and cybertechnology? How can we create energy (in the US and in the homeland) to address deep questions of identity, sustainable cultures? How do we access ancestral wisdom? How does/should ancestral wisdom inform our way of being in the world?
She said she has shared my yellow book (Coming Full Circle) with her cohort in the program who are non-Fil Ams and they, too, agree that they need to decolonize...and that the book provides a map for doing that.
She was also excited to share the news about a hotshot Hollywood movie producer who is Fil Am and is looking for a movie to produce. The suddenly famous Aureaus Solito has already been picked as the director but there is a need for a screenplay penned by a Fil Am who has a grasp of the complexity of the Fil Am diasporic experience and understands the depth and breadth of spiritual, cultural, and psychic work that needs to happen in our communities. This calls for babaylan-inspired work, we said knowingly to each other, and we need to find other kindred souls to work with.
It is good to meet with young writers and to see the world through their eyes; it is even better when there is mutual recognition of the ties that bind us when one has already begun the work of healing the split psyche. Sometimes in my isolated location and preoccupation with other things in my life, I forget that the movement continues...here and over there. V called my attention to a Kapwa conference in Iloilo in June 08 (you must go! she tells me.), an Alamat conference in UP in November, to a Dream conference at my own university nearby.
But the inner world has called me this summer and so I must let this other world float by for now.
How can we (as decolonized Fil Ams) create aesthetic, cultural, political bridges in the diaspora? How can we use the arts and cybertechnology? How can we create energy (in the US and in the homeland) to address deep questions of identity, sustainable cultures? How do we access ancestral wisdom? How does/should ancestral wisdom inform our way of being in the world?
She said she has shared my yellow book (Coming Full Circle) with her cohort in the program who are non-Fil Ams and they, too, agree that they need to decolonize...and that the book provides a map for doing that.
She was also excited to share the news about a hotshot Hollywood movie producer who is Fil Am and is looking for a movie to produce. The suddenly famous Aureaus Solito has already been picked as the director but there is a need for a screenplay penned by a Fil Am who has a grasp of the complexity of the Fil Am diasporic experience and understands the depth and breadth of spiritual, cultural, and psychic work that needs to happen in our communities. This calls for babaylan-inspired work, we said knowingly to each other, and we need to find other kindred souls to work with.
It is good to meet with young writers and to see the world through their eyes; it is even better when there is mutual recognition of the ties that bind us when one has already begun the work of healing the split psyche. Sometimes in my isolated location and preoccupation with other things in my life, I forget that the movement continues...here and over there. V called my attention to a Kapwa conference in Iloilo in June 08 (you must go! she tells me.), an Alamat conference in UP in November, to a Dream conference at my own university nearby.
But the inner world has called me this summer and so I must let this other world float by for now.
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