Advice from Salon.com: Artists, Get a Day Job!

Question from Salon.com reader : I’m a jazz pianist, nearly 50, and I need to make some real money! I can’t believe how little one makes practicing “America’s only original art form.”

Self will refrain — for the moment — from commenting on above quote, dear blog reader. All she will say for now is that she is in a similar dilemma with regards to her writing, and keeps wondering these days, “What’s it all about?” After decades of sacrificing financial security to stay in measly little part-time positions to preserve her energy for her “art”, she has produced three books that nearly emptied her bank account (because of all the time off without pay she had to take to finish said books) and that have contributed not one penny to the family kitty.

Son’s college education? Entirely paid for by hubby.

Home mortgage? Same.

Property tax? Same.

Good thing self had the foresight to sniff out a Stanford engineer! If not, self would find herself teaching composition full-time and growing prematurely gray-haired from frustration (at not being able to practice her “art”) and from stress (financial).

Without further ado, the article. (Oh, and by the way, the italics at the end are my own.)

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April 17, 2007 |

Hi, Cary,

I’m approaching 50 years old. I’ve been a jazz pianist for nearly 30 years. I’m not anyone you’ve ever heard of. I’m good but not great. I never thought I would be famous, and that doesn’t bother me. I’ve had lots of hotel and restaurant gigs, accompanied hundreds of lame wannabe singers (and some good ones, too) and done thousands of gigs in jazz clubs, some with incredible musicians and some where nobody was listening. I always thought if I stuck with it, I’d be able to make a living. I think I read somewhere that the average jazz musician these days makes about $17,000 a year. A 50-year-old making that seems pathetic. I do better than that, but not by much. I’ve spent my life climbing this ladder of musical success and found out when I got near the top that the ladder was against the wrong wall. I’m not married and don’t have kids. Never would have been able to afford them. That would have been nice.

How can a person like me change into something different? It seems impossible and I don’t know where to begin.

We always hear heart-warming stories of people who followed their dream and never gave up and so forth, but what of the people who followed their dream and failed? We don’t want to hear about them.

I’m an intelligent person. I have two master’s degrees. One in music, the other in fine arts (another useful degree). Yet I have absolutely no idea about how to go about making money.

Yes, that is what I want. Money. I want health insurance. I want a decent place to live. I want to think maybe I won’t have to be taking lousy gigs at age 80 to buy a meal.

I don’t think I’ve been totally naive. I didn’t strive for fame, à la “American Idol.” I studied hard. I know music theory inside out. I checked out the history of jazz piano from Jelly Roll Morton to Keith Jarrett. I thought being true to your art was satisfaction enough. I guess it’s not. I want the satisfaction of making a decent living. I’m tired of taking every $100 gig that comes my way to play for a tone-deaf singer. After I drive an hour each way, and pay the IRS its cut, and I end up with $50. This is what practitioners of “America’s only original art form” have to deal with.

I really think I could leave it all behind. I could be happy playing the occasional gig for fun. Or playing for myself and friends. I’d like to do some more composing just for self-satisfaction. But I have no idea how to make a living! This revelation just drives me nuts. The thought of starting from scratch at my age is mind-boggling.

I know these questions are very broad. Most people look at me and think I’m lucky, that playing music for a living must be great. Other people in other occupations must feel the same. I’m just barely making a living. Is it possible for me to change?

Musically Frustrated

Carey’s Response:

Dear Musically Frustrated,

I, too, was frustrated this morning when I sat down to answer your letter. Nothing was coming. I went to the regular place where I go to get words and there were no words there. Weird. Am I running out? I had to leave my house and walk around. I went to a meeting of the type I often attend. It was somewhat comforting but did not really help.

Then, standing on the street corner waiting for a train, I noticed a bumper sticker on an old Toyota Camry sedan. It said “Real musicians have day jobs!”

I felt that my prayers had been answered — yours too, actually.

It was a needed reminder: Your music does not have to support you. In fact, your music might be happier if you were supporting it.

You have done the almost impossible by supporting yourself as a jazz pianist all these years. It is a remarkable, heroic and admirable feat. That doesn’t mean that at a certain point you can’t sit out a few sets.

You may find it hard to change; deep down you may feel that what you are is a musician, end of story.

I felt at one time that I was a writer, end of story. But it wasn’t end of story. Was more like beginning of story.

I did not gain freedom to write with fluidity and ease until I stopped believing that I had to be a writer.

NYTBR 10 June 2007 (Skipping Around, My Bad)

Self had the NY Times Book Review of last Sunday (3 June) all laid out and ready to post, but somehow, in the intervening week, clipped reviews got lost.

Self knows they are somewhere under huge pile of papers and books on her desk, but since this is Saturday, and self does not want to be reminded about how disorganized she is, she’s just going to go ahead and post last week’s NYTBR selections. So, without further ado (and while hubby is watching with rapt interest Richard Gere in American Gigolo, even though he indicated 10 minutes ago that we were going to “a park”), here are my picks from the 10 June issue of The New York Times Book Review:

(1) After reading Caroline Weber‘s review of Tina Brown‘s The Diana Chronicles:

Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles

(2) After reading Tom Bissell’s review of Ryszard Kapuscinski‘s last book, Travels with Herodotus:

The following books by Ryszard Kapuscinski:

Travels with Herodotus
The Emperor
Shah of Shahs
Another Day of Life

(3) After reading Christopher Dickey’s review of Roy Blount Jr.’s Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South:

Roy Blount Jr.’s Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South

(4) After reading Marilyn Stasio’s “Crime” column, the following mysteries/”thrillers” :

Jeffery Deaver’s The Sleeping Doll
Peter Lovesey’s The Secret Hangman
Christopher Fowler’s White Corridor
Louise Penny’s A Fatal Grace

Brain Cloud, Friday, 18 May: Evelina, Son, Neck, Geraniums, Travolta and Sedgwick

Brrr, brrr, brrr. Stiff wind. Gimpy neck.

First to Draeger’s for lamb chops. Then, Cold Stone Creamery: Oreo Overload. Walking up Santa Cruz Avenue, cell phone rings. It’s Evelina calling from the airport: self can hear the announcement for first class passengers to board. Evelina goes, It’s OK, we can keep talking, I’m not first class!

She says she’s sorry we didn’t get together. Self tells her, it’s OK, I’m sure we’ll bump into each other sometime. She says, YOU can do so much. You can talk. It’s easy!

I tell her, I’m better at writing. It’s true. I’ll try.

Last night at Manilatown Heritage Center, 12 people showed. The night before, at Brava, I don’t even want to ask.

Listen, we have to get signatures by Tuesday, Evelina says. There’s a chance it will pass! We have to call everyone. By Tuesday!

I say again, I’ll try.

Then, find myself standing in front of a store I haven’t seen before: Tibetan handicrafts. Deep-hued scarves in the windows. Lamps, rugs. I suddenly want to call son.

Hey, I tell him. I’m on Santa Cruz Avenue, and I thought of you. Are you having lunch?

He says he passed the smog test, which is fantastic — his little Honda has 200,000 miles. I ask him, well, what do you think? Think you want to watch the Richard III at Cal Shakes? He says he can’t come up until after his job ends, June 17.

Then self babbles on: That’s OK, the play doesn’t end its run until June 24. Course, that will mean you’ll have to give up a whole afternoon, because we’ll have lunch first, and then the play runs two hours . . .

“Mom, can I tell you later?” son says. “I have tons of things on my mind right now, and the play isn’t exactly on top of my list of priorities.”

“Oh!” I say, “Sure!”

Feel guilty for hounding him. Drive home. Not without passing Roger Reynolds. A leaf from my Clematis Henryii is in my hand. A small leaf, brown at the edges. A woman in a Roger Reynolds T-shirt passes by, dragging a cart full of gorgeous white geraniums. “Excuse me,” I say. “Can you tell me what is wrong with my clematis?” I show her the leaf. “Probably over-watering,” she says.

Go home. Crash on the couch. God! My neck is terrible! I want a chiropractor!

On TV, there’s a movie with John Travolta. He has a brain tumor and it turns him smart. Also, gives him telekinesis. I’m crashed on the couch and I am watching John Travolta spin pencils and sunglasses in circles with a point of a finger. How. Fascinating. Seriously.

I watch to the end of the movie, it’s very sad, and I cry when Kyra Sedgwick cries. I remember that Kyra Sedgwick is married to Kevin Bacon, and that they live in New York. In fact, friend Penny says their kids study at the private school where she teaches.

And John Travolta is married to Kelly Lynch and they live somewhere on the East Coast but not in New York, somewhere “country”, since self saw a fab spread on their house in an Architectural Digest some years ago.

(Why, why is self’s brain so full of such trivia?)

Phone rings: ring, ring, ring! Wow! It really is a day for calls! Earlier, while self was in Cold Stone Creamery, deciding on which ice cream delight to order, Strawberry Blonde or Orea Overload, Fave Tita called, which she hasn’t done in almost two years.

See that the caller is son. Perhaps feeling guilty for having to rush off earlier? Now, he says, “You know, next weekend is the Strawberry Festival.” Yes, I remember. Hubby and I were there last year. It was so much fun.

“Well,” son says, “I was thinking, why don’t you and dad come down? It would be fun!”

Ahhh. It would be fun. Thanks, son.

Get off the phone with son, call hubby. He’s busy, as usual. But when self suggests going to SLO next weekend, he pauses. Naturally, at this moment, self suddenly realizes: Who will water damn roses? Who will take care of the dogs? Can we even find a space in the Peninsula Pet Resort??? And, isn’t Mr. King’s funeral that weekend? Mr. King, who was so kind when self was a foreign student at Stanford, who passed away a few weeks ago??? Self cannot think, must lie down, place wet towel on forehead. Brain cloud over for the rest of the day.

Enjoyment

This festival is turning out to be– well, pretty darn good. Was quite down-in-the-dumps yesterday over absence of Mayor of the Roses, but am now fully recovered. Other than a few minor mishaps this morning (such as spilling coffee over myself while foolishly trying to manipulate room coffee maker), I am feeling happy. Even managed to glance over the copy of the local paper, The Virginian-Pilot, that they leave outside my door every morning. Very helpful, that.

On the front page today are photos of Thelma Drake, Republican, and Phil Kellam, Democrat, who are running against each other for a seat in the U.S. Congress. On p. A3 there’s an article on the five soldiers who are awaiting trial for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Mahmoudiay, Iraq. On p. A5 is an article de-bunking claims that DHEA steroid supplements and testosterone patches slow the aging process. I read this article with more than passing interest. Conclusion seems to be that, no matter how much we try, we will all grow old. Helpful thought.

Last night’s main reading featured Dagoberto Gilb. This author has a kind of shambling charm. He walks on to the stage and starts simulating an absent-minded professor. Shuffles papers, takes his wristwatch off and makes a great show of positioning it on the lectern, asks Tim Seibles how much time he has, etc. etc. Then he launches into the oh-my-God funniest rendition of a true tale about his pal Riley whose predilection for getting high did not prevent him from acquiring a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from UTEP.

In the intros, Dagoberto was revealed to have been a carpenter. He says he told no one about his writing. I first heard about this man in the pages of The Threepenny Review. In the 1990s, he and I appeared in several issues of said literary mag. Now he has gone on to acquire an agent and publish many other books. Let me tell you that the auditorium last night (which looked like it could seat a good 300-400 people) was packed.

Started to worry about my own reading, later today (at 1:30 PM). I do not have the shambly charm of Dagoberto. In fact, my voice is rather thin and wispy. Also, I am very short, barely five feet, and I worry that no one will be able to see/ hear me from behind the podium. Failed to anticipate this problem and brought only flats. Oh, well!

Yesterday, met a grad student named Berry and his Filipina daughter, Angel. Turns out Angel’s mother left and is now in Japan with her new boyfriend. She left Angel with Berry.

Berry seems like a well-meaning dad, but when he tells me, right out of the blue, that two years ago he and Angel were evicted from their apartment, that the bank froze his assets and the two had nothing to eat, I throw an alarmed glance at Angel, sitting in the back seat. She is poker-faced but seems to be breathing rather quickly. “Are you all right?” I ask her. She nods silently. She says she’ll skip class and try to make it to my reading today.

Neck aches, but what can you do. Only one message from English 1A students (bad). Amy Hoffman finally replies: she likes my review of Dao Strom’s latest and will publish it in the Women’s Review of Books (success!)

Hmm, what else? Oh, yes, last night a few of the writers, including myself (and I shamefully admit to taking advantage of every opportunity for a free meal), were treated by Tim Seibles to dinner at Magnolia Steak. Wonder if I can try that again tonight, which will mean the third night in a row that I get the freebie dinner. Last night, could have sworn Tim cast a skeptical look my way when I walked in. Maybe will find alternative dining spot tonight. I hear Freemason Abbey, walking distance from the hotel, is quite good. Interestingly, the restaurant is located inside a 127-year-old church, which sounds enticing.

(To be continued…)

Coming Soon to a Gallery Near You…

Soon to be released!

HER MARK 2007 Calendar from Woman Made Gallery
G   A   L   L   E   R   Y
685 N MILWAUKEE AVE
CHICAGO IL 60622
TEL: 312 738 0400

Copies can be ordered after October 8 — a great gift to yourself, family and friends–a calendar and datebook filled with visual art and poetry by women artists.
 
http://www.womanmade.org/whatsnew.html
 
Sunday, October 8, 2006 – 2-4pm – Free
Her Mark 2007 Release Party
Poetry reading by some of the women from the Her Mark 2007 calendar; exhibition of select work plus calendars will be available for sale.

Thank you to the jurors, Kymberly Pinder, Ginny Sykes and Beate Minkovski for making the selections for the Her Mark art entries. The following 21 artists will each have one work in the 2007 edition:

Visual Artists : Tai Lei Apolinski, Lauren Simkin Berke, Kristina Bogdanov, Anne Canfield, Eunwoo Cho, Pat Dumas-Hudecki, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Frances Ferdinands, Beatrice Fisher, Naomi Grossman, Melissa T. Hall, Virginia José, Cristina Longo, Jayne P. Lunz, Jane Maxwell, Jeanette Martone, Joetta Maue, Cella Neapolitan, Lisa Merida-Paytes, Lidia Simeonova and Marilyn Avery Turner.

Thanks to the jurors, Lisa Alvarado, Pamela Miller and Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai for making the selections for the Her Mark poetry entries.

Here are Pamela Miller’s observations: Jurying a poetry competition is always a great refresher course in what separates a truly exceptional poem from the good, the very good and the close-but-no-cigar. I looked for poems that communicated women’s experience with clarity and sharply focused precision, with rich texture and vivid detail, with sure-footed imagery and a contagious joy in the power of words.

Above all, I looked for poems that moved me, made me laugh or struck me with their strangeness–poems with the power to catalyze the reader rather than just sitting there prettily like a vase of flowers. And oh, did I find them in this year’s entries, again and again! If only there were many more than 12 months in a year so that there would be room for every single one of the extraordinary poems that deserved to be included in Her Mark 2007. -Pamela Miller

Poetry juror Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai wrote the following statement: Over the last few weeks, I have been blessed with the opportunity to read, experience, and absorb over 240 poems from women across the country who chose to boldly reveal their stories with courage, conviction, and pride. Their stories span the earth from the most intimate portraits of garden flower petals to the horrific violence of Hurricane Katrina. They draw from the rich roots and textures of our various cultures that survive in direct opposition to domination, hierarchy, and isolation.

In these poems, I re-discovered the passion that we, as women, bring to our families and communities, our responsibilities and freedoms. Reading each poem, I was renewed with the sense of why this work is so important. We write to communicate with our own hearts, to commemorate people and places that have slipped from our grasps, to explode our own sense of what is possible, to re-write what lays before us.

My deepest hope is that as you jump into these pages that you too can sit with the humanity that so clearly presents itself with every image and every stanza break. Thank you for entering into this challenge to carve new space for ourselves by listening thoroughly to our own hearts and those that inhabit this earth with us. My only regret is that we do not have enough pages to publish all of the positive effort that these women have dared to put forth into the world. -Peace and blessings, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai

Congratulations to the following 21 poets who will each have one poem in the Her Mark 2007 edition:

Poets : Tamiko Beyer, Maureen Tolman Flannery, Marina Garcia-Vasquez, Claudia Van Gerven, Lucia Galloway, Penny Hackett-Evans, Irene D. Hays, Luisa A. Igloria, Allison Joseph, Jane Knechtel, Kathy Kubik, Ellen LaFleche, Laura LeHew, Natalie Olsen, Susan Richardson, Purvi Shah, Bonnie Summers, Valerie Martt Wallace, Jennifer Weigel, Sarah Zale and Andrena Zawinski.

New York Stories

We went to The Strand Bookstore (18 miles of books!), twice.

We were supposed to meet Penny and Elizabeth and Rebecca and Tita Gladys but instead we went to The Cloisters.

I was going to catch up on reading Dao Strom’s The Beautiful Order of Girls and Boys because I’d only read to page 82 and the review is due in a month, and someone told me that the bus ride to The Cloisters on the M4 was an hour and a half each way. But the woman who sat next to me, who was bringing her four kids in from New Jersey for sightseeing, talked the whole way there about how nice Filipinos are, and how I must not miss the Lincoln Center Out of Doors concerts; the Mayan exhibit at the Met; and the Central Park Summer Stage concerts. I got a neck ache from having to crane my neck to face her and having to nod yes, yes, yes.

The people in New York are very friendly.

Or, at least, they are in August. The city and everyone in it seemed to be in a holiday mood, notwithstanding the approaching fifth-year anniversary of the World Trade Center, notwithstanding the movie of the same name which was pulling in good crowds at all of the Manhattan theatres.

The first chance we could, I dragged A to the Met and we dashed to see Raphael’s Colonna Masterpiece. We saw diggings and frescos unearthed from the island of Cyprus. A said he wanted to come back.

We saw Manang Bebot, who served us delicious mushroom omelettes and enormous papayas and frothy cappucinos at her E. 40th street apartment before driving us to her gallery in Tribeca, pointing out the apartments of Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert de Niro along the way.

We went back to the Met on a Friday night and went up to the roof and saw the skyline of West Manhattan across the trees and could not understand the installations by Cai Guo-Qiang until we were back in California and read the brochure and found out that the two life-size wooden crocodiles, which we thought were imbedded with colorful plastic push pins, were actually imbedded with “sharp objects confiscated at airport security checkpoints” and were intended to address “war, terrorism, and religious and cultural strife.”

One day, A spent the afternoon by himself in Central Park. It was the day after we had arrived from California and he was still in love with the City. The next day, he reached for his wallet, and it was gone. There followed a period of depression when he thought he had been pickpocketed. We had lunch with Elda and she said, “People rarely get pickpocketed here.” And, in truth, A admitted that the wallet might have fallen out of his back pocket while he was sitting on the grass, on Cedar Hill, watching a softball game.

He went back to Central Park and tried to re-trace his steps. There were now many people trampling over the spot where he had sat. I told him, you will never find your wallet. Consider it your gift to a person less fortunate than you.

But he couldn’t let go of that precious object, not so much because of the money inside but because of the various mementoes he carried around with him– old school IDs, an old Jamba Juice card.

He went to the 86th Street police station and the police there told him that no wallets had been turned in for weeks, months.

Last night, we flew home to San Francisco. My husband picked us up. He had arranged all the mail in a neat pile on top of the dining room table. The most recent arrival, from just this morning, was a small padded envelope addressed to A. The return address was Closters, New Jersey.

My husband was curious. “Did you order something on-line?” he asked A.

A didn’t answer; he took the package to his room. Silence. I knocked on his door. He opened it. He was holding a letter in one hand, and in the other, his wallet.

The letter said:

Dear A——,

My husband works in New York City and found your wallet in the middle of Park Avenue yesterday. He brought it home and asked me to mail it back to you. The only address we found was this one in California, so we hope it gets to you OK.

This was what the wallet contained: 14 cards, a driver’s license, an ATM card, car insurance, medical insurance, club cards, and school IDs. There was no money. And a fortune from a Chinese cookie. Looks like a good one!

P.S. The wallet is dirty from cars running over it.

Best of luck to you,

Linda S.

Articles and Interviews

The Museum of Americana, Issue 25 (Fall 2021): Five Questions for Marianne Villanueva

Bellingham Review Contributor Spotlight (Feb. 14, 2018)

TAYO Magazine interview by Melissa R. Sipin and Bel Poblador (Website doesn’t give a date, but it was 2014):

http://www.tayoliterarymag.com/marianne-villanueva/

* * * *

Writing like an Asian: Five Qs with Marianne Villanueva (Sept. 12, 2014):

http://writinglikeanasian.blogspot.com/2014/09/five-qs-with-marianne-villanueva.html

* * * *

with Tania Hershman on The Short Review

* * * *

Thea Ivens, whose site is the fabulous Filipino American Artists Network, did a post on self. Check it out:

http://www.filamartists.com/2008/07/29/marianne-villanueva/

* * * *

Check out Hyphen’s blog for self’s interview with Neela Banerjee.

http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2008/04/introducing-the-write-question.html

* * * *

“A Writer’s Tale”, in The Manila Bulletin On-line, Saturday, Oct. 6, 2007

by KAREN ANN C. LIQUETE

Since then, she has been writing and publishing stories about the Philippines and the lives of Filipino-Americans abroad.

Her critically acclaimed first collection of short fiction, Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Books 1991) was short-listed for the Philippines’ National Book Award. Her story, “Silence,” first published in the Threepenny Review, was short-listed for the 1999 O. Henry Literature Prize.

Excerpts From Selected Short Stories

Photo of self’s backyard through the French windows in her office (courtesy of Stella Kalaw)

“Dust” appeared in The Writing Disorder (Spring 2011)

She wondered if Remedios might have tried getting her old job back, the one at the Bank of America on Woodside Road. One day, she went there. She stood in back of a long line of tired, impatient people. It was 4:30 p.m., a Monday. She waited patiently for the line to move. And finally, finally, when she was at the front of the line, she forced herself to look up, to look carefully at the bank of tellers. Her gaze went from girl to girl slowly. That one had a face that was too square; that other one was too short; still another had a large mole by her lower lip. When there was only the last girl in the row, she stopped and considered. This girl had hair highlighted with gold and reddish streaks. She’d covered her eyelids with glittery purple eyeshadow. When her gaze stopped, the girl looked up. For a moment, their eyes locked. Then Remedios put her hand to her mouth and screamed.

“Seeing” appeared in PANK Magazine (Online Issue 9.5, May 2014)

My name is Gemma.  I was born in Makati Medical, during Typhoon Yoling.  There were two of us born that night, but I’m the only one people see.

My mother accuses me of making up stories.

“She says, hija, I had one of those, too.  When I was a little younger than you.  My imaginary friend meant everything to me.  Her name was Sharylyn.”

* * *

“Jesters” appeared in Used Furniture Review, January 6, 2012

There is so much weight here:  the house, the barn, the chestnut horses in the field, the Chinese elms, the white porch, the brick path, the flowering oregano bushes, the Steinway grand, the porcelain vases, the shelves and shelves of books:  Culture & Anarchy, Multilingual Lexicon of Linguistics and Philology, Cassell’s Italian Dictionary, The World and the Text.  You run your hands over the dusty spines.  You finger the books.  You feel yourself melting, slowly.

Make it a game.  Can you?  A for Articulation.  What they are always telling you at meetings.  Something to do with “requirements.”  These are somewhat rigid.  Why can’t you follow?

B for Because.  Because you feel different.  No, are.  You are different.  Because there are built-in redundancies.

C is for crumbling.  They all say it means nothing.  C for courage, they say.

* * *

“The Hand” won first place in the 2007 Juked Fiction Contest, judged by Frederick Barthelme

In the last couple of years, time seemed to be moving very fast, seemed almost to be accelerating, and the more she tried to hold on to it, the less of it there was to hold. This was a frightening feeling, a feeling she tried over and over to analyze. On this particular Monday evening, a light rain was falling. She could hear the gentle sound of the drops against the trees outside her window.

This morning the rain made her happy, since it reminded her of her childhood in the Philippines, when the yellowish glow from the low-watt bulbs made the rooms look unearthly, and everything in them blurred, as though she were looking at her surroundings from underwater. She remembered sitting at the round table in the kitchen, which was her favorite room in the house, where she sat surrounded by the bustling maids, the sound of people entering and leaving.

All day the question had been inside her, waiting.

Read the rest of it here.

* * *

“The Lost Language” was first published in Isotope, Spring/Summer 2009.  It is the title story of a collection published in the Philippines by Anvil Press, in 2009:

Filipinos once had an ancient written language.  If I were to show you what the marks look like on a piece of paper, they would look like a series of waves, more like Egyptian hieroglyphics, like the eye of the Pharaoh I saw in my old high school history books.

The language was written on tree bark.  Epics were probably written in this language, but I don’t know what they are.  My ancestors are shadowy people.  Shadows.

* * *

“Bad Thing”, was first published in Into the Fire: Asian American Prose (Greenfield Review Press, 1996)

Her son turned six that year. She realized that, for weeks, she had been expecting something to happen. Driving him to school, a feeling would come over her and she would slow down and look furtively right and left, right and left. When they arrived at the school without mishap, she would be surprised and thankful, though she didn’t know who she should be thankful to, she wasn’t the praying sort. Dela would ease her unsteady legs out of the car, call to her son with some measure of confidence, and push herself through the rest of her day. Like that.

* * *

“Siko” was first published in The Forbidden Stitch (Calyx Books), and later included in my first collection Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Books, 1991)

Aling Saturnina used to live in the last house on the left, the one behind the santol tree. But last year, she and her married daughter were taken to San Pablo in a military jeep, and since then no one has seen or heard from them. The villagers don’t like to talk about the events that led to Aling Saturnina’s disappearance. When asked, they cross themselves and their eyes slide sideways and perhaps one or two will invoke the name of the town’s patron saint, as though the saying of it had the power to protect them from all harm. If the questioner becomes too persistent–as lately some of these newspapermen from San Pablo have been–they escape to the rice fields, and wait there till nightfall before returning to their homes. They are simple folk and don’t bother with things they cannot understand.

* * *

“Don Alfredo and Jose Rizal” was first published in Story Philippines, vol. 1 and later appeared in Sou’wester (with a new translation of El Ultimo Adios by Edwin Lozada), Spring 2007.

The man’s eyes, like mine, like all of ours, have an Asian cast. But his clothes are European. A tailor in Madrid made his coat, when he was a young student there. That was long long ago– before Bonifacio, before the Cry of Balintawak, before the ripping of the cedulas. And his wife has brought it to him with tears, so that he can face the firing squad with dignity.

* * *

“Silence” appeared in Threepenny Review, Issue 72, Winter 1998 and was later shortlisted for the O. Henry Literature Prize:

Before Tina got married, her mother took her out to lunch with a friend she knew only as Tita Fely. Tita Fely had a loud voice. She had hair cut short like a man’s. She was married to a handsome tennis instructor and had a beautiful house in Monterey and was raising four sons. Tita Fely looked at her and said, “Don’t let your husband push you around. Don’t be too good.”

About Self and This Blog

Kanlaon is the name of a volcano found on the island of Negros, in the Philippines.  Read more about the volcano here. It’s sometimes spelled with a ‘c’: Canlaon.

She wrote a 100k word novel about 16th century Philippines called Camarote de Marinero: Voyages. She’s looking for a publisher, but first she has to get an agent. Ha!

• Why did self choose to name her blog after a volcano in the Philippines?

Self wanted to give it a name that had some personal connection to herself.  Her Dear Departed Dad was born in the Philippine province of Negros Occidental.  And that’s where the volcano is. (Self used to think the volcano was extinct but a careful reader of her blog told her it wasn’t, that it had in fact resulted in the deaths of two climbers, back in the late 90s.)

• All right, but who, then, is the writer of this blog?

She’s a writer.  Not well-known (for which, in a way, thank God.  She has a life.  Not an exciting one, but just a life).

She was born and raised in the Philippines.  She has a twisted way of interpreting things.  Every now and then, she’ll hear gossip about this or that relative, and she’ll say:  “They may be crazy.  But they’re MY KIND OF CRAZY.”

So, she went off to grad school in Stanford, CA and after graduating in East Asian Studies (concentration in Chinese), she successfully applied for a fellowship to the Creative Writing Program.  Where she got to meet life-long friends Beth Coryell Alvarado of Tucson, Arizona, and Penny Jackson of New York City.

• Why is this blog written in the third person?

The blog is an experiment in voice.  She found the “I” rather too limiting.  The Drama Queen side of her personality can only emerge when she thinks of herself as a character in some kind of narrative.

A few highlights of her life thus far:

Self has lately been writing horror and science fiction (!!!)  Her first horror story was published in Philippine Genre Stories (“The Departure”).  Her first honest-to-goodness science fiction story appeared in the New Orleans Review (“Thing:”  It’s a story about a new, post-apocalyptic world, populated by strangelings, creatures that cannot be named. If self were writing this for the first time, she would use the word “dystopian,” which she’s heard a couple of hundred times since the publication of The Hunger Games).  Wait.  That’s not quite right.  Her first out-and-out science fiction story can be found in her collection, Mayor of the Roses.  It was a one-off:  “Extinction.”  Still one of her favorites.

Self had a short story included in the April 2009 (the “Blood, Sugar, Sex and Magic” Bacolod issue) of Rogue Magazine! (That on the cover is obviously NOT self —  what were you thinking???)

The coolest magazine to ever have self’s name on the cover. Next coolest: The Threepenny Review. They put, on the front: MARIANNE VILLANUEVA GOES BACK TO MANILA (when they published “Sutil”)

Since it’s only fair to come clean about what she looks like, here is a recent picture, a selfie taken at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, County Monaghan, Ireland (May 2014):

Her first collection of short fiction, Ginseng and Other Tales from Manila (Calyx Press, 1991) was simultaneously published in Manila and was short-listed for the Philippines’ National Book Award.

She was a two-time recipient of a California Arts Council Artists Fellowship.

She was a Margaret Bridgman Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.

Her story “Silence,” first published in The Threepenny Review, was short-listed for the 2000 O. Henry Literature Prize.

She co-edited, with Virginia Cerenio, an anthology of Filipina women’s writings, Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx Books, 2003), which gathered together the writings of Filipina women from around the world.

Her second book, Mayor of the Roses: Stories, was the inaugural publication of the Miami University Press Fiction Series.  It could only have happened because of Brian Ascalon Roley.  The photo they used for the cover shows nearly all her Bacolod relatives, gathered at the funeral of self’s grandfather, a former Mayor of Bacolod.

In 2007, Frederick Barthelme picked self’s story “The Hand” as the winner of the Juked Fiction Contest.

KulArts gave her play-in-progress, “In Which Menchit Attempts To Improve Her Fortune” a staged reading in the Bayanihan Cultural Center in October 2008 (Looove Alleluia Panis. Just love her)

In 2009, her third short story collection, The Lost Language, was published in the Philippines by Anvil Press.

She is still writing, even after xxxxx number of rejections. And she still thinks writing is the scariest and also the most exciting activity in the universe.

Born and raised in Manila, she currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and tries to spend at least a few months each year in Bacolod, Negros Occidental.

Her Residencies (She is a great believer in these):

• Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Spain
• Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodside, California
• Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
• Hawthornden Writers Retreat, Scotland
• Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, Ireland