dog ears in the wrong notebook

The other
Lawrence Ypil

MORE AND MORE I’ve been finding myself repeatedly apologizing for writing in English. Not that Cebuanos find it difficult to forgive this traitor of the tongue (I think we’ve always considered English the lesser enemy anyway, compared to Tagalog). Or that I have found myself suddenly waking up on the right side of the bed in a world where overnight the vernacular tongue had (in a surprise upset) suddenly won over years of colonial mentality and become the official language of political clout and economic power—despite the burgeoning call centers filled with all the unfortunately required faux Midwestern accents, testament to English’s bright (and blinding) future in our financial landscape.

But when the battlecry of a recent writing workshop becomes a call to “return to the local,” “explore the hometown in one’s local tongue,” “speak of one’s life and one’s days in one’s native language,” one begins to think that one had stumbled into the wrong room, or gatecrashed the wrong party, or wore the wrong set of slippers to a plush ballroom.

I was invited as panelist a few weeks ago in the UP Cebu Writers’ Workshop, through the invitation of Prof. Fe Reyes and Prof. Lilia Tio and as with all writer gatherings where the talk is always ripe, the food for thought as endless as the actual food (which lasts only as long as a hungry writer’s stomach) and the conversation as deep an old well of stories, the talk inevitably turned to words: verbs and nouns, yes, but more importantly, the choice of language, the necessity of writing for an audience, English or Cebuano. (Who else but writers will have the energy to spend a full hour talking about whether a trip to the dictionary was blessed or baneful.)

I’ve always pushed for the writing of stories and poems that choose to explore personal, private, and local experiences.

Having always preferred the concrete image of a drinking glass to any highfalutin philosophical concept of thirst, the black shape of the head of a Japanese doll to any historical debate on World War II, the held hand over any well-defended idea of “eternal love” (no matter how elegantly stated the argument), I’ve always felt the true power of literature was not to be found in some “deep” insight or abstract concept, but to be mined in the humdrum outline of our ordinary days.

The more local, the better. The more bisdak (authentic Cebuano), the better. I’ll probably always have a soft spot for stories and poems that are about actual cities, actual towns, streets where people have died and lived, rooms, actual rooms, the one right outside this one, where someone enters and leaves. Banilad, Mango Avenue, that old house in Escario Street.

But when it comes to the issue of language, I’ve always been skeptical of the debate. Given this obviously local character in a local setting doing “local” things (whatever that is), is one meant to write this in the “local” tongue (like Cebuano) or an alien tongue (like English)? And so the question usually goes.

I’ve always been bothered, though, by how the issue usually takes an either-or stance, as if one, it seemed, had no choice, but to choose (and to live with the consequences). It’s a common sense notion that nothing is as earthy, as real as a poem written in Cebuano. Nothing hits the heart, kicks the groin, more strongly than a balak (poem) or a sugilanon (story).

But the same two-sided thinking is also quick to say that there are “thoughts and ideas” that are better written in English. As if Cebuano, in its power to celebrate the body and the bawdy, was completely powerless in the face of abstract concepts and philosophical speculations. As if our minds were in English, our bodies in Cebuano. Cebuano or English? Body or mind?

If one were a living, breathing, thinking body, then the choice would be obvious: both. Or the answer would be clear: the question was wrong. For is not the task of the good writer to work on his story, his poem, in the end, in the best way that he can, in his best language.

It’s a common advice for writers: “Write in the language you dream in.” But this had never made sense to me because, as far as I remember, I’ve never dreamt in nouns and verbs, but always in huge boxes, or dark abandoned malls, or long flights where my slippers are lost and my baggage, missing.

Perhaps the better advice is “Write in the language that wakes you up.” That keeps you restless, that feeds your hunger, that reminds you that you are alive. For the best writers, it’s a matter of hearing the heartbeat of one’s words: whether local or alien, Cebuano or English.

I can’t wait for more writers to write in Cebuano. Perhaps if the work of critics and teachers in Cebu will eventually bear fruit, it will not be too far off that the streets of Cebu will one day be filled again with the lyrical lilt of Bisaya.

But I also can’t blame those who continue to write in that other language Cebuanos love, and live with, and sing: English.

English, which is easy to dismiss as snooty, and elitist, and alien—even if it is the same village street, the same home that is being woven into words. A Cebuano literature, then, not because it was written in Cebuano, but it was written in English, about Cebu.

A tongue only becomes alien when we keep it at the gate, at the door. The stranger is only as strange as when we do not know his name, and he does not know ours. Perhaps the job of the writer is not really to master his language, but to make it his own. Not just to study its syntax and shape but to invite it into his home. To kidnap bored English from the court offices and banks and schools, and bring it to our beautiful messy rooms. To tell it our stories, whisper into its ear our dreams, and if the timing is right, and the intention is clear, then to show it our hearts and we’ll begin to write. Really really write. Without guilt.   

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