FAVORITES and INFLUENCES.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

FAVORITES. Libraries. Primal attraction: Books. The aloneness quiet yet I can still feel the people vibe or communal intimacy. When I was a little boy, a trip to the library (or bookstore) was a lot more exciting than a dozen visits to a grocery, hardware, or even the crowded playground. Many times, I’d just wander inside the library and skim through the shelves, reading titles of the books, daydreaming that in the future I will own my own library. 📚🏫📚

INFLUENCES. Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954). French visual artist, known for his use of vibrant colors. He was also a draftsman, printmaker, and sculptor. Monsieur Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the 20th century. Henri’s intense “colourism” art, from 1900 to 1905, hugely influenced my “art pretensions.” 🎨🎨🎨

FAVORITES. Flowers. I always love flowers. Stereotypes and “appropriation” say flowers are feminine. I don’t concur. Flowers are you and me. Male, female, your gender identification. I grew up in/around flowers. My Grandma Luz used to tend and maintain a flower garden around her house in suburban Manila. Roses, orchids, magnolias, zinnias, gumamelas etcetera punctuated by bougainvilleas. My chore was watering them everyday, after school. Love/d it! 💐🎍💐

INFLUENCES. Bison or buffalo in the United States and Canada. A significant resource for indigenous peoples of North America for food and raw materials until near extinction in the late 19th century. For the indigenous peoples of the Plains, it was their principal food source. Tribes highly valued their relationship with the bison and saw them as sacred, treating them respectfully to ensure their abundance and longevity. The equivalent in the Philippines: The carabao. 🦬🐃🦬

FAVORITES. Vinyl record a.k.a. phonograph record. The first commercially sold disc records were created by Emile Berliner in the 1880s. Thanks, Emile! I will never lose my love for “plaka” or LPs and 45 RPMs. Grew up with those. The turntable was busy-busy everyday, especially on weekends. I still use a (portable Victrola) turntable and sift through piles and rows of vinyls in thrift shops and Goodwill. I don’t mind the hisses, scratches, and low-q audio. 🎼🎼🎼

INFLUENCES. “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau. Published in 1854, the book is a reflection of simple living in natural surroundings. “Walden” details Mr Thoreau's experiences in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amidst woodland owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord in Massachusetts. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and a manual for self-reliance. 🍃📚🏕

FAVORITES. Newsprints. Or paper made chiefly from groundwood pulp and used mostly for newspapers. Many categorize newsprint as “cheap and low-quality” but I favor/ed this paper. Even before journalism went internet or electronic, I preferred “newsprints” over glossy pages. Pulp, raw, earth-bound, indie, local. When I evolved into a co-publisher of a number of publications, I insisted on “primitive” newsprints over the “chic” flash of shiny, glitzy gloss. Still, I do. (Photo: Fosters.) 📜🗞📰

INFLUENCES. Jean-Michel Basquiat, neo-expressionist artist. Mr Basquiat first achieved notice in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, with Al Diaz, writing enigmatic epigrams all over Manhattan’s Lower East Side. By the early 1980s, he was globally famous. His art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. Jean-Paul died in 1988 at the age of 27 of a heroin overdose. (Photo: CultureFrontier.) 🎨🎨🎨

FAVORITES. Organizing events. Gathering people. Concerts, readings, art exhibitions, discussions. My enigma, contradiction, and paradox since I prefer aloneness. But I dig watching people converge for a good cause. “Political” is a matter of opinion. I formed the Traveling Bonfires in the northern mountains of the Philippines amidst typhoons and (countryside) war. Warmth in the cold, light in the dark. The Bonfires in the U.S. traveled coast to coast for years. (Photo: My file.) ☮️🔥🎼

INFLUENCES. Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) was an Italian polymath, or whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects. Leonardo was educated in Florence by the Italian artist Andrea del Verrocchio. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. A genius of the Renaissance ideal. (Visual: Shortform.) 📚🍎🎼

(Photos: Halifax Libraries. Target.)