Last Monday I delivered a keynote speech at Tabaoan, a conference of writers organized by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. I adopted the theme of the conference, “Winds, waves, wars, words,” as the title of my keynote.
I edited my speech into two columns, the first appearing last Wednesday, describing how our vulnerabilities to disasters, natural and human-made, have shaped the way we look at the world. In this second part, I talk about the power of words in dealing with winds, waves and wars.
I believe words, and voices, can help us to reconfigure winds, waves and wars. I want to emphasize voices here. Writers are voices in their own right, but writers, too, can be voices for others, especially voices that have been muted and marginalized.
Writers face the challenge of creating new vocabularies and discourse around winds, waves and wars, language that will be powerful in its ability to transform our mindsets, and our lives.
We must remind ourselves of gentler yet powerful winds. As a seafaring people, we were helped by winds to bring us from one island to another. Winds emboldened us, allowed us to look out into the horizon and dare to seek new fortunes beyond that horizon.
We must revive the vocabularies around the habagat and the amihan, as markers not just of storms, but also of seasons and transitions. Many years ago, in a small village in northern Luzon, a farmer told me he could tell, from the afternoon breeze, that the rains would come soon, allowing them to start a new planting season.
As we rethink winds, so, too, should we harness new images of waves. I have met both boys and girls named Alon, a wonderful mobilization of a word to welcome a child into the world, alon speaking of the vigor and energy we so love in our children.
I have met many traditional healers who speak of their call to healing in terms of the alon, dreams of waves rising and falling, signifying our own cycles of health and illness.
I think, too, of the Badjao with one of the most enchanting dances I’ve ever seen: the alon-alon. We writers should learn to write as they dance, a graceful and elegant choreography of life’s meanings, integrated into each movement of the hand and the body.
Narratives of the earth
We must appropriate the language around winds and waves, and fire and water. The Department of Science and Technology has asked our College of Social Sciences and
Philosophy at the University of the Philippines Diliman to look into words for storm surges, and I have responded by pointing out we cannot just use single words. We need stories and narratives of the earth and its elements. We need the stories of older people who can tell when a storm is about to make landfall—for example, a change in the direction of the wind, not measured through instruments but by their bodies sensing the change. That sensing of winds is accompanied by an assessment of the colors of the sky, which tell them how intense a storm will be.
I think, too, of the aftermath of storms. I mentioned how we dread the stillness of death after a storm. But this morning I woke up to find my 4-year-old youngest daughter drawing away on a draft version of my speech. She had produced a rainbow, and I smiled because I hadn’t included rainbows in my draft—a wonderful refraction of sunlight and water to create hope.
I want to combine a discussion of both wars and words. We hear all the time about a war of words. Now why can’t we find a way to use words against wars? I am not talking about the overused rhetoric around peace, but of linguistic “devices” to build and sustain peace, as well as to heal the wounds of disasters and wars.
I was just reading Erlinda Alburo’s Dictionary of Bisayan Arts, published by the NCCA, and there is a whole section of Bisayan (Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Waray) words related to language. There is a Cebuano term, lingaw, loosely equivalent to the Tagalog libang, but which means more than diversionary entertainment. Lingaw is intentional distraction, an intermission, a way of lightening a somber mood. We lingaw all the time, during and after disasters great and small.
There are many more words, and literary devices, that need to be restored into our national consciousness. I am intrigued by an entry in Alburo’s book, taken from a 19th-century book: muku-muku, to pause in conversation in order to reflect on what to say next. I could not find the word in a more contemporary Cebuano dictionary by John Wolf. Now, shouldn’t we bring back this concept to include in our schools, on the need to pause more often before saying something? Wars, after all, are set off by words let loose without thinking.
To remember, to heal
Words make us remember, and this is particularly important in relation to disasters and war. Note how historians grapple all the time with coming up with accurate estimates of deaths from such cataclysmic events. We do not like counting the dead, preferring to forget.
If disasters mute us, words should embolden us to talk to each other, not just to comfort, but to embolden. In Alburo’s book there is a term listed, makalili-aw, the way we console each other at wakes. Cebuano or not, we can all relate to how noisy our wakes are because people are constantly talking to each other, sometimes even poking fun at the
deceased. All this kuwento-kuwento because we find strength in remembering shared lives.
I want to say, too, that sometimes we need to wage wars on words, words that trivialize. I join writer Ninotchka Rosca in declaring war on the word “resilience.” It is a term that I dislike because it is used too often as an excuse for society, for government, not to adequately respond, a way of saying: “Oh, Filipinos are resilient anyway. You’ll cope…”
But do we, really? I cannot accept that it is a matter of coping when granddaughters of the comfort women of World War II are sent off as japayuki (women working in bars in Japan), as was happening until a few years ago. It is not resilience when the comfort women lolas sadly explain: “We cannot eat pride.”
We forget winds, waves and wars too easily and there will be times when it may be useful to find words to bring back memories, to shake us out of apathy, to wage war against the many injustices that conspire with winds, waves and wars to bring more suffering.
My Muslim friends bristle when they look at how the term “jihad” is used to refer to terrorism when its more important meaning is personal struggle. We must wage jihad, as individuals and as families and communities, to deal with winds and waves and wars. In difficult times, we must proclaim and protest: “We live through disasters. We go beyond resiliency. We sail on into the horizon, our courage and strength drawn from the winds and waves, and our arsenal of words.”
* * *
E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph