Death, resurrection and Filipino artists

This is a time to mourn a big number of friends in the arts who have moved, seemingly one after the other, to the afterlife.

The rate of their passing literally kept one busy writing obituaries every other week. Earlier, one had hoped that fundraising efforts would help save them. To no avail.

I remember a gripping, true-to-life scene in live theater many years ago. José Mari Avellana was in pain and in mortal danger when he finished a moving performance in Mitch Albom’s play, “Tuesdays with Morrie.”

According to director Bart Guingona’s account, Avellana vomited what looked like a bucket of blood just before curtain call. The amazing thing was he completed the performance even if, halfway through the poignant play, he was bleeding profusely in the stomach.

When Guingona asked if there was a doctor in the house, everyone thought it was part of the play.

Avellana’s resolve to finish a performance despite an internal hemorrhage is typical, if not symbolic, of people in the arts.

Many things can happen backstage and, in varying degrees, they can prove more dramatic than the performance itself. Like pianist Cecile Licad sobbing backstage before a recital in Bonn, contemplating a marriage that suddenly ended after 10 years. She had wanted to cancel the performance but decided to go on with it.

The recital ended in an unprecedented standing ovation, with the audience unaware of what the pianist was going through. Later, Licad phoned her mom, Rosario, and said: “Mama, I just realized I don’t need a husband. I only need my music.”

In 2001, conductor Red Romero kept his audience in the dark while a performance was going on at the Meralco Theater. He got someone to replace him a day before the concert. After the standing ovation for the Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos, Maestro Romero quietly passed away in a nearby hospital. Even in his last moments, he made sure his death would not upstage the performance.

Bart Guingona verbalized the Stations of the Cross that artists go through when he reflected after seeing Avellana’s near-death experience on stage: “An artist working himself to the bones to make ends meet, living a hand-to-mouth life to entertain and edify others. Is it worth it? There’s too little money in it. Little or no fame. Yet some of us continue to do it and some of us die doing it. Most of us know there’s no financial security in it and only get by on its promise of spiritual certitude. Are we insane?”

One artist who transcended numerous crises was filmmaker Marilou Diaz Abaya, whose last film, “Ikaw ang Pag-ibig,” resonated with love and suffering on varied levels.

After the premiere night, Abaya’s faith was tested again with variations of the same illness resurfacing. (The medical term was metastasis.)

But her faith didn’t waver. She confided to close friends: “With your individual and collective prayers, I am ready—physically, emotionally, and spiritually — to face this new condition. Most importantly, I feel yet another special invitation to the grace of trust in God’s plan for me, which I accept totally and unconditionally.”

Abaya’s strong faith enabled her to see death as the secret passage to a new life that theologians call resurrection. She reflected on her earthly existence thus: “I was out

everywhere for many years. Filmmaking took me all over the world studying, producing, lecturing, exhibiting, competing, bowing… Scattered all over my library are hundreds of brochures, leaflets, posters, citations, trophies, favorable reviews, scathing criticisms, speeches, countless airline tickets, hotel receipts, airport taxes and mileage reports. I leaf through these pages now and smile wryly as I visualize all the places I’ve been to in search of something worth finding.  And I realize that it isn’t about somewhere. Rather, it’s about someone.”

The filmmaker told me about an anonymous author with a story of a salt doll who longed to experience the sea which she had never seen. “She travels far and wide before finally reaching the shore. She is awed by the vast, majestic body of water before her. She falls in love with it. She yearns to embrace it, but at first hesitates. So, she lets her feet touch the water. She is instantly refreshed. Then as she submerges deeper into the seawater, she finds herself dissolving, bit by bit, until she is totally immersed and united with the sea itself. On her last breath, she exclaims, ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord!’ We live once. We die once.  And we live again forever.”

Asked how she regarded death, Abaya began by quoting a Zen saying: “The joy of a raindrop is to enter the ocean.”

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Pablo A. Tariman has been covering the performing arts for more than 40 years.