- Eleanor Roosevelt
That being said, I'm a small mind, because this post is going to be about two people I know personally. Profiles are always great to write not because they make the subjects look good, but because it surprises me how much or how well I know a person. It helps to appreciate 'normal' people more, including the things I take for granted about them. It's those little details that make the world more interesting; those little facts and quirks that, if remembered, make us all feel a little better about our existence.
Writers don't always get the attention they deserve; they shell it out, shedding light on a potpourri of different topics and ideas. Writers seldom get written about, unless they're awfully good at their craft (Miguel Syjuco, Neil Gaiman); most writers get written about after they've passed away (Jose Rizal, Sylvia Plath).
Over time, I've read some friends' writings. I can't judge them based solely on what they write, but I get to know them better and some stand out.
Take for example my friend Tet Domingo, who says she's not so spectacular. She says she's a replaceable cog, because there's nothing indispensable she can't offer (or at least that's what she thinks). She wished she had something useful to offer, like drawing skills cut for Pixar, or supreme tap-dancing skills (not what she said) or a pink Vespa (not what she also said).
You'll see her in school lumbering around in hipster-ish clothes with a musician boyfriend wielding a laptop and a big umbrella. The pairing seems unlikely at first (because they look like brother/sister or Sully/Boo or because she's an Aries and he's a Taurus), but so far she's made it work with him, and they've accomplished wonders. While he's home writing the songs, she's a few blocks away making album covers or album art for Luna's, her boyfriend's band whose genre I don't know. They sound like Coldplay without being gay.
What few people don't know is that she can quote Fight Club from her ass at any given day and time. She's read a lot of Palahniuk's stuff, and shows that she isn't grossed out a single bit from all the violence going on. She's seen a lot of films not a lot of people have seen, and she's one to whop your ass in a pop culture drinking game.
What's unusual about her is that she doesn't maintain a blog for public use. She makes blogspot her own diary, a Mecca of her deeper thoughts. If her knowledge about pop culture shows how much breadth she has, her blog shows her depth. She allows little room for shallowness when she reflects, and she reaches on personal dilemmas we all might have experienced in the past, adding a little touch of emotional warmth. She defends her own opinions with an aggressive fire, because she knows what she's entitled to. These are vague, but once you get to read her stuff, you'll get what I mean.
Aside from writing, she's a member of the Loyola Film Circle and a writer for Bantay Presidente, a campus publication that deals with behavior/misbehavior of the freshly minted Pres. Noynoy Aquino. She's maintains two blogs, a Twitter, and a secret 'secret blog'. With all the lookbook and the tumblr polyvore posts aside, she doesn't come off as a ditz when she writes or tweets; she's more of low-key and witty, with amounts of comic sarcasm.
She likes watching movies - a buttload - and there are lots more she can quote from those produced beyond the year I was born. She makes a lot of movie and TV references in random daily conversation. Now, if she could only translate that to writing, because real film and TV connoiseurs are hard to come by. She's not the type to write about how handsome Zac Efron looks in Charlie St. Cloud or how fat Cobie Smulders is in the latest ep of How I Met Your Mother. She's one who can flesh out a plot, look at the cinematic flow, and then judge if it was good or not.
But I'm not saying she should take Arbie Baguios' seat as a movie critic in g! (Ateneo de Manila University's official online magazine), one of the young writers who developed an intricate, intelligent style at his fresh age (18). I don't know the stuff Arbie crams into his bristly head but he's one to turn to about a lot of the 'deep' stuff, things like metaphysics and controversial issues (the reproductive health bill, cosmology). Leaving him in the library with a laptop or a pen with a piece of paper is deadly, because his writing is pretty enough to steal your girl.
In the same breath as Tet, Arbie is a culture critic. Though his ass doesn't have Fight Club quotes, he can make fresh ones out of his curly noggin. His head is relatively small, but the amount of gray matter in there is astounding. Do you know where the hell Petrichor is? I sure don't but he'll gladly show you what it's like to be there, beer in hand.
Aside from being a writer in g!, he's a Development Studies major in my school and a Loyola Mountaineer. Life is a big bucket list for him, and he's likely to try anything (except gay butt sex yes?), and he does it with amusing nonchalance. He knows when to wing it and he knows when to, in his words, give an 'actual fuck'.
His writing style seems mystical at times, and although I got lost finding out what his message was, it was undeniable he had a way with words. His vast consciousness and youthful brazenness are evident, but there's something torrential and powerful with the message he wants to convey to all the world: Fuck it, let's live. He thinks more than he drinks.
These two are just a handful of talented writers I know, They're the ones who fly under the radar because they don't get a lot of credit for what they do best. Maybe I'll see them working for major publications in the future, and I'm glad to have known and seen them work their way up.
*This is my first post so I started off easy. I'm shaking a lot of rust off from my writing arm, and I think shrooms have grown since I last started writing. It looks like I'll be stuck here writing out my idiocy and misadventures, but hey, like the courtside vixen Jessica Mendoza said, "I like writing, you like reading, or else you wouldn't be here. Let's do both for free."
VISIT them at their respective blogs:
Tet - http://innovatorprocrastinator.tumblr.com
Arbie - http://neusdadt.tumblr.com
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