Good morning, Cubao!

The day serves a a slice of chill pie.

TONY PEREZ\S GUIDELINES FOR HIS FACEBOOK FRIENDS FOR THE COMING WEEK (MONDAY, JULY 29 - FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2024):

1) Remember the heat and how it was unkind to you.

2) Live to the fullest without having to wait for any big break.

3) It is unwuse to rely only on your memory.

4) Do not be generous to a fault.

5) There will always be a work-related inconvenience.

6) Focus on your own concerns before focusing on those of your co-workers.

7) Give only in reciprocation.

8 ) Do not feel obliged to give in to relatives outside your immediate family.

9) The arrogant skeptic ends up with nothing.

10) Sherbet is a dessert for all seasons.

11) Long trips are a bad idea at this time.

12) Do not force yourself to attend a function if you are not feeling well.

13) A former classmate says goodbye.

14) Ensure that you have good finances. 

15) Supervisors will praise you only to a certain extent.

16) Do not ingest too much potassium.

17) A long-lost acquaintance surfaces.

18) Something red on your bed will protect you from roaming spirits.

Senior citizens and veterans should be taught creative writing beause they have many, interesting stories to tell. That is why they often yearn to sit with someone they can talk to.

If not, those stories will be gone forever.

Though you are a creative writer, learn how to veil your innermost thoughts. Your life should not always be an open book. Preserve a good amount of mystique in your persona. Both you and your writing will be more interesting that way.

The mastery of writing and painting is the result not of enrollment in an academy but of the correct and judicious exercise of one's powers of observation.

Painting and writing come into creation through one's personal passion, conviction, experience, habits, and preferences, not via what teachers impose in school.

That is why many brilliant painters do not have Fine Arts degrees, and why many brilliant writers do not have Creative Writing degrees.

And, after all, many Fine Arts graduates still know nothing about the rendition of correct anatomy, and many Creative Writing graduates still know nothing about the correct usage of idioms.

 It is the correct sequence to write first, and then paint later.

Because it is DIFFICULT to paint first, and then write later. You will literally be AT A LOSS FOR WORDS.

Of the hundreds if not thousands of arts graduates, how many actually made it after graduation?

--How many had to go abroad in order to be branded a success?

--How many are simply bumming around while waiting for projects to arrive at their doorstep?

--How many ended up working in call centers?

--How many resorted to self-auctions, selling minor works online for a pittance to a general public?

--How many are selling plastic ware and hosting Tupperware parties to survive?

--How many became depressed and even suicidal?

It is fine to be an artist, but one also has to have a sense of economics, not only for oneself but also for one's community. After all, what kind of nation would this be if everyone were an arts graduate?

And, in the last analysis, it is real talent that counts, never the fact that one went to an academy.

Hello Mark,

Thank you for the nine sonnets you sent me for critiquing. I appreciated them more than the first poem you showed me the last time we were together in the coffee shop.

My comments:

--It is all right to explore and experiment with forms established by earlier poets from Europe, but, always have the objective of developing your own, unique style of writing that can separate you from the rest. It can be done. I am referring not only to Western sonnets but also to Filipino awits and koridos. 

--Try writing more loosely rather than constraining your work to fit rhyme and meter. Do look for a copy of the 1969 Penguin Modern Poets 13: Charles Bukowski, Philip Lamantia, Harold Norse. The works therein are timeless.

--You are very young; your poetic sensibility needs to mature, like wine. I could tell, from your lines, that there were instances when you were writing not from your own experience but from your visual observation of the world around you and from stories told by others. Poetry is condensed truth. Do not attempt to write about a night with a prostitute if you've never spent a night with a prostitute--that is an example I am using not from anything of the sort in your writing. In short, do not be a man writing about having an abortion because you can never have one in this lifetime. (The latter can be done, but only through a complicated process called regression, in which you visit, on the astral plane, a previous lifetime in which you were a woman who had an actual abortion. Let me attempt to do a regression on you sometime. Not many writers can do that, by the way.)

--Do keep on writing no matter what. It's the only way to get where you want to be.

--Further develop your powers of observation using ALL YOUR SENSES. Read through my blog on developing powers of observation; the exercises there apply not only to young psychics but also to artists and creative writers:

http://tonyperezphilippinescyberspacebook19.blogspot.com/

I look forward to being with you again soon.

Write from your heart, never from your producer's or your publisher's cash register.

The artist who becomes truly immortal will always be the artist who takes pride in aging.

Always write for readers who are 30 years old and above. Your work then becomes truly timeless.

Draw a graph illustrating your journey of ups and downs over the 12 months of the previous year. Was your life on an upward trend?

Then draw a second graph illustrating your progress MINUS the emotions, and they will be two totally different graphs.