31 days to go

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

There’s a month to go, and the 33rd MassKara Festival will unfold.

It is my ninth year in this, but yes, there are jitters as we try to map out and hammer the details of this annual event.

The fact is, I’d get scared if I am not scared now. After all, when I look back, my most monumental failures were marked by fearlessness and smug confidence, when I thought all was going to go well. Indeed, when I fall into feeling everything will turn out fine, almost always, they don’t. Somehow, being afraid pushes one to go beyond limits, to do things that aren’t normally being done. And I think the last eight years have been about trying new things and doing things yet undone.

In a weird sort of way – you may also call it masochistic – I have come to love being somewhere between fear and excitement, that feeling that something was knotting in one’s guts, while there is a murmur in one’s heart that is the unmistakable beat of anticipation.

The other night, I was in this dinner with some uppity crowd in Manila and they said many of them are coming in October. In fact, someone even asked if I can pull strings in this or that hotel because they couldn’t get rooms – I told them I was sorry I cannot, my October life was complicated enough without having to act as reservations desk, thank you. Besides, I think our hotels are doing a fine job in the impossible task of trying to fit everyone who wants in. Someone else said they were looking for a place to party all night among themselves.

This kind of pre-event buzz from people whose opinions matter in this sort of thing was, of course, affirming, that somehow, for all the lies thrown our way, we are doing something right and something good for this city. But, of course, it also led me to another cycle of reviewing the plans – are they good enough, will they make it worth for this chi-chi crowd to come, considering that in the past they never even bothered about us at all?

But don’t get me wrong. Of course, the plans are good. In fact, things are falling into place, where they are supposed to; in fact, there have been a few pleasant surprises already.

There was that unexpected buzz created by CNN, when its iReport on the Philippines chose MassKara as one of the 12 best things in the country, along with such icons as the halo-halo and the institutions among festivals that is the Aliwan.

More than the rating, we were very happy that CNN editors saw exactly what we have been trying to do in this festival – show to the world the resilience and tenacity of our people, made manifest in their capacity to be happy despite the odds and the problems. Remember how our artists laid that down in the slogan, “sige lang, sige na…Bacolod bato kita” (It’s okay, it’s all right…through whatever adversity, Bacolod fights on!)”?

Personally, I thought the CNN recognition was not just another validation or affirmation of what we have done.

When I first learned about it, I immediately recalled how, on our first year, Mayor Bing had very clear marching orders on what to do: reengineer the MassKara into the global festival that it should be.

It’s been eight going on nine years since then and I think the recognition of the citizens’ journalism arm of a global news network as CNN can well be taken as proof that we have brought this festival in that direction already, if it isn’t there yet.*

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