Excerpt From Atang An Altar For World
01/10Patrick Rosale-flux journal #118 Ñ may 2021 Ê Patrick RosalExcerpt from Atang:Excerpt fromAtang:An Altar forListening to theBeginning of theWorld05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDTEditorÕs note: Images and captions are theauthorÕs own, from his book Atang: An Altar forListening to the Beginning of the World (QuiliQuili Power Press, 2021). A full description of theexperimental book project, along with a free ebook download, can be found at the authorÕswebsite https://www.patrickrosal.com/atang.LubongAt the height of making many of the drawingsand collages that would become part of thisbook, late summer 2020, smack dab in thepandemic, I woke up in the middle of the nightwith a ringing in my left ear. I have pretty heavytinnitus from all those years of dancing andDJing in clubs and bars, but this was extra loud.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊA lot of folks have a ringing in their ears thatcomes and goes. My tinnitus is always there, amix of hissing and very high, very farawaysinging. IÕve woken up some nights and thought Iwas hearing a chorus of children a block away. Ifyou could hear the beginning of a toothache,turned the volume down to about 2.5, and madeit sustain from the moment you woke up to themoment you dozed off, my tinnitus is a bit likethat. ItÕs like foil shaking. No. ItÕs like hundreds ofthousands of bits of foil shaking in the air aroundmy ears. ItÕs a stratosphere of mosquitos or amillion hummingbirds blacking out the sky.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMy tinnitus has changed my hearing enoughthat I forget exactly what bells sound like. I canhear them. But I know I donÕt hear them the sameway most other people hear them. I know I donÕthear them the way I used to hear them. Smallbells especially.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMary Rose asks me if my hearing is preciousnow. She asks if IÕm scared that IÕll lose all myhearing. And I say no. I mean, yes, IÕm scared, butno, IÕm accepting how my world will change. Italready has.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThat night last August, I managed to getback to sleep for a little while before wakingagain around dawn. The ringing wasnÕt juststronger than usual, it sounded like I wasunderwater. I got out of bed and made somecoffee, thinking it was just a particularly longswell of my tinnitus, which happens occasionally.Sometimes the wave of ringing lasts as long as10 or 15 minutes. So I took my hot cup, sat on achair by our front window to quietly start my day.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt was close to 7am. We live on a wideresidential artery with downtown just a blockand a half east. The first commuter of themorning drove past. And it froze me. The engine,the rumble of the tires against the road were allmuffled, as if they were far away. And whateverclarity of the sound I was processing was comingonly from my right ear. I waited for another car.And not a minute later, the same. I couldnÕt tellwhich direction the cars were coming from. They
02/10ÒLet it be remembered that most of these Filipinos are musicians, and that the character of their music is of the sentimental and appealing (to passions sort),and that the Filipinos dress flashily, spend their money lavishly on the girls É Chief Mann [of Toppenish, Wash.] said: ÔThey are just as dangerous whenallowed free social contact with women as that of the negro when given the same libertyÕ É One of the prominent men [also] in Toppenish, with whom I talkedyesterday, said: ÔIf I had my way, I would declare an open season on all Filipinos and there would be no bag limit.ÕÓÐ C. O. Young, General Organizer, AFL (as entered in Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 71st Congress, 1929Ð31) Collage byPatrick Rosal Ð scan of score notes that John Coltrane made for A Love Supreme and a picture of aÊband during the Philippine American War. The descriptionfrom the second volume of Our Islands and Their People as Seen with Camera and Pencil (1899) says: ÒThis band came from the interior, professingextraordinary friendship for the Americans. But they professed too much and thereby aroused the suspicions of authorities, who banished them from thecamp. It was afterward learned that they had been sent by Aguinaldo as spies.Ó05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT
03/10I started doing these bigger drawings on butcher paper with my students in an improvisation class in fall 2019 that met for six hours on Saturdays. We fedeach other food and just hung out, talking about art and language and poetry. And then we did a lot of these drawings together, finally inviting the communityto join us in a massive drawing on butcher paper about water. Maybe IÕll make another book and talk about that. Anyway, these drawings were all kind of visualimprovisations about the Philippines and Spain and dancing. I like the spaceship and I never drew a Filipino church before. And check out the Callao figurecame back to dance in the vestibule!05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT
Pen and pencil drawing of anangel. Looks like a superhero. Iwish I could draw good enoughto make a comic book. Mybrothers can!ThatÕs my Uncle Charlie with real blood from a goat he was slaughtering for a little party we were having. And thatÕs the Ilocanoalphabet from a page in the de los Reyes book. Also, thatÕs Fort Santiago in Manila that the Spanish built.05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT
These are some of my nieces and nephews in Barangay 41, Santo Tom‡s, Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, Philippines. A day or twobefore I left, one of the kids came up to me in my uncleÕs yard and they were like, ÒTito, ammom ti agaramid ti ullaw?Ó And I waslike, ÒUllaw?Ó What is that? They tried to explain but I couldnÕt get it. So they scattered. One brings a walis tinging (a broommade of thin sticks, which are the spines of a palm tree leaf). Another kid grabs a plastic bag. And another comes down the dirtroad with what looks like VHS tape pulled out of the cassette. And they all gathered around and started making this thing. Andit was a kite! It was amazing! I show this to improvisation students when we get together. I donÕt know if theyÕre actuallyimpressed. But I am!05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT
05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT06/10e-flux journal #118 Ñ may 2021 Ê Patrick RosalExcerpt from Atang:may as well have been doing donuts under mynose. Then two cars drove by. I shoved my fingerin my right ear and listened as more cars passed.It sounded like somebody had taken a speaker,knocked it on its back, and was holding it downwith pillows and cushions. I could barely ÊÊÊIÕve spent the last ten years or so learninghow to talk to the dead. I feel a little funny sayingthis because IÕm still pretty deeply American insensibility, but IÕd be lying if I pretendedotherwise. My cousins who were born in thePhilippines donÕt think talking to the dead isweird at all. They do it all the time. They tell meabout the visits the dead make, not just indreams but in the bodies of birds and spidersand butterflies. They tell me their mom Ð myAuntie Uding Ð visits. Our grandparents visit. Mymom visits, too. They sometimes have messagesof warning or comfort. Sometimes they come justto make us laugh. It has happened to several ofus that the dead come to tickle our feet to scarethe shit out of us. And then we, the living, cantalk about the visit to someone whounderstands. And we, the living, can laugh reallyhard together. And I imagine the dead are stillaround when weÕre laughing. I imagine thatÕs whythe dead come to scare us in the middle of thenight with such a feathery touch. The ones whohave no choice to leave a body might understandthe body best. They crack up at our stubbornunfamiliarity with death.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIÕd gotten good enough at listening to thedead that I could call them in. Not like theyÕdcome every time I called, but time to time theyÕdcome. And thatÕs how IÕd heard stories from menand women who lived in other times and places.Ancestors. Not long ago. Some of them inCalifornia, during the twenties and thirties. Someof them had worked with my grandfather inHawaiÕi before picking lettuce in the PajaroValley. Some of them were living in Watsonvillewhen Fermin Tobera was shot in his sleep. Oneelder told me how they had kite-makingcontests, each man trying to better the other instyle. Some of them drawing pictures on theirkites of cars or angels. Some of the manongswriting the names of a sweetheart or inscribing alittle wish in the corner. And then theyÕd run outlike boys all the way past the dunes to the waterand theyÕd test their kites out, some of theirslapdash inventions smashing into the sandyhillocks, some snagged in the trees, and othersflying way up.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊA picture of Perfecto Bandalan and EstherSchmick appeared in the Watsonville newspaperin December 1929. The image of this Filipino anda white girl embracing riled racial anxietiesbarely a month before The Palm Beach Clubdancehall was set to open at the edge of town.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOn January 20, 1930, posses of local menformed to hunt Filipinos down. They wereassaulted throughout Watsonville. Some of thosemanongs were thrown off the Pajaro RiverBridge. One posse arrived with weapons on theMurphy Ranch to stand outside one of thebunkhouses where the laborers lived. One of thewhite men shot the bunkhouse up. And FerminTobera was killed in his sleep. Sometimes IÕmasking questions that the dead wonÕt answer.And I have to see it for myself. And I think, therewere no fine suits or hand-crafted shoes. Nohalf-finished letters to family back inPangasinan. Probably no kites hanging from theceiling. There probably wasnÕt a guitar. The menresponsible for ToberaÕs death were tried and letgo. That is neither speculation nor a dream of thedead.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThose men were field laborers Ð anddancers, so in their visits they gave me stories ofmaking music with nothing but a tabletop and astolen guitar, these men holding each other closein a bunkhouse before they got all dressed up intheir fine suits with a pocket full of dimes. Nomatter how exhausted, bruised, or sore, they dugdown deep into the reserves to shave, clean up,and head to the dancehall. No matter Ð inCalifornia, in 1929 Ð that it could cost them theirjob or their Õve mostly played guitar and keysthroughout my life. And a few years ago, I startedplaying percussion. I practiced every day, beforeand after work, in between phone calls. I quietlyworked on rhythms and rudiments on my lap atmeetings, in the slow-moving traffic of I-676, onmy walks to the laundromat, testing all thesyncopated subdivisions, studying time. Ilistened to records and more records. I watchedvideos of Tata Güines, Ang‡ D’az, Ray Barretto,Johnny Rivero, Jerry Gonzalez, Raul Rekow. MaryRose tells me I fall asleep tapping on her thigh orwrist and sometimes the drumming starts againin the middle of the night. I hear a rhythm in rockand roll or jazz or experimental electronic musicand itÕs calling out to Bantœ songs or Abaku‡ orbembŽ. Sometimes I hear the gangsa of theKalinga or the plosives of the ipu. Sometimes Ihear the rhythm of the song my dad used to singto my baby brother to help him shit Ð takkiiiiiiii,takki! The more I studied, the more closely Ilistened, the more I remembered.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI love percussion (and just playing music ingeneral) because touch is a part of the listening.What most people donÕt realize is that whentheyÕre listening to music, they are listening tosomeoneÕs listening. And so much of a musicianÕslistening happens through touch. I believe havinga ÒfeelÓ for the music is about a kind of unnamed
05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT07/10e-flux journal #118 Ñ may 2021 Ê Patrick RosalExcerpt from Atang:sense, one in which all the available physicalsenses heighten and converge to make meaningÐ before language, before thought, a nearlysimultaneous electricity and chemistry in theblood and in the neurons and in the bones.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn the film Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed playsRuben, a drummer who loses his hearing. Hischaracter goes to school with hearing disabledchildren to learn how to be deaf. And thereÕs ascene where Ruben, the children, and theteacher are gathered around a man playingclassical music on a grand piano. And they allhave their hands on the body of the instrument.And I know that feeling. I feel it through the keyswhen I play piano. IÕve put my hands on a pianowhen my father was playing and these days whenmy wife plays. I donÕt just feel it in my fingers andpalms. I can feel it in my chest, and if IÕm stillenough I can feel it in my scalp and the bottomsof my feet.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ***ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI was trying to keep my mind off theuncertainty of my hearing. My left ear still feltwalled in when Mary Rose and I tuned into a liveconversation about the Hō kū leʻ a, a Polynesianvessel whose construction became both asymbol and materialization of the genius ofNative Hawaiian maritime seafaring. Overhead,our ceiling fan was spinning, letting out asqueaky pulse. IÕd joked for months that itÕs mymetronome while I practice rudiments on drums.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe Hō kū leʻ a isnÕt just built in Polynesiantradition, it is navigated with traditionalPolynesian wayfinding techniques Ð no Westerntechnology. Kā lepa Baybayan, who has served ascaptain of the Hō kū leʻ a, was talking about thestar compass, or using the altitudes of celestialbodies to orient their boat on the sea. They findtheir way by something called dead reckoning.He explains further that even when theyÕresleeping they can tell by the sound and the feelof the waves that theyÕre off course. ÒOurcompass is visual, yeah? ItÕs also based uponfeeling and internalizing the movement of thecanoe. ThereÕs a certain beat and rhythm thecanoe makes as youÕre sailing on the ocean on anextended course. You internalize the motion. Ifthe motion changes, if the pulse changes, thentwo things have either happened. Either theenvironmental conditions have changed or youÕvegone off course. More likely, youÕve gone offcourse,Ó Kā lepa says.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd then mid-sentence, the regularsqueaking of the fan fell apart. The soundstarted breaking up like crazy. It startedmultiplying. The window was open. I realized itwasnÕt the fan, which I could still hear. I stoppedthe video and turned my head toward our frontyard. It was geese. I could hear the geese,honking around the same pitch as our fan. It wasone of those cool days in late summer. IÕd justtold Mary Rose this feels like autumn weather.And the honking of the geese outside, theoverlapping rhythms Ð they must have been rightoverhead. It was all mixing with the squeak of theceiling fan. The cat let out a soft meow in thekitchen, too. Hungry probably. And it all belongs.All the sounds belong together Ð the geese, thefan, the cat in the kitchen, and now somewherein the overcast gulls were yucking near the samepitch as the geese. I was weeping then. Myhearing had been changed for a long time. I wasjust traveling deeper into a world IÕd already beenliving in.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ***ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe dead are always with us. You hear me?Maybe they do come to give us insight orknowledge. But they also come to lead us astray.And somewhere in the ghastly tapestry ofwisdom and trick, prank and sagacity, the deadremind us that our bodies are theirs. Not just ourears and hands. Not just the belly and the spineand eyes. But the heart and lung and muscle. ItÕshow we hear them. You feel me? ItÕs how welisten. The dead carry the past, all the listeningof their past, all the solitude of their listening, allthe gathering of their solitude. They carry thepast of their past. And we carry the dead.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWe have an entire body for carrying. Wehave an entire body for listening. TheyÕre playingtheir guitars. TheyÕre crafting their kites. TheyÕrescribbling their names, their wishes. TheyÕredrawing a bird, a boat, a cross. TheyÕre hangingthe kites from the rafters of a bunkhouse, fromthe ceiling of a dancehall, from the beams of abombed out house. They are bidding one anotherfarewell by smashing the glasses against thewalls. They are holding each other tight in thedark. TheyÕre kissing someoneÕs hair in the dark.TheyÕre listening for the waves in the dark to findtheir way in the sea. TheyÕre plucking the fliesfrom the rice bin and sifting the moths from theflour. Listen. TheyÕre counting the gulls. TheyÕrespitting into a cup full of blood. TheyÕre birthingour grandfathers. Listen now. Listen. TheyÕreholding each otherÕs hands as they weep. TheyÕreringing their bells and so are the dead of thedead of the dead, which is to say their soundsare so old. So very, very old. Their sounds are oursounds. Listen. Their listening is our listening.Everywhere in our bodies is the end of our lives.Everywhere in our bodies is the beginning oftime.AwanAnd what can I do about it Nothing I canÕt doanything I can wring my hands or look out at therain coming down for hours now until the streetsfill up Even when thereÕs nothing thereÕssomething you canÕt see And what can I do now
A Study of BeautyTo have rejected strategy; to sit, instead, withoneÕs bafflement; to see such bafflement as apreface to madness Ð and awe; to touch somesimplicity, to attend to that simplicity; torelentlessly pursue its continuity with theinfinite; to catch the occasional glimpse & bechanged. Not sparkling embellishments orpristine blades. Not the effete disguised indenim. Not the FOR SALE sign hanging from theGallery of Misery. Not the policies of lawncare,but the bulbous deformation of one green gourdborne on a dying vine. Not the gloss of museummarble, but the young man weeping under thevaulted cobwebs. Not deputies of thespreadsheet, but a road disappeared under newsnow. Not scripted tours or curated wonders, butthe crack that runs the length of the last drinkingglass in the cabinet. Not surveillance, butsurrender. Not worship, but devotion. Blessingand blasphemy, both. Not the sanitized tables ofslaughter, but the fleck of tendon that pops thebutcher in the eye.BunengSome things IÕm learning as I start to cut. Collage05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT08/10e-flux journal #118 Ñ may 2021 Ê Patrick RosalExcerpt from Atang:that everything I do is invisible I canÕt even see itslegs any more that thing galloping now westcarrying the sun on its back screaming for themurderers to exit their houses to use the frontdoor to announce themselves We know youÕre inthere You have nowhere to go You can do nothingThereÕs nothing to do Move along Move alongNothing to see here even if you shine a light on itEven if you set the whole city on fire Look at thebells I mean listen to them TheyÕre as good asrain filling the neighborhood breaking intowindows Men have dreamed of machines totravel as fast as them clap in the heavens all theZeus-like engineers looking into the stratosphereseeing nothing Nothing at all just like whatÕshaunting us just like whatÕs jailing us just likewhatÕs keeping us on track in line on point Radarof the gods Come in Come in No responsenothing Where is God the child asked after thetowers fell Where is God God is everywhere If youthink long enough about his location you arriveby logic not at his whereabouts but hissubstance which is nothing God is nothing Noteven murder Not even mercy Not even the flycrawling out of the crowÕs mouth Even when thebird is talking heÕs not saying nothing Not agoddamned thing Not even the weight of ahatchet Not even the hole you dig to bury it Noteven the ancient trees heÕd trouble himself toreap until the whole hillsideÕs blank NothingNothing there No branches No leaves Not even aflimsy twig to hang your hat or a log to which youcan nail your feetis so much like DJing and making music Ð thekinds of care in the tight spots, finding therelationships, the places where one thing meetsthe next, the illusion of seamlessness, theintention of the cut, the suture, the healing, thelittle song I make up in my head while IÕm cutting,the absolute surrender to the utterly localwithout giving up on the flow of the whole.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAnd like two pieces of music, sometimesthe material is disagreeable: the knife wonÕt gowhere you thought it would; the slice isnÕt clean; Ican ruin hours of work with one slip; I have toforget how dangerous the blade is. ItÕs teachingme patience which means it is teaching meabout time, how to be so inside of it, IÕm outside.I once heard the leader of a rumba groupdrumming in the park yell at the salidor player,ÒYou got to lose yourself to find yourself, man!ÓThis art does not let me forget: I am an agent ofruin, destruction even, and there are only a fewart forms that do this. IÕm learning, in order tocollage, I have to cut away. I have to choose tolose (and often itÕs not even my choice) and IÕmusing a knife to do it. But I know the history ofthe knife. Machete, cutlass, bolo, and in myparentsÕ language buneng. To chop down grassfor a roof, to slaughter an animal for feast, towield in the face of another soldier.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIÕm talking to the knife. IÕm talking to thepaper. IÕm talking to the dancers and the king.Cutting them away from their context makesthem more alive. Some of them are hard toremove from their context. IÕm thinking ofrelationships in ways that are both familiar as awriter and a musician and in other ways that feellike total expansion. What I really mean is thatthe accidents are new. IÕm prone in a brand newway. IÕm staring down into these photos anddrawings and IÕm looking into heaven at the sametime. Prone to heaven. Prone to hell.On the Lateness of FilipinosFlavor is a function of time
attention is public relations. Ê TabasTo read beyond oneÕs style is both a temperamentand a skill. To read beyond oneÕsÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊstyle is a style itself.TabasTo severely restrict oneself to a given style is alsoa style. That style is an anti-style.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is the death of a style. It is a mortuary ofstyle.TrabahoTo be the one to make the ropes they use to hangthe ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊto be the man theyÕll hang.Lung-awArt doesnÕt change you. Attention changes you.Art is one version of attention. Art without soulful05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDTe-flux journal #118 Ñ may 2021 Ê Patrick RosalExcerpt from Atang:This headline was published in the New York Times on February 15,1901. America thought that they found the Garden of Eden, which is tosay that America believed it was returning paradise to its rightfulstewards. I thought this was a joke but nah they really believed that. Iwanted to learn how to draw a balite tree. So thereÕs that.Ê
10/10e-flux journal #118 Ñ may 2021 Ê Patrick RosalExcerpt from Atang:Patrick Rosal is an amateur, a tinkerer, a dilettante. Heis, above all, a student of music and dance andlanguage and ritual and good food and drink and theland. Atang is his first self-published book. He used tomake mixtapes and give them away. HeÕs been knownto do that with microscopes and guitars and otherthings, too, i.e., give them away. He lives in Rahway, NJwith his beloved, Mary Rose, and their two cats Vovoand Yuri.05.13.21 / 09:23:58 EDT
Patrick Rosal Excerpt from Atang: An Altar for Listening to the Beginning of the World EditorÕs note: Images and captions are the authorÕs own, from his book Atang: An Altar for Listening to the Beginning of the World (Quili- Quili Power Press, 2021).
1 And thou shalt make an [brazen] altar of shittim wood, five cubits [7 1/2 feet] long, and five cubits [7 1/2 feet] broad; the altar shall be foursquare: and the height thereof shall be three cubits [4 1/2 feet]. 27:1 an altar. An altar speaks of worship. The altar is a place of humiliation, submission and death to self.
KNIGHTS OF THE ALTAR SOCIETY *Note: the term Knight, or Knight of the Altar may refer to all members at any rank including apprentice and page. The Knights of the Altar is an organization of boys and men who serve Our Blessed Lord at His altar. It was organized in September, 1938, in resp
Mar 12, 2016 · Altar Guild Customary Includes Glossary of Terms 3/12/2016 Every Liturgy at St. Mary’s Church begins and ends with the Altar Guild. To the glory of God, we prepare and maintain the altar for
ALTAR GUILD NEWSLETTER FALL 2017 A twice-yearly publication of the Province IV Altar Guild GIFT FROM PROVINCE IV ALTAR GUILD CONFERENCE TO KANUGA NEW SILVER PATEN FOR CHAPEL OF THE TRANSFIGURATION Every year at the closing Eucharist of the P-IV Annual Con
Altar Guild Manual Christ Lutheran Church Marshfield, WI Prayer for Altar Guild Almighty God, we thank Thee for the opportunity to serve You and Thy Church as a member of Altar Guild. Grant that we may handle holy things with reverence and perform our work with such faithfulness and devo
Above: The altar is placed on the eleventh step, starting from the step on which the seven persons dressed in white are kneeling. On the altar there is a Crucifix and three chalices.The frontal black drape of the altar is divided in 12 panels;the dominant colors arewhite and black. The altar is dominated by a “Christ” detached from a white cross with an impression on his side.
Altar Server Step-by-Step Guide Candle Bearer II Entrance Procession 1. Move slowly and respectfully following the Cross Bearer, stop at the foot of the Altar, turn left and go to candle stand. 2. Put candle in stand, and go to your seat. Remember to genuflect to tabernacle while crossing between it and the Altar together with candle bearer one. .
Agile software development therefore has a focus on: . Scrum is one of the most popular agile development methodologies. Scrum is a lightweight framework designed to help small, close-knit teams of people to create complex software products. The key features of the scrum methodology are as follows: Scrum team: A team of people using this methodology are called a “scrum”. Scrums usually .
