Interlude of Frustration

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Hello everyone! Kumusta ka! Seriously how are you? Because I am not doing so great, so I need to vent for this episode. Not a great look as a podcaster to expect your audience to do any amount of emotional labor beyond whatever a fictional story can provide, but it is what it is. I’ve had a rough two weeks trying to work on this episode and needed to let out some steam, but at the same time, this podcast is supposed to be a documentation of a journey or discovery or my exploration through the seas of my own culture. So when I am frustrated because I’ve hit conceivably every roadblock imaginable, then fair enough that’s an entry on the RSS Feed.

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But for now, oh where to start… Oh yes, Hugot Podcasting, and my resolve to start that network off with an audio drama because maybe, just maybe some of the investigative ones I’m planning will be able to get grant funded, which would be a super win for the culture for some of the reasons that I’ve run into so much trouble these past couple weeks. While it means that I can’t launch those shows or do anything too substantial now least I actually get the grant and then have to adhere to whatever rules are in the award. And that would be a little annoying but also--I mean--fair enough if you’re going to be giving me a lot of money, then there are reasonable stipulations I should be expecting.

So audio drama. Well, to launch an audio drama, it would make sense to lead the announcement with an episode about a Filipino writer or their work and yeah… I’ve already done that, somewhat, right? I’ve done episodes on Jose Rizal and Noli Me Tangere. And that was actually a lot of fun because my cousin was reading that book for her class at the same time, so it got to be a fun bonding exercise.

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However, there are other Filipino authors out there. Obviously. And so I started searching for the best or most fitting one for my work, an author that I could essentially ride the coattails of, for the time being… sorry not sorry. It’s a hard life for a podcaster and/or female Filipino writer. And hold on to that latter bit because it will become very relevant later...

At first glance, it seemed incredibly promising. Despite all the criticism educators levy against Wikipedia, it’s still a great way to get the creative juices started. While you can’t be sure how much of that information is accurate, you can still find a lot of information to get you thinking. So I somehow fell into a list of Filipino writers. I say somehow because at some point Wikipedia finds a way to just lead you into corners of its website that you had never properly anticipated or thought you needed but there you are. In addition to all the hyperlinks in every article, Wikipedia also has lists or collections of articles to make navigating a broader topic much easier: a feature that is--one--very handy, two--something you’ve probably seen at the bottom of articles before, and yet three--might not have been what you were expecting Wikipedia to offer you when you first think about it.

So suddenly, I had a wealth of potential topics or authors whose work to could be featured ahead of mine. Which is great. Now, clicking through some of those articles, I did notice that some of the  biographical information could be a bit sparse or bare bones at times, but honestly? I had expected that a little bit.

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Once upon a time, I worked in a nonprofit job that kind of, sort of sucked. Basically, they did not have any intention of keeping me long term because--while having a master’s degree meant that my market rate for my salary was higher, and they didn’t want to pay it when they didn’t have to. And by didn’t have to, I mean they could just hire someone else.. And sure, it would look nice to have me around for a few months or it would help them attract some wealthy donors attached to the school that I had gotten my master’s degree from, but after the fundraising push was over, the perceived return on investment was not going to be very high. But firing me also wasn’t going to be a great look with those aforementioned donors because, you know, you would want them to be a repeat (quote) customer. 

So there was this sense in which we all knew my manager and a few other higher ups were making my daily life tedious enough to be a reason to quit while not being so directly bad as to be considered hostile. You know, the good ole hostile work environment that triggers some protections for an employee. I mean, it would have also required some effort on their part to force me out, and that was something they didn’t want to put in. So yeah, we ended up in this quasi-termination-of-employment status where they did not want me and I knew they did not want me, but we were still playing a game of meaningless task chicken.

Jokes on them because I did have a reason to stay for a little longer than they would have liked. I had a trip to the Philippines coming up. One that was going to last a few weeks, so I couldn’t jump to a new job right away. My plan was to work at this not so great place until the trip then fun times with families, and a new job when I came back. An ingenious plan that admittedly would not always work, but on that particular time, the cards came up in my favor.  

And I promise that all of this is relevant. Because one of these tedious jobs was closing out the honorariums. All the people who were honored by this organization--and it was many but I can’t really explain that without doxxing myself somewhat--had files in the system that were largely used to solicit donations, and they needed to be closed out because you never want to send a donation solicitation to a dead person but you for sure want to send one to every living person that you can.

So the strongest evidence or only evidence that someone has died, according to this nonprofit, was an obituary. A death notice, in other words or in certain interpretations, which is surprisingly great at providing information about the entirety of someone’s life, particularly people who are super established or whose family weren’t charged by the word for the notice. But in the case of the international honorees, not all cultures do obituaries like America does. In some places, the community is close enough that everyone who needs to know you’ve died can figure out within the hour or at worst one afternoon. Obituaries can then seem like an unnecessary luxury.

But for the tier of people we were dealing with, or I was dealing with, an obituary was largely going to be expected. But it certainly wasn’t a guarantee. 

And when it came to the honorees from the Philippines, out of seven people, I was only able to close out one account. And it was not the account of the person who would likely be 115 at the time. The sort of age that would make news in and of itself. But my judgment was completely irrelevant. That was part of the grand scheme to get me to leave, you see. 

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That was when I first learned that the Philippines did not really do obituaries. If a death is notable enough to make the news, that’s one thing. There will be an announcement and the appropriate amount of reverence paid to that person. But it’s not a super common thing to recite the details of the recently deceased’s life--their parentage, childhood, etc, etc--in a publication like that.

Having that experience, I should not be surprised that the obituaries that make great tools when it comes to building Wikipedia pages did not exist. And so the information on those Wikipedia pages was going to be a bit sparse. You maybe had the date of death, the name of someone’s spouse or parents, but that’s about it. And that wasn’t great, but I could work around that, right? And really, I need to start with their publications anyway. And those were listed on Wikipedia.

Which is as far as I got. Because I tried to find copies of those publications, and I could not, not in libraries or bookstores or even on Amazon. I mean, in theory, there were possibilities, yes, particularly on Amazon, but all of these extra possibilities involved third parties that I had never actually worked with before and had been burned by, abstractly speaking. To be honest, I couldn’t even pirate those books if I wanted to. And that… was incredibly frustrating.

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I will air this grievance with the caveat that if I was raised in the Philippines or I was in the Philippines while looking for this information, I might not have had this problem. I could have shelf after shelf of these books every which way or place I wanted. But in the United States, when I try to find these works, all I see is the notice that it’s out of print. Everything is out of print, and has been for a great while, to the extent that my magical local bookseller has not been able to do anything to help me. Shocking when you consider independent book sellers can and happily will get you whatever you need. 

So I’m stuck. I’m stuck. Amazon third party sellers can’t even help me in some situations, and libraries are in the same boat as the indie book sellers. 

All of it has been incredibly frustrating, and maybe your rebuttal is to point out that it was inevitable. Because if the demand for these books wasn’t great, then of course they were going to fall out of print in the US, and if books fall out of print, they are obviously going to be hard to find. And I get that, but that’s just a repackaging of the target of my frustration. It doesn’t take anything away.

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Because it begs the question if this branch of literature was ever presented as a variable option to want. I mean let me use a different example. I like superhero movies. Which is not a controversial statement, but the only reason I know that about myself is that I was able to see them for myself in theatres. I can’t say the same thing or a similar thing about Filipino literature, and I imagine that most people are in that boat. I found Noli Me Tangere for this podcast, a book still in print because it’s considered a classic of colonial literature. That’s it. Admittedly, if any detail had changed, I may not have ever picked it up.

On one hand, you have popular culture that hasn’t really given this world of literature much of a chance, and neither did my academic experience. There was only one year of school whose curriculum included world literature, and that English class in high school ended up focusing on English and French literature when we strayed away from American Literature because my teacher just kept conveniently forgetting that the English teachers of the next grade were the ones who were supposed to teach American Literature. Oh those and the Russian novel Anna Karenina. That was it. 

But i you’ve listened to Miscellany Media Reviews, you’ll know that one of my favorite books is the Japanese novel Socrates in Love, so there’s a bunch of stuff out there that could speak to young people, but I found that book almost randomly. 

As I see it, there were so many opportunities to bring Filipino literature into the spotlight, in a way that could have also made traditional media some money. I mean, look at what I’m trying to do. Sure, indie podcasting doesn’t have a great return on investment, but I have plenty of material for what could be amazing intellectual properties, but nope, apparently I’m the only one who thinks so. And because everything isn’t just profit driven but also absurdly risk averse, no one but podcasters are going to take that chance and produce these stories. So consequently, I am having a hard time finding the sort of tales that you would consider mine by birth right. 

It really sucks. More than a little bit.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. In addition to this show, Miscellany Media Reviews, The Oracle of Dusk, and Aishi Online, we’ve just recently launched another show: Temporal Light. 

Oh and uh... just a fun question. How do you know who you are? Zaneta thought that was a meaningless question, one just used to fill the air of conversation. Until she saw her face where it should not have been: crafted by a mysterious artist who hid it in such a way that there’s only one angle where she could have seen this secret. And Zaneta knew exactly where to stand.

So what is going on?

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