I use the word poetics liberally to refer to a personal, usually unique, way of creating art.
My poetics, i.e., how I understand and approach creativity, heavily relies on my worldview and my quest (also informed by my worldview).
For now, I would describe my poetics based on:
- How I want to feel + what I want to achieve during and after creation
- What I want others to achieve and feel after experiencing my creation
- How my process will achieve the two above
Summary
My main creative objective is to pursue a vibrant philosophical, contemplative, and creative life.
I want my creative processes to enrich my existence and my creative works to enrich the existence of my audience.
I achieve this by:
- Lessening as much modern-day distractions as possible.
- Simplifying my life as much as I can.
- Building and maintaining a deep philosophical practice.
- Keeping a rejuvenating daily contemplative practice.
- Perfecting my craft of creating essays, poems, photographs, and books that help my audience continuously appreciate the universe and their life.
What I want to feel + achieve
Elevate personal experiences
I want my creation process and products to elevate my experiences. Since two of my most important strengths are Appreciation of beauty and excellence and Continued freshness of appreciation, I believe that my work is to appreciate life and the universe. I want to focus on the eternities. I want to be near nature and beauty as much as possible and highlight them. I want to curate what I tell the world on just these things. I want to document a life about these things and share that to others. (Source: Diary entry from 2023-01-18)
Cultivate understanding and wisdom
I want my creative acts to cultivate understanding of the world as it really is. I want them to nurture a deep friendship with wisdom, a friendship that helps me understand reality, uncover truth, and use it to act appropriately at each moment. Throughout this process, I am hoping to build a personal philosophy of living that is as honest as it is meaningful to me.
I want to use this personal philosophy of living to inform living itself. I want to act on what I am learning as much as possible. From applying my worldview in real life, I then collect feedback that I can use to iterate on it. My goal is that by living my wisdom, I live a life filled with meaning and happiness.
Witness effect of my works
I want to see the effects of my work to other people’s lives as often as possible. I know that writing tends to be a long-term process, and the effects of my work are not immediate. I accept this. But whenever there is an opportunity for me to see how my work affects others, I want to see and experience that in person as often as possible.
I want my creative process to help me feel peace of mind, love, wisdom, intellectual and emotional growth, ginhawa, and freedom. I don’t need my work to provide me fame or the feeling of doing important work.
Enjoy community
I want to be surrounded with people who support the life I want to live. I want to have mentors, peers, and an audience. I want to have an intimate circle of support. I want to have a philosophical group. I want to have a writing group. I want to be part of a scenius that both challenges me to expand my horizons and grounds me to the ultimate vision: a friendship with wisdom to live a happy and meaningful life.
Feel sustainability of my work
I want to be able to support myself while pursuing this life work with a source of income that provides enough money, feels good and ideally closer to joy, and does not rob me of the time I need for the core of my life work. I am open to starting a business based on my art, designed in such a way that does not compromise it. However, my ideal sustenance model is the patronage model.
What I want my audience to feel + achieve
I have done some work defining:
All of these are people I want my work to have an effect on.
At present, I think the field I will best thrive is the arts, specifically creative writing (A life in letters). Although, I am not completely ruling out philosophy, specifically lyrical philosophy.
Being Filipino, my audience will primarily be Filipino. But I still want to converse with an international audience because walking, philosophy, and most other subjects I’m interested in are universal topics.
Feeling existential
i want my audience to feel existential. Existentialism ultimately results to a feeling of happiness and meaningfulness grounded in Truth.
I want my creative work to help people appreciate their life and the universe continuously.
- I want my creative products to make people feel that their life and experiences are elevated, deep, valuable.
- Whatever I learn from understanding and living my philosophy, I share it to the world primarily through artifacts that could serve as archetypes and models for anyone who is called to live a life of philosophical contemplation or those who just want to enhance their well-being and their life’s meaningfulness.
My process
My subject matter
I write about my thoughts and experiences. Specifically, I write about my life stories, studies, and walks.
I want to write about living intentionally, finding what is true, looking and curating beauty, and striving to be kind and compassionate.
My media
My main medium is writing. The form I want most to master is the personal narrative essay. In my essays, I want to intersperse philosophy, personal life, culture, history, place, and walking. I like my personal essays to contain the following:
- philosophical inquiries
- landscape descriptions
- poems
- quotations
- translations
- photos
- research
- general narratives and stories
Nevertheless, I also want to deepen my love and mastery of poetry.
My second medium is photography.
My creative artifacts
My style
I want my work to execute the following:
- Framework: Move between these three realms: cosmic–local–personal (ala henry david thoreau).
- Inventiveness and poetry (ala annie dillard)
- Simplicity of language (ala ben hewitt and rofel brion)
- Walking vignettes and photographs (ala craig mod)
- Have a surface-level element that it was written outdoors through the dance of mind and body moving.
- I want to focus on creating words that reflect genuineness—a genuine desire to know and understand—not to perform. Let this lead me to the right words.
My method
I collect materials primarily through walking. My goal with walking are as follows:
- To walk as much of the Philippines as I can.
- To take photos and videos while walking.
- To write about my walks.
- To publish creative essays (text + photos/images) in a website that will become the most comprehensive collection of information on walking in the Philippines.
- To send intimate newsletters to readers.
- To create books out of the above creative artifacts.
- To establish a sustenance model that helps me continue doing the above.
My workflow
See: my workflow. This is also very related to publishing frequency.
My sustainability model
Right now, I use the day job model to sustain my work. But I am hoping to transition into a patronage model. See my sustainability model.
However, the patronage model is difficult to pull off at this stage. So here are business ideas adjacent to my interests.
Elements
I write in multiple languages, namely Pangasinan, Filipino, English, (possibly Sign Language in the future). I want to make these languages talk to each other and make the most of each without nurturing the animosity each has to each other.
My work has some pastoral elements in it. My calling, my gift, is to remind people and to call them towards their state of depth. In a way, I am a pastor of free religion—a religion that starts within me first. One of the things I want to do is eventually help people one on one—a life of retreat and communion, of going back to my well but going out to help others. I want to build a purely naturalistic belief system then from there, get out and have an adventure into the wilderness of compassion.
Principles
Inner first
My creative life is an extension of my life. The main reason why I create is because I want to understand the world and live well. My life is my most important artwork. Therefore, my creative life begins within. I am my first audience. Whatever creative work I do in private is my most important work. I believe that creation is first an act of renewal. This inner work is the most fundamental part of creative life. I could do away with all the other but not this.
This is why the most important parts of my daily routine are those that involve meditation, contemplation, walking, and journaling. When I am busy with sustenance work, I could let go of other projects except these.
(Note: Connect here discussion in Understanding and living are the core of my life work)
Macro then micro
My photos shall be philosophical. Capture an abstract concept from macrocosm then use a moment, a subject, an object to represent that.
Same with writing. Macrocosmic concept but use a vignette to represent it. My writing work should combine cosmic, local, and personal perspectives in one, moving from one to the other in a dance.
This is a style I borrowed from henry david thoreau.
Only give birth to something as it arise
Only write something when it is worth saying. You don’t have to force anything.
Incorporate strengths
I try to articulate my purpose. Right now, my purpose is to achieve self-actualization and eventually transcend. To do this, I am dedicated to understanding the truth about reality (people and nature). I do this by cultivating a rich intellectual life, which involves daily studying (journaling, reading, Talahardin, philosophical walks). Through this intellectual life, I allow myself to change course and explore whenever I want to (curiosity) or dive deep into a specific subject (love of learning). The ultimate goal of such an intellectual life is to build wisdom and perspective on things. I share this perspective through the blog and through conversations whenever they are available.
Alongside this intellectual work is a different but related practice, which could also facilitate and enrich my intellectual tasks: I cultivate appreciation of beauty and excellence and their continued freshness—the small things as well as the big ones. This practice is mainly facilitated by walking and what I do when walking (savoring the environment, photography, and taking notes). This intentional exposure to beauty and excellence generates gratitude.
Facilitative
Whenever I am ready, I want to work on applying my ideas to individuals on a more personal, intimate, and practical level through facilitating.
Emotional and intellectual
I want my work to feel both emotional and intellectual.
My life work is both emotional and intellectual. The intellectual work involves reading, writing, and thinking (i.e., philosophy, which is also my main craft). The emotional work involves walking, poetry, and photography, which provides a rest to intellectual work or facilitates and even guides the former.
Process over product
What I want to do with walking
I used to subscribe to rem tanauan’s ginhawa poetics, but I already find it limiting, although I think I still believe on some of its unarticulated tenets.
Today, I subscribe to the following beliefs about the act of creation:
- Creativity should be a vehicle to maximize complete freedom. I subscribe to what ann lauterbach said: “Poetry protects language from serving any master.”
- Creativity, because it involves action, is saying, “I choose to live this life which I didn’t choose for myself, which was gifted to me, and which I could easily abandon by killing myself.” Therefore, creativity if befriending life, embracing it, an effort to see what good can be taken from it.
- Creativity, is therefore, a way to create meaning in what is a meaningless world.
Seeing life through this metaphor makes walking relevant and writing walking excursions appropriate.
To do
- Use this to improve my bio
- Include your commitment to philosophical lyric essay (poetry, personal essay, photography, philosophy)
- Revisit poetics and simplify. What do you really stand for? How do you want to contribute? Still focus on creative writing, spirituality, and the art of living. But focus on the methodology: draft, walking, fragmented, decentralized, low-tech, gift-based, subsistent