Have your fill of arts (from our virtual community pantry)
There are two ideas that come to my mind when I see community pantries sprouting all over. One is the essential need of a human person for food, and the other is our intrinsic sense of empathy and compassion that moves us to share what we have with others who need it more.
Food and compassion. In my mind, they have a connection: the arts.
Let’s start with food, something that nourishes us. It is an essential physical need to sustain the life of every human being. Community pantries have spontaneously opened to fill that need when many do not have the money to buy food.
By all means let us have a pantry for food. But beyond that, let us also put up pantries that offer more than just food for the stomach. We need a pantry that will feed people with food that nourishes the spirit.
I don’t mean “spirit” in the sense of religious, although it might. I’m talking about music, drama, dance, poetry, literature, cinema, paintings, photography which all are a source of spiritual nourishment. All art forms help nourish our spiritual life because they are capable of touching and evoking something profoundly emotional in us — some deep sadness or great joy.
When you are entranced, delighted and awestruck for the entire duration of a movie or a symphony and do not want it to end, you are not simply enjoying moments of pleasure; you are having a spiritual experience. And when your inner spirit is moved, you become transformed. Something is at work in us — our creative spirit.
In fact, the community pantry idea is the creative spirit at work. The spirit comes to life because our sense of humanity wants us to do something, to create something to address a crying human need.
There is a community pantry for the arts for those who care to feed the spirit. We have opened the vast archives of recorded performances in CCP and NCCA to make them accessible online so people in their homes can become virtual audiences, and find “escape” or “recreation” amid the stress of being cooped up indefinitely.
Art helps to enhance what is called the “narrative imagination”: it leads us to be intelligent readers of other people’s stories and to understand their emotions and wishes. Through art, we help sharpen our sensitivity to be hurt and to cry when people are suffering and are in pain, and to be happy when people are blessed with good fortune. This underscores our common humanity and the importance of the gift of life. We are able to transcend local loyalties and parochial concerns and to approach social problems as a responsive, caring “citizen of the society.”
There is a community pantry for the arts for those who care to feed the spirit. At the Cultural Center of the Philippines, we have opened the vast archives of recorded performances in CCP and NCCA to make them accessible online during these times so people in their homes can become virtual audiences, and find “escape” or “recreation” amid the stress of being cooped up indefinitely.
One such activity is Padayon, an online program that aims to inspire and instill appreciation for and love of arts and culture and inculcate a sense of understanding and pride in our distinctly Filipino heritage. This joint NCCA-CCP undertaking is airing via the NCCA Facebook daily at 3 to 4 p.m.
This program is part of the NCCA Hour, which features performing arts, visual arts, literary works, short features about our national artists and heroes, among others. Something highly visual, well-annotated by experts and appealing hosts, and briskly paced.
Let each day be a new film, a new painting, a new poem, a new song, a new play, or a new dance to nourish us. It is the arts that will save us and sustain as a people and as part of humanity.
Last May 28-30, CCP’s Office of the President presented “Pintig,” the biggest online Percussion Festival in the Philippines, as part of its Sining Sigla program, in partnership with the Percussive Arts Society Philippines, with over 30 percussionists and drummers gathered to give performances, talks and workshops — all streamed on the CCP Office of the President Facebook Page.
And watch also for the grand opening of the newly restored Met. It will feature a musical that everyone can watch online. Details to come soon.
So let each day be a new film, a new painting, a new poem, a new song, a new play, or a new dance to nourish us. It is the arts that will save us and sustain as a people and as part of humanity.
Through the arts let us, in the words of the writer William Saroyan, “not add to the misery and sorrow of the world but smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.” Come have your fill of the arts in our version of community pantry at the CCP and the NCCA.
Visit www.facebook.com/ccp.officeofthepresident for online events.