The Pinoy hipster

Last week, I had lunch at Maginhawa street in UP Teacher’s Village, drank at Cubao Expo, and read Pete Lacaba’s introduction to his late brother Eman’s poetry anthology “Salvaged Poems.” Three different experiences for sure, yet they are linked by concepts of national history, nostalgia, youth culture, urban cultural geography and activism. Let me explain. Eman Lacaba, like many of his generation, was a prominent activist in the underground movement against the Marcos dictatorship. And, yet, as his brother writes, people also “knew him as an award-winning poet and short story writer in English, a flower child who hung out at the hippie Indios Bravos Café, as an occultist who liked staying with the messianic sects on Mount Banahaw.” He thus had a dual identity as both a committed activist and a talented artist. To grasp this binary, ask a simple question like: where would Eman Lacaba have hung out in today’s Manila? Eman the hippie might gravitate to the Cubao Expo enclave, where counter-culture is represented by thrift shops, art galleries, and intimate soundscapes of a vibrant independent music scene. Eman the activist might frequent the Sikatuna Village/UP Teacher’s Village residential district where the country’s divided Left occupies a relatively coherent geographic space, all eating lunch on Maginhawa street (at different tables of course). I dare not open a debate about whether he would find his home in the HQ of the militant Bagong Alysansang Makabayan, the Akbayan Citzen’s Action Party’s or another organization’s. Eman Lacaba’s dual identity, however, is only dual in the language of today. From Pete’s introduction, one gleans the porosity of the line that divided “National Democratic” activism and youth counterculture – a line that is more clearly drawn today when not as many artsy burgis kids are willing to self-identify as tibak. Radical politics isn’t as cool as it was before. Not that the tension between coolness and activism is new. Certainly many in the Left during martial law saw Western hippie counter-culture as reeking of a “bourgeois” escapism reflected in the penchant for LSD and other efforts at “transcendence.” Not to mention that putting on the Led, tripping on Pepper, or turning orgasmic as Hendrix ripped into Dylan’s “All along the Watchtower” were manifestations of that old “evil” called neocolialism. Be that as it may, this was also the same counter-culture of the anti Vietnam war movement, the British “New Left” which saw hardened Trotskyites marching alongside Mick Jagger, and the French political orgy of 1968 that almost toppled de Gaulle’s government. And while John Lennon would castigate Maoists by declaring that “if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow,” Filipino Maoists could hardly pass him off as retrograde. He was too cool. Just like Eman Lacaba. That Eman Lacaba dedicated one of his poems to Jack Kerouac – the hipster progenitor whose “On the Road” serves as a blueprint for other meaningless attempts to render melodramatic the “alienation” of the privileged white male (i.e. Ben Stiller’s pretentious “Reality Bites”) – evinces his fascination with the quality that places one in “the know,” otherwise known as “hip.” Yet to label Lacaba “hipster” and other activists like him would be a disservice. Kerouac and other beat hipsters made a career out of pointlessness. “On the Road” is an homage to exploring social undercurrents (he does this through his forays into the American West) only to surface more clueless than before. The contemporary hipster cliché – a self-conscious blend of older countercultures from beatnik, hippie to punk – makes differentiating one’s self from the mainstream the pointless point of youthful subversion. Coolness without the revolutionary bite. Culturally subversive but politically unthreatening. The artsy Cubao without the militant anchor of UP Teacher’s Village. How could Lacaba be “hipster” if he died fighting a dictatorship? The secret of 1960s/1970s activism was its ability to channel youthful energies into political and social projects. An older academic friend of mine recalls that in those days he seamlessly floated from jazz gigs, to pot smoking sessions with Igorots, to poetry sessions, to anti-Marcos rallies. Another friend recalls that he “learned political radicalism from the Juan dela Cruz Band.” Despite this, these kids weren’t jokers. “Intensely committed and almost fanatically devoted individuals,” was how Marcos in his declaration of martial law described the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK), known then as the hipper counterpart of the militant Kabataang Makabayan. The organization, known to be “militant but groovy,” attracted painters, poets, writers, musicians, and artists. Cubao Expo types during a time of political upheaval. I have a personal nostalgia for SDK-type activism. But this might be because I’m pretentious enough to aspire towards both hipness and political radicalism. Alas, I am burgis, but I have a conscience attuned to class difference. Personal reflections aside, what are the potentials of today’s youth countercultures? “Can the hipster, by virtue of proximity if nothing else, be woken up?” asks n+1 editor Mark Greif in his cultural eulogy for New York Magazine “What was the hipster?” Not as first glance, he notes, because you “can’t expect political efflorescence from an anti-political group.” And yet within the meme of old countercultural tropes, one can find old kernels of radicalism. “Granted, they have been husked of significance—but couldn’t a 12-year-old with deep Google skills figure out what they originally meant?” Indeed. For that 12-year-old Filipino artistically inclined enough to find out more about Filipino poetry, I suggest he Google the name Eman Lacaba. Lisandro Claudio (“Leloy”) is a PhD Candidate at the School of Historical Studies, the University of Melbourne. He is also a lecturer (on leave) at the Department of History, Ateneo de Manila University.