I am many, indeed. But I didn’t know I was this many!
- Rock Band Musician – flails recklessly on stage, breaks guitars and snaps strings, whips hair left and right and up and down, screams bloody murder on the pickup measures, finds himself cut, bruised, sore, deaf, dehydrated, by the end of the night; and loves every fleeting second.
- Composer Musician – alone, in the room, with a guitar, a microphone, a mouse, and a keyboard, in the dark, huddled in front of the glow of a computer, under headphones, meditation in a series of blips, bleeps, clicks, cuts.
- Marketeer – “How many people see this ad? Why was this ad effective? Who was the creative behind this campaign? How can we get more eyeballs on this? Who is the target demographic? Would they care about this? Who are the competitors? Can I see the SOW? What is the CPM on this? The CPA? Do we have an in-house SME? Can I get this by EOD?”
- Web Developer – HTML. XML. DHTML. FTP. SSH. TLS. CSS. PHP. SQL. AJAX. POP. IMAP. RSS. ASP. NET. OMG.
- My Father’s Son – Do I remember the Philippines? I haven’t been there many times, but it’s definitely left its impression on me. The humidity, the start of rainy season, the mega-mall in Manila, bootlegged software in the open-air market, Pinoy rock bands like Wolfgang and Parokya ny Edgar, the smell of the beach at Lingayen, my grandfather’s graveyard surrounded by tropical flora and fauna. Would I like to go back? Of course I would. Someday.
- Gamer – Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start. Know your roots.
- Scholar – I don’t think we’re going to get another age of Modernism, unfortunately. As far as prose goes, James Joyce really drove the point home with Ulysses and as far as poetry is concerned, T.S. Eliot covered a lot of ground. The thing is, neo-classicism is seen as dead, outdated, and by and large, irrelevant. With many of the average population having developed a surprisingly (and unintentionally) sophisticated grasp of the post-modern, no matter how much speculation goes into the pontification, the age of post-modernism is effectively dead, outdated, irrelevant. So what is the next era we can expect? I think with the extreme democratization of information, Mark Amerika has some pretty good ideas. I’m going to place my bets on his theories.
- Hopeless Romantic – I once wrote a love-letter to no one. It was an open letter, with no signature or contact information, written knowing that the letter would find its way into a stranger’s hands. It was worded to make that stranger who received it feel beautiful. It would let them know that the writer was sure they are a person more complex than that of first glance. It would let that stranger know that a cursory sighting was enough to make the writer feel like there was such a thing as an unadulterated thing as beauty. That there is a form of beauty, and that the form could be seen through somebody walking down the street. That this is enough to make someone’s day. I took this letter with me one day to the library, in an unmarked envelope. Walking back to my car, I saw a very pretty girl. She sneezed. It was high-pitched, it was adorable, it made her lose her balance a little. I walked up behind her and said, “excuse me, you dropped this.” I handed her the letter. And I got into my car, and I drove away.
- Friend – Life, love, work, play: I always listen to what you have to say; come on over, we’ll crack open a beer and talk about your day.
- Enemy – I will treat you like family until you stab me in the back. And then, I disappear from your radar. I can’t forgive you if you can’t ever find me. Sure you can call and email, but I won’t reply. Have a nice life.
I always thought it was A, B, select, start.