Turkish Cafe in Ulm

It was me and two friends,

D and L, who are also partners.

At a table outside of a Turkish cafe in Ulm.

A sunny Saturday afternoon in August.

Ideally I would have visited them more often.

Knowing they plan to return home to the Philippines in a year or two.

Ulm, after all, is just an hour away by train from Stuttgart.

But alas, I haven’t.

At our age, weekends get easily filled and the weeks go by quickly.

Especially for people like us three who cram multiple hobbies into these two precious days of the week.

D, apparently, had partnered with her sisters in the Philippines to start a calamari food stall.

That explains why she hadn’t been sharing new artworks on Instagram these past few weeks…

I don’t think I’ve seen much from L on my feed lately either,
turns out he’d uninstalled all his social media apps so he could focus more on his many side projects too, good for him.

Sipping on our Turkish tea and savoring our sweet tiny baklavas, L posited that Filipinos are, in general, generalists in nature.

In contrast to Europeans who tend to be more of specialists.

This came about as we were discussing how Filipinos haven’t really been able to champion in any industry.

The notion piqued my interest, I hadn’t made such generalization myself before.. It also felt a little incongruent to reality at first.

But just like my two friends, I never simply reject an idea but rather am usually curious enough to explore it.

“Your suggestion fits the three of us. But I don’t think I’ve met many Filipino generalists…” I began.

“Or maybe I just haven’t labelled it that way. If everyone was a generalist, why label it, anyway?

In fact, meeting a truly Filipino specialist may be more uncommon and thus would stand out more…”

L took an anthropological approach to defend his theory.
He had been reading Harari’s Sapiens, we were just talking about it moments earlier.

“In our small tribes, ages ago, every person must have had to take on more than one cap.
Whoever was available and had zeal — do the deed.
So each person had to learn multiple skills.
I don’t think we were assigned very strict roles…”

There was, however, no way of proving this hypothesis. Pre-colonial history in the Philippines had mostly been lost or erased.

Nonetheless I took a similar approach to explore the topic further.

“In my imagination, we as a people simply encounter more changes in shorter spans of time.
Be it a terrible typhoon, earthquake, or volcanic eruption destroying all of our community.
Or a neighboring tribe ravaging us.
Or resources in one area running out forcing us to relocate…”

“What I’m getting at,” I continued, “is that if our whole lives are destined to completely change within our lifetime anyways, why invest in building up something long-term and permanent? Why specialize in one thing?”

This didn’t sound convincing to them. So I added,

“In comparison to Europe — or at least this part of Europe,” I gestured around me to indicate Germany, “it doesn’t seem to have a very volatile environment.
Sure, there are seasons — something we don’t have in the Philippines — but this too comes and goes in a predictable way.

So there’s more incentive to stay in one place for longer. Build something up, expand, and get more people to specialize.”

“It goes back to Filipinos being more adaptable as a people,” D interjected.

Earlier she had already suggested that that is our most exportable quality. We, as a people, are the export. OFWs, overseas Filipino workers. We are the industry, an industry of human capital that can adapt to any environment. And who may be, more naturally inclined to move around and explore anyway.

Now this to me was uncontroversial. It’s true — OFWs are our country’s biggest export, and economic asset. And the three of us belong to that.

“It would be better though, if those talents have stayed within our country to develop something,” L had added into that topic.

“And the export should be some kind of intellectual property, not human labor…” I said, with a hint of self pity.

“The reason I think, why we can’t develop in one field, is that we, Filipinos, are generally, generalists in nature…”

—

We have finished up our tea and baklavas but it was still some time before the movie we were waiting for so we continued chatting.

No one was gonna throw us out of a cafe, not here in Germany.

“So you’re focusing on business for now?” I asked D.

“Yea, I thought we (referring to herself and L) should build a foundation in the next 10 years or so, so we could have more freedom later on, I hope, to go back to our hobbies — and give those the attention they deserve.”

“… We really need to plan our return to the Philippines very well. We don’t want to regret the decision…” L later on added. I could tell from his tone that he’s still going back and forth on their decision to move.

I assured them that in case things don’t work out as they expected it to be in the Philippines, that they would still be able to find opportunities abroad. It’s not like that door closes once they go back home now.

“It all comes down to,” I continued, “how do you want to be spending your lives, and which place will allow you to do that…

“It seems to me, that you would like to work on four things: your profession, your hobbies, your own business, and I assume later on, your own family… And I agree that would be more doable in the Philippines.

“I, one the other hand, have decided that I’ll focus on two things for now. My office job, and my creative work.
That’s all I have the time and energy for.
Later on, once I’ve put out all I’ve been wanting to put out, then perhaps I’ll replace my creative work with business — or even family.
But right now, it’s just those two things. And I feel like Germany allows me to have a good enough balance between those two things.”

L later on joked that D could take on the business and family while he gets to do technical and creative work.

“That’s the dream, isn’t it… to be able to play my music on the streets without any care about money…”

That’s when I asked him, “Do tell me, L, what is it that you want to translate from your life into your music?“

He gave it a moment of thought and answered, “Just emotions.”

“Okay, any emotion? Complicated emotions, I suppose…”

“Yeah.”

I wish I had probed further.
For example, what emotion?
What kind of experience would have evoked that emotion?
And how for example are you turning this one emotion into music?

Instead I returned to D and told her that I go back to her artworks every now and then on Instagram.
Just to look at them and appreciate, like a museum.

I asked them if they display their works proudly at home. They do. And they should, I said.

“But I wonder,” I asked D, “how do you want your audience to interact with your work…
I ask because unlike music, people can’t play your drawings, you can’t perform it for us, we can’t sing along to it…

“You could sell them, of course, and still have digital copies of it on your online gallery, but then the physical thing is no longer yours… You could exhibit it in different places, like some kind of a tour… You could print it out on merchandise… What is it for you?”

It seemed like she had never pondered this question before, they made me clarify and re-clarify my question until they finally got it.
“I dunno, I think I just wanted to put what I see onto paper, through colors. Make a record of it, I guess… using my hands.
I really want to do something with my hands…”

That last sentiment was something we all understood, as we only get to use our hands now for typing and clicking.

“I know you’re busy right now with business but I’m also looking forward to new artworks from you someday.
I just have this strong urge lately to support my friends’ art or music, knowing now how hard it is…”

“But I also hope,” I added, “to see more art from you that’s purely coming from your head.
Or a message that you want to say, that is conveyed through an artwork — a scene or something.”

L commented on this, “I also think that when it comes to visual arts, the goal is to come up with a unique visual language that can be used again and again in different ways.”

We agreed, but also in our minds knew that creating a new style isn’t easy. And that it’s perfectly valid to just want to tell your stories using styles that have already been established.

—

The baklavas and teas were all gone by that point and our movie was starting very soon so we decided to get up and start walking to the theater, which was just across the street.

On the way to the theater we passed by a sign of a Vivaldi concerto in the city.

“This should be the dream,” I told L. “To have your own concerto, wouldn’t it?”

“For sure…” he replied.

“But you would never want to play other people’s music though, I guess?” I asked.
“I never could see the point of that. If I’m gonna play, I wanna play my own stories.”

He agreed.

“But then I guess performing the classics is their way of preserving culture and history, and feeling connected to this long tradition.”

We nodded in agreement as we entered the movie theater.