PARADOXICAL

Misadventures of a Hesitant Contest Judge

(My funny and exasperating adventure as a judge of assorted contests)

For a few number of times, I ran into the 'misfortune' of being asked to judge in a contest. I have been a judge of a poster-making tilt, cutest baby, tourism brochure-making match, poetry contest, songwriting competition, and even cook-off (note the effort I made in looking for synonyms). The organizers could not have chosen a worse person for these tasks.

First of all, even though I love words and I am a writer by profession, I don't have the luxury of time to do poems and much less read through them in rapid succession. Although I can appreciate a poem and I have had sophomoric attempts at writing poems, poetry for me is something best made and appreciated in the quietude of isolation and retreat, much like meditating on the day's gospel readings. I would much prefer to read and write essays--and save for moments of mental block, I can do so at the drop of a hat, so I guess I wasn't cut out to be a poet.

And while I love music of all kinds, I have never attempted to create music of my own. I have no experience waking up from a dream hearing beautiful melodies or writing a song or composing a tune.

I am also into art and art appreciation, but I cringe at the idea of calling myself an artist, knowing there are so many out there who actually live and breathe art, whose bread and butter is art.

As for cooking, I am oftentimes a disaster in the kitchen, but I do appreciate the finer things in life like a perfectly cooked dish, be it in private kitchens or in restaurants.

So to judge these things I am not even good at, or I am not the proper authority in, is a laughable idea to me. Writers, for one, are like doctors -- they too have specializations.

Secondly, while I love reading top 10 lists of anything, I am someone who hates the mere idea of ranking artworks of any kind. I understand that the whole point of judging is to uphold certain standards -- in fact, the highest standards. But in cases where the parameters or set of criteria are too general for comfort, like the most popular ones on TV ("Britain's Got Talent," "American Idol," etc.)? Sorry, but no go.

...For how can anyone choose between apples and oranges? In the case of competitions involving poems and songs of all sorts, I feel so uncomfortable with the very idea of pitting, say, a haiku against a full-blown epic poem, or preferring a rap music composition to a mere jingle, say, or a ballad. The whole idea is crazy to me! Judging in this context will twist me mentally, philosophically into a pretzel.

But even with much sulking, I did judge the poems and songs anyway, and for this task to work, I forced myself to relish each piece, be it a poem or a song, so that I could find each of their merits, wherever those may be hiding.

True enough, in case of the poem entries, while being extremely pressed for time, I had to read -- carefully -- through not 10, not 20, and not even 30, but a grand total of 95 poems! It was a crazy time managing my emotions while calm-and-collectedly appreciating each work.

There were very short poems, there were longish poems, there were indeed haikus, a couple of sonnets, and what have you's. There were poems I understood easily and there were poems that I had to read repeatedly to make sense of them until I went crazy. There were works that emerged to catch my attention, works that made me shed a tear or two, and works that offended me in many ways: due to pointlessness, incoherence, inaccuracy, ungrammaticality, faulty word choice, faulty punctuation marks, etc. Many entries are quite prosaic, too direct, too literal -- all anathema to art and literature and most especially to poetry. One verged laughably on being an essay masquerading as a poem because of the arrangement of text.

Most works are predictably a paean or "praise release" for our town in general and for the current dispensation -- which is well-deserved, just to be clear. So the entries that caught my attention the most are those that that did it nicely anyway and those that went to another direction by taking up other less expected subjects and themes or those that went for other surprising angles while dealing with the same pedestrian theme.

Among those that are different, at least one poem focused solely on native delicacies, another chose to highlight a local school, another one dwelt on a recent viral controversy, and another turned the spotlight on a giant statue. A favorite is a poem giving a rundown of the town's barangays -- who could have thought? Too bad it didn't deliver as a whole.

Aside from paeans, there was a pledge, there's the usual acrostic type, which is, to be frank, corny, and there was a billet doux (love letter).

Never have I once imagined that these unnoticed everyday subjects would be the focus of poems in this town someday. Apart from the town of Bayambang per se, there are pieces that include an historical sweep, a focus on a significant episode now called SingKapital, the town's lady mayor, the Christmas display called Paskuhan sa Bayambang, the much-overlooked Agno River, and even the LGU's development projects -- who would have thought?

These works are thus unprecedented in that they are the very first ones, to my knowledge, to honor and memorialize in verse the town in this manner when having a dismissive 'small-town' attitude toward it is a lot easier and in fact has been normalized since its founding.

Collected together, these poems are unanimous in their praise of the speedy changes that the town has been going through, matching the unprecedented development of the town since 1614.

"As Bayambang Breathes" captured my attention the most because it trains the spotlight on the typical day in the life of the town in such a skillful way, a unique strategy among the submissions.

As for the song entries, it's the same dilemma all over again. I had to contend with comparing advertisement jingles with ballads, anthems with folk music, and so on.

The cutest baby contest is, as you can imagine, the most challenging to be in, because all babies are, of course, inherently cute.

(N.B.: Don't get me wrong. I fully support these competitions that promote artists and creators of all kinds. And I must credit the creative dynamo behind these endeavors who has been relentless in pushing for this kind of competitions as part of the annual Tourism Week/Month celebrations. Were it not for his conduct of the three Anlong poetry competitions under his wing, the hidden talents that exist right under our noses would have remained hidden forever. I likewise thank our leader-benefactors for giving the greenlight and approving the funding to worthy endeavors such as this. Furthermore, judging is not a walk in the park, so I am thankful for anyone willing to say yes to invites. And being invited is indirectly an irresistible honor -- who doesn't want it?)

But having said all these, please don't repeat the same mistake of asking me to judge anything with such a broad scope -- and in rush mode too. Understand that it is pure torture to me. I don't know how esteemed judges survive the ordeal, but I am especially distressed whenever I find a piece of work to be singularly worthy of acclamation only to see it lose because I don't share the aesthetic philosophy or professional views of fellow judges, or that the work belongs to another realm of interpretation or mode of appreciation. I have a soft spot for 'losers', especially for uniquely but unconventionally talented underdogs losing out to pros like what I have repeatedly witnessed in "American Idol," "Tawag ng Tanghalan," and other singing competitions. (I don't know why I still watch these shows whenever I can despite the sure heartbreak they'd bring of watching wonderful talents feeling like they were also-rans just because they didn't win the first prize.)

Another thing is that all art is subjective, so I fully expect other judges to have judgments entirely different from the ones I hold. Which was exactly what happened in some contests in which I was a judge: the impasse created by different judges choosing surprisingly different set of winners had to be resolved on the spot in creative ways, or else the contest would be one big fail. And if I have learned anything from the history of art... art is like fashion. To potentially misquote Oscar Wilde, "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." In other words, man's definition of art, poetry, literature, beauty is simply unreliable, even whimsical, so who am I judge? Get someone like Simon Cowell instead, please.

posted by Resty Odon  # 6:53 PM