CALL FOR SUBMITS! Paper Monster Press “Dream Pop Issue” (The Anniversary Issue!)

After setting the mood with the seductive flair of our “S/Trip-Hop Issue”, Paper Monster Press will now be leading you into a lovely afterglow with the “DREAM POP ISSUE.”

Melodies taking you on an out-of-body experience; rhythms wrapping you up in a blanket of spacious soundscapes; and voices resonating like an echo-laden remix of your favorite bedtime lullaby. Dream Pop is the kind of music that keeps you awake yet under the sheets in a trancelike state at any hour of the day. It is atmospheric and ethereal… And that is precisely what Paper Monster‘s fourth issue is all about.

If you can get an aural picture of Kevin Shields’ (My Bloody Valentine) indulgence for delayed and distorted guitar effects with Elizabeth Fraser’s (Cocteau Twins) or Hope Sandoval’s (Mazzy Star) sleepy-eyed vocals; and Anthony Gonzalez’ (M83) blurry and up-front synthesizer tones, then it’s quite easy to catch our drift.

Once again, we are calling all literary, visual and sound artists to give us their personal interpretations of DREAM POP in the form/s of:

• LITERARY ART: We accept poetry, literary essays, critical essays, microfiction, reviews of Paper Monster Press issues 1-3, and ekphrasis works.
• VISUAL ART: We accept new media art, installation art, abstract expressionism, lowbrow, graffiti, body art, pop art, photography etc. (any kind of visual art, basically).
• SOUND ART: We accept sounds that embody dream pop. Think spacious, ambient, steady, atmospheric, ethereal. 

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

1. All works must be submitted to papermonsterpress@yahoo.com.
2. Each contributor may submit 3 works ONLY from each category. That means you may submit 3 literary works, 3 artworks, and 3 musical pieces, but no more than that. This is to give space and a chance to others.
3. Submissions must be loosely/closely based on the dream pop genre of music.
4. The EIC’s laptop is Buddhist, so aside from attaching text submissions, kindly paste the contents of your piece to the body of your e-mail.
5. Submit literary pieces in English or Filipino. We do not have the capacity to read and/or translate foreign languages as well as local dialects at the moment. Works should not exceed500 words.
6. Submit artworks in JPEG format. We accept both colored and black or white art, but please be reminded that PMP will only have a colored cover, the rest of the zine will be in black and white.
7. Submit sounds in MP3 format.
8. If your piece is inspired by a dream pop artist/work, kindly state the artist/work from which your piece sprang from.
9. PMP religiously follows the process of selecting and editing. We stand by our editors’ decisions.
10. For updates, just check the Paper Monster Press Facebook page (www.facebook.com/papermonsterpress)

Deadline for this issue: JUNE 30, 2011

Ladies and gentlemen, let us now get ready to float in space…

The Planet in Orbit

An excerpt from my article on All Eyes On Saturn featured on Australian music site, Soundofthestage.com. (Band photo by Jesse Stack)

At the first glance of their profile picture, an array of female-fronted alternative acts came to mind─ Paramore, Flyleaf, Evanescence, and what have you. There is a stereotype that most bands with female leads just offer sex appeal and a mediocre sound. Thus, whenever a band categorizes itself as “experimental rock,” you expect to hear something far from classic pop sensibilities. You anticipate music that pushes the envelope. After reading the general description of AEOS’s music─ “a cross between the electronic/experimental feel of Radiohead, the infectious melodies of Dance Gavin Dance, with the moody element of Circa Survive”─ I was intrigued.

For the full article click HERE.

Worthless Beautiful

July 24, 12:20pm

Shit.

Ava felt powerless. She couldn’t control the gritting of her teeth as she tightly clasped Stephen’s hand in hers and blankly stared at the ceiling for a full six minutes. Speed. Though it was her regular dosage, she felt different. She was as still as a statue- solid and steady, without a blink of an eye. But, her mind was racing.

Stephen: How do you feel?

Ava: Not so good.

Ava was sick. For three days, her fever remained high. She would shiver and sweat bullets; spew and squeal out her pain. Stephen had a phobia for hospitals but he had no choice but to take her to one. After consulting more than five doctors, they became aware of the situation’s gravity. Their unborn child was abnormally positioned outside its womb, a problem that would cost them a fortune to fix. If the fetus grew any larger, it would burst Ava’s fallopian tube and make her bleed to death.

Stephen: We can get through this.

Ava: Please, just take me home…

Ava resorted to subtle thoughts of suicide. It was a state of depression no anti-depressant could take away. They didn’t expect the complicatedness of her condition neither could they afford it. They were junkies with no family or friends to help them. But Stephen kept hunting for a solution. Alternative medicines, superstitious regimens and whatnot. It was in this quest for a cure that he came across a gypsy and heeded to her advice. It was the easiest but evilest way out. In order for Ava to get better, they needed to sacrifice their child.

Stephen: What should we do?

Ava: What else can we do?

Ava felt hopeless. It was the most difficult decision of her life. They had no money, and she could no longer linger on the thought or else, in the literal sense, it would drive her crazy. Stephen informed the gypsy that they were willing to take the chance. She helped them set an appointment was with a witch doctor. In a week’s time, their problem would be easily erased. Yet they couldn’t help but feel uneasy.

Stephen: We can still change our minds.

Ava: No. Let’s do it.

Ava had to keep her mind vacant. Guilt, anxiety and dilemma could not be entertained. There was no turning back even though she could walk backwards and run away. The day came for the sacrifice to take place. Unlike the hospital visits, this time, Stephen wasn’t beside her. The gypsy warned him not to come along. The witch doctor forbade men in his shrine. This was a dubious regulation, but they were assured that everything would be safe, and that this was something different people did everyday.

Stephen: Will you be all right?

Ava: Relax. I’ll be fine.

Ava looked around with bewilderment. The gypsy led the way to the shrine, which was right behind a church. Ava was baffled at how the opposing themes of faith stood so closely together. Faith killers and faith healers. Upon reaching the place, the witch doctor gave Ava four seeds and a stone to swallow. It was the first act of the official ritual. The second one was to wait. After two hours, she could feel her insides expanding. Stephen, who was waiting at the church, was bearing the pain of agitation.

Stephen: Please God let her be okay…

Ava: Father, forgive me for I am about to sin.

Ava started to bleed. Subsequently, the shaman called her into his lair. He instructed her to undress and lie down on the floor. Someone was playing a voodoo drum, and she wondered whether it was a form of distraction or if it was part of the practice. The blood that came out from her was different¾ thick, dark and murky. She started to feel nauseous. As the ‘healer’ prepared his apparatus, he chanted a prayer in an unknown tongue. Ava closed her eyes.

Stephen: Please God let her be okay…

Ava: Dear Lord, please take the pain away.

Ava could not scream. The witch doctor had shoved his hands deep through her cervix into the realms of her uterus. His sharp, elegantly long yet soiled nails adding up to the excruciation. It was ear splitting, and Ava lay down in silence like a corpse. Smack could be of good use at this point. She kept her eyes shut. All she could feel was the shaman’s hands inside her, scraping out whatever was left of her child. Within twenty minutes, the procedure was over. She was told to get up. Blood was all over the floor. Ava, weak, pale and limping, put her clothes back on. The fetus was put in a jar. She didn’t have the guts to look at it. The deed was done. She felt like shit and needed to take one too.

Stephen: How did it go?

Ava: You don’t want to know.

Ava was Stephen’s queen. Their drug use was a setback, yet their affair was never like the dope fiend stories you saw in the movies where junkie love revolved around drugs. Whether stoned or sober, they always promised to spend the rest of their lives with each other. Ava would keep taking herbal remedies and remain bed-ridden for days. Stephen would go out of his way to take care of her until she became better. Depression was very prone to kick in at such a time. So Stephen kept making Ava happy to avoid moments of melancholy. They remained inseparable despite the countless rough patches that built their relationship, but this road to recovery was the coarsest.

Stephen: Let’s stay in love.

Ava: No matter what happens.

***

April 24, 6:30am

We were supposed to be a proper family now, but because of the improperness of the ones we grew up in, we had to harm your innocent soul. We take the blame as well. But we never meant to hurt you. They say selfishness is as worse as selflessness. We always dreamt of having you, but still, when you came around, we couldn’t even keep you. We didn’t even get the chance to give you a name. It was a wrongdoing, but I hope you don’t ever think that we didn’t love you. If you see your mother, please give her a kiss for me. I miss her terribly…

Balite Zine (March 2011)

* TY’s to Poch and Pao Angeles (The Bernadettes) for permission to use song title.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Paper Monster Press “S/Trip Hop Issue”

To begin Paper Monster Press‘s “MYOOZIK Year” with a bang, PMP is now officially welcoming contributions for its “S/TRIP HOP Issue“.

Trip hop is downtempo music, a blend of electronica and hip-hop with psychedelic and jazzy textures. The third (and sexiest) issue of Paper Monster aims to recreate, redefine, and record the lazy, sexy, cool ambiance of trip hop and jazz. We are inviting literary, visual and sound artists to contribute pieces that represent their personal interpretations of these music genres. Anyway you lay it down, we’ll take a look at it. To get your grooves on, you may listen to PMP’s favorite trip hop and jazz artists in the likes of Massive Attack, Portishead, Morcheeba, Mudville, Alpha, Tom Waits, Richie Havens and Digit-all love.

We’re into genre and trans-genre works. If your submission spans two to three genres, go for it. PMP likes blurring boundaries, but here’s what we generally look for:

• LITERARY ART: We want poetry, literary essays, critical essays, microfiction, reviews of Paper Monster Press issues 1 & 2, and ekphrasis works.
• VISUAL ART: We want new media art, installation art, abstract expressionism, lowbrow, graffiti, body art, pop art, photography etc. (any kind of visual art, basically).
• SOUND ART: We want sounds that embody trip hop and jazz. Think mystic, sexy, deep, psychedelic, acid funk, sensual, surreal. This will be the first edition of Paper Monster Press with a music CD.

Your piece may be a close conversation, a post-mortem, or a remake of a work from a group like Massive Attack, or a meditation on a lesser-known work like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (Richie Havens). That said, the rest is up to you. Surprise us, weave up something that we’ve never seen before, make us love trip hop and jazz more, and we’ll likely publish your piece.

GENERAL GUIDELINES:

1. All works must be submitted to papermonsterpress@yahoo.com.
2. Each contributor may submit 3 works ONLY from each category. That means you may submit 3 literary works, 3 artworks, and 3 musical pieces, but no more than that. This is to give space and a chance to others.
3. Submissions must be loosely/closely based on the trip hop and jazz genres of music.
4. The EIC’s laptop is Buddhist, so aside from attaching text submissions, kindly paste the contents of your piece to the body of your e-mail.
5. Submit literary pieces in English or Filipino. We do not have the capacity to read and/or translate foreign languages as well as local dialects at the moment. Works should not exceed 500 words (Paper Monster Press is TINY!).
6. Submit artworks in JPEG format. We accept both colored and black or white art, but please be reminded that PMP will only have a colored cover, the rest of the zine will be in black and white.
7. Submit sounds in MP3 format.
8. If your piece is inspired by a trip-hop/jazz artist/work, kindly state the artist/work from which your piece sprang from.
9. PMP religiously follows the process of selecting and editing. In the instance that major revisions were made to an entry, the sub-editor will inform the contributor of such changes. However, if a contributor remains dissatisfied with the edited piece, the EIC may decline the entry to avoid any conflicts. We stand by our editors’ decisions. Please, don’t feel bad if your work wasn’t selected for an issue. There’s going to be lots more of Paper Monster Press in the future.
10. For updates, just check the Paper Monster Press Facebook page (www.facebook.com/papermonsterpress)

Deadline for this issue: APRIL 10, 2011.

Please feel free to share this with everybody!

The Editors

PAPER MONSTER PRESS

The Sound of The Silents

An excerpt from my article on The Silents featured on Australian music site, Soundofthestage.com. (Band photo by Florence Keeley)

… Having been able to share the stage with acts such as the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Mess Hall, and You Am I among others, The Silents is a band that’s certainly one for the books. In more ways than one, they’re reviving and perhaps, reinventing psychedelia by incorporating the raw foundation of garage rock with jangly riffs layered by reverbs, distortions and phasers, along with blending and chanting vocals. They provide brooding avant-garde sound without compromising their roots. It’s anything other than silence.

For the full article click HERE.

New Age Nomad

Fervently inspired by truths of freedom, faith and failure
Obscurity is this man’s challenge
Right is wrong, right is left
Time, on his watch, flies in the stillest manner

Heaven is not his anticipated horizon
Eternally he will hope for the same steady hands and strong feet
Jaded by the sight of stars and streetlights
Observantly, he is engulfed by their similar luminosities

Under them, he sees homes of bridges and rivers
Riveted by dreams of yesterday’s hopes and promises
Naivety embraces him in new places
Engrossing him in visions of more adventure and luck

Yes, he is indifferent of intricate paths
More so, in his numerous quests, he aims to move on
Anxiously, he sets his mind to the peak of peaks
Now and never shall he be impeded by sunsets

Paper Monster Press
Issue 2
December 2010

* New Age Nomad is an acronym poem. The first letter of every line forms its alternative title.

Our Tiny Literary Frankenstein

Paper Monster Press was first conceptualized as a literary pamphlet that would bring poetry to a wider range of audiences. Of course, the question of why and how arises. Why poetry when the whole publishing world is inundated with it? What exactly is meant by “a wider range of audiences”? Who still reads poetry?

Years ago, I read a biography of Vachel Lindsay (author of The Congo), and it told how he wrote down personal poems on sheets of paper and tried to sell them to people for 20 cents each. He was never able to make a lot out of it, but just the experience of “selling poetry” fired him, and he kept writing charged by that experience. In a way, yes, Paper Monster is like that.

I still have stacks of Issue 1 stashed at home (proof of poetry’s unsaleability?), but with each person who patronizes it by purchasing an issue, promising to buy one, or just by reading a friend’s copy, my hearts grow with gratitude. Most of the time, I find it hard to believe that people will buy or read poetry, and that many still do. We are thankful, thankful that there is still some place for art in our lives.

- Ainne Frances dela Cruz
(Editor-in-Chief, Paper Monster Press)

** To our amazement, the second issue of Paper Monster sold like… hotcakes (in a unique flavor, that is). We are very much open to any kind of support the interested public may offer (financial, in particular). Do join us as we begin to create Issue 3 this March. Support the small press!

Vulnerability in a Leather Jacket

While trying to forget a melee between to-dos and whatnot, I find myself stumped in a bookstore, spaced out with a 33⅓ issue on the Ramones. Suddenly, the word “punk” resonated in my head like some goony fuzztone clatter…

“Punk…” The term is centralized on one thing—an anarchic spirit—which led me to realize how almost-perfect it is for the following pieces you may or may not read. Punk’s art lays in the rejection of elaboration. If this is the way you will appreciate these selections, I somehow have nothing more specific to tell you.

Lowbrow free verses and open-ended dialectics. You may liken these writers and their works to something commonplace or underground. Nevertheless, I’d describe them the way Marlon Brando was called ‘The Original Punk’— “cool without oppressing the audience with too much sharpness, powerful without having to be invulnerable.” In other words, a good collective image of “vulnerability in a leather jacket.”

* Above is an introduction to the English pieces contained in Espasyo Zine, which was launched last July 17, 2010 in celebration of Espasyo Siningdikato creatiVenue’s 1st anniversary. The issue comes with a poetry CD at Php 100 ($2.50). Copies ares still available. If interested in one, kindly leave a comment.

Your Sober Memory

No, I didn’t let it slip
I still remember
Yes, it shall all come to pass
But I still remember
Though I am intoxicated
Though I am inebriated
Though I am smashed
I write, I think, I focus
Then I try to forget

“I don’t have the passion anymore
So remember…
It’s better to burn out than to fade away”

When Harrison was stabbed,
He chanted a “Hare Krishna”
When Hendrix flew high,
He excused himself to kiss the sky
When Lennon took the bullet,
He left the world to let it be
When Cobain ended his set,
He begged for peace, love and empathy

Yet, when Dylan had no direction home,
He simply said, “I’m not sleepy so please…
Play a song for me…”

 

Espasyo Zine
July 2010

Give Me Some Space

In the spirit of Arts Month, this is a repost of a personal note from Facebook dated July, 1, 2010.

It was two years ago, a weekday, around 3am by the gutter of 70′s Bistro. After a two-hour discussion (litany, rather) on how experimental music is more of a tradition than a genre… That was when I first heard the words “Espasyo Siningdikato”, almost in passing. I barely gave it much thought (little did I know that within a year, those two words would be equivalent to “second home”).

As of today, Espasyo Siningdikato is known as that quaint local art gallery situated in an exceptionally unusual place. Its surroundings consist of vacant lots, delivery trucks’ parking area, a vulcanizing shop, an Iglesia ni Cristo residence, and a hardware store. Obviously, it’s the only place of “color” amidst the rusty ambiance. I’d suggest going beyond the graffiti-ed exterior. (To borrow the words of GSS, “It’s a Neverland.”)

On some days, you can find… A naked guy in the middle of an art exhibit… Some calm-looking sound artists extravagantly killing your ears… A couple of punks raving and creating a sandstorm… Some ladies chanting in black hooded capes… A few merrymakers perched outside drinking till the cows come home… Someone sweeping, sleeping or rolling on the floor… A couple of kids messing around with paint or clay… Some officious-looking guys cooking up a veggie meal or washing the dishes… And the list flows into a sea of endless curios.

No, it isn’t a madhouse (or at some point, maybe it is). All Espasyo has aimed for is to prove that art can survive on its own during these times when art has become more of a trade industry than a form of expression. It isn’t run by the opulent or some sort of government fund, yet it has successfully gone from exhibit to exhibit, workshop to workshop, event to event… Mostly for the price of nothing. Just like you and I, it struggles to pay the bills and put food on the table. All the same, it’s still there, steadfast and unyielding; the red, black and white signage clear and intact.

For us who frequent the place, we owe a lot more than what we have consumed from it over the past year in terms of food, water, shelter, and electricity. Within that span of time, we have become evermore indebted to “Space” for the prodigious passion it has been able to instill within us, and the priceless friendships it has created for us.

I’m not one to ballyhoo for most things and persons, but nothing compares to the effort Espasyo and the people behind it have given to uplift local art. Now, I pass on this note like the plastic bottle of a donation box you can find at the gallery during an event. And I may choose to end this with the same old battle cry (in the tone of some United Nations campaign): “Please continue support your local art scene. Help us keep Espasyo alive.”

Nevetheless, I’d rather conclude with a traditional Lirio Salvador-an celebratory greeting …

Happy New Year, ES!