Friday, May 27, 2005
AWE-INSPIRED
Two creative demi-gods from our network's pantheon dropped by to share their divine wisdom with some lucky bastards from Manila. Being relatively lucky (and quite a bastard), I got to work with them on a....um...special project. Shhhh.
One of them stayed behind for a couple of days more to give a little talk and show us some of his work. He's a very pleasant, friendly guy from Singapore, and I (along with fellow blogger Canis Lupus) didn't mind helping him put up his work on the mini theater's walls. He unrolled the large, crumpled sheet of brown paper that contained his print ads and posters.
Some of them, I've seen before.
In magazines and books that featured advertising. Or, more accurately, magazines and books that featured only advertisments that are at least finalists of one international award-giving body or another.
I felt like a wanna-be impressionist painter who wandered into a gallery and ended up offering to help an artist put up his paintings of ballerinas up for an exhibit. One of the paintings turn out to be La Classe de Danse. And the artist is actually Edgar Degas.
Obviously, I was stunned. And rightly so.
I had the idea the guy was great. I didn't know he was fucking legendary.
When we finished pinning the materials up, I stood in the middle of the theater to watch the creativity leaping off the walls. Truth be told, in pure envy, I had cussed at the ones I had seen before. In about the same way that I cussed at the ones that I had just seen that day.
Fuck.
Before he flew back to Singapore, he declared that anyone of us could be better than him. That, who knows, maybe some day, he'd end up working for me.
Honestly? I do hope he's right about that.
Until that day comes, I'm content with knowing that I got to work with a master of his caliber.
And that, one afternoon, we got to share a plate of sizzling sisig.
