Bisaya Short Films Message for Lav Diaz of Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis

Dear Lav Diaz:

Remember how it feels when you're eating three pieces of Siomai sa Tisa and 3 Puso and you still want another puso, but to your dismay, there's no more Puso to sell? That's how I feel after sitting for eight hours to finish your Hele Sa Hiwagang Hagpis. But how will you remember this when you probably haven't tried our Siomai Sa Tisa here in Cebu because you're probably vegetarian or haven't been in Tisa? 

Which means you should be here to try Siomai sa Tisa and do a film about how Tisa has a Siomai Festival and examine the celebration of Cebuanos on the fact that we eat pork, which is a byproduct of a mass slaughter of pigs, a nationwide act of murder on the weaker species, which I believe has also been a subject in your other movies that I also unwaveringly respect/love/am awed by: "Norte, The End of History", From Kung Saan Ang Noon, and "Butterflies Have No Memories".

Anyway, I have a list of thoughts that came to being before/during/after watching your 8-hour-long Berlin International Film Festival Awards winner Hele Sa Hiwagang Hapis (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery) that you sure could help me answer for the sake of The Nationhood that you implied in the Star Cinema Bloggers' Press Conference to be something that cultural workers like you, me, Bonifacio and Rizal should be responsible for:

1. Do you think that the existence of dark matter and black holes is the source of all the things that we label "evil/man's cruelty "? And what is the point of fighting when Death is always here anyway?

2. There's this book called Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and it transformed me in a way that since the last time I read it (3 months ago), it's hard to say if I still have a suffering. I got through every potential threat of suffering by exerting the "Watch The Thinker" mindfulness approach, and also by exercising leveled-up effort of unlabelling the triggers that otherwise would've meant tears, heartache, emotional ache, attachment to suffering that would go compel me to grab the next Fast Food or Lechon Kawali or Fleeting Pleasure-Giver to augment the situation.

Which means: the module in the book, which involves ego- and time-detachment astoundingly works for me. Do you think Oryang and the rest of the sufferers who want to kill for pleasure would be free from their suffering if they knew how to employ The Power of Now? 

And what if the Filipinos that you consider are suffering, are actually not, and we are actually insulting those who are in pain by making up an entire epic of their suffering, and they might be actually happy because they unknowingly already employ The Power of Now approach that sustains them with unlimited happiness from "within"? 

And if all the characters do find a way out of the misery through Power of Now and there will be no more cheating partners, no murderers and no rapists, do you agree with me when I say that all our Cinema will then have just to be about events that celebrate Life Minus Suffering, in which there will still be calm suffering-free death perfectly presented in the intro scene in Kristin Wiig's Hateship Loveship but there will be less crying, less drama and more stoic acting perfected by the normal behaviour of cats?

And do you think the entire humanity's obsession with cats through Cat Youtube Videos is because we highly look up to cats because they seem to have figured out the Google Keyword to type to know how to get to the highest consciousness that frees one from (the appearance of) suffering?

3. I interpret the use of 8 hours of Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis as an entrepreneurial risk-taking that ended up working to its favor because it (accidentally) worked and the World Society's reception of it personified by Meryll Streep's appreciation is proof of success, and the Cinematic Gene Pool benefits for it. There's more of this analysis in Nicholson Taleb's Antifragility. Have you read it? There's a concept in the book about Convexity of Benefits, and your Hele fit in the context.

You took risks, and so you may have lost some energy and if you fit in the graph it will be a downward slope, and you took more risks and those little risks cost you and put you even in downward slope, but then later on, the risk worked to your favor because you received the funding/attention/supplies you need for your goal, and therefore the benefits went up, and if you graph this, it would be in the "Upside Down Mountain" Convex Shape. In the book, sustainable with high chances of survival entities/structures have to employ Convex-Shaped risks. Do you agree?

4. I've been reading Albert Camus. All your movies (that I saw) resonate everything that I think he's been all about, which was to embrace our own truths, to contradict ourselves all the time because that's the only way one can live in a life run by an indifferent universe and that means killing is both permissable and forbidden.

5. Other than the "You Can't Please Everyone" Cop-out Answer, what else can you say to those who say that you want your audience to suffer with your long self-indulgent egoistic amateur movies, knowing that I disagree with them because almost every frame in your Hele Sa Hiwagang Hagpis (A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery) is so beautiful, I catch myself aroused, whispering "Oh my god", as if I'm looking at the immaculate 26-year-old body of my ex-girlfriend naked before me in bed?