The writer Marra PL. Lanot, recently departed, and her friend, National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin, long passed, can be said to have belonged to a mutual admiration society in which they admitted their imperfections, with each staunchly defending the other’s humanity before the world.
Such was his esteem for her that he wrote the introduction to two of her books (“Dream Sketches” and “Déjà vu and Other Essays”), describing her in one as a “nosey profiler” who was extending the boundaries of the journalistic profile and in the other as the progeny of two geniuses: her father Serafin Lanot in poetry and her mother Gloria Licad in music.
But the most comprehensive description of Marra, her upbringing and more can be found in her autobiographical poem “My Other Self,” dedicated to her mother, who was her first piano teacher. In it both personal and social histories converge to create a portrait of her growing up from the mid-20th century and coming of age in the turbulent ’70s and ’80s. It also discloses her deep feminist leanings as she surfaces her own mother’s silenced story.
It begins thus:
My mother left with a thousand goodbyes.
Memorizing my face, looking deep into my eyes,
With her clear eyes, she would retrace
Her youth, how her Papang used to wake her up at dawn
In order to play the piano, and then, pray,
Eat breakfast, and then, play with her siblings,
And then, practice again. She wanted to be a doctor,
But the nuns in her school said she should major in piano
Because, they told her father, she had talent.
Looking back, my mother thought maybe it was
Her Papang’s way of keeping her home.
Mama was attracted to Papa’s knowledge of music and more,
She saw adventure, daring, rebellion, courage,
Which reminded her of how she climbed the wall
Of her dormitory at night and escaped the watchful
Eyes of the nuns just to walk around Ermita
With her interna roommates and bring home
Food, which was not allowed in the bedroom.
She would go out on dates with her would-be husband
To the silence of the cemetery, where they could talk,
With a chaperone in tow.
Until they eloped, also with a chaperone!
And ends with:
Mama taught me when to be tender
And when to be tough,
When to use scorching words
And when to wear icy silence,
How to serve my family
And how to be independent and strong,
She wanted me to reach for the stars
With my feet planted on the ground.
In many ways, we were different,
Though in many ways she’s also my other self.
She also taught me not to expect too much
So as not to be disappointed.
She was preparing me with a thousand little kisses
For the time she would leave…
Now, I have become my mother.
Tender and tough
Those qualities of tenderness and toughness were what writer Paulynn Sicam, on the phone with CoverStory from Sydney where she is now based, remembers of Marra: “She was soft-spoken, gentle, but can frankly speak out her thoughts.”
Sicam said that when she heard of Marra’s illness and eventual heart attack on Aug. 16, she took the news calmly. But she was weeping when she recalled how Marra surprised her by handing her a gift at the joint birthday celebration of the July-born members of the informal group called Women Writers in Media Now (or Women).
“Marra gave me a crocheted, previously loved skirt, something precious from her own closet,” Sicam said. “She didn’t have to give anything, but she did, and that spoke of her thoughtfulness.”
Sicam also remembered how Lanot, who was editor of the monthly Philippines Graphic Reader, would act like a talent scout, hunting down poems of her Women confreres that they’d post on Facebook, and encouraging them to submit these to her magazine. That was how Sicam herself, Neni Sta. Romana-Cruz and Ceres P. Doyo, who are more known for their journalism, found their poems and short stories in print.
During the Women members’ reunion lunches or meriendas, they doted on the frail-looking Marra and her just as fragile-looking husband Jose “Pete” Lacaba, an honorary member of the group. They’d take care of fetching the couple from their Quezon City home and bringing them back.
Sicam surmised that Marra might have been so focused on her magazine job and on caring for Pete that she ignored her own health. “Marra gave her all to Pete,” she said. “We love them both.”
Another friend and fellow writer, Nini Gaviola, credited Marra for strengthening her morale when she was diagnosed with cancer and started treatment for it.
Gaviola said, “She was one of those who would say, ‘Kaya mo ’yan (you can bear it)’ and ‘It’s good you have kept your sense of humor.’ I always greeted her both on her birthday on March 17 and on Elvis Presley’s birthday on January 8. My husband Danny (Dalena, the painter) calls her Ms. Elvis—that’s the politically correct way.”
Of Presley, Marra had written many essays. In “Goodbye to the King,” she tried to objectively appraise her idol: “Perhaps nobody really cared what Elvis was mouthing. We were simply carried away by the rock beat and by the simple melodies. Maybe his words were dirty, yet. And corny even. But a sense of humor seeps in…and the feeling with which he delivers negates any sensuality.”
Mind, heart, ear
That was another of Marra’s strengths—her ability to review books, plays, musicals, and films apart from crafting profiles—“nosey,” Nick Joaquin described them—of celebrated people from movie stars to politicians to activists.
CoverStory executive editor Rosario A. Garcellano recalled Marra’s articles for the fortnightly magazine Celebrity that flourished in the late ’70s and early ’80s—submissions, she said, that were “unerringly targeted at mind and heart.”
“Marra engaged in long interviews with such subjects as the then just-blossoming actress Chanda Romero, a school dropout who pushed the limits, loved till it hurt, even learned photography on which she hoped to also make a living,” Garcellano said, trying to retrieve the extraordinary details, including Romero’s Dad naming her after an Indian goddess of love, from memory.
“There was also a piece on Freddie Aguilar and his immortal ‘Anak,’ which, Marra wrote, ‘speaks to fathers and sons’ and ‘touches you and me,’” Garcellano said.
Marra was once a jogger, Garcellano recalled. In “The Marathon Maidens,” about the runners Josefina Bonzo and Rosalinda Catulong, the Philippine representatives to the Fourth Avon Ladies International Marathon in San Francisco in June 1982, Marra began with: “Running with the wind is breathing in the sunset and the sea. Far from an act of dying, except perhaps for the groaning and gasping at the end of a 4.2-kilometer race, it is meeting the dawn and one’s soul. It is life itself.”
“It seemed like,” Garcellano said, “Marra was ever mindful of Baudelaire’s injunction to ‘always be a poet, even in prose.’”
On top of everything else, Marra was facile in speaking and writing in Spanish. Said the writer Chit Roces-Santos: “Marra and I usually saw each other at socials and other not-exactly-happy occasions—book launches, art exhibits, and, yes, wakes. We always eagerly sought each other for warm exchanges—in Spanish—welcoming a rare opportunity to practice a language we knew better in our youth as students in Spain. The encounter was our way of touching base and catching up. The language became our bond as we reminisced and shared memories although we were in Spain at different times.”
Roces-Santos added, “It always amazed me how Marra still sounded native to the language after all those years. Perhaps, poets, like singers, share that special ear for capturing sounds from wherever and making them their own.”
Marra’s poetry collections are in English, Filipino and Spanish. Some are still in print: “Witch’s Dance” and “Cadena de Amor.” Among her oft-performed, even by street artists in rallies and protest marches, is her “Babae Kami (We Are Women).” It partly runs:
Babae kami
Hindi makinang
Lalaruin, huhubaran,
Bibihisan, ikukulong
Sa kuna o ididispley
Sa eskaparate.
‘Mother Marra’
This feminism is what drew anthropologist and former radio-TV producer Anna Leah Sarabia to Marra.
“I called her ‘Mother Marra’ because in the early ’80s, when some of us women in the arts needed firm but gentle guidance, she took us forward with clear acts, not just words. Like the decision to compile the pioneering women’s anthologies ‘Filipina 1’ and ‘Filipina 2,’ from which Marra and Fe Panaligan thought up the group Women,” Sarabia said.
She continued: “A couple of years later, visibly incensed when she saw how most members of the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) tended to push aside the voices and feminist opinions of CAP women, Marra proposed the formation of the CAP Women’s Desk. Lino Brocka and Behn Cervantes supported it. As did Maria Montelibano, Fe Mangahas, Babeth Lolarga, Adul de Leon. We spent the morning after the CAP general assembly (held at the National Press Club) planning our first steps.”
Sarabia said that in 1985, when she first convened the team that would produce the first feminist radio program “Womanwatch,” “Marra was the first to agree that it was time.”
The team would occasionally proceed to Marra’s house after the Wednesday-morning broadcast at the Radyo ng Bayan studios “because her mother always served us breakfast rolls and beverages,” Sarabia said, adding:
“Marra was in charge of selecting the literary pieces that would be read during the show, making sure that poetry would always be part of our first feminist media ventures. Most people knew Marra as a writer, poet, editor and translator. In my mind, she was a soft-spoken feminist organizer, bringing women of contrasting tempers together at meetings in her home, and in her own graceful way, conducting us towards resolutions we were not always comfortable with but which we followed, anyway, because the ‘mother’ said so.”
Visual artist Imelda Cajipe-Endaya recalled the many moments she and Marra spent together in the anti-dictatorship movement. “I was painting about the condition of woman isolated by wife/motherly roles,” the artist said. “In ‘Sa Plantsahan ni Marra (On the Ironing Board of Marra),’ I appropriated a Greek goddess. I Filipinized by dressing her in baro’t saya and patadyong. She herself becomes a piece of furniture and housework implement. Marra’s poem ‘Babae Kami’ succinctly articulates the protest.”
Marra became the literary arts coordinator at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. “I helped her organize a project where women poets and visual artists inspired each other’s work,” Cajipe-Endaya said. “We showed them at the third-floor hallways. Myself, I was just producing art that flowed from my subconscious. But Marra was resolute. She impressed me with her activist poetry. Our friendship meant encouraging each other creatively.”
Fictionist Susan Lara, who worked with Marra in judging the winners of the yearly Graphic/Nick Joaquin Literary Awards, said, “Marra has always struck me as a gentle soul, shy even.”
Lara added: “She never sought public attention; in fact, she shied away from it, even during her own event, as in the launching of her trilingual poetry collection “Poesias Completas En Lengua Española.” As member of the panel of judges of the Nick Joaquin Literary Awards, Marra always allowed her co-judges to reveal their choices first before disclosing her own. Fortunately, hers almost always matched ours, so there was hardly any nasty quarrel. In the most recent judging for both short stories and poetry, our co-judge Wendell Capili and I had identical choices, so Marra became the tie-breaker. She was never belligerent, never argumentative. But oh, when she wrote poetry! That’s where all the passion went.”
And Lara cited “the last stanza of my all-time favorite, ‘Ina (Mother)’”:
Sa kaunting init ng ulo,
sa malaswang galak,
sa sukdulang kamalasan,
sa silakbo ng damdamin,
bakit ako ang minumura,
ako na ina ng mga ina
at ng mga ama at diyos-diyosan?
Bakit, paano sa labi ng musmos
naging p*ta ang ina?
Paano, bakit sa dila ng mundo
palaging p*ta ang ina?
Marra’s prose and poetry will outlive her. Her latest anthologized essay is included in Vibal Publishing’s collection “How I Became a Writer 2: Essays by Filipino Writers,” edited by Cecilia Manguerra-Brainard, to be launched on Sept. 12 at 5 p.m. at the Vibal booth, Manila International Book Fair, SMX Convention Center Manila.
In one of her works, Marra looked back on “the study room that served as a library and music room. I would read while listening to classical records on vinyl played on a hi-fi turntable. My father bought the records in the early ’50s in the United States—baroque music, Beethoven symphonies 1–9, Brahms, Chopin Waltzes and Etudes, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Strauss, Marian Anderson, Wagner, Verdi, etc. We watched up close the best performers of that time at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera House.”
It wasn’t until she became a teenager that she was exposed to “poetry, biographies and autobiographies, philosophies, mythology, and detective stories, Hardy Boys and Earl Stanley Gardner,” she wrote. “I devoured mysteries and comic books such as “Brenda Starr” and “Supergirl.” And then came the Tagalog komiks—Mars Ravelo and Pablo S. Gomez.”
She confessed that she “was no child prodigy, just an ordinary little girl who was awed by the singing of musical instruments and by opera sets and lighting. These were drama and dream reality” more than the printed page. CS
Marra PL. Lanot will be remembered with music and words at a necrological program planned in September.
