The Making of Reaching Destination a.k.a the true story and spread the word!

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Nerisa shares her Story

“It was a process of faith that relied heavily on friendships and God. I had friends but I had no PA or manager. Ibang klase ang pagka-indie ko; it’s a running joke. I’d say, “Indi ko alam pero ginawa ko pa rin.” From fetching artists, buying food, to coordinating with the artists, the publishing house, the press, the pressing and packaging plant, the launch space. It hadn’t been done before, this book and CD.”

From REGARDING DESTINATIONS
Luis Katigbak, Pulp Magazine
November 2004

The search for Home begins with a point of departure and ends with a destination.
In between, there are poems.
Reaching Destination is a collection of poetry I had written from 1994 to 2004. It’s all about waiting for the one word that will lead me to the one line that will bring me back Home.
This Project is not a coming home (that word will come) but a showing of where i had been and where i am going. It is a slide show in words and music. And I have been places, been with people and have crossed some borders. Like this border between music and poetry.
I wanted so much to unite with the music and artists I so loved.
Reaching Destination is this union. It is my poetry set to music and voice. Everyone involved, I spent beautiful time with and we celebrated our friendship with the combination of poetry, voice and music.
This is the first poetry book set to music by top alternative artists in the Philippines.
Let us celebrate Destinations and the hope of getting There.

Regarding Destination : An e-nter view with Pulp’s Luis Katigbak

1. How did the whole project come about? How did you
first come up with the idea, and how did you gather
collaborators?
Nerisa says!
After I wrote "Closing the Sky" in 1996, I thought, "Hey, I hear music in this." Not music TO this (reggae playing in the background and my poem read out loud). I thought, "I want this to be a song someday."
But, hey, fresh out of med, fresh into creative writing, it was just a whim.
Then when I threw myself out into the Night in 1997, I met so many madmen and madwomen mad for life and I knew that the World had given me a way to make that whim possible. But not just yet.
May 15, 2003, left with myself again, I went to rehearsals at Grace Nono's studio and meekly said, "I want to make a cd." Grace didn't even blink. She gave this huge Destiny smile, led me to her office after rehearsals and took a pencil, scribbled on some scratch paper all the steps I needed to do. Then she said, "Go, Neri."
I think the project had so much to do with answering the question, Why are you Here, you crazy girl?
Having had so many lives, (med student, creative writing student, teacher, dancer and who knows what else...) I needed to make sense of the journey to Here. So was the whim just a whim or part of a Destiny bigger than myself? I am Here, after all.
I did not need to gather collaborators. Those first few months in 2003, I took 50 poems I had written the last ten years with me to all my gigs. Even to my gig in North Korea where I met Peking Opera Tenor Henry Tong. Before the set, hanging out, I'd say,"hey, would you like to have a look at this?"
So whoever connected with the energy of the poem arranged and recorded the poem as song. And every track was an answer to that question. So the World answered me 14 times.

2. What were the processes -- creative and logistical
-- involved in publishing and launching a book/CD?
Generally, how did you work with the musicians and how
did you pitch/produce the project?
Ibang klase ang pagka-indie ko. Its a running joke. I'd say,"Indi ko alam pero ginawa ko pa rin."
The reason why I had my 50 poems at hand all the time, even during gigs, was because that same May day I promised myself I would finish my M.A. and have a book published by 2004.
(Ambitious, you might say. But hey, left to myself again for the nth time in my life, I thought putting myself to work was better than sitting, crying and being depressed about being alone again. Let's just say, it had to take these many projects to forget about being alone.
Yes, Luis, heart-broken lang ako. Babaw no pero ang daming nangyari dahil sa kababawan, hehe don't print this)
I put upon myself a deadly time table. I needed to FOCUS. It was a domino set that I was playing with, you see. If I didn't finish my M.A., I wouldn't be able to have a book published (I didn't have money to publish independently, a University press needed academic affirmation.) and I wouldn't launch the cd without the book and vise versa.
I proposed this project to NCCA. Proposal was denied. I had my salary every month and used it to pay for everything I needed to pay for. Grace had always said, be professional. These artists were not only my friends, they were fellow artists that needed to eat and create comfortably. It was a shared respect.
I finished my M.A. late January, we finished recording late June, Bob Aves mixed the tracks June, Zach mastered the tracks July, Teta Tulay and I began and finished layout of the book by late July, Teta Tulay and Datu Arellano worked on the CD layout all of August. We launched August 31, 2004 at Conspiracy! All this while teaching nearly 400 students at UST. Whew!
Did I think that all this was possible? Yes.
Did I think it was going to happen as envisioned? No. But it happened, didn't it. Waaahooo.
3. What were the processes -- creative and logistical
-- involved in publishing and launching a book/CD?
Generally, how did you work with the musicians and how
did you pitch/produce the project?
It was a process of faith that relied heavily on friendships and God.
I had friends but I had no P.A. or manager. Indie. Indie. Indie. From fetching artists, buying food, coordinating with the artists, the publishing house, the press, the pressing and packaging plant, the launch space.
It hadn't been done before, this book and cd.
All the way around, I guess, we just trusted each others’ capacity to create and manage.
I didn't even know that the term for me was PRODUCER till later on. I still get wide-eyed thinking I PRODUCED a CD.
Every poem was chosen, not assigned to each artist. They chose the poems because the poems had an energy which they, too, had experienced.
By making the poem into song, the artists dealt with their own personal experiences with loss, love, separation, isolation and hope. So this project is both mine and theirs.

4. Any particluarly rewarding or amusing experiences
on the way to creating and launching "Reaching
Destination"? Would you like to share anything about
particular songs/poems?
Usually, ang mga reactions ng mga artists ay "wow naman. ang bigat ng tula mo. I was depressed for two days...."
Oo nga naman. The poems were sad, always yearning, honestly and quietly just there...
Oh wow. This was both a learning and a rewarding experience. School of Art and Life Management and all of that!
*I was going to drop Dear Land Lady from the book and three AM on a Saturday Barbie called and said that was the poem she had connected with and put the phone near the piano and played the song. I didn't drop the poem after that.
*Mr. Tong, an eighty year old tenor, and I met up for The 22nd April Spring Friendship Festival in Pyongyang, North Korea in the summer. On our way to Pyongyang, we had a stop over at Shanghai and in a hotel restaurant there, I listened to the sad sound of the erhu and was able to write the poem Shanghai Love. It was Mr Tong's talk of war and lovers never returning that curled around that sad music. Mr. Tong loved it and translated it into mandarin and wanted to make it into a song. I took him up on his promise a month after and waited for him to come to the studio and record. Weeks passed and the "mood" that Mr. Tong had waited to come, didn't come. So I thought, "Hey let's just record you reading the translation and we have an erhu master come and jam with you." He agreed. I fetched him from Binondo, brought him to the studio, and when he stepped into the studio he said, "this place is so familiar. im in the mood. do you have paper?" He wrote the melody in less than an hour, they practiced for another hour and we recorded it immediately. I was floored by that miracle. I was totally floored. (Mr. Tong died in his sleep three months after re-cording the track. I think he is in the Peking Opera in the sky.)
*Badjao thought of the Kalinga chants Session Road and Baguio Poem on his 6 hour bus ride from Baguio to Manila just a few hours before recording.
*Jenny Carino made the melody of Sacred Mountain in 10 minutes.
*Aia de Leon of Imago combined 3 poems and made her haunting track End to the Full Moon. She always thought out of the box and she challenged herself and came up with this lounge beauty.
*Gabby Malvar I had met through Barbie. I had never heard him play. He wanted to come on the project and I agreed. I trusted our energy. Now we have Between Walls, a solo piano track with his daughter on soprano.
*Carol Bello woke her brother up that morning to play guitar for the recording of the track Acid. He came in so frazzeled and surprised but played beautifully anyway.

* We recorded all of Acid 42's tracks on Lionel Valdelleon’s bed.
5. Were all the poems used in the CD originally
written as poems, or were any of them written with
collaborators or song structures in mind?
Yes. The were poems before they were songs. They'd won Palancas and University awards. These things were first on notebooks and napkins. The song structures came from each artists’ personal take on the poem. Revisions on arrangements were nil.
6. Who performed during the CD launch (and what did they
perform?) What are your impressions of that night?
The perfomances happened in order of the track list. except for 27 and Beinte Siete which we the last ones read.
3 artists were not around to perform. aia of imago which I and my co-dancer Louanne Kalipayan danced instead. Mr. Henry Tong was in Shanghai so Thomasian Writers Guild member Tim Nubla spoke the track. And Dwight Gaston couldn't make it so Professor and poet Ralph Semino Galan performed the Hiligaynon translation of 27.
That night, I felt like I was in the eye of the storm. I was moving about taking care of artist needs like drink stubs and food stubs and should have been dead tired before the launch started but I wasn't
People were asking me, aren't you nervous? I'd say, no because this is what I do. this is what I am about. I had never been more sure of these lines.
7. Any thoughts or impressions or realizations you
would like to share about "Reaching Destination," now
that it's out in the world?
We journey. Sometimes we make it to a Destination. Sometimes we don't. The thing is we have to try to get There.
I never realized that this was a big deal till it was a big deal. The project started on a whim. Am just glad that I celebrated with friends.

8. What's next for you? :)
Another book. Another journey. Another destination till I find the one word that will lead me to the one line that will lead me back Home.



Nerisa, she travels with her eyes closed and her heart open.

She is called many things; mermaid, diwata, mad woman. She smiles at those descriptions knowing each one of us contains the same magic to be just that. She is basically a traveler in search of other travelers.

Nerisa del Carmen Guevara was a medicine student once at the University of Sto. Tomas. Was a graduate of B.S. Biology once in the same Univeristy in1993. Was Thomasian Poet of the Year once, with a record breaking grand slam of first second and third places in the USTETIKA in 1995. Was an Amelia Lapena Awardee for Poetry once in 1996 and then in 1997. Was a Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awardee for Poetry in English once in 1999. She finished her Master of Arts Major in Creative Writing this April, 2004 at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

She was an apprentice pangalay dancer of the Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa Alun-alun Dance Circle.

She has performed with Grace Nono, Joey Ayala, Cynthia Alexander and Pinikpikan.

She has produced her first book and CD of songs called REACHING DESTINATION, Poems and the Search for Home. The Book and CD project ran against Gary Valenciano’s Soulful and was the only one to receive a Special Citation for Best Secular Album in the 27th Catholic Mass Media Awards.

She is looking forward to being eighty, art-less, just an armrest for a child.


In Praise of REACHING DESTINATION

“… this exemplary project brings together tremendous creative juices from Baguio to Paranaque, from Silay to Quezon City… Nerisa, what have you pulled off? More than fision woman. Fission! Must be the times. O why are we so blessed? By such terrific divas?

Alfred Yuson
“A Bevy of Divas”
Arts and Culture, The Philippine Star
October 25, 2004

“We could explore new metaphysical territories with Nerisa del Carmen Guevara’s Reaching Destination… something fresh to the ears, at last.

Igan D’Bayan
“Cosmic Chopsuey”
Audiosyncrasy. The Philippine Star
November 12, 2004

“The CD is richly layered. This is the sound of your generation! An organizational feat as well.”

Grace Nono
Cultural Icon, Musician
Executive Producer, Tao Records

“Guevara may have intended to write her poetry small. But within the limits of memory, she provides, and shares with the reader an entire world where yesterday is lived and living, and where one can bask in the mellow air of the then experienced now.”

Ma. Nicole Pauline C. Cruz
“Memory in Small Things”
Literary, The Varsitarian
September 28, 2004

“Nerisa del Carmen Guevara has fashioned her own mythology in her first book of poetry, Reaching Destination.”

Cirilo F. Bautista
“Queries and Books”
Breaking Signs, Philippine Panorama
October 24,2004