Marks on a page

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You can choose to listen to this blogpost.

A little while ago, the mother of two of my students passed away. She was still quite young and while I’d only met her briefly, I experienced her passing as a personal loss. Maybe it was because of the care with which she introduced her children to their piano teacher, perhaps it was because I recognised a similar feeling when we talked about the fragility of life and how we really cannot dictate how long or how short life will be. Perhaps it’s because where she was, still resonates with her presence.

I think about her as I think about the workshop I gave for TakeAway when I was in Rotterdam last week. I went there in connection with TakeAway’s theme for the year which is The Slow Influencer, and for this I brought along a collection of letters sent to me and my siblings during the time that our father worked in Yemen.

I think about connections, about presence and about what’s left behind. My father passed away in 2016, but I can still hear the sound of his voice echoing from these pages. In some ways, it’s as if he is still here.

During the workshop, I asked those present when was the last time they’d received a handwritten letter.

“Does a postcard count?” Someone asked.

In this age where you can send and receive a message without having to make a trip to the post office, hardly anyone posts a handwritten letter anymore.

“Because writing on your phone is convenient,” someone says. “If you make a mistake, you can just erase it. With a letter, it’s different.”

There is also a difference between how one writes a message sent by phone and a handwritten letter. As one of those present says: “On the phone, I tend to use text language or emojis. But now that I am writing a letter, I’m more conscious of what I write.”

Writing a letter by hand is a physical thing. We feel the page under our hand, we hold the pen between our fingers, we shape the words. We lean forward into the page. It takes a little more effort. Maybe you choose a specific letter paper. Perhaps you want to include colourful pictures, perhaps you want to write with a certain script. Afterwards, there is the effort of purchasing an envelope and bringing it away to the post office.

When we pause and reflect on it, we recognise how a letter contains more than the words. We recognise the letter writer who bends their thought to the words they will use, the shape and form of their handwriting and the stories we see in the kind of marks on the page.

I am writing a letter to you, the marks say. My thought, my entire being is bent towards the writing of these thoughts and when I send this letter to you, it carries the energy I put into the writing of it.

I’m sure the mother of my students left letters for her own children. Marks on a page, like affirmations speaking of presence even after we are no longer on this planet.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and maraming salamat for stopping by.

(Image of a collection of letters.)

Musical adventures:Pipe organ with Birds

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You can choose to listen to this blogpost. The snippet which I talk about is at the end of this blogpost.

Today, I’m sharing a small audio snippet of a music experiment. For this experiment, I used a recording of birdsong layered with an excerpt from Bach’s small prelude in F which I recorded on the Van Dam Pipe Organ. I quite liked the ensuing effect which makes it seem as if the Pipe Organ is outdoors, with the faint hum of traffic in the background ( wooded areas in the Netherlands are never really all that far from traffic).

On one of my recorded practice sessions, there was a meeting going on in church while I was playing the organ. I found the murmur of voices in the background to be an interesting effect, but it’s not something I would share as the conversation is decipherable. I do like this impression from the recording where we become conscious of the world in which the music is taking place. Perhaps a recording in a market space would be interesting to layer under or on top of a piece. I shall have to venture out on a market day to see what I can capture.

I tried to explain to my organ teacher how when I am writing, I am thinking about more things than words. I am thinking of sound and light, of images and movement and how I have been thinking of composing something that will reflect the world I see and hear in my head. I’m not very good at talking spontaneously about my work, so it came out a bit garbled. But I do want to try and see if I can create something that reflects the sound tapestry of the world I’m currently working on.

On King’s Day, we attended a concert given by my organ teacher. These organ concerts were launched two years ago with the intention of generating funds for the upkeep of the monumental Van Dam organ. Seated in the church, I found myself thinking of the birds, of cathedrals, of sound, of the ways in which we move through time, and through the world.

Sometime ago, I had this brief conversation with my son where we talked about FOMO (fear of missing out) which seems like a spirit that haunts this age. As if we will miss out on something if we are not perpetually visible online or present at gatherings or in chats. To not be in motion or to not be seen seems to bring about a kind of restless anxiety.

I thought about this more deeply and came to the conclusion that there is no need to rush, no need for this anxiety. Even when having a cancer diagnosis means there is no guarantee of how long or short life might be, there’s no need to rush anything. I thought to myself: it’s the same for everyone actually. Just that people with a life-threatening diagnosis experience this awareness more keenly than people who don’t have one.

Perhaps one of the most valuable things I have learned from the work I do is the importance of intention and intentionality. It makes a huge difference in how I step out to meet life. I think of what appointments I make and why I choose to make them.

I suppose this is also why I am enjoying Bach so much. There is a lot of intention and thought in Bach’s work and every note feels like it has a purpose. It’s not just there to be pretty, it’s been set with intention. The challenge for the musician becomes: how do I interpret and bring out that intention.

It’s like life. We can choose how we want to live it. We can choose to retreat, to focus only on ourselves, but we can choose to step out intentionally. We can choose not to close our eyes to what’s going on. We can choose to join our voices and our strength. We can choose to advocate for a better world, for better circumstances, for each of us to be and to do better.

On that note, I’m leaving this small bit of audio from my experimentation of mixing Bach on the pipe organ with birdsong from the park in our neighbourhood. I hope you enjoy listening to it. Until next time, blessings and peace and Maraming Salamat for dropping by.

Excerpt from Bach’s small prelude in F with birdsong

Moving Love Premiere

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It’s a happy thing to note that Moving Love will be on exhibit in Amsterdam during WorldPride 2026. I’m not yet sure how much I can share about this just yet but suffice to say, I’m really happy that we were able to find a location that’s accessible to lots of people and also a space that’s friendly to the community of LGBTQ+ asylumseekers.

This week, Moving Love is going into Premiere. Kudos to Vera Born of ImpactMakers (Moving Love producer) for finding a wonderful location for this premiere at the Utrecht Schouwburg. Tickets to this event are free, so click on the link and get yours. It will be great to see support for these young filmmakers.

There’s also more news on the bookmaking front as we are approaching Refugee Welcome Week and the writers from the Queer Work letter writing workshop will be on programme as we share the work that’s been done in relation to this collection of different letters gathered together in a book titled: A Letter Full of Love to An Unknown Person. We’re headed towards the final meeting together with this group of young writers, but the wonderful Sajad Salmanpour just shared with us that we’ve been granted a wonderful festive space where we can hold the launch of this collection of letters during World Pride.

I had been planning to post an update to this blog earlier, but I came down with the flu. So, It’s a good thing I got the flu at a time when most people were out on the school holiday. I had time to rest and recover and didn’t have to cancel a lot of appointments.

I did manage to make practice day on the Van Dam pipe organ in the town of Haastrecht. I recorded some bits from my practice there and am thinking of an interesting way to share them. In the meantime, I’m glad I’ve recovered enough to write a proper entry about Moving Love’s premiere. If you are in The Netherlands and have the time and opportunity to visit the Utrecht Schouwburg on the 7th of May, it would be great to see you there.

Warbles, Barbles and A surprised Bunny

/ RCRuiz

I’m somewhat taken aback to realise that it’s been a little more than a month since I last updated this blog. It’s quite cliche, but things do tend to happen at the same time and a period of intense events just converged and swallowed up the days as we moved through the phases of rounding up and preparing for the premiere of Moving Love. Then, of course, we had the season of Lent and Easter, and I found myself saying Yes when I was asked if I would be up for supporting the alto’s of the local church choir (cantorij).

I think of language again and find myself rather more attracted to the Dutch word for church choir which is cantorij. I have the idea that there must be some other translation for cantorij. Choir translates to koor, but cantorij reminds me of the word cantor which makes me think of chants and somehow this is more in line with the repertoire used in traditional Dutch Reformed churches. (Church chanters? Chanters of sacred songs?)

With all these things going on, we still managed to make time for the acquisition of an older Eminent organ which I now use for at home practice. I read somewhere that in order to learn a new skill, one must count an hour for every year of one’s life and then multiply that by two if one is an older person. This means I will need more than a hundred hours to become somewhat fluent at pedal work. I still have a lot of hours to go, but I am looking forward to discovering what the hundredth hour will bring. I have to say that I am gaining more balance on the organ seat and am sliding off a lot less than I used to.

Where we live, one can hear the birds quite early in the day and so I’ve started a practice of going out for a short walk just as the sky lightens up into the blue. It’s so fascinating to be walking under the cover of trees and I find myself trying to puzzle through the warbling and the fluting that goes on in that birdling chorus. (Is it louder when a car swooshes by?)

This morning, I was holding out my phone in an attempt to capture some birdsong when I saw a small creature running headlong towards me. At first I thought it was little fluffy dog, but as it came closer, I saw that it was a bunny. It was quite a startling surprise for both of us, and I swear I could see the bunny thinking to itself: “Whoops. Human creature.”

It did this movement that I can only describe as a screech-stop before it hopped around and run away in the opposite direction.

I walked for a little bit until I came to what’s called a HeemTuin–something of local ecological garden with a small reserve for wild waterbirds and other kinds of local wildlife.

The benches were still quite damp with dew, but I managed to find a small spot on a bench facing towards the sun. I closed my eyes and listened to the birds, and felt the light against my eyes and for a while it was like being enclosed within a sacred cathedral. In some other world, here would be trees curving towards one another. I felt myself held fast in that beautiful light that embraces all of the world.

I’m very glad for these kinds of spaces and for hours that feel sacred in a world where there hardly seems to be time for anything sacred anymore.

I reflect on what is sacred as I contemplate the rise of generative AI and how quick people are to embrace it.

There is a tendency to excuse the use of it, even when we know its origins, even after we have been told how these tools have been built in an exploitative manner. We say: I just wanted to make this piece of art in just this way.

We forget that the beauty of making lies in how we collaborate and work together with other makers. It lies in the give and take between musicians and text writers, between a screenwriter and a film-maker, between a novelist and their editor and all the other people in-between who enrich not just the work, but enrich us as human beings. The beauty of making isn’t just about the product or the end-result. It’s about discovery and joyful surprise when the unexpected happens.

I was talking about this with someone who works in IT, expressing my feelings about generative AI and his reply to me was quite straight to the point. “If you are wondering why the work comes out sounding European or Western, it’s because the technology was developed in the West. It’s only logical that this technology is skewed towards that kind of sound or that kind of way of formulating things.”

It was something that set me to thinking even as people tell me that “we have to accept that this and that kind of work will soon be obsolete.” (The this and that kind of work often refers to work done by editors or translators or copy editors or writers or songwriters. Like gosh…it covers everything. Soon being human will be obsolete too.)

Other lines I keep hearing: “You just don’t understand how it works.” and “It’s inevitable.”

And maybe that’s true. Maybe in time, a machine will be able to think independently and convey nuance in ways I never imagined…but I still will rage.

I write this thinking about indigeneity and indigenous ways of being. I write thinking about intentions and intentionality. When I sit down to write, I don’t choose words thinking I want to sound like so and so. Whether I am writing or making a piece of art or thinking about which registers to use when I’m practicing on the organ, I am thinking of what I want to convey. I choose my sound with intention, I choose my palette of words and colour with care. I learn from the mistakes I make and often discover that what my son told me at the start of my art-making journey is true: there are no mistakes. There are only happy accidents. Often it’s these happy accidents that enrich us. We learn by failing. We become richer as we forgive ourselves for failing (the forgiving part is a lot harder than it sounds, btw.)

On Sunday, the preacher at the church asked us “what is art?”. And I realised that we need to answer that more clearly and with much more intention in this age when a lot of art, music and literature is being generated by AI. We need to ask ourselves what makes art valuable to us and why do we engage in it? Why do we invest time and effort in it? Why do we value it?

Reading back, I realise that this isn’t a neat and tidy entry. It hops and springs and warbles about. Like birdsong interspersed by the honking of geese and the barking of dogs and the white noise of wheels somewhere in the distance. It’s a fluffy bunny running pell-mell towards something until it realises the shape looming up ahead is a human.

I’ll post this anyway, because it is just like life.

(Some birdsong from this morning’s walk.)

Musical Adventures: In search of sound

/ RCRuiz

(If you prefer, you can listen to the audio recording of this post. It’s a 6 minute listen.)

I’ll be having my third organ lesson soon, and I realise that it won’t be long before I need an instrument with at least twenty-seven foot pedals to practice on when I’m at home. My organ teacher, B. K., recommended that I make a visit to Stolk Orgels, the place where he’d bought his own organ. 

So, we made the trip to Stolk; an establishment that boasts quite a reasonable collection of new and occasion organs. 

B.K. had told me that he doesn’t like the Hauptwerk organ because it’s actually a computer. 

There was a Hauptwerk organ in Stolk, and after the showroom organist had shown us a selection from their stock of new organs, he showed us what a Hauptwerk organ can do and why it’s become quite popular. 

It was interesting to learn that you can programme a Hauptwerk to sound like the any famous pipe organ you fancy. So, you can pick anything from the organ in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk to the Notre-Dame de Valerie in Switzerland. 

The showroom organist told us that he’d recently had a Hauptwerk organ made to spec and it was a source of continuing frustration. When the computer works, it’s great, but when the computer breaks down, it’s a drama. (I’m sure there are people who love this kind of organ, but I quickly realised it wasn’t for me.)

I also didn’t dare to ask how much these things cost new because by the time we headed into the occasion section, it was pretty clear that even a secondhand organ was going to be a pricey investment. 

We listened to the organist as he played on a Johannus organ which is one of the best known brands in the world of organs. It has a clear and robust sound and I suppose this is one of the reasons why it’s so well-liked. We also listened to the Content organ which has a warmer, more romantic sound. 

I can’t help thinking about the time I went in search of a piano. 

Granted, my Grotrian Steinweg has been refurbished, but when I heard it for the first time, I felt something in my insides. Something that said: this is the one. 

My piano tuner says that old pianos have this warmth about their sound that you don’t get in modern pianos. Maybe a Fazioli would have it. As I’ve never played on one, I wouldn’t know. I once played on an older Bechstein and the feelings I had for that piano are similar for the feelings I have for my Grotrian. Maybe I just love the sound of instruments that carry some sort of history with them. 

I didn’t have this feeling with the organs we saw in the main showroom. There wasn’t this moment of wowness and ‘I am in love’.

So, I asked the organist/showroom person, if he’d ever heard of Eminent organs. Jan used to work for Eminent and he once put together an organ which was given a place in his mother’s bedroom. The funny thing is, no one played the organ in that house and except for the few moments when the grandkids were allowed to play around with the thing, we hardly ever saw or heard it. Still, I was curious if the name Eminent organs meant something to the organist who was showing us around. 

Eminent organs are Dutch-made organs. There’s an entire history about the company on the Eminent website, but the showroom specialist told us that they’ve fallen behind in terms of commercial viability. A trivia thing, which may or may not be true, was that there were two people left building these organs at the mother company. It made me a bit sad to hear this. 

“It just so happens that I have a beautiful Eminent in the back,” the organist told us. 

He led us to the backroom and showed us an organ with a beautiful honey oak cabinet. It had real wood levers, it had something like 6 or 8 woofers (I don’t remember the exact number) and it had come from the home of an 80-year old man who could no longer see well enough to play the organ. It was magnificent. 

As we stood there in awe, the organist took his seat at the organ, pulled out registers and started to play. 

Sound. 

I remember falling in love with the sound of a pipe organ being played in the belly of an old Dutch church. There’s nothing like it really. It sounds and resounds all around you and for a while, it feels as if you are part of this gigantic resonance. You are inside this instrument and when you open your mouth and sing, your voice joins with the voices coming from those pipes. 

Of course, house organs can’t possibly compare, but the sound this organ produced captured my imagination. It was like golden light, clear and warm wrapping itself around the listener. For a while, I was spellbound. I wanted to sit at this instrument, I wanted to press its keys, I wanted to be embraced in its sound. 

Alas, this organ was too large. (It was also way beyond my budget) 

Practicality overrules the desire to own a thing. I have seen and heard a beautiful and enchanting thing. It doesn’t mean I have to own it.

Friday’s event for Queer History Month

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On Friday, I attended IHLIA‘s programme for the sixth edition of Queer History Month. The first part was taken up by a keynote speech (in Dutch), and a panel (in Dutch) which included the keynote speaker and the curator overseeing an exposition for World Pride at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. For a while, I felt like I was attending a college lecture. The keynote being one where the speaker, Tamara Kloppers (a researcher at the museum) presented her findings from researching art and objects in the museum that speak of queer history.

We already know that Queer History has always been there, except it’s often been muffled or hidden away or pushed aside because history is often dictated by those who hold power (and money). But it is interesting in an intellectual brainy kind of way where yeah…look we have found this in the archives and here is the evidence.

I did find myself wondering what these findings and discoveries could mean for those coming from queer refugee communities.

As Sorab Roustayar (founder of Queer City and Fite Club) succinctly put it, “Who are these recovered items for anyway? Many of us don’t have a museum card and entrance fees to museums is really expensive.”

So yeah…who does the research serve? Does it serve the community? Or does it serve the insitutions?

What stood out to me was the story of how these pieces of art became part of museum archives. I suppose researchers don’t speculate on the reasoning behind these donations, but I can’t help but think of how a lot of history is personal as well as political.

How does what is uncovered or recovered echo in current spaces? In what ways do we want these findings to echo onwards? Queer bodies continue to be marginalised and pushed aside even in spaces and institutions that want to be seen as queer-friendly.

I have to think of the sharp contrast between the insitutional vibe and the community vibe because once the community panel came on, you could feel the vibe shift in the room. Yes, we still talk about history, but we talk about history that’s happening now and how marginalised communities are making histories which are often elided, underfunded and even undocumented.

(I hope we are not making these records only to have them be hidden in the archives.)

I have to say that I like the IHLIA crew. They’re warm, approachable and friendly. It’s nice to know that there is this possibility to send an email and someone will respond who will remember your name and who will say: okay, just send me an email and we can talk if you need help with your community or your projects. It’s these kinds of connections that help us feel supported. Community work can sometimes feel like shouting into the void. But, as Arlo (from the last panel) says: “you keep showing up because that’s what community is about. You just have to keep showing up.”

You can still visit the annual exposition Queer History month exhibit at the IHLIA plein in the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (the one at the East Dock near Amsterdam Central Station). Collections from five participating museums are on display together with archive materials from IHLIA to put these objects in context.

There was a really excellent spoken word performance from Duraa. You can check out her website here.

Thanks again for reading. Small movements lead to big movements. May grace and peace be always with you.

The ongoing journey

/ RCRuiz

I’m still basking in the IFFR glow of watching our young filmmakers from Moving Love having that epiphany of: I am a filmmaker.

They finished the course, they made these films, and so they are deserving of that title: filmmaker. I’m looking forward to the premiere when all of the moving portraits will be seen in one space. At present, we continue to send out feelers for other possible locations as we want to bring these films all over The Netherlands and hopefully beyond The Netherlands.

My role as consultant and coach for this project is coming to a close, but I still feel connected to these young people. I very much wish that as they continue on with their journey, they will be able to find people who will help them grow further in their craft.

On Friday’s IFFR film-showing, I met a young filmmaker from Berlin whose film called Unbelong moved me so much. Pars Loren is a non-binary artist and filmmaker and for those interested in finding out more about them, they have an online presence on instagram.

Unbelong is like a visual poem. It has beautifully haunting imagery combining footage from Pars’s life with other archival footage. All throughout the film, we hear Pars’s voice telling us a story, we are invited to be part of the inner world of the self. Unbelong is vulnerable and intensely personal, and it speaks to us on a plane where we connect with that vulnerability and acknowledge the courage it takes to be so. If you ever have the chance to see this film, I want to encourage you to do so.

Unbelong will be shown during an Anatolian filmmakers in Exile event in Berlin on the 14th of February. This event is a Turkish event. but there will be another showing on the 7th of May at the Frauenzentrum (in Berlin) in English and in German for those who prefer English or German.

Do visit Pars’ website for more details.

On another note: I started organ lessons this Monday and am feeling quite rejuvenated and excited. It’s a feeling pretty similar to when I was studying at the conservatory back home in The Philippines. But where I used to dread piano lessons, I’m looking forward to my organ lessons. I can’t fit an organ in my house, but the digitaal piano has an organ set-up which helps in terms of understanding the difference in technique. I’m starting with the first of Bach’s eight preludes and fugues for the organ and with the second movement of Handel’s Organ Concerto HVW 295, which I’m told is called the Cuckoo concerto.

There are still a number of things to write about, but I thought I’d keep it to this for this post.

May blessings and peace be with you always and thank you for dropping by.

Saturday morning signal-boost

/ RCRuiz

I thought I’d share a recorded excerpt from Vida Cruz-Borja’s story, “Have your #Hugot harvested at this Diwata-owned Cafe”. This is a story that’s available online at Strange Horizons and if you click on the title line, it will take you there. For some reason the podcast doesn’t work for me (I also didn’t realise there was already a podcast of this story, but this is an excerpt and not the whole thing.)

“Have your #Hugot harvested at this Diwata-owned Cafe” is one of the stories in Vida’s Song of the Mango and Other New Myths which is available from the Ateneo de Manila university press. I’m pretty sure it’s also available from outlets like Amazon.

Vida’s fundraiser which has been up since May 2025 has only just tapped 10% of what she needs to raise for her medical needs. Cost of medication has never been cheap in The Philippines, and with the rising cost, her need has become more urgent.

In the Philippines, we have this tradition of bayanihan which originates from when a house needed to be moved from place to another, an entire community would show up to transfer the house from its current location to wherever it needed to be by carrying the entire house on their shoulders. It’s also symbolic of how we help one another as communities.

I’m writing this post and sharing this excerpt in the spirit of Bayanihan. If you feel so moved, do feel free to share, to signal-boost, to donate whatever you can.

I hope you enjoy the excerpt and if you’d like me to record a full story, just let me know. When we reach 50% Vida’s goal, I’ll be happy to record one of Vida’s stories or one of mine.

Here is the excerpt from a section in the story titled: Eating One’s Feelings.

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and maraming salamat for passing by.

Editing to highlight: Click to Vida’s fundraiser.

What I am doing and where I will be

/ RCRuiz

It’s turning out to be quite a busy week on the blog. Sometimes, it’s like that. In conversation with a group of new writers, we talked about this case of intermittent journalling. There are periods when you have lots to write about and periods when you don’t feel like journalling.

It’s often hard for me to process on the spot, and it can be helpful when the buzz of being busy and engaged is more at a distance. I have to admit that I do forget to blog about events, so I’m trying to do better.

I gave a workshop on writing memoir to a group of new writers in connection with a project from Queer Work. Sajad, who is the founder of this organisation is passionate about giving visibility to the stories and the voices of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers in The Netherlands. Not just that, there’s a deeper concern of wanting to equip and empower this group by providing what tools can be provided through workshops and trainings. In this case, the project is one underwritten by Gemeente Amsterdam Noord wherein the municipality asks for voices coming from underrepresented groups in The Netherlands.

I’ll continue to support and be present at these workshops, helping out and facilitating. I do feel a longing for something structural that will allow us to go deeper. I feel like gathering words isn’t enough. Underrepresented voices need more, but there is so little room for that more where institutions are concerned and whether I like it or not, I have to listen to my collaborators when they remind me that I also need to keep watch over my energy. I’m very thankful for this reminder.

Moving Love, which is one of the projects in which I am quite intensely involved with has completed most of its shooting. I love how this project has done what it’s promised to do, which is give participants the foundation for a possible career in filmmaking. The intensive workshop days are behind us, but the lessons into how films are made and the hands-on experience of making one themselves is something participants will carry with them. I’m sure we will see more from these young and talented people.

For the Moving Love team, it’s been a joy to witness participants in their element. They have always wanted to make films, and now they know what it’s like to make one of their own.

On the 6th of February, the first un-edited versions of Moving Love’s Moving Portraits will be shown during the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. It’s quite exciting as some of the participants will also be interviewed during the programme. I’m looking forward to this event.

For those interested and in the area, click on the link. It will lead you to the exact page and let you know where Moving Love will be. I hope to see you there.

Thanks again for dropping by. Blessings and peace and thanks for reading.