DIGNITY IN quietude. In his life, in his writing, in his passing.
As he eschewed public acclaim for his excellence – declining my off er of nominating him for the MOKA in Media on at least two occasions, so did he renounce any panegyric, indeed, shunned necrological rites, in the event of his death.
Thus, his passing hardly noticed by even the closest of his peers, his body immediately cremated sans the least semblance of a wake.
He would not have welcomed this, but I can never forgive myself for depriving him of his overdue recognition, if only in reprinting this piece I wrote over ten years ago to serve as a fitting eulogy.
RAMIRO MERCADO makes us all local “writers” no more than pretenders to that title which the iconic Che Guevara called “the most sacred thing in the world.”
Ram so excels in the craft that I feel oftentimes reduced to that caricature so perfectly sketched by the19th century English writer William Samuel Lilly thus: “All men who can write grammatically – and many, indeed who cannot – seem to think they have a call to express their ‘views’ on all subjects, human and divine. And their views will be found, in the vast majority of cases, to consist of shreds of information, generally distorted and often erroneous, claptrap phrases picked up at hazard, and dignified by the title of ‘principles’, preferences and predilections, always unreasoned, and not seldom unreasonable.”
To append the tag “journalist” to Ram is a supreme insult. For he has never been one. Not in the usual sense of day-to-day reportage bounded by the cold, cold “objectivity” of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of events-of-interest to the reading public.
Ram is too sensitive a person, too good a writer to be a journalist. A chaff -from-the-grain distinction: The intellect, of course, is essential but it is heart that truly makes the writer. And Ram is all heart.
That is most evident in the columns he has churned out through the years through all those publications he has written for, from The Voice to his very own Pampanga Eagle to Sun-Star Pampanga.
That is most manifest in his first book First Person just off the press.
More than a simple anthology of his past columns, First Person is a travel through time, a lingering look-back at a past made perfect by a tense present. The good old days, when the skies were bluer, when the grass was greener, when the sun was brighter as that song of long ago went.
One can’t help but wax romantic with Ram’s paeans to the Dalagang Kapampangan; and nostalgic with his reminiscences of places, celebrations and even our American past.
Ram makes us laugh at our own foibles as a people. Even as, befitting the true son of Mexico, Pampanga that he is, he impresses upon us our inherent social consciousness.
A still life, a portrait, a landscape, a moving canvass of Kapampangan life in the brightest of colors did Ram masterfully paint in First Person.
Sub-headed “A memoir of life in small town Philippines,” First Person draws out of the Kapampangan psyche, like a long-buried heirloom, the soul of a place, the zeitgeist of an era irretrievably lost to the new generation of his race.
And like the true literary treasure trove that it is, First Person is a jewel to the enrichment of Kapampangan culture. Had I the authority, I would have made the book required reading in all schools in Pampanga. If only to impact upon our youth the ethos of a recent past for a clearer appreciation of their time and place.
In just his first book – and hopefully not his last – Ram has already his defining opus. I, who have come out with four books, am most envious of him. For I still am in search of that which shall define me, which shall truly make me what I now pretend to be.
I have my own anthology of columns dating back to the early 70s all-ready for encoding for over two years now. I even have a working title for it, not without some dose of my characteristic conceit: “I Write: I Am.”
First Person took the wind out of the sails of my self-importance. Now, I am more inclined to just leave my material as it is now – in yellowed, tattered clippings.
Notwithstanding the platitudes Ram heaped upon my person in his handwritten dedication to the copy he sent me – “Distinguished journalist and author, leader of media, social philosopher, the original rebel” – I will be – to use that overwrought cliché in a Sharon Cuneta movie – “nothing but a second-rate, trying hard copycat.”
Ram, the writer, is one tough act to follow.
