Fresh from the success of Isang Himala and Green Bones, National Artist for Film and Broadcast Arts, Ricky Lee, talks about the trade-offs of writing and the meandering paths that lead to creative fulfillment. Though the road may seem rife with more pains than gains &mdash; the artist insists that nothing is ever really lost in the process.&nbsp;

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Books occupy almost every room in Ricky Lee&rsquo;s home. Sometimes they&rsquo;re scattered on tables alongside his grandson&rsquo;s toys. Sometimes they&rsquo;re mixed with rows of CDs and DVDs. Sometimes they&rsquo;re tucked between random cracks and ephemera. Often, they rest proudly on wall-to-wall shelves without rhyme or reason. No numerical or alphabetical arrangements rule the assembly. Rather, they gather gazes, ready to open themselves to anyone willing to get lost in a story.
 The system of getting lost works well for Lee. In his scriptwriting manual, Trip to Quiapo, he likens writing to wayfinding. It reflects his experiences where he would record sounds from the environment and examine the cadence and diction of the crowd during his commutes. He admits to lacking a sense of direction, but moving toward the unknown fires his imagination. When left to his own devices, he always finds a way.
 Fondly called by peers and students Sir Ricky, he tells me the method to his madness: &ldquo;I never stop working. I&rsquo;m always moving or working from the time I wake up at 4 or 5 AM. Nabo-bore ako &lsquo;pag may bakanteng segundo so lagi ko pinupuno ang oras ko ng gagawin.&rdquo; Being soft-spoken camouflages his tenacity, but his body of work couldn&rsquo;t be any louder. Currently writing his memoir, Lee spends most of his time juggling projects. He&rsquo;s setting up the musical rendition of Moral, putting together another non-fiction book for UP Publishing, and fulfilling his consulting duties for entertainment networks GMA and Viva. Since 1979, he has penned more than 150 scripts including movies that were pivotal to Philippine cinema. Among them are Lino Brocka&rsquo;s Jaguar (1979), Mike de Leon&rsquo;s Kisapmata (1981), Ishmael Bernal&rsquo;s Himala (1982), Marilou Diaz-Abaya&rsquo;s Moral (1982), and Chito S. Roño&rsquo;s Salome (1998).
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&ldquo;Sabay-sabay ko tinatrabaho. Otherwise, I will get bored,&rdquo; Lee discusses his routine. The only breaks he looks forward to are his massages and acupuncture sessions. Before sleeping, he would feed his mind with prompts and allow his thoughts to marinate, so that upon waking, ideas could just &ldquo;slide in.&rdquo; Even if only a fraction of his dreams remain, he perseveres to gather forgotten fragments.
 But his path hasn&rsquo;t always been smooth; he didn&rsquo;t always have the privilege to create his own schedule. As a young orphan from Daet, Camarines Norte, Lee lived in a province where reading was rare. Books were his only escape and salvation. Comics and magazines kept him busy until he moved on to the canons of Faulkner and Dostoevsky. Despite his struggles, the experience became instrumental in expanding his characters&rsquo; emotional range. He recalls, &ldquo;Noong five-years-old ako, pinaampon ako sa relatives. Medyo distant &lsquo;yong tatay ko. He hardly touched me. It&rsquo;s interesting kasi lumalabas siya sa writing. Kung ano ka ng bata, it&rsquo;s still there. Some people say I&rsquo;m both cold and warm as a person.&nbsp;
 So, bakit warm at mapuso ang characters ko? I think it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m cold. Whatever you lack or are yearning for, that&rsquo;s what you get to express in writing.&rdquo; Because of these polarities, it&rsquo;s safe to say that Lee radiates warmth, and serves it with restrained passion and wisdom. The same spirit invigorates Green Bones, a prison drama he co-wrote with Anj Atienza. Despite the film&rsquo;s gravitas, its narrative succeeds in its ability to fill dark voids with glimpses of hope and redemption from its alleged criminals and outsiders.
 Like the inmates, Lee always considered himself an outsider. He often felt small, which is surprising for a writer of his stature. &ldquo;I used to suffer during the early years kahit nanalo na ako ng award like Palanca. &lsquo;Pag nag-susubmit ako ng short story or article sa editor, ayokong buksan niya sa harap ko. Bago ko i-submit, maglalakad ako sa block ilang ulit hanggang mapagod ako. In a way, natatanggal &lsquo;yong lack of confidence ko. Iniisip ko na baka it&rsquo;s rooted sa fact na ampon ako. I never felt like I really belonged sa town namin. I had to please others kasi nakikitira ako. Lagi akong conscious na baka they don&rsquo;t like me. Wala akong roots. Maybe that contributes to the smallness and shyness.&rdquo;
 However, stories gave him the chance to overcome his inhibitions. Through them, he can take up space without questioning his worth. That&rsquo;s why after high school, he pursued what he wanted more than anything &mdash; freedom. He plotted his exit strategy and left Daet to realize his vision of a true home, a place where his dreams could thrive and where his stories could come to life.

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Photography by Geric Cruz

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Without looking back, he faced his future in Manila and enrolled at UP Diliman while working as a waiter and salesman. He was known as the &ldquo;freak&rdquo; and &ldquo;Bicolanong instik&rdquo; who wrote in Filipino but studied English. During this period, he discovered the locales that would soon inform his creative process.
 Since childhood, Quiapo has always been a central setting in Lee&rsquo;s comic books. When he finally set foot in it, he relished its energy. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s bristling with life so buhay na buhay ka. Lahat ng tao pumupunta doon. Lahat mabibili mo doon. Lahat ng kuwento at pangyayari ay matatagpuan doon. For someone who feels like an outsider, parang na-aabsorb nila ako as part of them. I don&rsquo;t feel rejected. That&rsquo;s Quiapo,&rdquo; he says.
 Later on, he also explored Ermita. &ldquo;Sa Ermita, nandoon lahat ng klase ng tao. May madre, may prostitute, may pimp, may maton. Siguro may assassin. Who knows? Maybe may addict. Lahat sila ay nagkakantahan sa kalsada o nagkakasayahan o nag-aaway. It&rsquo;s easy to get lost and be nameless inside it.&rdquo;
 As a wanderer who writes, he has always considered writing a mobile activity. When he&rsquo;s not prancing around Quiapo or Ermita, he would ride a bus to Dau, Angeles City in Pampanga and survey its imported goods. Since Dau is near the Clark Air Base, it had access to markets selling limited edition books, CDs, and vinyl records. It&rsquo;s where he got his hands on rarities like Playboy magazines and Madonna&rsquo;s explosive Sex tome.
 Unfortunately, not all his explorations led to freedom. His activism brought him to captivity during Marcos&rsquo; dictatorship. A wave of arrests arrived without warning, and he was imprisoned from 1974 to 1975. A year after being detained, he wrote Himala. He regarded this period as a season of skepticism. He questioned everything from people to institutions. In hindsight, activism, among his other proclivities, fueled his desire for belonging. Hence, the themes of community and kinship continued to bleed into his work. He shares, &ldquo;Most of my protagonists are like me. Elsa in Himala wanted to be accepted. Vilma in Anak (2000) wanted to be accepted by her children. Mostly, they all want to belong and be loved.&rdquo;
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Perhaps, that&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s important for Lee to teach. It&rsquo;s his way of fathering a new generation of writers. Back in the day, he wrote for the Philippine Free Press with National Artist Nick Joaquin at the helm. But in 1982, he came into his own and started conducting free scriptwriting workshops at home. It&rsquo;s common for screenwriters to be brushed aside in posters and credits, but Lee makes it difficult to be ignored.
 There&rsquo;s a session in the workshop called Inner Life, which is somewhat like therapy. You&rsquo;re guided to get out of your comfort zone and go to areas you&rsquo;re not used to. According to Lee, writers tend to write from the outside. They&rsquo;re influenced by all the beautiful films, workshops, and manuals they&rsquo;ve accumulated through the years, but what they should really do is look inside so they can scrutinize their experiences &mdash; from the pains and joys to the nightmares and traumas. &ldquo;Pakawalan mo,&rdquo; he advises. If you don&rsquo;t, the writing becomes contrived. &ldquo;Minsan nag-iiyakan kami. Pero after that, lumuluwag sila sa writing nila.&rdquo;
 He had his fair share of struggles when it came to letting go, but the first one that tested him to the point of drowning was Moral. It didn&rsquo;t have a template. It didn&rsquo;t follow the three-act structure. It didn&rsquo;t have a story. It didn&rsquo;t have a climax. It just flowed and followed the lives of four women during the years of Martial Law. He recalls &ldquo;groping and trying to find his way.&rdquo; But that part was important because that&rsquo;s exactly how the characters dealt with their lives.
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Forty years have passed and the industry has changed. He says, &ldquo;The good side is lumawak &lsquo;yong espasyo na ginagalawan ng writers compared sa ginagalawan namin noon. &lsquo;Yong espasyo namin noon, ang liit, ikot lang kami ng ikot at wala kaming mabalingan. Walang mga grants at workshops. On the other hand, it&rsquo;s more collaborative and communal now. Sometimes artists lose their solitude because everything is noisy, and they can&rsquo;t hear themselves. It&rsquo;s important to embrace all that noise, but every now and then, go into solitude. If you swing the balance between multitude and solitude, you&rsquo;ll find your voice and benefit from all the open doors.&rdquo;
Similarly, his house, with its rooms brimming with books, is also a home of open doors. Each area carries the memory of those he had welcomed, those he had encouraged to keep trying, and those he had dared to ponder deep within so they could breathe life into a page or screen.
He reflects, &ldquo;Actually if you want to be an artist, you need fear. If you have fear, you become questioning. &lsquo;Should I go inside the door? Baka may ahas dito.&rsquo; If you totally don&rsquo;t have fear, which is also good, you might miss the awareness of certain things, and baka hindi ka matuto.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Is your faith stronger than your fear?&rdquo;
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a duet,&rdquo; he declares. &ldquo;You need faith as a writer because you&rsquo;re never sure of what will come out of the film.&rdquo; He and director Pepe Diokno were never sure about the outcome of Isang Himala but they kept ploughing ahead. &ldquo;You need faith to be able to do the miracle.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Do you believe in miracles?&rdquo;
&ldquo;The act of believing is the miracle itself. That&rsquo;s already going to change you, transform you as a person, make you kinder. Whether you believe in Jesus Christ or Muhammad, faith is all about the act of believing. It&rsquo;s not about the spectacle. &lsquo;Yon ang himala.&rdquo;
We wrap up our conversation at 6 PM when the daylight is fading into deep tones of ocher. While packing up, the sound of bells clanging from the nearby neighborhood alerted our senses, as if signaling us to pause, pray, and practice our acts of faith.
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The act of believing is the miracle itself.

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*** 
On the way home, while passing by Katipunan Avenue, I open my copy of Trip to Quiapo where Sir Ricky signed, &ldquo;Huwag kang matakot na malunod, o mawala, dahil doon mo mas makikilala ang totoo mong sarili.&rdquo; 
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Lost and Found: National Artist Ricky Lee Talks About Finding His Creative Path

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