Living in Flow

(Typed in Ambon, Monday, January 23, 2006)

X: Lu bawa kamera buat ngerekam upacaranya? Video?

(X: Did you bring a camera to record the rituals? Video?)

I got this SMS message from X when I was transiting in Bali, waiting for my flight to Tambolaka, West Sumba, on Wednesday, December 28, 2005. My friend X is a filmmaker, currently based in Banda Aceh. He must have read my December 27 blog entry about my murdered cousin’s funeral. X has been encouraging me to make films for years now. In his opinion (and I agree), my Sumbanese heritage is one of the interesting things that needs to be documented.

He has been urging me to buy a handy-cam, so I could start learning how to do it first-hand. “There are so many cheap and simple models now!” he pointed out to me almost two years ago. But the problem is not merely technical in nature.

There would also be an issue of distance with the subject-matter, if I take on the role of a filmmaker; a documenter of Sumba. I’ve had had a significant and existential brush with this issue when I was writing my thesis in 2002. Because of that, writing my thesis became one of the (if not the) most difficult project I’ve done to date. And so far, I haven’t reconciled this issue yet, in the case of documentary filming.

On July 2005, more than 40 days after my father passed away, my brother Yosef and me went to Sumba to ritually “tie the spirit” of our father to our ancestral home in Pu’ukaruddi village, Rara, West Sumba. This is a crucial ritual, because my father’s funeral in Jakarta was regarded as a “temporary burial.” His proper, traditional funeral is yet to be carried out when we’d bring his – and our mother’s – remains home to our ancestral village some time in the future. We haven’t owned a digital still camera at the time, so we borrowed one. We also borrowed a handy-cam. We wanted to document the rituals properly, knowing how special this occasion was. I took turns with my brother in operating the still camera and the handy-cam, although I ended up handling them more because as the only son of my father, Yosef had to be more involved in the rituals. After my father died, he’s now the head of our kabizu (clan).

Things went relatively well for a while. We recorded the guests coming in welcomed with dances, betel-nut exchange, ikat cloth gift-giving, the whole package. The Catholic holy mass was carried out without any remarkable incident. And then after the mass, it was time to “tie the spirit” of my father onto the clan house’s ancestral pillar. It was done this way: After some ritual prayers and chants by the Marapu priest, my brother had to tie up an Ingngi ikat cloth around the far right pillar of our clan house. And then everyone, our beloved extended family members, male and female alike, burst out weeping incessantly. It was a very emotional moment, intimate, private and communal at the same time. I felt it to the core of my veins. And I had the handy-cam in my hand, rolling, recording the whole beautiful process. Or so I thought.

Later that day, when we reviewed the footages, it turned out that the footages of the “tying of the spirit” ritual was nowhere to be found in the tape. It went directly from the mass to the teba (animal sacrifice) ceremony which followed the “tying of the spirit” ritual. Frustrated, I tried to figure out what went wrong. In the end, I realized that during that moment, I failed to press the right button to record. I was too carried away by what was taking place. It got to me very emotionally. I am after all part of the grieving community. It was my father’s spirit that was being addressed to and taken care of in that ceremony, so he wouldn’t wander aimlessly around the universe before his final journey to the ancestral realm. The still pictures, however, came out quite okay somehow.

This experience had taught me that it is still very difficult for me to be a good (film) documenter when I am too much part of what I am trying to document. Inevitably, the issues I’ve dealt with in my thesis concerning subjectivity, objectivity, and inter-subjectivity resurfaces in my mind…

(Typed in Ambon, Monday, January 23, 2006)

X: Lu bawa kamera buat ngerekam upacaranya? Video?

(X: Did you bring a camera to record the rituals? Video?)

I got this SMS message from X when I was transiting in Bali, waiting for my flight to Tambolaka, West Sumba, on Wednesday, December 28, 2005. My friend X is a filmmaker, currently based in Banda Aceh. He must have read my December 27 blog entry about my murdered cousin’s funeral. X has been encouraging me to make films for years now. In his opinion (and I agree), my Sumbanese heritage is one of the interesting things that needs to be documented.

He has been urging me to buy a handy-cam, so I could start learning how to do it first-hand. “There are so many cheap and simple models now!” he pointed out to me almost two years ago. But the problem is not merely technical in nature.

There would also be an issue of distance with the subject-matter, if I take on the role of a filmmaker; a documenter of Sumba. I’ve had had a significant and existential brush with this issue when I was writing my thesis in 2002. Because of that, writing my thesis became one of the (if not the) most difficult project I’ve done to date. And so far, I haven’t reconciled this issue yet, in the case of documentary filming.

On July 2005, more than 40 days after my father passed away, my brother Yosef and me went to Sumba to ritually “tie the spirit” of our father to our ancestral home in Pu’ukaruddi village, Rara, West Sumba. This is a crucial ritual, because my father’s funeral in Jakarta was regarded as a “temporary burial.” His proper, traditional funeral is yet to be carried out when we’d bring his – and our mother’s – remains home to our ancestral village some time in the future. We haven’t owned a digital still camera at the time, so we borrowed one. We also borrowed a handy-cam. We wanted to document the rituals properly, knowing how special this occasion was. I took turns with my brother in operating the still camera and the handy-cam, although I ended up handling them more because as the only son of my father, Yosef had to be more involved in the rituals. After my father died, he’s now the head of our kabizu (clan).

Things went relatively well for a while. We recorded the guests coming in welcomed with dances, betel-nut exchange, ikat cloth gift-giving, the whole package. The Catholic holy mass was carried out without any remarkable incident. And then after the mass, it was time to “tie the spirit” of my father onto the clan house’s ancestral pillar. It was done this way: After some ritual prayers and chants by the Marapu priest, my brother had to tie up an Ingngi ikat cloth around the far right pillar of our clan house. And then everyone, our beloved extended family members, male and female alike, burst out weeping incessantly. It was a very emotional moment, intimate, private and communal at the same time. I felt it to the core of my veins. And I had the handy-cam in my hand, rolling, recording the whole beautiful process. Or so I thought.

Later that day, when we reviewed the footages, it turned out that the footages of the “tying of the spirit” ritual was nowhere to be found in the tape. It went directly from the mass to the teba (animal sacrifice) ceremony which followed the “tying of the spirit” ritual. Frustrated, I tried to figure out what went wrong. In the end, I realized that during that moment, I failed to press the right button to record. I was too carried away by what was taking place. It got to me very emotionally. I am after all part of the grieving community. It was my father’s spirit that was being addressed to and taken care of in that ceremony, so he wouldn’t wander aimlessly around the universe before his final journey to the ancestral realm. The still pictures, however, came out quite okay somehow.

This experience had taught me that it is still very difficult for me to be a good (film) documenter when I am too much part of what I am trying to document. Inevitably, the issues I’ve dealt with in my thesis concerning subjectivity, objectivity, and inter-subjectivity resurfaces in my mind…

From Isabel Allende’s "PAULA: A MEMOIR" (HarperPerrenial, 1996)

P.187: (…) pain is inevitable in this life, but they say that it is almost always bearable if we do not put up resistance or add fear and anguish.

p. 314: What happened to us? Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. with each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.

p.310: If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will loose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving….

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Luv ya, gurl! (",)