My Name In Reverse

My Name in Reverse from Jorel Lising on Vimeo.

My Name in Reverse - a short film inspired by Rafael Antonio C. San Diego's poem of the same name.

Producers: Lara Antonio & Jaz Reyes
Director: Jaz Reyes
Screenplay: Apa Agbayani
Director of Photography/Editor: Jorel Lising
Production Manager: Tony Battung
Production Assistants: Liz Arcega, Juancho Mendoza

Featuring Brian Sy & Lara Antonio

Music: M83 - I Guess I'm Floating
Jonsi & Alex - Happiness 
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Of Secrets
Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong




My Name in Reverse
---------------------------------
Rafael Antonio C. San Diego

VIII. 

nothing ceases to disappear. from the beginning where the child and the star 
stain the void with brightness, to the language my teachers passed on to me to 
understand these things. I dwell in what I do not fathom. twin things: the egg 
and the whole jungle I call life. do not try to understand. the poem is the poem, 
and this does not create between us a relationship. I speak about rupture. the 
mouth opens. just one. and many things speak. don't be like adam who named 
every single thing. be like the thousands of unforgiving beasts that came after 
creation. those who dwell in the absences. those who prefer to dissent. I prefer 
to relent. 

VII. 

I am justified in killing my faith. I commanded it. I, who swore never again to 
trust in americans or jews. I, who drew my own bastard spanish blood, who 
wrote beautiful verse by the sea until the insight was struck out of me. I stayed 
in my room all day until possessed by a tongue so foreign it could only be mine. 
and no human prayer would lift the curse from my being. no benediction from 
my bodiless problem: I have no name, you see. in my tongue, there is no need 
for a name. 

VI. 

take away madness from joy and all you're left with is useless laughter. remove 
struggle and you will not find anything. this is known as peace from where I 
come from. that singular incident where you and I are lifted from our countries 
and buried in the negative equivalent of a million tons of space. the heart is the 
heart. nothing more. because it is more important to float away than to remain 
inconsolable; the whole body should shudder out of love. 

V. 

I propose that every cat must die. this way, there will be no cats. it is much 
better than destroying a race of humans. this is the simplicity of math. take a 
variable, and destroy it. 

IV. 

my forefathers insisted that they came from inside a man and a woman who 
came from inside a giant cosmic bamboo tree. this tree was split by cosmic 
lightning. this lighting was split from a single source of light. if you divide and 
divide these mythical things, you will come to realize as much as I have that it 
is a terrible waste of time to think of creation. I prefer to think about the things 
that will someday destroy us. my favorite form of extinction is poetry. 

III. 

a good preparation for death: one bright morning, when you wake up and see 
your consciousness still hanging from your bones, command yourself not to 
rise. by the time you lose track of yourself, it will feel like you are slowly 
disappearing. 

II. 

ten thousand people are starving. this is true at any given moment at any given 
time. a million people die every second. a million other animals. a million trees. 
a million emotions vanish all of a sudden. the sky retains its cruel blue. 
someday, though, that too will end. 

I. 

once, I picked a fight with the universe, and it won. it was the only victory I 
have ever had.