THE INTERVIEW

I talked to Atty. Pao Chikiamco, who runs the POC's Pinoy Pop channel and the Rocket Kapre website, a while back and here's that interview. Dang, ganda ng graphics. Mukha ko lang panira hehe. Salamat, Pao!

Excerpts are below.

PART 1
Karl R. De Mesa (personal blog: Trust Your Black Shirt) is one of the more radical and vocal writers in the Philippine horror scene, a writer who draws from a childhood grounded in urban reality to come up with tales of supernatural horror. His new book "News of the Shaman" from Visprint Enterprises, a collection of novellas, will be out in major bookstores this month. He is also the newly minted Executive Editor of Playboy Philippines, and part of several bands: Biscochong Halimaw, Ninja Empire, and Gonzo Army. He also co-edited Demons of the New Year (which we reviewed here and here) We spoke to him not long ago about his childhood, his beliefs, and his writing process. This is the first part of our interview.

Pinoy Pop: I gather you're a believer in the supernatural? I gather at much from your introduction to Demons of the New Year.
De Mesa: You mean creatures and the like? I used to be very… mixed up, let's put it that way. I mentioned this once in an essay in Likhaan: My parents used to be NPA urban agents. So we used to move around a lot, every three months at the most, sooner if we were spotted by surveillance. It was very tough for a child in that environment to make any friends, so my outlet was a lot of action figures--marami akong G.I. Joe dati, at mga Voltron, Voltes V, Matchbox--and when I got old enough I started gravitating towards the occult. I'd experienced a lot of strange events by then--I'd get sick all of a sudden, or I'd natter on to my parents about the dark man I'd seen in the trees. The first venture I made into organized occult material was a Pranic Healing course, basic energy healing. From there I went on to Tai Chi, meditation, enchanting… I also did research on my own on topics like witchcraft. I joined up with a lot of f*cked up kids who studied a lot of demonology, and I remember when they'd try to summon something there would be this smell, like sulfur or sh*t, and I felt we'd actually brought something over… a few days later, our neighbor seemed to be possessed. 

Were there any repercussions to any of this?
I think we did a lot of harm in those days. One of my later teachers said my aura was black, like I'd done a lot of bad things in the past. But, yes, sometimes these things--say, wishing ill luck on an ex-girlfriend--they come back to you. That's just basic karma.


I take it that not everything you've done counts as "bad stuff"…
After college, before I went into journalism, I supported myself by reading fortunes. I had a knack for divination, as it turns out.

Did you tell your customers the truth?
Not all the time. It was hard. Women would come in and ask questions about their boyfriends and husbands and ask me when the cheating would stop… and while you can see some stuff clearly, others you can't, but they don't want to hear that. Sometimes you make it up as you go along: "avoid donuts" "your lucky number is 72", things like that. It entertained them.

Read the whole of PART 1 here.