Misearable Miracle, A.X. Ledesma
September 2024
Screencap from YouTube video: BongBong LRT Speech (w subtitles)
Prolegomena
‘This is a mournful discovery.
1) Those who agree with you are insane.
2) Those who do not agree with you are in power.’ — Philip K. Dick, VALIS
‘Where classical science saw a single world that comprised within it all living species hierarchically ordered from the most elementary forms up to the higher organisms, Uexküll instead supposes an infinite variety of perceptual worlds that, though they are uncommunicating and reciprocally exclusive, are all equally perfect and linked together as if in a gigantic musical score.’ — Giorgio Agamben, ‘Umwelt'
Around 13 years ago, a friend of mine shared a bizarre video called ‘BongBong LRT Speech (w subtitles)’,1 featuring a man on the LRT reciting a largely continuous monologue in a mixture of English, Filipino, fragments of broken Spanish, and unintelligible gibberish. He is interrupted twice. The first pause seems to be prompted by a security guard asking him not to disturb the other passengers. His silence lasts for a few seconds before his rant continues. The second disruption takes on the form of a threat. He stares down another passenger, yells at them about giving him a ‘shit of mind’, gets up to challenge them to a fight, and takes his seat as the tense encounter seems to diffuse itself, sombrely expressing his disappointment. ‘You better respect. Somebody’s talking.’
Throughout his soliloquy, the man speaks of Manila also being Jerusalem and Germany, of treasure and artillery hidden underground, about an event that sounds either like a ritual awakening or a resurrection, of his personal involvement with the National Bureau of Investigation, and of his intention to decapitate then president Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III as an act of revenge. The man claims to have reached out to major broadcasting networks in the hopes of propagating his message, but he admits that they only refused him entry and regarded him with a mixture of fear and disgust. According to him, he uses drugs (‘top shabu’) to recover his distorted memories. It appears that he believes himself to be the son of the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, whom he refers to as ‘mama’ while frequently referring to himself as ‘Bongbong’.2 He says Aquino has committed unspeakable crimes against him, which he describes as follows: ‘Iyong pinaka itlog ko tsaka ‘yong pinaka muscles ko nilagay niya sa ilalim. Stomach ko nilagay niya dito. Ang head feet ko, kita ninyo wala ngang kuko. Eh paano po? He checked my three eyes. My nose was put in the heart, man. And my head put in my pubic hair.’ (An attempt at translation: ‘He displaced the essence of my testicles and my muscles and put them underneath. My stomach was transferred here. Look at my head feet. The nails are gone. And how? Well, he checked my three eyes. My nose was put in the heart, man. And my head put in my pubic hair.’)
Toward the end of the video, he seems to calm down, sounding like he got everything out of his system. He reassures his captive audience, ‘whatever I say, the Filipino is my friend.’ As the train comes to a momentary halt, the person recording the footage turns the camera to himself, exchanges a glance with an imagined audience before mouthing something silently. It is difficult to determine the word or phrase that his lips attempt to form or the precise meaning behind the expression on his face. It is unclear if he is expressing amusement, confusion, or derision.
Everything the man in the video said has held my fascination for years. Some of his ramblings came off as ridiculous because they were inconsistent with consensus reality, but they seemed to be thoroughly consistent with their own internal logic as though they were glimpses of an established cosmology of his own invention. I presumed that this video of this man was the only one on the internet until I recognised his face in a series of four longer videos filmed outside a small canteen, uploaded by two different users shortly after the video on the train. In all four videos, he addresses the camera directly, expounding upon his ramblings captured earlier. It is impossible to piece together a single, coherent narrative from this selection of videos, but characters, events, and ideas reappear. The thought that this was some odd attempt at a viral marketing campaign crept into my mind, but it seemed implausible considering his descriptions of brutality, the absurdity of his claims, and the absence of any development in plot or in intensity. Nothing appeared to follow until he resurfaced in another video on the LRT once more in May of 2022.
In what seems to be an expansion of the premise of the initial video,3 we find the man much more cordial this time around and noticeably more muscular. He claims that he is ‘not using drugs’, stating that he is a ‘demon’ who ‘walks beside the Lord on the road, asking for change because [he doesn’t] have money’.4 He proclaims that he is Elvis Presley and says that he loves Filipinos because they pray, and he pities them. He then goes on to discuss in succinct tautologies how he understands the Filipino state of mind: ‘ang isip ang isip. Ang isip ang isip. Buti hindi ako nakaapak sa isip ninyo.’ (‘The mind is the mind. The mind is the mind. It’s a good thing that I haven’t stepped on your minds.’) After a few brief moments of contemplation, he puts on a pair of sunglasses and bursts into what appears to be an improvised song and dance with an indeterminate subject. Throughout the course of the song, he directly addresses the person holding the camera, calling them his friend when a security guard asks him to quiet down. The other passengers pay him little mind, looking up at him occasionally as he approaches.
If the videos were framed differently, his world may have been obscured by his position amongst an indifferent crowd, but placing him in the centre of the image favours his perspective. While one may be hesitant to ascribe any sort of meaning to his statements, what we hear seems to be an inquiry into things that are normally imperceptible, into a world within and alongside the countless other worlds that intersect, multiply, and dissipate inside of the one we have agreed upon.
‘This is a mournful discovery.
1) Those who agree with you are insane.
2) Those who do not agree with you are in power.’ — Philip K. Dick, VALIS
‘Where classical science saw a single world that comprised within it all living species hierarchically ordered from the most elementary forms up to the higher organisms, Uexküll instead supposes an infinite variety of perceptual worlds that, though they are uncommunicating and reciprocally exclusive, are all equally perfect and linked together as if in a gigantic musical score.’ — Giorgio Agamben, ‘Umwelt'
Around 13 years ago, a friend of mine shared a bizarre video called ‘BongBong LRT Speech (w subtitles)’,1 featuring a man on the LRT reciting a largely continuous monologue in a mixture of English, Filipino, fragments of broken Spanish, and unintelligible gibberish. He is interrupted twice. The first pause seems to be prompted by a security guard asking him not to disturb the other passengers. His silence lasts for a few seconds before his rant continues. The second disruption takes on the form of a threat. He stares down another passenger, yells at them about giving him a ‘shit of mind’, gets up to challenge them to a fight, and takes his seat as the tense encounter seems to diffuse itself, sombrely expressing his disappointment. ‘You better respect. Somebody’s talking.’
Throughout his soliloquy, the man speaks of Manila also being Jerusalem and Germany, of treasure and artillery hidden underground, about an event that sounds either like a ritual awakening or a resurrection, of his personal involvement with the National Bureau of Investigation, and of his intention to decapitate then president Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III as an act of revenge. The man claims to have reached out to major broadcasting networks in the hopes of propagating his message, but he admits that they only refused him entry and regarded him with a mixture of fear and disgust. According to him, he uses drugs (‘top shabu’) to recover his distorted memories. It appears that he believes himself to be the son of the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda, whom he refers to as ‘mama’ while frequently referring to himself as ‘Bongbong’.2 He says Aquino has committed unspeakable crimes against him, which he describes as follows: ‘Iyong pinaka itlog ko tsaka ‘yong pinaka muscles ko nilagay niya sa ilalim. Stomach ko nilagay niya dito. Ang head feet ko, kita ninyo wala ngang kuko. Eh paano po? He checked my three eyes. My nose was put in the heart, man. And my head put in my pubic hair.’ (An attempt at translation: ‘He displaced the essence of my testicles and my muscles and put them underneath. My stomach was transferred here. Look at my head feet. The nails are gone. And how? Well, he checked my three eyes. My nose was put in the heart, man. And my head put in my pubic hair.’)
Toward the end of the video, he seems to calm down, sounding like he got everything out of his system. He reassures his captive audience, ‘whatever I say, the Filipino is my friend.’ As the train comes to a momentary halt, the person recording the footage turns the camera to himself, exchanges a glance with an imagined audience before mouthing something silently. It is difficult to determine the word or phrase that his lips attempt to form or the precise meaning behind the expression on his face. It is unclear if he is expressing amusement, confusion, or derision.
Everything the man in the video said has held my fascination for years. Some of his ramblings came off as ridiculous because they were inconsistent with consensus reality, but they seemed to be thoroughly consistent with their own internal logic as though they were glimpses of an established cosmology of his own invention. I presumed that this video of this man was the only one on the internet until I recognised his face in a series of four longer videos filmed outside a small canteen, uploaded by two different users shortly after the video on the train. In all four videos, he addresses the camera directly, expounding upon his ramblings captured earlier. It is impossible to piece together a single, coherent narrative from this selection of videos, but characters, events, and ideas reappear. The thought that this was some odd attempt at a viral marketing campaign crept into my mind, but it seemed implausible considering his descriptions of brutality, the absurdity of his claims, and the absence of any development in plot or in intensity. Nothing appeared to follow until he resurfaced in another video on the LRT once more in May of 2022.
In what seems to be an expansion of the premise of the initial video,3 we find the man much more cordial this time around and noticeably more muscular. He claims that he is ‘not using drugs’, stating that he is a ‘demon’ who ‘walks beside the Lord on the road, asking for change because [he doesn’t] have money’.4 He proclaims that he is Elvis Presley and says that he loves Filipinos because they pray, and he pities them. He then goes on to discuss in succinct tautologies how he understands the Filipino state of mind: ‘ang isip ang isip. Ang isip ang isip. Buti hindi ako nakaapak sa isip ninyo.’ (‘The mind is the mind. The mind is the mind. It’s a good thing that I haven’t stepped on your minds.’) After a few brief moments of contemplation, he puts on a pair of sunglasses and bursts into what appears to be an improvised song and dance with an indeterminate subject. Throughout the course of the song, he directly addresses the person holding the camera, calling them his friend when a security guard asks him to quiet down. The other passengers pay him little mind, looking up at him occasionally as he approaches.
If the videos were framed differently, his world may have been obscured by his position amongst an indifferent crowd, but placing him in the centre of the image favours his perspective. While one may be hesitant to ascribe any sort of meaning to his statements, what we hear seems to be an inquiry into things that are normally imperceptible, into a world within and alongside the countless other worlds that intersect, multiply, and dissipate inside of the one we have agreed upon.
Screencap of now-defunct Time Cube website
Elegy
‘Your opposite eyes were moved to 1 corner to overlay for single perspective, but that corrupts your Opposite Brain.’ — Otis Eugene Ray, Time Cube
‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state.’ — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 3
I. The World At Large
According to Otis Eugene Ray, self-proclaimed Doctor of Cubicism and Wisest Human Thinker, meridian time is a scam, one great conspiracy determined to obscure the true nature of time, which operates on the principle of the Time Cube. He wrote that only one day – out of the actual four contemporaneous days – would be officially recognised by passing through legislation, impressed upon the general populace through education, and reinforced by religion. He equates worshipping a single god with parents cannibalising their children.
According to Ray, all fields of mathematics that make use of ideas of the singular are false. He claims that ‘ONEism is a demonic Death Math’, and ‘−1 x −1 = +1 is stupid and evil’.5 In Ray’s writings, everything is reducible to a series of binary oppositions, which are determined by the four concomitant cycles of the day. It would seem that this fixation with the number four may develop from the work of Alcmaeon of Croton or Empedocles, but there is no mention of either figure on the Time Cube website.
Ray offered $10,000 to anyone who could disprove his theories. He was the sole judge of this challenge, and it is safe to assume that Ray was never disproven in his lifetime. The Time Cube makes no room for nuance or difference. There are statements on the site that espouse racist, sexist, and homophobic views. The principle that underlies Ray’s ‘four-cornered truth’ is that of the singular, which he purports to despise.
Ray believes that education has made us ignorant, that the academe has produced a world that consists only of obscurantist language and fictitious mathematics, which he calls the ‘Word World’. The final paragraph on the first page of the Time Cube website reads as follows: ‘Can you distinguish the academic induced "Word World" from the natural “Real World"? Beware of the change when your brain is free from induced "Word World” enslavement — for you could find that the natural "Real World" has been destroyed.’
II. When We Cease To Understand The World
In 2023, I visited the Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and found myself utterly astounded by the institutional machinery behind the selection of an arbitrary centre. A tour of the museum left me with the impression that the parameters of linear, clock time as we know it were imposed upon the world from the top down, from the centre to the margins, not unlike the history of British imperialism that necessitated this forceful consolidation of multiple trajectories of experiential time. A few days later, I attended a conference at Goldsmiths on varying conceptions of the time machine, which examined attempts at escaping linear chronology across a range of experiments in media. I took down a lot of notes. I was particularly intrigued by the idea that a time machine that does not only allow one to travel forward or backward in chronological time but produces numerous experiences of time. Time that thickens in viscosity, time that suspends itself in loops, time that accelerates and slows down, time that becomes space, increasing in volume, acquiring texture, time that disintegrates and gives way to a multiplicity of times.
‘Your opposite eyes were moved to 1 corner to overlay for single perspective, but that corrupts your Opposite Brain.’ — Otis Eugene Ray, Time Cube
‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state.’ — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 3
I. The World At Large
According to Otis Eugene Ray, self-proclaimed Doctor of Cubicism and Wisest Human Thinker, meridian time is a scam, one great conspiracy determined to obscure the true nature of time, which operates on the principle of the Time Cube. He wrote that only one day – out of the actual four contemporaneous days – would be officially recognised by passing through legislation, impressed upon the general populace through education, and reinforced by religion. He equates worshipping a single god with parents cannibalising their children.
According to Ray, all fields of mathematics that make use of ideas of the singular are false. He claims that ‘ONEism is a demonic Death Math’, and ‘−1 x −1 = +1 is stupid and evil’.5 In Ray’s writings, everything is reducible to a series of binary oppositions, which are determined by the four concomitant cycles of the day. It would seem that this fixation with the number four may develop from the work of Alcmaeon of Croton or Empedocles, but there is no mention of either figure on the Time Cube website.
Ray offered $10,000 to anyone who could disprove his theories. He was the sole judge of this challenge, and it is safe to assume that Ray was never disproven in his lifetime. The Time Cube makes no room for nuance or difference. There are statements on the site that espouse racist, sexist, and homophobic views. The principle that underlies Ray’s ‘four-cornered truth’ is that of the singular, which he purports to despise.
Ray believes that education has made us ignorant, that the academe has produced a world that consists only of obscurantist language and fictitious mathematics, which he calls the ‘Word World’. The final paragraph on the first page of the Time Cube website reads as follows: ‘Can you distinguish the academic induced "Word World" from the natural “Real World"? Beware of the change when your brain is free from induced "Word World” enslavement — for you could find that the natural "Real World" has been destroyed.’
II. When We Cease To Understand The World
In 2023, I visited the Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and found myself utterly astounded by the institutional machinery behind the selection of an arbitrary centre. A tour of the museum left me with the impression that the parameters of linear, clock time as we know it were imposed upon the world from the top down, from the centre to the margins, not unlike the history of British imperialism that necessitated this forceful consolidation of multiple trajectories of experiential time. A few days later, I attended a conference at Goldsmiths on varying conceptions of the time machine, which examined attempts at escaping linear chronology across a range of experiments in media. I took down a lot of notes. I was particularly intrigued by the idea that a time machine that does not only allow one to travel forward or backward in chronological time but produces numerous experiences of time. Time that thickens in viscosity, time that suspends itself in loops, time that accelerates and slows down, time that becomes space, increasing in volume, acquiring texture, time that disintegrates and gives way to a multiplicity of times.
Found text. Courtesy of the author
Epilogue
‘They said there were two fathers: one above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the devil. And when you look up from the bottom, it is just his reflection laughing back down at you.’ — Westworld, Season 2, Episode 4
‘A fundamental misunderstanding obtained however, which has since run like a red thread through my entire life. It is based upon the fact that, within the order of the World, God did not really understand the living human being and had no need to understand him, because, according to the Order of the World, He dealt only with corpses.’ — Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
‘Prophet of evil I ever am to myself: forced for ever into sorrowful auguries that I have no power to hide from my own heart, no, not through one night's solitary dreams.’ — Thomas de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
‘The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind,
Mine speaks in Parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates,
Thy heaven-doors are my hell gates.’ — William Blake, ‘The Everlasting Gospel’
‘… you will see my present body / burst into fragments / and remake itself / under ten thousand notorious aspects / a new body where you will never forget me.’ — Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’
‘EAT SELF. DIE SELF. DAVID IS A SELFISH KING. ABSALOM, REBEL PRIEST. DAVID HAS SHIT IN HIS HEAD. DO NOT FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF THE THIEF. REPUBLIC ACT 1516.6 CHICKEN. PIG. DOG. HOW MANY? BIABLE. BYBLE. VIE BALL. BIA VALL.’7
‘Hey, Genius! You can see someone else’s snot, but yours is bigger. Examine yourself. Have a look at your own reflection in the mirror. Only then can you pass judgment on others without shame. … If it is time for war, I will die. … Can I become a soldier? My testicles are white. Never mind, brother. Plant sweet potatoes instead. You will benefit from the harvest. … I must not be afraid, for god is with me all the time, and he will not abandon me. Child, do not be afraid of the enemy, for I am with you at all times. I am the lord of your ancestors and your forebears who have worshipped me. My child, now the lord is with you all the time. How will you leave this planet?’
What was it that you saw?
‘They said there were two fathers: one above, one below. They lied. There was only ever the devil. And when you look up from the bottom, it is just his reflection laughing back down at you.’ — Westworld, Season 2, Episode 4
‘A fundamental misunderstanding obtained however, which has since run like a red thread through my entire life. It is based upon the fact that, within the order of the World, God did not really understand the living human being and had no need to understand him, because, according to the Order of the World, He dealt only with corpses.’ — Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
‘Prophet of evil I ever am to myself: forced for ever into sorrowful auguries that I have no power to hide from my own heart, no, not through one night's solitary dreams.’ — Thomas de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
‘The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,
Is my vision's greatest enemy.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind,
Mine speaks in Parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates,
Thy heaven-doors are my hell gates.’ — William Blake, ‘The Everlasting Gospel’
‘… you will see my present body / burst into fragments / and remake itself / under ten thousand notorious aspects / a new body where you will never forget me.’ — Antonin Artaud, ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’
‘EAT SELF. DIE SELF. DAVID IS A SELFISH KING. ABSALOM, REBEL PRIEST. DAVID HAS SHIT IN HIS HEAD. DO NOT FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF THE THIEF. REPUBLIC ACT 1516.6 CHICKEN. PIG. DOG. HOW MANY? BIABLE. BYBLE. VIE BALL. BIA VALL.’7
‘Hey, Genius! You can see someone else’s snot, but yours is bigger. Examine yourself. Have a look at your own reflection in the mirror. Only then can you pass judgment on others without shame. … If it is time for war, I will die. … Can I become a soldier? My testicles are white. Never mind, brother. Plant sweet potatoes instead. You will benefit from the harvest. … I must not be afraid, for god is with me all the time, and he will not abandon me. Child, do not be afraid of the enemy, for I am with you at all times. I am the lord of your ancestors and your forebears who have worshipped me. My child, now the lord is with you all the time. How will you leave this planet?’
What was it that you saw?
A.X. Ledesma does research on sound, material culture, and ecological thinking. His work in these interrelated areas has taken on various forms including installation, performance, and text; iterations of which have appeared in various institutional and non-institutional spaces and platforms. He received an MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London and currently teaches at the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman from which he received a BA in Comparative Literature.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWjsXcTFOnc&t
2. The nickname of the dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who is currently the president of the Philippines.
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PxqcjOWkVI
4. Translated from: ‘Naglalakad aka sa gilid ng Panginoon sa kalye. ‘Yong sukli sa akin na lang. I don’t have money.’
5. https://web.archive.org/web/20150506055228/http://www.timecube.com/index.html
6. See: https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/2/25441#:~:text=To%20carry%20out%20the%20purposes,the%20Philippines%20up%20to%20December
7. Found text. Translated from Filipino.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWjsXcTFOnc&t
2. The nickname of the dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who is currently the president of the Philippines.
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PxqcjOWkVI
4. Translated from: ‘Naglalakad aka sa gilid ng Panginoon sa kalye. ‘Yong sukli sa akin na lang. I don’t have money.’
5. https://web.archive.org/web/20150506055228/http://www.timecube.com/index.html
6. See: https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/2/25441#:~:text=To%20carry%20out%20the%20purposes,the%20Philippines%20up%20to%20December
7. Found text. Translated from Filipino.