Imagine

We call each other  “bay” and exchange comments or chat on Facebook in a mix of very rudimentary Tagalog, Cebuano, and Bahasa words. He has probably more Filipino artist-friends than me in the social network. But he said he has never been to the Philippines, although his mom is a Filipina born in Zamboanga who married his dad, a Malaysian living in Kota Belud in Sabah.

I only met Jon, my Malaysian-Filipino friend, once and only very briefly when I came with two other Cebuano artist friends to see him in his studio in Kuala Lumpur last year. He first made friends with another Cebuano painter who I was traveling with when we came to Malaysia. He invited him to his studio when he learned that we were in Kuala Lumpur. It was to be their first meeting and me and still another Cebuano artist friend were just tagging along.

But Jon was a kind host. As it was only early in the morning when we met, he treated us to traditional Malay breakfast of nasi lemak in Krafts Komplex, the tourist mall where he had a batik studio. Jon is a batik artist who specializes in semi-abstract renditions of tropical flowers. He studied batik in a school in Sabah but came to KL to practice the art. His studio is now frequented by tourists who come from all over the world to learn a short batik painting lesson for a small fee or buy his work.

Some of them became Jon’s collectors or return to his workshop on their next visits to Kuala Lumpur. Perhaps, part of it is due to Jon’s sense of humor. The artist loves to crack jokes to his new friends in his broken English.

But he is particularly fond of Filipinos whom he call brothers and sisters. Upon first meeting, he always try to impress his Pinoy guests by greeting them in Tagalog or telling them his funny anecdotes growing up with a Filipino mother in Sabah.

This must have attracted some Filipino journalists to feature him on TV. Jon sent me a link of videos from youtube of him being featured on two TV programs in the Philippines. After seeing it, I joked to him that could now come to Philippines to visit us and sign autographs for his fans.

We wanted to return the favor to Jon, who generously invited us on our first meeting to make batik paintings in his studio. He showed us the procedure, from melting the wax to applying it on the silk with a canting or that small brass and bamboo batik pen. Then you add colored inks over the fine strokes of melted wax with a Chinese brush.

We were all amazed at how quick yet controlled Jon’s hands were at demonstrating the techniques. But he was equally amazed at our own crude attempts, where he saw abstract and surreal figures gradually emerged from the big white silk that he specially stretched for us.

It was one unforgettable morning of learning a new art and making friends in a foreign country. We gave him drawings and prints in exchange for allowing us to bring our first batik paintings. We traded jokes and teased each other like we had been childhood friends. We forgot that there’s also a lot of differences between us: For instance, Jon is a devout Muslim and yet we had been telling him a lot of jokes that could actually be haram (forbidden).

But our friend from Sabah is actually friendly to Christians. In fact, he sent us Christmas greetings last December on Facebook. He also posted greetings to his Chinese friends during the Chinese New Year. This must be due to the largely multicultural population in Sabah, where a lot of Filipino also resides. He can relate to their struggles as his own mother was one of them. But Jon is a typical a Sabah native—mixed blood and Muslim.

Recently, after seeing on TV how members of the Royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu were killed in a firefight with Malaysian troops in Lahad Datu, Sabah, when the former came to the island state to reclaim it, Jon sent me a private message to express his sadness, anxiety, and ask my views about the incident.

I gave him a short account of the Sultanate’s (and Philippine’s) historical claim on Sabah but also told him that it’s very unfortunate how politics (in this case, geopolitics) often create walls between people who have actually been living in peace and harmony. How different these events were from how artists could instantly become friends and understand each other in the common yet mute language of art, I told Jon. He said that that is exactly why he came to Kuala Lumpur, fleeing the political noise in his own place in Sabah.

Now in the social network, Jon is free to speak his mind, share his art to friends from all over the world. As we chatted about our frustrations over current events (the Sabah crisis and the coming elections in both Malaysia and the Philippines), I posted the following lines from John Lennon’s “Imagine” in my status: “Imagine there’s no countries/ It isn’t hard to do/ Nothing to kill or die for/ and no religion too/ Imagine all the people/ Living life in peace”.