This past weekend I gathered some friends together and shot what is now the music video for my song, Moontide. I’m posting it today in solidarity with the Lysistrata Project, a worldwide theatrical event in which over a thousand theater groups in over 50 countries are performing 
Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata on this day, 3-3-03, as a form of creative protest against war.
Lysistrata is an ancient greek comedy about how the Athenian, Trojan and Spartan women conspire to tease and titillate but withhold sex from their warrior mates until war is stopped. During the course of the play, helplessly hard-cocked men could not concentrate on their war efforts and decide to go home and give peace a chance.
My favorite scene is the Oath of Women. Here’s my own translation:
I will have no military man
For a husband, lover or casual encounter
Not even his boner will win me over
I refuse to put anything on
Except what shows my body off
That every GI Joe may burn with desire
But find no release from his groin’s fire
To warmongers I won’t raise my toes to the ceiling
Nor stretch on all fours like a pussy
Both the front door
And the back door
Will be locked.
As I drink from this cup
I will abide by this oath.
It’s a fun little fantasy, but a satisfying way to express myself as a global citizen. I know there are many people like me who are citizens of one country, yet residents of another. I was born and raised in the Philippines, but I’m a green card holding California resident. Neither government has the right to speak for me, nor wage war in my name. The internet is quickly creating a global culture, and it is to this global community that I pledge my allegiance.
I wrote the song Moontide as an ode to the moon, its power over the tides and its supernatural connection to women’s life cycles. The music video, loosely based on Lysistrata’s Oath of Women, celebrates soft sexy women in sheer seductive fabrics contrasting against militia and industry for a striking feminine anti-war statement.
Pretty soon, my pretty baby
the moon is on my side.
Pretty soon, my pretty baby
she’ll change the tide.
You have talent dripping out of your pores. Beautiful voice, beautiful face, beautiful body, uncommonly intelligent. I love your new music video and your voice is soooo sensual. Do you have a CD of your music videos? I can’t get enough of you. I will be joining your website soon. Please let me know if you are still doing cam shows. Also, I may be attending Erotica LA in June. Will you be going? If so, I would very much like to meet you. Love you!
You are really involved in interesting projects! The Aristophanes play sounds thrilling. To bad I live about 10.000 miles away… Personally I really like Greek theatre. It is very explosive, liberal and is much more ‘real’ than contemporary plays and movies (especially since they often do not have a ‘happy end’). Aristophanes, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus… When I was a student I had to translate their texts (I did ancient Greek), and it was always interesting. Beautifully written.
The song looks good too. I have no idea what it sounds like since for some reason my computer has turned dumb (mute)… do you play an instrument, by the way? If you don’t you really should definately try to, it really opens up the mind. I play classical (and modern) guitar (I even tought it), and I am now trying to get some music out of a cello. Completely different language, completely different relation to the material. Wood is a most fascinating material.
You’re completely right about the flaws of ‘representational democracy’. Hardt and Negri (in their book Empire) also mention how this whole idea of representation is based on a really strange thought that one man is able to ‘represent’ millions of people. In ancient Greece there was a direct democracy, meaning that you could personally have a voice in ‘parliament’, but as the nation states (the polis) grew bigger, they replaced this much more ‘democratic’ system by the representational democracy, which makes that State a much more institutionalized, conservative organ that is only aimed at keeping power and expanding it. Horrible. Sometimes I give some ‘political-philosophical’ lectures with the left wing parties here in Holland, but even they have great problems with questioning parlementary democracy. When you introduce a concept like anarchy (which does NOT mean chaos, but simply means that decisions are not made by an institutionalized organ of power), they really get scared.
Anyway, keep up the good work, I really enjoy reading your diaries. So are so liberal and seem to enjoy your life very much, and that is really comforting in a time like this one. I am happy to have met you.
I liked the juxtaposition of “just cause” and “just because” in your song. There’s an anti-war slogan in there somewhere.
Dear (((((((((May)))))))))))
Thank You!!!
We had a feminist club here called Lysistrata back in the ’70′s in Madison. I had read the play & thought it good, and as a Worshipper of Women bought stock in the enterprise. It was a nice place, although at times radical lesbians tried to have all males barred. Unfortunately it burned many years ago.
Love Your Flow Sharing, Your Feminine Power, Your Beauty, and now Your activism too!
Hello Mayling,
I have another thought, perhaps unusual for this forum. It deals with your ideas about the moon and its influence on our state of existence. It seems obviously connected to women’s life cycle, but I’m 60 years old and have not stopped learning nor have I stopped being open to new, sometimes surprising ideas, so I think it possibly affects men to, perhaps in ways we don’t understand as of yet. I’m not sure if I go through “cycles,” except in the larger sense that we all pass through life phases, but the idea is intriguing. And then, of course, the moon affects us all through its interactions with tides. This idea, I discovered, is extremely complicated, by the way, including esoteric relationships between the pull of the moon and earth’s gravity. Last there is the moon as metaphor, which pervades our music, poetry, and religion.
Best wishes!