“Q” is for Questions, today, for the continuation of my #AtoZChallenge.

Last year, it had to do with the Top Ten Questions People Ask Me. Now, I am going to share a recent (well, last August) Q&A that Rappler.com did with my favorite artist Lea Salonga. I didn’t know they were going to do a live interview and just happened to see an announcement, so I was kind of late when I went to the site to listen. The good thing is, they have uploaded it to the page, yay!!!

Rappler Talk: Lea Salonga on art, technology, and leadership

Hope you learned more about Lea from that interview 🙂

Well, what timing that I did this when she is currently in hot water. I actually just found out because of this. Lea is generally considered the country’s pride. But because nobody’s perfect and you can’t please everybody, sometimes she does get into trouble when she opens her mouth or tweet about certain things, whether they really pertain to what netizens think they pertain to or not.

My take on this is this: At the end of the day, she is still just a person. She has rights to an opinion, to an advocacy, to a belief, to a-whatever. We pay to see her perform. We pay to see her work. But we don’t pay to run her life. We don’t pay to run anybody’s life. Why do you get to have an opinion and others can’t? I’d rather have an artist who speaks her mind than an artist who says things she knows will please people.

For the record, my family watches the said segment for the laughs. And for the record, I don’t like what the competition came up with at all. So I am being shallow myself…It is shallow, let’s admit that. But we can’t always be too serious. I’ve been there, it was depressing. It was like nothing was working the way it should have, like being trapped and unable to get out. So, you know, I am not about to be bothered at all by her tweet, if it does pertain to that certain segment. Taking offense like that, that’s what’s really shallow. I don’t want to go online and spend my time just butting heads with people about little things we should not be arguing about. There’s a difference between being in an argument and joining a healthy debate. They’re just shows. Watch what you want to, avoid those you don’t want to. Don’t make it bigger than it is, don’t take it personal.

One thing I do believe: we definitely NEED to level-up our entertainment industry.

‘Nuff said.