How Raymond Lauchengco turns pandemic quiet into poetry in his debut collection ‘Dance With The Wind’

Written during lockdown, the actor/director’s new book explores vulnerability, fatherhood, and the Kintsugi philosophy of finding beauty in letting go of control.

The room at Breakfast at Antonio’s in Robinsons Magnolia felt appropriately hushed for a book born out of stillness. Soft morning light settled over wooden tables, coffee cups clinked gently, and conversation stayed at a respectful murmur… less a press event than a pause.

It was here, on December 12, that Raymond Lauchengco introduced “Dance With The Wind,” a collection of poems and short stories written during the pandemic, when the world slowed enough for him to finally hear himself think.

The stillness of reset

The book emerged from a period of sudden quiet. Before lockdowns, Lauchengco’s days were defined by motion, directing events, managing productions, moving from one commitment to the next. Then the noise stopped. Schedules cleared. The usual urgency dissolved. In its place was silence, and with it, a different kind of attention.

“It was the perfect time to reset,” he said. “To ask yourself, if the world goes back to normal, and you have ten, fifteen, twenty years left, what is it you really want to do?”

For Lauchengco, that question didn’t lead to a reinvention so much as a return. He wanted to sing again. He wanted to sit with emotions he had long postponed. Writing became part of that process, not as a goal, but as a response. Words surfaced not because he planned them, but because there was finally space for them to arrive.

The Kintsugi philosophy of creation

One idea, in particular, guided that period. “It’s not about what it is,” he said. “It’s about what it can become.”

During the pandemic, he found himself drawn to discarded objects… felled trees, empty wine bottles, things other people were ready to throw away. He began studying kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics, and applied the same philosophy to what surrounded him. Broken things weren’t finished; they were waiting. A heavy slab of wood could become a table. Shattered glass could be pieced back together. Nothing was fixed in its discarded state.

That way of seeing quietly shaped “Dance With The Wind.” The book doesn’t follow a rigid structure. It moves through poems and short stories that feel discovered rather than designed. Some, Lauchengco admits, surprised even him. They arrived without warning, written less with intention than with trust.

One story, about a child asking his father how much he is loved, was inspired by a walk with his own son. Another emerged while staying on a farm in Batangas, where early mornings brought the steady rhythm of work and the slow unfolding of daylight.