REMINISCING.
Bittersweet memories as I listened to songs in my CD, songs that I
wrote with friends when I was in my 20s to 30s. Very meaningful ones
in my progression as a human being, like a chronicle of my journey
before I crossed oceans to America... Due to copyright intricacies, I
will have to work on legal issues first before I could properly
market them though (especially via the internet). I can't download it
on YouTube or Facebook either, but see me—I will hand you a copy. I
hand out “friendly copies” for donations (to my community
projects) each time there is a chance. Besides the songs that I wrote
with my band, Duane's Poetry—I also wrote a lot of songs with my
bestfriend Duwi when we were very young, like 13 or 14 years old.
Then some more with other friends in so many places—songs that I
left on cassette tapes, lead sheets, notebooks (with scribbled music
ledgers and stuff), and memories of those who heard them.
MEANTIME,
when I was in New York, “Awit kay Clarita,” an ode/sonata behind
kneading strings and piano solo break about a slain tribal amazon in
the Cordilleras back home, was interpreted by an Alvin Ailey
dancer/teacher, Elena Colmenares, in an art exhibition opening in
Soho's Puffin Gallery. The master copy was co-arranged with my best
buddy Rolly Melegrito, Pearlsha Abubakar and the late Miguel Basilio
(who also engineered the recording). I rearranged “Pagano,” a
statement vis a vis traditional/conventional religion and tribal
faith, into a multi-percussion interplay and choral voices. “Mutya,”
inspired by a Filipino poet/mentor Romulo Sandoval who died of cancer
at 40, about the beauty of poetry in the backdrop of a cruel world,
was sung by a Columbia Univ student and staff for The Indie as “gift”
to the late Senator (and presidential hopeful) Raul Roco and his wife
upon their visit in Manhattan in 2000. “Yakap” (“Embrace”),
written with Pearlsha, was about a mother's endearing, undying love
for her child.
I
LEARNED that a very young group in Manila wants to record an old
blues-rock broadside that I wrote with Rolly and Kay Conlu-Brondial,
“Praise The Lord, I am Cool,” in reference to the Pope's visit in
Manila that time. Then there's the old blues howler, “Mama, Don't
Let Your Children Grow Up to be Politicians,” a piece that me and
Rolly wrote for our little poetry/blues side-project, “Lightning
Joe and The Bluesman.” The sad but closure-tinged “Looking for my
Comrades” was my send-off song as I prepare to fly to New York City
on my 38th birthday, it's about the surreal confusion of party/ideological-line
ruin following the fall of the dictatorship, that we were still
“fighting” after the so-called revolution. “May Habilin ang
Uhay” (“The Rice Sheaves' Message”) was an elegy to the
protesting farmers who were shot at and perished in front of the
presidential palace in early `90s. “My Daughter is Missing” talks
about a summarily-executed or “salvaged” young activist, a
desaparecido...
OH,
that song, “Ode to the Beauty Queen,” written with Ray Nunez,
with the lines, “Now
that you have a most desirable body / Sure bet to boost tourism in
any country / And as computers check your vital stat / Tabloids
scrutinize your most private parts... / Go on fair muse, sell that
toothpaste smile / Neon gods whistle as you strut down desolated
isles / And what have you got inside that lovely swimsuit / Have you
traded your stars to a sequined fruit... / There goes your stairway,
stairway to heaven / All you have to do is get a perfect ten.” Oh
yes, at that early age, although I always watched beauty pageants
with my four sisters and mom and aunts, I never agreed that awesome
shapes and beautiful faces define “beauty” in a woman. And my
takes on love as a young man, “”Love
is a Poison,” is warm song, written with Kai, based on The Little
Prince and The Fox. Then a “harana” (serenade) that I'd like to
rearrange and record one of these days, composed with Rolly, “Hindi
Ito Panaginip” (“This Is Not a Dream,” that love is not
idealized—but realized).
TO
think that, these are just little fraction of the many songs that I
wrote in the past... What about my poems, plays, unproduced
screenplays, paintings? There are so many to catch up on, retrieve
and resurrect, while my little brain keeps on chugging along
everyday, every minute, every second—even in my night dreams. It's
not over until it is over, you reckon?
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