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Words and music |
|
 by Alfred A. Yuson
(for Philippine Star Jan, 10, 05)
I must thank our fellow columnist in this section, and special buddy, Butch
Dalisay, for making one riotous spread of a family room a much happier place
over the yearend holidays, and well beyond. This he did by playing cyber-Santa
and helping install a couple of shiny if not exactly brand-new Apples in the
collective domain.
Well, the i-Book was supposed to replace an antiquarian PowerBook for my
sorties away from the domestic comfort zone, for journalism and electronic
correspondence while on the run. But our little girl pulled a fast Piatco on my
strong state, or was it the other way around?
The expropriation was conducted as soon as the she saw the E-Mac hefted right on
another desk. Or maybe the hot-zoning moved her to scurry away with the laptop
right into her room, suddenly freed from wires and cables as we all were, thanks
to Sir Butch’s Airport magic. Just as quickly did the large desktop become the
self-designated property of her older bro, so that this grand pere had to beat a
hasty retreat back to his trusty if slow dinosaur.
The comforting thought is that we now have four work stations to service the
five of us, counting the breakdown-prone PC that’s been demanding a new, bigger
monitor. There the eldest son contents himself unrivalled, but for occasional
forays into his gaming turf by his Mom. Not that she plays the MMORPG or Massive
Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games he does, nor
peruses Fan Fiction nor relishes anime; but for her own simpler world of Word
processing and e-mail.
Ah, but since it’s back to school for the expropriation committee, this old
geezer can now wake up in an ideal environment, turn on the E-Mac, and thanks to
the various ministrations rendered by the RP Mac Society Prez, voila! LeBron
James is easily imagined slamming a dunk right in the opening quarter, by virtue
of nba.com’s running account on html.
Sir Butch saw to all of the configurations for instant transport, plus software
that included the gargantuan Garage Band for the budding composer of a sixteen-er,
and Limewire for his retro-reactivated Pops. Whenever the aspiring rapper went
back to his oncourt basketball on weekends (as opposed to his old man’s virtual
spectating), the latter actually got the chance to import old ditties into the i-Tunes
library.
These have since included my fondest ’50s and ’60s memories of Buddy Holly, The
Platters, Bob Dylan, and the ’70s and ’80s’ Keith Jarrett. Ah, hog heaven for
the deja-vu-ing Buddha ears that signify enough longevity for retro restoration
many times over.
“Rave on, rave on and tell me, tell me, do not be lonely…”
“When the twilight is gone…”
“Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door…”
Memories are a flood of bright and cheery Golden-Age moments, even if these
include a flash headline of Holly’s and The Crickets’ premature demise, together
with Richie Valens of “La Bamba” fame, in a plane crash circa early-50s.
(September 30, 1955 would be the follow-up date of supreme tragedy, when a
Porsche crash snuffed out Jimmy Dean’s iconic candle.)
The Platters take me back to sweet slow-drag in the barn-dance era, when “bakod”
meant tight guarding of territorial imperatives inches away from the
desiderata’s delicate hemline. And Dylan revives those days of early
avant-gardism courtesy of printmaker non pareil Pandy Aviado, in his Phil-Am
Homes digs, sharing his woodcut skills along with the twangy one’s
blaring harmonica.
Now the vintage and the hi-tech meet at the portals of a new millennium, while
words and music intersect at a junction of hark-back poesie.
Oh, also filed enough songs for an 80MB CD album of Canadian jazz chanteuse Jane
Monheit, with and without Michael Bublé. And The Indigo Girls for a friend’s
missus. And soon Mama was asking for downloads of Nina Simone. Upon compliance,
I am blown away by the extended, riproaring “Sinnerman.”
With a TV screen behind me at an angle, I could still observe either Kobe Bryant
with his usual bwakaw or CNN’s repeated images of 20-foot waves taking their
increasingly horrific toll. Then Simone comes in with Leonard Cohen’s classic
“Suzanne” -- an old fave from Warren Beatty’s memorable Western, “McCabe and
Mrs. Miller.”
Synchronicity! Selective affinities. The common coin of incidence.
“Suzanne takes you down/ To a place by the river/ You can hear the boats go by/
And you can spend the night forever/ And you know that she’s half-crazy/ And
that’s why you want to be there/ And she feeds you tea and oranges/ That come
all the way from China/ And just when you mean to tell her/ That you have no
love to give her/ She gets you on her wavelength/ And she lets the river answer/
That you’ve always been her lover/ And you want to travel with her/ And you want
to travel blind/ And you know that she will trust you/ For you’ve touched her
perfect body with your mind//
“Now Jesus was a sailor/ When He walked upon the water/ And He spent a long time
watching/ From His lonely wooden tower/ And when He knew for certain/ Only
drowning men could see him/ He said all men will be sailors then/ Until the sea
shall free them/ But He Himself was broken/ Long before the sky would open/
Forsaken, almost human/ He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone/ And you want
to travel with Him/ And you want to travel blind/ Cuz you think maybe you can
trust him/ For He’s touched
your perfect body with His mind//
“Suzanne takes your hand/ And she leads you to the river/ She’s wearing rags and
feathers/ From Salvation Army counters/ And the sun pours down like honey/ On
our lady of the harbor/ And she shows you where to look/ Between the garbage and
the flowers/ There are heroes in the seaweed/ There are children in the morning/
They are leaning out for love/ And they will lean that way forever/ While
Suzanne holds the mirror/ And you want to travel with her/ And you want to
travel blind/ Cuz you think maybe you can trust her/ For she’s touched your
perfect body with her mind.”
That last section turns particularly poignant in these times. It’s always been
poetry, not sheer as they say, but solid, and now Cohen’s lyrics prove
prescient: “…Where to look between the garbage and the flowers…” Hey, CNN, know
something? “Heroes in the seaweed…” Lord, does that apply to images of the great
washed in the tsunami tragedy? “…Children in the morning… leaning out for love …
they will lean that way forever…”
Leonard, you’re a Nostradamus, quatrains and all. Non-cryptic, non-acidic, but
just as prophetic.
What is it in music that fixes the moment?
On the first Sunday of the new year, National Artist for Literature Rio Almario
invites poets and writers to a get-together, where the poet-composer Jess
Santiago joins a phalanx of entertainers and blows us away, too, with his
guitar, his soft, cutting-edge voice, AND a recent signature ballad that draws
sighs from everyone.
“Laging ikaw sa aking puso/ Laging ikaw sa aking isip/ Dahil ikaw, tanging ikaw/
Laging ikaw ang pag-ibig//
“Ikaw ang pook ng aking saan/ Ikaw ang petsa ng aking kailan/ Ikaw ang bilang ng
aking ilan/ Sa bawat paano’y ikaw ang paraan/ Sa bawat bakit, ikaw ang dahilan/
Dahil ikaw, tanging ikaw ang pag-ibig//
“Sa ginaw ko’y ikaw ang kumot/ Sa kati ko’y ikaw ang kamot/ Sa pilay ko’y ikaw
ang hilot/ Sa bawat sugat ikaw ang gamut/ Ikaw ang idlip sa aking antok/ Sa
aking hilik ikaw ang yugyog/ Ikaw ang ginhawa sa aking pagod/ Ang ligaya sa
aking lungkot/ Dahil ikaw, tanging ikaw/ Laging ikaw ang pag-ibig
“Ikaw ang talas sa aking purol/ Ikaw ang tatas sa aking bulol/ Ikaw ang niyog sa
puto-bumbong/ Sa kare-kare, ikaw ang bagoong/ Ikaw ang sagot sa bawat bugtong/
Dahil ikaw, tanging ikaw/ Laging ikaw ang pag-ibig.”
No sense in translating “Laging Ikaw.” It can only be a failure, for Jess
Santiago’s lyrics are so intrinsically, idiomatically Pinoy. To render bagoong
into fish paste and kare-kare into oxtail stew would rob the whole thing of its,
uhh, flavor? “To my where, you’re the place/ To my when, you’re the date” or
“Eloquence to my stutter/ Coconut shaving for my
rice cake” don’t quite cut it either.
To each language the verse of song, then, for the most part. Paraphrasing would
prove dull, tedious. Counterpart lyrics fit into our lives only the way partners
do, whether of irony or lack of, as in “moon and June, croon and spoon” or “love
and marriage, horse and carriage.”
Jess Santiago isn’t our Leonard Cohen. He’s our Jess Santiago, guitarist,
composer, lyricist, singer, exquisite poet.
Enough to say perhaps, as he has, that “You’re the answer to my riddle/ Because
you, only you/ Love is always you.” For the new year and for always, when it
comes to words and music, we will lean that way forever.
------------------------------------------------------
Published in Gutom.org with permission from Alfred A. Yuson
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Posted on Monday, January 10 @ 14:22:12 CST by don |
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