The Carpenters is by far the most articulate pop band of their time when it comes to love melancholy. People who grow up to their songs will not wonder why the story of these two siblings is as tragic as, say, their song Aurora.
Yesterday, I felt rain on my head. Walking through a crowded place, everyone is bustling, running for cover, scrounging for a ride home.
Yet I moved through the noisy crowd like the film and music was slow and sad. Like Karen Carpenter cooed at my ear with her cold voice. I have always wondered why the rain was such a sad occasion on most literary references.
Andrew told me that I could write anything I want on this blog, ANYTHING I was passionate about to write. If you know me personally, it’s hard to tell what field I belong to. That is because I’ve been all over the place and am practically interested in EVERYTHING.
A few months ago, I took the bold step of turning this blog into everything I was interested in. And now it’s turn out to be an “anything goes” kind of blog. But I haven’t done it any justice by waiting for its 2D walls to grow cobwebs. WELL. That’s always been my bane. Being too busy living life to write about it. I even missed writing about the very eventful Kadayawan, but if I released anything at this point, I suppose it’s like stale cheese. Which is worse than the smell of freshly fermented cheese…you get my point.
So, it’s back to basics for me and that’s the fact that I love music.
Did I tell you that I love music?
The other day, I was just thinking about it when I finally reunited with my lovely guitar after TWO YEARS. That’s a fairly long time to be away from an object you held on to practically everyday. Imagine you lost your phone and found it two years later: that’s how I felt.
See, when I left Manila two summers ago, someone (who I had kindly sought favor to load my things at the back of the car while I prepared for my trip to the airport) forgot to load my guitar (among other valuable electronic gadgets, irritatingly so). So by the time I got to the airport, I was cities away from my lovely wooden thing.
A few days ago, I got in touch with my cousin who I haven’t seen for the same number of years and found out that she took the liberty of taking MY guitar with her to Davao. I just love her, she is definitely the best. That’s why I forgive her for the pink heart-shaped butingting that she pasted on my guitar’s pick guard, it’s alright by me. Even though I would never have approved of it to begin with. Never mind, we can easily arrange its…removal.
What got me thinking even more while I was finally strumming the thing was how hard it is for a musician to love music without an instrument. Or to REALLY love music without being able to play anything. I know you’re all sick of my metaphors, but here’s another one: It’s like, you can’t really appreciate sex until you’ve done it, in my humble opinion.
I finally get to play a song I’ve been dying to play myself which is Joy Division’s monumental single, “Love will tear us apart”. For this post, I won’t have you listen to how I played it. Instead, check out this superb cover from Jose Gonzales (who also made an equally superb rendition of Heartbeats by The Knife as well as Teardrop by Massive Attack). For me, it’s always a joy to listen to guitar players and hear them sing to the songs that they play.
What more if I was THAT guitar player.
Jose Gonzales – Love will tear us apart (Joy Division cover) [Download] [Lyrics]
Tomorrow is supposed to be an historic day for the Blogger community of the Philippines, that’s because a Wordcamp is taking place in Manila for the first time. It’s too bad I’m booked to fly to Manila on the 18th instead which concludes how impractical it is for me to decide to fly in earlier for Wordcamp, come back to Davao then back again to Manila on 18. When I accidentally called Ria this morning (mistaking her for my friend Ria Lumapas), I got to ask her where she was and she replied matter-of-factly, “I’m in Manila.” Hearing those words, I suddenly felt a crushing sense of panghihinayang. The closest English equivalent of which would be…regret.
Oh well, life moves on. Hopefully when I move to the States I’ll catch the Wordcamp in San Francisco, booya!
Meanwhile, a blogger who’s not in the field is obviously mulling about the internet. Just now I downloaded the beta version of Google’s new browser Google Chrome and for a Beta version it has so far impressed me with its speed. It’s phenomenally faster than Mozilla 3.0 and is apparently more efficient than Safari. Apart from the exciting fact that Chrome is Open source, it introduces a very unique way of managing javascript by incorporating multiple process in one browser. Now the brainiacs from Google can best explain what that means not me, definitely, no. Luckily, they came up with a very friendly way of helping us understand…through a comic strip!
Click through to check out a more "personal" side of me. After all, behind this veneer of musical snobbery is (surprise, surprise!) an actual person with feelings and thoughts.
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