MUSIC AS SHOWBIZ,
POETRY AS SHOWBIZ!

The song that I came to sing
remains unsung to this day
- Rabindranath Tagore

If there is no room in poetry for difficulty,
where is difficulty to go?
- Billy Collins

You can fry me in a cauldron or turn me upside down, you may throw me in a dungeon or burn me at the stakes - but no sir, I shall not trade this music and that poetry for your glowing pot of gold. Go ahead and disarm me, cut my hair and gouge my eyes; pry my heart open, or dry my valves into submission - there's no cry of sweet surrender no matter how you try. I won't be the real me if music were dead and poetry were not alive.
- cbs

I was probably conceived under the haunting melody of song and the consistent guidance of rhyme. If your parents were like my dad, a virtuoso in his guitar and harmonica who could have accompanied you in any song of your choice while nightmaring in his sleep, and my mom who in her much younger years had the essence of Callas in her throat and Kipling in her memory (she'll do an aria and cite a stanza at the slightest hint of audience), music and poetry could be your foetal companions, too.

Through my adolescence, music in the house was one of wild abandon. Everyone was a singer, and save for the youngest, played at least one musical instrument (some of which demonstrated a unique aspect of utility: the flute doubled as a backscratcher, the banduria as dog-swiper). My mom's operatic voice helped so much in the laundry (a fabric softener?) and my siblings classical eloquence on the piano paved the way to my love for classical music.

One of the most memorable moments with my family in the Philippines occured during 'brownout nights', where power failure failed to defeat our willpower from singing at our terrace to our hearts' content. I played the guitar, my dad the harmonica, and my mom and siblings tone down the humidity of the air with the coolness of their voices through an array of kundiman and other traditional songs. Sampaguita ng Aming Lahi, ayy, that gave me goosebumps; La Paloma, ayy, yay, yay, yay, that gave me even more goosebumps, I could remember Tatum the doggie joining us in the chorus with the only lyrics she knew, awoooooooooooooo! Folksongs were a favorite, too, and Peter, Paul and Mary's Where Have All The Soldiers Gone was always sung in blended perfection. And when the lights were on again the entire neighborhood shouted in glee, probably because we abated our own nuisance rather than the power coming back.

Still and all, my music is not reactionary nor supercillious nor learned nor intolerant. Right now, I crave for reggae, and there seems to be a political, aside from harmonious, reason for this: reggae is third world music that found acceptance beyond geography and culture.

Did you know that 'I Shot the Sheriff' popularized by Eric Clapton is reggae, and that the 70's British rock group Police is basically a reggae act? Every beat in Roxanne screams Caribbean and you can always see the Jamaican-ness in Sting everytime he croons 'de-doo-doo-doo, de-da-da-da'.

I would like to believe that the greatness of reggae lies in the fact that any song can have a reggae arrangement which beautifies, as well as beatifies, the original melody. Red, Red Wine is a Neil Diamond song, but listen to UB40 turn it into a great reggae anthem. I went to this place called SOB (Sounds of Brazil) and witnessed how a Brazilian reggae band version of Frank Sinatra's Let Me Try Again brought the revellers up and the house down. A month ago, I saw on tv a man and a woman doing an acoustic rendition of Coldplay's Yellow in reggae. That was unforgettable. And finally last night, somebody was doing a cover of Slave to Love (by the former front man of Roxy Music) in reggae, and that, too, was supremely memorable.

And which now leads us to poetry.

Here's my routine: coming from work I would go to a bookstore before heading home, to unstress myself and relieve my brains from the stubborn clinging of office responsibility. I do this with a 15 minute therapy I simply call poetry reading. I pick up a book by any poet, scan the pages for quick look at any poem I will have love at first sight with, and then read that poem aloud.

Believe me, it is effective. The stress falls into place, which place is outside your body (but be careful as the place may be the one beside you who will consider you a loony).

Tell me yourself, say this aloud:

Once intoxicated, one learns the strength of wine,
Once smitten, one learns the power of love;
You cannot write my poems
Just as I cannot dream your dreams.
(Dream of Poetry by Hu Shish)

and this, too -

The whiskey of your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
(My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke)

But the ability to remove stress speaks of the physical only. Poetry, in Seamus Heaney's 1995 Nobel lecture, has the ability to provide intellectual, spiritual and emotional benefits, too -

(Poetry has the) power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values; that our very solitude and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.

And as if I can't have music and poetry enough, I just got myself a cd that combines both music and poetry. Entitled Neruda, with Luciana Souza on vocals and percussion and Edward Simon on the piano, the cd contains 10 songs that are actually 10 Pablo Neruda poems set to samba music. Track No. 5, Memory, reminds me (as if!) that music is my heart, and poetry is my soul:

I have to remember everything,
keep track of blades of grass, the threads
of untidy event, and
the houses, inch by inch,
the long lines of the railway,
the textured face of pain.

If I should get one rosebush wrong
and confuse night with a hare,
or even if one whole wall
has crumbled in my memory,
I have to make the air again,
steam, the earth, leaves,
hair and bricks as well,
the thorns which pierced me,
the speed of the escape.

Take pity on the poet.

That's all for my showbiz, folks; please don't take pity.