The Case For Redemption

Prayer

2009-06-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

I have always wanted to write a poem with a prayer-like quality to it. Not a prayer to God in the strictest sense of the word, but actually something which addresses someone or something in a prayer-like way; asking for something, a little bit of confiding, and ultimately treating that addressee as if he or she was a higher being. One of my friends back home did a poem which I enjoyed reading because of that very reason, that it had a prayer-like quality to it; asking for rain, making a promise that he will dig into the very depths of nature and praise them in a release of wonder and awe.

I think of this poem:

PRAYER
Marin Sorescu

Oh you saints,
Let me enter your society,
If only as a statistician.

You’re old,
Perhaps the years are
Getting you down by now,
Laying themselves over you
In layers of color.

Just let me take care
Of your dirty work in
All the nooks and crannies.

For example I could
Swallow light
At the Last Supper
And exhale your halos
After the devotionals.

From time to time,
At a distance of half a wall,
I could
Form my hands into a horn
And shout,
Now for the believers,
Now for the unbelievers
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I was thinking of something less religious but more focused on nature and relationships, and then build something like a prayer to close out the link. But I like reading this one because it's full of wit.

Why prayer? I was never a religious person all my life. In fact, I've considered myself more spiritual than religious. Only recently have I been convinced that there's a line that draws the two apart. After coming back to a strong and steadfast faith (because most of my college life I considered myself a humanist with the same religious views as George Carlin, if you know what I mean), I have always believed in the power of prayer and the fact that there's a being of a higher existence somewhere. St. Anselm of Canterbury put it best: God is "that something which nothing greater can be conceived."

I do feel a sense of presence and lightness when thinking and reflecting on the Transcendent, the Supreme, or whatever you may call God. Unlike others, I grew up being told about the power of the Rosary, having been raised in a Jesuit school that owes devotion to St. Ignatius and Mother Mary. Today I gave one of my closest friends one of my lucky rosaries, one I had kept since 6th grade and which had brought me immense luck, as a reminder to follow our dreams and our goals. I hope and pray that it gives her as much luck as it gave me the past thirteen years.

Two poems by one of my favorite Filipino poets

2009-05-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

TWO NUDES
Eric Gamalinda

She was cruelest to me in April, when the monsoon stifled
The little devotion left between us. I blame
The monsoon, not her. Coasting southwest
From Sarawak the air reeks of cardamom,
Crab roe, corpses. Soldiers are bombing Pikit,
Three thousand Moslem refugees pour into
The Christian churches. She doesn't see the irony of it,
How we always wind up nursing the ones
We wound the most. We make love infrequently now,
Once a month if ever. She lies in bed
Like my weather-beaten republic, too sad to respond
To how badly I touch her, to how too fast or too slow
I come. You might think I'm making this up,
But this morning she told me, Money
Is the most beautiful object in the world.
She's looking for something to believe in,
Beyond the obvious that's too bright, too close
To see. Dear Eric, he writes, I run to you
Only when I'm on the verge of disintegrating.
Summer in the tropics is all Lent, all repentance
And resurrection, and I'm sick of it. She loves to stick her thumbs
Into the scabbed stigmata of my hands. I feel no pain.
She tells me war is inescapable. You must bomb
A few towns if you want peace. If we have children,
They will be among the nine out of ten
Who will never speak in the future tense.
For some reason she finds this comforting.
When she lies like this, fetal, one arm stretched out
To touch my face, she reminds me of the crook
Of the northern tip of Sulawesi. She showed it once to me
On a map: a jungle island almost human in form,
Teeming with terror, incredibly poor.

------------------

SUTRA
Eric Gamalinda

How To Be United In Future Lives
is a sutra from the Angutarra Nikaya, a book
too big for me to handle. It says that if I
do not wrong you and you do not wrong
me, the blessings will be awesome
and all our enemies will walk away in shame.
I will make it simpler for you.
I will live through this day with you. What follows
is the future, and I will renew this vow
day after day until the future is now.
While you are away I will be stronger
in my loneliness, and when you return
I will rebuild a house of happiness.
I will love your eyes as we get older, just like I love
each summer in New Jersey, all that open sea.
I will know you by your footfall,
by the air that grows still. Who are you
and from where have you come?
I will protect you from gossip, from the murmuring chatter
of the humdrum world. When your heart is full
of longing, or doubt obscures it with rain,
I will understand as though I were reading
your palm, your tea leaves, your daily
horoscope. I will make you laugh or you
will make me laugh and our laughter
will be an entire universe where no one dies.
I will learn your words as you learn mine
and we will place those words
in each other’s mouth like ripe berries,
bursting with sweetness. And when our bodies
are tired and our eyes are closed
I will praise the body that holds your soul.
I do not know what the soul is, my love.
But I will say love, which is more difficult,
more enduring, more fine. Love till the future life
unfolds, and I wake by your side.

------------------

I've always loved "Two Nudes", but the second poem is just incredibly beautiful.

The conclusion: Part 3 of the 15 songs that changed my life

2009-05-11T22:28:00.000-07:00

Here are the five songs to round up my list. I want to turn up the volume a little bit, but let's see. I'm choosing songs as I write, once again.

11. Frank Sinatra with the Pied Pipers and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra - Stardust
Since I've been on a standards phase since summer of last year, I figured I have to add at least one standard to this list. This is the song that made me learn to appreciate music older than the 1960s. Before, I didn't listen to anything older than The Beatles. But when I heard Michael Buble cover this song, I had to find the original. I've listened to countless covers of this, from Nat King Cole to Tony Bennett, but this one by Sinatra and Dorsey is the best I've heard.

12. Black Sabbath - Iron Man
I swear, this song changed the way I looked at heavy metal. Look, I grew up in the '80s. The only metal I remember growing up was glam metal and hair metal, if they ever overlap. I remember seeing so-called rockers of the day with their huge hair doing pirouettes on the guitar around me and I couldn't relate. And then I heard Black Sabbath play "Iron Man" at a gig in Paris. I listened to the intensity of the main riff and said "Now here's something I could relate to." Fantastic song.

13. Antonio Carlos Jobim - Chega de Saudade
Two words characterized my Senior year in college: Bossa Nova. This was the year I pledged homage to the father of Brazilian music, Antonio Carlos Jobim. Again, my dad introduced me to Bossa Nova when I was a kid, but I really didn't take it seriously until college, when some of my batchmates at the Ateneo put up a Bossa Nova/jazz band which became quite popular on campus. When I heard Jobim and Joao Gilberto play this song for the first time, I was blown away.

14. Kings of Convenience - Love Is No Big Truth
This is the song that made me explore the vast territory of indie rock/indie pop. In the process, I learned to distance myself from the world of mainstream top 40 shit. Thank you, Kings of Convenience, for widening my music knowledge. Thank you also for that guitar/piano soloing in the end. Brilliant.

15. Metallica - Fade To Black
My reaction to Metallica before hearing this song: "Well, they're a pretty good band. I like Enter Sandman and The Unforgiven off of the Black Album. They're influential especially to a lot of aspiring metal bands in the 90s."
My reaction to Metallica after hearing this song: "FUCK. Hammett is God."
This is also the song that forced me to explore Metallica's thrash metal days.

So that rounds up my list of 15 songs that changed my life. Enjoy the music, folks. In the meantime, I gotta study for Communications Law.

Part 2 of 3: 15 songs that changed my life

2009-05-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

I promised in the previous entry that I would add happier songs in the next two installments of this series. Let's see. I'm choosing songs as I write. Here are the next five.

6. The Doors - Light My Fire
Some people call The Doors legends. Others, for some reason I cannot comprehend, call them overrated. I just think they're fucking smart. When I first heard "Light My Fire", it seemed like a dream. The entire song, especially the extended solos in the middle, consumed me entirely. I could not listen to any other song in a more concentrated way as this one. The blend of Jim Morrison's haunting vocals, Ray Manzarek's Latin-inspired keyboard sound, and the other hard-driving beats is flawless.

7. Chick Corea and Return to Forever - Spain
This is the song that got me listening to jazz. I remember hearing this for the first time in the car when I was around 7 or 8. My dad, who normally does not show enthusiasm for songs he likes, started raving about how much he loved this song and kept bobbing his head and snapping his fingers to the music. I did not understand it all back then, but when I started listening to this along with Miles Davis and Jaco Pastorius, I finally did. Countless remakes of this song have been done (my personal favorite being the one done by the Super Guitar Trio of Al di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia) but the original is the one that changed my music taste forever.

8. Badfinger - Day After Day
The height of Badfinger's success came when they were once highly touted as the eventual successors to The Beatles. This song is one of their later recordings, just before the tragic self-inflicted deaths of two of their members. It has also been a fixture in my so-called Muse Playlist, the playlist of songs I would dedicate to the woman I will eventually love.

9. Bob Marley - War
You say you want a revolution? This is the song. If there's any doubt towards the sincerity of this song, know that the lyrics are actually part of a speech made by Jah Rastafari himself, Emperor Haile Selassie, to the United Nations condemning racism. If you're Rasta, these words are holy. These words are the words of God. The most goosebump-inducing part of this song is the last, when Bob Marley echoes the words of Jah, "And we are confident in the victory of good over evil, of good over evil..."

10. Miles Davis - Flamenco Sketches
If "Spain" was the song that introduced me to the world of jazz, everything I learned about the genre started with this song, coming from probably the greatest jazz album ever made, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. I remember coming home to this song after a night of heartbreak, and all the emotion was just channeled away by the improvisations of Miles Davis' trumpet. Absolutely brilliant song off an even more absolutely brilliant album.

Finally, I've balanced the stuff I have here. I conclude with the last five songs tomorrow.

Part 1 of a 3-part series: 15 songs that changed my life

2009-05-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

This is actually a response to a challenge issued by my friend, after answering the "15 albums that changed your life" question on Facebook. For me, this is harder, because of course I'm picking out fifteen out of more than probably a thousand songs I like. Second, how do I define how a song has "changed my life"? I'm actually going with songs that have changed my view on things: be it music, relationships or the world. I've decided to include Youtube videos of these songs, because what good is description without the experience? These aren't arranged in any order, because if I had to, it's just too much work. Here are the first five.

1. Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song
Rarely do the words "Led Zeppelin" and "tearjerker" appear in the same sentence, but dare I say it? This song by the greatest band in the world drives me to tears every time I listen to it. In the original recording, John Paul Jones uses a mellotron to simulate the orchestra sounds. In this live performance by Page and Plant, there's an actual orchestra, which makes the song even more painful to listen to. By the last few minutes, the band have gone back to their hard-rock ways, but the message has been sent: love is, indeed, painful.

2. Nick Drake - Northern Sky
Another love song takes the #2 spot. The thing that hits me most about this song is that it's so magical, just as the lyrics say it. "I never felt magic crazy as this." Add that to the mystery of Nick Drake's personality, who he was and what was going through his mind throughout the ups and downs of his career, and you have a song wrapped in an enigma. Needless to say, I want this song on my wedding CD.

Nick Drake - Northern Sky - Funny blooper videos are here

3. Jesus Christ Superstar - Overture
Actually, the whole musical changed the way I looked at Broadway plays. when I was growing up I thought all Broadway plays were either operatic or choral-driven, having relatives that were huge fans of Miss Saigon and Les Miserables. Jesus Christ Superstar changed everything with its rock-driven songs. The Overture at the beginning is actually a homage to progressive rock with all the sudden changes.

4. The Beatles - Girl
The song starts off with probably the most desperate plea in all of music: "Is there anybody going to listen to my story?" This for me is probably John Lennon's most sincere composition, telling us about the mixed emotions of young love. My favorite line? "She promises the earth to me, and I believe her." If anything, this proves to me that love songs don't have to sport so much embellishments and grandiosity.

5. The Ramones - Havana Affair
I used to hate Punk because I thought it was for kids who tried to rock on but failed. And then I heard The Ramones along with The Sex Pistols, and I was blown away. This is the first Ramones song I heard, even before the popular "Blitzkrieg Bop." I was blown away. Simple chords, but the impact is mind-blasting (with apologies to Russell Peters hahaha). I thought Punk was far from intense, but this song packs so much intensity, so much that when Red Hot Chili Peppers did a slower, more subdued remake, it just didn't work.

Shit, I have to include more happy songs in this list. If all the songs that changed my life reek of melancholia, what does that say about me? Dammit...I need to think of happier songs. The Lovin' Spoonful, maybe? Part 2 is coming up tomorrow.

The poems of Leonard Cohen

2009-05-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

To me, Leonard Cohen has always been the epitome of what it means to be "cool". Other than Bob Dylan, his name and voice are among the most recognizable and influential in the classic Folk-rock scene. Plus, he's best known for writing and performing the song that took Jeff Buckley's popularity to a legendary level, "Hallelujah". When I read that he was also a poet, I didn't pay much attention since I was pretty much immersed in his songs. I knew him only as the folk singer with the deep, haunting voice singing those heavy lyrics. A few days ago, I decided to check out his poems.

THE NEXT ONE ("Things are better in Milan ...)
Leonard Cohen

Things are better in Milan.
Things are a lot better in Milan.
My adventure has sweetened.
I met a girl and a poet.
One of them was dead
and one of them was alive.
The poet was from Peru
and the girl was a doctor.
She was taking antibiotics.
I will never forget her.
She took me into a dark church
consecrated to Mary.
Long live the horses and the sandles.
The poet gave me back my spirit
which I had lost in prayer.
He was a great man out of the civil war.
He said his death was in my hands
because I was the next one
to explain the weakness of love.
The poet was Cesar Vallejo
who lies at the floor of his forehead.
Be with me now great warrior
whose strength depends solely
on the favours of a woman.

These are no doubt my favorite lines:

He said his death was in my hands
because I was the next one
to explain the weakness of love.

I don't know what else I can say about this. Remember in one of my earlier writings I compared love to a revolution based on the alleged Che Guevara quote which says "All revolutions are rooted in love"? Scratch whatever I said. This one single-handedly personifies that quote. The clash of position and negation just blows me away.

Here's another one I like, I just don't know why the title's the same. Probably a different version:

THE NEXT ONE
Leonard Cohen

From the original version of My Life in Art:

I lost my tan in Italy and I got fat on pasta and the starch of loneliness. I must fast for forty days. Sabina wrote me from the temple in Germany. She said that the old books say you should fast once each year for the number of days corresponding to your age. She was on the eight day of an intended twenty-eight-day fast. Also I neglected to twist my feet so the heart went crazy. I must phone Patricia who was so good to me. The line is busy.

It's a short but definitely sweet prose poem. The "starch of loneliness" blows me away because of its sudden outrageous-ness, right after mentioning pasta. Totally caught me off-guard. The lines "Also I neglected to twist my feel so the heart went crazy" blow me away as well because of the witty use of inversion.

Add another one to my list of all-time regrets: why I had not discovered Leonard Cohen the poet at an earlier time in my life. But that's okay because at least I've finally read his stuff. Now I hope his poetry books are available at Barnes and Noble...

Whatever happened to target shooting?

2009-04-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

I've decided to move to this blog, after almost two months of not updating on my old blog. I just feel that after over a year, it's time to start anew. Hence, the case for redemption.

Many championship-caliber teams have a "statement game" in which they send a message to other would-be contenders that they can't be fucked around with. Having said that, I hope I can find my own "statement game" and I hope it would come soon. Now I believe T.S. Eliot when he says "April is the cruelest month."

"Poetry, when it takes sides, when it proposes solutions, isn't smarter than anyone else."
-Robert Hass