A life of uncertain certainty
Audrey Niffenegger’s ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’ was written by American, but am struck by how the sensibility is so, well, European. I was reminded of a calmer A.S Byatt, more introspective and personal, with an obvious affection for the characters in how they were depicted, and how their happinesses and small and major griefs were described.
Reading about Clare and Henry’s life-long struggle to be normal, to stay together against all circumstances that make it essentially impossible to be normal and for them to remain beside each other through even the simplest and most banal moments was sadly frustrating. Niffenegger’s language was hardly corny nor cloying; she never resorted to tedious narrations of Clare’s emotional suffering — the endless worrying, the long hours of uncertainty, and this helped made the book more compelling: one takes on the burden of the worry, and the sadness at the impossibility of the situation they were forced to build their lives around. Clare and Henry’s embrace is always tenuous, and it is never of their own doing much less wanting. Theirs was a life of certain and undeniable love rendered often uncertain because of time.
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Last Friday night I arrived an hour early for dinner with Walkie at Trinoma, so I thought I’d first go to the Block across the street to buy something from Watson’s.
I had just gotten off of the escalator on the second floor when I thought I heard a violin playing. Singing, more like. Violins have voices of their own, and they are plaintively beautiful even when they sing of happiness.
In the middle of the main hall they had set-up a small fiberglass stage, and on it were two black chairs. Seated there were two men dressed all in black; the younger man had a violin, and the older a guitar. Together they were playing "Saan Ka Man Naroroon."
I had to stop. I stood there literally transfixed. I seldom write about music and how I am affected by it, but like most other Filipinos I grew up with music filling the house. My dad used to play the guitar, and he played while he sang and he taught my sister and I all about the Beatles, the Cascades, Asin, the Lettermen, America as he played their songs. In my earliest years, music meant comfort and warmth, of my father singing and strumming ‘Sister Golden Hair’ in the living room while my mom read on the sofa. Early mornings around 530 am while we prepared for school and my parents for work the radio would be playing music from Gene Kelley and Debbie Reynold’s "Singin’ in the Rain" — ‘Good mornin, good mornin!"
It was a happy series of moments standing there in front of the stage, watching and listening to the two musicians create beauty, to feel it fill the space of the busy mall and render everyone nearby silent (even the children became subdued and voluntarily stopped their tantrums). One song after the other — "Sa ugoy ng duyan," "Isang Dipang Tao," "Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang," "Sinasamba Kita" and it seemed to me that fragile fairy vines of green and delicate violet were starting to grow and climb the walls of The Block. I was almost expecting grass to spontaneously grow from under my feet. The music was so life-giving, pushing sad and upsetting thoughts away, rendering one dumb-struck, amazed anew at how beauty is so accessible if only we choose to see it (and help one another appreciate it).
What I liked best was the composition of the small but solid crowd that formed and clapped after every song.
There were well-to-do middle aged couples in khaki and bermuda shorts and Crocs, holding hands. High school students with spiked and gelled hair. Working class folk in rubber slippers and basketball jerseys with big armholes (they sipped guyabano juice from Zest-o doypacks and ate chicaron). Young husbands and wives with their babies in prams (the exhaustion in their faces palpable, but suddenly disappearing as they stood there smiling at each other when the opening strains of Jim Brickman’s ‘The Gift’ began).
Everyone but everyone was united by the same feeling of awe at musical talent (maybe even genius - the musicians were really, really amazing, and the sound their instruments produced were so pure I nearly cried so I bit my lower lip instead) and the sheer beauty of the songs played acoustically.
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Right now am reading ‘Snow Flower and the Secret Fan’ by Lisa See. I am freaked by the descriptions of the process of foot-binding!!!!
Looking forward to the film version of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. The reviewers of Pajiba (Scathing Reviews by Bitchy People) did NOT diss it and said they had a great time.
