Christmas in the Imagination of an Imaginable Being
Iris P. Concepcion

Let me start this piece, this rather fairy tale piece, with a sincere greeting of Merry Christmas to those who matter and awfully know they matter, a lot, to the writer of this piece.

I shall be long and NOT brief, for this is all what I have in mind that could not be taken away---hoots be damned.

I watched “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Olivares”.

I thoroughly, and exceptionally, adored the film.

I’ve always known that something from the foliage or forests or wherever field of dreams creative people design the things they craftily do, could not hide for so long with geckos and ferns and had to come out soon---vengefully inventive-- in this side of the Pacific Ocean. Just reading from the credits that my better Keith Richards musically scored this film (Yes, Pepe Smith, he of ‘Today Rock and Roll, tomorrow, the Presidency!’ quip is one of my most favorite aliens even if I read somewhere that he muddles his lyrics often----he is breathing! for oxygen’s sake, and craggy as it may sound, that ought to give hope to everyone who wants to throw a flying fist to everything, and I mean everything, that constricts the free spirit), which evolved so, so smartly with Yoyoy Villame’s scratchy rendition of a song about our country, hummed splendidly with sad, opening visuals-----I immediately wanted to hug the director. Pronto. I know this had been done again and again and again but I know for a fact that it requires a valiant heart to display to the world, in your chosen medium of passion, the beauty of your views despite their boundaries, limits and excesses. After some lull, someone got OUT and happily for the displaced of inspirations-this film is sending a message that isolation from what is normally accepted is never an encumbrance to be OUT.

Why am I capitalizing that three-lettered word? Because, my friends, I just freakingly want to.

Need I really examine the picture? Famous writers have already done wonderfully so and the adjectives connected to the film are precise. One thing I will direct your attention to, nevertheless, are the tiny details that were radiantly worthwhile to me as the dignified sobs of the actor playing Maximo : The Beatles poster fighting for a wall space filled with religious remembrances and the perfect, perfect guitar rendition of what sounded like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” nestled in the film’s climactic eddy---the anticipated ascent to a moral resolution. (Was that Mike Villegas’ strums? Soulful.) This film is a confluence of a great ensemble of talented people. Bond that way and claim the creative soil from where the backbone of our society is made manifest without the kind of diluted pronouncements we often hear and see.

Next stop. Since some of my favorite people are like entrants to Mardi Gras with their spectacular costumes and genderless role-playing, I would likewise mask them in this tribute which is already stripped of my colorful imagination due to a desperate need to relay my gratitude.

The transistor friends. To the beloved little guy, the dependable creator of spectacles, and his coterie of happy elves and giants and tongue-twisting fairies who crash all the restrictions of prudeship (one of my inexistent words to mean, well, prudish)-to rattle, amuse and fish for that smile: by the glory of Charlie Chaplin, you are all appealing. The faces, I may sometimes misconstrue as belonging to the realm of ordinary people but at least, you would not theatrically cover for anyone in hoodwinking a citizenry so used to cover-ups. Did you know they did not fatten their bank accounts incognito but did the act to make some irksome, impossibly unsmiling girl in sack, happy? My favorite people, in their arena, spread their craft and goodwill without prior announcements. Their egos are firmly checked. The encounters of the first, second, third, fourth and hopefully gazillion kind, wherever they may be and in whatever capacities they may have been stumbled upon and heard, had severely expanded my level of comprehension about the friendliness of human beings. Happiness is not a warm gun (I may have to issue my title dissent there with my other hero, John Lennon) but a warm disposition. And pillow. (that’s for the most giving creature I have known in my entire life).

You see, not everyday can you be given musical phenomena, printed mastery of words and doodles of faultless creative faculties without even having to open your rooftops.

The musicians : It is by a bolt of blitzkrieg I think that I was slumbering and the greatest sounding live rock and roll band in these islands, the lead singer at least, somehow, magically, became Freddie Mercury who was crooning five centimeters (somewhat) away from the wooden fence. Yet, who could possibly, in a fanatic sort of way, fail to spot that timbre of a voice which once replied in a bookstore to a companion, when asked who Jack Kerouac was?: “A poet,” this singer retorted . If you have heard this musician sing Radio Gaga and shreds of Bohemian Rhapsody, you would say, Freddie Mercury was resurrected for the best part. Even with an aid of a karaoke box, that voice can always be deciphered. Unlike the other tapes we are used to these days, this man, like his music---roared honestly. I do not know how this became possible. But all along the watchtower (to be Dylanesque about it, he wailed like a meteor passing through the dark skies), a voice could make one a magnificent company. I may, perhaps be fooled into thinking it was him, but for the promise of a voice, that was outstanding.

Next is my favorite brown Beatle whom my ears tracked down long way before I hit the road of immobility. Everyone who knows me knows my fascination for his former band. There was a time when I had the commanding urge to pelt rocks (not pebbles but pointed rocks with salt) at anyone who would berate this band’s music. Their smug sense of humor is what sets them apart. And they twist words and names like I often do. Impossible as it may sound, this singer transformed into a sweet performer with guitar riffs chopped like dancing fireflies which burst, free of charge, from sandpiles (I don’t know what the heck this allegory stands for and why fireflies should emerge from sandpiles but I like its incongruity) with a tutti-frutti---vocally powerful---band! I am not making sense if I have not been followed so far but to these artists (I still love the technical classiness of the juicy group even if it became huge and I should already be yawning by their popularity but I am not). What a SPIKE! to the harmony spine. I was reverted into a mumbling musical fanatic as I regaled the inspiring supernatural appearance which was then received by the people I regaled them to with Awwwwwwwww. Of course, I had to explain to them the mechanics of costumes which was extremely difficult under the economy of my own stress. Will they think I am totally nuts? I was so privately arrogant that I began asking : Did the audience notice the opening riffs? It was transported from a Mongolian song or something (I love this wordgame so much) and I wanted to knock down and jiggle everyone with : ”Did you hear that? Are you familiar with those opening chords? Did you know this musician’s melodies were played by the Philippine Harmonic Orchestra?” I badly needed to gloat but was held down by my own mortality of weakness. What if all these people knew too, like me, but had been reserved and prettily coiffed through it all? So, I was pleased as usual in a very privileged but quivering way of my having noticed the supposedly unnoticeable. I am so blessed, God the Father of Heaven that I capped off my privately boasting, musical discovery with a genuine, elastic smile.

You know what the brown McCartney did? He moved like his limbs were loosely calibrated with oil---it was a specter act. He danced like an excruciating Jack Black. I silently asked myself who injected what to this guy that he became so stagefully amiable. He sounded and performed like a Gallagher brother coming out from an anger management counseling and was thus totally reformed. That good vibe: where on friendly earth did that come from? The following sentences need to be addressed personally: Thank you so much. And hey, Jude, you are immeasurably gifted. Your sixth sense organ is not your guitar straps but your splice-of-life music. Don’t you develop goosebumps when everyone covers your songs? Can you perform “Alone Again, Naturally” with half of the song done in guitar solo? You signed a poster of a friend once with “P, High!” And it became a deathless conversational piece if the co-headed entities (us) wish to speak like rock stars.

Then, there’s this pizza guy who, I must thank for having willfully, sanefully, without any aid of additives, allowed his vocal chord to be imported, right smackly, into the heart of the land where animals still scuffs food in open lands leisurely. The enigma of the pizza man’s arrival. Not punk rock but ingenious rock. Why did he travel that far? Why was he so polishedly dressed up? Why can’t someone tell me, even those who are knowledgeable of the bandmembers, who he was? If that was not him----can someone explain why his patented mic handling got so evenly volunteered? I remember this musician cum pilosopong teetwo singing the songs of the band essayed in the preceding paragraph way back. He boasted that he knows all the lyrics to the latter’s songs. He is a fan just like me so that creates an unwritten code of unmitigated chuckles between us even if I am but a stranger to him. But, what made him travel so far? Kill me if that was for me, but you are one heck of a pizza delivery boy. The wonders of a beerland.

To all the Filipino musicians, sessionists or otherwise whom I have heard in my solitary reconnection with the world : You have always bolstered my premise that without the melody of this island, 90% of its soul is scraped off. I have always placed my faith in these artists who take their crafts seriously. They never flee when they are asked to sing and they do so, with valuable integrity.

Also, I do not know who this singer was but I must single him out because he rocked and summoned the smoky effects on stage in one of my gig outings with the loud and vibrating vocal authority of “Usok!!” Lo and behold, the stage was abruptly covered with foggy air and only his long, attitude-laden hair stood out from that artificial concealment. And he said things like “Dat song was from Dif Lifard”. Man, if that was not groovy, I don’t know what to call it.

One of the invented characters of O. Henry named Azalea Adair spoke with a wistful spur : “I have traveled many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings---print and dreams.” Had Azalea included music there, she would have realized that the airship kindly heals and fixes crushed dreams. That is music’s elemental nature.

The artists in general. The wordsmiths, of the column types and reviews, I particularly relish the sight of sentences and paragraphs which are lyrically adept while extremely forthright on issues of debates. Now that I have a time full of mind wanderings, I can take more of their words in a relaxed manner with ample time to laugh on the side. I think I saw some of them loitering in ladies’ sections which is pretty much a Kubrick way of getting detected.

The last group, the doodlers, unfortunately is the most remote from my accessibility, personally. I just see the drawings and compact one-punch liners. I hope their works are transferred, if not in documentaries, then on film (like some artwork on credits). I always interlink, far-flung as they are, people who should be pooling their artistic resources together. Like a choreography of assorted talents, all imaginative endeavors blend well in the end.

I write with delight about people I hear, musicians and writers, since their impact to me is more graspable. It does not mean, however, that I am no less unaware of what the rest of this kindred habitat is doing to give me more leverage in thinking, feeling and creating. It is with an act of faith that I turn to you in reverse during times of hesitations. Especially during slips of anxiety.

Thank you very much. And with much respect to the unselfish forwarding of the craft.

I am so darn lucky people I barely know from Adam can make me feel this way. You know why? This is what makes a script pale in comparison. I love everything about it.