Ingredients
1 pinch of the feathery fall of pandesal dust on my pants in the morning
9 months of mildew mornings in the choir room
1 trip a month into the salty sea musk of Seafood City, split into 4 golden yellow bags
2 major seventh chords that anchor the verses of Ang Himig Natin by the Juan dela Cruz band
2 puckered lips licking 10 fingers dipped in Datu Puti’s spiced vinegar
1 broken heart lost in the summer heat of New York City
1 squishing squelch of a butter knife impaling a Jufran ketchup bottle
3 hour car rides with my dad improvising the EQ to a Beatles song in his F150 truck
1 of my grandpa’s catfish sizzling and hissing in the kitchen, in foil
A dash of swooning melancholy penchantly perched in Sara Bareilles’ mezzo soprano timbre in Gravity
12 gooey drips of my grandma’s ginataang bilo-bilo, divide into red solo cups
25 laps splashing in the pool
6 hours of the symphonic breeze you feel on a long drive down the California coast with those you love most
2 homo-Salongian-voiced Asian Disney Princesses
1 recording of my high school teen angst entangled in a karaoke rendition of Who Let the Dogs Out
11 gurgling bubbles of steam from 6 plates of my sister’s sinigang
2 rock bands trying to ask an R&B/theatre vocalist to do screamo
1/2 cup of a church choir singing You Are My All in All for a sonic Sunday refuge (even if an illusion) because the world feels too small to hold the weight of one’s daily struggles
3 servings of the creamy breadcrumb crunch atop my auntie’s crab-stuffed mac and cheese at Christmas time
1 more hour of playing cover songs and standing tall with my family
17 shuffling steps of moving and moving and moving and moving and moving as the eldest child
3 years of makibeki wag mashokot in meadows of heirloom tomatoes
151 cries of the Pokémon on my Gameboy
3 village doorbells clamoring to the beat of my mom’s BTS-ringtones and DoorDash takeout orders
20 years of sitting in front of a piano, diced across time
1 queer child projecting one’s pining for the start of something new through Vanessa Hudgens’ opening karaoke scene in High School Musical
The precious feeling of mahal without the words to say, capture or own it; season to taste
Steps
For I’ve known sound all my life, yet I continue to feel puzzled by its magic: Lately, I’ve been thinking what we can do with sound, where it comes from, how we find our way through the world through sounds, how it shapes our everyday experiences, how we distinguish a sound from a noise. I am most fascinated by the way in which music teaches us that sound is more than what we hear. As Tina Campt once wrote, it can make us feel. It can touch us and move us. Thus, I begin by asking: how do the sounds I hear make me feel, how do they move me?
For I’ve known much of my life has orbited and continues to orbit around sound: So, I dip into my life’s pool of memories and think back to how I learned to sing. Was it the choir classes in high school? Was it the music lessons my parent’s provided me? Was it my mom singing around the house? Was it my dad playing his guitar late at night? Was it watching my family sing at the church? Was it hours of tinkering at the piano? Was it listening to the kinship I formed with birds chirping and migrating from home to home, tree to tree? Where did I get my voice? When did it become a voice?
For I’ve known the taste of ube, even when I do not know its name: Its rich, ribbons wrap, roll, and wrangle me, but I unravel in travel (ako’y nag-iisa) into older flows of requiem. For the humans, we say rest in peace, but I fear for those like me who will only hear: wake out war. T/he/y grow deep in mauve and lilac, lavender plums in the garden of Eden burned at the stake of a human interpretation of biblical text passed down from generations of colonialism. Yet, it separates me from people like me. I may not share tongues, but my tongue is split too (mind/body). Don't I sing the sounds of Ang Pilipinas? Have you not listened to the sonic solar systems I've built? But somehow, I am their biggest fan on Spotify Wrapped, which leaves me to wonder. Who is it all for? Ang inyong awitin?
For I've known the music of the mountainous ranges: The sound is muddy like the silver fog where melodic moths whisper despite the mosquito nets and cedar mycelium postponing the inevitable slumlord pandemonium.
For I’ve known without name that these are the places and spaces and faces that gave me my voice, that taught me to sing: Perhaps, the claim of this recipe is modest: We learn how to sing.
If we learn how to sing, perhaps we also learn how to move, how to feel, how to do, how to become everything, how to know nothing, how to grapple with living, how to live no day everyday, how to love, how to hate, how to be.
If I listen to the lyrics ako’y may kaibigan at s’ya’y nahihirapan, they hold the power to turn my cheeks into rivers. T/he/y are lonely, but how do I listen to such loneliness? If we learn how to sing, do, feel and be, then do we also learn how to listen?
If I look into the etymology of the word tune, maybe we can learn how to listen differently. Yes, I know, if you ask all my academic friends, they will lovingly laugh at my love for etymology. But the reason I obsess over the etymological is because it reminds us of the genealogies of our voices and of the words we inherit to speak. For the word tune, it comes from the 1500s (the era when colonialism began, interestingly) meaning to "bring into a state of proper pitch." Beyond its musical meaning, tune also meant "to adjust an organ or receiver, put into a state proper for some purpose," a meaning recorded from 1887. A little later, the verbal phrase to tune in in reference to radio (later also TV) emerged in 1913. Then, its figurative sense of "become aware" came around 1926. Tune out meaning "eliminate radio reception" is recorded from 1908; with its figurative sense of "disregard, stop heeding" is from 1928.
Listen: tune all at once may refer to a musical succession of notes that we listen to (sonic aesthetics); the subjectivation process of adjusting an instrument (whether a guitar or our bodies) to a “proper” pitch (power); an affective shift in attitude or mood we feel (affect, haptics and emotions); the sum amount that something costs (social reproduction, history, labor) “to the tune of…”
Listen: to detune is to cause to become out of tune (musical); to tamper and reduce performance power/force for longevity and reliability (engine detuning); to change the frequency away from a state of resonance (electronic/technological); to reduce an instrument’s tension for maintenance purposes (stringed instruments especially); or to perform ski detuning to soften the edges of a snowboard or ski to make turning easier.
Listen: Oh, how do I tune into ang himig natin of our times? How do I receive the jazz of mahal? How do I let these three words seep into my soul? How do I absorb the sun dripping rays into my skin? How do the failures of diaspora give life to new worlds we dream of but have yet to see? How do we remember both the five-century-long pains of modern history and the precious presence of the moment in which we bear witness to each other's mortality?
Set this world to 450°F. Bake until we remember the earth of love. Until we remember that life is too precious to settle. For to speak freely is an empty freedom unless we have those who are willing to listen. Handa na ba kayong lahat?