tourettic (?) ticcing in an sm north jeep

He was cradling his head on his elbow and huddled behind the driver's seat. I was seated next to him. Occasionally, he'd look up quickly and wordlessly wave. At the time I thought it was a wave, that he was beckoning to someone outside to hurry up and get on the jeep already, but it didn't look like anyone outside was responding. This happened three or four more times until our jeepney finished boarding. It was nighttime at busy EDSA in front of Waltermart Muñoz.

When we finally started for SM North he ducked his head to his arms again and was in this pose for the duration of the short journey. And then it started. Shoulder spasms which I felt as gentle nudges on my ribs. Bursts of incessant finger tapping on the jeepney ceiling. And again. And again. Head bobbing to nothing, a useless davening. All the while the man kept his eyes on the floor and was quiet. I thought I was the only one noticing him until I saw the woman across us watching and giggling.

Could it be Tourette's Syndrome? Poor guy.

This was last night, on the SM North Jeepney from Muñoz. When at last everybody got off, the man hopped out last, looking dazed. Of course I have no way of knowing whether he really had Tourette's—for all I know he was just having a bad hair day and was acting out physically, but then a few weeks ago I was reading Oliver Sacks, who wrote about Tourette's sufferers in his book Musicophilia, and that's where I got the idea.

I had always thought Tourette's Syndrome was a disorder Caucasians often got, like cystic fibrosis (in the same way that lactose intolerance tends to afflict Asians more than Caucasians)—that it was something Filipinos just could not be born with. Last night and the PTSA website proved me wrong.

oliver sacks on tourette's syndrome and music

"While Tourette's may be considered, like parkinsonism, a movement disorder (albeit of an explosive rather than an obstructive kind), it is much more. It has a mind of its own. Tourette's is impulsive, productive, where parkinsonism is not. Sometimes this productivity is more or less confined to the production of simple tics or repetitive, fixed movements, and this seems to be the case with John S. But for some people, it may assume an elaborate, phantasmagoric form remarkable for its mimicry, antics, playfulness, inventions, and unexpected and sometimes surreal associations. People with this rare, phantasmagoric form of Tourette's may show much more complex reactions to music."

—Oliver Sacks, "Come Together: Music
and Tourette's Syndrome," Musicophilia

happiness

is a skipping train at the U.N. Station just when you step on the platform on your way home.

enya and the funk

For some time now I've been in a funk that I can't get myself out of. Despite recent developments that tell me to feel otherwise (a hot new boyfriend, getting hired for a part-time job, a possible promotion), I'm short tempered, bitter as usual, despairing, and none of the usual things that pull me out of it—working out, reading a good book, watching movies, sex—work.

The weird thing is I don't know why I'm so angry. Another weird thing: it doesn't show. In the office I'm my usual quiet, steady self. But inside I'm seething, waiting to explode.

I don't think listening to chamber music will help. Ugh. To the contrary. I'll be staying away from Brahms and Schubert for a while: I have my own neurosis to deal with.

So I turn to Enya. It's odd how immediately soothing her music can be. It's corny and sappy for some—after the nineties "new age" has become a pejorative, a dismissive term— but yeah, I'll admit it, I'm an Enya fan.

globe tattoo

(Dear) Globe Telecommunications:

You charged me for internet services that did not exist.

You should at least have the decency to not charge if you can't deliver. You know you can easily do that-program your system to desist from deducting fees when your internet services are obviously down. But you don't give a shit about that, do you?

You suck.

Photo grab from Tunay Na Lalake

panem et circenses

"Mrs. Link, my high school Latin teacher, will be proud that I recall one of her daily phrases, 'panem et circenses,' which summarized the Roman formula for creating a docile population: Give them bread and circuses."

—Roger Ebert reviewing The Hunger Games.

comfort food 1: ritter sport hazelnuts

photo grab from plums in the ice box

auditory overload

"Half of us are plugged into iPods, immersed in daylong concerts of our own choosing, virtually oblivious to the environment—and for those who are not plugged in, there is nonstop music, unavoidable and often of deafening intensity, in restaurants, bars, shops and gyms. This barrage of music puts a certain strain on our exquisitely sensitive auditory systems, which cannot be overloaded without dire consequences."

—Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia

salwal / salwar

"Asra asks if he wears his loose trousers, his salwar, high—an odd but telling question, since it has become the fashion among fundamentalists to hike up their pants.... The Jihadi spokesman did wear his salwar high."

—Mariane Pearl, A Mighty Heart

I remember older people referring to briefs, underwear, as "salwal" when I was a kid. It's probably derived from this South Asian word to describe pants.

ccp esta noche

Esta noche voy a CCP para escuchar a Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra. Toca Sinfonía Numero Cuatro de Anton Bruckner. Maestro Olivier Ochanine conduce el orquestra. Despues del sinfonía, el PPO accompaña la cantante Rachelle Gerodias. La Soprano canta un aria de La Bohème de Puccini que se llama "Si, mi chiamano." Canta tambien canciones de Filipinas son llaman kundiman. Voy con mi amiga Rhea.

So I'm off. To the CCP. For the Bruckner and Gerodias concert. After enough listening to a recording of Bruckner's Fourth, I'm excited to see the live performance. I think it's going to be special.

one more reason to love anne

I've loved her since "Rachel Getting Married," "The Devil Wears Prada," and "Love and Other Drugs." Here's another reason to love her more.

mariane and daniel pearl's wedding vows

We promise to grow old together, while keeping each other young, maintaining our sense of humor, sharing love and secrets.

We promise to discover new things, places, and people together, to view our life together as a work of literature.

We promise to share our happiness with our friends and relatives.

We promise not to let money, lack of money, or passage of time change us.

We promise each to treasure the other's happiness at least as much as our own, to support each other's creativity, and always to keep faith in the strength of the other's love.

is listening to ...

Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, "Romantic," with Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra. Care of EMI Taiwan, which transposed the above vinyl record onto compact disc in 1993. (My cd has a different cover.)

In the first movement of the "Romantic" Fourth Symphony the intention is to depict the horn that proclaims the day from the town hall!

Or so Bruckner wrote to a friend. A fan of Sergiu Celibidache's record in Amazon.com has another, other-wordly, take on the work, though: " The glory of heaven opens before you. As it never will again." Wikipedia has a very interesting article on the Bruckner Fourth here.

I brought it to the office as prep for the PPO's performance this Friday, March 16. Soprano Rachelle Gerodias will sing some a number of arias and kundimans as well.

haring lear

Saw Haring Lear two fridays ago, have I mentioned this? (I haven't. I checked. I'm the only one who reads this blog.) It's the Filipino translation of King Lear, with an all male cast. All the cast had shaved heads, save for Teroy Guzman, who played Lear.

The last time I saw an all-male staging of Shakespeare was Watermill Theater Company's A Comedy of Errors ages ago at the CCP. It was a British company. There were kissing scenes. Girls at the gallery screamed.

There are no kissing scenes in Lear.

PEP.ph says PETA sets Lear in a post-nuclear world, and it looks it. Here's a pic.

Photo grabbed from oliverpublicist.blogspot.com

What can I say?

I really liked it, but I was a bit put off by the singing of the national anthem at the end of the play. What happened to the play's catharsis as planned by Shakespeare?

Naudlot.

Gibbs Cadiz says the director Nonon Padilla also inserted lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" at the end of the play. I noticed that the end, already transmogrified with the gratuitous, parochial vocal exercise, also included lines from the original Shakespeare text being read side by side with their corresponding Filipino translation. The translator was National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera.

Why the need to show off the translator's skills? We already know he's translated the whole play, and very effectively. Was this exercise Padilla's insertion or Lumbera's?

I wonder why these agendas (what else can they be?) had to be worked into Shakespeare's play. A national anthem, for instance, is essentially a political device, propaganda. Was this the director's way of claiming Lear and its verities for Filipinos? But why? One reason Shakespeare appeals to people to this day and is being staged everywhere is that we still get him—there's an undeniable immediacy and power to the thoughts and emotions in his plays.

Still, bravo to the cast and director. (Especially to Myke Salomon, who played Edgardo.) And speaking of the director Nonon Padilla: A man seated near me was taking pictures of the play the whole time, even after the theater said it was prohibited. Annoying, inconsiderate little click, click, clicks when I wanted to concentrate. The man, middle-aged and sloppy-looking in a neck brace and a green hospital gown, wielded a digital camera, anachronistically programmed to make those dated mechanical clicks. I rushed out to complain to the usher, only to be told the picture-taker was no other than "Sir Nonon," the director.

So basically I couldn't do anything about it.

Sir, you could have taken pictures of your play during dress rehearsal. You really disturbed my viewing of your play. Shame on you for violating a rule in your own theater.

Oh well. I look forward to PETA's next theater season.

dear mr. alla--

Dear Mr. John Alla--,

You don't know me. Yesterday, on yet again another a visit to Booksale (a bad habit—I have so many books unread and yet keep buying more) in Muñoz, Quezon City (that's a city in the Philippines), to my extreme luck I chanced upon a copy of Alan Hollinghurst's "The Line of Beauty."

I was excited. I've never read Hollinghurst, a famous gay writer; I say extreme luck because I had never chanced upon his books in a secondhand bookstore before. "The Line of Beauty" is his Booker Prize winner—the first gay novel to ever win the prize.

As I pried the book from the shelves I prayed it would be cheap. I actually chanted "please be cheap, please be cheap, please be cheap," not caring if anyone in the narrow store heard.

The chant worked, Mr. John Alla-- (I believe you to be an American, given your name and address in California). The copy, I was thrilled to see, was only P60, roughly a dollar and fifty cents by today's currency exchange. The copy was hardbound, no less.

When I got home, I set about to cover it in clear plastic (another habit of mine: all my books are covered in Gauge No. 6 plastic bought from National Bookstore, a major retailer of books and office supplies here in the Philippines). That's when I saw your order slip fall out from between its covers.

Or should I say your wife's order slip? Or your sister's? I see from the slip that it was ordered from Amazon.com. Apparently, one Gayle Alla-- from Spain (the billing address reads: Berrocaxxx, Av. Puente de los Viveros xx, Paracuexxxx, Madrid xxxxx) ordered four books from Amazon (1. The Purpose-Driven Life; 2. Out of the Silent Planet; 3. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: Tears of the Giraffe; 4. The Line of Beauty) and had them shipped to your address.

Your shipping address shows you live in Turlock, California. In 2007 and 2008 I passed Turlock at least four times on the train (the San Joaquins) en route from Bakersfield to San Francisco and vice-versa. But oh, I've never been to Madrid, the one in Spain (there's also a Madrid in Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines—we're an archipelago, Mr. Alla--, not that I'm implying you can't know that) and I'd like to go visit it one day. I no longer can remember what Turlock, California looks like, though from what I can recall of the view from those six-hour long train rides, it's just one sleepy American town after the other. Until I got to San Francisco, of course.

Your wife-? your sister-? or is she your daughter-? Gayle has an interesting reading list, Mr. Alla--. I've read "Out of the Silent Planet" in an American Science Fiction class in college (that's the course title: American Science Fiction, and an actual Estadounidense, a Professor Robert Boyer, taught it some 14 or 15 years ago at the University of the Philippines Diliman; I wonder if Professor Boyer is still alive? His wife was diagnosed with cancer while they were here; they had to leave in a hurry, before the semester officially closed). I would see "Tears of the Giraffe" in Booksale every now and then, but I balked at buying it or any of the other titles in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, afraid it would turn out to be some silly detective series for middle-aged housewives looking for a little diversion from Days of Our Lives on the teevee—something like Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax series, the conceit of which is that a sixtyish whitehaired American widow "and garden clubber" does, gasp, undercover detective work for the CIA as she visits exotic and touristy "world" places on the side (as the Philippines would be for those given to such imagination, although I have to tell you we'd be more on the, uhm, "exotic" side, since our infrastructure, like our airports, is hardly touristy). Sortofa Nancy Drew for those who feel they've outgrown the series but have actually not, and yet need the same type heroine, aged this time to match their age, to convince them they have. Tricky, tricky, 'no? But I digress.

Back to you, Mr. Alla--. With your daughter's (yep, I'm convinced Gayle's more likely your daughter) reading list, I'm intrigued. I just might erase my agam-agam (Tagalog for doubts) with McCall Smith. A Booker Prize winner on any reading list is good recommendation of the reader's choices.

Oh, "The Line of Beauty." It means Gayle's a liberal, for who else would want to read a gay novel? The Republicans wouldn't. They would read Mrs. Pollifax.

And her copy. I see it's still a very good copy, only there's, oops, there's slight, very slight, water damage on the inside cover ... see? The binding's dye leeched a bit due to a, was it a spill from your drink, Gayle? It's stained the front flap's top, oh but for a teensy inch, and it's not even minutely visible from the outside...

I'm afraid Gayle might have been a little O.C., Mr. Alla--, to get rid of a perfectly good book just because it's water damaged.

With a little Gauge 6 plastic cover, it would be, voila, good as new.

My theory is this:

Gayle is your daughter. While Gayle, at the date of the order slip (2004), was in Spain, you were in Turlock, and you're both Americans (Alla-- doesn't strike me to be a Spanish name; otherwise it would probably be spelled Alla--o or Alla--a). Gayle was probably in Madrid on a visit, to see the country, on a scholarship perhaps to learn the language, lucky her. You, on the other hand, are her supportive father left in the desert (that's the least I can remember from those rides: I passed through a lot of desert). You were on your way to visit her, and so she decided to order some books from Amazon and had them shipped to you, instead of to Madrid, to save on shipping costs (I do that, too). So you have a little present for her cuando vas a Madrid? ¿Intiendes? ¿Estoy correcto?

Someone, though (Gayle, of course, who else could it be?) was careless with her drink, what with the water stain.

Or—but no, this can't be! She didn't like "The Line of Beauty" that much. Which means I'm either mistaken about her reading tastes or the universal appeal of a Booker Prize Winner.

In any case. Gayle's (?) hardbound, $15.72, perfectly good copy of Hollinghurst's Booker winner ended up, eight years later, in a secondhand bookstore in Muñoz Avenue (most people call it Roosevelt—we Filipinos love the Americans more than Spaniards, tsk, tsk) in Quezon City, Philippines, and finally, here on my bed, waiting to be wrapped in clear plastic cover, to be placed in my pipeline of books to be read on the train.

And that someone was reckless. And forgot to pull out the order slip from the book, which contains all your names and shipping and billing addresses.

But don't worry, Mr. Alla--, the order slip doesn't contain credit card details.

And while I am no stalker, I am a bit intrigued. To at least see what your home(s) look(s) like. It would be easy to see that with google street-view. I can no longer remember Turlock, after all. Not that I care that much.


And, oh, before I forget, Mr. Alla--., Amazon.com sends its regards.

In the order slip, which says your wife? sister? daughter? mother? ordered "The Line of Beauty" on November 22, 2004, Amazon greets in you bold face:

"Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com, and please come again!"

Very truly yours,

xxxx

he didn't give encores

Last February 17, I attended the PPO's performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto and Mendelssohn's Fourth Symphony with my dear friend Rhea the philanthropist. English conductor James Judd led the orchestra and Finnish violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen was featured as soloist. My notes:

1. I was moved.

2. There's something about a live performance that makes the music more real, more human, with the fragile synchronicity of the musicians producing it, the in-your-face fact of its creation, its of-the-momentness.

3. Even with the Beethoven Violin Concerto. with its boring repetitions and I-get-it-already motifs, I still felt exhilirated.

4. At one point during the long orchestral introduction to the first movement, the soloist lifted his violin and quietly joined the violin section of the orchestra. No doubt, he has had enough experience playing second fiddle in this concerto, as principal violinist of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. But tonight was his night.

5. What can I say? I had warned Rhea that the Beethoven was not a virtuoso piece--it 's not a composition where a solo violinist could brag and show of his skills. Still, wonderful and elegant playing from the Finnish violinist that night.

6. He did not give encores, though. Too bad.

7. The venue was, uhm, too small for a full orchestra. This is the first time I heard the PPO outside of the CCP main theater, a hall way bigger than the Philamlife auditorium. The smaller hall, coupled with its renowned acoustic sensitivity, made the PPO seem too loud that night. Anyway.

4. I'm not such a fan of symphonies. I'm more of a concerto guy (I'm listening to Mendelssohn's two piano concerti as I type this: Murray Perahia on the piano with Sir neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.) I guess this is my way of saying, the Mendelssohn Fourth Symphony was just okay to me.

almost blue obsession

I've been obsessing over Elvis Costello's 1982 song Almost Blue lately, and for good reason (bittersweet words set to a haunting melody, etc.). Anyway, here's the Diana Krall (Costello's spouse) cover:


Listen or download Diana Krall Almost Blue for free on Prostopleer

And the original Costello version, which I prefer:

almost blue mp3 | lyrics

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