So I find myself writing about music again. I’d spent most of the weeks since Christmas break painting my room like crazy after being bitten by the DIY bug, and, as I returned books and other stuff back to the shelves, I found an old cassette tape of original compositions my big (unrequited) college love gave me before I graduated.
He had given it to me for no other reason than he wanted to share it with me, like he had given me a copy of his first book of poems, and a copy of his thesis, and a painting he had made of an idea of a girl he loved. I had kept the tape, as well as everything else he gave me, because even after romantic turned platonic, it still, happily, turned out to be the undying kind of love.
I’m now looking for a way to transfer his songs to a CD, so I can send it back to him as a belated, blast from the past surprise. He’s an established writer now, with a beautiful wife and a beautiful child, and a band and a job in civil service, but he’s still very much the boy I loved who was, in turn, very much in love with all things unattainable, like the past.
I told my friend Jenny the music geek about my project, and somehow, conversation shifted to how many of the songs I love, I love only for the moments they remind me of. It’s not the melody or lyrics that get to me first; it’s the story. Specifically, my story. When the moment is forever preserved in song, apparently, even if it’s by Michael Learns to Rock, I can listen to it in fondness. Of course, the best stories all have to do with love, or whatever comes close to it.
The song “Can’t Fight this Feeling” (REO Speedwagon) first reached the airwaves when I was 7 years old. For years after that, whenever I heard it on the radio, I’d think about the lines, “It’s time to bring this ship into the shore, and throw away the oars, forever” and wonder what kind of ship that still used oars the guy was singing about.
In college, however, in love with a friend for a first time, I’d play this song over and over in my head, for two reasons: first, the lines, “What started out as friendship has grown stronger” and, second, still that ship. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d been slightly bothered by that blasted ship. One sleepy summer afternoon, under one of the many trees of the University of the Philippines, my band of former loners and I discussed the implications of using “boat” instead of “ship,” which, of course, would not be the right idiomatic expression and would ruin the alliteration, but would give it better imagery.
Ultimately, however, we all agreed “ship” was better. I, more so because it connected “Can’t Fight this Feeling” to another old song that had gained a renewed significance in our lives: “Rock the Boat” (Hues Corporation). This disco song came out in 1974, three years before I was born. When a friend professed love for another, another friend exclaimed, in both panic and exasperation, “You’re rocking the boat!”
Which, of course, elicited a silent chorus of, “Our love is like a ship on the ocean. We’ve been sailing with a cargo full of, love and devotion!” To which I couldn’t help but add, “So I’d like to know where you got the notion.” You know you’re in the company of friends when all of you can have a good laugh at that!
Speaking of my old friends, I think it’s not easy to find such carefree, selfless, generous friends outside of college again. We’d manage to entertain each other with each other’s company, so we didn’t have to spend cash on going out. Or, we pooled our money together and managed to get all of us treats, like A&W root beer floats. My big college love once sang “Danny’s Song” and I think it was at the lines “Even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you honey and everything will bring a chain of love” that I decided to spend the rest of my life with him, whether he liked it or not.
Technically, though, I’m still spending the rest of my life with him. Nothing anchors down that ship more than what I have left of our beautiful college years together: his poems, painting, five orange hand-made postcards that arrived all at the same time, letters, and a tape that also contains part of the soundtrack of the short segment of our lives that we shared together.
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