From here to there!

Jing Villamil

 

AS she was toeing a leap from the fence to a stone bench, she paused. She hears a strumming of an intro to a song. She asks herself “but, that is my song! Or is it just music in my mind?” She nods to herself. “but, that sounds like a band playing the beginnings of my song!” Another nod. (She often conducts a running conversation with herself. Seriously.) Then it finally gets to her.

She gives up her intended leap, drops down fast from her perch of a fence, and flies swiftly to . . .

The band on practice mode, the five members and their equipment, are in comfy disarray on stage. The lead guitarist is plucking the chords with the pad of his fingers, and not with the pick. That is why the notes come out whole and full and cool from the boom speakers. Not squeaky thin, spiky or metallic.

His music runs up and down the scales, light and swift, unfolding a musical tale without words . . .

Of running through grass and sand and fine pebbles. Of leaps and soars across space, over mirrors of water left by rain or stream overflowing. Of a face turned up to the trees, eyes closed, bathing in warm streaks of sunrays.

It is joy in celebration of what is beautiful in life! And God’s creations are bursting with it, in a symphony of a song!

A symphony played and re-played by these young men, their fingers romancing strings on wood honed into guitars, and the beat of the heart thudding forth from lambskin stretched and tucked unto metal drums. And glee tinkling from piano keys and other percussions.

The instruments offer their chords and the beat of their rhythm and bass to the passage of the lead guitar, and he picks these up and threads all their uniquely distinct notes, into one vary-colored yet harmonious shawl of sounds. And he flings it spinning, dazzling to the listening crowd!

This piece of live music is one of the most beautiful she had ever heard! Had the givers, the gods through this band, knowingly intended this effect at first note?

It is the band’s rare kind of classy “feeling” music that had induced the school principal, a musician himself, to hire the band for the promenade and ball. For two hours every other morning of the week, Juniors and Seniors would practice with the band, the students at one end of the longest open school quadrangle under the shades of ancient acacia trees for a roof, and the band on the huge stage at its opposite end.

And it came to pass that, more often than not, as in three days out of the three days of practice, Manta would eventually tie the practice into knots! To the teachers’ chagrin and the other students’ peals of laughter!

Kasi naman, when marching her way through the left and right of every other girl and boy in the squared rigodon de honor, Manta would brake an unchoreographed sudden stop at that exact moment she faces the stage. She would steal these few seconds to close her eyes and breathe-in the source of this wonderful music! Meanwhile, the boys and girls behind her would end up bumping and crowding unto each other. AY! ANO BA YAN! KA-BLAG! ARAY!

The young men of the band would also grin and laugh out loud at the commotion regularly occurring below and far down the quadrangle, because of this girl brightly blinding as sundrop!

Sa totoo lang, it can really be nice and cool under the trees, better than the sticky stuffy air in the classrooms. So the kids make a game out of it. They would anticipate Manta’s brake-and-stop. As the teachers fling up their arms and shout in one exasperated voice “Manta!” the kids would also do an echoing chorus of “Manta!” exaggerating their exasperation. They would all then drop playfully, delightfully down to the ground. It would take a lot more seconds to pick themselves up, “pagpag” the leaves off and proceed again with the march. Two hours practice would extend to three, and not a one complaint, not even from the band.

It was thus, bacause of the shouts and chorus, that he learns of her name.

(To be continued.)

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