Lightyears

September 8, 2008

Do not go gentle into that good night,Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas


The first time I heard an Eraserheads song was in 1995. I was in 6th grade, and a minor controversy had erupted about the song “Alapaap.” Even senators were being interviewed during the evening newscasts about the song and its alleged references to using illegal drugs. I wanted to judge the song for myself, so I listened intently to the lyrics when it was on the radio—and from then on, there was no turning back.

I was eleven.


To my eleven-year old (and twelve, thirteen, fourteen and  fifteen-year old) self, the Eraserheads were more than just another band—there were a dime a dozen of Pinoy bands in the early 1990s—they were the soundtrack of my life. They put into words the thoughts and feelings that I had and couldn’t express for myself. I’m sure everyone who was in high school and college at the Eraserheads’ peak would agree that Ely, Marcus, Buddy, and Raimund were the mouthpieces through which a generation’s thoughts were expressed.

My biggest regret in the years after they had disbanded was that I had never seen them live. The closest I had gotten was when, in my third year of high school (I was fourteen, then) the band was set to play at the UPLB Fair—unfortunately on a Saturday that I had to spend at home with my parents. (At the time, PHSA was pretty strict about staying over on weekends—you had to have some official school stuff to do to be able to stay. The then-seniors were staying for their college entrance test review, and I was insanely jealous when they told me that you could hear the Eraserheads playing from the street outside the dorms.)

So when the reunion concert was announced, I knew that I couldn’t pass up this chance, despite all the rumours about how much they had each been paid, and all the crazy last minute glitches. This was my one chance of fulfilling my high school self’s dream, and I wanted to do it—even when, looking back, that high school self is now a virtual stranger.

(Did I really have a long-running crush on an upperclassman who, when he cut his hair short for the half-assed PHSA CAT classes, had a very vague resemblance to Ely Buendia? Oh gawd. The memory makes me laugh.)    


Nothing would have prepared me for the concert itself.

When the opening bars of Alapaap started playing–a green laser light blasting beam into the crowd, and the band emerging from the bowels of the stage—an energy came over the audience—I could do and say nothing aside from scream along with everyone else, still half-disbelieving that I was actually there.

I was half-dazed, to be honest, taken up in a pseudo-religious experience, one with a community of strangers who shared in the same feeling. I don’t remember almost half the songs of that first set, and was surprised when I read in news reports that it was a 15-song set. I only remember singing and dancing along with practically all of the songs. (As far as titles go, I remember Alapaap, Ligaya, Kaliwete, With a Smile, Harana, Fruitcake, Kailan, and Lightyears.)

After Lightyears, it was the break, and what happened everyone now knows—Ely Buendia being rushed to the hospital after collapsing backstage. I imagine that the physical stress from rehearsals for the concert and the emotional strain over the death of his mother last Thursday had much to do with it.

And even though it was a sad ending to the fulfillment of a dream, I don’t think it was anticlimactic—which was the sentiment of many, overheard as we slowly made our way towards the exit. I actually preferred this ending, than the way the Eraserheads died a long, lingering death in the early part of 2002. The American poet T.S. Eliot once wrote as a scathing criticism of our time: “this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.” And that was the way the Eraserheads ended then.

But this 2008 concert is a different story. This is the way it should end, and there was no better song to end it with than Lightyears: the recognition that we’ve all grown and changed and have become different people from the way were then—that Ely, Raimund, Marcus, and Buddy are no longer the same people they were. Who we were in those beautiful, turbulent years—light years away from who we are now. Yet we can still hold on to the memory of what once was, and still hear its spirit move in the music of the Eraserheads.

 

Big dipper north of nowhere
Outside the room inside my mind
Look forward to tomorrow
But can I leave yesterday behind
 
Now it feels so strange
To have grown and changed
Now it’s not the same

Because time slips and slides into another place
And try as we might to understand each other
It doesn’t really matter where you are
It always seems so very far
’cause you’re light years away, you’re light years away from me.

suicide

September 1, 2008

One month after L. departed this life, my former student G. B> took his own life yesterday.

I don’t understand, and I never will.

I regret never watching G. in his play last May.