Leavetaking=Homecoming

Created by cerumentric on Jun 6, 2009

This playlist has the songs No Sleep till Brooklin' by Beastie Boys, Loves Comes Down by Mylon LeFevre, Jungle Love by The Time, Good-bye Cruel World by Whitecross, Shell Shock by New Order, and more.

To tell you the truth, I have yet to go out of the Philippines. I have never stepped foot outside of Luzon, probably because I am more of a homebody than anyone I know. I do know the feeling of leaving though; I spent 16 years of my life in the place where I was born. I went to UP Diliman in 1995 as a college student, and that was the longest time I have been away from my hometown.

I do consider Metro Manila home, and still have a fondness for the area around Diliman, Quezon City, for most of my adulthood memories were made there. I feel a sense of nostalgia about the place everytime I visit. My first music gigs, playing 90s alt-rock ditties in class because the prof decided not to show up, the now-defunct Tumbang Preso Cafe in Visayas Ave., Joey Ayala inviting me to his place to give me some free gear and talk music, dragging a cheap acoustic guitar along wherever I go, hanging out with Lernie Ang and going to his place to record on his 4-track.

I somehow miss the Olongapo City that I knew back then; it's not the same place now. It is an idealized version in my mind that still provides me a tether to my roots. The city of Pinoy Rock, the actual between-worlds of two disparate cultures-traditional Tagalog Filipino and the American military base, the first hip-hop gangs, 80s mohawk punks at California Jam, Beastie Boys' License To Ill blasting in yellow jeepney I was riding in at 12, country/western music combos in Magsaysay Avenue. I grew up in a cultural melting pot during the presence of the U.S. bases, my family's source of livelihood for more than 15 years, the same 'imperialism' that nationalistic intellectuals in Manila protested about and yet neglected to formulate extensive livelihood alternatives for those who depended on it. It was daily normal fare to see a mix of Caucasians, Afro-Americans, Indians, Pakistanis, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese and Filipinos walking the same streets. Some I even went to church with. That, I have left a long time ago.

In a sense, it would be 'homecoming' for me to travel outside the Philippines, to see the world's melting pots, because I know that while I will experience them all for the first time, it will all be familiar.