The Perks of Being a Wallflower and my manic pixie (younger) self

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is such a good barkada film. I want to be friends with everyone Charlie made friends with, i.e. "trip" with Mary Elizabeth, talk about boys on random dates with Patrick, go to gigs with Sam.

The movie reminded me of Almost Famous, perhaps because they were both coming-of-age films and music played a crucial role in the re-shaping of the main characters' lives. I saw Almost Famous when I was younger though, i.e. I had just begun college, so I empathized greatly with the coming-of-age-feel of the movie: I was looking for my own heroines and manic Pixie girl Pennylane became, for quite sometime, the epitome of free spirit I had wanted to be. She was a proud groupie. She loved bravely. Plus, I was also trying to "discover" 60s-70s rock music and hippie culture then and Almost Famous was shown when the hippie era was relatively unexplored and not too cool yet (it was the pre-hipster period).

Manic Pixie Girl no more
Watching TPoBaW 12 years after Almost Famous provided an unanticipated evaluation of what happened to the projects Music/Hippie-ness & Manic Pixie-girl-slash-groupie I began when I was 18 and just starting college:
1) The music were ones I already like and have heard of (that's also thanks to the more contemporary playlist) 
2) I'd rather be manic Pixie-girl Sam (played magnificently by Emma Watson)'s ate and friend than her.

It's like seeing Paul Rudd play the teacher: an affirmation that I'm a lot older now, haha. I still love Pennylane's character, would hug her were we to meet in the fictional world and tell her how I did learn to love stupidly and bravely at the same time and take on life somewhat like she had, but I have other heroines now. And I think if I tell her this, she would say she understands where I'm coming from and tell me she knows what I mean. Then we would exchange knowing looks and trade stories about those trips we took, sometimes intentionally, other times because we had no choice, that forced us to stare at ourselves long and hard while asking "What the fuck is wrong with you?" and then learning to forgive and accept who & how we are, and then getting on the bus/ the route/ the journey again, stumbling/learning/struggling/practicing this notion of self-love, and then have a silly laugh and say, "Those manic pixie girl days were fun times, right?"

I know that had my Pennylane-adoring me met Sam earlier, she would probably feel like she found a new bestfriend. To her I'd say Sam is right, things are gonna be better or at least, it could be better if you allow it to. Then I'd tell her to be excited. Knowing the younger me, she'd probably get so anxious and a little scared. I'd tell her it's going to be real, affecting, and world-&-self-changing but oh-so-worth the ride, she should stand up, embrace the uncertainty, and wave her hands in the cold air like Sam does in that tunnel scene.

"An Ocean and a Rock," Lisa Hannigan

Last week, Turtle was telling me about her newfound respect for singer Lisa Hannigan, who we both previously knew from her work in a few of Damien Rice's songs, i.e. "Volcano." Upon Turtle's recommendation, gave Lisa's solo album Sea Sew a listen. Hannigan's work is fantastic, quite a far cry from the kind of intensity present in Rice's songs, but beautiful too -- their intensity tempered with a certain whimsicality. 

Here's my favorite track (so far):   

Thoughts of you, warm my bones

I'm on the way, I'm on the phone,

Lets get lost, me and you,

an ocean and a rock is nothing to me.

DCFC in Manila (03.05.12): our "We were there!" photos

the band, with, as Corin puts it, Ben Gibbard doing his sexy moves

Corin and Carl

Meg, Turtle, me

Hearing some of the songs being played live was just surreal.

This night's one for the books. :)

All photos on this page are taken by Corin Arenas (thanks, newfound concert buddy!). 

A shoutout to Death Cab for Cutie

And the news reports on the radio

Said it was getting worse

As the ocean air fanned the flame.

But I couldn't think of anywhere I would have rather been

To watch it all burn away.

To burn away.

...and how appropriate that the best show I've ever seen would be right here in Manila. Thank you, Death Cab for Cutie, thank you, Ben Gibbard, for going all out. That was such an awesome, awesome performance you gave last night. I don't think there was a dry eye in the audience or a person who regrets being poorer by a few thousands. We all went home with shaken souls and swelling hearts, but all of us were also a tad more human than before your concert began.

Final shoutout: MANILA LOVES YOU, DCFC!

***Video of DCFC live in Manila where Ben Gibbard delivers his "I apologize on behalf of the band for not coming sooner" spiel + plays "Grapevine Fires" from Narrow Stairs

The Rainbow Connection (Johnoy Danao cover)

"What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me."

Goodbye, R.E.M

Dear Peter Buck, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry, 


So central rain, that's how your decision to disband feels like. I'm guessing each of you must have taken the time to process this huge decision before making the announcement. I admire the courage that must be behind the decision to pursue your own projects. Still, we, your fans (no longer kids, struggling to be adults, succeeding in some parts, failing in others, winging it in most places) will miss you. We'll feel sad that the concept that you guys are actively collaborating on something are nil for now. 


Thank you for the past 31 years. Your songs have made life infinitely more meaningful. 


Thank you for producing some of the most beautiful songs I will ever know, with lines like "I count your eyelashes secretly, with every one whisper I love you, I let you sleep," (At My Most Beautiful), which my 19/ 20-something mind understood as the possibility that a great love, the kind that leaves sweet, awkward rhymes on answering machines and one that counts eyelashes, could exist, but which, in my late-20s, I finally understood as a reminder that when one loves greatly, one is at her most beautiful. 



Or how about this line, "Your light eclipsed the moon tonight, Electrolite,"(Electrolite) which is a line I don't think I'll ever tire telling my someone, just because. (Just because you always want to remind them of that great, blinding light within). 


I love the band that you guys were. Trust that your music will never be erased from the ipod and that they'll always be migrated into whatever format music players of the future evolve into, not because I'm sentimental, no, but because whenever I wish to feel better or feel safe or feel home, it's your songs I've always reached out for. I suspect I won't stop doing that. A lifetime of thank yous is not enough.

And all this talk of time, talk is fine. And I don't want to stay around. Why can't we pantomime, just close our eyes and sleep sweet dreams, me and you with wings on our feet.

- from that song of yours that always drives me to tears, "the Great Beyond."

The song of the bum & the cry of the yuppie

Once upon a time, I used to write for the Metakritiko section of the Philippine Online Chronicles. I wasn't very diligent at it and I haven't always been proud of every end product (often, there's the compulsion to edit & edit & edit long after it has been published), but there's one particular feature which I will always have a soft spot for, "Dylan and Dylan: the Poem as Compass and the Song as Road Map," if only because it was about how a song (Bob Dylan's) and a poem (Dylan Thomas') got me through two different points as I grappled my way through the 20s (why are you so complicated, 20s?). The involvement of the two Dylans was pure coincidence, too. That it was quite personal made me really hesitant to publish it at first. Anyway, just thought it'd be a good time to blog about the link after that Haruki Murakami quote in my earlier post. That Murakami's character describes Bob Dylan's voice as being "like a kid standing at the window watching the rain" brought me back to the first time I heard the man. That day at the beach, Dylan's voice was like gunshot and his song ("Like a Rolling Stone") pierced through my life (not an original idea, Greil Marcus says as much, but does it more eloquently & sociologically). To be dramatic about that first encounter with Bob Dylan, I was forever changed.

Hey Universe, I know you're listening, throw a new song and poem my way soon? <3, Me