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by Gerard Salonga

When I got the call asking me to write about my love for music, I first thought, “Sure, piece of cake, I’ll have lots to say.” When it came time to sit down and actually write, it turned out to be more difficult than I could have imagined.
How does one describe in plain words one’s love for something like music? After all, music is something that expresses the inexpressible, and to reduce something like my feelings for it into something merely verbal seemed daunting a task. How was I going to do this without it sounding like an autobiography? I wanted it to be honest and candid, but not seem self-congratulatory.

It would have been easier for me to describe my love for my wife, or my mother, or my dog Rocky for that matter… but here we are, so let’s give this a shot, and if anything, it may at least allow me to share with you a little bit of how I feel for this thing we call music. Many a feature article and souvenir programme have described my education and professional experience, so I’ll spare you from all that. Here we go.

How did we meet? I have no recollection of the first contact I ever had with music. For all I know it could have been from inside my mother’s womb as she listened to the radio. I do remember my first listening experiences. It was in our living room, where I would be fed a diet of The Carpenters, James Last, ABBA, Chopin, and Chinese opera. These were on reel-to-reel tapes, which were the thing back in the mid-‘70s (I was born in 1973). I remember my dad teaching me how to turn on the machine and thread the tape so I could listen whenever I wanted.

There I would be, listening for hours to The Sound of Music, or a recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, sitting totally still throughout the whole thing. I was four. My mom thought I had some form of autism, because if the machine weren’t plugged in, I would thread the tape, and turn the reels to the end, singing what was supposed to be on the tape. I actually remember singing Beethoven 5 all the way through while turning the reels. Sometimes it would all be in my head, and I wouldn’t sing anything, which I’m sure was quite alarming to my mom.

One afternoon, there it was. I didn’t see it come through the front door. I walked into the living room and it stood there, a shiny upright piano. My sister Lea began taking lessons on it but I wouldn’t get my hands on it till a year later. I still remember vividly that first lesson. Mrs. Miraflor came over for Lea’s lesson as usual, and after they had finished she called me over and sat me on the bench. She showed me each of the notes in the C major scale. I was in love. On our piano, the G above middle C had a different tone, and from that day it stuck in my head. To this day, G (not A) is my surefire reference pitch.

More of Gerard Salonga’s love for music in the March 2009 issue of S Magazine.

by Chin Chin Gutierrez

Tragedy can happen to anyone, rich or poor, to a celebrity or a private individual. But grace can happen to anyone too. In what seems to be a test, a trial or a tribulation, one could recognize grace. And this can be done with a deep sense of gratitude.

I learned that we need not suffer anything to distract or draw us away from knowing that each of us is a child of God: a loving being in a loving world. I wouldn’t say this with utmost urgency and importance if it was just simpler said than done. God’s love is the very anchor of grace and gratitude in this journey and one doesn’t need a tragic experience to know the joy that comes with living this truth.

I saw the fire that razed our house two years ago this month as a grace, for beyond what I know and truly accept, life took away what was no longer necessary. And this may perhaps be for the good of all. Yes, this is not just my story and not just about me.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother and I used to spend time putting together those jigsaw puzzles that had a thousand pieces. It was always so difficult to begin with, all those colors and shapes scattered around. Lola Nena would always say, “Be patient, let’s have fun… Start with the corners. Look for all the ones with a flat side so we could create the frame and see the size of the picture of the puzzle.”

But then soon after the frame was done, I’d start getting confused. “That’s why it is called a puzzle”, Lola would chuckle, “but if you look at what colors are similar and find the clues of the guide picture in each perfect piece, that would help you see that no two pieces are alike.”

What she told me made me feel that every piece of the puzzle was so special and perfect, and I valued the joy of finding even just three clusters of pieces to join together for along with a beautiful picture in the making was a beautiful soul sitting right beside me — with whom I would laugh and sing in awe at what we would find next, on whose lap I would lay while she told stories, and through whose eyes I would see the loving gaze of God.

Each of us is a special and perfect piece of this puzzle called life. Life is beautiful. And I’ve learned that we can see how we could all fit together in accordance with the beautiful vision that God has already given to us as we look at this picture through the eyes of God’s love. To see Creation through the heart of our Creator which is love… and compassion.

In this light, I cannot really say I’m going through a recovery stage because I truly recognize that I’m already “covered”. It may seem idealistic or impossible to respond in this way but with what I went through, I could sincerely witness that when we lose everything that we seemingly have become accustomed to having, we realize what life is not about.

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