For the longest time, I have already forgotten what the feeling was like. Yet, this weekend finally brought it back like a sudden wind-in-your-face kind of sensation. At last, I have finally had another opportunity to take a road trip with three of my musician friends to play in another city five hours away.
It’s not to say that traveling to play in some town has become rarity in this day and age. The only thing is, it’s now the younger musicians who corner the almost full-month gig schedules that’s akin to that of a roving circus’. Alas, even as that has become the norm rather than the exception, the elder music statesmen are now relegated to limited trysts, and ones that are not so far from the senior homestead at that. Incidentally, we didn’t have name for such travel adventures in the old rambling days, but young folks of today nonchalantly call them as “out-of-town” gigs and one can say duh to the creativity in coming up of such a term.
Fortunately for me back in the day (I was in third or fourth year of college then), I again met up with a grade school classmate who was so much into folk music, he totally convinced me to travel and sing with him, here in Mindanao at first, then finally to Manila in order to fulfill what he termed as our “ramblin’ days”. Still nineteen at the time and with crazier dreams than most, who’s to argue, even if I only had under a year to graduate from college? So off we went, with mostly the wind in our faces while on the road and the warmth of stage lights at night.
Jut looking back, the whole experience could not have been singularly motivated by the music in our head alone. Truth be told, there is no other delight that compares to constantly coming into new places for the first time and establishing lasting friendships with the people. This, I just realized during our last weekend’s sortie. Some friends, whom we’ve never seen in so many years, have come to greet us and even played with us on stage. Eerily, the whole experience seems like a return trip in time. I can only imagine, if we were able to do this again in Luzon, it might still be possible that with our old network of musician friends, we could again whip up a sentimental trip up those old towns, with their quaint school gyms, ancient Spanish churches and spacious green fields.
So in all, there’s really not much change in the pub halls of memories. Especially now with the availability of chat engines on the net, still a sizable, if not, a sprinkle of old musicians still twang it up in some corner. Because of this, definitely not much change in the provinces too, with them around. Who’s to say, a return is a hard-enough thing to do.
