I am re-learning some of the things that I dropped. One of them is playing the guitar. I first learned the basics of guitar playing when I was a sacristan. I was about fourteen then. I had this friend who seemed to had been carrying all the problems of the world on his shoulders and the way he chose to cope with it was to turn a little into himself and learn the guitar in the
kumbento. The first and only song I learned and used to play then was the older version of
Santo, Santo, Santo which required only a small set of very simple chords and where the transitions between those chords are much easier. Whenever we had the chance on the guitars (I think there were two guitars which were not always idle), we'd start strumming that song. The elder sacristans and church choir members would tease us and they'd be right that we would be singing the same song over and over and over again. Years passed and my friend went on to have his own electric guitar gifted to him while I moved on to different things. He has progressed enough to playing his favorite songs on his guitar and even got to play with his own band while I almost forgot all about it. But I learned the guitar basics such that I never had to re-learn it again. From time to time, opportunity to play the guitar arose but it required developing the habit which I didn't. My younger brother bought his own guitar which I used to borrow and practiced with but I never really quite progressed beyond simple strumming. Eventually I had accepted that maybe I never really had what it takes to play it. I think I am better at singing than at playing any musical instruments so I envy those people who can really play well, like my cousin who could play well the accordion before he was able to read and write. Whenever I pick up the guitar to strum a few chords of simple songs, I'd listen to my playing and I wouldn't be satisfied to the point of frustration. Or I'd start singing and my chords will quickly deteriorate into abhorrent noise. Maybe I was consciously trying to play it rather than using more
ouido. Some years later, I'd still be playing the same set of chords as
Santo, Santo, Santo but this time it's the simplified chords of
The One I Love by REM but whenever I do, I still remember my sacristan days. It was short-lived but I had plenty of good memories about it.
They say the churches of Europe, where religion is declining, are sometimes filled to the brim not by Europeans but by Filipinos. This is true also in Tokyo. There is Yotsuya (四谷) Catholic church in Shinjuku (新宿). Shown in the picture taken sometime in 2006 were our kababayans and their half-Filipino half-Japanese children starting to come out of the church after the Sunday English mass. I don't go to Yotsuya to hear mass. I go there to see people or accompany my family there. I usually just stay outside the church ogling the pretty girls that pass by, and which by the way has become so rare now that the Japanese government has come under fire from the US government on the trafficking of women. I saw one statistics some years ago that say nine out of ten Filipinos in Japan are women, most of them working or has worked as hostesses in Filipino bars. Filipino bars aside from Filipino stores is where you can find the Philippine flag displayed. My poor countrymen who are so devout believers will brave the uncertainties of life in a foreign land of heathens and yet their god seemed to have chosen to make the heathens to be more economically free than the devotees who work and pray for a life that's a little bit better than a life of poverty. Such irony for the believing Pinoy!
