The Year of the Filipino

It's been awhile since I've written a "substantial" blog sometimes I wonder if I'm even capable of doing it anymore! Or maybe life has been so rich lately I don't want to stop to record it for fear of this wild ride disappearing... Well, que sera sera...

So many things:
* Got to meet four of the five Filipino actors of The Romance of Magno Rubio: Bernardo Bernardo, Ramon de Ocampo, Jojo Gonzalez and Paolo Montalban (yes, THAT Paolo) and Arthur Acuna was terrifc too. More later.

* This weekend our mini-musical Cain and Abel: The Naked Truth had a three-day run at Actoberfest with John David Wallis and Rachel Payne reprising their roles as Abel and Trudy; Stephen Van Dorn as Cain, Kelly Lester as Eve and Adam LeBow as God. Michele Spears came back to direct and Myrna Emata was the music director. This is a whole post in itself -- the performances were top-notch, the team was great! That's all I'll say for now and will have photos to share soon.

But what inspires the title of this post?

I'm in the middle of breaking out an outline for my next musical, Sailors and Nurses. First of all, I'm so grateful to have two fabulous lyricists to collaborate with -- ANMT-trained and YES, FILIPINAS! Thank you for signing on Allison Johnson and Maureen Borillo... it's gonna be a TRIP... if the bookwriter can get her proverbial sh*t together. Oh wait, that's me!

My classmate, Terri, asked me how it was going -- and I all I could say was "I'm crying a lot. I can't stop crying."

But don't fell sorry for me... I've finally figured out this is my process! It's what happened when I wrote Carabao Bookends and Light Filipino Brown -- and it's when I know I'm telling the truth and writing of my heart. [As I've told many people: I'm like Dorothy Parker:

"I hate writing, I like having written"

-- because a story has to be told. So I wallow in the process, as messy and inconsistent as it is...]

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And today, Stephen, the new fellow who played (our third!) Cain so wonderfully this weekend, found out how crazy I am about these songs that are OPM = Original Pilipino Music, like Ikaw. We're backstage this weekend waiting for their curtain call and he starts singing this song, Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang, in pure, beautiful Tagalog... a song his co-star, Carol Banawa (a famous TV star/singer in the Philippines) taught him while they were in a biblical extravaganza of a musical in Singapore called Judah Ben-Hur.

Oh dear. Talk about completely melting. More watery eyeballs. And to hear this fabulous voiced white boy sing it... good grief, I'm on another planet.

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We find out last night we didn't make the finals... it's a long, long night. But I woke up: and there's a beautiful serenade of Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang on my voicemail from my new friend Stephen, singing the duet with his friend, Mel.

Now I'm just a bowl of jelly. I've never received a song that way before, EVER. And of course, it's just opening up more and more STUFF for me to write about...

Thank you, Stephen. You don't know how magical that was. Sailors and Nurses will be all the more truthful because of that gesture, you have no idea.

Here's a YouTube duet version of it and an English translation -- yeah, you better believe I'm gonna learn this one!

Enjoy.



Why only now...
Why only is it now that my heart needs?
It now has found out...

I wish that I'd found out
That you would come into my life
Then I would have waited

Pre-chorus:

You were supposed to have been the one for me to hug
Your hand always for me to hold instead of hers

Chorus:

Why only now....
Is it that you arrive in my life
I'm forcing to open my closed heart
You are the only one for me
Even though I want to forget you
I want to know...why is is now that you arrive in my life?

Cinderella, and a Guitar Gently Weeping

It must be that full moon again.

Went to the Pisces full moon meditation tonight and ended up going out to Hollywood and eating outside on picnic benches with Maria at a tasty (and packed) Mexican food stand, El Gran, on Santa Monica and Vermont... wow, cheap and delicious! How fun was that.

But Pisces being Pisces... fluid, dreamy, nebulous, vast... I had to come home to do some composing for the next assignment. Looking for music in a ballroom setting (1700-1800s or so), and ended up at YouTube watching the Cinderella of my childhood and her Prince, Stuart Damon.



Wow, could not stop crying... I love this song... and whatever it is that it brings up in me...

A quick aside -- almost 20 years ago I was at a "meeting" of sorts and ended up sitting next to an older Stuart Damon... and we had to hold hands for a few minutes... and I remember thinking to myself, "My God, I'm holding hands with fucking PRINCE CHARMING!" hehehe How did he get away from me?! -- or rather, where is he now?!?!?

Of course, without realizing it, my idea of a "Prince" was formed by seeing this version of Cinderella and Mr. Damon. But I can't let go of Paolo Montalban either (I wrote about him ad infinitum already) but of course, I have to put his version here also.



I never ever believed a Prince -- or a love -- could be Filipino. Until I saw that.

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Or maybe it's just that I love that song... AHA AHA Rodgers and Hammerstein! And I do love those tenors.

Help.

Lastly, today... here's a gift my brother, Mike, shared with me. George Harrison being channeled by ukelele virtuoso, Jake Shimabukuro.



Tonight the guitar, ukelele and I -- we all weep.

Edited: 3/5 to include:

To bring it all together and talking about PRINCES, check out the PRINCE lick at the end... it's a tribute on VH1 to George Harrison with Tom Petty and others, and even George's son (his doppelganger!) is on stage too (can't miss him). PRINCE KICKS ASS!

The Sweetest Sounds

I'm a mush-pot (no big news) -- and it's showing up in my dreams... today's nap produced another sweat-inducing, probably peri-menopausal wedding or boyfriend dream... and lately they've been looking like Paolo Montalban.

In case you didn't know, he played The Prince in the 1997 Cinderella TV version with Brandy and Whitney Houston. He's a beautiful man, he's got a gorgeous voice and shockingly enough... he's Filipino. {Why is that? Because Filipino men have an incredible hoop to jump through in my eyes... but hey, that's another post.}



THE SWEETEST SOUNDS
The sweetest sounds I'll ever hear
Are still inside my head
The kindest words I'll ever know, are waiting to be said
The most entrancing sight of all, is yet for me to see
And the dearest love in all the world
Is waiting somewhere for me
Is waiting somewhere, somewhere for me
(Rodgers and Hammerstein)

Ah,what a dreamer I am... and I like it that way. (Wow, I'm feeling a bit defensive about this all right now! But I plow on -- I at least write in this blog so I remember where/what I was feeling -- it's MY blog, isn't it? -- or that I even WAS feeling...)

Tonight I had the urge to finally pull out my Cinderella video and watch and sing... and I swear, I felt my heart open up... AHA! I finally know the key to my well of hopes and dreams... MUSICALS. Amazingly enough, it's only in a musical that people/characters are so overwhelmed with feeling that mere words will not suffice -- they have to break out in song... oh, dear, I'm getting teary just thinking about it again.



Last week I finally watched my TV -- thanks CJ for putting my VCR/DVD players together -- I'd had the TV for a year and a half and was just scared that I broke it. I don't have reception, but I was able to pull out one of my favorite movies, A Little Romance, with Diane Lane. My friend who watched it with me was feeling quite cynical about it -- knowing what would happen, that they couldn't really be together... and I was so "into" my movie, I didn't even notice she wasn't laughing and enjoying herself.

Same with tonight... I have another friend who's stressed out about a job she's doing on the side and hates that after all these years in the business, she's still doing "surivial gigs." I couldn't even relate.

And that's okay. Because, as dearest, sweet Heidi says in The Alchemy of Love class I've just begun with her -- one of the steps of the heart is softening the heart. And when I can just sing and cry into my TV, and open my heart to the hope of true, innocent love again -- then I know that I, the optimistic Seven, am out of my head in the right place.