Watching Peter Jackson's Get Back was not only wish-fulfillment (loud and proud Beatlemaniac since 1991, baybeh!) but also a wonderful trigger for nostalgia about my previous life as a musician in the Philippines. Seeing the Fab Four dick around rehearsals with spontaneous 2x-speed renditions of songs they loved when they were kids, along with the creative spats and moments of genius, I was reminded of my time with Ang Bandang Shirley. It was very satisfying to see, after years of being trapped on a pedestal of grandeur and mystery, that The Beatles were just likes us low-life kantateros, winging it and just here (trying) to have fun.
In our band, Owel was definitely John and Ean was Paul. Shirley was different though in that it had another driving force in Kathy (a more fierce, determined Brian Epstein perhaps?), and I suppose I wasn't quite George but maybe an amalgam of him and Ringo-- or most probably neither of them as I felt more like a witness who had her say now and then. Do I elaborate on these judgments? I hesitate because some of us are trying to live peaceful lives after some time and distance from the band (and other members, heehee) and I don't want to rock the boat. But I'm trying to pursue truth and disclosure, and I need to practice with something.
In recent months I've had occasional video calls with Ean that confirmed my observations. He said that he felt when he was writing songs for the last two albums that his creative karass included me and Owel, that he needed us both to elevate his songwriting. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure he and every Shirley fan in the world is aware that Ean is the hitmaker of the band, having penned "Umaapaw" and "Nakauwi Na", but he's correct in acknowledging Owel's ability to recognise the genius in the song and how to make it unique or weird (and O's own songs are beautiful pop oddities themselves). I'm not sure exactly what my role was, but I think because of my indie background and love for radio pop, I provided the ether in which their ideas swirled and blended. So Ean was very Paul and Owel was very John, and this extended to their goals for the band (ie. E wanted to get big and O wanted to get big but also fuck things up in a glorious way). And here's were Kathy stepped in, because her smarts made the first part possible, but she also wouldn't settle for less than "fuck things up". We couldn't just be baduy about it and give the fans we were gaining what they thought they wanted-- we had to also add to the universal pool of artistry, even if maybe what we added only we thought was artistic.
Thankfully, last time I talked to Ean he was on a creative streak and doesn't need us anymore to write new songs for the band. But we both confessed to missing Shirley, not necessarily the individuals (for him; I actually miss them all), but how we were together, the friendship and rewarding artistic collaboration. It was such a magical time in my life, the early days and all throughout. I truly grew up with those people and they'll always be a treasured part of who I am. They activated parts of my brain and heart so that I got to actualise my own creativity, and I'll forever be grateful to them.
F***book Memories for me these days consist of mostly two things: Russ or Shirley. I relish the photos from random gigs we had. I also just read our defunct TinyLetter, where I said goodbye to everyone, and the other posts reminded me of fun times in the last few years I was with them. Gaaawwwd, I miss them. I have nothing to offer them but nostalgia whenever I get the chance to speak to them, and that's a bit sad.
Boxes of the last of our stuff from the Philippines arrived before Christmas, and my favourite things in them were our photo albums. Seeing my childhood ones made me feel as if family had finally visited me here. And then I found early Shirley pics, from God Knows Hudas Not Pay gigs and Big Sky Mind and the first Love One Another Studio. My friends and comrades <3.
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A hard truth: my colleague announced yesterday that she was pregnant, and I cried afterwards. That's probably what everyone expected me to do, but I honestly thought I was feeling better in the last few weeks since Russ and I were able to talk more about what happened and what we wanted for the future. I had no ill feelings toward her-- in fact, of course I'm very happy for them-- but it just made me remember the feeling of being a failure again. It is false, I know that. But knowing this didn't stop the emotion.
I kept asking myself why I felt bad and pushing myself to be honest about it. Was I envious? Yes, I was! Did I feel it was unfair? No, I didn't. She's much younger and by convention a "more viable" candidate for a successful pregnancy. I then questioned the thought of "by convention" as well, because when I had my miscarriage I was told it wasn't necessarily age that made my pregnancy fail, only that we lost the genetic lottery that time. I felt so confused! So I decided the only thing I could do was to hold my emotion up for scrutiny and treat it as independent from reason, something that had to ebb.
While I was making dinner for myself last night, I watched a roundtable of scriptwriters that included Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Lost Daughter (why in hell did they not put her in the roundtable for directors???). She talked about how Elena Ferrante, the author of the novel the movie was based on, was so great at writing about women who had messy emotional lives, which really is all women having lived through the patriarchy, and had the courage to portray them in art. The Lost Daughter itself is about mothers who struggle with the expectations to be perfectly loving while reality makes it impossible to keep one's identity whole. Even if I'm not a mother, I can relate to this contradiction of desires, because I want to be a mother even as I'm afraid of the necessary self-annihilation that comes with it. I am messed up because I considered myself a feminist and yet residual indoctrination has made me feel like my miscarriage was shameful, a tragedy, even if it happens to millions of women all the time. Miscarriage is still misunderstood by so many because society has not thought it important enough to investigate and explain how women's bodies work or how pregnancies happen, leaving women to figure their way out of and through biological "roles" they've been told to play.
I'm so angry that I feel this sad, and that so many women are left to deal with the grief and shame by themselves.
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