Impressions between joy and sorrow

MANILA, Philippines - One wet weekend at Greenhills’ Music Museum, the man of myriad faces who has impersonated a galaxy of personalities for the last four decades is doing it again, as he has done countless times before: “curing the world of its sorrows and choosing to live in joy,” as the life-long student and teacher of the human spirit and mythology, Joseph Campbell believed.

Indeed, with Will the Real Willie Nep Stand Up, primus inter pares Filipino impressionist Willie Nepomuceno, is still “following his bliss,” despite the vicissitudes of Ondoy which buried his life-long memorabilia, including a vintage juke box in its muddy wake. “I was intending to leave these life works’ mementoes to my grandchildren, but in one fell swoop, they were gone,” he lamented that terrible apocalyptic day of Sept. 26, 2009.

Seated on stage in front of his astounded audience with a styro juke box in the background, perspiring after a brilliant repertoire of icons and iconoclasts, Willie Nep was a figure straight from an ancient Greek theater: A cathartic presence upholding to his faithful the truth of what American poet laureate, Robert Frost, distilled in three words as what was to be learned about life: It goes on.

His opening spiel of Mar Roxas entering the stage in his padyak/trisikad and trademark patriotic blue shirt was the closing act of another gifted impressionist, Jon Santos’ recent take on the political circus (Kuring, Gluring, Dyuning, Syerap), where he was a surprise guest. However, he upped it a notch with more finesse, having perfected the tounge-in-cheek one-liners of the vice-presidential LP hopeful from the domed kingdom of Cubao.

The Dolphy segment was simply perfect, right smack to the gait and gesticulations of the King of Comedy in his diamond years. In dazzling white suit and lothario red tie, he pandered to the showbiz proclivities of his audience, titillating them with the elusive peal of wedding bells for Shashing.

The Freddie Roach novelty rode high on the crest of the last Pacquiao victory over Cotto, despite the pondahan humor of the natives putting one over the unwitting white dayo while teaching him the four-letter words of the dialect.

When it was time to parody the phenomenal pugilist himself, Willie Nep caught him hook, line and sinker — complete with the Bisayan accent of a trying hard college boy who dishes out his gonna’s and other Amspeaks with the same hilarity which his loving mom (then Aling Dionesia, now Mommy D), can only deliver with uncanny timing.  The audience was in stitches, thinking: They’ve come a long way these two — from the hungry years in Gen San when there was hardly begas pangsaeng to the casino oasis, where they shop away their boredom, paBegas-Begas na lang, Dong.

Of course, with the presidential race just around the bend, the coup de grace was the Noynoy-Kris joust, with the unflappable tinsel town queen trying her darndest to overhaul and make-over the reluctant heir to the Cojuangco-Aquino claim for the Malacañan seat of grace. The mimesis here was first rate, Willie having not only incarnated the timbre and intonation of Noynoy’s baritone, but even his smoker’s cough and nervously meek laughter. From our vantage point on the balcony, the gleam in the balding head of the perhaps next President of the Republic, added to the hilarious dazzle of the father-daughter (Willie’s own daughter) tandem impersonating the sister-brother kontra-pelo yellow duo.

As if these Pinoy headline makers were not enough to have the audience’s cup running over, Willie still would not let it rain on his hit parade of music magicians from yesteryears, which he and Boots Anson-Roa queue in their Music and Memories teleradyo show: Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Cliff Richards and his separated-at-birth twin Jose Marie Chan, Matt Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Roy Orbison and Yoyoy Villame.

Just as one was beginning to think — when will this guy ever run out of faces and voices to impersonate — thence came the last melody of the evening — Charlie Chaplin’s immortal song from his 1952 autobiographical opus, Limelight, filmed at the most troubled period of his adult career.

And the epiphany comes: Following one’s bliss, as Campbell viewed it, isn’t merely a matter of doing whatever you like, and certainly not doing simply as you are told. It is a matter of identifying that pursuit which you are truly passionate about and attempting to give yourself absolutely to it. In so doing, you will find your fullest potential and serve your community to the greatest possible extent.

Willie Nep, like the mortal rest of us, may hurt from disasters, but we keep believing the unknown prophet of Ecclesiastes who wrote:

For everything there is a season,

and a time for every matter under heaven…. a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

And the fictional prophet of Kahlil Gibran, who preached:

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.