Writing, music and friendships

If you enjoy books and music, especially original Filipino creations, these invitations are for you!

I’m very pleased and proud to invite you all to two events that are coming in the next few weeks. I’m sure that all your calendars are starting to fill up what with December just around the corner.

You won’t believe this but the past six months I’ve been busy, um, recording. Yes, you read that right, recording! This is because I’m part of the group the Bukas Palad Music Ministry.

I’m sure many of you have heard of this group. If you haven’t heard of us, for sure you’ve heard our songs. A lot of the songs we sing at Mass are Bukas Palad songs – such as Hindi Kita Malilimutan, Tanging Yaman, Sa ‘Yo Lamang, One More Gift and countless others.

This group has had a long history, and in fact we celebrate our 20th year in 2006. It all began even earlier actually in 1981 when a class in freshman high school at Ateneo composed the song Hindi Kita Malilimutan together. Three of these freshmen were Manoling Francisco of the Society of Jesus, Norman Agatep and Jandi Arboleda. These three continued to compose songs and in college began to record these songs. They got their friends to do the recordings. They got these friends from their own orgs in school, The Christian Life Community and the Ateneo Student Catholic Action. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I’ve been a member of this group for 18 years of my life now, half of my life, really! And I’ve stayed because it has enriched my life. The enrichment not only comes from having had the opportunity to be with people who believe in the same things I do or even in finding lifelong friendships and love. My deepest friendships come from this group. Not only in being able to practice my artistry and creativity in recording music and performing in concerts for we have had the opportunity to work with the best artists in the country. Not only in being allowed to meet many, many people and exchange ideas and experience but especially in the way it has become the core of my prayer life.

I’m convinced that writing and music are twin-gifts. Having sung most of my life helps me when I write, so much so that when I do write, I often feel that creating sentences requires the same skill as phrasing and deciding when to breathe in a musical line. Approaching a song is also like approaching the page: inflection, expression, beginning and ending, present in two different art forms.

Our new album is entitled "The God of Silence" and is produced by the Bukas Palad Music Ministry Foundation and the Jesuit Music Ministry of Jesuit Communications Foundation. It consists of 15 songs specifically designed for meditation and prayer. The cover album says, "These songs aim to accompany us as we journey in faith and prayer. They share our voices when our hearts overflow with praise, when our spirits taste desolation, when our souls are moved by the serene majesty and steadfast love of a God who is always, always with us."

For anyone who’s ever been faithful in prayer, or for anyone who is struggling with prayer, or anyone who wishes to be accompanied in prayer, or anyone who wishes to pray with music, this album is for you.

"God of Silence" will be launched on Nov. 19, Saturday, at the Church of the Gesu at Ateneo de Manila University. There will be a Mass at 5 p.m. and the concert begins at 7 p.m. Admission is free. If you would like to know the group’s schedule of concerts and activities, log on to www.bukaspalad.com.

The second invitation is to the launching of my first book entitled Love, Desire, Marriage, Reflections of a Young Wife. It consists of 13 essays. These essays have appeared in various publications and putting them all in one place will allow the reader greater accessibility to my work. The title is what it is. The essays talk about my personal experience of being married. Many essays are about the complex world of parenthood. There are essays on what it means to be a daughter as well. I think more than anything else, the essays are about love. I am obsessed with love, in all its forms!

Here’s a sampling of what can be read from one of the essay entitled "A History of Desire":

But then, on the night of my Senior Prom, on Buendia Avenue, right by the stoplight as we waited for the light to turn green, I let my date kiss me. Nobody knows this about me. Nobody knows I let a stranger kiss me (for he was only a blind date). Suddenly, I desired him. Perhaps not necessarily, him, but a possibility of something.

As in all momentous moments, my recollection repeats in slow motion. Most details disappear (although if called upon to complete this picture I am certain to remember), and what remains is the movement of Paul towards my lips, my mind’s debate over why I should let him, and my natural curiosity acquiescing as I twist my head to receive my first kiss.

I’ve always enjoyed carrying this secret. It is a secret that reveals a side of me no one has ever seen. If I were to study this moment as a work of fiction I would explore what motivated me to allow the kiss to happen. One possible reason was that I wanted to be just like those heroines in the novels I was so busy reading. Being kissed in a novel always signified the arrival of wonderful things to come. Perhaps that was what I wished for.

Maybe I was motivated by the need to be beautiful. Never having been a beauty, it must have surprised me to find someone who thought otherwise. His admiration of me was unmistakable at the time which is funny because I was wearing a most hideous hot pink gown with a diamond studded rose on my left hip my mother had made only a week before from a shop along Xavierville Avenue. But it is possible that it was me who found him beautiful (he was 6’1 and he wore a white suit while all the other men wore Barong Tagalog) and it was me who moved to kiss him. I can no longer be certain. Perhaps it was an experiment to see completely a place I had begun to know.

Studying this all now, I shouldn’t have rushed. Because the novels were right, a kiss meant the arrival of new things. For when Paul put his lips to mine, I felt that drowsiness of limb and the rush of wetness in between my legs. Finally something clicked. I could truly feel – the word made flesh, real flesh.

The book is being published by Milflores Publishing. The launch is on Dec. 3 at 4:30 p.m. at the Kuquada Gallery in Marikina Shoe Expo, Cubao. My sister Plet launches her own exhibit of digital art. We’ve entitled our show "Two Peas in a Pod," as we are offering a family feast to you all. My brothers will play music, maybe I will sing. I will definitely be signing books. I look forward to meeting all of you then.

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You may reach me at Rica.Santos@gmail.com.