The Philippine Online Chronicles

You hear a guitarist strum a tune on his guitar. You cannot quite figure out what he is trying to do. Is he playing a song? But he goes on strumming and shifting chords. He plucks a note here and there. A melody slowly emerges…and then he begins singing. It was an introduction after all, and now he sings a song.

We may ask if introductions are still necessary, if singing the song and playing the music immediately achieves the same purpose without an introduction. Why then do all melodies begin with introductions, tunes that are gentle and subtle preludes to the theme that is the song?

Life sometimes becomes drudgery, a deadly routine without spirit and direction. The creative pause is necessary, a kind of turning back or moving backwards, if our lives are to recapture that first fervor, that primordial spirit that brings passion and energy into our lives. We need to remind ourselves that life without spirit is dead. How many have become automatons, cogs in the mindless assembly line of jobs? Life is fundamentally a vocation, a challenging and exciting call that comes with an equally exciting and magnificent response. The call is constant, ever alive and clear. The response often varies from person to person and from time to time in each person.

Pasakalye…is returning to that moment before the beginning of life, or of that which we are as well as that which we do. That moment before being and doing is like the introduction to a song or a symphony. It is the creative, unspoiled, unrehearsed moment of truth. Truth is mysterious and elusive which for the lazy degenerates into gossip and cheap talk. Beyond what is habitual and obvious lies the truth unspoiled, unseen, untouched by human minds and hearts.

Could we see truth with unspoiled, unbiased and open eyes or are we forever prisoners to blinders given us at birth and imposed on us by society and the various ideologies and dogmas of big business, politics and religion. Don’t we need to step back and climb out of the boxes we have grown comfortable living and working in?

The music plays outside. It is a confusing cacophony jarring the ears of our souls. There is a music that plays within and we hear its prelude gently and quietly subverting the noise out there. We can choose to ignore it and drown in the soul-less ruckus. We don’t. Instead we choose to listen and look deeply and allow the music within to lead us through the shallow glitter and empty talk…pasakalye….