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Scene 1: The most un-poetic of places, an out-of-the-way donut shop. I had been hiding out, wanting to disappear, but there I was waving my Ipod in front of this man who I affectionately call Papa A, telling him to save it in his laptop, it’s the best OPM album I’ve heard in a long time. It was Peryodiko’s self-titled debut, and it was (still is) on repeat in my car, in my head, in my sleep.
I tell him excitedly that it is poetry, it’s reminiscent of the Eraserheads songs in Circus and the old Rivermaya. Papa A begins to listen, and I know he agrees. If one song is to a poem, then this whole Peryodiko CD is a chapbook, one that actually works extraordinarily, telling a story of sadness and loss and love. But this is getting ahead of this story cum review cum insistence that this music is poetry.
The album begins with “Pikit” a paean to the desire to get lost, at the same time that it does ask for permission to leave, so that the object of the persona’s words are created precisely by words. Because of what the persona seeks, what is disallowed is revealed, as the latter is another person altogether. With lines like “Paulit-ulit ang mga araw / na parang kaytagal-tagal / ang oras parang kaybagal-bagal / naghihintay, nag-aabang / naghahanap ng mga sagot / sa kung paano at kailan at kung anupang dahilan”, what “Pikit” introduces us to is a band that deals with its music by contradicting its words. This song has a steady light drumbeat, a rhythm that’s not at all emo or crazy angry. This is what allows for an irony that much of the songs here work with, where the sadness is balanced out by music that renders it upbeat, if not happy, a strange experience that’s might only be described as necessarily schizophrenic. In a good way.
Carrier single “Agawan Base” begins with a decision and a sense of consequences, as the music begins foreboding accelerating to the sounds of an almost funky chorus, with Vin Dancel’s signature non-scream. This even when the lyrics are “Sa tuwing umaalis, at tuwing bumibitaw / Ang puso ko’y nagsusumigaw / Nagpapanggap pang nakangiti pa rin / Dala ang iyong habilin / Ang puso ko’y nagsusumigaw.” It is in this song that the layer of a metaphor is used well, that of play in the idea of the childhood game agawan base, where one is to leave one’s base to capture the other base, risking the loss of everything in the process. And so there is a resistance to the act of leaving, as there is the probability of regret.
Pikit (Rev1ta)
Scene 2: Inside a car, where the sadness and serendipity intertwine in an absent love on the more important days, a visit that I’m asleep for, and in April of the same year a love who doesn’t return, and a song that plays on the radio of a car I do not own, but has become mine, with a boy I barely know, one I’ve known forever.
And the song isn’t about us two, even when it is entitled “Tayo” and we are both listening to it, repeatedly in his car. His thoughts are with someone else, as are mine, but the uncertainty of the song is what gets to us, is what’s familiar. It’s a ballad without the cheesiness; it’s a camera on us that isn’t point-and-shoot. Instead it is a set of questions: “Sa ‘sang saglit, maririnig na bang nasa isip mo? / Paano ba tayo nagkaganito? / Kailan ba nagsimula ang gulo? / Mga araw na lumipas, alin ba ditong totoo?” which isn’t answered at all throughout the song, and instead is repeated, made into a mantra, in the way that repetition in poetry works as a way of understatement or overstatement, and never just mere repetition.
The beat picks up in “Lihim” which is conventionally about love yet remains mysterious in its use of a persona that is startled, seemingly surprised at losing and finding love, obviously confused: “Mababawi pa ba ang panahon na mawawala / Sa piling ng pansamantalang pag-ibig na gawa-gawa / Hanggang kailan kaya maglalakad ng walang patutunguhan / Sagad sa buto ang katotohanang naryan lang pala / Pero di na naririnig.” The guitar riffs and keyboards here allow for an eerie sounding song, as if what cannot be heard, what is uncertain is what will never be understood, what is confusing is also scary. What is an ending, the end of a particular self.
And when Dancel screams at us in the most angsty rock song of all “Paglaya” it is an insistence on our freedom(s) separately, our pasts, the present that doesn’t fit us in, “Wag kang magulat sa bilis ng panahon / At wag pakukulong sa kahapon / Kaydalas mong mag-isip / Lumabas ka sa kahon / Lumaya ka’t / Makita mong muli kang ngingiti.” But what of one who doesn’t feel trapped in a box.
Tayo (Warhamsterxxx)
Scene 3: Alone, in a car that has met too many of my heartbreaks, lived with too many songs. The CD is memorized from track one to track eleven, other passengers have passed through, not caring enough to ask.
But Peryodiko doesn’t stop asking questions even when these don’t seem to want an answer. “Sino ba nagsabi na / ‘di ka puwedeng madapa?” in “Huminga” uses an imperative tone, refusing “no” for an answer, where the haunting melody in the beginning evolves into an encouraging beat that enjoins you to breathe: “Hindi lahat ng gusto mo / hindi lahat ng plano mo / nasusunod, natutupad / hindi parating lumilipad / Kaya’t huminga ka ng tuloy-tuloy, tuloy-tuloy, tuloy.” Where there is acceptance in loss and absence in “Milenyo” which speaks as much of the typhoon, as it does of the turn of the millennium where what is lost is necessarily gone, impossible to keep, necessarily embraced.
Themes that are prone to cheesiness are evaded by Peryodiko with lyrics that are, well, more than just song lyrics. Particularly for songs of hope, the tendency at the universality of moving on and forward is admitted as difficult and dialectical, telling us “Gumulong ka lang kaya / ‘Wag magpatalo” (“Kumapit Ka Tuwing Lunes”) and “Ang lahat ay may hangganan / Nakatali sa pinagmulan / Ang pait ng ngayon / Ay bahagi ng kaligayahan ng kahapon” (“Walang Kapalit”).
But it is in the upbeat songs – close to funk – that Peryodiko outdoes itself, not just with music but in poetry. “Piraso” begins “Sa isang panaginip ay nakita kong sumilip sa pintuan nakaipit ang isang piraso ng alaala ng nagdaan / Dali-dali nagpumilit na bumangon sa kahapon para maabot ko lamang ang piraso na lipad patungo sa buwan” where the evils of memory in the immediate and the now is dealt with by a persona who is admitting to the irrational, and expects understanding. While “Bakasyon” is obviously about love, it has a particularly interesting take on it, and the premise of its difficulty: “‘Di na muli / padadala sa ‘yong mga ngiti / kailangan ko ng bakasyon / maaari bang magpahinga ang puso kong / pataluntalon tuwing nabibitin / sa kung ano ba ang alin.”
What becomes even more obvious in these songs is that the poetry in Peryodiko isn’t just about their music ironically going against their lyrics, or in their use of metaphors and analogies, rhyme and meter, not even just alliteration, consonance, assonance in songwriting. More importantly, it is their use of dramatic situations that seem to be interrelated in these songs, but which they are able to manipulate and render unfamiliar to us all, giving listeners/readers layer upon layer upon layer of meaning. This is special for those of us who are tired of living the clichés of love in pop and rock song, in past and present OPM, where cheesy rules and the literal travels far.
Ah, but on repeat in the car, in my life, like much of the poetry I live with in my head, Peryodiko poetry has traveled farther than most. I wait for it to land on the lap of that boy who will ask why. Meanwhile those music videos? Poems in themselves.
Huminga (karlaredor)
The band Peryodiko is composed of Vin Dancel on vocals and guitar, Kakoy Legaspi on guitars and vocals, Simon Tan on bass and vocals, Abe Billano on drums and vocals.
Photos of CD case and the band via the Peryodiko Facebook Page.
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