Loving a certain song or album sometimes depends on how present it is during on e's most intense moments. So, it reveals another function of recorded music: personal musical score. Greenday's Kerplunk! became my favorite during college. Like most bands I like, I usually claim myself to be the sole listener, fan, and worshiper (though sometimes I allow a friend or two, to share this imaginary exclusivity). I was new in Manila; I had no friends aside from a stabilizing relationship with a few blockmates in Y2 something. And I miss my highschool crushes, my highschool friends, my highschool, and everything that was absent that time. This album, which I chanced upon in Tandem Recto's 90's piracy trove, was my constant walkman companion. I have written love letters, and letters to friends with this music. It was the soundtrack of my lonely sophomore year, dethroning Radiohead's "The Bends" which was my freshman's. Though I have other tapes that time, encompassing a considerably wide range of genres, say Morbid Angel to Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Kerplunk! is the album that gives me a vivid picture of my 1216 Sulu St., Sta. Cruz Manila apartment, 3 am, the waterpump, noisy downstairs, my companions all dead-drunk-sleeping, I am staring at the space beyond the dark buildings, through the ruby humidity of metro air, over the constant drone made by city movement or restlessness, hoping my sight would reach the lonely town of Tabaco, and walk on its empty streets and visit the places I used to be in, like a wandering spirit, or ghost.
I was young, and ready for anything but I was so alienated. And through this album of the so-called "pre-sell out" Green day, I had celebrated my solitude, satisfied by and actually prizing my non-conformity. Little did I know that time that by an unconscious intuition or even clairvoyance, I was fortunate to have done so, to have had long walks alone, to have lost myself in the dreaded streets of Recto and Sta. Cruz, fearless, for there will come a time, when even a ride on a bus alone is an impossibility.
To confess that I feel a little stronger, listening to this old, old album of my old, old favorite band, is to say that I am really that weak. But I did feel a little stronger, especially with the first recognition of the album's familiar songs. And I can say I also felt light and possibly younger. I had a realization: Because time travel is yet a scientific enigma, and turning back time is just plain impossible, listening to old songs may just give us that feel that once upon a time we had a better body than what we have now. (And then it's time to be sad again)
