Music to lose weight by
My late father Jose Sr. Ñ Joe to his friends Ñ would have turned 90 this coming Saturday. An incorrigible chain smoker, he died of an aneurysm in 1996, and there's hardly been a day since when I haven't thought about him. Whenever I travel, which is fairly often, I find myself talking to my dad to tell him, "Tatay, I wish you'd seen this, and this, and that." He was a simple man whose feet never left his country nor, pretty much, his home; his joys were in the kitchen and in the garden, and his favorite pastime was doing crossword puzzles.
Indeed, in his own way, he was a man of words, a gifted writer who - like I would do, myself - ghost-wrote speeches for far more powerful but much less articulate men. As modest as our circumstances were, there were always books and magazines at home, and even before I could read or write, my father fired up my imagination by reading stories to me at bedtime. In brief, I would not have become a writer had it not been for him.
Nor, speaking of my quaint obsessions, a fountain pen collector. In his last days my father wrote with a cheap plastic Bic ballpen Ñ the kind you can now buy by the box and forget or throw away after a few uses Ñ but in his prime he had some Sheaffers and Parkers that he would load
As IÕve been reporting lately, IÕve lost quite a bit of weight since my doctor ordered me six months ago to take brisk walks and go on a sensible diet to fight the onset of Type-2 diabetes. I seem to have hit the wall at a weight loss of 45 pounds, but I guess I should be happy where I am, in the low 170s. With my blood sugar in the 100 range and my blood pressure steady at around 110/80, IÕm a whole lot better off than where I was a year ago Ñ and, I suspect, than many men my age.
But this isnÕt about cholesterol, triglycerides, and all that; rather, itÕs about another unexpected side benefit to all this huffing and puffing. Because I take 30-minute to one-hour walks around the UP Academic Oval several times a week, IÕve rediscovered all the music IÕd stored away in my iTunes. I have about 2,000 songs all in all Ñ apparently not much by the standards of todayÕs kids, some of whom IÕve seen to profess having 10,000 songs in their playlists (of which, IÕm pretty sure, 9,900 will sound all the same to me).
As you can imagine, most of my music is made up of what seniors know as ÒstandardsÓ Ñ vintage pieces from the likes of Doris Day and Bing Crosby that can put a 20-something to sleep in 30 seconds, the kind of music youÕll hear on FM radio at 2 p.m. Of course I have the complete Beatles collection (and could probably sing 80 percent of it from memory), a boatload of Broadway, Sinatra from here to eternity, Michel Legrand in both English and French, opera like I knew Italian, enough bossa nova to make me wish I knew Portuguese, and instrumentals from the likes of Jackie Gleason (yes, he was also a bandleader). Henry ÒPink PantherÓ Mancini, and Toots Thielemans, who can make a harmonica sound like a love letter with your address on the envelope.
I do have quite a few new songs Ñ but ÒnewÓ to me usually means something 20 or 30 years old. Instead of Linkin Park, I have Led Zeppelin; instead of the Eraserheads, I have Heber Bartolome and Banyuhay. Okay, I have a couple of songs by Journey (what else but Open Arms and Faithfully) and one by INXS ( Afterglow) but no Nirvana, no hip-hop, nothing to disturb my hard-won equanimity or my illusion that the world is anything but an ordered whole.
ItÕs that oldguy sense of order and purpose that drives my left foot in front of the right and the right in front of the left, for 2.2 kilometers around the oval until I reach the Oblation and then do it all over again. I have to believe that all of this exertion will actually mean or bring something good, and for that I need emphatically optimistic music.
Broadway, I Þnd, best puts me in this mood. If anything Ñ from Carousel to Les Miserables Ñ BroadwayÕs been built on selling the power of love and the indomitability of the human spirit, so you could whistle a happy tune and never walk alone and look to the rainbow and be sure that the sun will come out tomorrow. I might start with something light like Dites Moi from South PaciÞc or Question Me an Answer from Lost Horizon, progress to something more dramatic like We Kiss in A Shadow from The King and I or If Ever I Would Leave You from Camelot, and then push myself for another turn around the oval with something truly rousing like On the Street Where You Live from My Fair Lady or There Is Nothing Like a Dame from South PaciÞc. IÕm singing all of these in my head, but being deaf to the world with my noise-canceling earphones on (not the smartest idea on the open road), IÕm sure Ñ from the strange looks I get from people I pass by Ñ that IÕm making noises IÕm not hearing.
Next to Broadway, my two favorite genres are Latin music and OPM. I donÕt really speak anything more than schoolboy Spanish (thank God for the old Spanish Law, which of course all of us detested in our time), but whenever I listen to someone like Luis Miguel, I Þnd myself feeling foolishly sorry that we kicked those Spaniards out. I have eight versions of Sabor a Mi in my iTunes, and savor both Andrea BocelliÕs and Ennio MorriconeÕs versions of Amapola (which Morricone used for the soundtrack of Once Upon a Time in America). Speaking of Morricone, how could anyone resist GabrielÕs Oboe from The Mission, especially when itÕs Yo Yo Ma doing the honors? And speaking of Yo Yo Ma, how much sweeter can a cello get than on Doce de Coco from his Brazilian album?
I have a couple of songs by Journey (what else but ‘Open Arms’ and ‘Faithfully’) and one
by INXS (‘ Afterglow’) but no Nirvana, no hip-hop, nothing to disturb my hard-won equanimity or my illusion that the world is anything but an ordered whole.
Ah, Brasil, where hearts were entertaining June, and we stood beneath an amber moonÉ. IÕve told my wife June (also known as Beng) that when I croak, the kind of music IÕll want at my wake will be that of Antonio Carlos Jobim, especially DesaÞnado. ThereÕs something in the gentle insistence of the bossa nova that speaks to my own temperament. And here I have to bring up one of my favorite divas (aside from the inimitable Barbra and our own Sharon Ñ yes, IÕm an unabashed Sharonian) Ñ the Japanese-Brazilian chanteuse Lisa Ono, whose Pretty World never fails to add some lift to my shoes.
For something more soulful IÕd turn to Laura FygiÕs Abrazame Ñ and it may be an odd way of looking at these ladies, but if Laura Fygi and Lisa OnoÕs voices were like ink, LauraÕs would shade to purple and LisaÕs to green. To top off my Latin section, no single album gets more airplay in the car or in my earphones than the soundtrack of Woman on Top, which has an upbeat vibe you can listen to all the way to Baguio. (I was playing it in the car once while driving around Pampanga, and everyone with me wanted a copy.)
And did I say OPM? Much as I may appreciate exotic melodieslike Deinistmeinganzes herz or Lesmoulinsdemon coeur, they canÕt get me going like SharonÕs I-Swing Mo Ako or Bituing Walang Ningning. When IÕm rounding that long bend around the Sunken Garden and am tempted to linger under the acacias for a lick of sweet sorbetes, I strengthen my resolve by drawing on SanaÕy Wala Nang Wakas: ÒKahit na ilang tinik ay kaya kong tapakan, kung iyan ang paraan upang landas moÕy masundanÉ Kahit ilang dagat ang dapat tawirin, higit pa riyan ang aking gagawin! Ó
And that Ñ plus a lot of kangkong and hasa-hasa in sour broth Ñ was how I lost 45 pounds in six months.
*** E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and check out my blog at www.penmanila.ph.