MANY people thrust into the sunset with equanimity. Wisdom instructs us to insulate ourselves from pain, more pain.
When friends say we mellow as we grow old, it is because of the adoptive disposition to roll with the turbulences.
I do not know if that is good. I do not know if it is only me, but by developing the capacity to withstand the stabs, I have noticed that we become proportionately guarded with the joys that life brings.
In other words, our threshold for happiness scales up as we build invulnerability against heartaches.
I suspect we use the same tendrils for anguish and ecstasy. We become cool, or cold, at the same time. That could be worrisome.
To many grizzled ones, I guess, the default to joy safely falls into going backwards, recalling beautiful memories. Doon na lang. Specially of love.
Not the Christmassy kind of everybody’s love. But the kind of personal love, deep and indelible.
Like what the old film “Notebook” shows, it is that kind of feeling that shines through the cracks of neural deterioration.
The past days, I encountered exercises and insights in characterization when I sat in a scriptwriting class by the award-winning writer Roy Iglesias; and when I recorded several radio plugs with the versatile actor Roli Inocencio.
That is the same question that Chichi Robles asked when I tapped her to voice an institutional video report.
“Sino ako dito?”
Through those, the more I realized how each of us has our own take on our most happy or most harrowing experiences, because of love.
Love, after all, are two characters of the same coin. One moment you are confident, and next you are insanely insecure. One face you are lost, while on another you are found.
One moment you are in paradise, next you are in hell.
As an exercise, I recalled an old, simple but lovely love song, “Never Let Me Go,” and listened to several takes of it.
You may wish to listen to them yourself, and choose which interpretation you would identify with.
To qualify, I am not referring to the Never Let Me Go film, a dystopian romantic tragedy film that was based on the book of the same title.
Rather, I am referring to that standard/jazz number written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, that was first recorded by Nat King Cole in 1956, when my nose was still buried into kiddie’s comics.
Cole interprets the song like a third person anecdote, as an observer. It is merry and danceable even if it could be sad and tender like Bozz Scaggs later delivers it.
Numerous other artists have taken the song’s simple lyrics and simple melody so close to their souls.
“Never let me go, love me much, too much
If you let me go, life would lose its touch
What would I be without you?
There's no hope for me without you.”
Stacey Kent is accompanied by only a piano, a snare drum, a cymbal, and a double bass and she sounds so vulnerable with her eternal young lady voice, as diffident as she sounds in the poignant “The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain.”
Nancy Wilson, one of my favorite singers and who passed away recently, is with a full orchestra in this song and she exudes a character who has been betrayed and broken several times before - as in her songs “Guess Who I Saw Today” and “Gentle Is My Love.”
That is why she is more emphatic when she comes to the part:
“You wouldn't leave me, would you?
You couldn't hurt me, could you?”
With Stacey, these are asked with a smile. With Nancy, with an arched eye brows.
“Because of one caress my world was overturned.” Sa isang haplos mo, nalaglag ang panty ko.
“At the very start, all my bridges burned by my flaming heart.” Hahamakin ang lahat, masunod ka lamang.
“Never let me go, I'd be so lost If you went away.” Kapit lang, hon. Para akong basang pussy pag umiskaflew ka.
“There'd be a thousand hours in the day without you, I know” (Hindi pa kasi uso social media noon)
Grand dame Dinah Washington does a Nat King Cole counterpart of the song. She waltzes.
Shirley Horn is commanding with whispers in your ears, while Tierney Sutton is languid and lingering, but enunciates clearly.
Jane Monheit, on the other hand, is so seductive and touchy.
When you look back into your own passages of love, I surmise you rummage into your touch-and-go moments. And wish you could be crazy all over again.
Roy Hardgrove. He snatches “Never Let Me Go” and makes it into an absorbing ballad much sexier with a horn than the supposedly sexiest instrument of all, the saxophone.
Finally, singer Andy Bey brings bongos and a flute into his take and matches Hardgrove’s gripping narrative.
Sorry, guys. Despite or probably because of the sizzling political temperature, I am feeling cozy and sentimental.