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Monday, July 25, 2005
Cuizon: The sound of politics
By Erma Cuizon
Bird by Bird
SUSAN Roces’ angry voice upsets me. It gets into my ears, rams through the fine tissues of my brain and cracks my nerves. I’ve been at this column for days, thinking of sounds, each time giving up after a while, and it hasn’t taken form at all.
It’s Roces’ voice that distresses me.
I come from a quiet family where no one is a blabbermouth. We exchanged friendly words, back when we were young, at mealtime but no one hugged the scene with his prattle. And I don’t remember a quarrel or a shouting match at anytime anywhere in the house. We got it all from Father who was always gentle and quiet, a man of few words who would simply nod and smile, a different politician. His friends today and his former constituents remember him that way.
But today in my day, years after, things are different.
Especially in these past weeks, I’m about to collapse from too much noise anywhere. I’m a boob tube nut, where there’s a lot of chatter, speeches and thunder. I listen to noisy self-righteous men talk about love of country. And I keep hearing sounds like “loss of confidence and trust” or “rule of law” or “for the good of the people,” or “in the name of the people,” heavens!
The jeers of regular rallyists, who rush to the streets at the drop of a hat, are harsh and wicked sounds. In their screaming banners, they’re on the verge of saying, “f_k you.”
I try to replace the jolting sounds with beautiful ones, like music. There’s peace in music, no doubt about that. It goes deep somewhere, a mirror for us to see our own pain in order to know how to handle it. This is too deep to understand but we could set our minds to it, then it’s there, the peace.
The other day, after watching ANC (whose color is Noli) for sometime, I shut it off frantically and scrambled to listen to music, hey! Where’s my music?
Why don’t you try “toning,” a friend asked.
Is that for the hair? we asked in turn.
Hush, calm down, relax, she said.
Am I dying?
No, you’ll last another century, she said. Choose a tone you’re at ease with, take a deep breath and release it, say, “hummmmmm” or “ahhhhhhh.” Do this for several minutes and never put on the TV. You get to let the tension go and diminish the dark thoughts about politicians. Try to see them as ordinary citizens more than they see themselves to be, people who have the wrong vision of themselves, said some watchers waiting in the wings.
No, the issue is not the country, it’s plain and not-so-simple politics.
Wouldn’t you rather go out fishing on a lovely day by some river bank in some quiet town, not thinking of anything else but God’s beautiful face reflected in the waters? You could write a poem after, sure.
(emc@sunstar.com.ph)
(July 25, 2005 issue)
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