Wednesday, June 17, 2009






A recital is a musical performance by one person. To perform in a recital, one must learn and practice well his/her skills in music.


I started playing guitar when I was 9 years old. My father bought me an acoustic guitar as a birthday present then. He wanted me to enroll in a music school but I insisted that I wanted to learn on my own so he bought me a handbook with chords and tabs in it.


So my journey in music began. At first, all I know was that I wanted to learn because of passion. The next thing I know, my fingers became tender and red and its tenderness and redness were painful. Then tiny bruises and wounds suddenly appeared because of the strings of my guitar., I then thought of quitting... but I was never raised up to quit, so in spite the pain, I endured it. I continued learning and practicing each chords. By then, the bruises and wounds on my fingers became hard – calloused. By then, the pain was no longer there because my fingers had grown calloused and thus it became numb. So finally I learned to play guitar and to put chords on my own lyrics and thus a new song – a piece of my own art, my own skill given to me by God.


Life is actually like that. At first, we all wanted to live our own lives, but as we go along, we will realize that it is actually hard and sometimes we wanted to quit learning life's lessons as well. But as we move on, like my calloused fingers, we became hard and thus, stronger to life's challenges and numb to life's pain. And after all the hardships, finally, we see our life as a recital, and we know, it worth it.


But just like any other show, the recital will eventually come to an end and that is an impeccable truth. The audience will bid their final applause, the crowd will get thin and the music will become just like a smoke mingled into the thin air until it reaches the clouds. Your prestige will become just a sweet memory turning sour as you nostalgically enter into the state of deep musing. And in a black and white scene of that flickering moment of your life, you will feel that sense called “PRESTIGE”.


Life is indeed as fragile as the strings of a guitar, you strum it hard then it will break. Sometimes we abuse our lives the way we strum the strings of our guitars because we thought that things could actually happen to others but NOT to us, but the truth is, our strings are just as fragile as the strings of others, because to that “OTHERS” we are the “OTHERS” too. Sometimes, we thought sickness could afflict others but us and neither those people inside the circle of our show, so we get surprised when the things we once thought were so intangible are now in our hands and we are not just holding it, we are grasping it tightly.


But the show, as they say, must go on. Whether it will be a tragedy or a comedy, an applause or a boo.


A recital is when we finally realized what we have learned.


(Dedicated In Memory Of An Acquaintance)

“Its gonna hurt, but I love the pain, I'm bleeding for it.”