Boomer Journals 5 – That One Downside of Learning to Play the Guitar

 

The type of voice that I envied when I was younger was a deep bass voice. I thought it would have been much cooler rather than this baritone, especially when in a choir.

By the way, is it at all possible to train your voice to reach a lower range? I thank heavens that I didn’t have any of it if ever there were such lessons.

Then I learned to play the guitar. I never attained the caliber of Kirk Hammet or Slash by the way, despite that I’ve been aching for a kick ass talent such as theirs. But I can proudly say that I’m much better than someone who just started to hug the six-string.

Videoke would have been perfect but it wasn’t that common back then. Our only access to music was either by radio or Walkman. Or by means of a six-string which I immediately indulged myself into.

I thought it was already cool to be able to jam with a six-string, to sing and all that, be it in a crowd or in one’s alone time. I was even able to enhance it to a certain extent.

And then I discovered a problem. It wasn’t a big deal at first but it had been bugging the hell out of me ever since for years:

I couldn’t sing most of the songs I love in the same pitch as the original singer’s. If I ever do finish a song, it is with a lot of difficulty. That difficulty I attribute to playing the guitar.

Why? You see, there is a standard tune for the key of C, for example, which of course you will never be able to tune your guitar into unless you have a tuned piano nearby. In most cases, people (me included) don’t care at all if the key of C isnt the same as the standard so long as you can enjoy the moment and cajole the instrument to your heart’s content. So the pitch where you sing the song becomes totally different from the pitch of the original.

And only when you sing along with the radio or in a videoke will you realize that you’ve been duped into believing that you can sing like Steve Perry. Depressing isn’t it?

Maybe if I just focused all my juvenile energies back then trying to improve my range instead of learning to play the guitar, I now would have been singing ala Moriuchi Takahiro, Brandon Boyd, Zach dela Rocha, or the front man of the attached video, eh?

Singularity

Physicists say that the singularity, that specific point in a blackhole, is where it all ends.

I say that the singularity of my pen, however, is where it all begins.

- (The) Name’s Not At All Relevant

www.theblankscreenblog.wordpress.com

Boomer Journals 4 – Cartoons er… Uh-nuh-meis

You got caught in the gut.

You swore you saw that coming, the famed diabolical fist emerging from the side. At first, the sight of his right cross was nothing but a mere pathetic weather disturbance. But in only a split second you know fully well that it will turn into a category IV hurricane which devastates everything it landed on based on history. And now it’s headed in full force towards your defenseless midsection.

For a fraction of a second you inhaled, in an attempt to stiffen your core to hopefully mitigate the resulting damage from the incoming devastating blow.

Then his fist made contact, and it was much more powerful than the hell you expected it to be. Suddenly there was a vacuum out of nowhere. All the air stored in your lungs got sucked away in an instant. And that vacuum now threatens to suck your soul as well, like a blackhole tearing piece by piece his captive star, an unfortunate unwitting victim who dared to cross the event horizon of no return.

As your legs buckled, you started to go down. Your eyesight fading slowly. You saw your opponent grinning, cocky sure that he finally put your lights out as he bid you his final ‘sweet dreams’.

You are sure as hell to hit the canvass any second from now. Strange but you momentarily forgot the pain from the impact until you realized you’re caught in a flashback. Once again you saw the reasons why you decided to turn pro: your mom, hands together praying for your safety; your siblings expecting the championship belt from you; and the instance you finally decided to own your life and become the warrior you always envisioned yourself to be.

After like an hour of being suspended in mid air, you decided it was too soon to give up. Suddenly, your legs regained their strength that once again established your balance.

On your way up, your right fist started to launch like a rocket, accelerating from zero to devilish speeds in a split second. Your opponent whose feet were grounded in fear upon seeing the dead rise again, can only gasp in horror as you gave him a dose of his own medicine when you hit him with all you’ve got in the midsection and throwing him five meters from you in the process, his body giving a loud thud as it kissed the canvass good night.

There he lays on his back, oblivious to the ten counts of the referee and hands waiving in the air signifying that it’s all over. Panting hard, you still can’t believe you came out of that alive and yet you were there, finally a title holder and it wasn’t a dream!

X – X – X – X – X

It’s hilarious recalling these moments from this cartoon [relax, triggered weebs and otakus, it’s “uh-nuh-mei” right? XD]

But it sure brings back good old childhood memories, including the opening sound track. Who says only American rock can only produce this much hype? You’re missing out if you don’t get to hear J-Rock!

Ang Dakilang Sulsultant

Mag ingat sa mapagpanggap
sa mga taong sulsol
masahol pa sa galising asong
kahol ng kahol
Akala mo matapang
matatag na sandalan
subalit pag nagkaipitan
mababahag ang buntot
mangunguna sa takbuhan

Stepping Stones

In order to go sky high, you first need to experience how it is to fall down south. Hard. It’s inevitable as gravity itself.

With much ado and denial, we painfully learn as we look back that there are no such thing as shortcuts. It’s a universal law that we have to undergo step by fucking step: we will suck at first, then manage to stay afloat, and eventually excel.

After all, there is no such thing as failure as the saying goes. Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn.

The beloved sons and daughters of Mephistopheles

Even those who caused us unimaginable heartaches have so much to teach us. Yes, including those who perplexed our souls such that we started to question why on earth was murder considered a sin in the holy scriptures in the first place.

And we have to realize that just like circumstances, these people, which we were certain to be related by blood with Mephistopheles, were sent to purify us, and were meant to prepare us to become our best selves that we are today.

A much more fun presentation

Okay, if you’re not at all consoled by all that cosmic shit, you can put it this way: instead of stepping stones, treat it as if you’re stepping on the necks of all the assholes, and dickheads, and bitches who gave you a hell of a time.

Imagine them all lined up, their necks serving as your footstools as you ascend your path from the abyss where you came from up to the dizzying heights where you are right now.

And rather than quickly ascending to your culmination, imagine that you are dancing on your way up, angels singing and clapping on either side, while you are taking your sweet time jumping and spinning and going to the next, just before the previous “footstool” gags.

Test results

Time for a pop quiz:

If the above presentation caused you to salivate that you drooled the way Venom does, obviously you should keep on searching for that elusive inner peace.

But if you just chuckled a bit and told yourself that you are exactly where you ought to be and that everything that transpired was meant to strengthen you including the people who prematurely put you through hell whilst you are still alive, well, you finally upgraded to a whole new level. Keep that fuck up!