Consider this picture here beside the sea. What is it? A couple of boys talking, a couple of girls walking beside the sea, a parked car. There’s no story to it, the people in it are only silhouettes, even the car is incomplete. It isn’t about anything in particular, doesn’t have anything to say about politics or poverty or health. It doesn’t speak in words at all, it just sings.
The point of some pictures can be easily described: news items: a wedding, a streetfight, a car wreck. Other pictures are difficult to describe in words; they certainly have feelings and meanings, but those meanings are more like music than like language.
Language describes the world to us. Words can tell a story, they say what happened, can say what’s good or bad, what you should or should not do. If something is written in words, you can always ask what it’s about.
Music, though, just presents the world to us, to make us laugh or cry. You can describe music, say how it feels, say that it sounds American or Spanish or Pinoy, sounds like jazz or rock–but unlike written language, you can’t ask what it’s about. It’s not about anything but itself.
Some pictures are like that also. Like this picture on the boulevard- it’s not about anything; but if it were a piece of, music, I think it would be slow in tempo, almost dream-like in feeling, with the parked car coming in as a heavy, harsh element for contrast and balance with the rest.
As music, this picture could be a short piece for orchestra, or a slow piece for jazz combo or rock band; or even a piece for guitar or rondalla. It might sound like American music, or Spanish music.
But, oddly enough, it wouldn’t sound like Chinese music, or Japanese or Indonesian music, even though those countries are geographically closer to the Philippines than America or Spain.
There are certainly Asian elements in the Filipino psyche, but they are hidden beneath the surface of the mind. For how things look and feel in everyday life, in style, gesture, and costume, Latin American and Spanish elements still prevail.
There’s certainly nothing particularly Asian about this picture or it’s “music”. As it stands, it might have been taken in Mexico, or even in Los Angeles. After all, the Philippines was born from the West.
