The Accidental Musician: #2 My first Hyundai was not a car.

If it ain’t heavy, I ain't gonna bother, brother.
I had a guitar-toting classmate when I was 15. Name’s Gavin, and all he’ll ever play were the Evergreens. He was the coolest guy I knew then, and I was the dorkiest kid ever. In a bid to bridge the gap, I banded with two other low-lifers (Fellas, if you ever end up reading this, don’t hate me, I mean, we weren’t all that cool back then despite our Nintendos. Seriously.) with similar goals and went on a guitar-hunting trip. We ended up at Davis Guitar Music Centre and I picked up a classical guitar with a nice heft to it. I told my buddies that if it’s heavy, it’s quality. I really wanted a Yamaha, but it was out of my league. We left with a $150 Hyundai instead. (Yeah, that Hyundai.)

Change of heart.
After ten years with the Hyundai, I polished it up real good. My skills? Not so much. One day, I chanced upon a guitar at Luther Music and I was never able to look at my prized Hyundai the same way again. It was a Taylor and it was love at first strum. I had no idea how good a guitar can sound, or how bad my Hyundai actually sounded until that fateful encounter. Which might have been why I hardly picked it up. Well, I started saving up for a new Taylor.

Make mine Taylor made.
I really liked Taylor Guitars. So much so that I started building a small collection–Taylor Guitar catalogs to be exact. So when I went to Sinamex with my money at Parklane Shopping Mall, I did the right thing and bought a Timothy guitar. It’s their house brand, well respected, and doesn’t cost an apartment’s down payment like most Taylor guitars do. It’s no Taylor, but the Timothy is as to heaven as the Hyundai is to hell. Don’t judge me.

Take me higher.
Armed with this newfound muse, I decided to take classes. I ended up at Believers Music. I think anyone who wants to learn the guitar should go there, I was able to play a song after my second lesson. Of course, as time went on, the classes got more complex, my playing got better, and the traumatic memories of the Hyundai faded.

I've never gotten myself a second Hyundai if that's what you're wondering. Stringed or those of the four wheel variety. For what it's worth, I don't even have a driver's licence.

And I was looking for Midas all this while.

Found this, did it just for kicks and dayum... It knows about my hot chocolate cravings! But what do you think, fellas?





And I was presented with this helpful guide to fix my romantic deficiencies. Or wait, it wants to see me go up in flames...


Discuss.

Sketchbook Flashback: #1 Early portraiture studies.

At some point in Art School, we went through a rigorous portrait sketching phase. We are talking about drawing eight heads a day. Not attempting half-assed, representational high-art crap but portraits that looked like it resembled an actual human being. Below is a series I did in successive pages in a '98 book. (sketchbook will be referred to as 'book' from here on out.) These were done during a practice run. Actual submissions of this quality will fail to meet the mark and it simply meant you'll have to show up with 16 heads the next day. And that's only from Portraiture Class... 

No, I'm not showing off. I merely want you to catch a glimpse of the kinds of monsters I have for lecturers. Usual bedtime then: 4AM. I liked these because I found a way to coax interesting lines out of carpenter's pencils–they save shading time as well due to their broadness. Disclaimer: I do not have a scanner. Nope, no camera lights as well. So, the shady quality of the photos will have to do for now. But don't you think it adds a certain mystique to the portraits? 

Oh, it was hard to use real-life models for our sketches due to the following reasons. At eight heads a day, you'll run out of family and friends real fast. And most will not be willing to pose for you at 3AM in the morning. What? You think it was all Great Expectations like, in a sexually-charged starving artist/high society girl artistic moment in a chic apartment for me? The key phrase here is starving artist. Accent on the 'starve'. Sans girl in any shape or form, OK? So, we scout for willing, easy to work with talent in foreign magazine pages–their features are more defined and deep set, see? Helps with the highlights and shadows and believe me, Asian faces are impossible. 

Random good-looking girl.

Marion Jones 

Charlie Chaplin

Bald guy in a suit.

Emo, rocker dude.

Glen Rice, during his hey-days as a Charlotte Hornet.

Denzel Washington in character for the movie He Got Game.

Thank you, come again!

Sketchbook Flashback: The Beginning

I've been encouraged by a few of you to scan pages off my sketchbooks and post them here. I want to, and will get to that. But first, here's a random transcript from one of my earlier books. Circa 1998:

Optimum learning temperature, 19˚C. (Betcha didn't know that.)

The Accidental Musician: Part one of many.

Music and Me.
I love music. But thankfully, I wasn’t being sent off unwillingly to piano lessons as a child. Music classes consisted of listening to anything that comes out of our Reddifusion unit, going through my elder brother’s cassette collection, and having my handful of Vivaldi CDs on heavy rotation. For years. We’ll go to that in a bit. Or once I get the parts about my first guitar over and done with.

Mother FTW.

If you've ever lived on your own, it won't take long for you to realise how much your mother has done for you all these years. You'd find out real quick how hard it is to upkeep a house. The clothes, dishes, cooking, cleaning, the works. Then you move back and you'll learn to appreciate how much she has sacrificed for so long to take care of a home. At least I did.

I have a mother who raised four children on her own for the past 24 years, worked three or more jobs a day, put three of us through university, clothes on our backs, food on the table, showed me the love of books, taught me how to draw, put up with my hatred for school, never denying us a chance, and most of all, giving us a home filled with love and laughter. All with nary a primary school education. She was fiercely determined to make the family work despite the odds. Oh, what odds. Yet, she pulled it off with aplomb. Life gave her a crate of rotten lemons and she tore it a new one. Where she found the ability or will to do so is something I'll never be able to fathom. At least not now, not as a guy without child.

I can only picture a woman with a love for her children that's not merely real and ever present, but it's a love that rages. So high and wide, nothing will ever stop her. Not sickness, not limitations, not hurt, not weariness, not abandonment. I thank God often for this woman of steel. You wouldn't be able to tell from her gentle demeanour, or her big, embracing eyes. But she is a tower of strength for us, for me. If I'm ever having a bad day, I don't have to look far to find reasons to immediately dust myself off. Many years ago, the moment enough of us became capable, bread-fetching young adults, we made sure she never has to work another day in her life. We've never discussed it verbally before but we just knew–at least I believe that to be so. She has gone through enough, and worked enough to last three entire lifetimes.

So, if any of you ever make the grave mistake of telling me you've got issues with your mum, or dare you do it, throw a tantrum about her–realise that I will have an immediate, reactive urge to slap you. It's not quite Mother's Day yet, I know. But go hug a mother, why don't you?

Oh, she now has six grand-younglings at her disposal for errands, hanging out with, discussions, babying and whatever else grandmothers do with their grand kiddoes. She likes her some TV programs (The 32 incher we got her is losing its mojo and recently, she ordered a 42 inch LCD TV. I thought that was totally badass, hahaha! ) and loves gardening.

That box of tissue? She left it there while in stealth mode.

Any thing that I've really wanted to say,

I've been letting it rip in actual, physical journals. I've amassed a collection of sketchbooks of various shapes and sizes filled to the brim with lines, drawn, written and coloured. I've been at it since '98. Whoa. 11 years. Anyway, this is my first stab in revealing a little more from within, just so you, my friends, can get to know me a little better. And so it begins.