Folksinger Heber Bartolome inaugurated the roof deck as outdoor folk house two months before passing on. No word yet if an elevator has been installed to get to the fourth floor of the center, to accommodate the arthritis stricken, but up there, the statue of Behn waits to greet you more than any long-lost friend, the first signs of life post-pandemic. Same with the roof deck of the Erehwon Center for the Arts in Old Balara, since renamed Behn Cervantes The Roofdeck, after the late theater director behind countless productions in the university, also the cult hit from the mid-‘70s Sakada, which screened in a movie house along Avenida and the character played by the actress Rosa Rosal gunned down while holding a sundang in the sugar cane fields of Negros, her body still lying between the kiosks selling magazines and rare cigarettes when you walk out at twilight. Actually, a veritable forest for the auditory senses. Then, the Abelardo Hall, where recitals were held, and the first exposure to visiting conductor Helen Quach tapping any listener’s hidden herbolario, as well as jam sessions of a fledgling UP Jazz Ensemble. In this case, one involving a certain roof deck in Quezon City, any first line might have to do with sounds of a conservatory, the UP College of Music, where a walk past it during childhood would bare multiple diverse sounds as if harboring within its walls a secret garden: cellos and violins being tuned, piano runs like ragtime, clash of wayward cymbals, practice plucking on classical guitars, an ingenue soprano doing the scales in customary fashion, hahahahahahaha, seven has a warmup to my favorite things. Near paraphrase, of course, of Melville, Garcia Marquez, Ruiz Aquino. The novel is dead, this is its resurrection. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Sometimes first lines come to you, out of the blue and walking straight up with a greeting like a long-lost friend. On QC roof deck, sounds of a conservatory
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