Visions of Noise

There will always be stories about, “The One That Got Away.” Realistically, in a world of a million possible candidates, each one of us would likely have had more than one. For me, one of them was a young lady named, Leslie. As people walk in and out of our lives, most of us will only remember the day we met and the day we parted ways. Leslie’s story is no different. She worked in the same hotel I used to service as an advertising photographer and since she was with the sales department, our paths were bound to cross, until one day, that was exactly what happened. My team was set to do a major shoot of the hotel’s rooms and other amenities and the Sales and PR Departments were to supervise the project. When the actual photography was underway, we were shooting a deluxe suite when she and her boss, Malou, whom I was dating at the time showed up to sit in. Because we were both working, Malou and I had to act professional and no displays of affection were expected. We all shook hands ...

It’s a little-known fact that I was once a manager for a music store set in a mall in the Ermita district. It was owned by my compadre, Christian—a half-American, half-Peruvian expat who was a virtuoso with any musical instrument. He and I met in the summer of ’98 and he introduced me to the magical world of Afro-Cuban and “Earth Music”. Chris would play on weekends and we would jam at the sidewalk table at the Episode Café along Julio Nakpil Street and we became very good friends. Like me, he loved photography and was an accomplished “photog” himself. He taught me how to play the “Dhoumbek”, an African hand drum which he produced himself, made out of ceramic mixed in with volcanic ash from Mount Pinatubo which gave the instrument extra rigidity and a unique sound quality. The drums he produced made him popular enough that he opened a shop and I would hang out in the late afternoons and we would jam the whole time. One thing we both noticed at the time was that, whichever drum I chos...

I was born in Malate but my Bohemian life there started only in the mid-1990s. Like any native of any place, I was quite unfamiliar with the popular haunts the small, Manila district had to offer despite the fact that most of the bars frequented by folks from out of town were a mere walking distance away from where I lived. I have to credit my friends from Instituto Cervantes for having introduced me to one of the most iconic Malate watering holes, the Penguin Café on the corner of Remedios and Jorge Bocobo street near the famous, Remedios Circle. It was flanked by equally popular dining places as the Bistro Remedios and Café Adriatico, the Oarhouse and the Korean Palace restaurant along Adriatico Street. A few blocks away were the Café Carribana and El Tercer Mundo, the latter also owned and run by Penguin proprietress, Amy Miciano. Penguin was the quintessential “artiste’s place”, serving up bubbly cocktails along with “Earth Music”, poetry reading, paintings, installation and ...