A frozen moment

In November 2010 ago NU 107 closed. They've gone off-air indefinitely. Someone told me it was management decision.

We happened to have passed by their office in Ortigas the evening they closed. There was a huge crowd outside. At that time I thought a rock star or some celebrity must have visited. Someone like Marc Abaya or Jett Pangan. I didn't know it was their last night on air.

I write now on the steps of their old office, empty now. The sing NU is gone. The glass doors reveal there's nothing inside but fluorescent lamps and empty chairs. So, even "nu" things come to an end.

I wonder how they ended. Did they throw a party and invited only loyal listeners and intimates? Did they hand out their CDs? Who got the Smashing Pumpkins?

My cousin of DOKI fame plays bass guitar and has had the privilege of guesting at NU to play "live." They went on at 10:00pm. I didn't catch it because I'm already fast asleep at that hour. In fact, I've never heard his band play. I'm an actor and he's never come to see my plays but we're both cool with that.

All our lives on this earth are at once ordinary and special. We define the specialness of the events of our lives. Going to work each morning maybe daily and ordinary (or dreaded, like the splash of cold water in the early morning shower). But this morning is also a moment that will never happen again. Yesterday I got up extra-early to get to work and rode in the same jeepney as Ryan, an officemate. Last night I got on a bus and I saw Tums, an old colleague in a doomed website I used to write for, whom I haven't seen in a long time. Things don't really happen the same way twice. Which is good. I never want to sit beside the same passenger with body-odor morning after morning.

Moments in our lives can be ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. What we call special may not be so with others. Accept this as truth. My first entrance and the moment I meet the audience; my cousin's basso solo hitting all the right notes at the right time every time. We cherish these moments and then we let go of them. That is what memory is.

It is every artist's responsibility to create memories by cherishing moments and then letting them go. That's what moves a painter to his easel... the memory of an image that is burned in his mind. The writer paints his picture with words; dancers with their bodies. Actors step on stage and becomes the image with words and their being. It's how we stand up to the impermanence of things and say, "We lived! We breathed! We were here, and this is how it was." The vibrations in the air and the NU radio waves that music created continues to resonate in our bodies and minds as memory.