The Threshold

I am standing on the threshold of my life’s greatest adventure.

In less than an hour, I will begin my first solo journey of over 20 hours, to a city halfway around the world that I have never been to.

By tomorrow, I will set foot in my first winter, with “nineteen inches of snow in Queens” and “fifteen degrees below zero Fahrenheit in New Jersey”, as friends have reported in e-mails and Facebook status messages.

And on Saturday, I will deliver a five-minute piano performance which, without exaggeration, will determine the rest of my life.

I am bound for Boston, in the deepest days of winter, for an audition and interview at Berklee College of Music that will determine my admission and scholarship to the school’s Fall semester.

Six years ago, this moment was only a distant dream. Needless to say, the past few weeks have brought back all the sleepless nights and stomach-turning giddiness of counting down to Christmas as an eight-year-old.

I don’t remember exactly when or where I first came across the name “Berklee”. All I remember is Jools giving me the 2005-2006 course prospectus that the school had sent him when we got to talking casually about music studies, a few days after I first heard the name.

Going over Berklee’s prospectus (and later its website), I had thought, what a place—a music school that valued creativity and individuality and self-expression, and not someplace where music was simply about reading notes off a page. After years of teaching myself to play the piano, arrange music, and write songs—with no classical training, with frustrations with organ and piano teachers who had never held my ability in any regard, and fueled all along mostly by a burning passion for the craft—it was exactly the kind of music education I wanted.

But what a price tag too. At almost US$20,000 a trimester for at least two years, it was something I could not dream of affording.

Yet the dream tugged at me ceaselessly, becoming the subject of many angst-ridden reflections during many a Hangad prayer session or retreat: did I want to stay corporate, or become a musician?

I gave in to the angst in 2005, when I applied for the International College of Music (ICOM) in Kuala Lumpur. A member of Berklee’s international network, ICOM came at a fraction of Berklee’s price, and offered the option of moving to Berklee after two years. In June 2005, during a vacation my then-partner and I took to Malaysia and Singapore, I auditioned with Jim Chappell’s piano solo “Otter Chase” and a self-accompanied “Someone Like You” from Jekyll and Hyde; took a written test on music theory I should have studied harder for; and had a rather forgettable interview with a Chinese-Malaysian member of the faculty.

Some weeks after the audition, I got word that I had made it.

But I didn’t push through. After all, what would become of my then-six-year relationship? And, even at a fraction of the Berklee tuition, how in the world could I afford that education? And besides, what renowned musician ever came out of ICOM, that uninteresting, six-storey building at the end of a narrow street, that the cab driver couldn’t even find? For that matter, what renowned musician ever came out of Malaysia?

So the dream got shelved. I took ICOM as a sign that I was meant to continue with my career, and be thankful I had Hangad on the side as my outlet for music.

It wasn’t a bitter decision at all. Life was very good. I had just shifted careers, from Human Resources to Marketing. I left Globe Telecom to join Procter & Gamble soon afterwards, and learned to love it after the grueling six-month adjustment. Two years into P&G, my then-partner and I bought a two-bedroom condominium under a 20-year housing loan. Still two years later, I landed an easy executive job at the country’s second largest fashion retail company, which got me a cooler car than I never imagined I would own. And my then-partner and I kept counting the years to forever.

All this while, I continued to make music on the side, with Hangad. This is life as it was meant to be for me, I told myself—cushy lifestyle on one hand, with a job that paid the bills; and enough music to keep life interesting and meaningful. Practical, sensible, perfect.

But, as I talked about in an earlier blog entry, life as I knew it came crashing down in 2010. Our countdown to forever came to a halt at 12 and a half. He moved out; I bought his share of the condo. A few months later, deciding the condo just carried too many memories for me to move on, I put my place up for sale, and started scouting around for a new condo.

Just as I thought I had found a perfect place—literally, on the day I was going to make a downpayment which would tie me down financially for another 20 years—there came the eureka: The hell with tying myself down again. For the first time in years, I can be free.

Hmm. Berklee?

The idea popped into my head along with this eureka of freedom. But, at first, it was almost as a joke: I’m done with that. …Or am I?

It was Hangad’s US tour last November, coming on the heels of this realization, that sealed the deal. Unexpected conversations with students and alumni of Berklee told me that, yes, there was a place in Berklee for lovers of musical theater and church music. The appreciation of multinational audiences during Hangad’s shows in New York made me come to terms with the fact that, yes, I am a musician, and a pretty good one, at that. Brief exposure to an international academic community showed me that there was so much to learn, not just in school, but from other cultures, from studying in another country. And two weeks of thinking about nothing but music—and the overwhelming fulfillment and peace of mind it brought—showed me that music was no longer just something I wanted to do, but the thing I wanted to do.

I returned from the US in mid-November with the resolve to finally pursue this dream that had been shelved six years ago. I put together the application form; spent several late nights toiling over the answers to 17 essay questions; woke up a few early mornings to put together my academic records in Ateneo; started practicing like crazy; wrote three new songs in a month in a flurry of new-found creative energy and self-confidence; and got my interview and audition sked.

It was time for this hesitant, even apologetic musician, to put aside self-doubt and second-guessing, to throw practicality to the wind, and to finally, finally embrace the gift and the calling that he had downplayed for much too long.

So today, it begins. Am I scared? Nervous? Worried? On the contrary -- right here, right now, sitting in NAIA a few minutes to boarding, I am so happy, so excited, and so grateful, that I have to breathe deep in order not to cry.

It’s melodramatic, I know. But then, how often can you say you’re standing at the gate to your future, waiting for it be flung open to reveal a vast world of dizzying possibility? How often can you say you’re teetering on the narrow precipice of the world you know, just seconds before plunging headlong into destiny? How often can one actually identify the exact day that demarcates who you are, and who you’re meant to be?

Part of me wants to press forward, and breathe in everything that lies in store.

Another part of me wants me to stay here forever, in this surreal, adrenaline-pumped, holy moment before everything changes forever.

But all of me is grateful. For unbelievably supportive co-workers and friends, in Hangad, P&G and elsewhere, who have been cheering me on every step of the way. For fellow dreamers who have had to shelve their own dreams in favor of practicality, and have asked me to dream my dreams for their sake. For fellow dreamers who have pursued their dreams with no regrets, inspiring me to follow mine. For an overwhelmingly loving family, who never ever doubted or faltered in their belief in me. And for a Universe that has led me to this moment after all these years.

Thank you, thank you, thank you all.

And now, the boarding call.

It is time.