Enveloped Ideas

Warning: stream of consciousness writing coming at you! The first time I heard the song was actually on the live album (The Dawn: Live) in 1990 (the song came out in '86 I think). I was mostly ignorant of this band.

Well, I do remember them featuring in a San Miguel Beer advertisement, with their song "Salamat" which was how I related to them ("Oh they're the ones who did that Salamat song).

The version of ideas that I heard was this highly stylized arrangement featuring a choir, and a tenor who sang the track like some kind of dirge. It was catchy though. So I set forth to learn as much as I could about The Dawn, because like a real geek (i.e. Aida Hikoichi in Slam Dunk, or Inui Sadaharu in The Prince of Tennis) "I have to check."

I ended up finding their debut album review (also titled "Enveloped Ideas") from Jingle Magazine which my Tito Benjie collected back in the day. What I remember from the review was that the band was being admonished for writing complex (read: pretentious) songs, with the parting shot that sounded like "before the Beatles could make Sgt. Pepper's", they had to write their 'Love me do's first".

By that time I've listened to a lot of their songs over many albums. And even if I was going to make an unfair criticism of the review, I couldn't help but feel that The Dawn proved the review wrong. Most of their songs are complex and deep, and they were never going to be a light pop band.

I remember the last day of freshman year in high school and I was sitting right behind Ryan Cablitas who was a drummer and was very into the band. We were singing Salamat and I remember being overpowered with feeling that I was crying.

Over what?

I really don't know. I went through a whole lot that year, a real break in belonging with my friends from grade school, my brothers who were far too young and I was distancing myself from, and my parents who I really disappointed with my school performance and troublemaking.

But that day I must have felt so much affinity not only for Ryan Cablitas, but for everyone in that class (Paolo Lerma, Joel Pineda, Francis Ballares, Allan Gabor, Anton Hontiveros, Victor Tierro, Noel Siapno, Gregory So, Giovanni Dizon, Janice Legaspi, Allan Cayanan, Carlos Angeles, Carlos Averion) Section 12, St. Joseph Cupertino. Maybe I was reaching out and trying to convince myself that I belonged, and that I was losing something that day.

I wish I made a time capsule for the year 1990. Had I made one, this is what I think it'd contain:

Death Angel Act III
Tickets to my first dance in high school
Andrew E. Humanap ka ng pangit
OST Miss Saigon
Michael Jordan poster

Surprisingly, I can't think of anything else I owned then that I would put in the capsule. I was into basketball (I actually played almost every day), but not that into the NBA (well, compared to now).

What if, taking my cue to from the song, I wrote down my ideas in an envelope that would work like a time capsule? What would I have written?

"Rockers are cool."
"Triskelion is the best."
"Drummers get all the chicks."
"Dragonlance is the best literature ever written."
"Tight jeans rock."

I am underwhelmed. Is this all? I remember being such a precocious kid. I thought about everything. What could I really have thought about or have written?

Maybe I really was that short-sighted. I never thought about college at all, as I barely thought about the next year. The more I think about it, it was really quite a pedestrian existence. Sure I read more and was interested in a wide spectrum of subjects, but in terms of what I really thought about or wanted, it's really quite ordinary.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I get some reassurance that for all the alienation and drama I associate with high school, I really was pretty normal (circa 1990).