Welcome to the May Q&A of Bottled Notes. Here, I sit back and respond to your messages and inquiries.
If this is the first newsletter you're receiving, no need for concern. Bottled Notes will be back to regular programming next week. For now, stay along for the ride.
Here are five answers to five questions.
1. Camila: Any interesting or weird dreams lately? Been reading articles on how people are having unusually vivid dreams during quarantine. Stay safe and healthy!
I’ve read a handful of pieces on the topic as well, and despite explanations offered by experts, I’m still mystified by this phenomenon.
My dreams, however, seem impervious to the effects of quarantine, as they have remained mostly incoherent and blurry. But I did have an oddly vivid one a few nights ago:
I dreamt that the Papal Conclave in Rome elected me to succeed Pope Francis. You read that right: I was voted to become the next pope.
I can tell you’re confused by this. So was I.
I wasn’t a cardinal campaigning for the position. I wasn’t even an old man. I was literally my present self—plain and normal Ace, who had nothing to do with the clergy—abruptly thrust into this bizarre situation.
It was all over the news. Stolen photos and footage featuring my face popped up on CNN, with talking heads speculating on who the hell I was.
I sank in my seat, watching it all unfold.
Then, thankfully, I woke up.
2. Nikki: How do you cope when you’re having a bad day? When you’re too depressed to do anything, but aware that time’s wasting away—but also don’t have the energy to be productive?
One thing lockdown has made me acutely aware of, is the cyclical nature of my emotions, across days and weeks. I could go on a streak of high energy and productivity for days in a row, then, without warning, find myself spiralling.
This hell state can last between a few minutes and a whole day.
In this condition, I accomplish little to nothing. My body is glued to bed, gaze out of focus, mind racing: it would scold me for being lazy, make me feel guilt for not being as active as my peers in the music industry, and scorn me for my fragility.
Though I still fall into this trap from time to time, I’m now managing my emotional lows better.
It helps to acknowledge that willpower and energy, like all things, are limited—especially with quarantine reducing stimuli. As much as possible I stay in touch with how I’m feeling, so that when I lose rhythm, I can promptly adjust my expectations.
Though there are instances when it helps to power through tasks, I’m often better off dropping everything in order to focus on healing.
Jump-starting the healing process can take on the form of a nap; reading a few pages of a novel; listening to a couple of songs; watching a classic basketball game; taking a shower or drinking water.
My advice: allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling, then proceed from there. Take your time. You won’t fully recover if you cheat your way out of your slump.
Focus only on getting through the day; merely surviving is already a win.
Remember that you are a person, and your worth isn’t measured by productivity. That we must always be busy is a dumb capitalistic lie.
Your well-being comes first.
3. Mika: Thoughts on Metro Manila easing into General Community Quarantine?
Given the rising trend in numbers of new COVID-19 cases, and failure of the systems in place to combat the pandemic and serve the underprivileged, I’m certain we aren’t ready to transition back to any kind of normalcy.
At this point, GCQ will do more harm than good.
Nothing about the virus has changed. We’re as much at risk of getting infected now as we were before lockdown began.
Please stay home as much as possible.
4. Sam: What’s something you wish you got into a lot earlier in life? Maybe a book you wish you had read during your formative years, so that it informed your style of writing? An album you wish you listened to at the start of your musical journey? Or maybe even a sport?
Music: I wish I had gotten into electronic music earlier during my teenage years. I was so steeped in alternative rock, that I shut out everything else.
I like electronica now, but something tells me that if I’d immersed in it at a much younger age, I would’ve gotten into music production earlier, too. My brain would have likely adjusted more easily to the in’s and out’s of the craft.
Visual arts: I wish I kept drawing after high school. I used to doodle on my notebook whenever I got bored during lectures. I guess I stopped doing it by college because I had to prioritize actually taking notes. But I wonder how good I would be today, had I carried on doodling.
Sports: I wish I had taken basketball more seriously when I was in elementary school. Besides wrestling, basketball was the obsession of the cool kids in my batch.
Because I didn’t have a jumper and couldn’t dribble well (I must point out that I was a chubby eight-year-old), I would usually be among the last to get chosen by teams at games.
Because I couldn’t ball, I was left out of the crowd I wanted so much to be a part.
I sometimes look back on those days and ask myself how differently life would’ve turned out, had I gotten validation from the upper rung of my school’s social hierarchy.
Would I have grown up with a stronger sense of self? Would I have been more well-adjusted? More sociable?
5. Cheska: I remember you once said that your favorite NTS song changed from time to time. What’s your favorite now?
I did say that, and it remains true. I’ve recently gravitated toward “Bago Mahuli ang Lahat.” But I’m puzzled at the disconnect I sense between myself and the song, despite having written it, recorded its keyboard parts, and sung on it.
It’s as if I need to convince myself that I made this piece of music.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve long done my part as artist, and, since its release, “Bago Mahuli ang Lahat” has belonged more to the world than to me.
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I look forward to June with you.
