“Who told you that love was begging, Kian?” A sirena inside of an ice box asked as she held a duwende around her arms, he was furious at her, yet she didn’t understand the reason why. Before the sirena could speak, the duwende spoke first, “Who taught you that love was yearning, Gigi?”
There are those who yearn, and those who beg through the symphonies. For Kian and Gigi who were both locked inside the ice box, love’s journey has two completely different versions, in such a way that someone can argue that only one of the two are true. Little do many realize that both of them breathe from each other the same way that Original Pinoy Music (OPM) breeds the intensity of Bita and the Botflies, and the gentleness of Magiliw Street in fuelling the Filipino populace in their exploration of their emotions on love and lost–whether it ruins, or reconstructs their heartstrings.
O, tadhana.
In Gigi’s reality, love comes from an unspoken and unwritten scripture. You do not need to be told when to fall or how to imagine a person in front of you, because despite all of its earthly aspects, you are supposed to gaze at another soul and embrace their presence. Hence, it entangles you with every thought of them by your side in the grandest way you’d want to live–”hayaan mo kaming sumilay sa gabi”—to make every thought have a part of that person, even if they don’t know it yet, because you know that having them as the complement to your life is the certainty you’ll ever need in this world. At least, Gigi tells Kian that this was true love, to choose someone everyday as if writing your own fate to have them regardless of what can end that bond, “Tayo’y maglalakbay sa pagitan ng lungkot at saya.”
“Yearning is the sun manifesting in your heart and finding the bravery to navigate the days ahead,” as Gigi would like to explain. Though, it was all wrong for Kian; what they said could never be love since before someone could have that warmth, they’d have to burn.
Bahala na, bahala na, bahala na.
“Luluhod hanggang magkakalyo ang tuhod…” is only one vow someone has to take for Kian’s vision of love, because it is a constant series of aching and a desperate show to reach for another’s hand. From Facebook to TikTok, people treat yearning as the pinnacle expression of love but for those like Kian, it is a blasphemous act of devotion—a paradox of sunshine and downpour. “… Makausap siya nang iilang minuto,” throwing out every caution and a little bit of self-respect to prove that if you were given three wishes, you’d repeatedly wish thrice to be the love of their life. The rawness and the lengths you’d have to go through, that even Filipinos would hide to tell, are the more validation that this love is something you’d pursue as if it was the last time you could ever feel it.
“There is no yearning, nor a pretty picture in love. Everyday and all day, you’d have to be desperate for it because you’ll never know when you’ll stay with it,” Kian tells. They both stayed in that ice box in silence for minutes, wondering if the other was right about love before they both realized something.
Sa Huli, Ang Pagpag
None of them were. The moment came where Kian stepped out of the box and was greeted with the summer day of the tropical country. It burned them like it always did, but there was a frigid feeling in their heart that made it difficult to mind the scorching heat. Likewise, Gigi was in their freezing box, but it was as if a fire was left in their chest after Kian left. Thus, only then did they both figure out that to yearn and to beg was never supposed to be separated in the philosophy of love.
In actuality, Kian and Gigi aren’t real encantos, but representations of the songs Quiapo by Bita and the Botflies and Tadhana by Magiliw Street respectively, and their tale is how they have sung out their own images of love within the Filipino community. Despite their contrasting themes, the diversity of the flavors in OPM when it comes to love was never meant for a division of what love is supposed to be for Filipinos, yet to be a testimony that love will invariably be complex that is too addicting and beautiful to ever settle on.
Whether someone kneels for decades as a confession, or dances with them under the bright lights of the dance floor, to love as a Filipino as everyone has countlessly heard in every OPM song is an undressed admission that the one you love will be another part of your soul.
