A Year of Very Impatient Singing
In which Teófilo continues the story of his last year at la Academia.
Many things happened in 1983 but only these few stand out to my mind. I compare the aftermath of my “big explosion” incident that ripped me away from Mom to one standing in a burned field. One’s surrounded by the charred remains of what was once a green-grass field. The acrid smell of scorched land travels through your nose into your lungs, making your eyes water. You look everywhere for something living, something green, and find nothing. The only thing left is your hope that the land will greenup again in the near future. That’s how I felt at the time.
In school I was doing better than in my junior year, back to all A’s. Physics was my favorite subject and I’d decided to major in it in college. Mercie, in turn, had decided to pursue nursing science.
A classmate gets sick
One morning during this year I met one of my classmates very excited, telling me I was “right” about Christ and for standing for “la fuerza positiva.” He’d had a “religious experience” I thought. I smiled at his word construction and about the impromptu evangelism he was carrying on that morning. However, though I responded “well, praise the Lord” to my classmate’s bubbling enthusiastic shouts, something seemed off.
Later on that day I was walking pass Fr. Guillermo’s home where I saw my classmate again. He proceeded to show me something by hopscotching across the lines and cracks of the sidewalk. I looked at his face, which looked pale and showed a lack of affect. Then it dawned upon me: he was sick in his mind. My jaw dropped and I looked at Fr. Guillermo who was watching him. He said “He’s a very sick child. He needs to see a doctor, now.” I don’t recall what else we talked about, but I then proceeded on to Mercie’s place and told her of my experience.
Next day, as I went to the principal’s office to offer up the morning prayer which was my duty, my friend’s guardians were in the office. I stopped at the door’s threshold. The atmosphere was thick with accusations and recriminations. The principal looked at me. I got the message. I walked away.
My classmate would rejoin our group after several weeks had passed, but it was clear he wasn’t the same person as before. The psychotropic medication he was on greatly affected his personality. His pallor, his speech, even his silences were off. Everything in him had changed.
Questions and more questions
I got to ask myself if being an enthusiastic Catholic Christian was in fact a kind of mental illness. What was the real difference between my classmate and me except for the ability to function in society? Was being a Christian believer a kind of mental illness with diminished effects on some, but full-fledged symptomatic on others? More to the point: was my “Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” that “second conversion of my spiritual life”, just a mild psychological lapse? Was it all “in my head” because of my own wishful thinking and delusions of personal holiness?
Maybe I didn’t ask all those questions with the attending clinical terminology. Yet, I sensed them, and for sure asked them in those terms later. The basic question, “am I just a nice crazy person?” did cross my mind in those terms.
Like I had done before, I filed away the questions in the back of my mind for a future answer. I was smart enough to ask these questions, but not smart enough to answer them. The questions remained hanging over me for future consideration. These would be whispered in my ears by that Ancient Snake who’s humanity’s bane, later on.
The Inner Song Persists
Mercie and I were members of la Academia’s school choir. In fact, I’d joined the choir when I entered the seventh grade. Later, the choir went into another direction when Mr. Félix Borrero took it over from Mrs. Ileana Martínez - who had been one of my first-grade teachers over a decade before. Mr. Borrero instituted full polyphony and our sound improved. He had also instituted a “grupo vocal” or “vocal group,” a subset from the choir that sang more complex songs and even danced as part of the performance. I belonged to it during my great Sophomore year, but he then cycled me out, along with my friend Juan Carlos, during our Junior year. I was a tenor while he was a bass. We were also the worst dancers in the troupe, the likely cause of our exclusion. That stung me when it took place, but I didn’t fight the expulsion. Later on Juan Carlos became a selectee for the US Naval Academy. Juan Carlos also became our class’ salutatorian. No big loss for him.
Song and music were still very much a part of me. During my Senior year, Mr. Borrero allowed me to solo one song during liturgical events, a song by the Brazilian priest Fr. José Fernandes de Oliveira, better known as “Padre Zezinho.” The song is titled María de Mi Niñez (“Mary of My Childhood”). I interpreted the song in a plaintive tone as I attempted to capture the song’s movement from remembrance, to regret, to rediscovery. The rest of the choir would back me up by singing the refrain while I sang the song’s three stanzas.
The general consensus about my interpretation of the song was polarized. It seems I moved many people to tears, albeit for opposite reasons. There were no middle points. Many people loved my singing and others hated it. In my defense, I’ll say I sang from the heart. When it comes to songs about or for Our Lady, I always do. Those who dislike it may cover their ears.
Two Brothers at Teatro La Perla
This year was also the year of the school’s first - and as far as I know, last - talent show. The school held the show at Ponce’s Teatro La Perla, the city’s principal venue for the arts.
I sang, but a girl in a lower grade beat me with her honeyed, melodious voice. I bombed trying to sing and play with my guitar the song Primera Cosa Bella (“First Beautiful Thing”) by the Italian singer and author Nicola di Bari. Mrs. Santiago was the only judge who voted for me because I actually played an instrument and didn’t sing using a prerecorded music track, she told me. She was always my ally.
I wasn’t the only family member who performed at La Perla. My little brother, he with all the telegenic good looks, played the main role of Marcelino in Marcelino, pan y vino around this time. It was directed by the late entrepreneur Jonathan Goithia. I remember the audience received the play very well and I myself was moved by it. I also remember that a lighting blunder triggered Mr. Goithia behind the curtains. You could hear him scream profanities from behind the curtains across the theater hall.
Tic toc tic toc…
All things considered my feelings were ambivalent that year. First, I wanted it to be over so that I could fly away and seek my destiny with my Mercie and going to college, as everyone else expected us to do. However, the thought that I would never again stand in the same room with my classmates, many of whom have been together with me since 1970 unsettled me. My time at la Academia had been the longest and most consequential time in my life up to that point. To leave the school fostered in me a feeling of disconnection and loneliness. But I decided to focus on the positives and felt hope for a future together with my Mercie.
That year I also lost my braces and my 1977 hairdo. I went back to my old, parted-on-the-left style I still wear today. I felt better in terms of my self-image, even though our class president, during her last address to our class, said I was “beautiful” but then, after a brief pause, hastened to add “beautiful…inside.” Everyone had a hearty laugh at my expense. I laughed too on the outside, while felt hurt - again - in my inside.
No matter. Mercie loved me unconditionally and still does to this day. That’s the only affirmation I needed both then and now. The external changes and “reset” meant that I was becoming more “myself” and less of a caricature of what I wished to be.
Mom didn’t attend any of the graduation events in which the school’s administrators expected one’s parents’ attendance. When the date of graduation approached she asked me “Do you want me to go?” I answered her “I’ll leave it to your conscience.”
Mom didn’t attend my high school graduation.
And thus, the night came in May 1983 when we graduated and off went into the four winds. I still talk to many of my classmates, but others have disappeared from the face of the earth, ghosts even in the Internet. A few have passed away. Yet, a mysterious bond forged by common memories still bind many of us together and will remain until the last of us depart to our Father’s House as this century progresses.
Four Videos
Another interpretation of Padre Zezinho’s song.
A Year of Very Impatient Singing
Excelente.. me encanta cómo narras tu realidad en aquellos tiempos. Me pregunto.. y tú mamá? Adelante!!💕🙋🏻♀️