In an industry dictated by genres, Pentatonix knows that “relatability” and the “future” are not mutually exclusive, or taken straight out of a textbook. Sometimes, it’s just all about the voice.

Over the years, music has split into genres like a spectrum in a shattered glass. Suddenly, we have Air Pop, EDM, Progressive Heavy Electro Rock, Country Dance Music and tons of other styles that would no longer fit in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Music is now a child of the future — from the way we produce and distribute up to how we access it.

Pentatonix, a five-member group who after winning an a cappella competition launched a career through YouTube covers, is pretty much attuned to that — literally and otherwise. Even with a traditional music form, they acquired a sense of “relatability,” a contemporary vibe, and a young following.

For their second concert in Manila on Sept. 24, Avi Kaplan, Scott Hoying, Kirstin Maldonado, Kevin Olusola, and Mitch Grassi emerged on a bare stage without fanfare — in black and white outfits from the urban street style book. Without musical instruments, gimmicks, and synths, five powerful voices made the crowd shrill, sometimes leaving them speechless — both in a good way.

Even with the absence of artificial sound, Pentatonix filled the Big Dome with tight vocal harmonies and riffing, Avi’s deep baseline and Olusola’s percussion through beatboxing.

The group opened with original, strong anthems, “Cracked” and “Na Na Na,” from their first and self-titled, mainly originally written, studio album. The Grammy Award-winning act has repackaged itself from being interpreters to influencers, but a trip down memory lane isn’t so bad with “Cheerleader,” one of their hit covers.

The real bookend performance came with the “Evolution of Michael Jackson” and “Daft Punk” medleys. From the King of Pop’s nostalgic Motown soul to his unparalleled ’80s beats, Pentatonix made the crowd experience his music that dominated the world a few decades back. Careful not to stylistically over-alter familiar tunes, the group made the tribute sound more like a rediscovery than a reinvention.

The “Daft Punk” medley was a different story. The French electronic music duo is the epitome of the future — with funk, techno, disco, rock and synth pop house music. But Pentatonix has proven that it is no ordinary vocal group. It can spit virtuosic vocals, complex arrangements, and technical skills that rival the very same concept of “future” it has been associated with.

The result: A crowd of teenagers, millennials and adults who all understand a single language. And that language is Pentatonix’s stripped down vocal prowess.

By the end of the night, banners of green, red, yellow and blue wrapped the dome. Then with a strong beam of light, the different colors faded into a single hue.

Perhaps a symbol — that although music may evolve into many forms, a shared tradition, such as a capella, will find its way to cut through diversity. It’s a symbol that Pentatonix exudes as it continues to take us back to the future.

How Music Takes Us Back to the Future was originally published in Popped! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

WE ARE in a state of war.

When the strongman declared the enemies are in its own backyard, we started to hear stories of how gunshots pierced the neighbor’s forehead, pointblank. Sometimes, we even hear the gunshots. We count every bang with our fingers. But police say we don’t know how to count properly. The next day, a .38-cal. revolver is found on the neighbor’s right hand. But he’s left-handed, his wife says. He was a good father. He couldn’t even afford a gun. Never mind, you were told. Men who were on the wrong side of the war are always victims of their own bullets.

Every day, we hear stories like this being passed on people’s tongues like an ancient tale. And just like old tales, versions vary. Sometimes, we even forget the characters, and soon what is left are generic stories with generic names and generic endings.

We follow the body count. Since the strongman assumed power, 564 suspected drug dealers or pushers have lost their lives in “legitimate” police operations and vigilante killings. We read their names and aliases like a classroom roll call. Some have remained unidentified.

So this is indeed a state of war: The dead has no face; the enemies are also the victims.

Too repetitive was the story that when a national daily dropped an image of a weeping widow in the middle of the streets holding his dead husband, a pedicab driver and alleged drug pusher slain by motorcycle-riding gunmen, we were suddenly forced to look at the face of death. And death is empathy, fear and anger all at once.

The dead man, Michael Siaron, is not like you — a healthy individual in the living room casually reading this piece on a modern gadget. He was a poor man, 29, a father and a husband. Every day he used to earn the same amount you spend for lunch. He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time — the sort of excuse we make for lack of logical explanation.

It was pure theater, the President quipped. Like “Mother Mary cradling the dead cadaver of Jesus Christ,” he said the photo elicits drama that clouts people’s judgment of who the bad guys are. But what the war leader failed to see is that the moment he discounted people’s subjective feelings toward the image, he has distorted the national soul.

However different our education and beliefs, we are free to feel the same horror and disgust over upsetting images as a people. Robbing us of that freedom is an abolition of humanity.

History will tell us that no war has ended with the same violence used to perpetuate it. The heart-wrenching image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the nine-year-old Vietnamese child shown running naked with severe burns on her back on the South Vietnamese town of Trang Bang is an example.

On June 8, 1972, Kim Phuc and her family have joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers to flee from North Vietnamese forces who have occupied their town. But a South Vietnamese pilot mistook the group as the enemy and dropped a Napalm bomb, killing two of Kim Phuc’s cousins and two others. Kim Phuc acquired burns too severe many thought she wouldn’t survive.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph has exposed the horrors of war and has shaken the world into thinking if senseless violence would amount to anything more than lost lives.

By ridiculing the public’s lamentation over images of violence — regardless if the victim is an “enemy” or an “ally” — the President has forgotten that a war is truly won not by a culture of fear but a culture of understanding, the same way a climate of violence will never be equal to a climate of safety.

This is not a moral perspective, but a logical one if we are to truly start asking ourselves for whom this so-called war is being fought. We do not tag an enemy by simply looking at a list, a name, a number, a scar or color of one’s hair. That is why we need to continue looking at the image of violence.

Looking is politics. Looking is a shared experience. Looking is being human.

We look at the images of dead bodies of people we don’t know with the same open heart not only to become sympathizers, but to remind ourselves of the reality the privileged and comfortable choose to ignore.

Virginia Woolf’s reflection on war is fitting: “Not to be pained by these pictures, not to recoil from them, not to strive to abolish what causes this havoc, this carnage — these would be the reactions of a moral monster. But we are not monsters, we members of the educated class. Our failure is one of imagination, of empathy: we have failed to hold this reality in mind.”

Because photographs can be falsified by their captions — in this case, a piece of cardboard thrown beside a dead body — we need to look at the images for ourselves to distinguish the actual moment of reality to the interpretation of that reality. That’s where humanity comes in: our capacity to judge for ourselves, to be disturbed, to be offended. Only when the viewer’s sensibility becomes assaulted will he find the urge to deplore an injustice.

As Susan Sontag argued, we all have our own distance from war, but image closes the gap. But, she said, it is always the image that someone chose. “To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.” We look at the image because we need to see what isn’t there. We need to look for the missing piece.

When you gaze into the abyss, do not be afraid that the abyss will gaze back at you. The abyss is not a safe place. And so is where you’re standing.

We Need to Look at the Image was originally published in Popped! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Secondhand bookstores have taught me some of life’s valuable lessons.

Spending hours slumped in a corner of a room full of yellowing paperbacks and hardbounds, I learned that great things are not sought, but “stumbled upon.”

No, I’m not talking about finding my Hugh Grant in a bookshop a la Julia Roberts in “Notting Hill” (though that is such an ideal love story), but the simple joy of unexpectedly finding a good book at the right moment.

Whether it’s that rare first edition or a literary master’s work for a fraction of its original price, the chance of stumbling upon a good book in a secondhand bookstore is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

How bizarre was it to find a 1900s copy of Emily Dickinson’s complete poem collection or a masterpiece of Maya Angelou for the price of an MRT ride? The delight is unexplainable. I like to call those moments serendipity, ones that fall in the grand scheme of things. But for me, buying a book often becomes a matter of timing: Is this the right moment? If I don’t buy it now, will our paths cross again? Shall I let it go and hope a better copy pops up? Most of the time this kind of questioning applies to life opportunities and decisions — the pain of choosing to let go, hoping for a better chance the second time, or succumbing to the impulse of seizing the moment because it may never come again.

A book hunt may be a fitting metaphor for life, but my deep affinity with used books is a combination of artistic and practical reasons. I treat old copies as precious artifacts — of attachments and detachments, connections and misconnections — marked by every change of ownership, with the sweet smell of chemical breakdown on paper affirming my old soul’s penchant for histories and shared knowledge.

The practical reason is, of course, I cannot always afford to buy new copies.

I put it this way: My appetite for books is inversely proportional to my economic capacity to buy them. Because I cannot develop a liking for e-books, I still prefer the good old duo of paper and glue. But in a Third World country marked by low wages, high tax rates, and whopping prices of even the basic commodities, reading has become a luxury. In sum: New books are expensive.

George Orwell was right when he said in his 1936 essay, “Bookshop Memories,” that “… a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.” Orwell wrote the essay, however, to lament his experiences while working as an assistant in a secondhand bookstore, and to narrate how being a bookseller developed his distaste for books. He noted the “rarity of really bookish people” visiting the shop. He reached the point when even the “sweet smell of decaying paper” appealed to him no longer. I could never fathom how he came up with that judgment, because I strongly feel otherwise.

When I was still a student, secondhand bookstores on campus were my haven. As much as I love books, my meager allowance was just enough for school requirements. Even if I managed to acquire the extra funds to buy some, a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez for the price of six meals feels like a dagger in my chest.

The polished shelves, the plastic cover and hefty price tags serve as barriers for me to get to know an author. Marketing books into binaries — bestselling or not, written by newbies or by award-winning/famous authors — which of course influences the price and position in shelves, steal the life out of good books. One needs to look at the state of popular literature today to understand why.

So, instead of the comfort of malls, I prefer to meet authors on footbridges and in underpasses, corner stores, thrift shops and online bookstores, where dusty, obscure or rare books mix with writing giants to provide me with the literary pleasures I wouldn’t have enjoyed had I purchased them for the full price. Because I do not want to meet authors on a pedestal, secondhand bookstores allow me to know them through their works’ most basic form.

I have the freedom to declare for myself what’s a good title or not, what I want to read versus what others are reading. Whenever I stumble upon good titles, I feel the urge to “adopt” them instead of “purchase” them — the feeling of having the desire to give them a home than the economic capacity to own them.

The accessibility and affordability of reading are important fabrics of a community. While books have made local and global industries — in production, distribution, publication and retailing — they shouldn’t lose their emancipatory potential in the process.

Some, if not most, writers write to earn a living, but their works can truly serve a social function if structures of their literary lives are detached from commercialization and organized capitalism. After all, books are meant to be read by the masses — and dependence on the market should only be secondary.

The democratization of reading gave rise to some great intellectuals who resorted to self-education, such as Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and our own Andres Bonifacio. Our hero came from a poor family, yet he managed to educate himself by devoting his limited resources to buying books. Like these self-taught leaders, we seek knowledge despite the economic limitations, aiming to weave a meaningful education out of every book we read.

This great potential of the printed word, however, can only be reaped when markets of mass-produced texts become truly integrated in the actual state of communities, especially where a great deal of inexpensive reading matter is needed to fill the desires of even the poorest audiences.

Secondhand bookstores serve that role in my life. They will always fill my literary hunger — and in return, I will always revel in the smell of old books, and in their capacity to make me believe that the power of the printed word transcends time. I will reaffirm my view over and over that reading need not be an expensive preoccupation. I will still take delight in every literary wonder I stumble upon in even the humblest locations. And I will always be someone who would give books — from the finest to the obscure — a home that they deserve.

Here’s how to write for #Feels

Old books’ home was originally published in Popped! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Mr. del Pilar,

If this space would be used to paint a picture of you as a hero, it would be very easy to fill this blank sheet with the basic information supplied by Google, a search engine in the World Wide Web (It’s a totally different world, far from the scene created by the Spaniards). But to describe you as a leader and a writer is a task beyond the freedom of speech, which you yourself championed, shall allow.

Now here comes the challenge of re-introducing you in this age without sounding like a blinded biographer, where history’s best place seems only in a book; and great men and women rest on coins and statues. One-hundred and sixty-two years is too wide a gap of our generations. You were born during the time of Spanish colonialism, and died before the Revolution. Yet being the man who lived in-between was never a hindrance for you to stand up and make a difference.

Weren’t you one of those intelligent and courageous propagandists who symbolized the ideal Filipino? You must have surely captured a lot of girls with your magnificently curled and stiffened moustache. Weren’t you part of the upper crust of the Philippine colony, well-educated and a lawyer in profession? Mr. del Pilar, you surely had enough to live in comfort. Reforms could be the last thing on your mind, but you chose to side with the masses. With your “pen,” you defended the poor against the abuses of the authorities.

It is fascinating to know that you being a journalist won over you being a lawyer. Because being a journalist, you said, is a better opportunity to be of service to your oppressed country. Maybe you thought that there could be no justice even when there’s a presence of law, and justice sought could be achieved outside the confines of hollow courts.

When you founded the first native daily newspaper in the Philippines, Diarong Tagalog, in 1882, you desired to propagate democratic liberal ideas among the farmers and peasants. To champion liberalism in a powerless land meant possessing extraordinary courage and determination, yet you were brave as you were. If only you are alive today, you would probably say that too little has changed.

While you were in Spain, miles away from your Motherland and family, you never forgot your duties. Heading the political section of Hispanic Filipino Association of Madrid, you agitated reforms from Spain to your beloved country. Under your editorship, La Solidaridad strongly promoted active participation for Filipinos in the affairs of government; wider social and political freedoms; equality before the law; representation; and freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly. Even after the Soli, as we call it now, ceased to publish in 1895, you did not give up in your patriotism as your political works circulated in Manila and neighboring provinces.

There was no other choice left, you thought, as you vigorously affirmed your conviction: “Insurrection is the last remedy, especially when the people have acquired the belief that peaceful means to secure the remedies for evils prove futile.” And your words inspired the great revolutionary organization.

Will you still suggest the same thing today? What has changed 116 years after you rejected the assimilationist stand?

Philippine journalism hails you, Mr. del Pilar, as its forerunner. Today, most journalists operate with a “tell it as it is” style of reporting, with limited news analysis, and as a gatekeeper of information supplied from outside. You were, in contrast, a statesman-journalist. You supplied the information and expected nothing from outsiders; rights, liberty, and happiness, you said, are conquered. You were a leader.

Technological advancements and the needs of the times may alter the way journalists work today, but as long as the standards of truth, fairness and impartiality are anchored on our democratic principles, the world isn’t too bad at all, right?

You were the most prolific, indefatigable writer. No other Filipino writer could equal your body of work as far as richness in information and fearlessness in journalism are concerned.

But were you just the journalist gone astray, as the Spanish friars once claimed? Were you too occupied with your ideals? Was your pen too sharp and your goals too far-fetched? Most of the time it appears, you knew what you stand for.

Plaridel was your nom-de-plume, a simple anagram of your surname. But the simple pen name was signed countless times in works against social injustice, bigotry, hypocrisy, and racial discrimination. Beyond the militant and progressive themes you chose to progress, you aroused the consciousness of the masses through your mastery of our native language. You were gifted with the common touch, with ready audiences for your lucid and forceful Tagalog works in the cockpits, the plazas, and the most common places. You were, in effect, the spokesperson of the masses.

Plaridel has given birth to a lot of legacies today — a journal, a college in the University of the Philippines, a college publication, and even a town in Bulacan, all called under your pen name.

The pen still holds its power. We hope we can still use it the way you did.

One-hundred and sixty-two years is certainly not the end, Plaridel.

It is when a beat-up copy of The Scarlet Letter is conveniently stretched out on my hands, coincidentally the same position I would assign to my legs the moment you lower your Mark Twain just beneath your grey eyes.

My own eyes will shift from the once gripping lines of the author to those wide, bright circles — gleaming yet questioning. And we travel from words to images to abstract thoughts.

As if we stumbled upon an incomprehensible passage — just as I will never understand why women derive a pleasure from needlework — we won’t be able to understand how an outside force manages to pull us together.

And when the right timing comes along, it is the soft, unhurried union of lips, akin to calmly closing a book so that its two faces meet. Bodies are smashed against the bookshelves, filling the gaps between the pieces of literature that serve as the act’s silent witnesses.

Your breath mix with the smell of Shakespeare’s yellowing pages, and I fondly close my eyes as I allow my nose to welcome the two greatest scents in the world.

They say that there are two ways of falling in love with a book: courtly and carnal. There is no doubt about your choice. You hold me as if you’re afraid to rip a page from your favorite book, believing that you can never separate the form from its content and so you have to be careful not to lose the book’s innocent and perfect chastity.

In every book, I realize, there are hundreds of kissing pages and I wonder whether those tiny, escalating bits of sensation your lips feel against mine, and vice versa, could pass as a book’s complex metaphor.

Because for a near-minute, as we kiss, we have relived the wide range of feelings I only encounter through a good tale.

Just as you are hesistant to leave markings on a page, you are careful not to leave words on my lips. So that when we restore the physical gap between us, I am eager to flip through the pages of the book again, hoping that comprehension shall finally dawn into me. Literally and otherwise.

But what if we can never distinguish which is more real between kissing and reading? Or if the two could ever lead us somewhere beyond the dream state?

What is an ideal first kiss?

It is when Paul, Ringo, George and John handsomely conspire to keep us at home on a Friday afternoon. My parents are out, and (we should be making out) we should be talking about the film script you’ll help me create.

We sit on the couch — less than a meter apart — as we bang our heads even to the tune of ballads. You ask me under whose Beatle stereotype shall I place you. I answered, teasingly, John.

Your boyish grin is priceless. But instantly displaying your John-state-of-mind, you become skeptic — as if my answer needs a thorough, logical explanation.

I love how you seek the truth. I love how your profundity seeps through my wits.

I chose not to ask you back. I like to think that I am a George. No, it is not a feeling of isolation; it is more of the INTP kind of thing which justifies my silence and meditation — and the thud of my heart — as we move closer on the couch.

Because when a song like I Wanna Hold Your Hand plays in background, we know we don’t need words. Or quick wits. Or skepticism. Or logical explanations.

With our fingers locked, you lean over slowly, almost hesitantly, until the tip of our noses touch. As soon as the first beat of the second verse catches in, your lips are already on mine.

How can I describe this kiss with an upbeat, pop Beatles tune?

That it is as stripped down as the song’s lyrics, where feelings transcend the simple words. That its rhythm jives with the rhythm of our grasps for air. That its candy-like womps are as sweet as your lips. That the melody and your kiss compete for space and permanence in my brain — and I would gladly hold a tie for that matter.

And it is as simple as that. You hold my hand. You kiss my lips. The song is over.

It is only when the song and the kiss stop and we lock our eyes with one another’s that the semantics shall actually matter. Or maybe not at all.

But what if, in its after-effects, the kiss will hung unto us more than the repetitive melody and lyrics do? What if it will take us long to find another that will remove or replace this sensation, much like what a last song syndrome does to us?

What is an ideal first kiss?

It is when we launch ourselves to the greatest things the (physical) universe can offer, above and below. We are engulfed by the sea’s pearly vastness as we slump by the seaside; our naked eyes watch the stars and the darkness.

Nothing is more serene. Because we are both champions of irony, we chose to break this calm not by words and sounds, but by feelings.

As we alternate drinking cheap vodka (or its child-friendly counterpart) and cursing society, you purposedly or accidentally, whichever is true, brush my feet with yours as they childishly swing back and forth above the rocks.

In our heads, we try to count the stars in the giant black veil above us although we know it’s dumb and impossible, just as we are well aware that assigning numbers to something is like assigning limits, restrictions, a life span.

Isn’t it more practical and easier to describe things in words rather than to quantify? We can simply say that the stars are plenty, because in that way we’ll never have to worry defining “enough”, “forever”, and “infinite”.

Even so I am not sure which of those two methods is more appropriate to describe the moment when you pull me closer to you, brushing my left cheek with your thumb, and how I realize a little late that while my eyes voluntarily close, you lean forward and lock your lips on mine.

In numbers: three heart beats skipped, two strands of hair on my palm, five fingers navigating through your neck, three counts of breath, twenty seconds of pleasure.

In words: It was unhurried yet passionate, shuts my system with the heightening, piercing sound that dissolves every beat of life around us. And though my tastebuds succumb to a minor role, the rest of my sensory system works double-time.

After the kiss, we lie on the grounds face-to-face. I realize that silent gazing into each other’s eyes is so much better than star gazing. Because no matter how long we gape at the stars, we can never comprehend the narratives interlaced with their brightness, but we can always find our way to each other’s mind through our eyes.

A simple fixed look could mean several things: “It was great”, “I enjoyed it”, “I would like to do it again.” But if we dissect these vague statements, we can possibly find the terms “goodbye”, “over”, and worst, “never”.

Coincidentally, just like in movies, a display of colorful fireworks ensues — and then reality slaps us in the face to make us remember that a kiss is similar to this temporary spectacle: fading, limited, made to amaze but never satisfy.

I wonder if you ever bother to look at your watch while we’re here, or if you run a countdown of minutes left in your head. We both know this will end, anyway.

The physical act only supplements the metaphysical — but then abstract reasoning that leads to nothing could leave us more ravaged than ending a kiss. The physical is safer. There’s always means of escape.

A kiss could be the better rite of passage than a heart left ajar for an unexpected visitor. A kiss is more ideal than falling for you.

But idealism is always meant to be shattered.

*id:

“It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the Dreamwork and of the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations…. It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” (Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis[1933], p. 105–6)

“Do not be afraid to make mistakes,” her mama told her once.

And she has erred so many times since then.

She remembers too well how she almost got disheartened in kindergarten — after misspelling words in English class. She tried to blame the pencil for refusing to draw the letters correctly, but mainly she wanted to blame the eraser attached to it for failing to remove the traces of the wrong characters soon before she realized that her self-doubt is what really caused her to not get it right.

But hey, she remembers her mama said, “Not everything in writing is the right thing.”

So even though she would never forget how she lost her first school quiz bee by drawing her sun with nine rays instead of eight, she would learn later on she is not supposed to count the lines outside circles and things that matter are greater than numbers — the latter she learned a little too late.

A monumental stage in her life comes every time life hands her a fishbowl of names of people she wanted. Sometimes, she’ll pick the wrong ones; she was never good at making choices. And oftentimes, her ability to choose stops where the people’s choice to leave starts. But she let them go. The only rational thing to do is to wait.

She mistook convenience for happiness, a mere feeling for a verb. She didn’t think freedom would sometimes hurt others, too. She almost wallowed in regret, preparing to slowly slide down the bathroom wall with tears in her eyes. But the worst is yet to come.

At 20, she fell for the guy with the broken strings, hoping to hear good music out of his guitar. But what she found are only lyrics that wouldn’t fit in incomplete melodies.

And so, broken and confused, she took the wrong path she thought was a shortcut. But there are no shortcuts — only time, in its many forms, pushing and pulling her in a world of deception and pressure.

But this time, the only voice she could, heck, she should hear is her own. “Do not be afraid to make mistakes.” Do not blame yourself when you decide to pause or surrender. In this life, she tells herself, you are given the chance to fall hard to the ground. But she’ll use her choice to stand back up and make things right.