Nothing changes. I’m still here, trying to fuck with the established, in my constant and unrelenting search for new possibilities in music.
Nothing changes. The reclusive artist is still here, drunk with peace and quiet, because I’m most comfortable without bullshit.
Nothing changes in my credo, which is the willingness to rather go broke for creativity, than to prosper out of capitalism.
Nothing changes. I am still cursed with Mozart’s recklessness and Beethoven’s insubordination, but not with their genius.
Nothing changes. I am still a nerd reading books, watching films that are unheard of, writing in journals such as this.
Nothing, in my heart, in my mind, in my philosophy, changes.
As a free and unemployed man, I rejected the idea of ever being a workaday person; working in a nine to five job, one among a horde of commuters under the heat of the sun, and under the moonlight trying to get home in one of the non-moving jeepneys among the non-moving river of vehicles. I was terrified, and still am.
What I’ve realized is that whether or not a freelancer makes it in a city like Manila depends entirely on him. I starved not because I was a freelancer, but because I was too soft. The quality of work I was doing was clearly more than the price I've asked for it. But despite the struggle, I loved being free. I cared neither for money nor material things. But at some point, one has to stay alive and sleep in a bed.
So I gave up my freedom, to work for a company whose name would spark a hysterical irony with the first statement of this paragraph. On the bright side, it’s a job I’ve been holding out for, a composer and music producer, with hours similar to how I work from home; when everyone else is asleep. Thanks to my former teacher for the recommendation and my girlfriend for some convincing, I am now an employee, with social security and tax and shit like that.
This wasn’t even in the backyard of my mind just two months earlier. Nothing changes, though. Nothing. Changes.