el pasyon de charlie castelo

el pasyon de charlie castelo

we are once again in the middle of the most boring week of the year and i do not know if i should be thankful for being gifted with neighbors who could easily claim for the embodiement of irony.

a brief background about them: they used to own a stripjoint along quezon avenue. their shack houses a good assortment of characters: three campy transvestites who come home so early in the morning (the sound of cab doors swinging shut and of mixed drunken voices of men and gays always succeed in waking me up), the village teen skank, the village junior teen skank-slash psychpath, and a pair of disturbed (and disturbing) children (one of which is an eleven year old boy who drives a minivan around the village). how do i know all these? well, if our househelp supply us all these info, i am just really afraid what vital information about us they supply our neighbores with.

at this point, you must be wondering where the irony lies. well, it has been their tradition, to my horror and utter regret, to hold a pasyon in their garage every holy week. my room is just right along the street we share with them and two out of three of my windows are strategically placed along this wall.

perfect.

for three straight days or so, i got drowned in the bittersweet harmonization of possibly grandmothers with loose dentures, scouring to give me a taste of how christ suffered by not just singing the story, but by actually internalizing it. yes, one could almost feel the lashes through their voices, and all these amplified a million times by what must have been the sound system they used to have in their strip joint.

i choose to dwell on this. the pasyon is a very interesting custom, yes. but what i'm really wondering about is why they choose to involve the microphone, the loudspeakers, or the megaphone? is this the insatiable thirst for mission work? to spread the good news farther, approximately up to until where the soundwaves could bring it? i don't think so.

a writer kept on saying that everybody wants to get into showbusiness. it is therefore my theory that everyone who could not (all millions of them) create a show for themselves. the pasyon is one such show. given this, and since i am such a catholic enthusiast, next year, i will be offering my production design/ events organizing services to my neighbors. pasyon 2005 will be the grandmother of all events, just watch out for the press release and the cd launching.

posted by carl @ 12:31 AM