Monday, August 15, 2011

Reconnecting with a friend and his music

I first met him in high school and he was ahead of me by a year. I was a freshman and he was a sophomore when we got introduced by way of scouting. It was a little later that I discovered he was the older brother of another sophomore but wasn't at all surprised. In our school, it was quite common for younger people to catch up to boys a batch ahead of them because of the acceleration opportunity granted to Grade 6 students who performed quite well in their academics. I found him as someone quite odd yet very kind and very patient. He was to me someone whom you'd want to be your kuya given the way he related to people younger than him. Many of us in our batch got to be acquainted with him and he was gracious enough to help us out being an upperclassman in high school. He shared stories with us about what he would like to be if given the freedom to choose, to decide. He wanted to become a DJ. He wanted to devote time to music. He wanted to mix music, play it and enjoy it. That was how I knew Vir-Gil then and that was how I know him today, many years after we lost track after graduating from high school.

He is known online as DJ Beatraxx and his works are accessible for music lovers through Mixcrate, which I only discovered a few days ago, thanks to one of his postings on Facebook. We only got reacquainted last year thanks to the search features of Facebook where he was suggested as someone I knew. I took the opportunity to reconnect and he did accept the friend request. Later, he related to me about how he had become serious in life after marrying and having a family of his own. He also shared how he finally got to save up to get back to his hobby of mixing music. And so I was happy too to have reacquainted with an old friend and had a bonus of sorts with his music, which happens to be mostly about the 80's and particularly about New Wave. Glad to see you again, my friend, and perhaps we shall meet in one of those alumni homecomings at Lourdes soon. The silver jubilees of our batches are coming up quite quickly in the next few years.

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