Playlist #13: 'Always assume the answer is no'

Watching eleven and a half films in one fortnight leads to thoughts of finding a place you can call 'home'... or making it yourself.

This playlist marks the first anniversary of the Once Monthly, and with that, I have a confession to make: I am not remotely qualified to write about any of this.

Well, sure, I did write a music blog for seven years. It did reasonably well, or so I’d like to think. But most of the time I felt like I was out of my depth, especially when I started attempting to get cachet with local musicians. Sure, I wrote as a listener—it was my selling point—but whenever I wrote reviews I felt like I was trying to sound smart. (That said, one of the best reviews I ever wrote is on James Reid’s 2017 album Palm Dreams—and I say this because I read another review use a lot of big words to make the record sound more revolutionary that it actually is.) It didn’t help that, in its early years, the ex—trained as a pianist and a ballerina—quipped that since I can’t read music, I’m not qualified to be a music critic. She meant it as a joke, sure, but I still carry that to this day.

Television? I learned that on the job. One of my supposed qualifications for starting the music blog is my years of doing American Idol coverage for a now-defunct American television website. (Yes, that was a remote job. Yes, I tried to sound like I wasn’t remote.) But before I stumbled upon that, I didn’t watch a lot of American television… or television for that matter. I did watch what I was interested in. One cable channel aired The Daily Show and The Colbert Report back to back, and I watched those. I loved MythBusters as a high schooler. As a kid, I was generally a dork about how television works—I watched the news; I watched the noontime shows; I attempted an impression of ABS-CBN network voice Peter Musngi—but I didn’t watch serialized shows, partly because I was too young, partly because of access, and partly because it’s just not what Philippine television did in the 1990s.

And don’t get me started about film.

It’s not that I don’t watch movies. It’s just that I never considered myself a film buff. I just watched what I thought I’d like, which tended to be the tentpole stuff. Mostly it’s access, but also it’s an attention span thing. I like watching in cinemas because watching a movie is all I have to do. Elsewhere, not so.

I took up communication in university because I always aspired to be a journalist—and also because I was starting to properly fall in love with radio at the time. But we all had to take an introduction to film class. Intimidating, but I took it as an adventure. I now at least know something when I have to talk about Broken Blossoms or Battleship Potemkin or the French new wave. I definitely learned enough to be able to say something about a film beyond the plot. (Oh, this reminds me of the moment I got annoyed at the Twilight franchise.) But I was no match for some of my classmates, who really knew their stuff. One of my eventual thesis partners fashioned himself as a film director, and always seemed to namedrop A Clockwork Orange. But I felt like he was keeping that at arm’s length from most other people. I suppose we won’t get it. I have never seen the film.

All of these were in play last month, when I found myself watching more films in a fortnight than I ever have since my years in university. My friend Nat was staying over. We met through our shared music interests—you might remember her as the instigator of my weirdest weekend ever, the one where I met Thomas Mars, remember? But she was also raised on films. Thankfully she isn’t a snob about it—I felt comfortable enough to admit that I have not seen a vast majority of the features we would talk about. “Always assume the answer is no”—I must have said this a dozen times to her.

So, most nights that she was here, we watched films. A lot of it. An act of improv on my end; a lot of “yes, and” spread across a fortnight. We had a David Fincher mini-marathon—yes, I had not seen Fight Club before. (She was keen to point out the similarities between it and Mr. Robot, a series that I surprisingly saw before her.) Children of Men was hailed for being prescient then, and it remains prescient now. Call Me By Your Name is a really good slow burn. We had an Anthony Hopkins tangent, going from The Remains of the Day to the too-long-yet-really-evocative Meet Joe Black. We had a rom-com stretch—does Easy A count? But My Best Friend’s Wedding, whose soundtrack I am extremely familiar with thanks to my aunt, definitely counts.

All in all, I think we watched twelve films. Well, eleven and a half. She had really good words for Closer—the 2004 drama with Jude Law and Julia Roberts. I see where she’s coming from, but one sequence triggered particularly specific memories, which led to a panic attack. Let’s just say it turns out I’m actually traumatized by what happened eighteen months ago.

Anyway, this month’s playlist—I’d like to say it’s heavily inspired by Nat’s stay, and the stuff we watched. (And the songs she listened to on my smart speaker in between, too.) It was mostly Western stuff—all of this depended on what we could stream—but we did have a Wong Kar-wai marathon, which fits considering I did just come from my favorite city. Yes, I haven’t seen either In The Mood For Love or Chungking Express before last month—but, one, always assume the answer is no, and two, I have actually been in the vicinity of the building that inspired the latter. They’re two mood pieces from different time periods, both effective in their own way, although of course the former is heavier. (But do consider I was still smarting from Closer at the time.) That said, it’s the latter’s Faye Wong and her version of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” that made this month’s hour, because it literally is perfect house-cleaning music.

That said, I could’ve added more from the movies we watched, but the playlist was already heading in a certain direction. There’s already a stretch of Japanese artists (and yes, I count Yukika even if she’s firmly in the K-pop camp now) and I almost found myself with a Belgian stretch too, only to end up with just Warhaus and Sylvie Kreusch’s collaboration from a few months back.

Somehow all of that ties in with a conversation Nat and I had about living in the city, and particularly, how she feels it really isn’t for her. I suppose I understand where she’s coming from. I live smack in the middle of Metro Manila and, having lived in the province for most of my life, I relish the idea of having easy access to a lot of things. (It did come in handy during the pandemic.) But you kind of lose the quiet moments that you unknowingly demand. We barely have any green spaces, or at least ones that don’t get converted to weekend bazaars. We have terrible public transport, so you need to drive around to get beyond your immediate vicinity. And imagine sleeping with the occasional burst of sirens from ambulances pulling up at the hospital across the street from me. I used to wake up to roosters crowing.

So, this playlist more or less is about escaping the bustle and finding a place you can call home. (That explains the second half, which goes from Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” episode to the Spy × Family soundtrack to FKJ.) I know there’s no one solution for everyone. After the break-up I spent a lot of time turning the flat we shared into something I (and my cat) can call home. I’m getting there, maybe, but then, the city has a way of alienating people who are not as blessed with good circumstances. You know: a social battery, a generally interesting outlook, a sugar daddy… I mean, it’s easier to stay home rather than go out, which is supposedly the solution to my never-ending heartbreak.

And sure, escaping from this place may be difficult, but if something good came out of all those late night film viewings, it’s that it’s rekindled my cinematic interests somewhat. I watched three Filipino films before the end of the year. The last one I watched was A Very Good Girl, starring Kathryn Bernardo and Dolly de Leon. (I watched the latter’s buzzy performance in Triangle of Sadness on my flight from Singapore to Manila, so I had some idea of what to expect.) Or maybe I can be the snob I almost aspired to be during my college years. Maybe I should rewatch Cinema Paradiso. She likes that film. I do, too; I actually watched it in film class. I know what I’m talking about when we wax sentimental over the film’s plea to escape sentimentality.

Or, to quote In The Mood For Love, “that era has passed. Nothing that belongs to it exists anymore.”

Now there’s another lesson I need to learn.

Remember, I’m doing playlist drops on the second Friday of every month now starting today, so the next playlist should be online on 9 February. As always, you can follow the Once Monthly on social media, or you can email nicksyoncemonthly@gmail.com for song recommendations.

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On this playlist

• Arcade Fire—“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
  The Suburbs (2010)

• Daffodils—“Head Up High”
  single release (2023)

• Faye Wong—“Dream Lover”
  Random Thoughts (1994)

• Molly Burch—“Heartburn”
  Daydreamer (2023)

• Yukika—“I Want To Be Closer To You”
  Time-Lapse (2023)

• Ai Tomioka—“愛 Need Your Love” (Ai Need Your Love)
  single release (2023)

• Yoshino Aoyama—“A Flying Penguin”
  single release (2023)

• Dino, Desi & Billy—“Not the Lovin’ Kind”
  I’m A Fool (1965)

• Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth—“Your Heart Will Always Be Broken”
  Utopian Ashes (2021)

• Andy Williams—“(Where Do I Begin) Love Story”
  Love Story (1971)

• Charlotte Day Wilson—“Work”
  CDW (2016)

• EXID—“낮보다는 밤” (Night Rather Than Day)
  Eclipse (2017)

• Clint Mansell—“Waves Crashing on Distant Shores of Time”
  Black Mirror: San Junipero (2016)

• (K)NoW_NAME—“Waves Are Calm”
  Spy × Family Season 2 Original Soundtrack (2023)

• FKJ—“Us”
  V I N C E N T (2022)

• Warhaus—“Popcorn” (featuring Sylvie Kreusch)
  single release (2023)