2025 starts tomorrow. To mark the end of this year, I did what my yesterday self wouldn’t believe I could do. I bought a salt lamp.

The lamp now sits on top of my piano with a pinkish glow. It graces the company of a set of rocks I acquired over the years. There’s that tourist contraption of a rock I got in Jerusalem during the Asian Composers League Festival in 2012 — I asked the guy selling these to inscribe a biblical verse in Hebrew. (N.B.: Before I continue, don’t mistake this as a representation of my politics. The colonial nation-state should stop its genocide, no question). I also have two rocks with crystallized interiors, one of them a thunder egg — I bought them from a store when I did an artist residency last year by the Pacific Northwest coast in Washington state.

Other memorabilia join the crowd. The sand dollar a fellow resident artist picked up at a beach and gave it to me as a peace offering. The “free drink token” of 440 Castro a cousin gave me as a souvenir. (If you know San Francisco, CA, you know). A pair of baoding balls in a rickety cardboard box. That sharpener in the shape of an upright piano that held up my luggage once at airport security. A cat papier-mâché who stands as the unwilling mascot of my Grumpy Kitty Boy shindigs.

I turn the lamp on and, *shazam*! They all hang out together like sizzling bromances from an alternate universe. Yes, I definitely fall for “sizzling bromances.” And more.

The salt lamp was a liminal suggestion for a long time. Do I really want one? Not really. As a joke, I told “Raccoon” (hint: an ex) once that I want one as a present. But the years went by, and the infatuations relapsed into oblivion. This non-desire over a lamp now transformed into real curiosity. Looking for a reason to spend money tonight, I found myself at a store and saw the darned thing. This is it, I thought. I want a mood. Let’s make it real. Proof that I lost my marbles and started feeling domesticated…right here!

If my career was a mere option out of many others, the empowerment I possess in life would be quite staggering. Unfortunately, this is the only path I chose to take. Unlike the salt lamp, I really wanted a career as a composer. I made it real for more than sixteen years with blood, sweat, tears, and lots of luck. And yet with the year 2024, it started to feel like it never existed. I haven’t composed anything this year. I didn’t get any commissioned work at all. [Correction: I actually have one! But that was it.] I didn’t have a long list of performances in tow, the hallmark of what people consider a vibrant artistic career. Even Grumpy Kitty Boy has been silent. The string of grant application rejections last year blew a hole in my pocket, so much so that I didn’t attempt to submit one this year.

To be accurate, this year has its performance highlights. Weekend Rain and Hanggang sa Takipsilim got their Canadian/world premieres at a Din of Shadows presentation in April at The Music Gallery (Toronto). Two months later, Weekend Rain received its American premiere at the New Music on the Bayou Festival (Ruston, LA), alongside the world premiere of the song cycle Liham featuring Renee Fajardo (mezzo-soprano) and Vivian Kwok (piano) in New York City. That world premiere was also my attempt to stand onstage and do staged readings of selected texts for the first time. Guy Few (trumpet) performed Kina-i-ngátan as a trumpet piece in September for a NUMUS concert (Waterloo, ON), its second performance since last year’s premiere. Co-presented by Philippine-based MusiKolektibo, the audio essay Kinalugarán was programmed for “The People’s Avant-garde” on Hong Kong Community Radio in November.

And of course, a digital presentation of Liham is in the works right now. (More details later). Most of this year though were performances of my electroacoustic pieces. My instrumental music seems to be of little value right now.

Instead, the winds and seas charted a different course. I spent this year more on reading, researching, conjuring ideas, and writing texts. I submitted project proposals and abstracts to places where I think I can fit my work. Alongside rejection emails were emails slamming me one at a time, saying I have the go signal to proceed.

I was tasked to write a book chapter (working title: “Kinalugarán: speaking nearby Filipinx invisibility”) for an upcoming Routledge publication on socially-engaged art, out hopefully in mid-2025. This contribution centres around my audio essay Kinalugarán, commissioned and premiered by New Music Concerts in 2022 with stories of three Filipinx artists in Global North diasporas. In harmonious concert, my abstracts for hybrid paper-music presentations were accepted at the “Music in Difficult Times” conference (co-presented by the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Quebec and Concordia University, Montreal) and the “Western and World Symposium” (co-presented by Labyrinth Ontario and The Music Gallery, Toronto). These academic presentations also propelled my writing towards an actual chapter draft. Since February, churning out draft after draft took lonely, endless months of staring at screens, pounding on the keyboard, cross-referencing material, and bleeding out strings of words that have to make sense. While the following nine months weren’t a walk in the park, Kinalugarán toured around in this manner during May and June.

The months of May and June were a particularly difficult time. Aside from the multi-city shenanigans in May, New Music on the Bayou happened on the first week of June. The Western and World Symposium ran on the second week. The world premiere of Liham in New York City unfurled on the third week. Presenting one paper required copious amounts of study, preparation, and writing. At the cost of my sanity, I took it on myself to present separate (but related) papers for the Montreal and Toronto symposia. While these papers eventually morphed into a chapter draft, it’s also “classic me,” as a friend always puts it: Do way, way more than is required! (And complain about it later).

Publishing Musicworks magazine articles also shared in the pie as well. The 10,000-word piece I wrote for IMD Darmstadt’s “Words on Music” last year? Now redacted and out on the Summer issue, featuring artist C-drík and the duo Sarana. The Canadian premiere of Jose Maceda’s Udlot-Udlot? Now out on the Fall issue, featuring artist-curator Aki Onda and ethnomusicologist Verne de la Peña. Scheduling multi-city trips to make this particular assignment work out involved flying from Montreal to Vancouver to Edmonton (with a scheduled rehearsal with Fajardo and Kwok for our Liham New York world premiere) and back to Toronto in a matter of days. Having my name as Contributing Editor in the magazine’s masthead felt flattering and motivating enough, I guess.

I just submitted another short profile this month — it will be out next month on the Winter issue. I’ll spew out details when the time comes.

On a more personal tone, getting my Canadian passport in 2024 is a symbolic turn. I’m no longer bound to harsh border restrictions. It felt like the world opened up more for me. This lived experience is something that people in the Global North will never understand. Visas still exist for long-term stays elsewhere, but I’m finally beyond the baggage of feeling second/third-class because of the geopolitics concerned with holding a certain passport. I look forward to more travels and big future plans that I can pursue within the next two years — all unfettered from such baggage.

It just hit me. The salt lamp that I both wanted and never wanted tells me that we really never know what we want until we start working for it. And when it is taken away from us. This is why kids here in North America are always encouraged to try out new things. Filipino culture isn’t like that. We constrain ourselves because poverty tells us that there’s only one shot in life. The family needs to constantly dispel hunger and life insecurity. Muck it up, and you find yourself living in the dumps for the rest of your life. But it shouldn’t hamper one’s desire for second chances. There’s always tomorrow to aspire to and complain about. Let tomorrow happen, salt and pinkish hues included.

I also find that complaining about an empty calendar has landed me opportunities in 2024. I’m employing the same strategy again now for next year’s empty calendar. *insert complaining here*. That being said, commissions and artistic projects are very much welcome. I’m already pulled into two big ones for 2026/2027, but something for 2025 would be nice. Grumpy Kitty Boy things should happen this coming year as well.

As a parting thought for everyone in 2024: Buy a salt lamp.