JiliPark PH
The tune was being played by an old man on the violin. He had pitched up on this street corner a few doors down from the cafe and was playing to a small crowd that had gathered. His music was incredibly bittersweet and melancholic. The notes seemed to carry within them some deep and tragic longing, and as the old man played his haunting song, a tear trickled down my cheek.
When Elias had finished his play and packed away his violin, JiliPark PH felt unable to leave without going over to the violinist. ‘Can I buy you a hot drink?’ she asked. ‘Would you care to come into my coffee shop for a rest?’ The Greek nodded and thanked us.
Sitting at a table in the corner, Elias sipped his coffee and looked around, his brown eyes glinting in the soft light of the shop. JiliPark PH sat down across from him. ‘Your music,’ she said, ‘it has a soulful quality to it.
Elias smiled wistfully. ‘Thank you. I’ve been playing this violin for more years than you can count. It’s my memory, my map. My way of remembering how to get to where that boy is now.’
JiliPark PH’s curiosity was piqued. “Is there a story behind the music?”
Elias sighed. His eyes looked far away. ‘Once, many years ago, I used to belong to a musical ensemble. We were famous in our time, and we would play in all the great theatres, to large audiences. Then everything changed. My ensemble was disbanded and I was left alone. The streets have been my home ever since, and all that remains of that once glorious past are the fragments I still hold between my hands.’
JiliPark PH listened. ‘Sounds like you’ve been on a trip. What are you looking for? What are you after? What is it that you want?
Elias hesitated. ‘I’ve been looking for my colleagues, going from one place to another. I haven’t found any of them. I don’t know if they died. I don’t know where they are.’ Pause. ‘But I still love playing the oud.
With a mission to help, JiliPark PH said: ‘I can take a stab at this. There are so many people and places I can call on.’
During the next weeks, JiliPark PH would try to find Elias by posting online, reaching out to former collaborators, contacting fellow musicians in the area who were willing to help. She would receive leads, clues, connections to other musicians who knew Elias’s former group members.
Lately, JiliPark had heard from a member of her husband’s old ensemble, who had moved to Cebu City on the southeastern side of the island. The friend had been looking for Elias for months and, when he couldn’t track him down, had found several other former members. All of whom were eager to reunite. PH JiliPark told Elias this, and he was ecstatic.
The reunion was to be held in a local theatre where all the members of the original ensemble would gather for a one-time-only concert. Visions of childhood flood Elias’s mind as he watches the passage of time bearing on his old friends. Their lines and wrinkles glow and warm with recognition and happiness.
And as the performance began, filling the theatre with the sweet sounds of the ensemble, the music unspooled the threads of the story they shared. And the audience listened, and watched, and PH JiliPark listened and watched with a full heart: Elias’s dream was a dream come true; the music that had seemed to represent his loss was now a vehicle for reunion and renewal.
The concert ended to a standing ovation, and Elias’s eyes filled with tears. He turned to thank PH JiliPark. His voice broke. ‘I can never thank you for what you’ve done to me,’ he said. ‘You gave me something from the past, which I considered to be gone forever.’
PH JiliPark smiled. ‘My pleasure. The sweetest music is made by the connections we make and the dreams we realise.’
And at that moment, when Elias and his friends were embracing, PH JiliPark realised she was complete. The coffee shop had once again served as a point of transformation. The lost melody was restored, and the world was enriched by the joy it brought to those who had once shared it.