It used to be that I gave up very easily; when I was still in single-digit ages, I was restless and impatient, and thus so easily bored. For whatever reason, I was enrolled in quite a few extra-curricular classes—violin, piano, voice, supplementary math and English, at some point even visual arts—yet now I maintain none of them. Now all I hear about these things are of self-taught successes and of natural talent.
These days I wonder if it was my downfall after all that I discontinued such activities; my math skills are pretty average, and my musical inclinations remain rudimentary, both despite still being a decent singer and English-user. I wonder now how I would have turned out if I had a musical edge, or the knack of deconstructing formulae. There is a note of regret resounding somewhere in my mind, but I made my own decisions long ago.
I used to study in a place I knew as Sacred Heart—the full name of which slips now from memory; it was something of an after-school tutorial center at one of the top floors of Shangri-La, a mall along Shaw Boulevard that my family used to frequent. As one recently-untoddlered, it was pretty spacious and safe-feeling for me. My parents left my siblings and me there for a program called Kumon, but I remember playing around alone more than I do having studied.
My understanding of the program was so; everyone starts at level A—the exact nature of which escapes me now. All I remember is that by the time I was six, I was doing long division for math, while I was far better at English; I think I was in reading comprehension of short stories with grammar of conditionals. I liked English more because it seemed more intuitive; I did not see math as a language in itself, but as a set of rules framed by English in order to explain numbers.
Sometime in my long division days, I remember getting bored, so I spent my study time just skimming the answer sheets, then the rest of the time horsing around while waiting for my parents to get back. There was nothing I could do to fill my time but make noise, and I remember being one of the shyest troublemakers in the center. My instructors would often pull my parents aside when they arrived to talk about my restlessness; I pretended not to hear them.
My parents never brought it up, so I figured not to as well. At home it showed though that I was more fascinated by mathematical flashcards with short answers and by quite linear stories. I think on it now and figure that I was a product of instant gratification; I just wanted to know without all the hangups of the process. My impatience was obvious in the way I went from activity to activity with the inability to stay put.
I remember at some point deciding that I would tell my parents to let me stop taking Kumon; I also remember giving Kumon one last shot. It took tremendous focus and effort, but I trudged on through the long division for but a week more before breaking the news. I only vaguely remember how I told them, but I did—I think I just said that I did not want to Kumon, using a noun as a verb, anymore.
Around the same time, I started letting go of my music classes. My parents enrolled me in weekend sessions at the school of my siblings—Saint Paul’s College, Pasig—in order to learn violin, piano, and voice; I only excelled at one of them. The names of my instructors are embedded somewhere in my head, but my recall is faulty—I remember confusing them with my preschool teachers at some point.
Piano was the first class I dropped; my small fingers and feeble attitude could not sink the ivory strong enough for notes to resound in unison. There was a window that I would constantly look out of—to me it looked like the interface of gravel and sky, but looking through that very window now would look like a driveway to nowhere, punctuated by urban skyline, and then the sky, dulled by the knowledge of age.
The building was known to me then as the CAB—Cultural Arts Building, formally—but whether or not it has changed since then escapes me. Lessons were conducted in tight rooms at the top floor, and the room where I learned piano was right beside where I learned violin. It was more fun to learn violin despite all the formalities—chin position, way to hold the bloody bow, et cetera—because it allowed more freedom for my futile fingers.
It took a little while longer for me to drop the violin; despite how I liked playing around with it, I was not advancing to any discernible level. I was just stuck in the basic level forever, so I told my parents to let me drop that as well. Voice was the only extra-curricular class I could sustain up to my double-digit ages, but even then, I gave it up just before I became a teenager.
The room where I had my voice lessons was on the other side of the building, but it was deprived of windows save for the one cut into the door. The light bouncing off the walls gave off a dingy yellow, and I remember keeping still for once. Whenever I sang, I really had to concentrate because my rudimentary voice control needed to be mastered.
For whatever reason, voice lessons offered that sense of control over myself and my capabilities in something so seemingly simple as singing; I did not need any instruments or answer keys. All I needed was rawness and feedback—voices echoing back and forth between pupil and instructor. That was why I stayed for so long in voice classes before quitting for reasons quite unrelated.
I was growing up; I did not have much time anymore for singing when surrounded by potential businessmen, art was but a triviality. Singing also stalled the effects of puberty, as after I dropped voice lessons, my voice started cracking almost immediately. It was inevitable that I give it up, but my former soprano was still something to revel in.
That was it; for the rest of my childhood, Kumon was slowly blotted out of me by regular schooling, and my musical inclinations atrophied from disuse. There was nothing special about me; I was just another hyperactive student with a naïveté that overrode the need to understand. I know better now—that these skills are luxuries I deprived myself of.
I made the decision once; maybe it did not affect me in the long-term—just maybe I can start back up from where I left off.
aaarisamor 