Like Nobody's Watching by Tara Frejas

Author:Tara Frejas [Frejas, Tara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

“W ell, finally!” Datu Alvez snatched the music sheets Pio presented him with and stared at the score for a good minute. He looked up at his little brother. “Piano?”

“Your call. I did it on the guitar because I thought it would match the mood of your film, but I guess piano is good too.”

The older Alvez simply jerked his head at the acoustic guitar sitting at the corner of his small studio. Pio shuffled toward it and pulled it from its stand, gently strumming the strings to make sure the instrument was in tune. He then sat on the chair Datu grabbed for him, cracked his knuckles, and began playing.

Datu requesting Pio to write a musical score for one of his projects was a recent development, as far as the youngest Alvez was concerned. The second Alvez son was notorious for being secretive about the work he did. A little too secretive, in fact, that he would disappear with his film team for months and resurface only when his projects were already screening at some film festival. It was just how Datu operated, and the family had already learned to deal with it.

This favor though, came as a puzzle to Pio at first, until he eventually realized this was Datu pulling him out of his funk. Where Isagani focused on health and wellness, Datu was all about exploring Pio’s untapped musical abilities. And while Datu would never admit to such intentions, Pio simply thanked him in his own way.

Like actually spending time and effort working on a musical score that would fit his brother’s new short film. Pio was provided a summary—three brothers and a dog go on a road trip—and some rushes. Datu never gave him a deadline.

Fingers light on the strings, Pio opened Datu’s story with an easy melody, the kind conducive to curling up in bed on a cool, sunny morning. The tempo picked up a little later, the notes swelling in happy waves signaling the start of a spontaneous road trip. When Pio switched from fingerstyle to muted strumming, the score took on an edgy feel, with a pace that escalated like the speed of a vehicle on a carless highway.

He tapped his foot on the floor and let the music dictate the flow of the story back to him—three brothers on a road trip encounter an old, stray dog on the highway and decide to take it along with them, nursing it on the way but losing it in the process—until he fell back into a relaxed rhythm that’s part mournful and part optimistic. He ended the same way he began, the bright opening melody now played with an extra chord that seemed to pad along with the rest. Like a stray dog that followed you wherever you went.

Datu’s face was inscrutable when Pio looked to him for feedback. But just when Pio thought he had failed, Datu turned toward his computer, opened his editing console, and pulled up a rough cut of his project.

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