Today, Nov. 6, marks the third year since I first landed on US soil. I still vividly recall my first look and feel of America as we drove from the Los Angeles International Airport, famously abbreviated as LAX, to my sister’s place some 50 miles from downtown L.A.
Ate Amelia, who relocated to the US way back in the ’90s, and the other members of my US-based kin who fetched me said that I had been welcomed by fall since the weather was significantly colder than the previous days.
Being a man from Metro Manila, it meant so much to instantly feel that cool weather without a typhoon and also see the wider roads and open spaces that mountainous California offers. I woke up the following day excited to go out for the morning breeze that required sweaters, despite the jet lag
Everywhere I went during those first days in the US felt like being escorted to a new world of wonders. I witnessed a Christmas tree lighting spectacle in Victoria Gardens in the city called Rancho Cucamonga, where I got to mingle with Californian locals for the first time.
When I was brought to a Barnes & Noble branch, I spent my first Saturday afternoon in California poring over books and observing how Americans behave inside a bookstore. We bought a book from an author who was promoting his newly published memoir by himself. He didn’t even have an assistant. I found that cool.
My sister and brother-in-law, Kuya Steve, even treated me to watch a stage musical featuring the music of The Beatles that same Saturday.
My parents first arrived in the US months after 9/11, and they became American citizens a few years later, before the 2000s ended. For some reason, it took a while for me to make the flight to the land of milk and honey that my late father Eulogio was so fond of.
While navigating my life as a music journalist and recording artist in the Philippines, he would revel me with stories that clearly showed he was enjoying living stateside. As if he needed to, he convinced me over and over that the US is the place to be. When he passed, I vowed to see that myself.
Just a couple of weeks after I landed in America, I got to see Las Vegas, which is a four-hour drive from where we are in San Bernardino County to the state of Nevada. I had experiences of the glitz and glam in the Philippines myself, being an entertainment journalist who got invited to countless such events. But to experience the Las Vegas nightlife for the first time was surreal.
The people walking along Fremont Street didn’t mind trends. They just dressed how they wanted to. One guy looked as if he had decided to wear the blanket he had used the night before. I admit he looked fine in his own right.
Of course, as always, I would associate a particular time and place with a song or two. Interestingly, I only got to hear the new hit at the time, “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus, when I was already here in the US. Or maybe I just had no recollection of being in Manila and hearing it.
You can imagine how many times I’ve heard that song while I was acclimatizing myself to how things are in the US—from partying with some Fil-Americans I met in Los Angeles to driving around with my sister while the single played on the radio. Good thing the track really has that charm that gave my first fun days in the US a tune to link to.
When I decided to write my first melody while I was in America, “Flowers” was kind of my peg song. And I so like the composition that I have a feeling it’s my signature piece, if there is a need to claim one in the future. More on that song later in my run.
There’s another track I would hear more often while spending my first weeks and months in the US: Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks, a song from her debut solo album in 1981. The song has a John Lennon connection, as I later found out she wrote it partly to express her grief over Lennon’s death.
Every welcome wears out, and soon I experienced what it is to be truly living in the US, coming from the Philippines. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to fully embrace America. I think I fit the bill. Those first days will always be special and unrepeatable—only the beautiful music gave them a soundtrack.
