Tag: Cancer

Cancer and Career

At Van’s Cafe Ho Chi Minh City, if you stayed til the end of their second set of music, you would no longer hear Truc Vy doing her closing songs. She performed her set last week for the last time. Despite her late-stage throat cancer, she gave her best with composure and courage. I did not know that at the time. Just noticed how much of that vocal grace could come out from so little of a body. Now I understood.

Cancer-causing death also took  my friend, an accomplished pianist, two years ago.

And last week, it started to put down the name of its next victim.

There is a new singer in that slot now at Van’s Unforgettable.

The show must go on, like life itself.

But how many would pause to remember  someone, frail and fragile, now under traditional treatment in the country side.

They say when someone sings, he/she opens up his/her soul to you.

Like at the Voice final last night. 4 finalists. Only one winner. But we saw four raw souls on display.

To the watching eyes of million.

Truc Vy perhaps won’t go down as a late great Rock singer in the Hall of Fame.

But her dignity and demonstration of the human spirit actually propels her to the top, however short a time.

In her end, her beginning.

Diva she is not.

But Death is not her enemy either. She seems to embrace it like a part of life, in this case, quite fleeting.

It lends new meaning  to each day, each note, and each number she performs.

Now I know where that inner strength was from. From her months of wrestling with the invisible enemy within her.

Like my friend before her who smiled more than I did when we  met for the last time.

And who gave me more advice and care than I could him.

Why does it take that much for someone to wake up, to be more humanized and appreciative of life!

For me, I notice someone’s absence more than their presence. Call it delay reaction.

But in looking back to my now deceased parents, whose DNA definitely stay on in me,  I learn one thing: their time with me when their lives and mine intersected, was a gift. I opened that gift and used it. It’s a one-time thing. Unrepeatable and fully appreciated only by looking back. “Your children live through you”, like a line in the last stanza of Paul Anka‘s Papa.

Life is such a trip that no one seems to get out alive. But while at it, we make the best of that gift, including the gift of music. In Truc Vy’s case, it’s her performance on stage, with voice riding over the loud instruments and clatter of toasting, to reign supreme in a class of its own. No, Truc Vy wasn’t a participant nor winner of the Voice last night. She was perhaps at home, in the countryside, viewing it  on live TV. But at Van’s Cafe, she will always be missed, especially when it’s time for the last set.

A set is not a set without Truc Vy. Please come back to me….in Casablanca or at the Cafe.

 

The bookmark of time

Recently I ran into a childhood friend, member of the band.  Almost 40 years in between.

It were as if I found a cartoon book, with a bookmark which landed me right where we had left off.

We could have been like two kids again, with passion for music and all things jr high.

He recently had cancer and miraculously, escaped death until then. An accomplished professional pianist, he  said he would come back to play in Saigon again.

All of a sudden, those tunes and those faces resurfaced. It’s like buying a ticket to a movie house which shows “Back to the future“.

No wonder movies could say more than any other medium: it got sound, image and mood.

The industry often uses yellowish lighting or black-and-white to denote flashback.

If it were a film, my friend and I certainly were in white and blue uniform, band-rehearsing our piece (3 electric guitars and a drum set).

My years in high school were rush rush. We were witnesses to political upheavals, fast social mores and intense clashes between modernity versus migration.

I remember our shirt collar styles. They kept changing during those years, from being pointy, to being round then Beatles‘ no collar.

The neighborhood tailor’s was doing brisk business.

Music was in Hit Parade, and fashion from Paris Match.

Boys and girls wore shirts so tight that they could be body glove. And those white shirts glowed when the disco lighting flashed on them.

My friend wore a wig when played key board for a Rock and Roll band.

He went pro.

(Ironically, he now needs a wig again with cancer and all).

We have so many unfinished “books” and they all are bookmarked.

The day the 7th fleet marines left a bin at the feet of the gangplank for refugees to drop their weapons before boarding, I also left many bookmarked relationships behind as well.

We call it legacy now. Just a flashback now and then. But one has to move on.

Each day is a new day. New “social network” relationship and connection to be established.

New way of collaboration.

But those memories stay there like books left on the shelves.

With bookmarks, for easy search.

My friend and I opened it right where we left off.

And in my mind, I could still see him with hair, 40 years younger, and a smile that was indelible.

Cancer or no cancer, our camaraderie sticks. Members of the band. Collaboration. Same beat, same tempo.

Many but one. Music dictates. In our case, it was Apache, by the Shadows. Got to go….to Youtube. Try it, you’ll like it.

Maybe it will land you where your own bookmarks were. Even first love, which melts away a hardened heart.

As of this edit, he passed away without another chance to play they Hyatt’s piano in Saigon. But memory of that brief encounter did bring closure to our chapter. Albeit short book.