Hear My Music

Hey, remember I told you I'm still learning my way 'round the internet, well, I found a way of sharing samples of my music on blog thru www.myspace.com.  Till I learn a better way or if any of you can help me, click on the title above, it'll bring you to my studio and go to (May 2010).

Now you can hear a sampling of Without Papa.... and What Sorrow Is.

See you there.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY Y'ALL! BE SAFE.

On my Dad's 10th Anniversary...

Just came back from church to say mass for my dad's 10th anniversary of his death.  Wish I had offered a special mass for him today but I never got to doing it.  

Sorry, Pa. I bought flowers for you and will have dinner out to celebrate.

Rest in peace, Pa.  I love you.  I miss you.

MY DAD

Today's my Dad's 10th anniversary of his death. I miss him.

Ten years ago, I wrote a piece of music entitled, Without Papa (on Father's Day). It was this song that inspired me to make my debut album, SOCORRO. I had been putting the cd project on and off for so many years until my father died. His death, the first in the family, was utterly devastating. I never knew what GOODBYE was until my father died.

The first special occasion following a death in the family is one of the most painful moments in life. My dad died in May and three weeks later was Father's Day. Next month, July, was his birthday, my birthday, and my brother, Jesse's. On my brother's birthday, about 430am here, I dreamt, it wasn't a dream, it was real, we were talking and I asked him how he felt about papa being gone, especially as both of them were very close. He didn't say anything. Instead, I heard music in my head and these words, "What sorrow is". This was my brother's answer to me. That's how my other composition was created, What Sorrow Is. The following year, my brother died.

GRIEF is deep, silent, it's beyond words...

Fortunately, I express myself best through music and that's how Without Papa (on Father's Day) and What Sorrow is came about that culminated with my debut cd. I decided to put all my energies, transpose all my grief, the pain, and everything, into music. It was 2 years in the making. In the end, it was a triumph of the human spirit!

Yes, grief is deep, silent, unfathomable, yet, as devastating as it is, it is sacred. It is so sacred, it's beautiful, humanly beautiful. There is no way past it but to go through it.

(I wanna share my music with you. I'm still learning to put music in my blog. Until then, you can go to my webpage, www.socorrodecastro.com. You can here a sample of the music there or on www.myspace.com/socorrodecastro. You can download it on iTune or get a ringtone. Or buy the album, SOCORRO, from cdbaby.com or amazon.com. You'll enjoy it. I'm very proud of it. Thanks.)

Aah, the Moon...

Love it when the moon looks through my window at night, as if telling me, "Hi, I just happen to be in your neighborhood. Have a good night."

Thank you, Moon. I love you.  Good night, too.

Fortune Cookie

If you can shape it in your mind

You can find it in your life. -

I like that!  However Confucius said it in Chinese, I like what it means in English.

Joy of the Moment

The joy of the moment
... is in capturing it!

It Always Happens

I was waiting for my yoga class in the room where a french lady was playing classical pieces on the piano. She was there last week, too, doing the same thing. Slowly I realized no one else was coming in and it was past noon. Then of course, today was pilates, Thursday, and class starts later. Oh, well, that's what happens when you don't have a routine.

Anyway, she really enjoyed playing like last week, even when people were coming in and getting ready. I thought some people would start complaining cause the music wasn't particularly pleasing to the ears, especially as some people would like some quiet as they prepared for yoga/pilates. But nobody complained. And when she finished, some even thanked her.

Must be the environment. It's the consciousness. People who do yoga, meditation and the like, seem to have more inner peace, content, compassion, they don't seem to be bothered by little things. Perhaps, if that was somewhere else outside yoga, let's say, it might have been a different story, who knows.

That was nice, though.

'Innocence' Defined

Follow a trail of tiny biscuit crumbs at the gym and you just know there were little children lined up there. There's just something about it - their Innocence!

Aah, Music, Again!

Just came back from Eddie Palmieri and La Perfecta II, Salsa and Latin Jazz Band, at Yoshi's and, yeah, music is such a natural high, who needs drugs?? And I can't understand why even a lot of musicians resort to drugs to get high when music is such a rush, man!! I'm telling you, we, musicians, are so lucky, what else are you searching for? What is it you're looking for? The answer is inside you, man, woman, hey, just look within. Music is waiting to come out of you, let it out! Express yourself. Don't fight. Don't resist. Resistance is one of the biggest roadblocks in life, and if you got it, you are your own one big roadblock! Get out of it! Crush it out of you, and instead, flow. Flow with the music. Flow with the energy. Flow...flow...flow. Dance, dance, dance! Sing, sing, sing! Play, play, play your instrument! Don't stop. Just go with the music. Go with the current...with the rhythm. Feel it. See it. Hear it. Keep going, keep going...I'm with you. I'm with you all the way. Don't stop, keep going, keep going...music is a natural high, I tell you. Non-stop, no limits...go for it, all the way...ALL THE WAY!!

Music is Love and Love is Music.  Luv ya...

On My Parents' Wedding Anniversary

Talked to my mom tonight on the phone and she sounded fine.  Great talking to her.  We kept exchanging our love for each other and she said, "I love you more than you love me."

And I answered, "No, I love you more than you love me."

It kept on and on till she finally said,"You can't love me more cause nobody can beat a mother's love.  A mother's love is the greatest love of all!"

Indeed!  Oh, my sweetest Mother, the greatest mother of all!

I love you so much, Ma.  I'll see you again soon.

Pa, I miss you.  I love you.  You'll be having your 10th anniversary soon. Rest in peace. 

I Love these 2 Sisters!

I was talking to Charrie and Mennie from a great musical family in MNL, on the phone, re: our Global Grand HS Reunion Gala Night Show in July.  While Charrie was concerned about our act for the show, Mennie was already giving me other songs to prepare for an encore!!  

Love your attitude, Mennie!  Don't get me wrong with Charrie.  She's a great singer.  We were HS classmates and we had a singing group then called KIT KATTS and she was one of the lead singers.  But after soooo many years and everybody all spread out globally, really, how do you expect people to get together and rehearse for the show!  Thank God for modern day technology we can practice on our own.  But we still have to meet and rehearse and be sure we're ready for the show.  From the demographics, we'll all probably get together for the first time at the general rehearsal/sound check on the same day of the show. 

Anyway, I enjoyed talking to them on the phone.

Love you, girls.

LOVE

Love is a beautiful thing.

Hey There!

Did I see you in my neighborhood just recently?  We looked eye to eye but we didn't recognize each other, I guess, until I walked past you and wondered , "Is that______?"

Was that you?... Next time, just ring my bell, okay. You know you're most welcome.

Hey, You know What?

Last night I dreamt that a friend won the lottery. She said after 9 1/2 months of playing lotto, she finally won and that she was going to buy a house in the city! Somehow, I felt the dream was real, really real! Something about it felt good, really good! Hope that's a good omen.

BLESSED BE

God, I wished I had a laptop or an i-Pad so I could blog in real time! I'd love to be able to express myself at the moment I feel or experience or witness something like an incident, an event or anything worth writing about or I simply wanna write about.

Was on my way to work this afternoon when I saw a sticker, BLESSED BE, on a dilapidated bus, school bus, perhaps. The bus was so faded, the paint rusty, you couldn't read anything except that sticker at the back. I can't even remember if I saw it moving or stuck in the middle of the street because it was so old. It seemed like it just died. But there was something about the sticker that lit up the whole bus - BLESSED BE, the bus, must be, meaning, "As Is"! I thought that was great! Wish I had a camera, too! (I better delete some stuff on my cell phone so I can take more pictures especially now that I have a blog, 2 blogs.)

I'm not that tech savvy. I know there are ways to mail posts from mobile, etc., I have yet to learn them.

Gosh, all these websites, social networks, URLs, browsers, apps, what else, I can't catch up! When I write on one, I usually copy and paste to the others one at a time, very labor intensive.

Then an old friend, my classmate in college, Susan Ordona, a "socialmediaholic", she calls herself, and I got connected thru linkedin, (I like linkedin!), and one day, she, literally, patiently, walked me thru apps that can send anything I wanna share to all my sites in one snap! We were on the phone for hours, she, in southern CA, and me up here north! Thanks, Susan!

I'm still learning. One time, at an Apple Store, I asked an Apple tech to show me how to shorten posts to send to my links. I gave him a sample. He did it so fast I didn't see what he did. Before I knew it, he was finished. I didn't know that unless I choose which sites I wanna send to, by default it will go to all.

And man, that post, a funny one, too, went to my linkedin! And. I. didn't. like. it. at. all!! Linkedin is business for me. Luckily, it went to my music link, music, being more relaxed, more casual than my other one in science. I removed those apps from my linkedin now.

Anyway, I showed Norman the postits I wrote my story on today cause I didn't have a laptop. And he said, "Allright, I'll give you a notebook."

"A laptop?" and my eyes lit up.

And he said, "No, a pad you can write on."

"I-Pad?"

Right. Nowadays with all these high-tech devices, who needs paper and pen?...Me!

Lil' Stories

The other day, I was teasing Na, our lab assistant, about something she said, and Janet, the assistant lab manager, also teased me, "Socorro, you're a trouble maker."

I answered, "It takes one to know one," and everybody laughed.

A few minutes later, Janet retorted, "All right, Socorro, here's one for you. How will you answer this, 'Socorro, you're very sweet.'"

"Thank you."

AAH, MUSIC!!

MUSIC, the ultimate... uh,... uh,... uh, what? How can you describe something so phenomenal, so magical, so miraculous!

Just came back from a concert downtown of a friend/musician, Bill Ortiz - NeoSoul, R&B and Jazz. Jeff Cressman, another friend/musician, joined in and what an experience! They both play for Santana and the Manny Moka Band.

After a hard day's work, going to a concert and hearing great MUSIC such as this, it IS great!

Music is great and it feels great to be a musician! Music is an experience! It is a journey! It's a universal experience, a universal journey, yet unique to every musician, at whatever levels we're at! There should be no labels for musicians, that we're either amateur or professional, no! We should stop that separation. Every musical experience is personal and deep to each one of us. There are infinite levels of music and musicianship, yes, because we all come from different roots. We all had different beginnings, different places of origin, different times, different ages where, when, how, why music came to our lives. But at the Source, we are all connected, we're not competing. Rather, we are one. That's why we should not be comparing ourselves with others, but only with ourselves and what we've done in the past and what we're doing now.

Music is like life. It IS life! It's a learning process. We learn, we live, we grow, and we keep learning, living and growing, no ending, no beginning...

Music is like love. It IS love, a lifelong experience. No one dictates who we should love and shouldn't. It comes from the heart, from the soul. Whether one is a rock star, a celebrity or a street musician, music comes from within, from our very core. So why distinquish the rich and famous from those who are not? We should just play. We should be playing together. There are no shoulds, no shouldn'ts! Just play. Let's play together.

Music IS music. It is an expression, a language of love, of life, in sounds, in harmony, in symphony, from a child learning his/her first song to the world's greatest classical instrumentalists, rock, jazz bands, concert artists, philharmonic orchestras, choirs, operas and infinite possibilities...

Music is a phenomenon, it's magic, it's a miracle! It is the ultimate... uh,... uh,... Aah, the Ultimate!

ON MOTHER'S DAY

The tenor singer in church today, when he sings AVE MARIA, I get chills all over. He's great! It cuts through, I missed my Mom. Will call her a lil' later.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY !

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

On LIFE

There was a documentary called LIFE on Discovery Channel the other night about plants. And the narrator, (Who else but Oprah!), was saying that while we we marvel at the beauty of autumn, it's really a struggle between life and death for the fallen leaves.

In one of my old posts, I wrote a poem, AUTUMN. But watching that doc made me a little sad and contemplative about the realities of life. There I was writing about my favorite season, describing the spectacular colors of autumn, loving it, by the same token, another form of life was struggling to be alive.

Life is such! Sometimes, happy, sometimes, sad. It's all about opposites - Yin and Yang, life and death, birth and dying, joy and pain, and on and on and on. It's all about relativity or relativism (don't want to sound philosophical here). What's funny for one may not be funny for another. One man's fantasy is another man's reality. But we all move on, every living thing, every living creature, big and small. Life goes on...

Thank Goodness.

Comment on - Why?

I particularly like what one of the interviewees said, "Who you are is really the basis of life more than what you know." - Beautiful!

Why?