When people ask me why I love Italy so much, I don’t say that it’s because of the landmarks. To say that I love something about a place without having truly experienced it yet would be akin to saying that I enjoyed a novel without having read it yet. I have never been to Italy, so I do not know yet how severely tilted the Leaning Tower of Pisa is, and if I went by sources like Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” and considered them believable, I could right away believe those juicy things can happen at the Roman Coliseum, in a century past the era of gladiators, because I really have never been there or seen the place for myself. Although I have seen Venetian masks and Murano glass sculptures around, not once have I witnessed an actual festival at Venice or seen real craftsmen do their craft in real life. However, I love Italy because I have listened to its music, which has allowed me to experience the world of gelato and hand gestures in many ways unforgettable. Whether it is in listening to music from CDs or collecting money from multiple benefactors just to be able to watch an Andrea Bocelli concert, this music has done more than affect me on an emotional level. Ever since I fell in love with the sound of the Italian language when I listened to “The Prayer” for the first time at a wedding reception, it became the star that my wandering ship recognized and followed to shore whenever it seemed to lose its way.

When I was thirteen, I found my dad’s collection of Andrea Bocelli CDs, dusty and discarded, some barely touched and others unopened. It was also around that time that I started dabbling in Italian phrases and vocabulary words after discovering Il Volo through the duet of Gianluca Ginoble and Charice Pempengco in an Italian TV show called Ti Lascio Una Canzone. I wanted to study this language so badly after hearing how good the words sounded to the melody, to better understand the Italian lyrics. “Every word in Italian is a truffle,” said Elizabeth in the movie Eat Pray Love, and I always agreed. I printed out the lyrics to their song “Vivo Per Lei” and studied it, carefully listening to the singers’ diction and writing down pronunciation guides in pencil. As soon as my tongue had gotten comfortable singing in this language, I moved from one song to another until a performance-worthy repertoire was formed. I sang Italian songs to my classmates and in talent shows. From once a shy and reserved child, being able to sing in Italian gave me the confidence I needed to become more sociable and outspoken. It became the unique talent I could easily perform in public without having to feel insecure or embarrassed. 

At fifteen, while everybody else danced and bobbed their heads to the rhythms of pop, rock, and hip hop, I was hungry for opera and I wanted to sing opera. My playlist did not just include songs from everybody’s favorite high school bands. Since I discovered singers like Eros Ramazzotti, Marco Masini, Gerardina Trovato, Laura Pausini, and some of the younger singers that appeared in Ti Lascio Una Canzone or had newly launched their songs or albums at that time, my playlist had a diversity of genres of a common language: Italian. Any song in Italian with a melody that captivated me already mesmerized me and I listened to it, sometimes even going as far as memorizing it, just for the sake of “absorbing as much Italian as I can.”

Years later, I went back to the discarded pile of CDs and found Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, The Three Tenors In Concert, Placido Domingo albums, and other such albums that had the word “opera” written on the cover. I listened to all of these and felt what Jacques Lacan might have meant by the French word “jouissance” or “intellectual bliss.” From Il Volo to Andrea Bocelli, to the cinematic music of Ennio Morricone and to opera, my playlist has become an ongoing record of my growth as a listener and as a musician.

My eight-year love affair with Italian music has given me the ability to think and feel in a language far different from my own, expanding my world and my limits far past the limits of my younger, much smaller world. When the time came for me to choose what I wanted to take as my major in college, without a doubt I chose literature. As I developed a love for written works in high school, there was also Italian music which I spent most of my “thinking years” listening to.

I owe much of my influence as a poet to Italian music, particularly opera and pop opera because it has helped awakened my sensibilities as a poet at an early age and has helped me develop a sensitivity for the sound of words and the music of poetry. The days I spent poring over the lyrics on the CD pamphlets, studying the music, and studying the language, has led to decisions that would change my life forever. Italy, for the sake of its music, is “somewhere I have never travelled” which I know would be “gladly beyond any experience” for me.

When people ask me why I love Italy so much, I tell them that it’s not just because of the landmarks or even the food. Because I have never been to Italy, this makes my reason even more interesting—a reason which is mine and mine alone. The most detailed personal stories are often the hardest to tell or even summarize, but when I give them a hint by showing them my playlist, they also get an idea why I take voice lessons, joined DLSU Chorale, and plan to major in voice next as a second degree.