It’s true that my voice teacher permeates most of my posts in the last few months. When you have someone in your life like that and then have them leave you suddenly only to intensify their role in your life, a few things happen. One is that it’s humbling. Another is that you feel very cell in your body feel the tremors of what you thought was mourning, to what the Universe is trying to tell you. Edgardo Crisol made my year. He might have made my life. I will keep talking and writing about him ultimately because I love him and I miss him. A loss like that can never settle. A loss like this has never given me more hope.

I laughed the day he died. It was a laugh that could not have come from a better judgment that knew why. The phone call bringing the news felt strange. The ring of the telephone itself sounded ominous. My brother who brought the phone to me was somber, like he was carrying the relic of a saint. Micko was one the line.

Micko was euphemistic, and had barely recovered from the news he was about to bring. “Sir Dodo is no longer with us.” I listened through Micko’s euphemism. And then, breaking through these words, I laughed. My mind wondered that I didn’t cry. I stopped laughing to think of something else to say, but I laughed again. Then these words came out:

“Oh my God. We got him a great time. We got him at a great time.”

Micko was obviously struck. As for me, there was nothing useful to say, except to wonder at the fact that we were supposed to visit him the next day. That his last messages to me were asking about Micko’s plans after my recital, that he had texted “Godspeed.” It felt ominous, this “Godspeed.” He must have meant this for me on my flight to the US but it felt heavier than what I thought it meant.

Then I felt like I woke up.

“Micko,” I said, like an older sister giving out orders.

“I have to give my costumes back to TDS. Tonight. I think I owe it to him to do that.”

I knew I owe it more to myself, but facing the seat of my anger and frustration is something that I’d like him to know. This was how I celebrated his life, by formally closing a chapter of my life and seeing these people for one last time, at the very least appearing civil, happy, if not a tad grateful. “Performance involves a lot of self-confrontation,” Edgardo told me the first day he gave me lessons. So there I was.

I kept it from the theater company that I was leaving for the US. I didn’t talk about it to a lot in spite of having planned it a year prior because I was sure that they would make a big deal out of it, which I didn’t want. Also, I was losing faith in my place there, so I might as well just fade away.

My first lesson with Edgardo discovered my anger issues, and out came a story. A story that spans 5 years of wasted labor, a legitimate reason to be angry. It was a story he understood. He wrinkled his nose, shook his head, sighed, and gasped. It was the issue of all issues that we’d later on talk about concerning me, my life, and, ultimately, how all that affects my technique, how all that is getting in the way of my voice. In an interview, Bobby McFerrin shares that one way to fight temptation is through singing. Edgardo had me sing away my anger so I won’t have to live that way. He had me hit high note after note, using my frustration as leverage until I forgot what it was like to feel frustrated, until all that came out of me was the moment. He’d call out the slightest twitch of my right eyebrow and the weird way I wrinkle the left side of my mouth, recognizing these as anger. He threw songs at me that made use of my angst to bring out the real story of their lyrics. A a result, I broke through all that and even had a recital to show for it. It was the best thing he’s ever made me do and I’m glad that I did it.

Showing up at the theater company’s office was probably a way of strengthening myself against grief while achieving closure. It was a convenient farewell, a formal one that announces my departure because I wouldn’t have any other reason to leave the theater company other than moving away and to New York at that. It was a convenient way to leave, without the mess of shallow pleasantries and fond farewells. Moving away would at least afford that. I was also stuck between a rock and a hard place emotionally. I didn’t want them to know that I had met and lost someone wonderful. At the same time, I didn’t want to them to know that I couldn’t be happier to be seeing them for the last time because I couldn’t care any less about them anymore. 

Later, we left the office and Micko and I went to Ria’s house for margarita’s. She invited us earlier that week and it still boggles me how all this fell into place in one day. I didn’t know if I wanted to tell Ria and Aria that Edgardo had died. Two rounds of margaritas later, I announced that Edgardo had died and they seemed more struck than we were. In fact, people we broke this news to were more shocked than Micko and I were.

Months later, I still talk about him. How he found me, how he fixed my voice, how he slanders, how he defends, how he complains, how he jokes, how he teaches, how he listens. He really was all that and he still affects how I think and live, an influence that I do not expect to fade. I talk to new friends about him, but I forget to tell them about the day he died. How his death armed me for slaying the demons anger and frustration. How he strengthened my resolve to go back to the start.

Late evening turned into early morning at Ria’s dinner table. After three rounds of margaritas, and probably about 24 hours after his death, the notion that we had wasted 5 years on a dream that ignored us was disproved. The news may have masked the difficulties of me moving away, but his death marked a transition and made us realize how things fall into place.

This was how I grew up. This was how I was made aware of what I could do, arming me for New York, arming me for what many believe I could do. 2011 was like a NASA space shuttle making its re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere with high pressure and high risk. 2012 has landed and it’s going to be great.