The Comedy of Menace | What will survive of us is love: a Meiday elegiac

What will survive of us is love: a Meiday elegiac

As most of you will have read by now, Mei Bastes has made it official that the last Meiday will be happening on March 10.

Without a doubt, many people will echo my sentiments (and the occasional sentimentality) about the impending loss of a rather enjoyable event to look forward to once every quarter or so. All of us have our own reasons for feeling this way, and let me take this opportunity to share why I feel a slight loss of mirth with the dismounting of this now-seminal musical event. Having been part of a band that has by and large made an uncompromising commitment to creative integrity in all its pursuits, I’ve seen enough disappointments to make me realize and accept the fact that this band will never have an audience large enough to imbue us with any significance in the larger musical context in which we are conscripted. This in retrospect was an easy prelude to a principle I’ve since held: that in those who appraise our musical endeavors, we will have to delight ourselves in the fact that quality can trump quantity.

It seems very odd to be writing about this precept in the context of Meiday, an event which I’ve seen from its small beginnings at the now-defunct Purple Haze bar and Big Sky Mind all the way to the rambunctious parties she’s held at Cubao X and The Collective. For most people who’ve gone to Meiday only in the last year or so, it’s the intimidating size of the crowd that manages to capture the mind both at the point of first impression and that of post-party recollection. While I will argue that Meiday was able to broker that divide between quality and quantity, that aspect of it now appears to me as mere minutiae. What must be remembered of Meiday is that it was a genuine expression for the love of music that is so rarely seen in this age where taste is as fleeting and volatile as the medium modern music is imprinted onto. What is astounding about Mei’s brainchild is that in spite of its unprofitability, (as well as the cost it has incurred on her health) it has never lost sight of that core principle all the way to its end, which we are about to see in a few weeks. Such dedication is precious and while she confesses that it will remain with her after the party has ended, the absence of the shows we’ve come to love and look forward to playing and attending will inevitably leave a gaping Meiday-shaped hole in the hearts of musicians who’ve found a venue where people come not merely to consume, but instead to appreciate, appraise and imbibe the music presented to them.

In the last Meiday show that the Purplechickens played, I uttered a tribute to the woman (who was going through a medical condition that forced her to be sober that night and compelled other production groups to mount the fundraiser for her) whom I felt and still feel grateful to for giving my band the opportunity to share its music to people who genuinely cared about it. I have no shame in saying it again (and feel compelled to do so anyway, since my diction appears to have mangled it that night). Here it is, and I ask you to be lenient with my imperfect memory: thank you for providing a space for us to play, and sharing the love for music that comes so rarely these days. I doff my hat to you, ma’am.

Speaking of love, I am reminded of the vertiginous line that ends Philip Larkin’s The Arundel Tombs: what will survive of us is love. The last show Mei will be mounting for this inimitable contribution to music seems to me a perfect parallel to this lovely fragment of post-war verse. Reading the poem, one is easily cornered into discerning a very important differentiation in light of Meiday’s last outing: things of value and significance often do not terminally punctuate their lives with a grave, but with a monument.