Mandy

MANDY

I remember all my life
raining down as cold as ice.
Shadows of a man,
a face through a window cryin' in the night,
the night goes into

Morning just another day;
happy people pass my way.
Looking in their eyes,
I see a memory I never realized
how happy you made me.

Oh Mandy well,
you came and you gave without taking,
but I sent you away.
Oh, Mandy well,
you kissed me and stopped me from shaking,
and I need you today. Oh, Mandy!

I'm standing on the edge of time;
I walked away when love was mine.
Caught up in a world of uphill climbing,
the tears are on my mind
and nothin' is rhyming.

Oh Mandy well,
you came and you gave without taking,
but I sent you away.
Oh, Mandy well,
you kissed me and stopped me from shaking,
and I need you today. Oh, Mandy!

Yesterday's a dream, I face the morning
cryin' on the breeze, the pain is callin'

Oh Mandy well,
you came and you gave without taking,
but I sent you away.
Oh, Mandy well,
you kissed me and stopped me from shaking,
and I need you today

Oh Mandy,
you came and you gave without taking,
but I sent you away.
Oh, Mandy,
you kissed me and stopped me from shaking,
and I need you!

By Barry Manilow

The song is about regrets I guess. About how you don’t realise there’s a good thing going on in your life. Instead, you were blind and slowly the good thing died. And when you regained your sight, it was already too late. Story of our lives, right?

However, I think there’s a distinct difference between regretting and remembering. I remember. But most of the time I wouldn’t have done it any differently. And anyway, the principle of the matter couldn’t be different. I’m wondering now though, with so much uncertainty at the moment, whether I would be making choices I might regret in the future.

Ah, I’m out of focus again. This post isn’t supposed to be about regrets but it is supposed to about sweet memories. Barry Manilow was the singer my then school principal Brother Gerard used as an example of clear, controlled voice projection. Yes, Resurrected was part of an all-boys choir. It was tiring though, we had daily practice in the run-up to competitions and performances.

It was really fun. Can you imagine a bunch of adolescent boys singing an acapella of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Cute, commented the girls ;) and sweet :P In one of the competitions, we sang our hearts out, singing the theme from a De La Salle musical, Rentak 103 (I think that’s the name. It goes like this : Paketi paketi pung, suara gendang bertalu talu….) and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The other song we wanted to try but dropped was an Australian folksong, Sunrise….which has this a real earthy feel to it. We also tried here Have All The Flowers Gone, but we couldn’t do it well enough.

I think we gave the performance of our choir-lives. We lost though, because we didn’t see one of the rules…no movement during the songs….as in walking. We did that for our finale, the De La Salle theme. A lot of people thought we were robbed (that’s not a new thing really in Resurrected’s life but he thrives nevertheless :P)but we have no regrets. Really, it was fun learning how to sing the right way and having such wonderful coaches along the way (Brother Gerard, Raymond Miranda, Mr De Souza, Gerald Toh…I hope I didn’t get any of their names wrong, it was so long ago). Warm up was something nice to learning how to warm up, funny thing that. Makes the voices warm and smooth, and warm bodies too. Never knew singing can use up so much energy. There was so much effort needed and far different from what we’ve experienced before (the choir wasn’t so active before that, have been doing this since primary school). nyhow, we were just amateurs having lots of fun. An enthusiastic bunch. We did good, for a bunch of no-hopers :)

Memorable. I haven’t sung my hearts out for a long time. Just songs in my head now. Wonder if I’ve lost it.