They’re a genre of ASMR videos that replicate, in sound, places in time: coffeeshops on a rainy afternoon in a crowded city, tea rooms on a date night, a jazz dive at the end of the world.
In my dreams, I’m not on quarantine. I get out more. I do things I didn’t even do before “ECQ.” I was notorious, before quarantine, for turning down any invitation to “hang out” after work hours. In my dreams, I seize every opportunity.
I go on dates, mostly. Yes, the romantic kind. In my dreams there is a never-ending supply of suitable (and suitably faceless) male companions to meet for coffee or else take me out to dinner. With the ASMR ringing in my ears, I create a sort of low-cost San Junipero: Heaven is a place in my subconscious.
In my head, I’m a lot more confident and put together than I think I have any right to be. My red-lipped smile is always catlike over a cup of coffee or a cocktail. My literal dream-date is always enthralled. I spent loving minutes imagining the minutiae of the outfits I wear for these tête-à-tête: always something that actually exists in my current closet; lately things that would benefit from the corsetry I’ve taken to wearing regularly.
There’s this bar and record store along Ann Siang Road that I liked when I was last in Singapore. It’s called White Label. It serves spam fries and great mojitos and has Miles Davis records I’d buy if I was ever home long enough to get a record player (Yes, despite not “going out much” pre-quarantine, I was somehow rarely ever home).
In my dream, it is a Tuesday, because that’s when they play jazz and open decks. I wear a 1950s-inspired blouse and trousers, my corseted waist emerging temptingly tiny from the high waistband. My hair is a poor approximation of Veronica Lake, but I like it anyway.
It is raining. My date and I rush in under my umbrella. His eyes (though he is faceless, I somehow know he has eyes) widen as he sees the stacks of records. He has been in Singapore for longer than I, but somehow this is the first time he’s ever heard of this place. “It’s quieter than Timbre,” I say, watching his (nonexistent) face register mild confusion, “the Substation? Along Armenian Street? Alley beside the Peranakan Museum?”
I never dream about Manila. My mind turns to the countries I’d planned to see, whose visas (still valid) sit snugly in the pages of the passport it sometimes depresses me to look at. The day before quarantine started, I was notified I could claim my South Korean visa–supposedly for a trip that I’d planned for March 10 to 15–from Travelpros. When I opened it to check, the visa said multiple entry.
That night I fell asleep, crying, to an ASMR video of the Cheonggyecheon Stream. In my dreams, an instrumental of BTS’s Zero O’Clock was playing from someone’s far-off speakers as I slowly made my way through the cold Seoul night. The un-sung lyrics felt like a promise: And you’re going to be happy…
Last night, my date and I have Spam fries and mojitos. We talk about impact start-ups and conscious capitalism and our respective career choices. He asks me how I found this place, and I smile and say that wherever I go, either I find music or it finds me. I play him the first single from someone I met the last time I was in Singapore. I play him my last single. The conversation fades out, like a tape, before I can ask him about his odd hobbies.
I wake up in my bed in a suburb of Metro Manila, to a Google Calendar alarm reminding me of my first video-call of the day.
Post-quarantine, maybe I won’t care so much about my career. Maybe I’ll be a little more irresponsible, a little more like those girls I used to envy back in my agency days: the ones who seemed to fly out every other week to some seat sale destination, coming back with beautiful travel photos and souvenirs. The ones who were effortlessly beautiful, who never seemed to have to try when it came to looks or love or living.
I watch the sky through my window. My officemate reminds us that quarantine will eventually end, and things will change.
Post-quarantine, maybe I’ll be a little bit more like the me in the movies in my mind. I tell myself this in a whisper, hoping it’ll be enough to get me through today.
A/N: Submitted this as an entry to World Nomads’ travel scholarship competition. I didn’t win, but it felt like a piece of travel writing worth sharing.
It’s June. The night is humid, glowing amber in the lights of Armenian Street. I’m twenty-three, and girls much younger than me have done this before—wandered off at night in search of adventure—but I’d always been the “tame” one. At home, they call me tita (aunty), lola (grandma). The girl whose idea of partying is having tea in bed after work.
Certainly not the girl who’d be rounding the corner of a graffiti-covered alley at half-ten at night, the remnants of a sangria buzzing in her blood. But it was my last day in Singapore, and I’d found myself wanting to live a little.
Emphasis on a little. There would be no shared drinks with strangers. Instead, I was looking for new music, and Timbre at The Substation was supposedly the best place to find it.
Back home in Manila, I balanced a responsible, serious job as an agency strat planner with a self-proclaimed “career”—profitability be hanged—as a singer/songwriter for a rock band. When my bandmates heard I was traveling to Singapore, they’d filled my head with stories of underground gigs with inspiring acts. It was this promise that got me to wander a foreign city at the oddest hours of night. I’d tried to find it in Clarke Quay, but the bands there sounded professional when I was looking for raw. A quick Google search for “indie music gigs Singapore” pointed me in the direction of Timbre.
Several attempts at a cab ride later, I’m elbowing my way into the dark, open-air club, dodging a bunch of finance-looking bros nursing beers. I grab a stool near the bar and, just as I catch my balance, there’s that familiar screech of an electric guitar being sound-checked. Then, the mics crackle to life as a raspy mezzo-soprano (just like me) launches into the familiar first line of The Killers’ hit, Mr. Brightside.
Soon, it’s midnight. Though the sangria’s worn off, I might as well be drunk. I’m dancing in my seat, shout-singing along with those finance bros through a series of pop-rock hits. Later, I’ll notice my phone battery is dead. Later, I’ll catch my first ever bus. Later, I’ll huddle, scared, at a deserted taxi stand in a different part of town (How did I get here?!) until an off-duty cab takes pity on me and brings me back to my hotel.
Later, I’ll wonder what possessed me to wander around at night, in an unfamiliar city. But, with rock music blasting from crackling amplifiers, later hardly matters.
For the first time, I’m coming out of my cage, and right now, it feels fine.
Actually, Frankie 