Alone with Hootie and the Blowfish

Have you observed that there are certain songs that when you hear it being played, it unexpectedly reminds you of someone, or a place, or an event, or even past emotions in your life? Perhaps it was your first love, or perhaps a painful break-up. Or maybe even your favorite sari-sari store, like when I hear “Tindahan ni Aling Nena” by the Eraserheads.

There is a scientific explanation for this, as music can strongly activates multiple, emotion-heavy areas of the brain – the hippocampus and amygdala – simultaneously. This phenomenon, which is termed as music-evoked autobiographical memory acts like a “time machine,” linking songs to past experiences.

Last weekend, my wife and I were eating at a Vietnamese restaurant here in Iowa, and on the background, they were playing some “old” songs. Then the song “Time” by Hootie and the Blowfish came up. Suddenly I was transported back in “time” – a time before I have my wife and kids – to the summer of 1994.

I had transitioned from the noisy jeepney-laden streets of Manila, to the charming, quiet town of Morristown, New Jersey. I just began my residency training in Internal Medicine in a hospital which was affiliated with Columbia University. I was supposed to start July 1, 1994, but there was a delay in the processing of my visa at the US embassy in Manila, so I did not come to the US until after July 4th. I just chalked it up that perhaps it got caught in traffic in Ermita.

It helped that the Chief Resident of the Internal Medicine program was a Filipino, who also graduated from the same flood-prone university in España Boulevard where I came from, the University of Santo Tomas. He helped arrange my rotations that it did not impact me that much even though I was late in starting. Who else would help us when we are in a foreign land but a fellow countryman, right?

There were more than 50 post-graduate residents in that hospital, training in different specialties of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Emergency Medicine, and Surgery. Out of all those residents, 4 of us were Filipinos.

Since I did not have time to look for an apartment before starting my training, I was fortunate that I had another kababayan who came to my rescue, whom I just met when I came to New Jersey. He was a graduate of University of the Philippines, a “rival” school, and was in his second year of training. But he did not treat me as a rival but as a family, as he allowed me to crash in his apartment. I stayed with him for a month, until I can get my own place or get enough money which I did not have, to pay for rent.

After getting my first month paycheck, I looked for an apartment that was near the hospital that I could walk to, since I did not have a car. No tricycles or jeepneys in Morristown. It was a good thing that the grocery store and the center of the town was walkable too. There was a Chinese restaurant near the corner of Elm Street, where my apartment was, where I could order take out food. There was a train that I could ride if I want to go to another town or city. I rode that train several times to explore New York City, which was about an hour of commute.

Photo above is downtown Morristown now (photo taken from Ryan Dawson real estate).

My first apartment was a studio-type, meaning the bedroom, kitchen, and living space were contained in one single room. I remember that there was a big red stain in the carpet, that the landlord said was left from the previous tenant but they could not get off. Was the stain from red wine? Was it from blood? Was my apartment a site of a crime-scene? I did not care. If I experience a nightmare, well, it was Elm Street! (“Nightmare on Elm Street” was a horror movie in the 1980’s.)

When I moved there, I had only 3 items besides my clothes and books. A sleeping bag (given to me by a classmate who was also in New Jersey), a phone that you connect to a phone jack on the wall (cellphones were not universally available yet), and a flatiron with its ironing board. I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag, and I sat on the floor with my ironing board adjusted to the lowest height as my table – for both studying and eating.

After a couple of months, I was able to buy a table, folding chairs, and a bed. I also bought a small “boombox” so I can listen to the radio, and play cassette tapes and CD’s. A childhood friend from the Philippines mailed me 2 cassette tapes of Eraserheads. Listening to those tapes made me feel that I was still connected to the motherland that I left behind.

Yet I need to live in the present too. So to embrace the reality and the current country I was living in, I bought cassette tapes (CD’s were more expensive) that were recently released by American artists. And that brings us to the music of Hootie and the Blowfish.

One of the music album I got was “Cracked Rear View” from this band whose sound bridges pop, rock, folk, blues, and Southern rock. It was their debut album which was released on July 5, 1994. They were basically unknown when they released this album. It eventually became one of the highest-selling albums in the United States, and also one of the best-selling albums worldwide, with over 20 million units. The most famous songs in this album includes “Hold My Hand,” the Grammy-winning “Let Her Cry,” and the hit “Only Wanna Be With You.” Those songs reverberated in my tiny apartment.

I am not particularly an avid fan of Hootie and the Blowfish, and I did not buy any of their follow-up albums. Yet they filled the void I had, at one certain point in time. In fact, I have not played their music album for a long time now since I moved out of that apartment about 30 years ago. One reason is that I don’t have a cassette player anymore. It was replaced with MP3 players and smart speakers.

However recently, through Spotify, I listened to that particular music album again. I reflected back on the memories – not with a “cracked rear view” but with a very clear rear view – that period in my life were the days were long and the nights were even longer, alone in that Elm Street apartment, consoled and lulled into sleep by Hootie and the Blowfish.

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Here’s the song “I’m Goin’ Home,” which was included in that debut album. Except at that time, it was a wishful thinking, for I was not going home.