The title of this album already existed long before it was supposed to be an album title.
I remember because it was during my Arts period and we made these stained glass designs and taped them against the window for the light to illuminate the colors from the inside of the classroom. I was in the ninth grade. That term can act as both a noun and an adjective; I’ll elaborate later. Distractedly, I was writing at the time and I remember writing a love poem which contained the exact phrase, ‘BELIEVERS TO THE GOLDEN RETRIEVERS’. The phrase, in simple terms, came from a fanatic self who relished in deriving emotions into text. Passively, in all of the events that landed in my life, they all acted as catalysts for the different emotions I sought to convey. Of course beyond the handiwork of the primary emotions and its limited extension to poetic emulation, I always wrote personally; I couldn’t write if it wasn’t something about my own experience. I had to live the emotion before I transfigured it. Whether I was fatefully lucky or extremely hapless I had the privilege of riding in my own emotional rollercoaster, and I don’t mean that in a pretentious demeanor. Consequently, I realized the range of my poems by the time I was ending tenth grade. Emotionally, each grade was versatile and had their own niches and marks to my life. There was no denying the indifference among them, either to the sheer influence of the people around me or to the circumstances that I was looping in and out of. As a result, my older poems had been saturated with ups and downs and the intricacies I needed to lose the weight of. It was COMPLICATED. But it was my art. I was exposed by the idea that I could sit in with my poems and quietly admire them.
Aesthetically, Believers To The Golden Retrievers came to be one of my favorite phrases, but that was not the only reason it became my album title. Reluctantly, I had once tried to sit with the idea that after the chaos, I could fully transition into a spotless life. It worked for most of the areas of my life, though left the minority unresolved—but I still persevered. Whenever I think of the phrase, I remember being amidst the peace of just writing when the world has stopped probing at you with either a pillow or a fork. It became a middle ground where my words took over instead. Now that I have moved up, I had more than enough time to reflect upon my past experiences and emotions. Structurally, I only highlighted a few key checkpoints of my life that garnered more fervor than otherwise in figurative subtleties; on the surface level I intended this to be enriched with storytelling and entertainment—without the blatant intrusion of injecting my personal elements—about themes of knowledge, faith, and hope. I basically crept into a very experimental ground where I played with different styles and figurative language distinctive from my past works. This is my gift to my Junior High self, and my contribution to the growing community of young Filipino poetry. Thanks for reading! ~
May 22
May 22, 2026 at 4:05 AM UTC
The title of this album already existed long before it was supposed to be an album title.
I remember because it was during my Arts period and we made these stained glass designs and taped them against the window for the light to illuminate the colors from the inside of the classroom. I was in the ninth grade. That term can act as both a noun and an adjective; I’ll elaborate later. Distractedly, I was writing at the time and I remember writing a love poem which contained the exact phrase, ‘BELIEVERS TO THE GOLDEN RETRIEVERS’. The phrase, in simple terms, came from a fanatic self who relished in deriving emotions into text. Passively, in all of the events that landed in my life, they all acted as catalysts for the different emotions I sought to convey. Of course beyond the handiwork of the primary emotions and its limited extension to poetic emulation, I always wrote personally; I couldn’t write if it wasn’t something about my own experience. I had to live the emotion before I transfigured it. Whether I was fatefully lucky or extremely hapless I had the privilege of riding in my own emotional rollercoaster, and I don’t mean that in a pretentious demeanor. Consequently, I realized the range of my poems by the time I was ending tenth grade. Emotionally, each grade was versatile and had their own niches and marks to my life. There was no denying the indifference among them, either to the sheer influence of the people around me or to the circumstances that I was looping in and out of. As a result, my older poems had been saturated with ups and downs and the intricacies I needed to lose the weight of. It was COMPLICATED. But it was my art. I was exposed by the idea that I could sit in with my poems and quietly admire them.
Aesthetically, Believers To The Golden Retrievers came to be one of my favorite phrases, but that was not the only reason it became my album title. Reluctantly, I had once tried to sit with the idea that after the chaos, I could fully transition into a spotless life. It worked for most of the areas of my life, though left the minority unresolved—but I still persevered. Whenever I think of the phrase, I remember being amidst the peace of just writing when the world has stopped probing at you with either a pillow or a fork. It became a middle ground where my words took over instead. Now that I have moved up, I had more than enough time to reflect upon my past experiences and emotions. Structurally, I only highlighted a few key checkpoints of my life that garnered more fervor than otherwise in figurative subtleties; on the surface level I intended this to be enriched with storytelling and entertainment—without the blatant intrusion of injecting my personal elements—about themes of knowledge, faith, and hope. I basically crept into a very experimental ground where I played with different styles and figurative language distinctive from my past works. This is my gift to my Junior High self, and my contribution to the growing community of young Filipino poetry. Thanks for reading! ~
