The Paradox of the Rock Goddess By Ginny MataPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 08:28:00 02/15/2009
Photography by the amazing Wawi Navarroza
LAST New Year’s day, 32-year-old Anabel Bosch was spending the afternoon watching TV with her boyfriend Reg and her 11-year-old daughter Mishka. It was a lazy day, one that she so deserved, after working long hours over the holiday break and even on Christmas day itself.
Her life loomed large before her: everything that she had been working for in the past year would finally come to fruition in 2009—the new apartment, her recent promotion, planned trips out of town with her beloved, her family and friends…
A few hours later, she was unconscious in the ER, the right side of her brain heavy with clotted blood. She would never wake up again.
For those who knew her, Anabel was the ultimate Rock Goddess. In everything she did, she sought to express herself and her many passions through music and poetry.
Having grown up in the Bosch compound in the 1980s, she attributed her early start in art and music to her uncle, the veritable counter-culture hippie icon of Manila also known as the “guru of Ermita,” Pepito Bosch. Hers was a rather unconventional childhood, to say the least. Her uncle liked to surround himself with artists, philosophers, writers and musicians of the time, among them visual artists BenCab and Roberto Villanueva, filmmakers Butch Perez and Peque Gallaga, and writer Krip Yuson. It was in the company of people like these that Anabel learned to appreciate all forms of art, and to become open to all the possibilities that the universe had to offer.
By the age of 13, Anabel was already singing for big bands like Cocojam. As she got older, she moved on to other bands like Tropical Depression, Spy, Elektrikoolaid, and finally, Analog. Together with guitarist Ian Umali and her best friend and fellow musician Romina A. Diaz, she co-wrote and recorded a series of yet unreleased songs called “The Dizzy Project” in March 2003.
Says Sammy Asuncion, front man of the Franco-Filipino rock group Spy, for which Anabel sang in the late 1990s: “Anabel was a real rocker through and through. It was her attitude, her motto, her very spirit.” Her long-time friend, music producer and photographer Wam Molina describes her voice as “rough yet ethereal, sweet, sad, and sophisticated.” Local guitar legend Wally Gonzalez of the Juan De La Cruz Band, with whom Anabel often performed, adds: “No one was like her. When you heard her voice, when you saw her on stage, you knew it was her. She was one of a kind.”
Indeed, the first time I saw Anabel perform onstage, my hackles stood on end. When she sang, she turned her body inside out, making herself the center of gravity in the room and transcending form: becoming child, lioness, temptress, angel, mother, daughter, sister, all at the same time.
We were an unlikely pair: Anabel Bosch, the brash, sexy rock star, and Ginny Mata, the clumsy, bookish writer, but strangely enough, we made sense.
Like me, she was, at her very core, a lover of words in a way that gave shape and sense to the world. And over time, thanks to her, I discovered that I had some of that strength and swagger in me as well. She knew this from the very beginning before I myself became aware of it, and she wrote about our funny friendship in her blog (http://dizzychick76.multiply.com):
She writes: “When we walk around a mall or sit together, people throw us funny looks. Curiosity must be killing them. There I am, in some tiny tank top with my numerous tattoos on display, black eyeliner, nose ring, chain-smoking Marlboros, and there’s Ginny, in her pretty blouse, fresh-faced beauty and honest eyes, sucking on her asthma inhaler. Me with a beer, (she) with her bottle of water. I look like some biker chick, the bad girl, and she looks like the poster child for the ’good girl.’ Not that looks are that deceiving; she is a good girl, but I know there is an evil glint in her eye from time to time. And I’m not bad, I’m just inked that way.”
Anabel loved getting tattoos, even claiming that she felt sexual ecstasy while having color drilled into her skin. Yet for some reason, she feared getting injections in doctors’ clinics and hospitals. The thought of undergoing a simple blood test scared her out of her wits, but she actually looked forward to having entire parts of her body tattooed.
Starting when she was 15, Anabel marked the most important events and changes in her life with symbols and images on her skin. The first one was that of a gecko, drawn crawling up her lower back, which represented the tuko (lizard) in the garden of the Bosch compound, “(which) kept her company through her pre-adolescent turmoil.” Over the years, the rest followed: delicate curlicues on the inside of her wrists, a sun-crescent moon on her left arm, butterflies on her right forearm and her left ankle, a small devil etched in red and gold at the base of her nape, and a small, mischievous fairy fluttering just above her bosom. Finally, there were the wings she became known for, the solid blue angel wings spread across her entire back.
Yet unlike other goddesses whose wings are simply given to them, Anabel had to earn hers. And how! For most of her life, she had to fight to earn the respect of her elders and her contemporaries, to overcome agoraphobia and severe panic disorder, and find a literal and proverbial home of her own.
Anabel took not only to music, but also to writing, like a swan to water. Her mother Evelyn Bosch, who herself did major production work for many years, and from whom she learned the basics of the business, says: “(Anabel) grew up to become a rock star, yes, but more than that, she was a real critical thinker; she questioned so many things, yet she sought the answers on her own.”
Anabel began writing volumes and volumes of journals when she was 12 or 13. Poetry came easily to her, which she then poured into the songs she would write with the musicians that she hung out with at the Bosch compound, like Sammy Asuncion, Rolly Maligad, and Jun Lopito. “She wrote very fast, and very well,” says Sammy, “we’d just sit on the front porch, and within one afternoon, we’d already finish a good song.”
One of her closest friends, American journalist and documentary filmmaker Nancy Collins, who has known Anabel for many years, explains: “In my line of work, I’ve met many brilliant, amazing people, but I can honestly say with complete conviction that Anabel was one of the most selfless, insightful, and perceptive people I have known. She gave of herself so much that it hurt her. She could cut through the BS, get to the heart of the problem and find solutions right away.”
Strange to think, then, that Anabel could easily do this for other people, but rarely for herself, save for the last few years of her all-too-brief life.
I became close to Anabel towards the end of December 2006: at the time, her seven-year marriage to theater actor Jamie Wilson had just ended, so she had to decide how she was going to survive, and take care of her daughter, 11-year-old Mishaela (Mishka).
Prior to this, Anabel had also only recently recovered from the extreme agoraphobia brought on by her severe panic disorder. With the help of her good friend Apa Ongpin, she was able to find psychiatric help. During the course of her treatment, Kathy Chua Chiaco brought over tattoo artist Martin Caoile to her house, where the famed wings began to form on her back. The tattoo was completed after a month and a half of work. “I wanted to fly, to not be held down anymore,” Anabel had said. Coincidentally (or not), on the night the tattoo was finally finished, she made it out of her house for the first time in four years.
She wrote about this disorder in her blog, a few months before her death: “For four years, I was unable to work, unable to go out for even the most mundane of things, like grocery shopping or bringing my daughter to school. I felt so completely, absolutely alone. My closest friends know what those years were like for me. I was almost 30 when I made it back out into the world (no small feat) and I really don’t want to go back into that dark place. So I struggle. I fight it.”
And fight it she did.
After her separation from Jamie, Anabel needed to build her life from the ground up. She moved back into the Bosch compound in Pasay, where she was able to re-establish strong bonds with her family, particularly with her mother and her sisters Nadine and Marlies. And eventually, when she least expected it, she also found love again, with photographer and Oarhouse co-owner Reg Hernandez.
Finding a job, on the other hand, was a different matter altogether: a four-year hiatus from the workforce simply did not look good on one’s resume. Several months passed, with her doing freelance projects and writing gigs in the interim, before she was able to land a stable, well-paying job as a writer and researcher for a US-managed data mining company in Manila.
Grateful for the work, she put in 10 to 12 hour days to meet (and exceed) her quota and produce high quality output, going so far as to give up precious sleep as well as much-needed time for herself. Much to her chagrin, she also had to stop doing gigs with her band Analog to be able to focus on her work. Within a year, she rose to the top to become editor-in-chief of the firm.
The money she was earning afforded her the opportunity to move into a place of her own with Mishka. It was the first step towards achieving her cherished dream of home. Proud and excited, in the thick of setting up her kitchen (even hugging her brand new refrigerator in sheer gratitude), carefully choosing sheets for her beds, and painting her walls, she wrote to us: “I can’t wait to show you my apartment when it’s done … almost there, folks, almost there.”
Unfortunately, she was never able to finish it.
In the afternoon of January 1, 2009, Anabel suffered from massive intra-cerebral hemorrhage. After a successful surgery and after initial signs of improvement, her condition gradually deteriorated. Ten days later, in the early morning of January 11, she passed away quietly.
Ever the rock goddess Anabel chose to fly away when the moon was literally at its biggest and brightest this year. It was also the same night that her young daughter Mishka had her first-ever major ’gig,’ backed up by no less than the legendary Blue Rats, at a benefit show held for Anabel at Hobbit House. She sang ’War,’ the song her mother had written for her all those years ago as part of the Dizzy Project, when she was still agoraphobic and unable to leave her house: “Oh child, survive this / Oh child, be strong / Oh child, remind them / that every war is wrong / With you, let peace live on.”
When news about her illness broke out, Anabel’s friends from far and wide converged to help raise funds for her medical treatment. Her fellow musicians put together simultaneous benefit gigs for her, and everyone from Rock Ed Philippines to Romancing Venus to DRT productions to small, independent groups of friends acting on their own staged such shows at venues like TEN 02, Saguijo, Club Dredd, 19 East, Conspiracy, Route 196, among others.
The morning after the very first benefit show at Big Sky Mind on January 3, co-owner Shari Villa found a note taped to the door of the bar: “I don’t know her personally, yet her impact on me has remained since the first time I saw her at the Verve in Malate with Spy. I learned there was a benefit concert for this lady I admire so much. I wish her well.”
There was no signature, nor was there any name written on it, but attached to the note was a P1,000 bill, which helped raise the total amount collected at Big Sky’s fundraiser to P75,520.
Even after Anabel’s passing, such kindnesses still persist, like cool rain after a long drought. On the very night she was admitted into the ICU, I created a support group page on Facebook for her, to draw critical mass in a more organized fashion: within three days, more than a thousand people had signed up for it. Now, it has over 2,100 members. Hundreds of people from all over the world write to us, many of them strangers who have never even met Anabel, telling us how much they have been affected by her phoenix-like spirit, her amazing story, and our love.
Anabel, who for so long felt alone, was now anything but. She would have been 33 last January 25, yet for us, she is not absent. She is ever present in all things: in the air, the stars, the sun, the moon she so adored. As Wally so aptly put it, “for sure, she is rocking it out in heaven, with Billie and Janis and all the rest of the rock gods and goddesses.”
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