At 60, OPM icon Raymond Lauchengco adds a new title to his name — author. The singer-actor, painter, and concert director officially launched his debut book, Dance With The Wind on 12 December at Breakfast at Antonio’s in Robinsons Magnolia. The volume, spanning over a hundred pages, gathers his essays, reflections, short stories, personal photographs, and images of artworks he created during the long months of pandemic isolation.

For Lauchengco, the book was never part of a plan. It began in a moment of personal crisis. “One day I woke up and realized everything was pretty much gone,” he said in an interview with Daily Tribune. “As far as I was concerned, it was as if the world had broken.”

In a matter of weeks, his sister had been rushed to the ER, his wife diagnosed with COVID, his father died of a stroke, and all his work bookings were canceled. “I honestly felt very, very scared,” he recalled. “I felt like a pressure cooker that was going to explode. And then something in my head said, ‘Go outside, make something.’”

He did just that — with whatever he had on hand: “a hammer, a saw, a couple of old rusty chisels.” It became a daily ritual. “I started to make art. I did it because I needed to keep myself positive and productive,” he said. “Every day I would work, and every day I would try to write. The pandemic became so quiet — you could hear your innermost thoughts.”

Those reflections eventually took shape on paper. “Little did I know that one day, it would turn into a book,” Lauchengco said.

The writing came almost effortlessly. “To tell you the truth, it feels like most of this just wrote itself,” he said. “I’ve written before — scripts for events, captions for social media — but never to this degree. I never enjoyed using words so much.” What began as a personal exercise in optimism became something larger. “I wrote to inspire myself… to think more positively. That it started to resonate with other people became a bonus.”

Lauchengco said he had written more than a hundred pieces — essays, stories, and poems — before he and his editor carefully curated which ones would make it into the final book.

“We wanted somebody from the outside looking in to help us discern what could be meaningful to others,” he explained. “Because it cannot be that I’m the only one who understands — what’s the point of that?”

The title Dance With The Wind, he revealed, comes from one of his earliest stories. “It’s about a little boy who goes on top of a hill and sees a tree that’s misshapen and leaning toward the cliff,” he said. “He notices that all the other trees have been knocked down. So he asks the tree, ‘How come you’re still standing? The wind here is so strong.’ And the tree says, ‘The reason why I’m still standing is because I have learned to dance with the wind. Instead of fighting it, I’ve learned to embrace it.’”

For Lauchengco, the metaphor captures the essence of resilience. “That’s the point of the story — learning to embrace the things that you cannot tame.”

Releasing the book — his first — has been a humbling experience. “It’s something I still can’t believe,” he admitted. “If somebody had told me that one day, when I’m 60 years old, I’m going to release a book, I would have laughed. But it just goes to show — there’s no deadline, no age limit to seeing your dreams come true at any stage of life.”

He hopes Dance With The Wind will remind readers of what they discovered about themselves during the pandemic. “It was a terrible time — awful,” he said. “But there was something beautiful that came out of it. When our backs are against the wall, we discover so much within ourselves.”

“Everyone became something new — a poet, a baker, a plantito or plantita. We found things we wouldn’t have had time for otherwise,” he added. “I just want this book to be a reminder — first, an inspiration; and second, a reminder of the incredible strength we have as human beings. As long as we do not lose hope, we will always find a way not just to survive, but to thrive.”