We were at the Penguin café in Malate, three days before Christmas, and the bar next door was hosting one of those retro-themed Christmas parties where we could hear employee jollies above the din of the soundtrack.

"Ah-ah-ah-awitin moh, at isasayaw ko-o-o-ohhh!"

While I attempted to demonstrate to actor Ronnie Lazaro the appropriate salsa hand gestures that went with the song, David Byrne strolled into Penguin.

It had taken days of hardboiled text stalking to track Byrne to this particular night, this weirdly congruent spot. It was at the Penguin, after all, where many remember hearing "Psycho Killer" every time they walked into its door during the ‘80s.

And now here he was, dressed in an accountant’s short-sleeved shirt, with pens sticking out his shirt pocket. His hair was a shock of white, while his face was oddly the same as it ever was. He was politely surprised by the decaying vinyl copy of the Talking Heads’ album, Speaking in Tongues, I had whipped out for him to sign. "Oh, wow," he said. I wished I had dug up my all time favorite, Remain in Light, in time for the meeting. But pal Baba Balce had given me barely 15 minutes to get ready before whizzing me off to Malate.

And there we were astounded by his presence, floored by his regularness, the lack of self-mythology-making, and thrilled to our middle-aged marrow that the guy who fronted one of the most influential New York bands during the nascent punk scene during the ‘70s and twin-billed CBGB with the Ramones, who got us all singing "pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa" and "this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no party, this ain’t no fooling around" on the dance floors of On and Rock-Ola once upon a time in a galaxy far far away, and who made sense of dank, pimply lives and lifted the brutal ennui of martial law for us who had to live it, was…there…no, here…just 15 inches away from our fangirl faces.

The Talking Heads were part of the welter of ground-breaking bands that played at the legendary New York punk club, CBGB, during the mid-‘70s. They performed alongside the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith and Blondie. Although many of these bands would later be called punk, Talking Heads didn’t fit the genre. In fact, vocalist Byrne and cohorts Tina Weymouth on bass and Chris Frantz on guitar were products of design school and their demonstrated sensibilities were of the ilk: geeky, Dadaist and quirky, but incredibly funky – as night as the Ramones’ loopy "hey ho, let’s go" lyrics were day.

"We used to complain bitterly that we weren’t punk," Byrne was once quoted as saying. "I think we fitted in because our music was stripped down and unconventional in that it didn’t match any radio formats, so it was a reaction against everything that was going on around us in the commercial music world."

Which, ironically, described the punk ethos as well. The band released around 10 albums and, in spite of their what they called anti-radio music, they managed to mint a few hits including "Psycho Killer," "Life During Wartime," "Once in a Lifetime," and "Burning Down the House." In 1991, David Byrne went solo and made music for movies (Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor), trekked the world and brought back the far-flung music he had heard via his own music label Luaka Bop, and increasingly involved himself in art using Power Point presentations and corporate signages.

David Byrne arrived in Manila on December 17 to research his latest opus, a disco musical about Imelda Marcos called Here Lies Love, in which he collaborates with Fat Boy Slim. He is scheduled to present it this year in Adelaide, Australia, but only as a work in progress, according to one of Byrne’s Manila connections. In fact, Byrne may need to go onstage in Adelaide – wearing the barong he bought for himself in Laoag – to explain why the musical remains unfinished. His eight-day trip to Manila inspired major changes to what he had already laid down, and he mentioned, tantalizingly, a possible return trip to Manila.

And "why that woman again," according to a few locals?

It was after seeing Imelda’s Fifth Avenue digs in New York that Byrne thought of doing the musical. His Manila connection, who begged to go nameless because seeing his name in print triggers esoteric phobias, said that although Byrne believes that the album is dead because downloading has changed the way people get their music, he still wanted to do something "buo, adding visuals, like an opera."

And what could be more operatic than Imelda, one presumes? And using disco as a form, Byrne tells me in Penguin, seems apropos. "Didn’t she have her own disco in her apartment?" Byrne asks. "I always associated Imelda with disco," he adds. As he smoked and quietly answered my small-talk questions about Laoag ("It’s really…interesting," he says smiling) and his forthcoming trip to Leyte, we look at the wall in front of us where an artwork that hangs in an ornate gilded frame reads "Excess."

"His original idea was a musical on the court of Haile Selassie," said the nameless Manila connection. "It would mix politics and fantasy." Selassie, exiled emperor of Ethiopia, is deified by Rastafarians.

"I guess he didn’t go through with it because he’d have to write…reggae."

According to actor Joel Torre, who was contacted by Byrne’s Pinoy friend in New York to help jump start Byrne in Manila and who hosted an evening of chicken inasal at his roadside grillery in Gilmore together with writer Krip Yuson, director Butch Perez and actor Ronnie Lazaro, Byrne himself made all of his travel arrangements. He booked himself into the dubiously-starred (though strangely appropriate) Aloha Hotel where at night he would hear the note-perfect rendition of cover bands performing on the Roxas Boulevard Baywalk.

He was dissuaded from bringing his folding bike to Manila but he did so anyway, bravely pedaling through Binondo ("a great place for walking, and for and buying fruits, vegetables, washcloths, bootleg CDs and DVDs, Christmas gifts (at this time of year,) fresh fish, medicines — anything that can be displayed stacked in little piles on wooden tables," Byrne writes in his online journal at www.davidbyrne.com) and Makati ("Biking here is not always easy — there are no bike lanes as there are on the bayshore and the fumes from the jeepneys and motorized tricycles are overwhelming").

In Batac, he pondered the mythological symbols surrounding the waxy remains of Ferdinand Marcos. In Laoag, he sang "Joy to the World" along with a bunch of carolers. In a neighborhood in Laoag called Discolandia, he found himself inside a club in the middle of the day, staring into a corkboard pinned with photos of smiling nubile things. In Vigan, he wondered how he could make bibingka in New York City sans banana leaves. In Leyte, over the hotel lunch buffet, he observed a few patrons singing along an endless loop of what sounded like Tom Jones doing "Climb Every Mountain."

"I hope also to catch and absorb some whiff of the Philippine ethos, sensibility and awareness — by osmosis — and by conversation, too," Byrne wrote of his trip. "I believe that politics is an expression of the landscape — the streets, eroticism and hum-drum lives — as much it is of backrooms, ideologies and legislature. Geography, religion, sex, weather, music, food — these all contribute to a national policy and how it functions."

While he may have taken a whole lot of weirdness with him from the Philippines ("his view seems that of an anthropologist from Mars; and he’s completely unshockable," said the Manila connection), a lucky few also had their stories to tell.

Byrne was brought to a videoke place unannounced where caterer and occasional production assistant Marta Lovina was with a group of friends. There was a collective gasp when Byrne strode in, said Marta, who promptly "made a fool of myself in front of him" when she sang a karaoke version of "Burning Down the House." Byrne was surprised the song was actually on file, but declined to sing it, swigging his pale pilsen instead and allowing Marta her weird phrasing.

"It was surreal," said Byrne’s Manila connection, as the track’s accompanying video showed a man dancing in front of a…burning house, while Byrne himself watched.

"What he actually liked were the intermission beats," Marta said, "you know when the machine looks for the song you like and there’s this rhythm going. He was actually grooving to it and asked what song it was!" When Marta explained it was simply filler, Byrne said, "I like it; it’s really high-tech."

Then there’s writer Eric Caruncho who met Byrne at his hotel and gave him a few copies of the book he wrote, Punks, Poets and Poseurs. Our Manila connection also said Eric gave Byrne two DVDs containing "maybe one week’s worth of Pinoy music—everything from Juan de la Cruz, to Asin to the Eraserheads. Punung-puno talaga."

"Told him (the album) remain in light got me through d 80s," Eric texts, "and that I lobbied to get ‘dirty old town’ adopted as manilas theme song. Tawa lang sya."

While I had Byrne sign my album that night in Penguin, Baba had the better deal. Ripping a sheet of black paper from her notebook, she wrote in silver ink: "Hi David Byrne. My name is Baba Balce. Please draw here." And left half of the page empty for Byrne to scribble on.

When Byrne handed her back the sheet of paper, he had drawn the word HERE in block letters, the word zooming out like Superman in 3-D.

"It’s so you," she said. Byrne laughed.

As he strode out alone into the Malate night, he passed Jimi Hendrix the doorman still on

duty next door.