Summer Nights

It's Labor Day, which means summer is coming to a close and fall is on its way.  This summer was one of the best I've ever had.  I thought I'd commemorate Summer of 2010 with a very special blog post.

Summer of 2010 was the summer of....

• E-I-O-U
• Girls' dinners
• The Plush shows
• The Golden Birthday
• "Actually, we're not together anymore...."
• 17th St. Idol
• Pool parties and barbecues
• Salvador at Congress (aka Thursday nights at Congress)
• SB 1070
• Red Wine
• The Bucket List
• Jager
• The Kavorka
• gchat
• Mt. Lemmon climbs
• Monday/80s nights at Congress
• The Swell Season Concert
• Mimosas
• Wrist stamps
• The Rise of the Dude Advisor
• Rug burn
• Concealed weapons
• The Matisyahu concert 
• Sneakers
• Sky Bar Open Mics
• Tots

Feel free to add to the list.  Until next time...peace.

You're Not Just Telling Stories

Months ago I received a phone call from a stranger.  I knew as soon as the man introduced himself why he was calling.  He asked to speak about a matter I thought I'd never have to discuss again on someone else's terms.  When I finally agreed to speak with him in person, I contacted one of my closest friends and expressed how distraught the call made me.  I told her how I was tired of the situation and wondered when the ghosts of my past would finally remain in my past.  She told me something that changed my perspective on the situation: "You've told the story before.  You can tell it again.  You're good at that - Ke'opu the storyteller."

Her words helped me remember how important storytelling had been to me through the winter of 2009 and 2010 - be it songs, fiction, or non-fiction.  It took her words for me to recognize that all the many songs I wrote between October 2009 and April 2010 were telling the stories of everything that had occurred over about a one-year period.  Between October and April the story evolved and so did my songwriting to help deal with everything going on.  And, when both the story and the storytelling was finished, my songwriting again changed.  In fact, I can see a distinct difference in the subject matter and style of the songs I've written since April.

As much as I thought the story of everything that transpired between April 2009 and April 2010 was done, it's become apparent over the last few weeks that I'm still very much affected by it.  I wrote my way through a great of deal of it, hence songs like "Lie to Me," "Worst Enemy," and "I Stand."  I wrote short stories and prose to work through the pain.  I've grown to learn though that there's a little more processing that needs to be done before I can fully close that chapter of my life.

So, what I've decided to do this Fall is work on recording an album telling the story one more time.  It's been a project I've thought about undertaking for a bit but never quite with this focus.  It'll take some time, but I'm hoping it will be worth it to re-work many of the songs that I play most frequently, adding other instruments and revising lyrics and melodies.  Expect to see more blogs about this project as I'm sure the process will yield a great amount of writing material.  I'm nervous.  I'm scared.  I'm really excited.  This is a new chapter in my life that will help turn the page on another.

Oh, the project and album title?  "Nothing Sexual."

Until next time...peace.

Every Plan is a Tiny Prayer to Father Time

Change.  Most people find it difficult.  Difficulty is an understatement when it comes to me and change - try a losing battle where it's better I just sit and take it as a lesson learned.  When change is in the air, my balance is thrown off emotionally and physically.  My body and emotions usually know change is coming before I know consciously. 

Change has characterized a good deal of the last two years of my life and especially the first seven months of this year.  I have it on good authority that it will likely characterize my life for a little while longer.  Instead of just taking the beating, I'm going to try to go for the ride.  Aside from changes in profession, lifestyle, etc., it might even include a change in location (who knows, right?).  So, I took it upon myself to make a Southern Arizona bucket list - things I want to do before I leave Tucson.

Disclaimer: I have spent a great deal of the last 4 years in town experiencing as much of Tucson as I can, so many things quintessentially Tucson are not on here because I've already done them.  Also, list is subject to change.

• Cycle Gates Pass
• Cycle Mt. Lemmon
• Wine tasting in Sonoita
• Horseback riding
• Hike to Romero Pools
• Visit Bisbee
• Visit Tombstone
• Visit the Desert Museum (one more time)
• Eat at The Grill at Hacienda del Sol
• Eat at Janos/J-Bar
• Stay at the J.W. Marriott Starr Pass
• Attend the Tucson Culinary Festival
• Eat at every decently rated restaurant on 4th Ave and in downtown

Until next time...peace!

Something In This Life Has Happened For Me

Note: I share my music readily, but I guard my writing in a steel fort.  So, please be delicate with the following entry.  

So in case you haven't seen the annoyingly prolific posts on facebook, here's the news: I passed the Arizona Bar Exam.  It's significance is more than just a passing grade for me and the countless others who saw their names on the list Friday or even in exams past.  I have known far too many classmates and friends who took that test in the middle of personal, professional, or family crises.  And, I'm proud to say I've seen so many of them succeed in the face of pain.  I'm not sure what the moment meant to those colleagues, but this is what it meant to me:

Passing
by Ke'opu 

     Her heart beat in a frenzy as she saw the black words turn blue.  Her heart had not beat so quickly or loudly since the test itself, or perhaps it had when the battle was in its infancy.  Those were dreadful beats then though; these were beats varied with dread, hope, wonder - though she could not tell which were which.
     She pressed the button and held the phone to her ear as she waited for the page to load.  The phone rang.  Would this be a moment she'd prefer to spend alone or one she'd be happy to have shared?  The phone ran again.  She reminded herself to breathe at least one breath.  The click of the phone told her the moment had come.
     "Congratulations," her mother exclaimed.  She wondered if this was only premature.
     She responded loudly and bitingly, "I never even saw it yet!"  She couldn't believe how inarticulate this moment had rendered her.
     "Well we did!" her mom said with the happiest of tones.  She was bewildered.  Could her mother be so cruel as to lie to her?  Certainly not, but she couldn't scroll fast enough.  She pulled the bar down not enough then too much.  Where was it?  She mumbled while she could hear the excited silence of her mother on the other end of the phone.  Up and down she scrolled.  This moment had not just made her inarticulate; it had made her incapable of functioning.
     Then, she found it.  The longest line on the page.  The only line with a diacritical mark on the page. The only four-named entry on the page.
     "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!" she yelled to her mother over and over again.  And then, when she had asked the question enough times, the tears flowed from her eyes.  She covered her mouth and closed her eyes.  She let the moment engulf her.  She let more pain flow from her.  "I can't believe this," she said more tenderly than her previous words to her mother.
     Memories flashed before her.  The night in her kitchen when she read his dreadful and life-changing words.  The June morning she woke up in his bed knowing life was crumbling all around her.  The day she thought she could hide her pain under a blanket.  The moment she sat between the sharply dressed woman and the man who asked endless questions.  The afternoons she ran away from her problems and studying on two wheels.  The nights she imbibed excessively in a fruitless effort to numb her pain.  The walks she took alone.  The nights she spent broken to pieces in an empty house.  They flashed and then left her.  It was over.  They were gone.  Those people were gone.  That institution was gone.  The pain was subsiding.
     The tears continued to fall and she tried speaking again, but her words were either incoherent or inaudible through them.  "I can't believe this," she said again tenderly.
     She once thought the world was against her.  His cruel and thoughtless words.  Their unnecessary prying into her personal life.  Their relentless pursuit of some crack in her story, in her character.  The exam had simply occurred amidst all of this.  That's not how it should've been.  The exam should've been the center of her life.  They ensured it wasn't.  She had thought it was all punishment for every sin she had committed in the last year.  She thought the world had a vendetta against her.  But, she realized vengeance was a human concept.  The world was actually with her and behind her.
   "I can't believe this," she said once more.  She had said that a number of times in the last year.  This was the first time she said the words though with a smile.


Until next time...peace.

All the Pieces of Me

When we encounter someone or something new, we try to fit them into nice little neat boxes.  We're human (and specifically American); it's what we do.  I consider the ability to approach something new and not try to fit it into a proper little space in our frame of experience a super human strength.  It's our nature or maybe just our thorough conditioning.  We want a label to make things easy.

We don't just do it when we meet someone new (insert related discussion on race).  We also do it with seemingly mundane things.  I, for one, even find myself doing it with my own songs.  Last week for example, someone complimented me on a new song.  As they were trying to distinguish which one they meant, I said "the happy one?"  The song was just days old and still I had already labeled it.

I find myself doing it while writing songs too in a way.  I try o to pin down one of my labels, one of my emotions, one of my states of being, and write about it.  After all, music is about being in the moment and typically I write because of a particularly strong emotion in a specific moment.

The funny thing is that no matter how much I try to label things or put them into nice little boxes I can't.  A song about anger or resilience might have fear or guilt bleed through.  I might write a playful song and feelings of hesitancy or resentment might peek out.  I am apparently not as simple as I'd like to think.  Through writing and songwriting I've come to appreciate more greatly the complexity of human emotions.  It's easy to see how thinking about a single moment can stir feelings of anger, sadness, betrayal, disappointment, and fear.  But, it should be just as easy to look at an experience and feel (then and now upon reflection) simultaneous emotions of pure joy, guilt, regret, elation, fear, and sensuality.  It's that richness of emotiona and expereince that makes human existence so completely enthralling and worth writing and singing about.

And yet, despite understanding and now writing this, I find myself still try to label myself, if only to package who I am for others.  I try to say who I am, find ways and words to define myself.  I come up only with a list of things that I feel define who I am today.  Hopefully you'll see how difficult it is to confine yourself to labeling experiences so simply.  At one or many points in my life I have been any or multiple of the following:

A Hawaiian, a mixed-race person, an academic, an athlete, a singer, a writer, a student, the other woman, a depressive, the abandoned, the leaver, the desired, the desirer, the faithful, a loyal friend, a hopeless romantic, a strong minority woman, a scared little girl, the white-privileged, the impoverished, the spoiled only girl, a daughter, a sister, an aunty, a part of a cohesive (if slightly eccentric) 'ohana, a proud individual, the firecracker, a law student, the victim, the survivor, the short-fused, the girl who likes to smile...and so much more. 

I am, in short, a bit complex.

So you can try as much as you want to label me (I know I've tried), but I have all of these things in some piece of my being.  Every time I try to label myself, I realize that I can't deny one of these truths without denying them all.  I know I'm not the only person out there like this.  But, I think we can all benefit from admitting that we so rarely fit one label.  I know my music does.

Until next time...peace.

I Fought the Law and the Law Won

What do I really want at this point in my life?  The ability to continue making my art and sharing it with others.  "What about that law degree," you might ask.  What about the seven years of post-high education?  What about the close to three years of legal internship?  The sass in me would love to shout "to hell with it!"  But, that's not exactly an accurate exclamation of my feelings.

This time last year, the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at my school asked me "so do you regret it?"  She was of course referring to my decision to go to law school (and stay in law school).  I had to think about it.  Eventually, I told her I didn't regret it.  I told her I thought it was all worth it.  Despite how much of law school upset me and everything that's happened in the last year of my life, I still believe that as truth.

The truth is that the years I have spent since entering law school have given more than an ability to parse legalese.  It helped me find who I am and what I want to do.  My skill set and confidence greatly improved because of the education and training I received.  I learned I could write.  I learned to believe in myself in law school because if I didn't, no one else would.  I learned I was better suited to create rather than master existing procedures.  Funny enough, in law school and my legal internship, I found the artist in me that always lingered beneath the surface.

There was and still is a great deal about law and the legal profession that upsets, saddens, and disappoints me.  I thought repeatedly about giving up law school and even the legal profession in general because of those disappointments.  Thankfully, in the end, I found comfort in a handful of coping mechanisms: distance running and cycling, cooking, writing, and music.  These were my ways not just to escape my disappointments but also to process and deal with them, especially with writing and music.  Interestingly though, because of my legal training (mixed of course with my education in political science, international studies, sociology, social justice, etc.) I approached both my writing and my music in a new way.  When I started writing and making music again, I was a totally different artist than I had ever been...and I liked it.  In my legal training, I learned new methods of organization.  I learned effective and powerful communication.  More importantly though, I learned how I worked best.  I learned the best ways to approach a project that suited me and got the best product out of my abilities.  It really did make a difference.

I'm not sure what life will bring me from here on out.  As much as my legal education and training have transformed me, I am unwilling to submit myself to the profession at this moment in my life.  Over the last few months especially, I have become thoroughly disillusioned and disappointed in the legal profession.  At this point in my life, I'm unable to stomach seeing the very people breaking the spirit of laws be the same people charged with interpreting and enforcing them.  I'm glad I have met a number of current and prospective lawyers who are able to handle the challenge while making a difference.  I'm counting on them to make up for what I can't provide.

Still, while I walk away from the practice of law if only for a few years, I know my life and my abilities are what they have become because of my legal education, my legal training, and my interaction with practicing attorneys (that were often a mixture of great and terrible).  I am thankful for the opportunity I was given almost four years ago to the date to go to the University of Arizona's Law School.  I appreciate everything law school and my legal training have brought into my life, especially the confidence in writing and making music.  You may never see me in the courtroom or in the Bar Association publications, but don't ever say my legal education and training went to waste.  I'm using them to make me happy, and that is what I call a good education.

Until next time...peace.

A Ship in a Bottle Set Sail

The last couple weeks have been rather busy between a trip home to Hawai'i and catching up from the time out-of-state.  But, it was all worth it.  While I was in Hawai'i, I got to meet my beautiful niece who was not even a week old.  Not only was it wonderful to meet her, it also encapsulated the fresh start 2010 has brought me.

Perhaps other years and times in my life have offered me new starts, but in 2010, I finally took advantage of the fresh starts that stood in front of me.  To say 2010 has been a fresh start doesn't quite capture exactly how much has changed in the first three to four months of the year.  I've taken opportunities to change who I worked for and what I do for pay.  I've taken opportunities to meet new people.  I've taken opportunities to experience new things and places.  But, what I've been happiest with was the opportunities I've taken to increase the presence of music and writing in my life.  It's taken a lot of faith and effort, but I think it's been worth it.

A few nights ago I performed a short set at LawLawPalooza, a fundraiser for University of Arizona's International Law Journal.  I played several songs up on O'Malley's stage looking over the crowd.  I felt great up there.  I'm starting to feel more comfortable performing.  I'm starting to have more fun.  I'm starting to love it.  And as much as I loved being up there, the thing I remember best from that night was something a friend said to me as soon as I got off stage.  "What a difference from first year," she remarked.  I responded, "I know!  I was afraid of the world then." 

The changes I have made since the new year have been tremendous.  They're put better into perspective though looking at where I am now compared to where I was just a couple years ago, as my friend mentioned.  In my first year, I got up on that same stage shy and meek - afraid of my own shadow.  Last year I climbed up on that same stage and played a couple of covers and an original I had written years previously.  I remember saying to friends who came last year to see me perform, "I hope you savored that because it's not happening again for another couple years."  And now, I requested the opportunity to play several of my very own originals (written in the last six months) and felt so much more confident and comfortable up on stage than I had any of the previous times.  I even got to announce the EP I had available to purchase and an upcoming show I was playing.  How things have changed.  Truly, what a difference it was.

2010 hasn't been all easy.  In fact, I've had to make some of the most difficult decisions I've ever made since 2010 began.  But, what I can say is that 2010 has been kind enough to offer me a fresh start in so many places in my life that need it.  And most importantly, I have been brave enough to capture the opportunities.  I can only hope the opportunities continue to present themselves.  Even if they don't though, I will be proud of what I have accomplished so far and I will be thankful for everything 2010 has given me.  After all, I've got a great new job and employer, new songs, new gigs, new friends, new stories, new experiences, and a beautiful new niece.  Even if the rest of 2010 is uneventful, my cup will be overflowing with fortune and fresh starts.

Until next time...peace.