05.08.2008 | 2:51 amCrossroads
(old entry!)
Hey. This entry is out of order & just for me. For the first time in awhile, maybe a year, I feel like I’m at a crossroads again & not sure which path to choose. I have this job interview to be a college professor in 3 days in California on one hand, and then the prospect of just saving money & moving to New Zealand on the other and Going to Hawaii for my PhD? It’s like God is asking me to choose ~ career or love or me? Stability or beautiful chaos?
Hmmm....Part of me is tired of the whirlwind life ~ like physically exhausted ~ like a young plant constantly having to uproot & be replanted. But I think part of me fears being rooted (or stuck) in one place for too long. But I’m not really afraid as much as I want to make sure I choose the right place, a place that will nourish, strengthen and replenish me from the ground up, a place where I feel warm, safe, and secure, and creative, and grounded.
A place by a beautiful sea, near folks who love me for me. I know any place will take adjustment, but where? Aigu. Truth is, I need to have a room of my own, a house, a home of my own more than anything, a space where I can freely dream & create & love & eat & rest without having to worry about disturbing anyone, like a writing residency in my own house, which will become a cozy home.
I guess no matter what, as long as I take time out to enjoy the stars, breathe, sit with my manuscript & my songs, and do my morning rituals, I’ll be okay. Maybe a nightly ritual as well, to close off the day. As for recording & sound engineering & computer & technical stuff, I just need to not be afraid of it, continually learn, revise, and work on that too, and soon it won’t be intimidating. Maybe I need a progress notebook on that too, to build on songs. So what do I need to do now, at this point, to progress further?
Print out the entire manuscript.
Write out list of top 20 Gband songs. Notes.
Clean up beginning & ends & volume levels.
Go thru Protools again, see what can be used.
Go to Apple store, make sure my computer is okay & in working order.
Learn Backup.
Burn disc of top photos, or save online.
Videos ~ post those two videos on myspace.
Learn how to cut Poetry Africa stuff & post.
ps ~ these entries are old! with this & stupid facebook & myspace, i'm living in a strange time warp of my own creation! it's retarded. :) what a weird, surreal, funny life.
anchor
05.06.2008 | 1:45 amend of Feb 2008
Ha! I missed my plane back home. Shit. I’m bummed because of money, and feeling irresponsible, but part of me is tired & wants to rest. I feel grounded here. Lum is my anchor, holding me down when I feel ready to drift out to sea. Maybe this feels like home most to me. Familiar. Relaxed. No need for words. Just us, in our one room, in different worlds. I think he unconsciously stalled & made me miss my plane. I think I knew it, but I didn’t stop him. I think he truly didn’t want me to go, so now I’m here. I feel a little trapped and a little happy, like a bird flitting in a gentle but firm palm, haha. But I have to say, in spite of my financial irresponsibility today, I really feel proud of yesterday. Making peace with his mom, apologizing, hugging ~ coming here to make amends & do right as a woman, to heal ~ mission accomplished! Singing on the beach with lum, how he carved our names into the cave...lumnish...oh love. Sweet madness! I need...nothing else really. I need to take care of my friends, my fam, and business. Be a healer, a little Khosi. I’m late, I’m in training, but I’m coming, I’m coming! I’m coming into my own. Beauty. Womanhood. Truth. Universe, please keep me grounded as I reach for the stars, touch heaven & the divine. Universe, please help me navigate through rough waters, to stay on track, to be happy and fruitful and prosperous and generous and humble and kind, please help me attain and achieve my dreams and be a vessel for your light & love. Sarang, Issilah.
Things to do this week
Send thank you email to Bharat.
Mail contract to Maria Hwang.
Book ticket/United for March 4th tonite.
Pick up tuner from Rodi’s.
Send manuscript back to Ruby, Sat.
heartache
04.29.2008 | 8:02 pmAotearoa, February
Post-splore, pre-Asian Poetry Night
Today my heart aches and I cried all morning. God. Help me please to stay grounded and loving and pure even though I feel weightless and sad and confused. Please help me support my family & loved ones, emotionally & financially through times of struggle, please help me stay grateful and focused on what I need to do to attain my dreams.
Being in New Zealand again is such a heartbreaking, heartwarming experience. On one hand, I feel like I’m constantly having to prove myself, swallow my pride, take little jabs, and reaquaint myself with old friends and strangers, on the other hand, I feel like it’s like coming home. I’m gaining weight, slowing down, seeing friends, haven’t recorded or worked on any music in weeks ~ I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing. It’s giving me a taste of a normal life, and part of me craves it. Homemade yummy commie dinners, videogames, bunnies. Aigu. Where is home? That is the big question. Where will I settle to make my home? Who will be my folks, my community? Where will I raise my family? I feel pulled in 3 directions. I know I carry home in me, I am finally comfortable with my soul, just don’t know how to be there for the handful of people who truly miss me and need me at the same time, when they’re spread all over different parts of the earth.
But one thing, which has been revelatory and surprising and beautiful to discover, is that Love never dies. It changes form, but it Lives. Deepens. Once you water it & nurture it, it blooms again. Tender. Green. Pure. Step away from all the superficiality, the insecurity, the pride, the sadness, and the truth is, I love waking up next to this boy in the morning. My sleep is never so sound as when I’m laying next to him. And my heart is breaking already because I only have 10 more nights in his arms, before I have to leave again, and I can’t think or concentrate on anything else because this grief is so big. Jesus. I miss him already. I miss everyone and everything all the time, because I’m always running. Can’t wait to settle down in my own home and have my folks come to me. Sorry, Reader, I’m useless & nonproductive this week. Need to take a break from ‘art’ to concentrate on life, and nurturing this love, so I can be a good woman to my lover & my family. How to do it all? Universe, Ronan, Khosi, Uma, Oprah, Anais, Buddha, Jesus, Jimi, help me! Please. Sarang & peace.
HW
Help Lum w/ application.
Fix fridge/shopping.
Feedback for Ruby/email.
Check out AER amps at Hobson Street.
Make room on computer! Delete! Make room for new!
Record with Unscene.
Budafist business – myspace, logo, guitar photo Wed.
Collect interviews (RadioNZ), photos, film, birds from Splore.
Send contracts to schools.
Extend ticket.
Set list for Feb 24.
splore!
04.17.2008 | 10:46 pmPost Splore 2008
Aotearoa
Rejoice Rejoice! Madness! Magic! Glitter flying out golden bums! The Butterfly Room! Hillside orchestra pits, unscene, chillin’. Bjorn. Tyra & the Tornados. Soul & sax. Tikki. Kotahitanga. Arohanui and mad respect. Brought your ancestors onstage for the most epic, true-legend songstory I’ve ever experienced. Tikki. Who lent me his guitar stand. Tikki. Who left me humbled & speechless. Liam who found me on a hillside. Lost & found. Yes. Welcome to Splore, a carnival of thick-limbed trees, wispy fairy gypsy hippies twirling poi ribbons, epic Maoris surviving & infiltrating your ears with meaning & culture & sound, luminous, lanky techno-wiz kids creating musical glowsticks & lunarscapes with a keyboard & turntables, mandalas sandy on the Christmas-lit art trail, a sea of bluegrey tents & canopies extending to the cypress-treed horizon, sunburnt, shirtless, smiling kiwis, the fire engine cab truckin’ it up the hill! Skipping & dancing barefoot, tree-climbing, the Wellington Ukelele troupe rocking out to Outkast’s Heyya (perhaps my favorite song of the festival, or ever!) Linh teaching me new poi tricks, singing & almost crying onstage, looking out at the blue sea reciting Jejudo ~
scrambling, drifting,
sinking, swimming,
like a girlfish
or an
angelfish
next to Lum,
a boat-speckled horizon,
bluemountains misted...morning...
hexagonal crystals swimming on the blue tent
as raindrops splatter
and your guitar
sings softly
with the
wet,
dank earth,
& somewhere,
at this lost hour,
a young girl gives birth.
susan
04.11.2008 | 8:33 pmDecember? Tuesday.
Oh. 11th? Nicky’s birthday.
Wow. Wow. I just finished recording 7 of Susan’s songs and 7 of my own and I am floored by so many revelations. For one, how music is definitely an art where you get richer, deeper with time, more sophisticated, and how some people are just gifted with the voices of angels, and that too, comes from grace, comes from love, comes from work, comes from suffering, and not being afraid to show it in song. Also, how good songs can’t be forced, They come from some life force – tragic or beautiful – usually both. Also, what matters in the end, in the book of time? Whether or not Susan makes an album? No! She created those Songs, those beautiful, heartbreaking, sophisticated, lovely, enchantingly sung & strummed Songs. And they will last for eternity, echoing in some distant space where attempts at divinity are recorded, noted, remembered and sung by startled ancestor angels leaning down to hear a whispered Truth. Jesus. That’s why artists are so crazy. Musicians. How to live with this gift, believe in it, when you have to take out garbage, get a job, get your heart broken, try to pay rent and live??? What matters more, next pay check, or next note, next chord, next song??
That’s why I have to learn to record well, for real, if only for myself, so I can have a record of myself at this age, this learning stage, and myself in different stages of my life. It’s like a whole life’s collection of songs that mark different periods, different loves, different interests. My growth & development as an artist & a songwriter. ha! It can only get better from here, I hope! I pray! Please Universe – I know you listen – please let my songs ring with poetry & epic heartbreaking storytelling, let my songs become prayers, fables, dancehall hits, love songs, family songs, soul songs, soulful songs, seoulful songs, hanfilled songs, blues songs, brilliant songs, wind-thru-trees songs, serenity songs, peace songs, anthems, lullabies, positive critical hits, commercial successes, financially viable, not only viable but incredible so I can live off my songs!!! And live well ~ and healthy & happy! And be able to provide for my future generations with my art. Or however the Universe plans, so be it.
Let me be beautiful inside & out during times of hardship, let me be an anchor, a warm kitchen, a butterfly, a hawk, a clearing in the woods, a beach, a breeze, a howl if need be. Aigu. The more I know about life, the more I know it’s uncertain. Anything can happen. Tragedy. Devestation. War. But also Love. Fortune. Adventure. Peace. All I know is I have a choice in how to live my life, to claim it as Mine or not, and the consequences of those choices. I can choose to live free, but too much freedom = no family, not being grounded...I dunno. But also, maybe, development as a musician, like Billie Holiday, traveling with her cast of musician buddies. That’s what I want to do, learn from the greats, but the greats are usually crazy!! How to be around them & not be crazy? Oh, too late for that, my friend. Look at yourself!! What is this life??
People with less talent & intelligence or sensitivity have gotten much further. Just look at Britney. Mandi Moore. But that’s what this world rewards. Doe-eyed dummies! And look at you. You look like one of them, except exoticized. Exoticizing youself, because, that’s still the only way you can get paid as an Asian entertainer, still, these days. We’re not far from those Green Lantern sidekick times, Bruce, nah, sorry, still no one has us appear real in mainstream movies yet (not-evil), or as heroines, except for Mulan, which is cool...maybe I’ll play her one day. Ha. Jesus. Dave Chappelle, you’re right. We have to still get ta dancin’ whether we be n*gger, ch*nk, sp*c in mainstream eyes, we gotta do the do, look cool by epitomizing our street, our country, our swagger, our other-ness, our image, but what about our souls??
That’s the beauty of this time, tho. At least I can decide how to package my own soul. I get to design my own soul’s shirtsleeve. And however it looks or feels, will be a reflection of me. Oh I love art! O my god. It just hit me so hard I had to lay down. That’s what this comes down to...How will my soul look? How will my soul sound? How do I want my soul to sound to the world? What songs, what 10-13 songs will adequately express, tell me life’s journey up to this point? How to capture the soul, the intent, the spirit or each song? What kind of condition does each song require? Catching each song at the right time, right place is a delicate business ~ rather like catching butterflies in a net. O Nabakov. You freak. But are we really that different? Perversely chasing after the beautiful, the impossible, the rare fleeting work of art, and once in a while, through cunning, patience, exhaustion, waiting – catching it! Feeling it pulse in your fingers, this living, precious song ~ then nailing it down, recording it, to keep it forever in one form.
O who are we, crazy artists who feel life to the marrow, how to live & cope & thrive in this world with these strange but nonpractical gifts? We must find a way to touch god, kiss god, be god, and be grateful, humble, human, happy at the same time. Yes. We are blessed. Let us remember. Let us love incredibly, including ourselves. Let Susan & Liam find their way. Lead us all to the light in our lives, amen.
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