From sometime in 2011...
"I'm sitting in this bar, waiting for the van full of stuff to arrive and trying to get some much needed peace and quiet before the dust stirs and explodes into a mess of duct taped road cases and buyout discussions. The music in the house has a familiar aroma of jaded bartendress and lost ambition. It wails through the speakers and screams out in rebellion against the able-bodied, educated world that steered it so terribly wrong. And while it thrashes aimlessly about, I sit quietly at my dingy round table and wait for serenity to return to my senses.
I remember the days of opening the bar, just me and whatever music expressed that particular mood. It was quiet in those moments, less the pounding, angry rhythm of the speakers, talking to my dimming dreams and growing dissatisfaction with the world around me.
But those days made no mistake in aligning themselves with the only part of this industry that mattered. The music was either right or gone. There were no filling seats and hitting points, squeezing dollars out of your artist, venue, employees, friends, etc. Just me and a 5 gallon bucket for ice and my greatest love streaming through those speakers to fill my senses with my own personal interpretation of peace and quiet.
I look back now, nearly done with school, letting the words of a teacher roll over me as they pass. I can write my own ticket now, he said to a class of almost 100 new prospects. And in that, I should take comfort. But will my ticket take me to a place where I can find peace within my world again? Will it always be about the bottom line and not about the music?
If so, I'm thinking my ticket should take me back across the Pacific."
I've been reflecting a lot lately about where I've been, where I'm going and what's changed over the past year. It was a great surprise to find this partially created post from March of 2010. I had graduation in my sights and a million questions about what laid in the path of the months to come. Yet, my focus still drifted back to the comforts of home where the courtesies and customs and values of my culture were still firmly in tact. And more importantly, I was refreshed to see those things still so firmly in tact in myself.
As I got closer to this huge milestone of graduating, I began to unravel the most precious things to me, as if I'd packed them carefully and put them in storage to keep them safe during the long winter months. Only months became years and the boxes got mixed in with the miscellany of time until they were forgotten in my everyday life. And then one day, from atop the most remote memory of a 5 gallon bucket came toppling down the key to the things I'd packed away so many years ago.
The familiar ache of my first love lost, subsided as its possibility re-awakened. One by one, I carefully opened each of these boxes and discovered that I had not only kept them safe, but learned to incorporate the contents in my life here, despite the harsh environment. Years passed and colors faded, but I remained rooted in the distinct outline of the things that were of true value to me, to my culture, and to my family: music, community, honesty, aloha.
And flash forward again three years later. An unfinished piece of work resting quietly in a corner of my mind, but planting a seed that grew into the consistent core I call my own today.
I am blessed, mahalo e na akua.
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