I have been putting off writing a new blog as I tried to imagine how to be uplifting.
I realize I need and want to say how things really are in these radical times.It makes me wonder how all of you are and what you might not be saying for fear of how others might react.Janne and I are continuing to work on selling our Leo Nani Farms property on the Hamakua Coast on Hawaii Island.We have a positive and powerful real estate team who we have been working with. It is tough to sell our beautiful farm because it isn’t just a building but really an ecosystem. However I think it is an essential time for farmers; growing, sharing, selling food and caring for the aina. I continue to believe we will find the right team, family, group to take Leo Nani to the next step of care and production. I am happy to tell you more if you are seriously interested; video and details at the end.This means we will need to move from the farm. We had big hopes of staying on with the new owners, but so far that is not working and we are just now facing what it means to go through our stuff, downsize, let go, and be prepared for a new life somewhere nearby we hope but who knows. That is one of the mysteries.Janne has been diagnosed maybe 6 years ago with Parkinson's. It is an ever unfolding drama that contains every emotion. She is being enormously brave and keeps finding ways to stay on her feet and keep her mind active. I am her caregiver, something I have not done before. We both find this journey intense, deepening our relationship, causing us both to stand up for what makes a day feel good. Learning how to reach out, remembering to talk with one another in a fresh way every day, staying real and laughing whenever possible. I am looking for a personal therapist to keep me working on my core and how I stay true to myself while caring for my beloved.This July and August I had two wonderful music trips off the island. First to Hollyhock on Cortes Island in BC Canada. Oh Canada. Glorious full workshop for Vocal River with many old friends and new singers who took on the challenges mightily. Cara Tresize assisted me and in general makes my life better, stronger and more enduring. Then a Murmuration Project workshop with precious Margie Gillis of Montreal. She and I have both taught at Hollyhock onwards of 30 years. We met because of Hollyhock. We are currently co-directing the Murmuration Projects that spring up around the country and the world. To have a dancer/choreographer teaching movement principles and encouraging everyone to be in their bodies in their own way is a mountain of goodness, and I sense that the combination of the two of us is insightful, funny, confronting in a good way and generally a great happiness. We all loved the sold out version of this workshop with a performance at the end where many local Cortesians come and spice up the room with their love and sincere devotion to the arts.Did I say how complicated it is to get to Cortes? Planes, ferries, sea planes, overnights along the way. All of it is very, very well worth the journey. Next summer it seems we will have another Murmuration Project workshop as the ideas grow and the desire to learn this process becomes better known and very desirable. Don’t miss it!In August I took a second trip, this time to Philadelphia, bypassing the immensity of the NY airports. I stayed with Suzzette Ortiz and visited with Germaine Ingram as well. It was a big city cultural adventure starting with meeting Carolyn Brandy and one of her international drumming sisters, Ouida Lewis from Jamaica. What a thrill to sit at breakfast with these women of age all living full on lives and talking through what matters to us. Then a great jazz concert with Nduduzo Makhathini in an intimate local club and finally the new Calder museum which is partly underground and fantastic.We all drove to Omega Institute in the Hudson Valley for Return to the Well with me, David Worm and Zuza Gonsalves sharing a week of Circle Singing, Musica do Circulo and Vocal River/Murmuration work. It is the next step for the Bobby McFerrin workshops that went on every summer for 12 years at Omega. This is the current summit of vocal improvisation study in the US. I found the week remarkably calming, joyous, not rushed with too many options, but really a gathering to celebrate vocal improv and all the ways we are devoted to it and to each other around the world. We had 100 singers and a week of such grace, humor and learning. Medicine! Next summer we will return to Omega the first week of August, as well as a second gathering at Hollyhock in July.Then Cara and I drove to Acton Vale in Quebec at Margie Gillis’s family compound with the family church as a studio, living together for 5 days in the big old family home; singing, moving, cooking, making coffee, talking, walking the nearby trails and in general having a residency that thrilled all of us. This work of intimate improvised shared leadership requires deepening our friendships and being able to talk out the hard stuff while rehearsing, eating and sleeping within dreaming distance of one another.Off to Quebec City to meet our cousins, the International Body Music Festival originated by Keith Terry and his wife Evie Ladin 20 years ago. It happens in various places in the world and really represents an international gathering of people who make music on, with and to their bodies. And I say cousins because it really felt like we are family. We improvise more, they choreograph more but in essence we are after the same comprehensive joy of music, rhythm and dance. It was fantastic. The Murmuration Project opened the festival and that was magic.
I loved being the first out of the gate with our fully improvised performance and were deeply appreciated by people who talked with us all week about what they saw and how innovative it was for them. Couldn’t be a better audience or family reunion. We spent the week there; me and Margie teaching, Murmuration singers assisting, demonstrating and in general taking in all the goodness of this circus. It did feel like circus. Such unique and diverse concepts so generously taught. Wanting more of that. In fact next year it will be in Greece and yes I say, yes.
Let’s be there!Now I am home packing, divesting, discovering, letting go and generally not knowing at all how this is going to turn out. I must keep trusting and that is the grace and difficulty of now.I hope you all are weathering the intense global climate events and finding ways to love yourself and your community. We rise and fall with community I believe that.I send you hearty, joyous days and nights of creative life. Don’t be discouraged and if you do, please sing and dance with others. Keep rhythm in your step and in your heart.The madness is finite. Life will go on beyond the patriarchy, the oligarchy, the billionaires.Keep on gathering. Keep on voting. Keep on believing.TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FARM SALE PLEASE CONTACT OUR REAL ESTATE AGENT DIRECTLY:
Active $880,000 | Residential
4 Bed, 1.01 Bath | 875 sqft | 8.68 ac
29-3871 KANNA RD, HAKALAU, HI 96710
MLS 727355 | TMK 3-2-9-4-40
