Sweeping The Clouds Away

 Awake at 3, up at 4. I find that lying in bed and doing deep breathing makes me feel better, and then I started to go to sleep again so I got up. 

I did some voice exercises last night, packed that stupid heavy pump I need to ship, and sang some songs also. I actually have the sheet music for the song "Sweeping The Clouds Away" that I'd ordered; the one with the pink cover from the 1930s that shows up on videos of that song on YouTube. 

I wanted to list stuff but decided to just get some sleep, but before that I did a thorough scrub-down while watching some YouTube stuff like Shinichi's World. He left Hawaii at around the same age I did, but he left for Japan and had his father there; it was still rough at first though. 

I also watched a documentary about "Braddah Iz", Hawaii's answer to Luciano Pavarotti. Just an amazing, amazing, singer. While Hawaii gave the world slide guitar and a lot of tin-pan alley stuff from the 1920s became "Hawaiian" music, and a handful of ukulele virtuosos have come from there, this guy really put Hawaii on the map musically. It's too bad he was so overweight. That had to be the cause of 90% of his health problems. If I can develop my voice maybe I can sing some of his stuff and pull it off OK. A while back, Ben Yep, I guy I got to now from the temple choir who plays uke, and I got together and he could play the uke part and I did the singing part of "Over The Rainbow" the way Iz sings it and it went pretty well although of course I didn't have the words down pat. 

In a couple/few years when the virus is done burning its way through the population like the 1918 flu did, it will be good (assuming we both make it through) to go to the adult Buddhism class again and listen to Rinban Sakamoto's long lectures, and meet up at Roy's Station with Ben Yep and kanikapila which means to get together and play music. 

I've talked about how my earliest memories were those of having art materials shoved into my hands and doing art; kind of steered into art and from an early age being used to people watching over my shoulder etc while I paint or draw (a major bugaboo for most) because I guess that's what I was supposed to do. 

But at the same time, my earliest memories also go back to my father playing tons of music from classical "world" music, stuff like the Kingston Trio, records of spy movie themes, you-name-it. The guy had an incredibly wide taste in music and he's the one who turned me on to electronic music like Isao Tomita. And, when I was very little he seemed to get a kick out of teaching me all those little-kid songs like "This Old Man" and having me sing them to him. So although it wasn't Officially Sanctioned By Mom(tm) I was formed as a singer as much as a drawer or a painter. That's the idea behind my 1-year plan to try to train my voice; let's just give it a year of consistent practice and see what happens. 

So I left here at a quarter after 7 and took the big heavy pump, now all packed in a box, to FedEx and bought some more paper. On the way back I got a ton of small boxes from the electrical place and a few tomatoes. I got back here and had some canned mackerel and then "pre-staged" 15 things that had to get packed tonight. Pre-staged means not completely packed but I know the sizes and weights and printed the labels. I had this all done before Ken came by. 

Ken wrote out my pay check and we talked about all kinds of things. At one point I said, "If I could figure out how to live in a cardboard box in Hawaii, I'd be out of here in two weeks!". But the reality is that I'm scared to death to try until I've got something in the bag - either Social Security or good enough at something that I know I could trade that skill for basic room and board at the least. 

An interesting thing though. There is very little socializing around here even without the virus, and with the virus naturally there's even less. I've noticed that even in talking with Ken for half an hour or an hour, my voice would get tired out. But it got less tired out this time and it was one of our longer BS sessions.