The Ground Beneath Your Feet

“When I Hear Music, It Makes Me Dance”

(Debbie Debʻs When I Hear Music )

There is an entire group of women in our late 40s who, right now, can hear this song playing in their heads.

Yes.

I did it on purpose – I wrote the one line from that song that no one can deny as being a huge part of their lives growing up. You either loved the song or you hated but right this moment, I donʻt care how anyone feels about the song.

I only care about the dance part.

There is not a soul alive who does not equate my name with one word – hula, or, for that matter, dancing, period.

The thing that I have always known, for the majority part of my life, is that humans and music just go together. My Maestro, David, is a musician. He has the most beautiful singing voice, and he is the one person who is not one of my kids, not my best friends, none of my teachers or professors who knows, very well, that the one thing that is akin to his music for him  – for me is dance.

Any kind of dance, but, particularly the very one that has been my closest friend since the time that I was 3 years old.

Hula. 

I have loved this dance from the time that I saw it live for the first time ever, with my mother being the dancer, singing along to the album that she was playing.

She was almost 30.

I was almost 30, as well, when I became part of a halau that was owned by someone in my family. Then one day, I started my own. It was the job I always held and the one that I loved the most, and love the most still. It was the only one of its kind in the desert, and no one else promoted it like I did – which was with every bit of passion that I have for this dance and that dawns on me now was the reason why I was so insanely rabid about its promotion in the middle of nowhere called The High Desert Region of Southern California, particularly Helendale, CA.

I called us Hula i Lalo Ka La… “Dance Beneath the Sun” which was completely appropriate, given my location at that time.

I wonʻt drone on and on about that place, neither that time, other than to remind us all that we are not here to be boring, to sit at a desk all day long and to remain in the constant droning away of the lives that we want to live. We ought to be thankful everyday for our ability to at least walk, to breathe, to see what is the same as others rather than to constantly try “winning” by focusing on what is not the same as us.

There seems to be this awfulness to us as humans anymore. I am no better than the next guy in that I am willing to make it known to others that there are things that they have said and done, whether in person or online, that was not the nicest thing that I said, that they said, assumed, whatever – we are where we ought to not be, even as we are EXACTLY where we NEED to be right this moment – in that space where we are giving ourselves a once over, giving our selves a reality check like nobodyʻs business – we are meant to be with one another – NOT at each otherʻs throats but that, unfortunately, is where we are.

Yes, even those of us who are here to help this place called “Earth” be what it is supposed to be and NOT what other people are currently trying to turn it into.

Right now seems like it is harsh, but that is only because we are experiencing the changes that we, ourselves, called into being. Maybe not the way that these things are being revealed to us, but, on that end, we are also not the only ones who are meant to grow and evolve and be who we are through it all – bumps, bruises, scraped up soul with a fractured heart. We are supposed to triumph, and right now, we are feeling like every horrid thing that we have feared our entire lives is right there and in our faces, as if there is nothing else that we have to tend to and more, no one else who we have to help, and really, we are supposed to be helping ourselves get through this time in our collective lives.

It seems impossible, at times, to do that – it seems like the biggest hurdle in our lives that we are trying to get past right now, and it seems as if what we are is nothing in comparison to WHAT we WERE and I am here to make it known and positively so that who you are is not meant to be what you were. You are not, like I Am not, meant to go backwards to do with what we know, that which we used to do with it.

I teach dance, but it is far more than only that. Over the last two and a half years, I came to realize how much this dance and my ability to create it for me and for others, in every sense of the word, really and truly means, not only to me, but also to everyone else whose lives have been guided by the count of eight, and the very one that matches the heartbeat of the Soul within, the dancer whose feet were stopped by life, but whose heart chose to keep time with the music….even if the guitars were the sort that scream and jam.

You are human. You are meant to dance, even if you look like a damned fool doing it – that is the best sort of fool to be….the dancing sort….it is not a bad thing to be a dancing fool. In the Tarot, the Fool card does not mean “foolish” but rather and only innocence, and the sort that is filled with wonder and awe at the idea that you do not know what you donʻt know that you know….yeah, when my sistah, Lanakila, told me that one, it threw me until my other sistah, Tutasi, reminded me the important nature of knowing who we each are.

I Am A Dancer (and a teacher, and a healer, of the Hula sort…of the every dance I can do sort).

I have not ever been anything else.

Even when I Coach, I am yet, even if only in my mind, dancing, healing myself, my battered soul fully bared with the world watching, even if it does not know that it is, even if I donʻt think I am doing my very level best…the fact that even in my mind I dance is a big frikkinʻ deal.

It is not about being able to impress someone else with your moves, and is not about the newest “jam” that you have heard that is here today and gone tomorrow. It is about being able to just know that when you dance, you are not being strange, and you are not being watched the way that you think you are being watched. You are being watched by the Goddess, being praised by the God of the Dance, and being loved and wrapped in the music, in the count of eight that only your own soul knows as yours. You are being told without being told that it is okay – that when you hear music, it makes you dance, and it ought to.

NEVER EVER THINK that the people who make fun of you when they donʻt even have the guavas to show their true selves are when YOU are the dancer.

They can laugh all they want, but that laughter is limited in that they have to have someone to laugh at.

But your laughter, it is permanent, is real and is the thing that is the song of the Gods, the music produced in the heart of the soul, the place where actual #ALOHA lives.

“Dance is The Hidden Language of the Soul” (Martha Graham) 

Dancers.

We all know each other, even in a crowd and even if we do not personally know each other.

This is more the truth of those who dance indigenously, like I do.

It is the language that no one speaks audibly but that we all understand. We can know one another by the time the music keeps and by the middle area of who we are called The Soul.

When you hear music, please get up and dance. Even if you make a damned fool of yourself, remember to be a dancinʻ fool, as it is the only fool that the world can appreciate.

With everything in the world that we have that is free, the one thing that we will always have is the heartbeat caused by life, and our feet on the ground to keep the time.

It is far more than a count of eight, or two counts of four…

To Dance is to know the bodyʻs language, as much as to cry is the souls message to the Universe.

When you hear music….let it let you dance….

Do your Soul a favor…let it lead.

Indeed….dance like a damned fool….the world is watching, and it is indeed a beautiful thing that it is…

#LiveALOHA

#LosAngelesKahunaRox

#TheCrabAndTheFish