New Year's Eve 2007

Played for the New Year’s Eve dinner crowd at the Vintage with E, a young bassist with whom I have played music for a couple of years now. He is easy to be with, grateful to be playing music, willing to try new tunes on first sight. Finding folks like E to share music with, folks who are happy and grateful to play music, who don’t let their egos get in the way, who listen to what others are doing and try to dance along, is not always easy. I have been lucky here, I have found some folks I am comfortable with, and it has given me room to be a bit bolder with my playing.

And as much as I enjoy playing, it is composing that is most satisfying. The act of creating an entirely new entity, something that springs forth because I exist, is exhilarating. It is a time when I feel fully alive, a time when I am not struggling to change what cannot be changed, not judging my worth against what others might think I “should” be doing or being. I am creating, I am birthing something entirely new, I feel so lucky to be doing it, I can’t wait to see how it will evolve. And then I want to put it out into the world, with the hope that what I create will touch someone in a positive way.

And, as this year comes to a close, I have been conscious of being fifty, likely being on the other side of the fence, and every day is incredibly precious.

To Garden Girl and Scott The Trainer, Thank You.

2007 was The Year of Fifty. It has been a good year, filled with celebrations and accomplishments and a sense of beginning, of commencement. 2008 will be The Year of Can and Will. The inspiration for 2008's theme came this past Monday from Scott The Trainer, who shared his belief that believing you can do something will make it so. Like doing pushups (he had me do 36 of them today). Like believing you can lose weight without significantly changing your eating regimen (this is a stretch for me - he's 34 and not a 50-year-old woman with a hormone-encouraged mid-section, but I loved his enthusiasm).

This blog, inspired by my dear friend Garden Girl, will be an integral part of the coming New Year. When it came time to type in the name of this blog, “the art of mahalo” is the phrase that immediately came to mind. It will be a companion site for MahaloArts.com, the site through which I will share and distribute my work. For both sites, the foundation, the essence, the spirit, will be gratitude (“mahalo” in Hawaiian). I like the notion of approaching gratitude as an art, as an act or process of creation. I aspire for every action I take to be done so in gratitude.