Peace, Love, and Apples

I edited a video over the weekend, but I wasn't able to write anything. I was too busy enjoying the respite before I took on new work. At the very end of said video, there's a picture of me as a wee one with a microphone in hand, as if singing and performance was what I had always wanted to do. But, as my aunt confirmed via text, between us siblings, I was The Quiet One™ until I was 5, when my family moved to Hanoi, and where, as it happened, I began my obsession with writing. It was only in high school, after a couple of guitar lessons (which I did not take seriously), when I wrote my first song that had a verse that went something like this:

Dim lights and counting sheep
Never really help me sleep
It's been so long since we last talked
So I'm singing you a song

I know what you're thinking: Such humble beginnings for a future Pulitzer-Prize-Winning lyricist! 😜 I grew up in a family who loved music, a few of whom were amazing musicians themselves. But any desire to make music lay dormant for a few more years until college, when my then boyfriend brought a borrowed midi-keyboard to my apartment and I began to tinker and experiment. All of Arigato, Hato!'s original demos were written on that keyboard and recorded very DIY-like on GarageBand:

It's very different from the Arigato, Hato! band version that continues to get plays on Spotify (every month since I've uploaded it, to my awe). The demo also sounds very different from the latest version we performed as Club of Stranger:

The Fish Song was first written with a singular vision of love and romance and has evolved so much since, whether in its musical composition or meaning. As I shared on Arigato, Hato!'s page when I posted the video I edited, I "set [the song] to scenes of love and laughter—a love letter from myself to the little baby cat who hadn't found her voice yet". It was also meant to be a hug for anyone else "having trouble finding your words, or finding your place."

I wrote that because this quote from bell hooks had been ringing in my head all week: “Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment. Self-love cannot flourish in isolation.”

I am so grateful for all the folks who rooted for me to make something out of my early demos, the musicians I've had the immense honor to work with and who took the little seeds of what I wrote to new dimensions, and the lovely people who have supported us and continue to make the song a part of their lives and the stories they tell (shout out to Lester who recently put the song in his short film, Japan Surplus). The outpour of love has been incredibly healing.

My self-love would not have flourished as it has (see video), without the village who played music for/with me and raised me. All of that happened so I am able to say to my baby girl inner child: I am lucky to have traveled far with you, to see the seas and ride the tides, and that we've stuck together through all of it.

Friend, this is the nudge for you to say something sweet to your Inner Child today.

Peace, Love, and Apples.