(thoughts from March 26, 2015)
What does Hawaii mean to me?
A question that I wanted to think about a little longer. To do this, I delved into my past to remember when I first came into contact with this word, these islands that I had never visited in person. And the longer I thought about it, the more I collected little stories from my life that were related to it. I couldn’t remember the exact date, the first time I went to Hawaii, but that wasn’t important for this story. The only thing that amazed me was that these islands had been mentally accompanying me for a long time in my life and the more I thought about it, the more I discovered that the individual events occurred at ever shorter intervals. I was particularly surprised by this in the last two years, since I have been working intensively on love. And what I then discovered, because it found me, showed me the way, made my heart beat faster and awakened an immense curiosity in me about these islands and the people who lived there. But let’s start with a look into the more distant past.
So I remembered that I had already gotten a glimpse of this group of islands in my teens and early twenties. A TV series took me to this place and Tom Selleck, alias Thomas Magnum, had me dreaming of Oahu, Honolulu, Maui, Waikiki Beach and, and, and. Wonderful aerial shots during Magnum and T.C.’s helicopter flights showed the beauty of the island chain in the Pacific Ocean and its diverse landscapes. But I had no idea back then where all this would lead me. A few years later, I was standing in the office of a former colleague and discovered a large coconut covered in stamps on her desk. I learned that the colleague had mailed it from Hawaii to Germany. Post-a-nut on Molokai made it possible and she went on to tell me that she had visited the islands for the seventh time. I could feel her enthusiasm for Hawaii and her stories rekindled my dream of going there myself. But first my life took a different direction and a few years would pass in which this dream had no meaning. I then came into contact with the islands again through music. In 2010, a song and its singer conquered the charts in Germany – Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, or affectionately known as Iz, enchanted me and millions with his version of a medley of “Over the rainbow” and “What a wonderful world”. The gentle giant was also very committed to the interests of the Hawaiian people at the time and made a significant contribution to reviving and preserving the Hawaiian language through his songs. An interesting personality and yet I was never able to meet him in person, as he had long since left this world.
In the meantime, I had discovered my fascination for burlesque, which I pursued for three years by attending events, getting to know dancers, drawing them and even adapting my appearance to the style of the 1940s to 1960s. Of course, I couldn’t do without the flower in my hair and I discovered a beautiful one in an online store called the “large Hawaiian flower”. After this time, the flower remained an element that I liked to integrate into my clothing style from time to time and in the summer of 2013, when I was preparing “The Office of Love” project, I wore the Hawaiian flower in my hair every day, so that it became my distinguishing mark and many people who didn’t know my name referred to me as the woman with the flower. This also reminded me of the famous Hawaiian flower wreath, the lei, which represents the beauty of the Hawaiian Islands and the aloha spirit and whose fragrance is said to be a delight for the senses, evoking a feeling of welcome. But back to my real world. In my year of love, I spent a lot of time in my satellite office, a café whose owner I had befriended and formed a little lotto betting community with him and Nina from time to time. In the hope of winning the big prize, we often imagined what everyone would do with their share and enjoyed these thoughts. So we also thought about how we were going to inform each other about the win by deciding that the person who handed in the ticket should send a text message to the others with the words “pack your bags”. The suitcases would then accompany us to Hawaii, where the three of us would celebrate and deal with the positive shock. To our regret, we didn’t win, but a dream accompanied my consciousness again.
While I was writing my first book in the first half of 2014, I heard Iz’s song on the radio again one day and this time I searched for the video on youtube. There I saw a montage of Hawaiian landscape images with footage of Iz performing the song on the beach in front of an audience, accompanied by his ukulele. At the end of the song, the video also showed the funeral ceremony, in which Iz’s ashes were passed to the sea, accompanied by countless people, some of whom went into the sea on boats to attend the ceremony and pay their last respects to him. I was very touched by this scene, because the people there were also celebrating his life despite all the sadness that the loss brought with it. I liked this form of burial and as death is as much a part of each of us as life, I spoke to Nina about it and told her that I wanted my ashes to be scattered into the sea at the end of my life and that everyone who attended should also celebrate life. The place for this should preferably be in Hawaii.
Back in the here and now, I met a friend for a coffee break a few weeks later and I was amazed when he told me, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, that he had actually had it sent to him from Hawaii. This was one of those little moments that came to me without me even thinking about Hawaii. I always felt like someone being whispered to: “Don’t forget your dream. Make it come true.” And so these moments became more frequent and, strangely enough, the intervals between them became shorter and shorter. The Hawaii documentary on TV that I stumbled across as I listlessly flicked back and forth. A talk show that had nothing to do with Hawaii and in which a lady suddenly talked about her trip to Hawaii, which was so important to her. The facebook page about Hawaii that appeared on my timeline without me searching for it. The friend I hadn’t seen for years who told me about his trip to Hawaii. The old gentleman who told me about his first great love, whom he met at the end of the 1950s while studying in Vienna and who later became his wife – the special thing about it: she came from Hawaii. All the way to Aloha Food Tours, who suddenly followed me on Twitter without me ever having written anything about Hawaii there.
In October of last year, Nina traveled to China for a modeling job and sent me a photo on her way back from the airport in Beijing with the words: “Look, the woman with the flower looks just like you.” What I saw next felt completely crazy. Nina had taken a photo of a Hawaii Airlines plane with a painted woman’s head with dark hair and a Hawaiian flower on the tailplane (rudder), just like I always wore. I had to laugh and thought: “Life is an adventure and I’m in the middle of it.” Now I started to look into Hawaii specifically and wanted to learn more about the islands and their history. I learned about its Polynesian roots, read about its history and culture and then the meaning, the connection to my life journey of the last two years, was revealed to me. I discovered that the Hawaiian ALOHA means also LOVE and “Aloha ‚aina” expresses the love and deep connection of the Hawaiians to the land. For me, this realization meant that I wanted to make my dream of visiting the islands and getting to know the people there come true. My stories about love and Hawaii have now come together in the I AM FOR LOVE World Tour.
At the beginning of February, I wrote the concept for the World Tour in a café in Düsseldorf harbor that I had last visited in December. Steven was working there that day, a man I had met a long time ago, who was always very welcoming and curious to know what was going on in my life. I was happy to see him again after a long time and told him about my idea for the World Tour and that my personal dream destination on this trip was Hawaii, where I didn’t yet know anyone to whom I would deliver a message of love. He smiled at me and said: “No problem. You can visit my relatives there.” I looked at him in surprise because I could hardly believe what I had just heard. In fact, his roots lead back to this island chain in the Pacific Ocean, which had been a spiritual companion in my memory for over 25 years.
