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By Cynthia Oi
Star-Bulletin
SHE was headed for a regular life, denise was.A studious, church-going girl, she graduated from high school and eagerly set out from small-town Hilo to big-city Honolulu and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
She would get a good education, earn a degree, find a job, work hard, save money, buy a house, set up a retirement fund. The whole American-dream life was ahead of her.
Then her friend Leila died in a hit-and-run accident and denise careened off track.
"I kind of see it as my mid-life crisis," she said, wrinkling her nose and adding, "or is that presumptuous because I'm thinking that I'm older."
Mid-life or not, it was a crisis that hijacked her spiritually and altered her perception of herself.
A decade later, she has regrouped, sorting from life's offerings the elements she finds important: writing songs and making music.
Tomorrow, she will play guitar and sing as the warm-up act for a dramatic reading by author Lois-Ann Yamanaka and James Grant Benton from Yamanaka's newest novel, "Father of the Four Passages."
She'll likely perform "Amazing Grace," a song that Yamanaka uses in her book, that represents a kind of grace denise possesses.
At 29, she is self-aware and composed. With her makeup-free face and clean looks, she's often mistaken for a teen-ager, yet she is enveloped in a maturity that evolved from close examination of what's important to her.
ON STAGE
What: Mini concert by singer-musician denise, preceding reading by James Grant Benton and Lois-Ann Yamanaka from Yamanaka's novel, "Father of the Four Passages"
She goes by only her first name because her father is well known in the community and "automatically people make that connection. To me, that's distraction from what I'm trying to do." Not capitalizing the "d" in her first name reflects her sense of self, of "just being denise."
The name choices were made after a lot of thought. "Some people say I think too much," but that's what helped her through the bad times.
Leila's death "was the catalyst for getting depressed," she said. "I had a really hard time dealing with that."
"We weren't best friends, we weren't even in the same circle of friends. But you know how when you grow up in a small town, you just go through school with the same people. There was never a time when you met these people; you just kinda always knew them for your whole life," she said.
When she started college, she was full of enthusiasm. "I was so happy to be there. I felt privileged to spend my days learning. After my friend died and everything, I felt the very opposite about the same thing. Like I'm not doing anything, I'm unproductive, I'm not contributing to other people's lives, I'm just taking up space and learning for myself only.
She quit school and went back to Hilo. Brought up a Protestant, she had felt secure in her beliefs until then.
"I guess I never questioned that much, or if I did I felt my questions were answered and I was satisfied with the answers. But what happened forced me to get more real."
She doesn't reject Christianity, in fact, she realizes it gave her an emotional foundation, "a place to stand and look at everything else."
"Now I don't go to church. Now I feel like my church is my friends, the people I care for. Now I see the church as an institution, a site. Now my church is more personal."
She tried to go back to school, taking classes at UH-Hilo, but quit again.
"I felt that I needed to do something, just do something crazy, just get away."
On a whim, she went to Australia where she found a job on a ranch.
"I helped stack hay, round up the cows, and castrating and branding. I mostly rounded up; I didn't actually chop (testicles)."
Returning to Hawaii, she took jobs as a prep cook and as a gofer for a Hilo radio station. She worked her way up to program director at the station and it was then that she began to get into music.
"While I was working at the radio station, I looked around and realized that this was a job I enjoyed. I thought I could possibly do this for the rest of my life. At the same time, it took my whole time and I wanted to do other things like write.
"I thought, 'Do I want to do this for the rest of my life? Is there more?' And the answer was yes. I wanted to be a part of creating music, music because it got me through a lot of hard times."
She concentrated on writing lyrics and songs, went to audio engineering school in Florida and worked for a recording studio.
She returned to UH-Manoa and is a semester away from her bachelor's degree in English, supporting herself by working as a janitor at a medical facility and as a retail sales clerk.
Late last year -- she can't remember exactly the month -- her first CD was released. "I guess I planned for it and worked toward this goal for five years so by the time it came out, it had been real in my head for so long I can't remember," she laughed.
Even with a degree, she has no intentions of being part of the workaday world.
"I don't want a real job, a career," denise said.
Her family doesn't pressure her.
"I'm proud of my parents because they're proud of me. Because they're from that background of having good savings, the good job, the business cards, but they are proud of me and tell me that. I think they are proud of me for not being afraid."
"I don't want to get in line and start marching. A lot of people think it's irresponsible, but you're not safe even if you have savings, the mutual funds. Everything is by the grace of the greater power."
"Making money, to me is the real cage. Making music, -- if it really touches somebody, that's the real pay."
When asked about what happens when she gets older, she stops to think, the gears turning in her head. But the uncertainty in her eyes is overwhelmed by determination.
"When I'm 50? I hope I'm still writing or still brave enough to write. I'm going to be doing what I'm doing whether I'm a janitor or an established, respected writer.
"I want to always find value in myself. I want to be brave."
She stops as tears appear. But her smile returns, then she jokes about crying.
"That's what I love about the arts. You can go deep and serious and at the same time you're laughing at it and laughing at yourself. That's what I love about life -- it's so insane."
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