DRB: Do you hold grudges?

Ooh, do I hold grudges? I think I can be bitter, but I wouldn't say hold grudges.

DRB: Really?

I am a person that needs repair, and I will ask for it until I get it. If you're an important person in my life, I will try my best to come back together and repair.

DRB: Yeah. I'm the same way. You have to repair with me, or I can't live.

I can't. I'm gonna die.

DRB: Are you nostalgic for anything in life?

Portland summers, they're just so magical.

DRB: Are you reading anything right now?

Usually I'm reading textbooks.

DRB: Did you know that you had an amazing voice all of your life?

People did tell me you have such a soft, beautiful voice, but I don't think I believed it. I don't think I could hear that myself.

DRB: It's a beautiful song.

Releasing that song [living room] into the world was such a huge deal. It's almost like the song had been birthed and has this other life.

I was crying the whole day because people were listening to it and I didn't expect people to listen to it, but people connected to it.

I never thought "how many streams can my song get". With other things like design I'm thinking what are the sales? But, I didn't think about [living room] in a sales metric.

DRB: So, how did you get into fashion design?

So, fashion, screen print, sewing, construction—that is my actual school background. And then I worked for Reebok right out of school. I had an apprenticeship in Boston for a year, and then I moved into another department in New York City. So I got my start in clothing design and footwear there before I moved to Portland after a few years to work at Nike.

DRB: Do you still feel connected to fashion after returning to school?

I do. Being at Nike, product is your whole visual landscape. I was always seeing new products, testing out the trends for myself. I would travel [internationally] for work too, so trends abroad influenced my style.

Leaving that world and becoming a student again… it’s changed the way that I have been shopping. And because my inner world is changing my style's also changing.

DRB: How do you define yourself? Do you think of yourself as a musician, artist, or a therapist?

I consider myself a musician, but I don't think I owned that identity until I started performing, and having a more committed practice.

I was a designer for so long, for a solid 10 plus years that was my full-time job. I didn't even notice how much my thoughts were consumed by work.

Now that I'm a student I'm reading, I'm writing. It's a lot more introspective. It's changing the way that I'm writing music, my lyrical inclination feels different. There's more of a story behind the words as I'm writing. Before the words were just my subconscious coming out. I would write the whole song and have no idea what it was about and then later I'd be like, oh, it's probably about this.

I'm making connections in my emotional world just being in this year of therapy school. I wasn't expecting how vulnerable it would be.

DRB: If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?

Oh my God. a whale would be sick. But I also just think I would like come back as a great grandchild because I think that already happens.

I think that I'm a manifestation of one of the ancestors and we'll continue to live out our ancestors patterns until we break them. And yes, right now I do think I'm probably some form of like my mom's father or his mom, and I think that's one of the ancestral lines that I was meant to explore and understand.

DRB: Is that something you think about? How did you come to that belief?

It's been definitely a few years of thinking about this stuff. Like, why am I this way? Why am I that way? Why did I get into this type of relationship? Or why have I treated past partners this way?

At first I would blame myself for getting into these things, but I was doing the best that I could at the time, so where did that come from?

I think that's when I started asking my family their relationship history and what were the experiences of the women in my family line? What's been passed down? What did I learn from my parents that I view as normal? How can I change?

I do think a lot about the ancestral line. Just like diseases are passed down, how is emotional health being passed down? And relational health?

DRB: That's a hard thing to track unless you have a close family relationship.

Definitely. Definitely. I've been able to explore a lot more on my mom's side because there's so many women—and culturally women are—you know, we talk a lot.

My dad's side is Greek, and there are a lot more men. My dad's the oldest of four brothers, and it's been harder to to learn about these stories because my great aunts are gone. So it's been a little more challenging to learn about my dad's side, but I am slowly getting there.

DRB: And your mom's side, how did they end up here?

My mom came through the Hyatt hotels here in San Francisco. My mom and her two sisters all came to the States in their 20s, so her brother was the only one who stayed [in the Philippenes].

San Francisco wasn't on my radar, even though this is where she came first. She had such a large Filipino community that kept her here in the States - and her sisters too.

DRB: What is your favorite place in the world?

My go to is always the coast of North Carolina. I love swimming in that ocean and being in the sun.

DRB: Have you ever seen a ufo?

There was one time I was driving back from the Oregon coast and thought I saw something that looked weird. I've felt a presence in life, like at Joshua Tree.

We just went to Shasta for a few nights, and there's definitely some interesting energy there. Have you been?

DRB: Yeah, that place… there's a weird energy in Shasta. Good, but it definitely very peculiar.

There's a theory that there's a whole civilization living in the mountain. I don't think I believe that.

DRB: Sounds terrible. I would hate living underground.

I got these tarot cards [there]. I'm gonna pull one for you.

DRB Oh, God. It’s going to be the tower.

Okay. The Hanged Man. Radical change of perspective. This may show a strong sense of family and of home. This means a deep desire for return to the source of life.