Hey, how's it going? Thanks for checking in. Yes, I too have been away from this journal for awhile. I had a chance to paint to live music in Honolulu, thanks to Ralo who puts on this music festival, Earth Mother Mind Jam 16, with partial proceeds to benefit Youth Speaks Hawai'i.

Performing runs in her family -- father Larry, who currently resides in Hawaii, was a favorite of professional wrestling fans who knew him as "Luscious" Lars Anderson and was a founding member of the original Four Horsemen.

Luckily, Ralo chose a profession that required a lot less physical contact.

"This is my passion," she said of playing music and promoting. "I love the arts ... I love the poets, the dancers and I see the joy that it brings to them."

Now, before I write about the actual festival, I wanted to tell ya about the shows before the fest. There were fire dancers and some music DJ was spinnin. I was going to meet them at an outdoor Greek-style theater at night when the fire dancing could take place and I was going to set up and paint.

However, all my boards that I pre-painted and took on the plane were double taped and inspected at the airport, for buds I guess, and taped up and roped up again and my knife that I was going to use to cut with was taken by the knife police at the LAX-ative airport.

Here are some pics. There was one dude spinin' records for the beats, two diggeree doo players, a bunch of flammable stuff in containers, and five fire dancers not all included in the pics. So, we drank and enjoyed the show.

More info and pics to follow.