Feeling Good is the Way Home

do what feels good 💕 Descend into the body, the Soma, trusting that it knows the way forward and the compass is pointing toward a good feeling.

Good feelings that are felt right now in this moment and in the next. It feels good and it feels good and it feels good … and the moment it doesn’t feel good, it feels tighter, contracting… that’s the little road block, the red light, the “don’t go this way” sign.

Course correct and face toward the good feeling again. Move into the next good feeling.

True north feels good in the body.

Feeling good is the way home.

The Mermaid Understands Why We Want Both

On my 34th bday I dressed up as a mermaid and spent the morning lounging on Banana Beach in Phuket, Thailand — sharp rocks poking my booty, waves crashing in around me, legs stuck together, sand in my mouth, crabs crawling past my face as I leaned my cheek on barnacles and squinted into the fire in the sky.

The minute my feet were strapped into the mermaid tail I felt a strong urge to have legs again. I thought to myself, “But how am I going to climb trees now?”

So many mermaid daydreams led me to this moment and suddenly I appreciated being fully human. Perhaps it was posing on a rock that made me realize I’d rather be swimming, playing. I was also in bliss…all I had to do for a couple hours was lay in the sun, sparkling, while a lovely photographer played with the light around me. I meditated as I stared at the blue sky and the soft jungle bushes beneath perfect palm trees. Playing dress up like a little girl, creating in nature like a wild woman…exactly the vibe I love for a birthday morning.

We have a desire to return to the sea, to the water we’ve evolved out of. We have a desire to crawl onto the land, exploring beyond the water that birthed us. A pull out of the water and a pull into the water. A desire for fins and a desire for feet. I want both and this is what makes me human.

I came from the #ocean so I want to go back, to go home. I left the ocean because I was curious what else I could find and I want to keep going. I want to travel and I want to be at home. I want to go back to childhood and I want to keep growing up. I want both because I am human.

Inside of me there is an ocean, inside of me there is a home, inside of me there is a wilderness, inside of me there is unknown. Inside of me is the universe I look into and through and know I am human in a universe beyond me.

This is the metaphor of the mermaid. She’s traveling between two worlds, pulled between them, transforming and longing for all of it. She wants both and that’s what makes her mermaid. The mermaid understands how I feel.

Love & Rainbows, Cha

Eyes Open Underwater

opening my eyes underwater and everything is blurry and I wonder why I can’t see clearly even though I really want to and I try so hard to and then I just accept that it’s going to be blurry and then I seem to see more clearly than I did before.

to embrace the fact “I don’t know” actually leads me to knowing more than I did before I was willing to accept the fact I didn’t know. it’s one step forward towards knowing. I love not knowing. I don’t know almost everything. Not knowing is my natural state of being.

These are the things the ocean is teaching me one dip into the water at a time, one cute metaphor a day. I’m lucky if I learn one new thing a day and luckily I learn many new things everyday because I’m looking with my eyes open into a universe I’ll never see clearly.

Love & Rainbows, Cha

What is this "mermaid music" I'm creating in Bali?

What is Mermaid Music, or “Mermaid Prayers” as I’m naming this project I’m creating. Why bother hauling heavy music equipment across the planet to a black sand beach where I sit at a desk on cliff overlooking the ocean, day after day, welcoming new songs into the world. I’m really just a musical midwife now. The songs are coming and I guide them in through the body to the light.

Little girls inside of me have a need to express themselves and feel safe doing so. I’m here for them. I’m showing up for them everyday, clearing a space for them to play and grow everyday, holding them in my chest and listening to them deeply everyday.

A woman ahead of me in time is nodding slowly, beckoning me towards her. Come this way she whispers and she tugs on the string that connects us, intuitively. She’s a vision in my future. She is who I become, who I step into. She is so confident, beautiful, elegant and flowing in her art. I’m enchanted by her completely so I keep moving towards her one day, one decision at a time. She’s so lovely.

A nerdy little mischievous creature shows up to the keys to press the buttons, play the noise! Make something rebellious, interesting, different, bizarre. Give them the goosebumpychills!

A spirit in my floats on this breeze. How does the song we craft open the channel for us to feel something we cannot reach with word or though?

I’m doing this to open my heart and throat. My voice is growing in strength and power. I hate how it feels to hold back. I feel a huge ocean of emotion that wants to squeeze through my tiny body, singing out through this throat, trickling out through these fingers. Something enormous is inside me (that’s what she said haha) and I feel the pressure build up. It feels better when I sing. It feels amazing when I pretend I’m a mermaid or a whale and start singing.

With every new strange sound I make I become less afraid of making sounds in general. The parts of me who fear sounding foolish, the parts who want to be perfect, the parts who judge my level of musical skill or lack there of…all of them become quiet as I make more sounds, sounds I’ve never made before. It’s like traveling to new places and finding myself more comfortable and confident wherever I go. As my mother has always said to me, “Wherever you go, you bring yourself.”

Now I understand.

Enough magical talk…here’s the nitty gritty of what I’m actually doing.

I sit on the floor in my bedroom on a towel. The tiles are uncomfortable. I drap a rainbow handkerchief that I picked up in Phuket, Thaildn, over the top of the Aston Spirit microphone, which is precariously balanced on the wooden bench at the end of the bed. The microphone is standing on a small portable tripod I picked up from Amazon before making this trip. I’m THRILLED to have a high quality microphone with me and to have it standing up on it’s own so I can sing with my eyes closed and get lost in sound space.

The computer is recording the whale sounds I’m singing this afternoon. I’m literally attempting to sound like a whale; hit the highest pitch notes I possibly can without damaging my vocal chords. I hear the whale in me singing out and I pull my voice down slowly until I sound human again. How smoothly can I transition from whale to human? It’s a slide down the vocal chords, like sliding your finger down the string of a guitar. I feel bad for my neighbors. It’s a sunny afternoon and they’re listening to a woman screeching in an adobe hut. Everyone complains about the roosters here. They’re cock-a-doodle-doing all day long. Maybe my voice just blends into the annoying nature soundscape.

I’m making up words. A part of me feels excited to sound like a spiritual chanting goddess from some exotic land. I sound a little African primal, a little aboriginal gutteral, a bit Indian shrill, a little elvish mystical, a little can’t put my finger on it. It’s weird. It’s awkward. It’s embarrassing. I’ve had moments of concerned…is this cultural appropriation? How can it be if I’m just a human making organic noises from my body? Nobody owns the sounds our bodies can make. The sounds I’m playing with also smell of potential. I’m curious, more curious everyday. Within a couple weeks I’ve already seen signifiant improvement in my comfort improvising sounds. I just sit down at the microphone and like fluid out of a vessel, the voice pours out with new unknown but deeply felt words.

I grew up listening to Enya. Her voice is a magical portal into the mystical realms. When I was a girl my mother casually mentioned that Enya was a badass who created her own music, all of it from scratch. This was why it was so difficult for her to perform. She was a one woman show. How true is this story? I don’t know. It stuck with me though. I’m laughing at myself now realizing how I have semi-consciously crafted myself into an Enya-like creator. My mom just called me “the new Enya” the other day on a text message. I won’t lie, it’s not a bad feeling to be compared to Enya, to witness my own art resembling hers. I’m a little surprised by myself actually. I can simultaneously say, “How did I get here?” and “I know exactly how I got here.”

When I’m not actively making music, I’m listening to whale sounds on Sony noise canceling headphones. I lay on my back in the jungle gym with the lights off. I drink honey, lemon, ginger tea with my feet propped up in the restaurant. I’m reading books about freediving in bed beneath the white mosquito net. Whale sounds playing the entire time. Nothing like these whale sounds seems to have the almost immediate power of drawing me into the deepest places on earth, deepest space inside myself. I click play, pop on the headphones, and BOOM I’m in the water world.

I started wanting to improvise singing like a human sound healer. Quickly inspired, I started channeling the energy of the mermaids. Now, I’m practicing singing like whales. What next? Beatboxing with crustacean sounds?

I went snorkeling yesterday with my GoPro and chased away some bright yellow fish. I ate chocolate and watched a torrential rainstorm rolled in.

Sidenote: If you’re going to spit in your diving mask (to coat the lenses so they don’t fog up underwater), make sure you don’t have chocolate melted in your mouth. I learned this one the nasty way and caught the learning moment on camera. haha

I spent the rest of the rainy afternoon and evening eating hummus and carrot sticks, eating more chocolate and reading a book about mermaids. I’m making a numbered list of mermaid ‘facts’ and characteristics that I’ll use as inspiration for my upcoming songs and creative persona. So far I have 24 bullet points, 24 ways the next song(s) will be influenced by mermaid lore. I’ll share that later this week as I fine tune it.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Mermaid Music by the Black Sand Beach, Resting My Ears

What are mermaids afraid of? This mermaid is currently feeling concerned about not spending enough time in the ocean water. I have hardly gone diving at all since arriving in this tiny Balinese village. At first, I was intimidated by the water. Then I got into the water and my ear started aching after some dives to 8m because I had trouble equalizing. Then I had itchy ears that were about to get infected by the nasty sewage water that runs off into the bay (I had to swim through that shit to get out into the ocean). Ear problems are a huge issue for divers. Best to play it super safe. Any sign of any discomfort and I’m staying dry on land for at least a few days. This is one of the first lessons I’ve learned and had drilled into me already. Not worth risking the ear damage that could keep you out of the water for weeks. I feel especially protective of this set of ears I’ve been given because I use them to create music. I’ve been spending most days in the office space on the cliffside, overlooking the ocean, creating new songs on a laptop with an Akai Mini Play MIDI controller and a really nice pair of headphones. I compose songs and drink beverages for hours as the sun moves across the sky that is too bright to stare into. I’m sharing little snippets of these songs on the Instagram reels and YouTube videos I’ve been posting a couple times a week. I’m eager to share a full album later this year.

“Music is my comfort, escape, power, play, god, way to express the deepest feelings I can feel before I fall into silence. I want to travel the world creating music on my laptop. I wonder why performance hasn’t stuck; shy, avoidant of rehearsal. I like moving onto the next new thing. I like raw, real, improvised. I’m not practiced in performing. It feels stressful. I can see myself saying “yes” to it before I’m ready and the stress makes me sick. I said I’d rather be at the beach than the stage. I keep telling this story.”

— Excerpt from Cha Wilde's Journal (feb 12, 2023)

“You have to have a chat with Beach Girl,” says Captain Bubbles almost everyday. He hears my music. It blows his mind. He runs his hand along his bald pirate head, shakes it and says, “The world needs this. People need to hear your music. Tell beach girl that she can go to any beach in the world if the music really gets out there. Just think, if you meet the right people, you could have access to some of the world’s most amazing beaches, beaches you could never visit otherwise. Music could help you get to those beaches.”

His adventurous spirit is beautiful and a part of me lifts her head in wanderlust and wonder. What could be? Another part takes a deep breath and remembers how much she loves just doing her own little thing, draining all the striving from her blood, enjoying this simple little moment. Just thinking about ‘the music industry’ tightens the muscles. If I enter back into that world, or rather, if I proceed deeper down that path, what is the flavor of my movement? Why would I be walking that way? What am I looking for? What am I finding? These young women inside me, dreamers in their twenties, feed off the fantasies. It generally only leads them to frustration. From there we focus back on what matters in this one moment.

A wise woman inside me is content.
She loves making music.
The creation of the song is enough.

Sharing it with other people is a lovely gesture, a somewhat essential part of the creation process; to allow the art to pass on through to the others. I share because others shared with me. It’s a flow. To be given the gift of a song, to receive it through the body, to give it on to the light and the world.

I write music and blog posts about music as I procrastinate tax paperwork. I’m sipping a green juice, turmeric juice and matcha lattes, gazing out at open blue ocean. I see little black dots in the water…freedivers. Captain Bubbles is out there today. I’m almost done reading “Deep” by James Nestor. Epic fun read if you’re interested in knowing what’s under the ocean. The sunrise this morning was soft and glowing down the jungle valley. I saw little boys zoom down the tiny road on a scooter; the boy on the back was holding a dead rooster by the feet. They sped off into the palm trees and disappeared just as an old lady drove towards us on her scooter. Most people on the street are wearing loose casual western clothing; dirty oversized tshirts, baggy trousers, cheap flippy floppys. In the restaurant I visit almost everyday the staff wears cheetah print clothing. The female bartenders wear cheetah print bows in their hair.

Birds are singing loudly all around me.
Fans are blowing the humidity around.
When the sunshines my spirit jumps out of my body;
it runs outside before I gather my thoughts.

The lady who gave me a pedicure yesterday had the widest smile and a bunch of rice stuck to her forehead. Obviously, she’d been to the temple in the morning. I handed her the raspberry colored nail polish. It felt like a pretty, powerful, playful and peaceful color; all those emotions somehow in one color. She rubs grainy lotion up these long white legs that haven’t seen a tan in a couple months. She points to the rash on my feet and winces. “It’s okay?” I nod. The rash has been on my feet most of the time since I was 14. I showed up one day in the summer in Cambridge, England. It itched me to near insanity and over the years I’ve adapted. I’ve realized the jungle is a living hell for my feet and skin. Bumps, blisters, bites, rashes. Take me to the beach!! Walking in the sand and salt water soothes my feet. Swim out into the water and I forget about my feet entirely. It’s a dream to float in water, free of any joint or skin pain, free of any human worries back on land. My soul is pulled into the ocean and I’m only at the beginning of this journey. Curiosity is profoundly liberating.

Enough writing today, I’m going to make music now. I see a paddleboard out there on the ocean. Perhaps I’ll grab a picnic and paddle out this afternoon. I’ll decide later. Right now, my lifestyle is guided by one decision at a time. I just keep asking myself, “What is the next right thing to do?”

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Lahangan Sweet Scooters, Mud and Cameras at Sunset

Mud squishing between my toes, I slide my way up the dirt path to Lahangan Sweet. The sun is setting behind Mt. Agung, a magestic volcano in Eastern Bali. Every adventure on this island blows my mind. How is this small island home to so much diversity? When I arrived here months ago I assumed there would be a mountain jungle surrounded by beaches. I thought all beaches would be similar soft sand and all jungle would be lush and full of temples. Generally speaking, yes. The diversity is in the subtle differences. The shapes of the rice paddies, the color of the sand, the color of the water, the dialects of the people, the temperature and smell of the air, the views of the sunrise and sunset, the amount of traffic on the street, the bugs crawling around, it’s all different on different parts of this island.

At the moment, I’m relaxing on a jungle cliff overlooking a quiet bay, boats relaxing with anchors, freedivers’ heads bobbing around red buoys, mist rising up the volcano’s long smooth skirt that slides all the way down to the horizon where it meets grey ocean. The vegetation is fluffy green, leaves bouncing in gentle wind. I think it’s raining slighty. None of my clothes are fully dry. They’re all damp and starting to mold. I can feel bumps on the skin of my booty and thighs. Not from bugs or damp but from too much sitting. Hours of sitting on the back of a scooter.

Yesterday, I held onto Captain Bubbles and a camera as we zoomed to the top of a mountain, miles of steep switchback road, through itsybitsy Balinese villages. We passed by a party; loud Indonesian music and the smell of food peeking through the jungles leaves, dozens of family sitting around together. They were still making happy noise hours later when we rode back down the hill. We swerved around countless dogs who lounge smack dab in the middle of the road. How many times during the day do they have to get up and move for vehicles? Is the pavement warm? Are they oblivious? Are we driving through THEIR space?

We drove the scooter past a mountain temple, across a small river (dogs all sleeping on the riverbank), a group of Balinese villagers twisting tools in the engine of a broken scooter, tiny shops selling packaged food I never wish to eat, kids sitting on doorsteps playing with little wooden ball toys, moms sitting on doorsteps holding their babies, men walking down the road with giant bushels of grass or sugar can on their heads making them appear to be forest plant monsters with human legs and a machete. Many times I wondered if the scooter we’ve rented will make it up and around these savage road turns. Wind tying knots in my hair, chocolate melting on my tongue, iPhone in my hand, I click “next” on Spotify and my little orange Bose speaker blasts “Messy in Heaven” by Venbee. Liquid drum and bass guides us up through the jungle to fresh air and dancing clouds.

We parked the scooter at a hut and walk the rest of the way, paying 60,000 IDR, stashing our flipflops behind bamboo and drawing fancy DSLR cameras out of our bags. Captain Bubbles is shooting with his Sony. I’m holding the Canon 5D Mark IV that I’ve built multiple photography businesses with. Business complete, we’re on greater adventures now. The camera has been a friend since I was 10 years old. I was send to France as and exchange student and my grandparents gifted me my first camera; a Canon film camera that was red and grey. I loved it. I used that camera to photograph a ridiculous amount of French landscape and seashells. In my teenage years I was positively offended if a human being walked into my frame. I laugh to remember this because in my twenties I built two portrait photography businesses; the only thing I was interested in photographing were humans. These days I’m mainly photographing my coffee cups, my cute feet in the sand, and pretty ocean views. Twenty three years and 8 cameras later, I have no idea what happened to my little red camera, and I’m clicking the shutter of the fanciest camera I’ve ever owned at the sun setting behind Mt. Agung. Once again, my jaw has dropped, my eyes have opened wide and I hear my laughing voice exclaim, “This is SO COOL!”

I lay my head back and look up at the leaves of these summit trees,
relaxed far away from the busier corners of the earth.
The wind is smooth.
The perfect wind and the perfect water are almost identical,
if you ask my skin.
Mist is rising behind me,
sun rays shine and I point my toes.

Captain Bubbles is clicking his camera shutter rapidly. He’s having so much fun taking pictures of me in this gorgeous magical setting; he’s trying to capture my hair in the wind with the sun setting behind. He likes photographing silhouettes. I’m having so much fun relaxing and feeling the wind whipping my hair around. Being photographed is an essential part of becoming a more powerful photographer. I am now comfortable behind and in front of the camera. I certainly didn’t used to be. I started my working life happily hiding behind the camera and soon realized I wasn’t hiding. From behind the camera, I’m guiding, leading, directing, being in the spotlight just as if not more than the subject. From some people’s perspectives, I’m the star of the show when the camera is in my hands. I loved it. It’s a very empowering position that taught me how to use my voice, take control, soothe other people, create and problem solve on the fly, take decisive action despite a world of chaos circling around me, and always focus on the beauty. As a photographer, I’ve chosen to find beauty in this world and in the people of this world. Shooting and filming, I hope my work helps other people see the beauty that’s right there before their eyes, to choose to look for it, focus on it, and let everything else fade into the bokeh.

In front of the camera, there is nothing to fear. I hate seeing a photograph of myself and remembering how self-conscious I felt or how much I forced it. My desire is to see a photograph of myself and think… “Ah, this is what I look like when I’m enjoying myslf! This is what I look like when I’m relaxed and happy! This is how I look when I’m feeling joyful and alive! Look at me there in that beautiful moment.” In order to have this, I must actually be present, relaxed and enjoying the moments I’m living when someone else is taking the pictures. So I open my eyes and my ears. I listen to the sounds of the mountain and laugh at happy thoughts. I watch birds fly by and I delight in the sensual wind on my shins. All this pleasure is captured by the camera and the cameraman says, “You look so relaxed, at peace and so elegant.” Perfect. How I look is how I feel. Harmony inside and out. The photographs are honest.

Snacks are also important. Today’s snacks include Sweet Jackfruit Chips, Purple Sweet Potato Chips, Raw Cashews and Ritter Sport Chocolates (Hazelnut Flavor). I filmed myself doing some impressive yoga poses on a bamboo platform overlooking the misty valley. If you’ve ever tried to balance on one hand and one foot on round bamboo “planks” nailed together over the edge of a cliff, you’ll know it’s a precarious pleasure, a moment of deep meditation, a sigh of relief for the soul to turn upside down and stare at the rising clouds with blood running to your head and wind in your fingertips. When I find myself upside down in a yoga poses staring at the sky, I know I am succeeding in this life.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Freediving with Captain Bubbles - New Song and Music Video for “Deeper”

Rain pelts us like warm bullets as we soar down the coast. I’m smiling on the back of a rented scooter. Long freediving fins stick out of the dry bag strapped to my back. The little orange Bose speaker I carry with me everywhere I blasting the songs I’ve just discovered that light me up with wonder. Collecting songs like seashells, carrying them around until I’m ready to drop them and pick up a new one. We’re drenched by the time we wade into the ocean. I’m floating on the surface, breathing through a snorkel, resisting the urge to dive under the surface, protecting my ears that need recovery time after freediving training. I watch Captain Bubbles disappear into the deep blue. I can’t see him. I’m counting time, wondering, hoping his figure will reemerge from the invisible bottom. His smile is enormous as he rises to the air and hands me a giant Cowrie shell, still alive. Smoother than glass, fingers slide across the brown spots and something wiggles inside it. I hand it back to the Captain, his feet kick skyward, he sinks with the shell back to the ocean floor. I’m filming him from above, catching his bubbles as they rise to meet me.

Captain Bubbles tells me stories of what life is like 80m below the surface of the water. His body has felt the silent pull into the deep ocean. Holding his breath he has kick down so far below the water that the pressure has pulled him down into a free fall glide towards dark blue. The deepest release and meditation is nothing but fearless beauty in his words. I almost cry as I listen to him. He opens Spotify and plays “Wanderlust” by AK. This song puts him in a trance before he deep dives. It opens his spirit to the beyond and prepares his mind to obey his intention of exploring his limits.

He grabbed his diving mask and waved goodbye, setting off to the sea for a day of diving at the shipwreck. I opened my laptop, launched Ableton Live 11, imported an .mp3 of the “Wanderlust” song and began deconstructing the sounds. The first four bars is just piano. Then the first set of strings enters. Four bars later, the second set of strings enters. In the four segment of the song’s long intro we start to hear a pulsing riser. Anticipation is building for a drop. I sketch out the structure of the song and begin adding in my own instruments.

Listening to “Wanderlust” on repeat all morning has me in a trance now as well. It was playing in my headphones as I journaled. It’s deep in my body, in my subconscious as I sit in front of the Aston Sprit microphone. The tile floor of this bedroom I’m renting is uncomfortable even with pillows tucked under my legs. Whatever. Eyes closed, I start diving into my body, feeling for feelings, listening for lyrics to float up from within me. How do I describe in words the feeling I felt when Captain Bubbles recounted his freediving experience?

His body feels pulled down, free falling, releasing, letting go, at peace in the silence, he pauses at the bottom of his rope to prayer in gratitude for the truth the ocean has given him. Kick back to the surface he looks up at 30m and sees the light sparkling and legs dangling above. He’s returning to the ‘land of the living’, having ventured to a place where humans don’t go or don’t go for long. He is alive, looking to the horizon in the energy of ‘no limits’.

I record dozens of vocal takes, tracks stacking up on top of each other, my voice exploring this deep expansive feeling. My intention is to sing a song that would call and guide a human spirit to the very edge of wonder, to peer down into, out at, the unknown with gentle open enthusiastic curiosity. I create a remix of “Wanderlust” and named it “Deeper”.

The following day, Captain Bubbles picks me up and we drive through the rain to the Liberty Shipwreck on the east coast of Bali. On the surface the world is wet and grey. Our clothes are drenched. I’ve got a huge smile on my face because I love the warm air on my skin, swerving corner of the jungle, raindrops prickling my face. I don’t think Captain Bubbles realizes how much I love this. He seemed a little concerned about my comfort. I was in heaven. Adventures in the rainstorms! On my back is a wetbag full of wetsuits, masks, snorkels, a speaker and a GoPro.

We down a couple glasses of hot tea, and jump in the ocean with the GoPro. He takes his one big breath and swims down. I snorkel on the surface, resting my aching freediving ears, and play with the bubbles rising up from the scuba divers below. Captain Bubbles lives up to his name and starts blowing bubbles up to meet me at the surface. I’m playing with the camera the entire time. The light, the water, the sparkles, the bubbles, the cool sensations rippling around my skin, the taste of air after a long breath hold, the smiles on our faces. We drive home in our wetsuits, freediving fins sticking out of the bag on my back, tunes blasting on the speaker as we retrace our tire-tracks through the coastal jungle. Life is so much better now; we’ve been in the sea. We’ve disappeared into the blue heaven for a moment and popped back up to the surface, reluctant to leave, rampaging with hunger for Nasi Goreng and curious what the video footage will look like. Captain Bubbles is like a little boy underwater, chatting with fish, waving hello to colorful creatures, upturning rocks, and blowing bubbles as moving artwork. It’s beautiful watching another human so alive in their passion, expertise, happy place. My passion comes alive when I’m beside someone else living in their passion. Watching him play in the water only heightens the desire in me to compose music, write stories and create videos.

The day after that, I open the laptop, launch Premier Pro, import the .wav file of “Deeper” and the GoPro .mp4 files. I create a music video, combining the song I wrote and the video footage I recorded. The entire day passes, I’ve swallowed two cups of coffee and a banana smoothie. Time was forgotten and twelve hours later I put the laptop on Captain Bubbles’ lap and click play. He calls me a genius, a very talented woman, and we nerd out about freediving. It surprised him I can create a song in a day and a music video in another day. Creating entire projects in one day is a sweet spot for me. I love to wake up with enthusiasm and curiosity, wondering what I’ll create by the time I go to sleep. I love laying my head on the pillow, smiling because something new exists in the world today, something new that didn’t exist when I woke up. So much can be done in a day.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Slow Bali Days Trading Wisdom

Rainy overcast days on land, vibrant blue beneath the water’s surface. We are at ease. I am wanderlusting, wanderliving. I want the music I create to give us the feeling of wanderlust being fulfilled. When you make music, people constantly ask you, “What type of music? What genre?” It’s an evolving answer because the music is exploring and evolving. This month I’m saying, “I create chill electronic wanderlust music.” The deep joy of music is bubbling up and splashing around playfully within me again. I had to deep dive to go recover it from the bottom of the inner ocean. New songs are rolling in with the waves.

I love how almost everyone in Bali is smiling. It seems so out of place to see someone serious, sad or grumpy. Last week, for the first time in months, I hear a man raise his voice. I turned my head in confusion. What could possibly bring someone to that? I feel very relaxed living here, quite content with how very little is going on.

I continue to want to dive deep, be open, and share what I love. Dive deep with me.

I’d really appreciate some new clothes to wear. I’ve grown almost sick of the tiny bundle of clothes I packed; a couple crochet tops, denim shorts, rainbow cotton shorts, rainbow crop top t-shirt, workout shorts and sports bra, black jumpsuit, three bikinis. That’s it. They’re all used up, smelling of adventure. Every combination has been worn. The fabric is damp and starting to mold. Nothing dries here in this rainy season. Only a day of air conditioning will evaporate the water and they still smell. If I wander down the village, will I find a laundry machine?

I’ve been visiting with “Captain Bubbles” everyday. We’re trading our knowledge and passion. He knows the ocean I’m staring at as I write this; big, blue, open to the universe, containing all the fish. I know the ocean within, the one I close my eyes to see. It’s black and sparkling with memories. We jump in the water and his face lights up with joy as his fingers point out colorful fish. He talks to the fish. He blow giant bubble rings that float up around me. We sit in the cafe and I explain how energy moves through the humans body just like the water flowing down a river. As the river narrows, the current increases and eddies form as the water hits a point and circles. Our attention works like this too. He teaches me about ‘water bonds’ and I explain how we bond with humans through music, sex, womb space, water play. It’s second chakra, sacral chakra. I’m a woman of the sacral chakra; it’s my favorite to work with, it’s my strongest energy, the portal that draws me into the inner world of the human body. Captain Bubbles enters the water and finds the same truths in the ocean that I’ve found in my body. We’re comparing notes of these truths, learned from different perspectives. He’s showing me how to read the waves of water and I’m showing him how to read the waves of emotion in the human body. How fascinating the life paths we choose to walk down and how they end up leading us to the same place in the end!

In the little jungle coffee shop (that makes DIVINE food) I love seeing people being affectionate to one another. A kiss on the nose, nuzzle the forehead, run hands through hair. I love these Tarzan men who walk around barefoot, shaggy hair in locks, unbuttoned shirts flapping in the breeze revealing tan abdominal muscles, zooming by on scooters at top speed. Bali boys, lovely. Bali girls wash their hands in the stone basin, plants growing down to the soap dispenser, tattoos along their arms, sacred geometry, silver rings. We’ve all risen through a fog to be here.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

We Are the Open Ocean Made of Music

I hear myself talking about music and I feel the light sparkling in my eyes. I try and explain the sound with the swooping movements of my hands. I hear the sound in my imagination and feel the rise in my entire body, lifting energy of joy and beauty and I pause, looking at my new friend, wondering if they understand what I’m saying. I wish I had the technical words to explain the musical creation, the vision of a soundscape, that I’m creating…and yet, technical jargon might kill the vibe. I ask him if I’m making sense. I tell him I wish I could explain the science behind the sound. He says it isn’t necessary when the passion is palpable.

It’s marvelous to be in the company of a human being who is boiling with enthusiasm. Can you think of a greater gift than to sense the greatest love? I speak of symphony of string instruments I can tweak with buttons, crafting an exact sound to compliment the recordings of my improvised singing I’ve collected each day. I’m playing with sounds that carve out wide open spaces and hold that space open so my voice can dance and fly in exploration, swooping as though the made up words leaving my body are little dragons playing in the clouds or fish chasing each other in the open blue water.

Expansiveness. Beyondness. Openness. Spaciousness. Vastness. Capaciousness….woah, what a word! How do you describe this feeling of so much room around you that you can spread yourself out as far as you want to go, endless potential to swim through. Potential is not a destination, it’s a direction. I have so much potential means I have so much space to explore! I have room to spread out. I have no limitations to the amount of fun I get to have!

I can feel all of this with the pluck of one string. Inside those seconds of vibration, there are billions of little dancing creatures. Imagine the trillions of little creatures dancing on the head of a pin. Imagine them dancing to the infinite ripples of sound produced by one pluck of a string. No need to crowd the song with so many notes and strums. Just one pluck of one string invites you inside an entire universe, for a moment. Everything is possible inside this moment. I make one simple sound and the universe opens up before me. It feels the same as looking out to sea and looking up at the sky. Infinity. There is infinity inside the sounds I play with.

When I stare at the ocean and the sky, I’m wondering about infinity and sometimes I feel it land in my body. When I play the open strings, infinity dancing inside my body, so much easier to feel it wake up. Human beings contain the ocean and we’re made of music.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

The Little Girl Inside Me Who is Afraid to Make Music

My loving passion for music bubbling to the surface again. I was so nervous, tight and afraid of the music when I packed the heavy equipment into my big backpack a couple weeks ago. Something in me knew I needed to face the music, literally. I just knew that if I showed up in Bali with paintbrushes I would have a jolly good time on the beach but something would be hiding deep down, something inside me was being ignored. It was a little girl.

It took a few uncomfortable days of croaking sounds out of my throat, whisper over the guitar with hesitant vibrations, crying and feeling very young and vulnerable, wishing I felt like a grown up woman all confident and sexy again. WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?! I felt crippled on the inside. Why was I so afraid of being heard? Why did I not feel good enough? Why do other people get to make music freely and joyfully while I have to hide and be quiet? I escaped facing these questions by creating visual artwork; photographs, videos, paintings, journaling. I would speak silently to paper. I would play with my eyes, observing, safe. Safe in the silence. I also stuffed other people’s music into my ears; headphones always in my pocket, on my neck or transporting me to another layer of reality. Since I was a little girl I would put on headphones and step into my own movie. I carefully chose the soundtrack for each moment. I remember being in high school on a school bus, leaning my head against the window, all the other kids were talking and laughing with each other. I kept to myself as usual and turned up the volume. Raindrops trailed down the glass and I watched the forested streets of Woodinville, WA pass by. Headphones off, I was awkwardly different than everyone around me. Headphones on, I was living in a magical story and I loved being me, alive, feeling beauty all around me. I escaped into music, it comforted me and gave me so much meaning. In the music I was in my own world, not to be seen or heard by anyone else. I disappeared, happily while a part of me still wished to be seen (because I liked myself and thought everyone else might like me too if they ever got a chance to see me).

I see flashbacks of myself sitting with a cello between my legs. I’m on the far left side of the junior high orchestra room. My whole body feels sick with the displeasure of not being good enough. The other kids are a couple years ahead of me in musical skills. I just showed up, a new kid from a private school who had been receiving one-on-one music classes for a year, entering into the chaotic swarm of public school kids who aren’t welcoming. I was suddenly a very small fish who couldn’t read music quickly enough to keep up. I ran. I dropped the cello and avoided the music teacher. That music teacher made a joke of me for years to come. When my brother showed up in his classroom years later, he recognized our last name on the roster. “You’re sister dropped out of orchestra?” He made a big deal about it. My brother told me how often he mentioned my moment of quitting. This planted a strongly rooted seed in my psyche. I was a music drop-out. I wasn’t allowed to play music anymore. Other people stick with music. I’m not good enough, not respected enough to keep going. I’m not welcome in the music room anymore and if I do walk in, I’ll be teased. I watched my brother and his friends fill their schedules with music classes, form bands, perform and grow as artists. I sang in the shadows, praying no one would hear my voice.

I would curl up in a ball and die of embarrassment whenever someone caught me singing. It was mortifying because when I thought I was alone, truly alone, I would really go for it. I put myself out there entirely so when I was caught, I was entirely exposed.

I would sing Celine Dion, Enya, Mariah Carry, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston. I sang the songs that demanded BIG voices. I sang the songs that made my voice show up with power. It felt AMAZING to open up and let these big sounds out…so long as nobody hear it….because what if I was actually really bad? What if I thought I was good, like that Asian guy on American Idol who thought he was amazing, and then the entire world laughed in my face at my foolishness. American Idol fucked me over. I watched humans reveal their vulnerable voices and they were mocked. This was my nightmare.

This little girl inside me showed me another flashback. I stood in the center of the portable classroom. Three teachers at behind a long desk, staring at me, waiting for me to sing. I was required to audition for the school musical. Every student was required to audition. The week leading up to this terrifying moment I had secretly rehearsed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the Wizard of Oz. I loved singing this beautiful song and I thought I was good enough at it that I could actually be a good performer on stage. In the audition, I chickened out and sang, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, begging the teachers to assign me to stage crew and keep me behind the curtain. I remember feeling relief and disappointment. I felt the cost of avoiding the fear. I had taken something from myself in order to stay comfortable.

That pattern of quiting and avoiding continued for the next fifteen years. I was in choir but didn’t raise my hand when they asked “Who wants to audition for the solo?” I pretended I wasn’t interested when my college roommate invited me to go with her to audition for the A capella group. My universe was well known for our A cappella grouups so this was a very deep robbing of opportunity from my soul. There was something there for me and I didn’t take it and I can never go back to choose differently.

Well into adulthood, this little girl would take over my body anytime I was in a position to make music in front of other people. I would feel her tension creep into my limbs, her stiffness would close up my throat, her ashamed eyes would dull over my sparkling sight, and I would bow out of the scene to let someone else make the noise. It was killing my soul. I was a songbird trapped in a cage. Looking back I’m smiling. When I was a teenager my mom took me to see the film Mansfield Park, based on the novel by Jane Austen. There is a scene in this movie when Edward reads from “The Starling” by Lawrence Sterne. I memorized this excerpt and would recite it to myself (in an English accent) often throughout my teenage years.

”I was interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took to be that of a child, which complained it could not get out. I looked up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.  In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over, and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage. “I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” said the starling.   I stood looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approached it, with the same lamentation of its captivity. “I can’t get out!” said the starling.  

“God help thee!” said I, “but I’ll help thee out, cost what it will;” so I turned about the cage to get to the door;—it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.  The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it as if impatient.  “I fear, poor creature,” said I, “I cannot set thee at liberty.”  “No,” said the starling; “I can’t get out! I can’t get out!” said the starling.”

When I was 25, I let the bird out of the cage. I was in a yoga teacher training and the healing work of yoga finally pried the bars open and out flew my voice. I sang like an opera singer in a room with thirty supportive adults around me. That was the beginning of my singing and music journey, out in the open, finally facing the fear and finding the joy. That was the moment I started to show up as a grown woman who was taking control of this music situation to steer it in a direction that felt good. By the time I was in my mid-twenties I was utterly sick of living with this hidden love of music, pained to the core by the very possible reality that my voice might stay locked away until the day I die. There was another quote I memorized as a teenager that guided me to the breakthrough moment:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ”

— Anais Nin

The magic words were, “Let the bird out of the cage.” My yoga teacher said this to me after I’d been standing in front of the room silent, shaking and crying. I’d been trying to sing for thirty minutes and everyone waited patiently as I looked the fear straight in the face. “Let the bird out of the cage,” was all I needed to finally hear and my voice cracked. I was done with being painfully stuck inside myself. I sang and I sang loudly. The whole room of people stood in ovation, tears, goosebumps. They told me I needed to sing, I needed to pursue music, I needed to do karaoke, become a professional singer, perform. My yoga teacher told me to start singing for the yoga classes I taught. “Sing at the end of every class. Sing, chant, use your voice even if it shakes.” Other mantras that helped me find the guts to sing to my yoga students that first year out of the closet:

“Speak truth, even if your voice shakes.”

— Maggie Kuhn

“If your knees are shaking, you’re on the right path.”

— Source Unknown

After years of pushing through the fear, why did I still get sucked into it? I arrived in Bali and I felt like the twelve year old girl with the cello between her legs. I thought we’d gotten passed this! Why does she keep showing up in my body? Doesn’t she disappear, grow up, realize that I know how to perform now, that I’m not scared anymore? I cursed myself for not bringing painting supplies. If I were painting, I wouldn’t be feeling these shitty emotions. I would just be playing on the beach. I called a girlfriend in Seattle and asked her opinion. Should I be forcing myself to make music when I’m feeling so much icky resistance to it. It’s not as fun as painting. Maybe I should just be a painter. She asked me why I was pushing myself to make music, why I was choosing to sit alone in a room with me and the music, through the discomfort. I just knew something in me needed to be faced. Something was hiding. Painting wouldn’t be wholeheartedly fun while something scary was hiding in the closet. I wondered, what would it take to start having fun making music with the same freedom I feel when I paint? Surely, that joyful childlike playful creative fun is possible in any art form. It’s not about the medium, it’s about the energy I bring to it. So why is the energy contracting so tightly when I open my mouth to sing? Why is it flowing so freely when I pick up a paintbrush?

Patiently now, I sit in a garden with thirty-four years of living in this body. It’s been nine years since my moment of great courage in that yoga studio, nine years of sharing my voice openly. I’m drinking a flat white coffee and writing thoughts in a pink Moleskin journal. I looked out over the Bali Sea, speckled with jukungs (Balinese outrigger fishing boats). I see long black fins flip up toward the blue sky and sink below the surface (freedivers heading down to the depths). I ask this little girl, this part of me who has felt so tight and afraid, What do you need me to know? Suddenly, she isn’t taking over my body anymore. I don’t feel tight. I am relaxed. I don’t feel young. I am a woman all grown up and completely comfortable. I don’t see flashbacks behind my eyelids. I see flowers and ocean and an invisible preteen sitting beside me at this round garden table. How can I help you? My heart opens up for this little girl. She wants to make music but she’s nervous. She feels like she has to figure it out by herself, she feels like nobody is helping her the way she needs to be helped. She shows me the orchestra room again. She tells me she wishes an adult had sat down to help her learn music slowly at her pace. She tells me she feels pressured to perform like an adult woman. She feels like she’s being told to make music with the confidence of a thirty-four year old woman with a lifetime of experience and skills but she’s only twelve and she’s not good enough yet. She wants guidance and encouragement. She doesn’t want to be criticized and critiqued. She doesn’t want her brother and his friends to tease her and mock her. She doesn’t want to perform online or stage yet. She just needs help learning how to play music in a way that feels fun for her.

My imagination is strong. My heart is compassionate. I love helping children learn in a way that is custom to their needs. I love sharing my passion with people in a way that removes all the intimidating energy. I love to teach music, yoga, painting, journaling, living to people from a place of ease. It doesn’t need to be such a big scary perfectionist hard disciplined beat-yourself-up experience. We can make it so so simple and so so playful and easy. We don’t ask too much of ourselves. Just start with one simple string pluck. Just take one breath. Make one stroke. That’s it. Just one stroke and let it ring out, savor the sensations that ripple through your body as the sound or the color or the movement ripples into the universe after you play it. You make the sound and then you enjoy the sound you made. You smear paint on the canvas and then you enjoy the way the color fills your eyes. You lift a camera to the sky and play with the way the light beam shifts in the air and creates golden sparkles. KEEP IT SIMPLE. In the simplicity there is so much room for easy joy. When there is joy, there is space to absorb and learn and understand. As we understand there is no more fear. There is just expanding play. I know how to teach a little girl how to fall in love with making music in a way that helps her feel safe, supported, empowered and eager to continue. I know how to make people of all ages feel safe and open. This little girl needed an adult like me to help her learn music. I wasn’t there for her back then. I can be here for her now.

As the little girl felt my presence, her energy softened, my body softened. I left the garden and invited her to come with me to play guitar. She’s been following me around the village and we’re becoming friends. I’m enjoying letting her dip her toes into the music. She’s making friends with another part of me that has suddenly showed up again. This other part is also a little girl. She’s the little girl who wears big T-shirts and loves to DJ. She’s the girl who is totally in love with music and isn’t shy about it at all. She’s the girl who loves dance parties and making playlists and creating all sorts of silly sounds with her voice. She’s the girl who loves being mischievous when we’re writing music. She’s a little girl full of little girl funny creature energy. She’s the little girl that teaches the adults how to play music.

So now, I’m in Bali learning to freedive and I’ve got two little girls hanging out with me, both excited to make music. One who needs my gentle guidance and she’s growing her confidence. The other who makes me laugh with her wild attitude. One is sweet and sensitive and the other is wonderfully boisterous. I’ve got the two of them teaming up to make these mermaid songs, under my guidance. The part of me who loves painting is chillin’ in the corner watching all of this unfold, grateful it’s finally being taken care of.

That’s enough for today.
Love and Rainbows,
Cha Wilde and all of my parts

PS: If you’d like to learn more about this concept of interacting with the different “parts” inside of you, check out Internal Family Systems.

Sensual Slow Motion Sand Play Seminyak Beach (Mermaid Prayer #2)

In the senses I slide fingers through cool sand. The sun is rising over Seminyak Beach on the west coast of Bali. I’ve been on this island for a couple days, easing back into home energy. “Welcome home,” is the sign I read everywhere. “Welcome home,” is the phrase I read in my text messages. Home, where I drop the clothes and welcome the elements to touch my skin. Wet feet, sandy legs, grains beneath fingernails, salt in hair, smile on face.

Feet in the small waves, the guitar strap pulled down on shoulders. It was very uncomfortable and I knew I had to do it. I’d rather be playing with paint. I’d rather be listening to electronic songs in headphones as I greet this new day. And yet, something inside me needs to walk in the ocean water and strum a guitar. Someone inside me needs to practice guitar scales and sing “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson.

My voice is lost in the air, competing hopelessly with the crashing waves. It’s not fun to project my voice and hear nothing. It’s not fun to sing into the open dry air. It’s fun to swim inside reverb. I love singing into a microphone, in an acoustically treated studio, in a shower, a car, an elevator, a parking garage, somewhere quiet so my voice cuts through the silence and soothes the soul.

The ocean isn’t a place to sing. It’s a place to listen. It’s a place to walk in silence and hear the rhythm. It’s a place to silence the voice in this throat and hear the voice in the body, the body of water. Listen here and then I can run back into my dark little room and sing my heart out, reverbs and delay!

I felt the way through this realization, action teaching. I placed the guitar on the sand. This guitar now contains sand from Thailand and Bali. Rainbow sarong (a birthday gift from Rae in Thailand) spread out on the hard sand and I stretch limbs, massage feet and feel the first rays of day on my cheeks. Breathing as foreign humans pass by. GoPro camera standing nearby on a little travel tripod to capture my play.

The video in this blog post, is a silly sensual slow motion sand music video to accompany “Mermaid Prayer #2”. If you’d like to watch the extended version of this video (original real-speed video footage of me playing on the beach and practicing yoga with the live audio) it’s in the Studio Member video library.

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Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Underwater Photographers Swimming into My Life

He loves bubbles as much as I do, which is saying something. He’s actually created an entire course about how to blow bubbles, artistic bubbles in the water. He introduced me to a “bubble ring”. My mind is blown. The ocean is blowing my mind. I’ve made friends with a freediving underwater photographer marine biologist pirate and my mind explodes with every sentence he speaks. I’m speechless as he tells me that parrot fish are all born female and the strongest one will change sex mid-life to become a reproducing male! I look around wide-eyed in wonder as he tells me of the night he was on a sailboat crossing the Atlantic and the boat was suddenly surrounded by sperm whales inviting him to jump into the water. He’s one of the most passionate, nerdy, adventurous humans I’ve ever met and we’re planning to swim together and hike up the volcano for sunrise. We’ve agreed to exchange information; he’ll teach me about the ocean animals and I’ll guide him into videography. It can be a confusing uncertain transition for photographers to learn videography. I love offering this training to people so this is a fabulous collaboration for me.

I have stayed up past my bedtime multiple nights in a row now, overflowing with joyful curiosity, giddy gratitude, and eager anticipation for the next morning. I’ve spent this week resting on a cliff overlooking the ocean, absorbing facts about freediving and discovering the absolute insanity that is the ocean world. It’s calling me. I’m feeling obsession setting in and I like it.

I befriended a diving musician photographer from Sweden last night in the yoga studio. We stayed up late exchanging stories about the real work behind taking photographs and pleasing clients. We bonded over our love of nudity, laughing at how natural it is and wondering when the rest of the humans will take off their clothes and realize how much more comfortable it is to be bare. We high-fived over the fact I teach naked yoga online. That blew his mind a little and he loved it. My smile grew even bigger when he told me how he takes naked portraits of himself outside in nature. I’m excited to visit him in Sweden. He was glowing with passion.

Rick is sending me messages from Australia as our time together approaches. He wants to film me underwater just as much as I want to float in front of the camera. We’re a match made in Phuket. I literally manifested this man into my life. The humans I’ve been longing for are popping up right and left. WhenI was in Thailand, the day before my scuba diving training began, I wrote a list of things I wanted in my life. First was scuba diving. Second was professional videographers who would want to help me create music videos. I literally wrote to myself that I would focus on diving first and once I took care of that I would turn my attention to the videographers. Can you imagine how I was smiling when I walked into the Aussie Divers scuba center on day one of training and standing right there in the entrance was Rick, ready with his camera, taking pictures of me from the moment I met him, telling me how much he’d been praying to meet a mermaid model to work with?! So that was easy. Give me a “That was easy!” button to carry around with me please. I need it these days.

I’ve been living in flow so opportunities float in naturally one after the other. Each person I meet arrives in my life loaded up with gifts to give me, needing all these gifts I’ve been carrying around in my arms. The giving and receiving cycle is alive and well and life feels vibrant. It’s a rainy day at the ocean. I’m watching fewer boats than usual pull out of the bay. I hear pitter patter of raindrops on the jungle leaves around me. I sip a flat white coffee and enjoy writing all of this to share with you. Gentle energy and slow living is allow so much space for pleasure, joy and wonder.

Love, Rainbows and Bubbles,
Cha Wilde