Pod Insights The Moth Look Away—Or Don’t: The Moth Radio Hour About this episode In this hour, stories of bearing witness and when it's best to look away. Overheard arguments, recording history, and a view nobody asked for. This episode is hosted by Moth Senior Director Kate Tellers. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.
Storytellers:
Ali Griswold's view of her neighbors leaves nothing to the imagination.
Misha Mehrel's mother re-invents movies by editing their Blockbuster rentals.
Madeline Berenson and her fellow "Spice Grannies" intervene in a fight mid-air.
Liz Mills is her daring brother's emergency contact.
Boots Lupenui witnesses magic conjured by the the "heirloom songs" of Kohala.
Podcast # 970
Transcript 0:13 Speaker 00 This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Kate Tellers. The other night, I was walking home from the subway with my two children, ages eight and 10. We had just crossed an intersection when we heard squealing tires immediately followed by the crunch of metal. When we turned around, there were two people lying in the street next to a smashed up motorcycle. I knew two things immediately: I had to call 911, and my children could not witness this. I quickly told them to turn around with their backs to the street and me as I described to the dispatcher what I was witnessing.
0:47 Speaker 00 After help was confirmed, I turned around to my children to see their tiny backs, rigid, lit up by flashing blue and red lights as the sound of sirens grew closer. They looked so innocent. I do not regret preserving some of that.
1:05 Speaker 00 Sometimes, the right thing to do is to look away, and other times, we need to look life straight in the eyes. In this hour, we'll explore stories from people who are grappling with this conundrum. And for all you big-hearted people out there, I confirmed with the detective later that the two men in the intersection survived. They will, thankfully, be fine.
1:26 Speaker 00 Our first story comes from Ally Griswold, who told us at a story slam in London, England. Here's Ally.
1:37 Speaker 01 So, I love my flat, except for its window. There's nothing inherently wrong with the window. It's even double-glazed. The problem is that it looks directly into my neighbor's shower.
1:51 Speaker 01 This is the main window in my flat. It's the one I face when I'm sitting on my couch, when I'm eating dinner at my table. It's impractical to keep it covered at all times. It is unavoidable, as were they when they were showering. I've never met my neighbors in the building next door, but I feel that we're intimately acquainted. They were either very clean or very dirty. I'm unclear which. But as far as I was concerned, at least one of them was in the shower at all times, and often both of them together, having enthusiastic shower sex. I considered what to do about this.
2:33 Speaker 01 I thought, I'm an adult, I should be able to work out a mature solution to this problem. We all live on the top floor of our respective buildings, and it would be perfectly reasonable for them to assume they're in the privacy of their own home. I felt like it was my civic and neighborly duty to let them know. So I decided to go about it in the most British way possible, by writing them a very apologetic note. I started with, "I'm sorry," which, after several years of living in this country, I think is the best way to start a conversation with any British person. So I say, "Dear next-door neighbors, I'm so sorry for the awkwardness of this note.
3:17 Speaker 01 I just wanted to let you know that your shower window isn't as opaque as you might think it is. Actually, it's pretty see-through, in case you wanted to get a curtain. Wishing you well, kind regards, all the best, Ali." Early the next morning, I tiptoe over to my neighbor's flat. I've addressed the note to top-floor flat, because I don't know their names, I don't even know their flat number. I put it through the mail slot, and I run back to my building. A week goes by, nothing changes. The showering and the shower sex continue apace. At this point, I'm forced to conclude there's one of two options.
4:02 Speaker 01 Option one, they read my note and they don't care. Option two, which seems to me far more likely, they didn't get or didn't read my note.
4:14 Speaker 01 I resigned myself to the situation and in the meantime, I tell everyone else in my building about it too.
4:23 Speaker 01 And so, a couple of months later, my neighbors in the flat directly below mine, Alex and Georgia, come by with some news. They tell me that the flat in the building next door is up for sale and their friends are buying it. They've already told their friends about the shower window and their friends are planning to get a curtain. I'm like amazing. And what an incredible sitcom-level solution to my sitcom-level apartment problem. When are they moving in? Home sales close slowly in the UK, but several more months down the line, their friends move in. I know this not because Alex and Georgia tell me,
5:05 Speaker 01 but because one day, new people are in the shower and they're taller.
5:14 Speaker 01 I won't go into too much detail other than to say that when you are seeing people through their shower window and they're taller, more is available at eye level.
5:27 Speaker 01 So I go back to Alex and Georgia. I say, "Hey, guys, I see your friends moved in, but maybe you could remind them about the shower." They tell me that they're seeing their friends for dinner in a few weeks and they can bring it up then. In the meantime, they come over to my flat to sort out a problem we're having in the building, just in time to see one of their friends step into the shower.
5:51 Speaker 01 Alex and Georgia press their faces to my double-glazed window. "That's Pete," said Alex. "That's all of Pete," said Georgia. I suggested this problem was more urgent than dinner and maybe we could send them a text.
6:10 Speaker 01 A few days later, I'm sitting on my couch when I see it. It is a historic day in my flat. The curtain is going up. It is like the opposite of the Berlin Wall falling. I text all my friends the news. A few weeks later, Alex stops by and he knocks on my door. He tells me that he's been over to the friends for dinner and they were looking at photos of the listing of the flat from when it was up for sale, when he noticed something odd about the kitchen. In the kitchen, you can see the fridge, and on the fridge, there is distinctly a single piece of paper.
6:49 Speaker 01 So Alex zoomed all the way in on the photo, and there, blurry but unmistakable, in all of its awkward apologetic glory, was my note.
7:05 Speaker 01 Not lost, not unread, but displayed in a place of honor for everyone to see. Thank you.
7:23 Speaker 00 That was Ali Griswold. Ali is a writer and former investigative journalist living in London. This is her first story for The Moth. She still lives in that same flat, but is happy to report that there have been no more shower incidents.
7:42 Speaker 00 Our next story is from Misha Merrill, who told this at a story slam in Miami, where we partner with WLRN. Here's Misha.
7:55 Speaker 02 Hey. I'm nervous.
8:01 Speaker 02 Okay. So, when I was a kid, back in the 1990s, yeah, it's not that long ago. My mom used to take my sister and I over to Blockbuster Video, and she would say, "Go pick out any video you want," and then we'd pick it out, and we'd rent it, and we'd bring it home, and she would make a copy of that video for us to keep, so we could watch it whenever we wanted.
8:33 Speaker 02 Right, so that's illegal. And we did it for many years. And eventually Blockbuster kind of caught on. And the VHS tapes would arrive with a sort of lock on them that prevented us from being able to copy them. So we found another video store called New Concept Video, which was in Miami Beach, was a great local video store. And we started doing the same thing there. And it was kind of a blessing because New Concept had this entirely different collection of movies. Like, all these eclectic, independent movies and foreign films. And my mom was in heaven because she's a real film buff. And she could kind of culture my sister and I a little with all of these, you know, eclectic movies.
9:16 Speaker 02 So, you know, while she had her head buried in like the indie film section, I wandered around as a nine or 10-year-old in this video store and found another section, which had this like partition with a red, like velvety curtain. And I would poke my head through and see this, you know, like ocean of just like fleshy... just porn, it was porn. And, uh, and I was amazed and mesmerized because, I mean, not only, you know, is it amazing, but it's also, I was, I had no idea what sex was because we didn't discuss these things in my family. Because despite the fact that like my parents are very open-minded
10:01 Speaker 02 and my mother in particular, I kind of think of her a little bit as like an Annie Hall, like a real-life Annie Hall. She's, she's very beautiful and very funny and warm but neurotic and throws on like outfits that don't really work, but they look amazing on her. So she's like that. But she's also Kurdish and Muslim. So, along with this Kurdish Muslim-ness, comes a lot of other, you know, baggage, in my opinion. Like, especially, basically, she's sexually repressed. So, you know, and, so we didn't talk about sex growing up. And she protected us a lot from that conversation. Which meant that these videos that she was copying,
10:45 Speaker 02 she wouldn't just copy them, she'd also edit them.
10:50 Speaker 02 Censoring out anything that she thought was too sexy or violent. So she'd just cut all that stuff out. And, so that means that like, you know, when I think about watching a movie as a kid, I really can't remember one movie that I watched that didn't at some point just freeze with two characters on screen like clearly about to kiss. And then frantically fast forward. And I was desperately trying to look past those gray squiggly lines on the screen. But I couldn't see anything because it was just this chaos of fast forwarding. All the way through the scene and then it would stop and the movie would continue. And she did this without fail with every movie that we rented.
11:33 Speaker 02 And then what happened is like just to be safe and cover her bases, she wouldn't just, you know, cut out like sexy scenes. She also cut out just huge portions of the movie because she was suspicious that maybe there's some like subliminal sexual contents in there that she's not quite picking up on and just to be safe, let me cut out like this massive portion. So like for instance, like Grease, like the movie Grease, which I loved. My sister and I would watch Grease and the way I watched, I thought like, wow, like what a weird kind of like avant-garde experimental movie. When really it was this incredibly conventional musical. Because she'd cut out like a third of the movie.
12:17 Speaker 02 Then there was The Wizard of Oz, which I don't know if anyone remembers, there were these flying monkeys in that movie, which terrified my sister. So she made another version without flying monkeys in it. Which I have to say did not affect the story at all. So, still a great movie without the monkeys. So yeah, this is the way I grew up and how I watched movies. And, you know, I eventually like wanted to see the original format of these movies and I did, I watched them. And I have to admit, I mean, I was... Pretty disappointed with the originals because they were really fake and phony.
12:58 Speaker 02 And they had these stories that made sense and like a plot that was, you know, had a through line and an arc and a beginning and a middle and an end. And I really liked what my mom did because the movies she made, these versions, my mom's versions, they reflect a lot more accurately my life. You know? They're scattered. They make absolutely no sense. And there's very little sex in it. Thank you.
13:34 Speaker 00 That was Misha Merrill. I asked Misha about some of the edits his mother made to the movie Grease that made it so avant-garde. He told me that she cut out all of the early scenes of Danny and Sandy kissing on the beach. He thought it was an intentional decision that the audience know absolutely nothing about their backstory. A bold choice. In a moment, Spice Granny's on a plane and beauty on the other side of bravery.
14:07 Speaker 03 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
14:16 Speaker 00 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kate Tellers. Our next story in the show about the choice of when to look is from Madeline Berenson, who told this at a slam in Denver where we partner with public radio station KUNC. Here's Madeline.
14:32 Speaker 04 So I had boarded the plane to Portland, Oregon, where I was headed for my grandson's third birthday. And in my hand I had my boarding pass and on my boarding pass was printed my row and seat, 8B. And when I got to row 8, I saw that the women in seats A and C both had gray hair. And since I am also a woman with gray hair, I found it kind of funny to be completing this little trio of crones on a plane.
15:06 Speaker 04 And when I sat down and I got a better look at my seatmates, I thought was, I saw that it was even funnier than I thought. Because each of us had a very distinct style that reflected a different persona. So we were kind of like, you know, the Spice Girls, Granny Edition. The woman in the window seat, Seat A, was fit and thin and she was wearing all Patagonia. Sporty Granny. The woman in the aisle seat was wearing this like drapy velvet dress and a crystal necklace. Mystic Granny. And I was in the middle in one of my cotton vintage dresses that I paid like $3 for. Drift store Granny.
15:51 Speaker 04 So, you know, all put together in a row like this, we looked like a real-time 3D BuzzFeed quiz. Which modern funky granny are you? And I was kind of proud of that. And I was feeling very pleased with myself about the way we were redefining the post-menopausal woman, right? Like, "Look at this world. You don't have to devolve into the stereotypical, cranky, judgmental, busybody who's in love with Barry Manilow." You know, you can still be yourself. Not that there's anything wrong with Barry Manilow. Anyway, then this gorgeous couple comes on the plane and stops at the row in front of us, Row 7. And I don't know their names because they only called each other babe the rest of the time.
16:37 Speaker 04 But for the sake of this story, we will call them Brittany and Dan. And Brittany took a look at her boarding pass and she saw that they were assigned Seats B and C and she turned to Dan and she went ballistic. She was like, "The middle seat? Are you kidding me? The middle seat? How many times did I tell you I needed the window seat? That was the only thing you had to do. The only thing. Oh my God. You screw up even the simplest thing." At which point, the man in 7A had turned his back to them, closed his eyes, and was now pretending to fall asleep.
17:23 Speaker 04 Sporty Granny, Mystic Granny and I kinda shot each other a yikes look. And Brittany was going on and on, listing all the ways that Dan was ruining her life. And every now and then, Dan would say something like, "Sorry babe, sorry babe." But it just made it worse. She was like, "I don't want you to be sorry babe. I just want you to not be lame babe. Can you understand that? Can you just try to not be so lame? Can you even try? Oh my god."
17:57 Speaker 04 So, she went on and on and on, all through the boarding process, all through takeoff. And it was getting worse, it was getting uglier and meaner. And at one point, I realized that Mystic Granny and Sporty Granny and I were all holding hands and sort of this, kind of like, we were bracing ourselves against this ugliness and this horror. And, but I also realized that we knew this story. We had seen this before, right? The beautiful abusive woman and the broken man under her spell, who can never do anything right, is responsible for everything and can fix nothing.
18:41 Speaker 04 And when we got to altitude and Brittany was still at it, Mystic Granny broke. And she reached up and she tapped Brittany on the shoulder and she said, "Excuse me. You are not the only person in the world. There are other people on this plane and your childish, selfish tantrum is upsetting all of us. It's time for you to stop."
19:09 Speaker 04 Mystic Granny!
19:13 Speaker 04 And Brittany turned and looked at her and she burst into tears. And she got up and she went off to the bathroom and she stumbled down the aisle, sobbing all the way. But now, Sporty Granny had something to say. So she tapped Dan on the shoulder. And she said, "I don't care how pretty she is, it is not worth that abuse. And you know what? You deserve more."
19:40 Speaker 04 And realizing that we had just morphed from the Granny Spice Girls into the Granny Greek Chorus, I thought, "Well, now it's my turn to add something." So I said, "Yeah." I said, "That's not love. That's not love." And Dan was looking at us between the, you know, the space between seats. And his eyes, his big, round eyes were filled with tears. And he said, "Mind your own fucking business."
20:12 Speaker 04 So, just then, Brittany comes back from the bathroom and she's still crying. And she falls into her seat and she leans against Dan and she's whimpering, "Oh, my God, she was so mean to me. She was so mean to me." And Dan's like, "Oh, no, babe. I'm sorry, babe." Meanwhile, back in row eight, we grannies weren't feeling quite so spicy anymore. We just kind of slowly retreated into our own little personal spaces. And cranky granny in the window seat closed her eyes and went to sleep.
20:46 Speaker 04 Judgmental granny in the aisle seat pulled out a book and started to read. And me in the middle, busybody granny, I put in my earbuds, turned on my music, and listened to my Love Songs playlist all the way to Portland. It's my favorite playlist and I know what you're thinking. And no, there is no Barry Manilow on it. Not one song. Thank you.
21:17 Speaker 00 That was Madeline Berenson. Madeline is a writer, ski instructor, and a blissed-out wife, mother, and grandmother who passionately believes that minding one's own business is highly overrated.
21:32 Speaker 00 To see a picture of Madeline wearing one of her, obviously, vintage finds, please visit themoth.org.
21:47 Speaker 00 Did you know that we have a pitch line that you can call and tell us a two-minute version of a story that you want to share on a Moth stage? We listen to everyone. Here's one that I love that reminds us that what we look so closely at one day may not be worth a second glance tomorrow. This pitch came in from Arnold Bremen.
22:06 Speaker 05 This is a short part of a long humorous story. Of all the 2,000 performers that I presented, I think Ethel Merman was probably one of the most memorable. It was the late 1970s, and she was in her early 70s. I was quite concerned that her voice wouldn't be as powerful as she was in her hey-damn Broadway. At rehearsal, she absolutely alleviated that fear. Her voice could be heard for miles without a mic. At performance time, the Broadway bell sang, danced up a storm, and had the audience at the edge of their seats. After the finale, the audience jumped up and cheered the great legend. Backstage, Merman was Merman.
22:48 Speaker 05 She was totally herself, loud, brash, and boisterous. A hundred fans waited at the stage door. She was flattered when I told her what she said. "Now that's terrific, hon. Now get rid of them." The following morning, before taking my star to the airport, I opened the local paper, and the banner headline read, "The Old Star Should Retire to Old Performers' Homes." The audience jumped up out of sheer sympathy. I prayed she hadn't seen the review. She had, and said to me, "I had to come to this piss-ant little town to get a view like that?" There were 200 letters of complaint to the editor. The editor sent them on to me, and I posted them to my star.
23:32 Speaker 05 I received a wonderful letter back that hangs on my wall today. It ended, "Oh, don't worry about that untrue and unkind review. I never pay any attention to them, anyway. I always say, 'Yesterday's newspaper wraps today's fish. Fondly, Ethel.'"
23:49 Speaker 00 Sing out, Ethel. Those are wise words. You can pitch us at 877-799-MOTH, or online at themoth.org, where you can also share the stories from this hour or others from the Moth archive.
24:13 Speaker 00 Sometimes the choice to look is not simple. Our next story is from Liz Mills, who told this at a Grand Slam we produced at the Castro Theater in San Francisco, where we partner with public radio station KALW. Here's Liz Mills.
24:32 Speaker 06 My brother William is nothing short of Houdini when it comes to getting out of things he doesn't want to do. Literally no excuse or strategy is beneath him, and I'm really ashamed to say I've often been his accomplice. Nearly 15 years ago, he called me from his college dorm room and told me he was totally screwed for a research paper the next day. And so me, his ghostwriter since high school, assessed the situation, and there was no way I could write 15 pages on the Ottoman Empire by the next morning. And so I said, "William, looks like you're gonna have to say, 'Our grandmother died.'" And he was like, "Liz, I did that at midterms." And so I joked, "How about grandpa?"
25:17 Speaker 06 And he said, "I did that one too." Suffice to say, even Houdini runs out of tricks at a certain point, and William certainly did. He failed the paper. But the good news is, when it comes to the higher-stakes stuff, William always rises to the occasion. About six years ago, he and I were on a bus on the way to Mountain View, and the driver lost control of it, hit the media, and we flipped. And out of nowhere, William turned into a real-life Clark Kent. He was saving the day, running around, helping people up, bandaging people up. He was making us laugh in the middle of the dark highway, when it was pretty scary. He was our brightness. So it probably comes as no surprise that a thrill-seeker like William ended up in an unconventional path.
25:59 Speaker 06 About a decade ago, he became a skydiver, and then a skydiving instructor, and then a base jumper, which means he's spent over 10 years climbing up mountains and jumping off epic peaks with only a parachute on his back. Pretty insane, but kinda cool. And so despite the fact that I'm epically less epic than him, I still am always his get out of jail free, emergency contact. And I do that because I love him. He's amazing and one of my favorite people. So, no surprise that I ended up in Switzerland two years ago when I got the call that he needed my help. He and his best friend Nate were on this bucket list trip to the Swiss Alps to jump off this mountain called the Eiger as a way to celebrate their newfound sobriety and just beginning a new life chapter.
26:43 Speaker 06 But, things weren't going according to plan, and enter Liz. My task of the day was I was standing at a police station in some random town in the Swiss Alps and getting a list of to-dos. I had to sign a mountain of paperwork, make a ton of calls, pick up his shattered sunglasses, cremate his body, bring him home. My big brother William, at 32, had jumped off the Eiger, soared like Superman, seen the world from a vantage point very few ever will, and not made it out alive. Grief defies words. And as I sat there with a police officer, I was shaking. I felt outside of my body and I could barely process
27:26 Speaker 06 the fact that William, who got out of everything, some sort of magical part of him got out of everything, hadn't made it out alive. Where was the magic? As I was leaving the police station, the officer handed me one more thing, an SD card. William was wearing a GoPro when he jumped off the mountain, because base jumpers do that. And so he had the final minutes of his life recorded. So, I know what you're thinking. I hope Liz threw that out and forgot it ever existed. But of course I didn't, because I had some sick belief that sister loyalty meant I had to experience that too. I threw it out of my head for a while though, but a few months after he died, I broke. And in like a manic frenzy, I pulled the video up on my computer
28:09 Speaker 06 and I just imagined if I hit play, would I regret it? Would I just be screaming at the screen, "William, pull the parachute earlier, pull it now. It's now or never, you've got to do it now." I hit play. And the video was nothing like I expected. It was really cool. I saw from his vantage point, being at the top of the mountain, looking around at some of his great friends. He was saying, "I love you, man." How epic is this? He was doing high fives and everything. I saw as he brought his toes closer to the edge, and then he jumped. And for 45 seconds, when I was watching the video, it was the two of us looking at this incredible escape ahead of us. This valley, it's beautiful. We looked to the left and to the right, and we took it all in, and I understood it.
28:54 Speaker 06 I mean, why stand at the tippy-top of the Alps looking out on a vista when you can fly over it and behold the world like entirely on your terms? William started base jumping when he was in a really bad place, and it was a hobby that became a passion, and a passion that turned him into the best version of himself. It was a part of the way he healed from bouts of tremendous depression throughout his life. So William's final gift to me was he showed me a way that healing has many different paths, some of which are bananas, like jumping off mountains. And all of them are hard, but it's worth it. It's taken a huge amount of courage over the past two years
29:36 Speaker 06 for me to learn how to simultaneously hold grief and devastation with joy and hope. William was the one who showed me there's such beauty on the other side of bravery. The video ended. I was devastated. It felt irrecoverable. I could not imagine watching this video. It sickened me. But I paused, and truly, it took a few seconds, I realized the magic in it. Because William really was Houdini. He was always escaping, all the way to the very end. He escaped social norms, the predetermined path, the idea that the way things are are the way they're supposed to be. He evaded that misconception we all have,
30:20 Speaker 06 that the possibilities presented to us in life are representative of all our actual options. He didn't escape death, obviously. But none of us will. And my God, did he show me the extraordinary beauty of a life well-lived.
30:54 Speaker 00 That was Liz Mills. I asked Liz what it was like to share her brother with a roomful of strangers. She said, "Sharing William, both his life and his death, with The Moth audience, felt very right. He lived life in such an epic way, as if he was intentionally teeing me up for a lifetime of moments where we could share the spotlight. Him as the protagonist, me as the storyteller."
31:30 Speaker 00 In a moment, a Hawaiian man goes hunting for the lost music of Kohala when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
31:44 Speaker 03 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
31:54 Speaker 00 This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kate Tellers. Our final story was told by Boots Lupenui at our main stage in Honolulu, Hawaii, where we partner with Hawaii Public Radio. Here's Boots.
32:16 Speaker 07 Aloha mai kako.
32:21 Speaker 07 This is a story about magic.
32:25 Speaker 07 Not the kind with the top hat and the rabbit and the howling lady getting shot in half.
32:32 Speaker 07 It's always a howling lady.
32:36 Speaker 07 No, I saw real magic. You know how when you see a magician and they tell you where to look and you're still amazed when the trick happens?
32:47 Speaker 07 I'm going to tell you right up front where to look.
32:50 Speaker 07 So the magic I witnessed happened in Kohala.
32:55 Speaker 07 Kohala is a beautiful place. It's full of stories. Some of them are well-known, like the one about how the people of Kohala saved the infant Kamehameha from being killed, hiding from, hiding him from whole armies, so that he might grow up and fulfill the prophecy and unite our islands. Kohala did that.
33:20 Speaker 07 I was born here, on Oahu, on the Windward Side, in Kaniohi, right? That way.
33:29 Speaker 07 But my roots reach back to Kohala. We'd visit as, as kids. And I knew, I knew that place was special. A few years later, I saw the amazing documentaries of Eddie and Murna Kamai.
33:46 Speaker 07 Yeah.
33:48 Speaker 07 Documentaries about special places and a way of life that was disappearing all too quickly. And I knew I wanted to make stories like that, but regular guys, we don't get to do that kind of stuff. So maybe better we just leave it to the professionals like Eddie and Murna Kamai. But in the early days of 2017, Eddie Kamai passed away. And that line of storytelling ended.
34:17 Speaker 07 Later that same year, my wife Cheryl and I, we moved to Kohala. And we hadn't even been there for very long when I ran into a couple of guys I hadn't met in years, two great Hawaiian musicians. They come over for dinner, they bring their wives and their instruments, of course. In that order, of course.
34:36 Speaker 07 We eat dinner, we move to the living room, the cases pop open, the guitars and ukulele come out, and we start playing. We're playing old Hawaiian music, we're playing local music that was on the radio when we were kids, there was a couple of Eagles songs in there, all, all kind of music. That jam session lasted until four in the morning. Yeah, our wives were thrilled.
34:59 Speaker 07 But the whole time I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about how good we sound. We sound like we're already a band.
35:05 Speaker 07 And I'm thinking, I wanna keep this feeling. I wanna feel this again and again. So later that day, I tell my wife that I've had these ideas for telling stories for years, for making documentaries, but I never thought I could do that kinda thing.
35:22 Speaker 07 But Eddie Kamai only had so long to tell stories and I don't know how long I have to tell stories. I told her I wanted to go hunting for the old unrecorded songs of Kohala. I call them heirloom songs and asked the old families if they could share any songs.
35:44 Speaker 07 My wife foolishly agreed to help me because, let's face it, she married a musician and an artist and now apparently a storyteller, so clearly she has poor judgment.
35:57 Speaker 07 But she can write grant applications.
36:03 Speaker 07 So she agrees to help and with her help, I get to work. I ask all the film guys, I ask the musicians, everybody says yes because apparently everybody else in Kohala has poor judgment too.
36:17 Speaker 07 I get a grant, I start a GoFundMe, I name our band the Kohala Mountain Boys, and we got to work. I put out the word on social media, I asked everybody I knew if they had any songs from any family in Kohala, and immediately I get a hit. How easy is this?
36:39 Speaker 07 One of my grade school classmates contacts me and says, her grandfather, who was from Kohala, wrote a song in 1940 or 41. So I contact her by phone and she says she knows she's seen the song, but she can't remember where. So her and her husband, they tear that house up. And in the last place they look, they find it, Papa's papers. And they send me the lyrics and she tells me about her grandfather, how he legally adopted her and raised her as his own daughter, how on long weekends and holidays, he would take her back to Kohala so she could meet some of her Kohala family. It's a good man. What she sent me was a page of handwritten lyrics, ma'olele hovei, in Hawaiian language.
37:27 Speaker 07 My job was to take those lyrics and put them in the form of a finished song. So I took the lyrics and the time period that he wrote them. And I tried to craft a song that I thought might have been a hit on the radio here, if you heard it in 1940.
37:46 Speaker 07 And just like that, song number one, done. Super easy, right?
37:52 Speaker 07 But it's funny, when we finally recorded that song for the documentary, we're standing in the boonies in this ancient part of Kohala.
38:00 Speaker 07 And we're in front of this old cabin, and we're surrounded by native plants and trees. And there's a stream running right here. We're dressed in period clothing and playing instruments that would have been available at the time the song was written. And we're playing this old slash new song, and it could have been World War II era Hawaii. And yet, right in front of me, there's a cameraman with a gimbal and a giant camera. And off over here, there's a sound guy with a bank of digital whatever they are. And I've got a wireless digital monitor in my ear. It's like 1940 colliding with 2019. But we got it done. We got it done. And then, nothing.
38:43 Speaker 07 For months, nothing. Nobody gave me any songs. I asked everybody I knew to ask everybody they knew, and nothing. And I'm thinking, these grant deliverable deadlines, they're gonna come, and all that money's gonna have to be paid back. And I don't even know what kind of limbs I'm gonna have to sell to make that happen.
39:01 Speaker 07 But it's not so magical now.
39:05 Speaker 07 But I started this, and a small group of people stood up with me.
39:11 Speaker 07 And I knew in my bones that there is magic here, so I just had to keep trying. So I did. And a week before, the film crew was to come up and shoot for the one and only time.
39:25 Speaker 07 My bass player tells me, "I know a lady who has a song, but she's not gonna give it to you."
39:35 Speaker 07 I don't even know what that means, but I'm desperate. So, I called the phone number. She grilled me forever. And then she tells me to come to her house for round two of the interrogation. So Hawaiian, you know, just trying to root out my intentions. So I go and I sit down with her and she tells me about her dad. About how he used to run a crew that maintained the famous Kohala ditch trail. And how he would take a couple of crew members and some pack animals and hike into the forest. And they'd stay in this little cabin next to the ditch trail. For days on end while they worked on it. And the whole time missing his family. And at night he would lay in his cot. And while he's thinking about his wife and kids.
40:19 Speaker 07 The beautiful scent of gardenias. From all the wild gardenia bushes around the cabin would come wafting in the screen windows. And he wrote a love song for his wife comparing her to the lovely gardenias all around him. She thought it would have been about 1939 or so. At the end of this hour, she smiles at me and says, "I think I'm gonna give you my daddy's song." Yes!
40:46 Speaker 07 And then she says, "It goes like this," and she starts humming. La da da. No, no, no, no, no, that's not how, no. What, that's it? That's it, after all of that, that's it, humming? So I said, "Does it have lyrics?" And she said, "Oh, yes." And she pulls out a notepad and a pencil and she starts trying to remember what they might have been.
41:09 Speaker 07 Right about then, I started feeling like I was getting Covid.
41:15 Speaker 07 And I think I was contracting it from this song.
41:20 Speaker 07 But I recorded her humming on my phone and I took her scratched paper lyrics home. To write this song with now, six days left. Just like the first one, I was shooting for a song that would have been popular here back in the day, 1939, when he wrote it. This one was easy, this one wrote itself, it was something about it that it felt like all I had to do was play it out loud and it would be real, and it was. And just like with the first song, we recorded it in the bushes. On the wall of a, the rock wall of a kahlo patch. And we got it all done, on time.
42:02 Speaker 07 On the last day of filming, Sunday afternoon, the crew comes to me and they said, "We got all the interview footage shot, we got all the song footage shot, we got all the B-roll shot, but we still have no idea what the story is that we're editing this footage into." There's no way I could have story boarded any of this. Now, this, this crew is leaving to go back to the airport to fly back to Oahu in a couple of hours, and I still don't know what the story I'm telling is. So now I'm in my head and I'm running through all the interview footage, trying to play it back, and it hits me that I've overlooked the most important piece of this whole puzzle. I took my eyes off of the spot where the trick was happening.
42:49 Speaker 07 Both the ladies who gave me songs for this story, for this project, one at the beginning of the project and one at the end of the project, were both from the same old Kohala family.
43:04 Speaker 07 And yet, they had never met, they had never even heard of each other. I didn't know how that was possible. But then it hit me that I can tell the finished story with one last shot. So, I tell the crew to go get the first lady, the one who grew up on Oahu, "Take her to the family graveyard in Kohala." It's a beautiful little plot. She'd never been there before. "Don't mic her up. Ask her to wait in the car." Because I don't want her to explore the graveyard on her own. I go to get the other lady, the one who grew up in Kohala. And I ask her to come back to the family graveyard to meet her cousin of hers for the very first time. And she says yes, and
43:50 Speaker 07 we filmed them meeting in the graveyard, hugging and kissing. The one woman pointing out the graves of both women's shared ancestors.
44:02 Speaker 07 They're holding hands and they're smiling and walking and talking and without microphones. We don't get to know what they're saying. That's not for us. That conversation belongs to their family. And it gives me chicken skin even now I think about the fact that the only people who heard those words were those two women and their ancestors. And I was honored. I stood outside that graveyard and I was honored to just be a silent witness to this sweetness in a graveyard. And that was it. There was the trick. It was revealed. I was watching the whole time and I still don't know how the trick was done.
44:44 Speaker 07 But what I do know is these two guys, these two men, these two sons of Kohala.
44:53 Speaker 07 They loved their family and their home so much that even after death, they were moving things around just to try and reunite or unite their descendants in their homeland. What kind of place, what kind of special place raises people who hold that kind of love and passion and loyalty even after death? Like I said, I don't know. I still don't know how the trick was done and I don't care. Because I saw real magic. I saw what happens when an amazing place raises loving, loyal children. I saw real magic.
45:33 Speaker 07 No top hat and no rabbit and no howling lady again cut in half. Real magic.
45:42 Speaker 07 Mahalo.
45:56 Speaker 00 That was Boots Lupenui. Technically, we look with our eyes, but you will see Boots' story more clearly if you listen with your ears. To end our hour, here is the Kohala Mountain Boys playing one of the song's Boots references in his story. It's called "Lovely Gardenia."
46:17 Speaker 08 Lovely gardenia, you're the flower of my heart.
46:28 Speaker 08 My sweet gardenia, you're my only sweetheart.
46:37 Speaker 08 Graceful gardenia, you're the flower of my heart.
46:48 Speaker 08 My sweet gardenia, you're my only sweetheart.
46:57 Speaker 08 Each petal snowy white, with fragrance so sweet. Reminds me of that night when romance creeps, romance creeps. Night I dream of you.
47:17 Speaker 00 Remember, you can pitch us at 877-799-MOTH, or online at themoth.org, where you can also share these stories or others from The Moth Archive, and buy tickets to Moth storytelling events in your area through our website. There are Moth events year-round. You can find a show near you and come out to tell a story. The Moth can be found on all major social media platforms.
47:42 Speaker 00 That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope this episode has inspired you to see stories around every corner.
47:52 Speaker 00 We hope you'll join us next time, and though we cannot see you, we appreciate that you're here.
48:22 Speaker 03 This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Kate Tellers, who also hosted and directed the stories in the show. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Marina Klucy, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinale, Caledonia Cairns, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patricia Uraina. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour is from Epidemic Sound and Boots Lupanui. Podcast music production support from Davey Sumner. The Moth Radio Hour is
49:02 Speaker 03 produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and to learn all about The Moth, go to our website, themoth.org.
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