Frank w/ trusty typewriter at the Atlantic Ocean photo by Luke Savisky The Godless Church: While I was out walking in the God-less church of the Gore Range, the Rockie's Glacier's were slowly melting into cool clean drop-lets feeding a cold clear tongue of water licking along the rocks, flowing down through the tundra, past the Alpine line, into valleys shaded with tall trees above moist beds, thick with fallen leaves already turning back into earth. A deer was bent, mouth to water, drinking... with ears turned hard back - (seeing with out eyes), ...  a whole forest knowing of my approaching. Coming down off the mountain I felt it could take me and I would not mind, ... sure, I would fight to stay alive, as a cornered badger would, but... I would not...  -  ultimately mind... ... not as I would if i was in a hospital bed, bleeding from the inside out, from something or other, while fed Vicadin and Morphine through a drip. I'd rather have my bones picked clean by ants and animal teeth. For here in nature, question has no reason. But really...  -  reason has no question. "Is", is just -  "is". ... Every lesson is here, in the God-less church of the great out doors. The last sanctuary of the sacred. Where the echo of the original thought is still sounding without a beginning or an end.

"perfect system" Growing up in and around the raw ocean has had a profound effect on my life. I have almost drowned in it, and have also been the happiest while swimming in it. I have reverence for it's power, while simultaneously understanding it has no malice - it is simply pure nature. It has no intent, it just "Is". If I were to be drowned by her (or eaten by a bear) - that would be a perfect death. Nature is a perfect system. Man's intellect is the free radical bouncing around within this system; This is the basis from which I view every aspect of this life. Zen Buddhism speaks to me the most because it looks to nature - not man, but I could never fully be a Buddhist because I refuse to differentiate between plants, animals and humans. True - humans have some kind of "spark" that has developed us (in our time-line) to be able to do thing plants and animals (in our eyes) do not, like art and philosophy. But animals and plants are much more attune to the real rhythms of this earth. We don't know what to do with our spark and are wrecking havoc on a balance that has been tested and balanced over billions of years. Our time here is short. We will destroy this Eco system we now know, I have no doubt. Still I cannot help but be compassionately intrigued by our wrestle with the dichotomy between our natural self, and our intellectual self. Our sense of superiority, our need to make a mark, our fear that our life will mean nothing, our fear of the unknown, & our need to SEAR the earth with the branding iron of our individuality, so that there is a record of how deeply we felt while we were here... (because deep in our hearts we know that the depths and vastness with which we feel while being alive will be forgotten upon our death)... ...It is more than we can bear. We try so hard to some how make our selves different, or to make it different than it is, in a vain attempt to make our impermanence seem less foreboding. The human intellect is so powerful, yet it's fear of finality or impertinence is it's ultimate weakness. Looking to wards an afterlife somehow seems like a distraction from our responsibilities here in the moment. It is right to respect the depth of our feeling, and to live in wonder and awe. This life is truly amazing. With all it's hardships - I am thankful for it. Music for me some how talks to the magic that we feel in this life. It evokes an emotional place in our hearts, a place before words, (this is why I also love instrumental music, because it's emotional breadth is not hemmed in by a lyrical narrative). I do truly love people, I just don't take us all that seriously. We are fragile little beings, against the stalwart natural world which (I hope) will flourish once again long after we are gone. F.Q.O.

"Trying to breathe Hawaii's past into the present" plate lunch stand with an old tuna fish can for an ash tray. grade school photo with floral patterns on shirts and dresses, our brown faces, white teeth above bare feet. beer in the back yard, and an open guitar case, someone's aunty doing Hula in a tank top, sexy, and thick with good living. picking puka shells at sandy beach before the sun rise, with sea turtles floating just beyond the shore break. buying lunches from a truck at the beach, packed in a card board box, wrapped  with white string, chop stick, napkin, 2 scoop rice, macaroni salad and teri beef. picking sea weed out of our pubic hair in the outdoor fresh cold water shower at makapu'u beach park. seeing Gabby Pahinui wild eye'd and lost in a bar's parking lot at night, after drinking at a koko marina bar, trying to numb the loss of a vanishing era of an innocent island, Atta, Blah, Joe Gang, Sonny and Gabby's mythical waimanalo backyard, slack key, guitar soul soothed the whole 1970's island. coming down off the ridge into valleys along muddy trails, strewn with broken open fallen guava, pink and teaming with fruit flies, the moist forest along streams feeding ginger blossoms, walking down into the dryness of the flat land of the valley mouth. stealing mangos off the trees. Picking watercress from the crawfish filled fresh water spring fed flats of Beano's Pearl Harbor farm, eating it right there, standing in the water. spear fishing with Kaipo and John John at Ka'a'ava, them teaching me how to lure a squid from it's hole, find the fish in a lava bed, reminding me to let the little ones go, and to only spear the big fish, ... and only what you can eat. Hanging with the men as they buried the kalua pig wrapped in banana leaf, encased in hot rocks in the ground over night, talking story until dawn, when we dug up the delicious steaming meat. Val Ching weaving hats at Waikiki beach for tourists, a retired fire fighter now "beach boy", his once hard body and brown leather skin now slightly soft with the gentleness of middle age, he, sleeping with my mother at night, teaching me to "throw net" for fish in the day. practicing in the park, using tree leaves for pretend fish. the whole crow's nest bar room all laughing to Kent Bowman (aka "kk cow manua"), drinking primo beer. long gone kailua drive in and portlock pier. plump frogs hopping across the wet grass on a rainy night, before pesticides all but killed them off. snails on the sidewalk in the dewy morning on the way to school. cock-a-roaches running for cover when we'd switch the kitchen light on in the middle of the night. the clicking of gheckos on the window sill. the purr of island doves outside my bedroom in the early morning. the clatter of myna birds in the banyan trees in the red streak of sunset. a brown paper bag filled with plumeria, the needle and thread sticking to our fingers from the flower's milky sap, as we made leis out on the lanai. old Chinese man behind the counter of a cracked seed store with a tide chart on the wall, huge glass jars filled with pickled plum. Japanese lady grinding ice into shave ice cones after school. the smell of resin and catalyst soaked fiberglass in the garage, as we patched a surfboard. my cat's rough tongue licking the salt of evaporated ocean off my skin when I got home from the beach. Jerry lopez: The soul surfer with the Buddha's hands, who's bones must have been wrapped in a mystic's skin to be that Zen like calm above a bone crushing reef. His relation to the water had nothing to do with profession. It was spiritual and sensual. He was devoted to E'hukai beach and something simple and eternal... His woman must have had to make peace with the ocean. (Who could stand in the way of such love?) - or - (to share him with her like that). the friggit birds circling high above the drooping still wind palm fronds in a Kona weather calm before a storm that could last days or weeks, full of wind thrashing, white water wave capping, while we searched the shore line for big green glass fish net balls that broke lose and drifted all the way from Japan. an old Hawaiian man floating way outside the line up on a homemade wooden paipo board, nobody drops in on him. in the shore break we all are bobbing in the ocean, waiting like seals with our hair slicked back by the salt water. an incoming set is greeted with hoot's and hollers from body surfers jockeying for position with swimfins and mostly friendly young man aggression. buying fresh ahi poke' at foodland, sand still on our feet, no shirt, no slippers, wet trunks. no shoes, no shirt, no problem.

"I would never trade these days" (My past is a mystery, and my future's unwritten)   slicked down angel's street of snow and brown branches tree limbs ladened  with loves abundant and a world's redundant ever flowing lotion of memories with out solvent like an opaque ocean of so many life times lived in one skin a blend of happenstance decisions and actions sacred geometry in a tree leaf a conch shell in a cornucopia a possum paw and the hand of man in a muscle and a labia this rhythm is longer than all our lives and this moment burns but really means nothing in the long run I let it take me like a river runs into the sea like color through a maple angel leaf the pain of my aging goes with out saying that I would miss all this and in fact don't understand it but love to see how it evolves and rolls and how my life seems to unfold ever changing - re-arranging weaving and wandering fucking up and squandering drunken and pondering knowing only of my life's longing to live it all - love it all before my life's fall from my will to live at all into the winter of my reenactment of every moment I ever  held onto every joy that ever got me through the onslaught of my involvement with this world and it's ways no... I would never trade these days I would never trade these days I would never trade these days. ============== birds wing knifing night she softly closing up behind it moon spreading milk on black water curtains drawn over muffled lover tree's leaves casting blankets of shadows on streets on starlight cream and molasses streets clocks ticking diligence goes unnoticed persistent little fucker === yeah - glad to not have its job ==== the smell of rain in my memory a thunder clap in the palm of my hand the earth is oozing dew from deep inside the fire flies are turning in the summer sky it's a night like this where secrets get revealed someone's gonna lose their piece of mind tonight ====== aint it just like gravity to hold you close to her? holding on like a lover she gave birth to wings like mercury w/ a roof of stars we cant reach and hardly see but imagination  is a wondrous thing icaris still got higher than all the human beings but mass knows to keep you close all truth flows from the earth ===== Tucked in the folds of the origami infinite lotus, of life's time continuum, Creation's little details, more wondrous than the space shuttle, quietly superimpose upon each other, forming 3 dimensional layers of petals unfolding onward - transparent in our hustling din. ======= we're living with the question without an answer that's the first thing you gotta get used to  - I don't have enough fire to put out all that water  - - if it feels good do it, if it doesn't... don't ===== Threadbare and high on life leaving a transparent rubber tire track trail all across the american map a summer moons reflection in a night blackened pool it all starts with love - this is the beginning our obsession with angels is our obsession with ourselves every angel all of us, inside our skin is wings, divinity in a tree leaf, and in every living thing - like silt in the bottom of a bottle of wine, every husk tells the stories of an entire lifetime distilled in all our senses is the essence of our being, yeah man - religion isn't supple enough to bend like the limbs of trees ==== I just can't seem to hold it any more there's just too many pieces, and they're tumbling to the floor, my is filled up with more threads than I can follow some much years, so much joy and sorrow, my mind's filled with thing's I can't keep so much crop and some are going fallow… too much field (too much field) and not enough plow for me to follow when you get my age you start to prioritize knowing you can't realize all the dreams you got stored up inside life used to seem so simple - like we had so much time now I'm watching a generation fall we all gonna fall like dominoes man pinned down crimson, sea worn and forlorn following the flow  of the ancient undertow rolling ever onward - now my time is waning I felt that first hit today, like I have lived more days than I have left time is moving faster than the endless grand chasm that my childhood summers felt like in the slow motion clock of my youth (If seen the edge of the downward slope into middle age and I don't want to relent to it ) who could hold the bowl big enough to hole all that life would spill? who's mouth not over flow? I been down so many roads... did I lose my way ? I been down so many roads... did I lose my way ? I guess I followed my heart...  did it lead me astray? when I look back upon my life so many lifetimes it seems to me, how many lives can one man lead? === feels like I 'm doing battle with something the consistency of a ghost

The following 2 peices were included in the c.d. booklet for the PDP album "7" "Recording 7"  Moon down, no sign of sun. Just the deep black / blue night and the studio light. All the phones have stopped ringing. The last of down town is home bound and you can feel the whole world seem to settle down. It's the best time to record. Martin threads the tape machine, Ted plugs in the echoplex. Nobody knows where the night will go. There's a riff here, and a drum pattern there. Words always seem the last to stick. Reams of paper with lyrics from home just seem to get burned as kindling in the furnace... a few phoenix. You start with a pretty good idea, but once you're deep inside the night it seems to disappear... maybe having served it's purpose. You follow a road and you find your self somewhere you hadn't planned. It's a nice surprize. The spirit of all those nights listening to music with your best friends flows over you. The dawn coming on, the trees outside the window in the winter wind. The drunken tears on the record sides as the song strikes a chord in our hearts. Singing out loud to each other to drive the point home. ("Nobody's goin' home tonight, yer sleeping on the couch"). Daytime in the studio is a time to get things done, night's the time you let it happen. Bring a bedroll and a tooth brush... (a case of wine will never feel neglected). It's like fishing. It's great to catch a fish, but you have to enjoy the waiting with your line in the water too. I like no time clock in the studio. Sometimes the most constructive thing you can do is just sit at the piano with your band mate at 3 a.m. and play "Wild horses" (and marvel at the tender beauty of it). You're not working on recording now... (or trying to 'write songs' or anything as boring as that). You're just reminding yourselves why you love songs. When you remember that... that's when the new ones come. (F.Q.O.)  "Live and let this whole thing go" Quite a few years back when my father was a mountain man at heart, he gave me a copy of “The 7 Pillars of Wisdom” – by T.E. Lawrence (the famed “Lawrence of Arabia”). The book is T.E.’s account of his time as a military man conflicted by his fondness for the Arabs he fought for, and his allegiance to his ever disapproving England. My father was a WWII Navy man so I think the personal-war politics held a special interest for him.      Anyway, the title of this record, “7” has nothing to do with this. It just reminded me of a road trip I took once to visit my dad in Colorado.           I came over to California from Hawaii and my brother sold me his red '66 Mustang hardtop. Beautiful car. Simple. Straight six. Easy to fix. It was my first ‘free man’ road trip. California to Colorado to spend the summer. I didn’t know much about the mainland then, but I did remember hearing about the “Big Rock Candy Mountain” from a song my folks used to sing when I was a kid. My mom would play an old nylon acoustic guitar, my dad would play the banjo and sometimes the harmonica, and my sister, brother and all would sing a song about a big rock candy mountain, along with other songs about a wild-wood flower, and trains with names like “the Wabash Cannonball” and “the City of New Orleans”. I would never want to go to bed, no matter how tired I was, while they were singing. I just used to love to curl up on the floor and go to sleep in the middle of it all.      Anyway, I found the Big Rock Candy Mountain on a map and headed for it. Slept in the back seat there in the parking lot of the gift shop and took it all in. It was a tourist trap by then, but it didn’t matter much to me. It was a kind of homage because my mom had died a few years before.      I drove on to Boulder, where my dad was working as an astronomer at L.A.S.P.; the plan was to help him build a rock wall for a friend of his, and to get some hiking in. He gave me the “7 Pillars…” book there and it was my 'summer read'. I was fascinated with T.E.’s story and how he let circumstance and passion of belief sweep him along into a completely different world and culture. And how it turned him upside down, until his homeland seemed foreign to him.           But this story I’m telling you now is not about that. It’s not really even about the rock wall… although it sticks out in my mind as one of the most constructive things I’ve ever done; to build a rock wall with my father. But while I was there I found my father’s old banjo at his house. In disrepair. Unplayable. I asked to borrow it so I could fix it up for him. I drove it back over the Rockies, got it fixed, and took a picture of myself with it for the cover of the first PDP cassette. On his return to Hawaii I gave it back to him, ready to play. He was happy to see it, but could not bring himself to really play it again; I think with the passing of my mom it was just too powerful of a reminder.           My father taught me about nature. He watched it through a telescope, swam in its oceans and climbed its peaks. My mother taught me about loving life. She was the dancer, singer, and bon vivant. They are both gone now, and I haven’t reconciled that I can’t bring them back.           We named this recording “7” simply because it is the seventh PDP studio record. There’s a true sense of history in the feeling of the band now. We’ve explored so many roads and forged on simply out of the love of just making and performing music because it brings us pleasure. Seven records and 20+ years down the line just feels like a benchmark. From those early days busking on the streets across the states, selling records out of a cardboard box, it was all about the land going by the window, the feel of unknown towns, the people along the way. And the feeling that you might not ever make it back. That wanderlust continues on to this day.           There is so much life to be lived and loved in this short arc. There’s Buck Owens, Caetano Veloso, and Monk records to be played, wine to be uncorked, meals to be cooked for friends and Dylan Thomas to be read out loud for the pure sound and to giggle in the syllable joyful tumble of it. The list goes on... and each of us makes our own list and tries to get it done 'til the light goes out. That’s all we can do… “Love your life, hands on handle it…” (well, you know the rest).      It’s so beautiful (this life). And so hard… but there really is no evil. Life is just the long song trying to find a way. And one hundred years from now it won't matter anyway. The hardest moments will fade in the outwardly telescoping eye of time, and the dead have only love left to give the living. And so we give ourselves back to the dead, in the wild tall grass bent in wind, and the nights unfolding ever onward into celestial “all we could ever knows”, and the dreams in the beds who long only to rise into a whole ‘nuther day-world of birds, crickets and wind.           So goes your child's heart, free and ever after, with pack lunch and quarter in pocket.      The dew drop pulling off the leaf. Make a way... Your grown soul knows....  Throw the cell phone out the window.           Pee on the T.V.                    Make your lover feel good.                                   Live and let this whole thing go.   F.Q.O.