In Portland, Kai Gaspar Finds Creativity in Escapist Comforts

The Native Hawaiian poet and teacher from Hōnaunau, Hawaiʻi Island curates creative rituals and locales for a wellspring of inspiration.

Images by Will Matsuda

“I spent the early part of my life without electricity and plumbing. So I grew up with kerosene lamps at night and I’m used to that. That’s very much part of my comfort zone,” says Gaspar, who still has the kerosene lamp he grew up with. He moved to southwest Portland a decade ago and spends hours deep into the night writing alongside husband Kasey.

In 2023, Gaspar published Ulu, a poetic memoir about his life growing up in the small village of Hōnaunau. “I started creative writing when I was a kid,” Gaspar says. “I’ve always been an escapist. I love fantasizing and escaping, and I still do. So writing helped me do that. Writing, reading and movies. Those were my obsessions, and they still are.” Gaspar, age, divulges a selection of rituals and Portland locales that serve as wellsprings of inspiration for his writing endeavors.

MANIFESTING HOME I enjoy the rain. It’s very lush. We’re thankful. We have a beautiful backyard for a garden and we planted a whole bunch of stuff in the front. Howard’s End was sort of our spirit guide, you know?How can we make this like a secret garden? We planted Wisteria, trailing things. We’ve got roses covering the front of the house. It’s very private. 

My husband [Kasey] and I are very big on feeling the fantasy, we want to make sure that the inside of our home feels very, very comforting. Tropical as much as we can, so when the doors are closed and it’s 20 degrees outside or colder or worse, it feels like home. And, I don’t just mean home here in the space, but home in the sense like maybe I’m still in Hawai‘i or Hawai‘i is here with me. I mean, it always is here with me. That’s where I’m from, but, you know, we try to evoke it in our surroundings as well. 

THE RIVER I write every day. I love it. Everything is inspiring. So I carry around my notebook. I always have my notebook journal with me everywhere I go and some kind of writing instrument and just write and record. I mean, I could just watch an episode of Murder, She Wrote, and someone will say something and I’ll just love that word. Or I love the way that was expressed. That’s inspirational to me.

I love walking around the Willamette River. That’s a really inspirational space. Just a majestic waterway and then the wildlife down there. We love birdwatching.
That’s one of the cool things about living here is the variety of bird life. We go down there at night around this time, we can see the ducks on the water in the dark. You can see their dark silhouettes just skimming the water so you can see the little baby ducks just in a row. It’s super cute. 

WRAPPED IN DARKNESS I do love writing late at night. We are deep night people. We tend to stay up very late and I enjoy writing in the dark. We are candlelight people. And I feel like when night falls, it should feel dark — like, the dark should feel like it’s wrapping me up. Darkness should come into the house. It should feel very comfortable because it reminds me again of longing for home spaces. It makes me just feel at home, and the darkness feels very fertile to me. 

ROMANTIC FEELINGS Our favorite trysting spot is Driftwood. It’s a bar lounge in the lobby of the hotel called Hotel Deluxe. When we do go out for a cocktail, that’s usually where we go. It’s dark. The interior is old school, and it’s been around for decades and the interior hasn’t changed for decades so it’s gorgeous. And it’s dark. It’s romantic. We enjoy just, you know, having a cocktail and sitting in the back. 

The tables are all designed so you can just kind of be with your partner. Just be close, share a cocktail at these cute little tables, and just enjoy the space. Enjoy the darkness and your privacy, the sophistication of it all.

I always take my notebook with me. Always have it on me and I’m always coming up with ideas. Things around me inspire me, and I love watching humans interact with each other. I love romances. I love Bollywood movies. I love a great Bollywood romance. Aamir Khan is one of my favorite actors. Very hunky. I love to cry. I love to feel deep feelings, and these movies are just next level. Driftwood kind of evokes those kinds of feelings when you just see lovers in the dark.

MUSIC OBSESSION We spend a lot of time listening to records. One of our passions is music. We have a pretty solid record collection. We’ve got thousands of albums. A lot of soul R&B albums. We’ll take music however we can get it. We particularly love digging for records at the record store which is really wonderful here. 

Crossroads is our favorite record store, and it’s huge too. Their selection is amazing. There are times when I’ve opened it and closed it. Oh, it’s like I spent eight hours there. We are obsessed with music and they have thousands of albums. The selection is beyond and there’s no way you can see everything in one day. And not only do they have stacks everywhere — you also go under the stacks, so there are two levels. All the stacks have boxes underneath and those are full of albums too.

We were about to go and my husband had this album and he’s like, “Check her out,” and it was this singer named Liz Hogue. She’s out of Philadelphia. I thought, I like your look, and we literally had to leave. There’s a listening station and I thought, Oh, wellm you look great, maybe I’ll just preview this real fast. 

I just dropped the needle for literally one, two seconds and heard her voice in the lower register and I was like, Oh, yeah, indeed. We’re good, I got it. We love contralto singers. We love all singers, but we love, love a solid contralto, like Phyllis Hyman, and a Hawaiian singer, Haunani Kahalewai.

I’ve always been an escapist. I love fantasizing and escaping, and I still do.

Kai Gaspar

DANCING AROUND My husband and I love to have a good time. We love to go dancing. We love dancing here [at home]. We spin records almost every day, every night. We’ve explored clubs and dance clubs and haven’t found jus, like, the most perfect one. At this point, we mix really great cocktails at home, we have a great bar selection, and great music. We have a club-sized mirror ball in our parlor so we got everything we need to have a great time.

Oaks Park Roller Rink is one of the oldest in the U.S. It might be the oldest, actually. It’s just roller skating, you know, just picking up that speed and feeling the wind in your hair is awesome. And I love the DJ, and often the DJ will spin awesome sets. Last time we went, the DJ was spinning a lot of music from the ’80s, so that’s definitely our jam. Cannot go wrong with the ’80s jams. Some Taylor Dayne and Kim Carnes, you know? I mean, like, yes, some Poison, Madonna, yes. It’s not necessarily a club environment. There’s lights and a DJ and the flashing lights. It a lot of fun. 

PAGE TURNERS Wherever books are being sold, I’m down to look at your wares. Powell’s is definitely convenient and large. They have almost everything. You’ll always find something but I’ll find books wherever. Used bookstores. You go along the coast, Lincoln City, Depot Bay, Newport and all these places are very popular tourist attractions, so there are a lot of antique shops and used bookstores.

I love memoirs. I read a lot of them, especially celebrity memoirs. I’m all about it. One of my favorites is the one Marlene Dietrich’s kid wrote. Maria Riva wrote a biography about her mother and that was a page turner and a half. I learned so much about writing techniques from the way that Maria Riva wrote about her mother. It just gives me insight into folks whose artistry I love. So it feels like I get to know the artist and the artistry even more too. So if I love something enough, I want to know more about it. I want to know how it came about and how it’s put together.

I read everything, and if you look on our shelves, we’ve got everything from architecture, photography, history, sociology, lots of cookbooks. We’ve got everything.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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