Phiya Kushi’s hands are familiar with the textures of two things: food and piano keys.
It is 6 p.m. on a busy weekday. Kushi gets up and goes to the kitchen. He cuts some onions, carrots and celery, then sautés them together in a soup pot to make a miso stew. When the noodles are done, he adds them to the simmering pot of vegetables. His partner Clair Johnson said he is responsible for almost every meal at home.
When he is not cooking, he can be found using his hands playing piano at A Major Music Lessons, a music school on Jackson Street in Columbia.
Glory from the family
Kushi, 60, was born in a reputable family. His parents were leaders in the field of modern macrobiotics. They spent years teaching the public about how to eat a healthy diet. Eating natural food instead of processed food was a crucial part of his parents’ theory.
Kushi remembered living in a big house in Boston when he was a little kid. “At least 20 people were living in the big house with our family, consulting my parents about the knowledge of food,” Kushi recalled. “And the people would change all the time.” His sister, Lily Kushi, kept a record of people living in their house for 10 years and found out that there were around 10,000 people in total. The number impressed little Kushi. He thought it was amazing for his parents to attract so many people. He hoped to be someone like his father.
“My family made a lot of opportunities for me. I grasped the opportunities to be part of my parents’ dreams,” Kushi said. He once worked in warehouses and restaurants featuring macrobiotics. He was also in charge of the Kushi Institute, a school named after his family. As the executive director at the Kushi Institute, he gave speeches and attended seminars, spreading the ideas of his father.
At one time, he was analyzing the recovery of a woman who suffered from melanoma. After the speech, a doctor came to him and said, “The woman in the case was my patient 20 years ago,” he said. “I thought she was going to die in six months at that time.” Kushi felt proud of the positive effect of macrobiotics.
Kushi was immersed in the sound of the crowd brought by his family’s accomplishments. He got used to the appreciation and credit given by the public. At that time, he thought that everything would continue to go in that way.
Still, there is something missing
Kushi’s sister, Lily Kushi, was the first person who brought a different sound to Kushi’s life. “My sister spent all her life with music. She was a big influence on my music journey,” he recalled. The eldest sibling, became a musician, pursuing a different path from her family. At the age of 8, little Kushi sat by his sister’s piano, asking her to show him how to read music. Later on, he bought books and became a self-taught pianist.
His sister moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of her dream about music. Kushi visited her several times in Los Angeles. He noticed she did not eat as healthy as she could. A few years later, Kushi’s sister became very sick. It was Kushi who accompanied her to see the doctor, where they learned she had stage-four cancer. Kushi was shocked by the result. He started to think to himself: “We even cannot save our beloved ones. Are the ideas from my family on the right track?”
Kushi felt depressed when his sister, Lily Kushi, passed away in 1995.
From then on, Kushi tried to find what was missing in his parents’ method.
Kushi looked back at the successful examples of patients’ recovery. He found out that social support played a key role in one’s well-being: “You can tell people what to eat but still, they do not listen. When your friends or family members smoke, you would get that habit since you want to be part of the social group. This is a thing that was not stressed in my parents’ work.” Kushi believes his sister failed to find a good partner to take care of her, which was a main reason for the tragedy.
Meanwhile, Kushi himself was struggling with intimate relationships. He got married at a young age. “At that time, I got lots of naïve notion of how marriage should be,” Kushi said. He admitted that he laid too much emphasis on the traditional role of a husband, “but we young people just naturally love to explore new things.” Kushi discovered that the more he stressed loyalty and commitment in the marriage, the more conflicts he found. His first marriage ended in jealousy and fighting.
“I was going to try again,” Kushi said, recalling the beginning of his second marriage.
But it failed again.
Kushi regarded the second divorce as a nightmare, “it was like Hollywood couple fighting and wives take all the money away, except it was worse because I didn’t have any money.”
After years, Kushi learned to abandon his previous ideas of relationships, “The best way to love is to be unconditional,” he said.
A few years later, his parents both passed away. The familiar sounds in his life-his parents’ words, his sister’ s music, the applause and the cheers-gradually disappeared.
A new life
After his sister’s death and his divorces, Kushi felt isolated in life. He also felt isolated in his career as a spokesperson for his family’s institute. He realized that he had kept instilling macrobiotics ideas as an authoritative professor in front of people, “But it cannot build closeness among your listeners,” he said. “It was like wearing a mask. Teachers and students always keep distance.” Furthermore, Kushi found out he had spent so much time following his parents’ path. He decided to find his own dream.
He met Johnson in Alaska 10 years ago. Johnson later became his partner. She encouraged Kushi to pursue a different path. “It is like turning off the buzzing noise lingering in his mind,” she said.
So, it was time for Kushi to search for a new sound. He came to Columbia and found A Major Music Lessons. “I am always interested in music, “he said. “More importantly, I like teaching people informally, like a friend.” He decided to become a piano teacher there.
He gets to connect with people in the community more closely.
Carol Allers, Kushi’s coworker at A Major Music Lessons, said that Kushi always has solutions to children who are bored during the piano lessons. “He would put aside all music scores and teach children duets and knuckle songs.” In this situation, Kushi would let the children play the simple part and he would play the complicated part. “Children and their parents love him,” Allers said.
Kushi’s life is now full of children’s laughter and melody.
Johnson thought Kushi became happier after taking this job, “The change is like rejuvenating,” she said.
He once taught a deaf student to play Jingle Bells. He showed the student how to play it again and again. The student followed what he did again and again. “He impressed when he could play the song without hearing,” he said. “And I was also impressed by that.”
During the process of teaching music, Kushi finds the similarities between macrobiotics and music, “They both help people acquire a new skill and a new understanding of the universe, a new meaning of life,” he said.
In the future, Kushi will continue to help people using his hands by either playing music, cooking for loved ones or giving them support as a friend to help them through difficult times. “I was once a goal-driven person but now I become wiser,” he said. “I am not going to change the world like my parents did.”
But he is adding his unique melody to this world.
Comments