"Distance" is the A-side of a single that I released with my solo project, The Tidelands on April 27th, 2020. A little bit on the song: The week before spring break, I was working on the island of Kauaʻi with some colleagues in the NRM department at UH Mānoa.

That's when we got the news that the university was shutting down indefinitely amid the rise of COVID-19 in Hawaiʻi. And when we returned to Oʻahu a few days later, everything was just completely different with quarantine orders and social distancing guidelines already implemented.

And so I wrote "Distance" a couple of days later while I was kind of self-quarantining in my bedroom since I had recently traveled outer-island.

And the song is a somber reflection, I guess, on the public health crisis. But with a glimmer of hope as well, especially in terms of the land being able to rest while we humans are kind of largely confined to our homes. There's a lyric towards the end that mentions a mountain to the north and that's a reference to Mount Makana, which translates as "the gift" in Hawaiian. Makana means "the gift". And so, yeah. "Distance" is the first single with my new solo project, The Tidelands. And you can check out the project on Spotify and Apple Music as well as Bandcamp.

Thanks.