CMUA: What is your earliest memory of creativity?
Hēmi: Me and my sister grabbing all of the blankets out of the cupboard and creating tents in the house with all of the furniture. We would build little houses in the lounge and then occupy them for the day.
I can see the images on these blankets. They remind me of my mum, my Nana, growing up in a simple home where we would make something out of whatever we could get our hands on.
CMUA: Do you have a creative pastime?
Hēmi: I've always had an obsession with Māori words. When I started learning te reo Māori, the way I would output what was coming in was by writing poems, and that grew into writing waiata. Now I compose for different groups.
One of the most recent compositions was when I was living overseas for some time and I had this feeling of being homesick, so that waiata composition is wrapped around that feeling. Another waiata might be wrapped around some sort of angry feeling, if it's a waiata of protest.
When I compose, I can get lost in the composition for days. There's an escape from Te Ao Mārama, and you enter another realm.
It encourages you to think differently, it encourages you to ask questions, it encourages you to talk to other people and share what you've created. It’s like therapy. It’s getting away from the everyday mundane stuff that is our habits, and your brain enters another space.
"I can get lost in the composition for days. There's an escape from Te Ao Mārama, and you enter another realm."
CMUA: Has sharing te reo online with Everyday Māori changed your relationship with the language?
Hēmi: My connection with the language through relationships has grown so much. Our connection with te reo Māori is based on relationships. It doesn't live in isolation. In order for the language to live within you, you have to talk it, and to talk it, you have to have relationships with people.
My connection with te reo Māori has grown so much in sharing the language with others through Everyday Māori.
CMUA: We use ‘auahatia’ as a rallying cry for creativity. How would you teach this kupu?
Hēmi: ‘Auaha’ is the verb: to create something. It can also be used as an imperative. If you want to tell someone to create something, we need to add the passive ending onto the verb: ‘tia’. You're telling someone to create. “Auahatia!”.
CMUA: What’s a creative moment that made you?
Hēmi: I love to paint, I love to draw, I studied Māori visual arts. I did a four-year degree, and I majored in painting.
My great-grandfather was an artist. I'm fortunate enough to have one of his pieces in the house that he painted in 1928 before he came out from Holland. Not pretty art. He would paint things that were dull. He was known for painting flowers that were dead and wilting.
He had this different way of looking at things, and he had this beautiful quote. Essentially it says that art is in the eye of the beholder, and I think that's very true. We all like different things. We all have different things that turn us on aesthetically.
CMUA: If you picked up the brush again would you follow his style?
Hēmi: I’d have to set up a canvas and just see what happens. You have to allow space and time to create. Sometimes with life and work and commitments, I don't allow myself that time and that space. I need to set up a canvas and just see what happens.
"You have to allow space and time to create. Sometimes with life and work and commitments, I don't allow myself that time."
How would you encourage New Zealanders to get more creativity into their lives?
Hēmi: With te reo, learn at least one word a day. I think that's something that we can all do, and there's so many resources out there to access te reo Māori now. The creative part is trying to incorporate it into your life, finding those opportunities with people and places we can use that word.
CMUA: What’s the first Māori word you think everyone in Aotearoa should know?
Hēmi: One word everyone should know is ‘taihoa.’ ‘Taihoa’ means to wait.
“Just give me a second, hold on, taihoa.”
CMUA: What can you tell us about working on Lorde’s EP Te Ao Mārama?
Hēmi: It was so exciting to work with Lorde, not just with Ella but Sir Tīmoti Kāretu, with Hinewehi Mohi, and Hana Mereraiha. It was a collaboration between us to create those five waiata in te reo Māori - sitting down, doing it the proper way through wānanga, through conversation. Her seeing if this was okay, and then the process that it took, that's what was so rewarding.
We saw people fall in love with it, we saw people be a little bit uncomfortable with it, for different reasons. But that's what art is.
CMUA: What's your pro tip for people who hit a creative block?
Hēmi: I'm still learning myself. I think leaving it, whatever it is, and going for a walk, going for a swim, going to do something else, getting out in nature. Leaving it alone.
Go away and come back, and if that doesn't work, just try again.