Susan Hwang

I’ll be joining fellow songwriters for Bushwick Book Club: Charlie Nieland, spiritchild, Patricia Santos and Thomas Teller in Indianapolis (not my first time!) 9/25-10/1 for an anti-censorship experiment at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. We’ll be living in the museum and writing songs all week in response to banned literature and performing the songs live at the end of the week. We talked with Chris LaFave of KVML in this interview that we’ve released as Episode 13 of The Bushwick Book Club Podcast. Take a listen! (It’s on iTunes too if you want.)

I’m posting this because it was satisfying on all kinds of levels to sing this song for this occasion with these people. Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist, and what always comes through in his writing for me is his compassion for the species. He feels sorry for us, because we have the capacity to love, and we want to be loved, but we fuck up. A lot. One of the ideas expressed in SIRENS OF TITAN is that the only thing humans are here to do is to love whoever there is to love. That’s it.

At the premiere of Bmore/DC Bushwick Book Club, spearheaded by Sea Griffin, there were all these incredible, talented, creative, fearless artists who created inspired pieces for this kick-off show and the audience who came to witness these new creations and birth a new chapter of BBC with us. There were these exquisite people to love, and half of them were on stage with me playing and singing the song I had written.

I grew up in Maryland outside D.C., and I lived in Mt. Pleasant just after college. This is where I learned the blues with Howie Feinstein and gospel with Jackie Stevens. When I first began singing blues in public, I couldn’t have anyone in the audience there that I knew. It was something I had to do, but it was also so beyond whatever I knew my identity to be, that I couldn’t have anyone who knew me in another context lay eyes on me as I did this scary thing that I could not keep myself from doing.

So to be in my home town singing with all these gorgeous, sensitive and extremely fun people––well, it meant something to this girl who was brought up to… to… do anything but perform in public.

I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal. It’s like, so what, there’s a stage, you’re on it.. okay. But really, you ask any other Korean immigrant girl whose mom became a Jehovah’s Witness once they got to America, and she’ll understand what I mean. I not only did the thing I was never supposed to do, I’m still doing it.

Thank you to everyone at the beautiful BMORE/DC BBC kick-off for being there to be loved and for using me.

I Can Abuse Anything

 

kabocha squash
sweet potatoes
avocados
coconut
tomatoes
blueberries
fresh figs
watermelon
steak
flax seeds
milk kefir
sleep

You’re welcome.

I would abuse sunsets and sunrises

but they won’t let me.

They run on their own timing.

It’s nice that they happen everyday though.

I have eaten blueberries to the point of shame.

That’s a lot of blueberries.

 

***************************************************

 

Kabocha squash. The spiral of squash. A downward or upward spiral. The choice is yours.

Also this:

Even these people want you to act on your base, insatiable appetite for discount socks and discontinued beauty items.

Jesus.  Like I didn’t have enough problems.

Share

Some mornings you can feel more.  Some mornings just talk to you and don’t shut up.  This morning, the air was soft, and it was romantic, looking at the Bushwick rooftops from the elevated train platform.  There was romance.  I’m sure that’s what it was.  I didn’t take a picture.  But I took a picture of the lady’s tote that I saw soon afterwards:

“Dwell in possibility” was the quote.  I loved it.  Dwell in…  yes, if you’re going to dwell in anything, it may as well be in possibility.  I’ve often said that I’m a citizen of doom, because that’s where I was born.  I know all about it.  But who cares where you were born.  If you have a chance to choose where you dwell, you can choose to dwell in possibility.  I thought about Dickinson’s famous solitude.  She chose very consciously where she would dwell.  And what company she would keep.  It sounds like she was pretty unwavering in this.   I thought, “Emily Dickinson was so smart.”  She really had it going on.  She really knew what was what.  Here’s the whole poem:

I dwell in Possibility – (466)
BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

Dwell…  I like that “well” is in this word.  A deep well of feeling well..  choose deliberately where you dwell.. may as well be possibility.

Then I saw this guy…  I just thought I’d capture him, because he’s someone my mom 

would look at and say, “Does his mom know his hair is like that?”  I’ve always loved a good fro myself.  I can’t help it, I’m pro hair.

And then I saw this guy:

Who I LOVE… I see this Chinese man several times a week.  We tend to get on the same train, the same car.  I think he gets on earlier than me?  Later?  I like seeing him, because he’s my unspoken train friend, and because his face is one that always has an extra happiness in it.  I will try and get a better picture next time.  Some faces have built in tragedy.  My mom’s best friend from Korea is that way.  Mrs. Ma.  She’s a beautiful, beautiful woman.  Always has been.  She has this delicate, fragile femininity and pale, pale skin.  And if you look at the photos, as far back as high school, her face had the tragedy behind it.  Behind her eyes and the vulnerability of her chin, there is this sadness that is blooming.  That sadness in her eyes speaks of big, epic doom, like in Russian novels.  I’ve never actually read a Russian novel.  I want to read The Brothers Karamazov this year though.

This Chinese man..  he is the opposite of Mrs. Ma.  He has built in joy.  Like his joy is so loud, there’s no question in it.  It’s just the frequency his face emits, has always emitted.  Will keep emitting…  People say that Asian faces are not as expressive.. what is the word?  Inscrutable.  I don’t know how true this is.  I mean, there is a thing about showing emotion and about formality.  There are rules, but goodness knows, no one loves tragedy and drama more than Koreans.  Except maybe the Chinese?  I was speaking with a member of the Main Squeeze Orchestra who is Chinese, this awesome woman, Elaine Yau, and she’s learning to play the erhu.  She said the Chinese love tragedy too.  Her teacher wouldn’t teach erhu to her daughter because  the instrument is too sad for children.  You should have already given up on life and the possibility of happiness before you touch it.  So Elaine’s learning it herself.

What was I talking about… faces.  Right.  I think that “inscrutable” business is something white people say because they didn’t grow up in an environment where all the faces were Asian.  You have to go to Seoul, and see only Asian faces everywhere, in the advertisements and on TV.. every type of person will be Asian… there will be nothing that an Asian face can’t be or express or represent.  Then we can see what you say.  People just need to get out of the country more.  That’s all.  We need to have mandatory world traveling as U.S. citizens.  Like some countries have mandatory military service for young people.  We need to have mandatory study abroad.  I’m telling you, it will cure some things.  At the very least, it could improve conversation.

Speaking of Asian faces… what is it about big ear muffs that make it so that people think it’s okay to “ching-chong” me?  I’m serious.  I get consistently more ching-chong noises when I’m wearing these

than when I’m not.  I must be asking for it.  Is that right?  Is there something in the audacity to wear loud head gear that says, “This girl wants you to yell nonsense at her.  She’s begging for it.”   Or does it say, “This girl has no boundaries!  She is aching for contact that transcends language.  Go ahead, just make unintelligible noises at her that poke fun at her race.”  It’s a mystery.  Is it because I look more like a hello kitty with these on?  I become closer in appearance to a large-headed, mute cartoon cat, so of course, I’m a receptacle for all those pent up desires to make another person uncomfortable.   I really don’t understand, but I will continue to study this phenomenon.  Once, I was ching-chonged walking through downtown Brooklyn, and I stopped and asked the guy why he was making those noises at me.  He said, “Oh… I’m sorry.  I just thought you couldn’t speak English.”  Right.  So if I don’t speak English, I am obviously fluent in gibberish.

This is a true story.

Share

I don’t know what to think of the holidays.  I don’t have the same early childhood memories of magic and getting what you want that other people do.  With my JW upbringing, Christmas was always this horrible time of flagrant false religion that was all Jesus-oriented on the outside but actually dripping with Satan the whole way through, so you know, it was to be tolerated until the evil was over.  Until the next year.

So far this awful Xmas music coming from a lighting display at a Bushwick dollar store is my favorite thing about this season.  It’s mesmerizingly bad.  I just want to watch it over and over.  I don’t want it to stop.  I may have to go back and get a longer clip.  It’s a good lesson for all of us though as we leave this year and head off into the new one.  If you’re going to be bad, be mesmerizingly, hypnotically bad.  If you’re going to do it, really do it.  Here’s to us.  Merry merry!!

Share

We started talking about love.  I don’t know how we started.  I think it was because he wanted to marry me.  Some days it’s just like that.  You sit on the subway train and somebody proposes.  And then his friend does too.  They had just gotten done singing a song.  The one man stopped to give me a compliment, asked about my marital status.  I lied, because it was funner and because I can’t help it.  I said I’d been married three times.  “Third times a charm,” I said.

He said, “But you’re single now.”  Yes, I’m single.  I’m only a fibber; I can only carry it so far.  He said, “So how about a fourth?”  Well..  And then talk about love… love is a beautiful thing.  “Why yes it is,” I said.  “And everybody has it.”  He agreed.  His friend came up behind him to chime in, “It’s free…  you can give it, share it…”

“And produce it,” I said.

“And reproduce..” he said.

“Whoa!” his friends said from the other side of the car.

“Wow, he’s really cutting to the chase,” I said.  “These are modern times.”  We imagined how beautiful our babies would be.  I said yes, they would be very beautiful.  None more so.  He said, “How about not giving me a fast no, but a slow yes?”

I said, “Who needs reproduction.  How about a number?  I’m a sucker for harmonies…”

So they did this song.  For me.  And for reproduction, I guess.  If it sounds this good, it could be for paper cuts and bikini waxes, whatever.  Sing me the song:

You can hear me on some of the “ah”s and the last “ooo” at the end.  I couldn’t help myself.  Bypassing marriage to sing the harmonies.  It’s a good trade off.  Any day.

Come and hear me and Marlon Cherry play some songs on Friday night as a part of “Call and Response – ‘answer songs’ to the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil by Natalia Zukerman, Susan Hwang, and Ben Arthur.”

Friday, December 5th, 8:30pm
Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 3
185 Orchard Street
New York, NY
tickets: http://www.ticketfly.com/event/702367-call-response-answer-songs-new-york/

Still all about Satan – Friday @ Rockwood Music Hall

Share

What I want to say to Kim Jong-un regarding http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/asia/kim-jong-un-north-korea-name-ban.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news:

Look, nobody does that anymore.  It’s very old-fashioned.  And how about feeding your people instead of monitoring their names?  What about that?  Being a Korean, I feel like I can pretty accurately say, Koreans like to eat.  Like really.  And nobody cares about your name.  Nobody.  But those people are still hungry.

There’s no word for “foodie” in Korean.  That’s because it’s considered just being alive.

Okay… speaking to dictators.  I’ve never done that before.  I should probably stick to what I know, like misinterpreting signs.

I liked seeing these signs everywhere in Montreal, because when I read it quickly, it always looked like “A Lover.”  Just big signs announcing lovers.  Like if you were looking for someone who loved so much that they identified themselves primarily as lovers, you could find one here.  Sat long enough next to that hater?  We have your antidote for you right here….  This was in Montreal.  Montreal apparently is chock full of lovers.  This must be why stores don’t open until at least 10am, and some don’t even open at all on some days.  Hey, when you have to love, you have to love, and love takes its own time.  And hopefully… it’s a long time.

And everyone wants to see God.  No one ever tires of that.  Look, in Montreal, they are asking directly.  Why beat around the bush (but check if it’s burning!).

While some people were looking for God, I found Jeffrey Lewis!

He was right here on this poster, announcing his coming arrival to Montreal.  And, what was funny was that I did get to see him last night at Shea Stadium in Brooklyn playing an inspiring, fun-charged, rock and roll night with Kung Fu Crimewave (you know the Kellys, right?  The Kellys of Brooklyn.  Talent and awesome is in their DNA) and the beloved, powerful surge of rock exuberance known as Schwervon!  Sniff…

The neat thing about an 11 hour train ride back to NYC is that it gives you lots of time to… make friends.  I mean, 11 hours together.  You have time to sleep and read and stare out the window and ask all kinds of personal questions about someone’s job, their family, the lives of saints, the devil and miracles.  Marcos and I talked about all those things.

He’s the first priest I ever met.  I had a lot of questions.  He was really open to answering them.  He might even come to a show some day.  He’s right over in New Jersey, and even a priest needs a night off for Christ’s sake.

I should text him about the show on Friday and have him be a guest speaker!

Friday, I’m playing a night of songs inspired by The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” called Call and Response.  It’s a new series created by NYC musician and writer Ben Arthur.  Singer songwriters present songs in response to other artists and artwork.  I’m psyched to play…  I’ve got a lot to say about the Devil and about sympathy.  And I love it when I think of ways to make things even better, like when I asked Marlon Cherry to join me on percussion and vocals.  Oh gosh.  It’s going to be really fun.  All Satan all night with a Cherry on top!!!

Friday, December 5th, 8:30pm (doors 8:15pm)
Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 3
185 Orchard Street
New York, NY
tickets: http://www.ticketfly.com/event/702367-call-response-answer-songs-new-york/

Share

A couple of awesome things happened this morning, that I can’t not mention.

First of all, I saw this lady:

I saw her, and I thought, oh… I do this too.  New York City is an orchestra of facial ticks some mornings (and afternoons and nights).  And there’s an anonymity and permission allowed to you on the subway.  Is it like this in all cities?  I know about the NYC subway policy of behavioral leeway, because I’ve wept multiple times on public transportation, and once I had an explosive screaming fight on the Jay Street Metro Tech platform with a now ex-boyfriend.  It was all allowed. MTA decorum enforcers did not arrive with tissues or counselors.  They also didn’t say anything when I saw a man clip his toenails and eat fig newtons right there on the seat.  When a man tried clipping his toenails at Goodbye Blue Monday during one of my shifts, I had to ask him to stop.  He was a little indignant.  I said, “This is a public place.  You’re doing a private thing.  It’s not a bathroom.  This is something you should do in your bathroom…”  I guess I was the first person to explain this to him.  I told him not to take it personally; it’s just a societal norm.

The lady in the video has a job.  I’m assuming she has a job.  It was morning rush hour.  I don’t think anyone would sit on a train at that time if they weren’t going somewhere to get paid.  I wanted to follow that lady and see where she worked.  What does she do for a living?  What does her cubicle look like?  Does she like her coworkers?  Do they like her?  Hey lady!  Can I stalk you for a little bit?

The other awesome thing was also on public transportation.  I was on a different train–the 2 train going into the financial district.  I haven’t been in these parts for years.  I used to work at 85 Broad St. for like 7 years from the late ’90s on.  Being there was really bringing back the ’90s for me.  I had forgotten what a crush of human beings filled the train cars close to 9am.  We were all on top of each other, breathing each others’ air, withstanding the conductor’s whimsical breaking.  And nobody killed anyone.  Not even one murder.  People were even saying “excuse me” and “sorry.”  I heard it on the radio once… if we were all gorillas in there, we would have ripped each other apart.  Blood, mayhem, fury.  But we on the train, we didn’t even growl.  No one died.  Not even a little.

Everyone got off the train, and the other track let off its load, and then there was the effort to get up the stairs.  How is this ever going to work? But it did.  We all just moved as much as we could, not killing anybody, and we got through it.

AND I even overheard a man offering to carry a woman’s heavy rolling bag up the stairs for her.  A strange man asked to carry a strange woman’s bag for her and she let him!  Amazing.  I just wanted to say I’m impressed.  No one died, and a lady got help with her bag.

Okay, sometimes things can be so horrible they are amazingly horrible, and I’m not going to ignore those either.  This example comes from this past summer when I discovered a new form of subway torture… it’s when you’re exhausted, and all you want to do is go home and rest your pathetic struggling bones and you waited for 30 minutes standing for the train that finally came and then it stalls on the platform with doors open.  And there’s music playing.  And sometimes the torture is a singer-songwriter with an original song you don’t like and a voice that is wailing and little bit flat and a need to be liked that is huge–too huge for you to fill.  And sometimes it is a saxophone with a meandering solo

that makes you question your love of horns.  And sometimes it is this (but longer):

Bagpipes.  On the subway.  This happened.

Share

Am I over my October performance art tour of Canada?  No.  No I am not.

Here are some more pictures.  Look, Leslie is green.  It’s the magic of theater.  We are in our world created by the loving and genius hands of Julie Lamendola as we sing Leslie’s song “Sleep.”

And Genevieve with her monologue in the song “V-JJ” that I wrote initially for Bushwick Book Club presents Philip Roth.  It was her improvised vagina monologue.  She initially wasn’t going to talk about her vagina but vaginas in general since her mom was in the audience that night, but in the end, she decided to talk about her vagina after-all.  Her mom was okay.  She knows her daughter has a vagina.

AND… here we are at the finale.  Julie Lamendola’s interpretive vaginal dance.

It was the closer.  I mean, where do you go from that.  You go and have a drink and call it a night…  You might want to sigh and digest your feelings, maybe mull it over with fellow spectators, maybe dance, shake it out, let it move through your body, your glorious body that is yours alone to experience the world with.  But that’s about it.

Way to be, Rouyn-Noranda.  Thanks for having us.  You know how to make a vagina feel received.

Photos by Christian Luduc.

Share

This is a rare bird of a month.  I’m not usually in Canada.  The last time I was here was for Ching Chong Song shows in Montreal.  Halloween 2008 or something like that.  Goodness.  One time before that, Murderizer played a bike messenger show also in Montreal.  The boys behaved so badly, I drove us straight home.  My bands have gotten more fun since then.

I will work backwards.  I just said goodbye to this lovely man:

He is a sweetheart whose name I feel insecure pronouncing.  It’s Alain, but you don’t pronounce the “n.”  The “n” is a felt, understood but unspoken thing.  What a subtle thing to think a letter but not have it come out your mouth.  If Chinese is a tonal language, then French is a subliminal one — filled with intentions that aren’t necessarily acted upon.  I suck at French.  My intentions are flung willy nilly.

But I’m loving hearing the language and the mix of French and English that is everywhere in this city.  Alain is studying landscape architecture.  His home is full of growing things–little plant cuttings in water.  A small tree.  Happy little beaded succulents.  Alain is also a performance artist and dancer.  Well of course he is, he comes from Rouyn-Noranda.  He grew up with Genevieve there.  This small mining town 8 hours north of Montreal is an unlikely artist haven.  I’m not sure what’s in the water there.  Alain says it’s pretty toxic actually.  But whatever it is, it must breed artists.  Genevieve and Matthieu, a couple who is also a rock duo as well as visual artists, have created a community there and a bi-annual performance art festival that attracts international theater and performance artists to L’Ecart, their performance art and studio space for a week-long celebration and communion of the out-there, the creative, the brave, the true(ish) expression.  Good lord.

Here are some revelers after our performance on Friday night.  They were inspired by the toning we did at the top of our set.  We ended up toning all night with the help of some apple brandy/whiskey thing that was delicious.

Julie made this world out of cardboard and paints for our performance.

Julie spent a couple days in the basement in her sweatshirt and underwear listening to hip hop, happily creating the pieces of this world.  She was so content there making these things.  I’m more visually challenged, so I marveled at the pleasure she got from letting her imagination have at it with cardboard and paint and old clothes.

Leslie, Julie and I had words on cardboard that we tied to our waists and dragged around for part of the show.  It reminded me of the handicaps that people dragged around in Kurt Vonnegut stories.  Mine was “baby.”  Just dragging around that inner child.

THis is the vaginal nest we made for our last number.  They actually supplied the kiddie pool we requested in our rider, so we made a nest for Julie’s vagina, which of course symbolized Every Vagina.

Alain made the food for the festival.  Oh my goodness.  A feat of deliciousness.

He also said we could use his apartment in Montreal while he was gone.  He said we could have sex in his room.  Now that is hospitality.  I smell like Alain now from the blanket he let us use on his futon.   It’s not a bad smell at all.  I smell like an adorable man whose name I can barely pronounce.

I bought jeans yesterday, probably because I don’t know how to give myself a break, and I’m wearing these jeans with the same hesitancy that I say Alain’s name.  Is this how you do it?  Is this okay?  Surely, this can’t be right.

This is my third week away from Brooklyn.  So so strange.  Most things feel strange, and I make myself nauseous over doing it (chocolate, apple cider vinegar, alcohol, you name it).  A few things remain consistently right– singing (it’s always better to sing than not to sing) and Alain’s laugh.  He has this cackle, high-pitched glee and pure joyful bubbling noise that flies out easily and sincerely.  It’s not a tortured, long-awaited thing that is coaxed out.  It’s this easy sound that sails and catches the air with the slightest movement.  It’s really something.  I’ll try and get a recording.

Alain and Carolina.  They are jokes and good times.  Alain says French is an unserious language compared to English.  I think he may be right.  But British people are culturally hilarious too.  There’s that.  I’ll continue this argument myself, don’t you think on it too much.

Share