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.

You know, you write some songs about books, and they seem innocent enough, but then they gain life and become their own sentient beings, and they demand things like videos where all your friends jump naked into a pool.  Or they want to be played all the time and then recorded, and then they want other songs about books to hang out with and soon you have a whole album (or EP), and then that album wants to be released, so you’ve got to have art and a party.  And then they want keys to the car and they’re trying on your clothes.  It’s a spiral.. downward, upward, outward….

You’re invited to the party–the party that songs about books wanted–on Wednesday, September 28th at HiFi in the East Village.  Producer and musician/songwriter, Charlie Nieland and I are playing as our new, lit-based duo, Lusterlit.  He’s got an incredible album of songs written for Bushwick Book Club too that begged for this party.  And we’re partying with the awesome singer/songwriter, Jessie Kilguss, who is also releasing her recording of BBC songs.  AND we’re having special guest performances from BBC contributors Sweet Soubrette, Casey Holford, Pearl Rhein and John S. Hall.  That’s the thing about songs about books–they’re very social.  They’re like 20 year olds–they’re all about their friends and hanging out.  Everybody dates everybody; it gets incestuous.  I mean, if you’ve never hung out with songs about books, you’ll see what I mean Wednesday night.  We’re all backing each other up on our songs, switching instruments and harmonies all night!  And then we’ll get pizza… metaphorically.  I’m still actually in my forties, and I’m lactose intolerant.

Here’s the video for the book-inspired song party!

Here are the details again:

Wednesday, September 28th, 7:30-10:30pm
HiFi
169 Ave. A
NYC

Here’s the video made by Charlie Nieland for one of my frisky songs to be released on my Vonnegut-inspired EP EVERYTHING IS SATEEN.

EUPHIO – Noise from the Void

Related show

• Artist:
  Lusterlit
• Date:
  09/28/16
• Time:
  7:30pm
• Venue:
  HiFi
• City:
  New York , NY
• Address:
  196 Ave. A
• Venue phone:
  (212) 420-8392
• Country:
  United States
• Box office:
  (212) 420-8392
• Notes:
  It’s the Lusterlit (me and Charlie Nieland) and Jessie Kilguss release show! We’re releasing our recordings of songs written for BUSHWICK BOOK CLUB! Special guest performances by Sweet Soubrette, Casey Holdford, Pearl Rhein and John S. Hall! We’re playing songs about books. For about 3 hours.

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What could possibly be more pleasing than a girl pool.  Who doesn’t like girls and pools.  A pool of girls is a desirable thing, as far as things go.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve only experienced the most satisfying, exhilarating of girl pools with the most talented, true, fearless girls one can know.  That’s how my experience of them has been.

The video, inspired by Chapter 7 of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, is for a song written for Bushwick Book Club.  It’s being shown at the Berlin Short Film Festival today.  I’m not there in Berlin, but the director of the video, Deb Magocsi is!  (Incidentally, I met Deb in a girl pool known as the Main Squeeze Orchestra.  I’ve occupied many, and they have all been glorious.)

These are shots from the original Girl Pool.  

Phyllis Junick
Margaret Langan

Janine Diorio….  (I don’t have a picture of her).

Gail Malone (the blonde with the sweet smile at the end of the table)
Sharon Murphy…

Tricia Balsamello.. (look at those eyes!!)

Donna Ingargiola Mustafa…

Those are some of my girls from the Girl Pool of M&A Goldman Sachs.

Some of the other girl pools I’m lucky enough to have occupied are:

(as mentioned earlier) The Main Squeeze Orchestra

The Debutante Hour

and GOLD

(we have a show tomorrow night, 9pm at Union Hall in Park Slope!)

People have all kinds of luck. I personally am fond of parking mojo, but I’m also blessed with knowing pretty much only amazing people.  It’s hard for me not to surrounded by geniuses, adorable people and  adorable geniuses of all genders and degrees of genders identifying more or less with one, several or no genders.

That’s all I wanted to say.  And one of the happiest occasions of my life was making the video for Girl Pool.  I can’t explain how fun it was and how many adorable, very good-looking geniuses it brought together at Mark Lerner’s pool in upstate New York and in the offices of Enstoa (thank you Jordan Cram!)  And I’m happy that Berliners get to peek in the Girl Pool that keeps swirling due to the forces of art, love and Vonnegut.

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I was talking with Leslie the other night about how I don’t tend to post things from the lower clouds.  I mean, my last post was from cloud 9, but generally speaking I won’t speak online if I’m not at least coming from cloud 7.  Yesterday, I got to Cloud -5, which included sitting on a train that wouldn’t move after I had already waited 30 minutes for it when I was dead tired at the end of the day.  It sat with the doors open on the platform where a folk singer played and played, making me feel like I was at that eternal open mic in hell.  I cried.

But you know, it never ceases to amaze me how all things exist at once.  There I was crying in hell, but then there’s this great thing that exists now that is the product of some of my very favorite people coming together to make something.  Here’s the new music video for “Girl Pool,” a song I wrote for our Vonnegut-Cat’s Cradle Bushwick Book Club show a while back.  The recording features Matt Menold on guitar (who I miss a lot), Mark Ospovat on bass (who I miss a lot), Adam Amram on drums (yay!) and Julie and Leslie on vocal harmonies (sweet and powerful mix).  Oh, also Cecil Scheib on trombone!  He’s the best.

The video is made by my dear friend and talented filmmaker, Deborah Magocsi.  And the cast of course includes adorable people I know from many different worlds.  And they all came together and got in the water with me.  It was a beautiful experience.

People come together for weddings.  And funerals.  The making of this video felt like I married myself, and all these loved ones came out to witness and celebrate.  Or maybe it was a funeral too.  A funeral of one of my old selves, and the moving on to a different place.  Well, now I want to do it again.  More wedding/funeral/choreographed dance numbers, please.

Speaking of songs about books, there’s also a SHOW next week at City Winery with the founders of BBC Malmo.  TICKETS are on sale now!  You can get them here: http://www.citywinery.com/newyork/bushwickbookclub082014.html

Wednesday, August 20^th, musical nerdery reaches new heights as we present our first international collaboration of songs about books at City Winery.  The founder of Bushwick Book Club Malmo (our Swedish Chapter) will be in New York to present new songs and performance inspired by Reidar Jonsson’s My Life As A Dog.

The night will feature original music and performances by:

Sunny Sanam – performance artist, actor
Julie Lamendola – Ching Ching
Sam James – The Wowz
Charlie Nieland – www.hervanishedgrace.com
Christy Davis – GOLD
Casey Holford – www.caseyholford.com
Sophie Malleret
Early Riser – Heidi Vanderlee, Kiri Oliver https://www.facebook.com/earlyriserrr
Susan Hwang – www.susanhwanglalala.com
Summer Morse
Jessie Kilguss –  jessiekilguss.com
Hilary Downes – hilaryedownes.com
Pierre de Gaillande – www.pierredegaillande.com/
Pearl Rhein – pearlrhein.com
Sweet Soubrette – sweetsoubrette.com

Hosted by Susan Hwang with the founders of Bushwick Book Club Malmo – Kristian Carlsson and Thomas Teller,http://bushwick.se/

August 20^th, 8pm
City Winery
155 Varick St.
New York, NY 10013
Ph: 212 608-0555
Door: $10
Tickets: http://www.citywinery.com/newyork/tickets/bushwickbookclub082014.html

www.bushwickbookclub.com
bushwickbookclub.bandcamp.com\

“The Bushwick Book Club takes humdrum book reading to a new level.” — The New York Times
 

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