Here’s my latest music video!
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So not realistic
The band name is a word mash-up from the mind of Nan Turner, and I like that the origins have anything to do with her genius and her wild sense of fun. Her fun roams wild and free. On Saturday, she was in the audience, and on Sunday, I joined her on stage for her set presenting excerpts of her new figure-skating musical/rock opera about Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Bayul and Courtney Love. And Scott Hamilton and Vern.
I like the idea of presenting music and story together, so it makes me think of how else to develop this and what can grow out of the song I have explaining the back story of the portrait of my mom and dad taken at the Sears in Montgomery Mall circa 1981.
That’s Leslie Graves holding up the pic. Julie Delano is on my other side and Anthony Coleman at the piano. Marlon Cherry was there, but it’s a small stage at Rockwood, and he set up on the floor (never again! I need him closer).
Here are more of the photos from East Village photographer and journalist, Bob Krasner.
Instead of having a dramatic costume change, I had a hair change. I just let my hair down as a demonstration of a beauty trick/optical illusion. My theory is––the bigger your hair, the smaller your body looks. So instead of dieting, just break out the aquanet. New years resolutions, schmesolutions!
ShareRelastics are back in January
So… We’re getting the band back together! Well, we got the band together a couple weeks ago to play our first full set in nine years at Bowery Electric, invited by our friends Jim Andralis and The Syntonics and Larry Krone.
It was kind of a dream, as you can see from the gif/animation thing above.. a fuscia dream, but still a dream. This must be what is called “living the dream.”
We are dreaming again:
January 13th (4pm Relastics s / 5pm Julie and The Dad)
Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 1
196 Allen st.
NYC
Related show
Share9/11 show at Bryant Park – Accordions Around The World
Video by Ron Herczig.
This is the next thing coming… Come out on the lawn at Bryant Park, bring a picnic. Bring some friends to share the picnic, because it’s funner that way. There will be accordions galore from 5:30pn-7:30pm. My set is at 6:50pm. I’m excited to add to excess (although when there is no such thing as too many accordions, I guess that means that too many accordions is just the right amount). See you there!
Sharea cake. a croissant.
I woke up and thought of the video I made the other day. I felt satisfaction. I felt satisfaction just on having made this thing that wasn’t there before. A song. A video. This feeling was there–feeling good about this new thing, and it was separate from whether this new thing would be seen by anyone. I mean, Virlana saw it, because she commissioned it and uploaded it to the Yara sites. I might send the link to Joie. But the pleasure in making this thing exists independently of whether anyone sees it.
And then, I felt pleasure noticing this pleasure. I looked at the pleasure and thought, “That’s so cool” — which is technically another pleasure.
A pleasure on top of another pleasure. That’s a double layer cake right there. What happens if you keep finding layers upon layers… you get a croissant, which is its own realm of multi-dimensional pleasure and proof that humanity may not be all bad.
This is the video. The song’s lyrics are a poem by Ukrainian poet Oksana Zabuzhko — “DESPITE IT ALL IT WAS YOU I LOVED…” translated by Wanda Phipps and Virlana Tkacz.
Here is another video I did in the winter of last year. Keeping up with the posting.. I have to be more people to do that and make the stuff to post. There is pleasure in posting. Hey! That’s another layer! Getting closer to that croissant… mmm.. croissants.
My folks don’t know I made this… shhh! My mother hates social media.
ShareBanned Books Week: An artist residency at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library
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.)
Share“For the good time…” A box of stationary.
I think I may be ready to drop cynicism. But maybe not, because I already feel silly and kind of embarrassed writing that sentence. Vulnerable? Exposed. Is there a draft? Seems a bit drafty in here.
I have a box of stationary from around when I first moved to New York in the late ’90s. Some of it is from Seoul, where I lived right before, and some from right after I moved to Queens sight unseen and started working as admin for Wall Street during the day so I could sing with my band, Murderizer, at night. The stationary from Seoul is embarrassingly sincere, showing a heterosexual white couple, both blonde, in between trailers on a gravel lot, embracing in torn jeans and cowboy boots. The caption is:
For the good time. Finding beautiful things to say brings dreams of happy meetings and with hesitation heart we head towards that mystical realm. Open up your heart and greet the world as it is. We can always find joy and love everyplace that our eyes land.
I remember picking these up, because from my perspective as an American, these were funny. The glaring naivete. The romance with which Koreans viewed American romance. The enthusiastic misuse of English. Words that grammatically make sense, that no one ever says. Sentiments so sincere no American would ever say to himself, much less utter in the light of day to another human being. This stationary was funny because you could laugh at Koreans and how they didn’t know anything about American culture while emulating and revering it. How bizarre.
The postcards I got in NYC also depict romance, but from old pulp romance novel covers––Barbie and Ken-like people in various formations of relationship drama––”He’s two-timing both girls, and they’re best friends!” “He knows she loves him, but she’s married… to God!” “She’s thinks he loves her; he knows it’s over!” “Mom! Stop stealing my boyfriend!”
There’s also a set of postcards where a cartoon girl sits in the mouth of a shark and says, “Wish you were here!” Or she’s underwater and says “Oops, I forgot to swim!” Or she’s floating in outerspace without a tether, and she says, “Oops, someone cut my space cord!” And these were funny because she’s so cute, and all her responses to dire circumstances are “Oops!” and “Wish you were here!”
It’s the lost astronaut one I really can’t laugh at anymore because it’s not like I’ve never felt like someone blowing in the wind. Leaving a relationship or a life or a context can make a girl feel like she’s floating in space without a tether. There’s part of me that’s always said, “It’s not having chains that’s the issue. It’s having the chains you WANT.”
I kind of still like the “Wish you were here.” Although I know it’s supposed to mean the girl is so cute and clueless she doesn’t know she’s about to be eaten by a shark, I relate to it in the sense that, even if what I’m doing and where I am looks dangerous to others and likely is dangerous, I’m still having a good time, and I wish you’d share it with me. It goes with the tombstone I’ve been writing:
Even the bad times were good.
What strikes me about all these postcards is the distancing from sincerity. I think of it now, because I rewatched “Heathers” recently, and I was surprised at how abrasive their sarcasm seemed to me now and how mean they were to each other. The violence, especially initially, was shocking––these young kids with their perfect bodies dying violent and horrible deaths. Yes, they were jerks, but they were only 17. There were few sincere expressions of grief, and the hippies were not to be trusted any more than the stodgy white male principal. Hippy was a dirty word.
I don’t think I’d ever identified it before, that this was an essence of what I grew up in and identified with––a fear of having and expressing a sincere emotion that wasn’t also followed with an underwhelmed catchy slang phrase like “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” or “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” I do like both these phrases though because the details are so specific. I do like specificity.
And THEN, I found some of my earliest stationary. I think shoes and stationary tie as my first loves (along with food). And this Little Twin Stars set is devoid of any humor whatsoever. And you can’t even laugh *at* it. There’s nothing funny about this cute. It’s just cute.
My point is, I think I’m ready to go back to Little Twin Stars. The reason I still have those other sets of postcards is because every time I would think to send one, I could never pick it up and send it and mean it. It was too mean or too sad, or why would I want to remind my friend of a possible romantic struggle they’ve had all their life especially when the two cats she’s had for the past 15 years have just died… or why send anything that isn’t actually funny…. or kind. I no longer think meanness is funny.
This on the other hand is timeless:
And this isn’t funny at all, but it’s Walter’s mother, and how can you not love Walter’s mother?? That face! It’s Walter’s face too..
Correspondences are records of history. You find out what people’s lives were like by reading what they wrote each other. In my case, regardless of what I was writing, what I was writing on was already telling a story.
And all of this leads me back to…. nipples. And innocence. I was putting on a shirt today, and I noticed my nipples were hard and pointing through my shirt. Somehow, that’s not something you want people to see. But it’s like, my nipples are innocent. They’re just doing what they’re doing. I don’t control these things. And I can actually control a lot of things, like I freaked out a neurologist by not showing any reflex reaction in my knees. Nothing. It wasn’t a condition, it was just that I didn’t like him. Hmmm.. so again maybe that’s actually another example of my lack of control. I was mad at him, and therefore was withholding my normal nervous system response, which I did involuntarily. My unintentional emotional response was to shut off response! Wow. They say women are complicated.
Okay, so that’s a lot of time explaining things nobody asked to hear. And I still have to get to the post office.
Did I tell you what I’m doing next week? A couple things: Singing with Jessie Kilguss and friends for the release of her gorgeous new album. The show is September 23rd at Rockwood Music Hall.
And then me and four other musicians are going to Indianapolis to live in the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library for week writing new songs about banned books for Banned Books Week. Bushwick Book Club is the band in residence for KVML’s annual Banned Books Week Artist Residency.
More on both those things soon!
Related show
Share“Use Me”
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.
A video, a Side Dish, a song about a book. Edgar Oliver. Summer, psilocybin, songs.
Actually, there’s no psilocybin. I mean, there is. In my refrigerator. But in the title, it’s just there for alliterative effect.
There is, however, this video I just cut from the live stream footage from the latest SIDE DISH at Barbès. SIDE DISH is one of my favorite new things I started this year because it’s on a Sunday afternoon in one of my very favorite performance spaces in NYC/Brooklyn, Barbès. It’s laid back; it can be whatever it wants to be; and it ends before sundown.
This particular show was extra sweet for many reasons. It was Ralph’s last show in the western hemisphere before he heads to Far East Asia for a few months. We played the first SIDE DISH together after we became fast musical friends last winter.
Also, we got to bring friends Anthony Coleman (piano) and J Granelli (bass) to the stage with us which just added dimensions and realms to the music. It felt like an alternate reality to me. Reality shmeality. It was dreams coming true; I’ll tell you that much.
The song was written for the Bushwick Book Club event for Edgar Oliver that happened at Caveat earlier in the month. Holy. What a month.
You know it’s a good month if you start it with a nose dive into the gorgeous work of poet, playwright, actor Edgar Oliver and end it with a string of shows at Barbès with my favorite songwriters and musicians including Don Rauf, Jackson Pinks, Ralph Denzer, Anthony Coleman and J Granelli.
Also come on… Trout and Edgar Oliver.
Oh, and here’s this great review of the Bushwick Book Club/Edgar Oliver show from writer Maux Kelly:
Okay, so the songs from that night are out there and growing and eating snacks and making friends. Mine just learned how to ride a bicycle. My how the time flies.
ShareThe next Bushwick Book Club show – Edgar Oliver
Show is June 4th, 6:30pm doors at Caveat in the Lower East Side (21 A Clinton St.)
It’s an indulgence. But I have to remind myself that Bushwick Book Club has always been so. It was born out of an indulgence of my curiosity by Steve Trimboli, so it always feels right when BBC moves from this impulse. Undulating to a little indulgence.
This time, the pleasure to give-in to is Edgar Oliver. He’s an East Village art/theater/literature treasure that if you haven’t heard of yet, you have the pleasure of coming to know now. His written work is not the easiest to get a hold of (I didn’t find any listed in the NYPL stacks) but you can start with enjoying this playlist:
AND we’ve got a tremendous line up of NYC and Brooklyn talent responding to Edgar in song and art, including fellow East Village art/theater/literary treasure, PENNY ARCADE hosting. In addition to Edgar being there to watch the show and of course give a reading in his singular (I would say inimitable, but we all try to imitate it) voice, we have performances from these most creative of NY’s creatives (the cream of the creatives?):
Penny Arcade (hosting)
Adira Amram
Ralph Denzer
Bob Holman
Rachelle Garniez
Susan Hwang
Charlie Nieland
Don Rauf
Lianne Smith
Jason Trachtenburg
TICKETS are $20 at the door /$15 advanced purchase / $10 live stream
