Susan Hwang

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.

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.

The Cole Haan woman is the new Marlboro man.

I saw these advertisements after reading a few paragraphs of My Life As A Dog for the Bushwick Book Club show that happened last week.  These were passages talking about America and walking out in nature.  The main character, a young boy in 1950’s Sweden, is imagining himself as an American and all the romance that entails.  He imagines himself “walking into the American wilderness..”  He eats “the fruits of nature and drink(s) from rippling streams and springs and rivers.”  He walks with a  wolf/dog/super-human and realizes “his is also not wholly dog nor human being.  We are the best of both–one for all and all for one.”  That is the dream–one of the most romantic notions of America.  The frontier.  The return to the basic essence of people as inhabitants of the planet.  A connection to nature and our purer, primal selves.   The frontier is abundance, with you as a natural participant in, recipient of that abundance.  That land of milk and honey that is yours as your human birthright.  And of course, that’s in contrast with reality.  Especially reality now.  Everyone longs to be epic, fighting big battles of good and evil instead of just the battle of will power against Doritoes and reality TV where we indulge our inner voyeurs by watching people treat each other horribly.  We give in to our smaller natures by watching other people flagrantly give in to their smaller natures.

I’m trying to think of all the least epic things — doritoes, cubicle walls, tourists, emails, email blasts, xboxes, plastic forks, walmart, airconditioning, flourescent lighting, fat mirrors in the elevators, cheetos.  I don’t know…  These are all arguable.  I really tend to think that packaged snack foods in general though are anti-epic.  And fastfood chains.  They take most of the food out of the food and then package it in mass quantities for us to eat and become addicted to.  What a racket.  What an easy trick on us humans who need nourishment so bad that we’ll take it in these depleted forms that kill us in the end.  Sometimes there seems no end to the depth of human patheticness.  So here we are..

And the Cole Haan ads reflect this.  They know what they’re doing.  They want you to associate their shoes with epicness, with something beyond the day-to-day pathetic tedium, mediocrity, mundanity that makes us feel unconnected in the end.  Mostly unconnected.  From each other, and from ourselves, and certainly from anything epic.  But the ads, they show a young, lithe blonde woman in the wilderness.  There are mountains behind her.  Maybe they are the American Rockies.  She’s on a road.  She’s going places.  She’s walking.  Maybe she’ll hitch hike.  But right now it’s just her and the elements.  It’s just her, living her life, at peace with the unknown, ready to accept whatever the gods put before her on that road.

But these are pricey shoes.  You can’t get a pair of flats that aren’t at least a hundred dollars.  A pair of boots can cost  half a month’s rent.    And how long would your $500 boots last you in the Rockies?  And if you could afford those boots, you probably wouldn’t be walking on that road.  You would be driving your SUV.  Or you would have your driver drive you.  Or you would have that boyfriend who bought you those boots drive you.  And if you paid for them yourself, you might have had to spend way too long in over air-conditioned environments, away from any natural light.   You might be very short on vitamin D from your lack of sunlight and short on melatonin from your lack of complete darkness.  You might be very short on sleep in general because people want you to work all the time.  Everyday.  For most of the week so that all that time you spend making money for rent doesn’t leave you much time to enjoy the apartment you’re paying rent for.  So those boots of that brand that is supposed to connect you to the eternal grandness inside you can only be bought by submitting to the most mundane, but painful, robbery of that grandness inside you.

What a trick these Cole Haan people are pulling–telling us we need $300 dollar shoes to feel connected to the earth and nature, when we already are the earth and nature.  We’d probably feel more connected to the earth and nature without any shoes at all.  We could all probably use more time in our bare feet.

Well, maybe soon we’ll all be spending more time in nature anyway, because there are the garbage patches in the ocean and then there’s the global warming, and it’s going to cause coastal flooding and flooding of major urban areas so we’ll be homeless and in nature a lot more, what’s left that we can stand on that is.

Oh, I just thought of another similarity between the Cole Haan woman and the Marlboro man.  The Marlboro man used the rugged American frontier to sell cigarettes that kill you.  And the Cole Haan woman uses that same romantic frontier to sell consumerism that kills you.

Jesus.  Why does advertising keep wanting us all to have cancer?

I don’t see the point in that.

Incomplete list of non-epic things:

crocs
sneakers
fleece
plastic
styrofoam containers
doritoes
food products

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
 

Hi.  I’m writing to you from Cloud 9.  I don’t know if I’m supposed to be up here.  I’m not going to stay.  I don’t think they let you.  You get booted in time, so you can find another way up.  But it’s nice to make it here today.  I got here with the help of Amrams and Dr. Vella.  It’s a pretty potent combination and one that I couldn’t have planned, but glad I fell into.

You know that David Amram has this monthly residency at Cornelia Street…  I saw it for the first time in May after I had moved onto Hart Street.  Actually, the day I moved in.  Adam moved me to the apartment
and then said he was playing with his dad later on Cornelia Street if I wanted to go.  I was dead beat, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to see the show.  I was charmed and amazed and moved.  David Amram can freestyle.  There’s almost nothing more exciting, right?  It’s like the Cirque du Soleil equivalent of verbal acrobatics.  He’s got all the plates spinning; he’s contorted and balanced and is hanging in impossibly beautiful positions in mid air.  Will he fall?  Will it all come down?  How can this sustain itself?  But instead the contortions continue and now chainsaws are being juggled and then midgets are being balanced on chins, and then he dismounts and lands perfectly on the ground.  It’s like that but with words and singing while playing piano with a 4 piece band.

That night in May, Mr. Amram improvised music to accompany a recited poem.  He followed the story and added drama in whichever way tickled his fingertips, and because of his natural playfulness and musical agility, the accompaniment was as much the story as the words.  It was one of those things I saw and then knew I could do.  There actually aren’t that many things like that.  I mean most things, a lot of things I see, and I think, ‘That looks really hard’ or ‘Not for me in this lifetime.’  Like when I see really good guitar players… really good musicians, any instrument, actually, I kind of know I’m never going to get to that level.  I’m not a virtuoso, not even close, on any instrument.  Honestly, I don’t think it’s in my make-up.  I may not have the head space or the ear or the coordination or the discipline or the, what is that called… talent.   As I explained once, I don’t have any chops.  Maybe one chop on a good day, but plural, never.

But when I saw the poem accompanied by David’s improvisations, I just knew that was something I could do.  So I asked Adam if he thought I could tell a story at the next show.  And he said yes.  And so I had to have a story.

But it was intimidating, as that process often is..  All weekend, I was “writing.”  Which requires all kinds of breaks, like going to pick up my keyboard and eating Chinese food.  There’s lots of time needed for staring off into space.  Suffice to say, it wasn’t exactly flowing.  I thought I could do this.  What the hell?

So the whole weekend, and I’m still confused.. nothing’s clear about the story I want to tell.  Usually it’s pretty obvious to me what I want to say and how I want to say it, but all of a sudden, I’m spewing out things and all kinds of tangents that I’m not sure are interesting…  I’m really wishing I had an editor.  And I mean, this has to be good..  if I’m bad, they might regret letting me do this, and I’ll never be allowed to do anything again ever.  That would be really sad for me.  Very regrettable.  Why did I say I wanted to do this again?

Monday comes, and things are STILL murky.  I can’t do anything but focus on this, but I can’t seem to focus on this…  I’ve got to go to Dr. Vella’s in Queens later…  I’m running late.  He’s running late..  I tell Dr. Vella about my dilemma.  He says he’ll fix me.  He’s a chiropractor, but he’s really not like any chiropractor you’ve ever met.  He just touches little spots on your back and neck and tail bone and then lets you lie face down for a while and then comes back and touches your feet and has you move your head left and right.  And he can check your system to see what it’s compatible with.  I swear, my body never talks to me, but it will talk to Dr. Vella and tell him things.  Answer questions.  Pretty remarkable.  I never knew my feet had so much to say.  Apparently, sugar alcohols are all kryptonite to me.  Who knew.

I leave Dr. Vella’s with that open, mushy liquid feeling… a little vulnerable, but not bad at all…  I work on the piece on train.  I have dread.  I thought maybe I shouldn’t do the show, but the pendulum said I wouldn’t regret it, so I said fine, I’m coming.  I’m writing stuff out by hand, because it’s not like I have a printer.  I’m cutting and re-wording… which sections stay, which sections go?  I’m still writing as the show starts..  I don’t know if this is going to work.  I imagine calling out for the hook to pull me off stage if I get terribly boring.  Can I just carry my own exit hook with me to extract myself out of failing performance situations?  Is that allowed?

But as I start talking (telling the story of the time I dyed my hair blonde and then had to go to my brother’s medical school graduation dinner, so bought a wig to wear so as not to offend my Korean relatives and spirits of my ancestors), I was flanked by Amrams.  I was in their attention.  It was intense.  I had known this before from playing with Adam.  He locks into you, and then whatever you do, he’s already with you; he’s already there.  Now I see where he gets that.  It’s like their whole nervous system takes you in, connects with yours.  You can see it in their eyes, but really it’s their whole being.  And the great thing is, they respond to you with their own creativity and skill.  Which is huge.  I mean, their creativity and skill are huge.  Formidable, really.

So things went where I had no idea they would go.  Some of the parts I doubted the most ended up being the most fun.  The audience responded in ways I hadn’t anticipated which changed what I did, which affected the band, which affected me and then the audience… whoa… we were on this ride.  I was out there on this wave with two Amrams in the Cornelia Street Cafe.  You didn’t even know there was ocean in that basement, did you.

I’ve never actually been surfing in my life, but I can’t imagine it could be more thrilling than that.

I jumped off the stage like I was just delivered to shore.  The rest of that night, I kept thinking, gosh, my parents came to this country.  We had no idea what we were in for.  But look, last night happened.  I did a scary thing that ended up with me surfing with Amrams in a historic venue in New York City.  What a thrill.  Thanks mom and dad for being brave enough to come to this country even though I now can only speak Korean like a three-year-old, and it caused you much heartache because your kids did exactly what you told them not to do–art.

Last night will not be written about except for here.  I don’t think it was recorded.  The memory may please some of the people who were there for a little while.  Certainly, any enjoyment or expansiveness of a shared moment like that does something good to you and adds some measure of joy and connectedness to your store of joy and connectedness.  I think there’s that.  I don’t think any time spent in pleasure and sharing is time wasted.  However, even with the transience of last night’s moment, I count that moment.  I mark it in bold, for myself, because I walked through some dread and uncertainty to arrive on a stage with incredible people, and we created something.  We made something.  Really the whole room made something, because we were informing and affecting each other the whole time.  And me there, who came to this country as a toddler, with parents who never wanted me to sing in public, I got to share that stage and be a part of an American culture of music and performance.  My parents never wanted this, but isn’t it great.  I’m really happy about it.  Sometimes the best things are the things you never could have imagined.  I’m glad for all these moments that don’t last, past and future, doing what my folks never ever imagined, but what makes me happiest.

Look, Amrams have a penchant for musical multi-tasking.  My theory is, you throw an Amram any two things, and he/she will play them at once:

David Amram on flutes (an Egyptian song):

And Adam on drums and trumpet in my room.  That’s me singing along like an idiot (albeit a happy idiot):

See that space, that space between the 2 Amrams?  That’s where I was standing, talking about my hair.  And.. the obligatory selfie in front of Cornelia Street Cafe.  David Amram said, “That was a great story!  Does your mom know you’re telling that story?  I bet she would really like that.”  Well, he obviously doesn’t know my mother, but I called her today and mentioned it.  She was silent mostly in response.  I asked her if she remembered that time with the wig.  She said, of course.  How could she forget?  I asked, what was it that you said when I took off that wig?  She said, “Aygo chamna.”  I asked what exactly that translates into.  I know what it means for me, but I wondered what the exact words were.  She said it translates into “Oh my god.  So awful.”  Oh, I now have the next album title…

I’m so excited about this, I can barely write.  Surely, it must exist already.  I was sitting on the train and looked over to where a boy was squiggling his finger rapidly on his device…  He startled me, but he was just playing one of those video games where you have to zap a bunch of things with your fingers.

I know and am related to people who know and love video games, and I had my time with the likes of Frogger and Pitfall and Tetris…  Pong too, sure, but in general, I much prefer to stare off into space than stare and poke at a little screen.  Besides, my fellow commuters give me plenty to look at.  Sometimes too much.

Something about that young man’s intense fingering of that screen made me think–my, if only people paid that much attention to pussy, they’d be really good at it.  It just takes attention, focus, practice, repetition.  Like anything.  If they made pussy into a video game, boys would be really good at it.  It would be an educational app.  You would manipulate your iphone va-jj until you hit your goal.  You would have to pay attention to the sound, heat, movement and swelling, and if you got really good, you would hit the bonus level of magical multiples where you earn points like crazy.  And each clitoris and vagina would would be different with different characteristics and different rhythms and different sensitivities, so even if you scored into multiples with one, the next time you played you’d get a completely different one and have to master that…  You can play with your friends..  at the same time, you know with the headsets like they do for those simulated flight games, right?  You could get very good at Virtual Vagina or Practice Pussy while playing with friends around the globe.  You can buy the plastic screen cover to protect from moisture damage for when you get to the oral manipulation levels which is really for experts because you can’t see what you’re doing.  Oral manipulation is a blind art.  It’s all feel.  Imagine, an iphone app that would help you develop feel (and a feeling other than addicted frustration that you’re not getting more messages and updates…).

Of course, the idea of this game is that you would get really good so you could go forth in real life with a certain knowledge and confidence and skill level.  I mean, people who play those flight games may never fly a plane, but we’re hoping that those who practice, hone and learn on the Virtual V-JJ go on to please many actual v-jjs into the realm of magical multiples.  It’s win win.

This is just an idea…  I wonder if this would take all the sexiness out of sex?  But then again, mindless fumbling with being too embarrassed to ask isn’t sexy either.  Or complete ignoring of because you’re a man and supposed to know everything.. that doesn’t get anybody going either.  What we really need to cultivate in this society is excitement about learning about sex, definitely about vaginas.  Vagina education should be the best part of the day or week.  I’ve always been very into learning in general.  Usually, I do it the hard way, but none-the-less it makes you feel alive.  And if you’re alive, you may as well feel like you are.  It’s such a jip to be alive but feel like you’re dead.  What a dumb joke that is.  No thanks…

It was just a haircut, but it was also a reflection of my evolution as a being.

I tell Hannah that I want Brigitte Bardot hair (the usual).  She gives me layering options.  We let the pendulum (Pendgie) decide on the classic cut/shape for me, and I head off for shampooing.

I’m met by a lithe young woman named Ford.  I’m a little intimidated at first at how lovely she is.  She’s effortlessly beautiful in her strappy white top and brown skin.  The kind of girl whose only needed cosmetic is a nice tan.  Her loveliness has this eternal quality to it.  Surely, she must be immortal.  I should have asked.

I normally feel like a truck driver around women this pretty.  This happens  a lot around French women who have a built in, cultural or genetic quality of impossible femininity.  Like Asians have this genetic connection to cute things–hence the creation of Hello Kitty and Hello Kitty-like things.  But the French women have this extreme, hyper, yet refined, femininity.  It is a force.  And around it, I always feel like a truck driver.  Actually, when I think about it, I often feel like a truck driver, whether I’m around the French or not.  It’s weird when I catch myself in the mirror and realize I don’t actually look like one.  I am, however, a very good driver.  And I can parallel park with the fearless abandon of an Olympic figure skater or um, Errol Flynn or Inigo Montoya (prepare to die…). .  I’d like to learn to drive camels and elephants one day, because I have a friend who says he needs a mahout.

So I didn’t ask if Ford is immortal, but I found out she has the hands of a goddess.  This is the view I have of her as she presses and rubs my head. Come on, mythic beauty.  You can see why I was questioning her mortality.  She does this amazing thing where she presses hard on the very top of my head.  Oh, this must be my reset button!  Ford, is making me new!  I make  sounds.  She asks if it’s too hard.  I say, you can’t press too hard on my head.  You just can’t.  And we talk about how expressions of pleasure and pain are sometimes indistinguishable.  I think, what a wonderful thing to give a person for a living.  Of course, she’s apprenticing to become a stylist herself there at Blackstones.   But I was thinking, if I could, I would give up my mahout dreams and just wash peoples’ hair, pressing on their heads until they felt like heaven.  I think that would be fulfilling.

So they start haircuts at Blackstones with ecstasy, which is a very nice

way to start.  And then I go to Hannah’s chair where you can bare your soul and be received with expert attention all while getting that much closer to Brigitte Bardot.

Speaking of bare..  yes, that’s a bear in between us.  And an antelope.  Or I guess a deer.

I tell Hannah that I’ve finally made peace with my forehead.  It only took about 41 years.  My whole life, I bemoaned my mediocre forehead.  I wanted it to be as large as Rita Hayworth’s Hollywood-altered forehead.  Or this.

Now this is a forehead.  This forehead is royalty.  And romance.  You can dream on this forehead.  Carol Lombard’s forehead is moonlit nights and mystery and the height of everything.

Hannah and I have had similar forehead issues.  We’ve both tried covering them up with bangs and strictly-enforced side parts.  For over ten years I had Bettie Page bangs, then various bang-like fluctuations, and then finally, in my forties, I’ve said, you know what, I’m going to just let my forehead be my forehead.  So what.  And you know, for the first time in my life, I love my hair.  I walked into the salon that day and said to Hannah (who gave me my last cut as well), I love my hair.  I don’t know why I’m here.  I love it.  I guess maybe trim it a little?  She did.  It was a touch up refresher.

I told her that I’m not married to my side part either.  She agreed–why be committed to a side part?  Yes, these days, I let the part fall where it may.. the middle, off from the middle, left right.  It does what it wants.  All the time.  Which brings me to my new motto:  Do What You Want All of The Time.

Honestly, anything else only gets you in trouble.

So see, sometimes it takes you 41 years, but you eventually get to learn flexibility and acceptance.  Even my hair knows it.

I’ll leave on this note.  Hannah is one of my heroes.  She’s one of the amazing young women I met working at Goodbye Blue Monday.  What I lacked in tips at the bar I certainly made up for in inspiration from the young people around me.  They were all (still are) like 15 years younger than me, but they moved me so much in how they shaped their lives into what they wanted them to be.  Hannah was working at the cafe, but wanted to be a hair stylist.  She got up the nerve to ask her favorite salon, and they hired her.  She worked her way up to being a top stylist/cutter there.  She transformed her life, and she spends all day transforming other people.  She’s all about making everything more beautiful.  I think that’s beautiful.

I feel like that generation of girls has less fear than mine?  Or maybe just less fear than me…  but I don’t think I’ve ever changed my life like that, where I get to do what I want most of the time.  I think it’s because I never believed I could, so I just let things happen instead of directing myself where I want to go.  I’ve always been a good driver, but if you don’t have a sense of where you want to go and the bravery to move in that direction, then you’ll just parallel park or sit in traffic.  Well..  better late than never.  And I have great inspiration from those friends I made at GBM.  My hair is already learning things like flexibility and acceptance.  Where is that elephant..

It’s that time of the month.  Yes, I’m irritable and angst filled and eating to distraction… because I’m writing a new song.  Sometimes, you have to turn into a horrible person just to get a song out.  I don’t know how other people do it, but that’s my, um, process.  And now I’m single.  But I have this new song to play tonight for Bushwick Book Club, and it’s inspired by Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking.  Come see and hear what souffles and omelettes and butter inspire in performance tonight.  It’s making me hungry.

June 25th, 7pm at Barbes in Brooklyn

The Bushwick Book Club takes on its first cook book with a show of new original music in response to Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  It will be a literary/musical feast at our favorite Park Slope venue.

Performers:  Bob Holman (poet, founder Bowery Poetry Club), SPACE MEOW (Dool Chao, Adeline Thery), Susan Hwang, Leslie Graves (GOLD), Casey Holford, Jessie Kilguss, Sophie Malleret and Shannon Pelcher .  Hosted by BBC creator, Susan Hwang.

Wednesday, June 25th, 7pm
Barbes
376 9th St.New York, NY 11215
ph: 347-422-0248
Door: by donation