Litquake event with Viet Thanh Nguyen and new song

written for SF Litquake and songwriter podcast

Hello all! A couple weeks ago I participated in SF’s annual Litquake festival via the Songwriter Podcast hosted by Ben Arthur. Author Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer, The Committed, Refugees, Nothing Ever Dies, a lot of great books) was invited to invite a songwriter to write a song based on his latest release To Save and To Destroy: Writing As An Other and he asked if I would, which of course I would and did.

We were joined in discussion by Dr. Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies, and founder of Stop AAPI Hate. I so appreciate his work, and Viet’s as well.

The song is inspired by a mention of Viet’s mother having not yet appeared to him in his dreams in his last chapter, The Joy of Otherness.

“… I take comfort in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s words about his own mother’s death: “for the first four years after she died, I felt like an orphan. Then one night she came to me in a dream, and from that moment on, I no longer felt her death as a loss. My mother has visited my brother in a dream, bringing him comfort, but she has never come to me, another mystery I do not understand.”

I was imagining she does appear- but because I didn’t know her and I don’t know anything of their relationship I imbued the messaging with what I’d want my own mother (to clarify she is still with us on this earth and I am so lucky for it) to say to me. It’s the voice of a mother figure composite who has had time to reflect on what she taught and modeled by virtue of extreme calamity and necessity, versus what she wished for herself and her children beyond safety and security, and what else she might still wish for them, had they the luxury of being out from under the dragnet of geopolitical whim. I want this mother figure to say your inheritance is more than just wanting baseline rest and safety.

Viet’s explorations regarding the joy of otherness reminded of this passage from the book I’m working on. I’ve shared this before, because it is a memory to which I am always looking to return. I include references to this passage and imagery in the song because to me those dancing evenings epitomized the joy of otherness.

The dance halls. I’ll call them dance halls because they were so much more than a temporary sheet-vinyl dance floor in the Harvest Moon Restaurant or someone’s cleared
basement. However I can remember the dancing, I will. Sweet memories are not about
accuracy, they are about safe harbor. You keep them well maintained and embellished as
needed so you can steal away from time to time.
I remember being eye level with waists and torsos. Thin leather belts, fabric swishing.
Curves. Panty-hosed legs and low heels. Hips. Graceful, manicured fingers resting lightly onstrong, scrubbed hands. Strobe lights from Party City and disco ball refractions swinging through the room, catching sequins from dresses bought at Macy’s or Nordstrom’s or Filene’s Basement. Smiling, cackling, levity. Forlorn yet soaring notes, bright, resonant snares.

Stateless men and women with varying degrees of fight still left in them, whom I knew
personally, were free and joyful, out from under memory and worry for the evening.