re-cap, behind and in-front-of the scenes photos, "Temple" two ways

2 events around the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war

Hello friends-

I last wrote from D.C., about to take part in an event at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I was in conversation with my friend and collaborator Tuan Andrew Nguyen.

I’m not saying you have the time or the gumption but in case you do this is the program :

Highlights include:

- Me so excited to be using podium and clicker because I never get to give presentations

- Beginning the program by reciting the lyrics to Temple and realizing in real time that I never do this and I don’t know the words without singing them. (Absolutely left out entire verses)

-A really lovely conversation with Tuan and SAAM curator Saisha Grayson (she moderated beautifully, which I have such respect for as I find it to be a deeply stressful undertaking) regarding our separate bodies of work, histories, collaboration, and reflections on the 50th anniversary

-A performance at the end wherein I sing Temple and know all the words against the backdrop of our film Amongst the Disquiet.

THEN I flew to San Francisco to perform two songs for an event at the Sydney Goldstein Theater, put on by my friends at DVAN (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network). I was the musical guest amidst a slew of incredible writers, poets, and artists.

I knew I’d perform Temple last but for first song I had this wild hair to try and cover a classic from the iconic songwriter/vocalist duo Trịnh Công Sơn and Khánh Ly, legends of my parents’ generation.

I’ve never covered a Vietnamese song before because the idea has always terrified me- what to do with the intonations in conjunction with the melody of the song and how to hit both the right note and the right diacritic (and therefore meaning), when to make concessions in either direction, singing in a vocabulary I’ve never encountered/ used, using northern pronunciation and inflection I did not grow up with (we are very southern), my pitifully low Vietnamese literacy level, aunts and uncles with extremely high standards… I could and also cannot go on.

But I resolved to do it and I had to cram studying the song before my flight back west and then we did it and it really handed me my ass but I’d have it no other way and I look forward to trying again soon.

here is the beautiful Biển Nhớ:

Photos of the event by Hieu Tran:

Green Room. I bought that tiny bottle of hairspray at the CVS on Nutley St. in Fairfax, VA near where I grew up. Never forget where you come from.

That mark below my temple is not a birthmark, my friend Jill did my hair for homecoming our sophomore year of high school and accidentally burned me just a touch with a curling iron. J- if you’re reading this, thank you for doing my hair back then and saving me salon money, the scar was worth it.

Bless Jason Slota my longtime friend, drummer and now also vibraphonist

Below: Photos of my mom from the early 1970’s- I asked that they be projected during Temple, as these are the photos that inspired the lyric. Also included toddler me, and a still of my mom from the Vietnam doc.

Temple as a duo with Jason on vibraphones, it is so handy that he is such an amazing drummer and also just happens to do this—

Video taken by my friend Merrill so I could send it to my mom.

xx

t