Halloween with Honey
I don’t think many things encapsulate the times we’re living in now, from a Honeysuckle perspective, more perfectly than the dual performances set to the backdrop of CNN at our Halloween party at Kelly’s Bar in New York’s Lower East Side. Hours after an attack on New York’s West Side Highway, when a man rammed his truck through the downtown waterfront boulevard, killing eight people and injuring eleven more — we decided to push forward with our plans to invoke the spirits on All Hallows’ Eve.
Jazz Singers Leah Wells and Deanna Kirk kicked off our night with a beautiful and eerie rendition of “Wilkommen,” the opening song to Cabaret. Cabaret is a musical based on Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin, written about his time in the Weimar Republic and the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany. To me, it felt like the Russian underground avant-garde vibes I experienced during a visit to St. Petersburg.Though we aren’t “underground,” these times in American history bring a sense of unknowing, that something lies in wait. That we, as a species and as a human race are waiting, for something.Then from the streets: EDM/Punk, trap-filled rage by the very talented Kaiju Killer Klan and Koi, a team of artists who performed in front of a screen with CNN’s vacillating coverage of Robert Mueller’s Paul Manafort and Rick Gates indictments alongside continued reportage of the downtown massacre that happened earlier that day in the background. The juxtaposition was palpable, to say the very least.I couldn’t help but wonder how much violence some of the performers had seen in their lives. After interviewing Justin Bullock, one of the performers from Koi, for our previous issue HOME, I knew some had. It was a strangely surreal picture culminating in anger, destruction, killing, murder, desperation, celebration, dancing, art and drink, all in a moment.But that’s part of what we do here at Honeysuckle. We strive to embrace the joining of opposing forces and the paradox. It’s part of our essence. As we push through these unknown and seemingly dark times, we follow the old saying – “The Show Must Go On.”–Follow the artists on Instagram:@kaijukillerklan@youngkoii@Deannakirksingsnow Ronit is the founder of honeysucklemag.com.