Written by:
Jenna V. Loceff
Photographer:
Doralbo Picerno
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this Issue of Curve:
17#9
One of the artists responsible for the No Wave movement in New York City at the end of the ’70s, and beginning of the ’80s, writer, singer, photographer, artist, Lydia Lunch has recently published a memoir chronicling her early years, . There are episodes of sex, gluttony, drugs and adrenaline. The moral she is trying to put out there, is whether it’s drugs, sex, food, culture or entertainment, if you are filling your void with whatever your obsession is for the wrong reason you are still going to feel empty.
Thank you so much for being available for me. I just read Paradoxia, and I want to talk to you about where you come from and what you are doing right now with your tour, your music.
Thanks for having a cool magazine. Even before music, I had been writing. I went to New York originally thinking I was going to be a poet.
You also do photography. How did that come about?
I left New York in 1990 and went to New Orleans. I started doing photography there just to capture buildings, and started photographing a lot of kids. When I was a teenager, I felt there was a lot of encouragement to be off center, to be weird, to be a freak. Glam rock was all about wearing your freak coat as a badge, but I think that by the time I moved to New Orleans there was so much pressure on kids to conform I wanted to show [them] their beauty and individuality by showing them what they look like. Now [photography] is a way of expressing myself as a sexual being. I started doing erotic montages. Self-portraits.
Where are you from originally?
From upstate New York. Music drew me to New York [City]. When I was just 14 I ran away to see the New York Dolls and then that was it. I went there for a few years and I knew I had to be there. [In] the 10th grade I was refusing to read. I had already read the Marquis de Sade, Henry Miller and Genet and they wanted me to read John Steinbeck? I’m like, I’ve read Hubert Selby; I’m not reading John Steinbeck. And my teacher just looked at me and flatly said “Why don’t you just go to New York and do what you want to do?” I’m like, thank you goodbye. I actually was encouraged by an educator to get the hell out.
In Paradoxia, how much of the book is truth, and how much is kind of memoiry fiction?
People have accused me of exaggerating my entire career and it’s like I am dealing with my reality and there is no exaggerating that. The better question would be how much did I leave out? I am only giving you certain dimensions or timeframes of certain sexual attitudes I had. You’re living one chapter; I was living this stuff day to day. All the incidents that I detail are true. I am happy to have forgotten quite a few too. I thought it was important to write a book like Paradoxia. I think that especially as women we have to learn to fill ourselves with ourselves. The situation I wanted to deal with in Paradoxia is this predatory hunger which ultimately would never be filled if you carry on in that way. Fill yourself with yourself, so that anything else that is brought to the table is going be real pleasure, not just a glut.
You are now living in Barcelona?
I’ve been coming to Spain for more than 20 years, I move all the time it just seemed like because of the place it is in now in history and because of the horrible history it has for centuries and certainly for decades in this century and the place it has arrived at now, it just feels sane … there is just no aggravation. And it’s not that there aren’t problems in any country, it’s just people know how to enjoy moments in the day … I think we really have to get back to that if we want to maintain our sanity. I think it is so hard in America right now because, whether it’s your rent you’re chasing or just trying to find a place where there is a bit of sanity, it seems very sad to me.
That sounds a little bit like what you were talking about like chasing something to fill you up.
That’s the point of America; it purports to be this rich, fruitful, Hollywood ideal. We’re brought up to consume and chase and devour and eat and more and next and the newest and the latest and the best and the most expensive or whatever we can afford—or can we afford it? Remote controlled imaginations. I am dealing with this stuff on a political and an artistic level all the time and at this point at my age. I am 48—to live in it [the United States] is too brutal.
What kind of projects do you have lined up?
I have a photo book out next year through Black Dog Publishing. I have this new CD I’ve just produced called the Ghosts of Spain which is about what we’ve been talking about and on MySpace there is a link to some of the songs.
Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers?
Power, sisters. Pleasure, please. What more can I say, I am hoping to be a conduit to women everywhere of some sort I just think that now more than ever it is wonderful to be a woman. My dream, when I saw [Liberian President Ellen “Ma” Johnson-Sirleaf] interviewed on CNN, was, if only America had a beautiful, big, black ma spanking the bastard who pretends to be the father of our country, maybe we’d get things done. But ladies, we’ve got to keep doing it for ourselves. What more can I say?
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