Book Review: Girl In A Band, A Memoir | Kim Gordon
Finally I have read Kim Gordon: Girl In A Band, which swirls like a majestic haze that is somehow pastel, glittering and grungy. As a fan of Kim Gordon, maybe more so than the band Sonic Youth (but oh, I love sonic youth), since I heard Bull In The Heather in the early 90s, and like a true nonconformist bought Daydream Nation instead of 'Experimental, Jet-Set, Trash and No Star' like everyone else who'd seen it on MTV. I read her memoir as being another chronicle of one's creative journey that flourished in New York city. Though her journey began decades before mine, the story feels the same. I came to the city before and somehow felt connected to it, or a spark. Looking back that is probably what most feel, but I vowed to live there one day and live the fast life: eat, breath and spit creation nonstop. And maybe I would've met my Thurston and might have married him too - but I didn't. Instead I tried to commit to my Self, to do art or some thing that was itching into becoming.
I feel like I've seen sonic Youth more than once, ironically never in nyc, but the only time I can ember is the night I saw them in Philadelphia at the Electric Factory or something. There were mezzanine levels and I sat spitting distance hovering above stage right, like a comfortable adult at a cafe table sipping a cocktail.
She's still looking at me! It is amazing how clothes empowered me - and still can. I was suddenly confident, experiencing the ominousness of two people simultaneously being aware of each other's existence. The idea of inspiring my spiration in any way was revolutionary and an empowering premise and now finally reading her words I can still remain proud of the inspiration I chose to guide me. Like learning the people you like, like the people you also like.
Hearing the haunting chords and an almost incantation like verse in the song "JC" has been another impetus for summer fantasies, obsessive poems and a laid back attitude to desire; it created frisson for me, cut to me carving words into paper with ball point pens, my hands furiously trying to keep up with my mind getting every word out. "teenage riot" was a tickle, gently nudging me into owning - at some point nearly all of their albums, including Sonic Youths version of club music, 'the whitey album' and I played "macbeth" over and over and over...my sweet candy raver club kid phase.
Kim relates her heaviest relationship with her brother who has schizophrenia and it correlates to every man after that. I hear you, girl. We are all living out some past residue of lives before this one. The residue gets in the way of our goals enmeshing and tugging us along like marionettes and sometimes propelling us forward, when it isn't splitting us apart.
Like everything and nothing, I am a mosaic of all of my lovely experiences, happily not belonging only to one, all stiched together by an unflinching aesthetic that hopefully sings 'kool thangs' to the universe.
It's hard to sit and read if your mind is scattered but I finished this book, the second half sitting in 90° heat, TV on in the background engrossed with Kim's discovery of Thurstons affair which took up only a fraction of the book. Touché Kim. There's so many names in the book, like a punk rock gumbo: Black Flag, Iggy Pop & the Stooges, Kathleen Hanna, Public Image Limited, Beastie Boys and more. A mosaic of her. Kim's take on acts like Lana Del Rey and of course Courtney Love whom she described among other things as a willing "punk princess," is insightful and a reminder of the sad loss of Kurt and mental illness how it saps life...and as I write this we lost another, Chris Cornell, another grunge God lost to darkness. there are just as many photos - all uncaptioned so you just have to know who they are. I was stunned at how young, young-Kim looked. All california sunshined, sinew and a slight grin. Its true how people can age you, just by their presence. Women always caring for others before their selves, never filling their own well. I bet Kim also read 'Women Who Run With wolves'. And the photos all remind me of any time a camera flashed or a video was rolling, always candid or taken in the middle of an impromptu dance party or a corner of a loft party where some lanky guy with weird hair will one day be a millionaire music producer and where it could easily be a photo of that person - or me, from back before they were famous or something... history repeats itself in Kims pictures that look like today or a few years ago all begat in some genisis called Manhattan. Things like reading Chloe Sevigny starting out in one of their videos, when she was an intern at Sassy (a so wonderfully dated reference) and modeling fitted skater clothes for girls, before Kids and Imitation of Christ. Skater chicks and the birth of X-girl which is still alive in japan and,
I didn't flinch. "Oh, yeah, I painted." I was so bold about it, but he couldn't say anything since that time someone died in the basement, decaying for days while I did laundry. And suddenly after I painted my room, the store I was working for - a big hipster place who only advertised online or by mail, had a spread in their catalog eerily similar to my room that I'd frequently photographed and posted online (employees' social lives no secret, our sense of weirdness brought in customers): the catalog spread could've been my room. same cheap gray ikea sofabed, same blue wall. But that's how it was in that world in nyc. Ideas spread like pollen during a windstorm. My nyc looks like that and had its inspiration over everything and everyone and it spread like alien spores. I look back at the Tara davies and Dan Grahams and Julie Cafritzes that may have been in my world...somehow Kim's New York helped me understand my nyc even better: the same grime, the same struggle, the same noise. And how you feel like there's nothing else beyond it when you're there.
I feel like I've seen sonic Youth more than once, ironically never in nyc, but the only time I can ember is the night I saw them in Philadelphia at the Electric Factory or something. There were mezzanine levels and I sat spitting distance hovering above stage right, like a comfortable adult at a cafe table sipping a cocktail.
Kim looked up and stared for a long time before starting the set. I was about 10 feet above her blondeness and starpower.She stared at me like she recognized me, but how could she? I was nobody at the time. Sitting next to me was Mr. Ugly who I was wasting my energy with at the time. I was at that moment a bit ashamed and equally inglorious. Suddenly it was just me (without Mr. Ugly as if shoving him away out the corona of my light for her to better see me) and I didn't look away from her gaze. I hope she sees me, also suddenly remembering the vintage Marc Jacobs sweater on my body. She's sure to recognize this. Marc's girls: Kim and Sofia...I adore them both..X-girl, SST...
She's still looking at me! It is amazing how clothes empowered me - and still can. I was suddenly confident, experiencing the ominousness of two people simultaneously being aware of each other's existence. The idea of inspiring my spiration in any way was revolutionary and an empowering premise and now finally reading her words I can still remain proud of the inspiration I chose to guide me. Like learning the people you like, like the people you also like.
Hearing the haunting chords and an almost incantation like verse in the song "JC" has been another impetus for summer fantasies, obsessive poems and a laid back attitude to desire; it created frisson for me, cut to me carving words into paper with ball point pens, my hands furiously trying to keep up with my mind getting every word out. "teenage riot" was a tickle, gently nudging me into owning - at some point nearly all of their albums, including Sonic Youths version of club music, 'the whitey album' and I played "macbeth" over and over and over...my sweet candy raver club kid phase.
Kim relates her heaviest relationship with her brother who has schizophrenia and it correlates to every man after that. I hear you, girl. We are all living out some past residue of lives before this one. The residue gets in the way of our goals enmeshing and tugging us along like marionettes and sometimes propelling us forward, when it isn't splitting us apart.
Like everything and nothing, I am a mosaic of all of my lovely experiences, happily not belonging only to one, all stiched together by an unflinching aesthetic that hopefully sings 'kool thangs' to the universe.
It's hard to sit and read if your mind is scattered but I finished this book, the second half sitting in 90° heat, TV on in the background engrossed with Kim's discovery of Thurstons affair which took up only a fraction of the book. Touché Kim. There's so many names in the book, like a punk rock gumbo: Black Flag, Iggy Pop & the Stooges, Kathleen Hanna, Public Image Limited, Beastie Boys and more. A mosaic of her. Kim's take on acts like Lana Del Rey and of course Courtney Love whom she described among other things as a willing "punk princess," is insightful and a reminder of the sad loss of Kurt and mental illness how it saps life...and as I write this we lost another, Chris Cornell, another grunge God lost to darkness. there are just as many photos - all uncaptioned so you just have to know who they are. I was stunned at how young, young-Kim looked. All california sunshined, sinew and a slight grin. Its true how people can age you, just by their presence. Women always caring for others before their selves, never filling their own well. I bet Kim also read 'Women Who Run With wolves'. And the photos all remind me of any time a camera flashed or a video was rolling, always candid or taken in the middle of an impromptu dance party or a corner of a loft party where some lanky guy with weird hair will one day be a millionaire music producer and where it could easily be a photo of that person - or me, from back before they were famous or something... history repeats itself in Kims pictures that look like today or a few years ago all begat in some genisis called Manhattan. Things like reading Chloe Sevigny starting out in one of their videos, when she was an intern at Sassy (a so wonderfully dated reference) and modeling fitted skater clothes for girls, before Kids and Imitation of Christ. Skater chicks and the birth of X-girl which is still alive in japan and,
"In a way X-girl gave me far more noteriety than sonic youth ever did."Kim crossing paths with all of these girls like Sofia Copolla and Tara Davies who have all of these boy-men in common too. that - the boys represented a lot of what erupted for me at that time: skate culture, girl power (the Hanna version, not the co-opted Spice Girls version which cam later). What carries over into adulthood though can't always survive, but what did seem to survive was Kim's commitment to art - her initial drive to which music took her on a scenic route. She kept transforming and shedding, starting out in "frumpy" clothes and with a vacant stare riding on a nyc subway, in the beginning photo of the book then ending another chapter in another photo, sitting in a midcentury modern L.A. home. Amongst her minimal art which nearly covers the entirety of white walls. She looks directly at the camera in a fitted leather jacket, legs crossed, composed yet laid-back in kitten heels. She's one of the coolest, always evolving and tranforming and not making a big deal about it, kind of like Debbie Harry. One of her favorite artists she mentioned in the book is Yves Klein - didn't know she also liked the artist until now - learning yet another connection to my inspiration. I came across the artist myself and being that l loved monochromatic anything and blue was 'speaking to me' during that time, I bought a bucket of custom paint and covered my rented room entirely in Yves Klein blue. That's just how I do. It literally made the nights darker and it was the color I needed at that time in my life. My landlord saw it one day and stopped in his tracks, "whoa."
I didn't flinch. "Oh, yeah, I painted." I was so bold about it, but he couldn't say anything since that time someone died in the basement, decaying for days while I did laundry. And suddenly after I painted my room, the store I was working for - a big hipster place who only advertised online or by mail, had a spread in their catalog eerily similar to my room that I'd frequently photographed and posted online (employees' social lives no secret, our sense of weirdness brought in customers): the catalog spread could've been my room. same cheap gray ikea sofabed, same blue wall. But that's how it was in that world in nyc. Ideas spread like pollen during a windstorm. My nyc looks like that and had its inspiration over everything and everyone and it spread like alien spores. I look back at the Tara davies and Dan Grahams and Julie Cafritzes that may have been in my world...somehow Kim's New York helped me understand my nyc even better: the same grime, the same struggle, the same noise. And how you feel like there's nothing else beyond it when you're there.
Kim Gordon on the subway is all of us. Photo from the book.
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