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LYDIA LUNCH ARCHIVES > ANGRY WOMEN (C) RE/Search Publications, 1991 "Lydia Lunch." Angry Women. Ed. Juno, Andrea and V. Vale. San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 1991. |
Photo: Birrer
Lydia Lunch
A thorn in the side of the performing
arts establishment for over 15 years, Lydia Lunch is a “confrontationalist” whose musical
onslaughts and spoken work invectives ravage middle-class, male-oriented morals and dogmas.
Starting at age 16 as primal screamer/guitarist for the seminal New York punk band,
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia has continued her assault on complacency via music,
film, video, theatre, spoken word, and writing. Besides doing hundreds of performances,
she has appeared on over 30 records, starred in a dozen films or videos, written 4 books,
and produced/written a play (South of Your Border, with director Emilio Cubeiro in New York City). Over the years she has collaborated with numerous musicians including Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard, Foetus, Sonic Youth, Einsturzende Neubauten, Henry Rollins, and Michael Gira.
Her own bands have included Eight Eyed Spy, 13.13, Beirut Slump and Harry Crews.
Legendary underground filmmaker Richard Kern worked with Lydia to realize her
personal vision of the roadmap of sexual violence and desire in the classic shockers The
Right Side of My Brain and Fingered. She starred in Beth and Scott B’s films Vortex and
Black Box and also appeared in Penn & Teller’s The Invisible Thread and BBQ Death Squad.
Recently Lydia completed Kiss Napoleon Goodbye, a film for Dutch TV co-authored by herself
and also starring Henry Rollins and Don Bajema.
In 1984 Lydia founded Widowspeak Productions to release her work and the work
of other cultural instigators with whom she tours – such as Wanda Coleman and Hubert Selby
Jr. Many of her early rare recordings are now back in print. For a catalog offering incendiary inspiration, send $2 to Lydia Lunch, Widowspeak Productions, PO Box 1085, Canal St Station, NY NY 10013-1085.
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Part I
VALE: Do you think it ever will be possible to have a society without exploitation?
LYDIA LUNCH: No. Absolutely not. Because I think it’s man’s nature to exploit power, position, authority, money, and it stems basically from greed. Exploitation and greed are tied together.
ANDREA JUNO: You mean “man’s” nature – literally. So far the history of our planet has been –
LL: Male-dominated! Completely male-dominated. And the general disrespect that human beings have come to accept – to take for granted – astounds me. It doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any reversal of that…so exploitation, ownership and greed prevail.
AJ: But isn’t that disrespect exclusive to a male-dominated society? Would that be transferred to a woman-dominated society?
LL: At this point still (which is astounding to me), I don’t see the improvement of the position of women in the social, political, or economic echelons. I don’t see the “equality” at all. I still see chronic domination by white middle-aged men in positions of power who will remain there forever, because they decide who gets to decide. Nothing short of total war between the sexes is going to eliminate that! Equality hasn’t happened – not in the past ten years; and just examine the “progress” that’s been made in the past twenty or forty! I don’t know when that generation will finally die out: of the men who think like dinosaurs and behave like their ancestors.
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V: A woman like Margaret Thatcher behaves just like a man – LL: - but using a single example like Margaret Thatcher is irrelevant. It’s like, how many Ronald Reagans and George Bushes and Khadafys and Saddam Husseins and Fidel Castros, Manuel Noriegas, Charles Mansons, Ted Bundys – how many of these can we name to one woman in a position of power who acts like everyone else? That example means nothing! AJ: Also, it’s the male power structure that allows someone like Thatcher in – a woman they know and trust will play by their rules. LL: Yes; she is useful as a token. Tokens are often set as standards: |
Where I grew up, Rochester, New York, I saw black-and-white race riots outside my door in the ‘60s. But now, instead of people in a community banding together to protest their position in society, people are going, “Fuck you, man, I know I can’t get ahead – I’m gonna get mine.” Not, “Let’s bind together and show them we can’t take this shit.”
AJ: How can the position of women improve?
LL: I like the concept of the Conspiracy of Women; of a political party run by women for women. I’d like to encourage other women to become more political, to bond together, and to spread communication outside of their small circles. I’d like to see more organization – women encouraging others: putting out books, newspapers, magazines, TV shows, radio programs, videos, and branching out in all media networks. Women have to find their own realm of politic, which doesn’t necessarily play any of those male games, or go by those male rules or use those male formats, but which can somehow unite and cause change and enlightenment! And that’s what the hope for my future is – I know that!
AJ: We don’t have the luxury of being thoughtless about the earth anymore.
LL: We’re at the breaking point.
AJ: We used to have a lot to kill: you could kill many people, animals and plants, but the earth wouldn’t die.
LL: But now it’s the opposite: they’re killing too much of the earth and not enough of the people! Another reversal of intelligence.
AJ: So how do you view yourself regarding all this?
LL: Merely as the instigator. Merely as the cattle prod. Instigation can be a fine art in itself! I never claimed to have any answers or solutions to the world situation; I merely report on it as I see it. But a common complaint about me is: “offers no solutions.” Just because I call what’s going on “disintegration” or “apocalypse now,” I’m supposed to provide the salvation?!
You answer the fuckin’ question…and answer it for yourself. Politicians offer solutions – they never work. My job is just to question the roots of the madness.
AJ: We all live in a brutal world, yet some people see this more clearly than others. I think everyone on some level is brutalized by existence –
LL: Absolutely. And that’s why when people ask me, “How can you tell those really personal stories to everyone?” I reply, “These are universal stories. Merely because I use myself as example…”
First of all, you shouldn’t feel shame about the abuse you’ve incurred because – first rule, to all victims – it is not your fault. Too many people take that guilt and shame upon themselves. Secondly, I’m only using my own example for the benefit of all who suffer the same multiple frustrations: fear, horror, anger, hatred…I speak for those who can’t articulate it, that’s all. And the stories aren’t just personal – often they’re very political, too. But the sexuality, the politics, the abuse – it’s all interrelated, it’s so historical. It goes beyond and before my lifetime – it goes back to the fucking cave.
AJ: Your childhood was pretty wretched, right? You were sexually molested by your father –
LL: It’s quite brutal to realize at the age of six that one is no longer a child. You feel that something has snapped that will never return to you. And you can rationalize this, without the intelligence to truly understand it. That’s the biggest obstacle to overcome: the point when you realize everything has suddenly changed, and will never go back…until…you return the power to yourself that has been stolen by that other person – and that’s very difficult, and takes a long time to master.
I like the idea of a community sense. I like the concept of the Conspiracy of Women; of a political party run by women for women. I like the idea of this threat…
Because no matter how petty or how intense the abuse that a child has to go through – physical or psychological or self-induced environmentally, financially – everyone feels as if something has been stolen from them, or that they have been battered beyond repair. People are so insecure; they hate themselves or they hate their parents (or both), because they don’t know what love is, and don’t want the love they never knew. And that lack or void (which they’ve never dealt with) has twisted and demented their entire reality. So much of the problem is: fear of intimacy…not knowing how to love or be loved or nurture or encourage without controlling, manipulating, hurting, perverting. I think this stems both from just the repetitive cycle of abuse we had to withstand, and also a reaction against the ‘60s Love/Hippie shit. Two forces that converge on the same generation to really make people cruel, mean, and unconcerned…not only about themselves and others, but about the situation. Hence: apathy, lethargy, destruction, mayhem, boredom, drug abuse and death.
AJ: Yet you’ve used your art as a catharsis to not only speak for other people but to heal yourself.
LL: From the time I was about 10, I was writing poetry and stories. So I had started to channel that painful energy while quite young. But also…I think the way most victims perpetuate the cycle is by experimenting on others and turning them into victims to relieve the pressure of their own pain. And I think I began doing that very early as an outlet – at 11 or 12. I became the “Bad Seed,” like so many of us were. I kept notebooks or journals of these “experiments.” I considered every relationship from the time I was 11 as a psychological test of strength, will, power, control and pain.
AJ: For a woman, that isn’t exactly a conventional outlook; it’s an inversion –
LL: But it’s just the other side of the victimization; the mirror image. Instead of turning it around, this merely perpetuated the cycle of abuse. But I think you can divorce yourself from that repetitive cycle of pain and victimization and channel the negative energy into creative outlets so that you don’t have to continue to experiment on people. That’s the growth process: to understand your psychoses and neuroses by spending enough time by yourself… to know yourself, and love yourself (not needing anyone else, of course, to love you). Yet also: not being in a position where you reject love because – god forbid, it’s the four letter word!
Victimization steals the capacity to love or be loved, and that’s a waste – in fact, many generations’ worth of waste. Defensiveness, insecurity, ego and inadequacy plague the people of our country, because that’s what they’re taught: they’re not good enough, they’re not rich enough, they’re not white enough, they’re not smart enough. And that’s inbred, generation after generation. The thing is: with patterns and cycles of abuse, the rhythm of the psychology and the drama behind these occurrences is what pumps the adrenalin through most people, because otherwise their lives would be unbearably numb and deadened from the pain they’ve witnessed before.
To be free of these negative, self-defeating, painful, alienating, lonely feelings, is to really accomplish a great achievement. Because “they” don’t want you to feel any anything but what they’ve drilled into you; they want to steal your pleasure – your pleasure zones; they know that when you’re miserable you’re not as effective or strong as when you’re happy. And when you as a woman can make yourself happy, empowered, strong, loving, concerned, nurturing and encouraging (especially toward other women)…when that empowerment can be restored or regenerated in a loving fashion without threat, abuse, violence, cruelty or ego…that’s when you start developing.
They’re killing too much of the earth and not enough of the people! Another reversal of intelligence.
Instead of being a flaky blonde who works for somebody else, I’d rather be a shrewd businesswoman any day, thank you very much. I know how to get what I want done – that’s my job.
V: Actually, hoe did you become a shrewd businesswoman? By demanding that every detail of every contractual arrangement be brought to light?
LL: Exactly – instead of just agreeing with whatever was proposed. By organizing. Conceive, execute, document, desist, go on. That’s being a shrewd businesswoman. Make sure that everything you do is documented to your satisfaction. You don’t take No for an answer – whatever it takes, you get it done!
AJ: What was it like back in the beginning of punk rock? You were a pioneer-
LL: “Annie Oakley of the Wild East.”
AJ: How old were you when you moved to New York?
LL: Just turning 17, I think.
AJ: Did you run away from home?
LL: Of course. I just left. The End, Chapter One. I had been going to New York since I was 14; I’d run away from home a few times to check out the CBGB’s scene – that was happening. The sense of community was very strong; people were having a good time and feeling good – it was before the big self-destructive binge when punk declined into death, destruction and drugs. It was more positive.
When I first started going to New York, people went to these wild discotheques – 5 stories, with incredible “happenings”: just people performing – gays, lesbians, blacks, drag queens, glam rockers, whatever. All different types – all the sexual minorities – were blending together in these huge discotheques which were left over from the late ‘60s.
V: The punk scene started with poetry as a focus, somewhat like the Beatniks started.
LL: I think Emilio Cubeiro started doing the first performance art/poetry at CBGB’s in ’72; he lived right around the corner from there – he still does. When I first arrived in New York, I stayed with some hippies including Lenny Bruce’s daughter, Kitty Bruce. She was moving out of this loft and I took her room. Then I met James Chance…and then my band started. But his stage antics – he was far too expressive to be in Teenage Jesus and The Jerks. Because I wanted a very rigid regiment of almost military precision – this band was not to be a spontaneous combustion, it was about uncompromising, percussive stabs of pain. And his was a much more free-floating lugubrious expressiveness. Finally we had to decide, “James, you have to do your own thing, please. You shouldn’t be held back. I’m not going to tell you not to do that – just don’t do it here!” Other bands like Mars and DNA were already rehearsing at my house – since everybody knew each other, the whole scene quickly bonded together…
V: It must have been like punk rock in San Francisco, 1977 – it wasn’t just about music – people were remaking and rethinking everything. It was a complete cultural rebellion.
LL: Yes! It was a very good time. It was the upswing. It was still riding the crest of the ‘60s “liberation.”
AJ: What ideas from those days do you still hold?
LL: First and foremost: no compromise. As soon as I started writing, doing a band, recording records, going to Europe, touring…all that just made me realize (as I had always known): “You want to do something, YOU DO IT. Listen to no one but yourself. DO IT.” I think that’s the most important lesson. Being able to do something at such an early age intensified in me the idea: “Don’t take No for an answer. If you want to do it, you get it done. You’ve got to do it yourself. Don’t listen to them; don’t listen to anyone else. Do it the way you want it done.”
The manifestations of these themes have changed…have gone from one pain, one heartache, one broken bone, one good mood swing, one emotional dystopia, one stab in the dark…to another. Well, that’s just part of the developmental procedure of examining yourself and trying to get over your personal story…then looking at the greater picture. Because until you’re over your personal problems, you are so self-obsessed, so wounded-animal-in-the-cave, that when you finally salve the wounds: admit, eliminate denial, go to confession, get over it…when you can see the bigger picture – you realize that not only are you not alone, but there’s even less hope for the whole picture than there was with you just crying in your bedroom with the gun in your hand! Now you need two guns – one in each hand!
AJ: - and they’re no longer aimed at yourself. You wrote two of Richard Kern’s films, Right Side of My Brain and Fingered – two very powerful films. How do you feel about the impact they’ve had?
LL: Well, I’m very happy with the way the first film, The Right Side of My Brain turned out. It was made for only $500, I believe. It’s very black-and-white noir, with a soft poetic explanation about the cycle of feminine abuse and violent relationships and why possibly that carries on …how the energy connected to that, and the adrenalin that goes along with that, is what abates all the pain. I look at it in the same way I think Polanski’s Repulsion is a romantic film: it’s tragic in a way, but it’s not sappy – it’s very sad.
Fingered is an uglier rendition of a similar theme. It shows again how the cycle of abuse turns the victim into the victimizer – sometimes completely accidentally through being a “victim of circumstance” – through being willing to “go along with” the situation to see what the end result of the experiment will be. The thrill of the kill.
AJ: The intensity in Fingered is an achievement in itself. It’s like looking at the world through the eyes of a psychotic.
LL: It’s not meant to be erotic or pornographic – it’s just reality – and that means pornography! Most people don’t want to take that chance…to test or learn. And that film was a learning process: to try to show that sometimes ugliness and pain, when they’re in your face, are very attractive from a close distance. We were trying to show how the rules of attraction may be quite different from the way they seem – well, there are no rules. First rule: no rules!
So much of the problem of the generation I speak for is: fear of intimacy…not knowing how to love or be loved or nurture or encourage without controlling, manipulating, hurting, perverting.
V: Do you think it’s possible to have a personal relationship without exploiting?
LL: I don’t know. I have to admit that exploitation (in my own personal experience) was part of the learning process – there was no choice. Because I’m not writing fiction; I’m not dealing with dis-reality. So in order to stop the exploitation that goes on in my personal relationships…every character that goes through my life ends up in a story. They’re interesting characters that need to be documented, because they won’t do it themselves and their stories need to be told. Exploitation always has a bad and negative connotation given to it. But it just depends on how it’s done: willingly, secretively, against one’s will, or with full approval for therapeutic or educational purposes.
V: One antidote to exploitation is communication or honest confession-
LL: And here a lot of men will shut down; the walls come crashing down whenever a heavy emotional confrontation might threaten to force some deeper communication. Yet that’s when they become men and no longer act like boys, because boys are the frightened ones that don’t want intimacy because they fear it…because they might get hurt – as if anything is going to hurt…and so what if it does? – you’ll live.
AJ: Exactly. To shatter your ego – so what? What are you losing? Just your previous sense of your Self. Hopefully you can learn and get wiser. You can’t learn about yourself in a vacuum – only by taking risks can you gain valuable lessons that increase maturity.
LL: What amazes me is that people feel it’s better to shut down and not experience something, than to experience possible pain. Women deal with chronic and constant pain throughout life: physical, emotional, psychological – living in our society as the second-class citizens they still are.
Fear of rejection and possessiveness often go hand-in-hand, and that’s where things really get dangerous and unattractive. People fear rejection because they really need to possess (or possessed by) someone else. Because basically they don’t want to be alone. They don’t want to be with themselves. They’re frightened to be alone. They don’t know how to live with themselves; therefore, they always have to be living with someone else…through someone else. I really don’t think people should live together; I think they should live separately – completely. Because that freedom is so important. Even if you’re working on separate creative projects, you still need time to be alone in order to center. I think that “codependency” is the first bullshit that has got to go. Society chronically reinforces the notion that you need a mate, you need a partner, you need a husband, you need a lover, you need a mother, you need a father, you need a fuck – or fuck you!
AJ: Let’s get on to another subject. You did the screenplay, “Psycho-Menstrum,” based on your study of female diseases. You leaned how there’s really very little research being done on them –
LL: I’ll talk about my diseases if you talk about yours! Let’s play doctor. PID interests me incredibly, because pelvic inflammatory disease first publicly reared its head in the early ‘70s, mostly because of the Dalkon Shield lawsuits. This was an IUD which a lot of women could have been suing for if they read the one article printed in the paper last year, because Dalkon was handing out $6 billion dollars to women who had been injured by their IUD. And any woman who has had an IUD has no doubt suffered in one way or another. I don’t know one man who would allow a copper rod to be inserted into the tip of his penis and left there to rust for years…and continue to function as a sexual human being.
AJ: PID is an intense “set” of diseases that they know nothing about. The AMA would never tolerate knowing so little about a male disease that affected the male penis-
LL: - and that affected so much of the population. At least 25-30% of the female population have suffered from PID, because it is sexually transmitted. And once you have it, you tend to get it again – under stress, bad diet, no sleep, or different sexual partners. Every time a new unprotected partner is introduced into your feminine body (we forget how raw and exposed the feminine genitals on the inside are; how close they are to the inner organs; they’re the gateway to the whole body) pollutants run rampant – whether they’re something that you notice and smell or not. Very unhygienic! All sorts of feminine cancers (which they don’t want to call feminine cancers, like PID) are transmitted sexually through unprotected contact that women pay the cost of. Ladies, invest $1.99 – get yourself some condoms, please! (Or: if men are too fuckin’ cheap to afford ‘em, they’re outta luck! You don’t need “it”!)
That’s the growth process: to understand your psychoses and neuroses by spending enough time by yourself…to know yourself, and love yourself.
To me AIDS is not as frightening as all the other things that lead up to it. People have a focus on AIDS, but no one is talking about the twenty other common sexually transmitted diseases which plague mostly women (which men do transmit, but have no symptoms of) like Chlamydia, which many people have, and which can also go into the bloodstream and cause what is commonly known as “Yuppie Disease” – chronic fatigue.
AJ: In a performance you cited a litany of these diseases that sounded so poetic –
LL: - just like a Greek chorus: Chlamydia, Candida, Albicans, Condyloma Acuminata (genital warts), Trichomonas, Vaginitis, Endometriosis, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, Herpes, Syphilis, Gonorrhea – to name a few. Let us not forget non-specific urinary tract infections (NSU)…
AJ: In your screenplay you’re also talking about PMS: another underreported –
LL: - problem we all suffer from. [laughs] It’s about a biology student who’s dissatisfied with the lack of research about many ills, but especially the monthly monster: premenstrual tension. Unable to comprehend how half the population could possibly suffer from this every single month (the cramping, the bloating, the weight gain, the irritability, the insatiability, the mood swings) she sets out to experiment on herself with steroids and hormones in order to discover a solution hopefully beneficial for the entire female population.
Her experiments come to unfortunate ends, because she tries injecting steroids, hormones, estrogen and progesterone, causing an imbalance which causes her to start acting like a man – not the desired effect! She becomes extremely sexually aroused and bloodthirsty, acting out fantasies [which have been illustrated by cartoonists Robert Williams and Charles Burns]. Each fantasy experienced not only as a hallucination but as an actual chemical imbalance which causes indescribable mood swings – just like premenstrual tension – only exaggerated under the influence of the drugs.
I’m hoping that with a caricatured, slightly comedic portrayal leaning toward futuristic sci-fi sex horror, some controversy may be instigated (if at first as a joke). At least the film will pose the question, “Why isn’t there research being done about this?” What id women did begin taking hormones and steroids and acting like men – what would the consequences be? Women should start pioneering…experimenting with different drugs and hormones, to find a remedy that is not harmful and that possibly could be administered holistically.
AJ: It’s amazing that PMS and PID are still tittered about. If you talk about prostate cancer, nobody’s tittering about that. But somehow PMS is “funny”: “She’s on the rag,” and it’s not taken seriously. The whole field of women’s gynecology –
LL: - is 50 years behind the times. And the lack of holistic research – well, holistic medicine is not an abusively profitable business, so that’s why there are no holistic cures. It’s practiced by individuals who are not necessarily linked to medical associations – therefore they usually can’t charge too much for a given herb.
V: There are over 9,000 “medicines” in pill form. Think of all the profits –
LL: At $15 to $35 a bottle, or more!
V: They’re an ideal capitalist commodity: cheap to manufacture, invested with a mystical aura – plus you can charge what the market will bear.
AJ: Also, most drugs don’t really heal, they just relieve symptoms, so you have to constantly come back for more –
LL: Absolutely. Drugs often relieve one problem and replace it with another. Antibiotics often eliminate one form of infection just to make the body vulnerable to another – which they can treat you for again. Thus they perpetuate your cycle of sickness and discomfort and weakness and suffering. But I’m not a doctor; I can only complain about this. I’m not inventing any new cures; I can only ask, “Why aren’t you doing something about this?”
It’s unbelievable, but before 1970 the American medical society would not admit that women actually had cramping every month – it was a figment of your imagination! During the Victorian era it was, “Don’t get out of bed!” God forbid – she might get crazy, she might do something horrible, she might become violent – so stay in bed. But during the Depression women were out in the fields working, because female manpower was needed. Cramps? – you worked through them – “it’s all in your head!” So society has treated the menses differently throughout history: hiding women in huts when they’re menstruating (Rastafarians did that).
AJ: The menses is a very powerful time, when you’re connected to your deepest sense of self …but we’re not in an inner-directed world, we have to be external; we have to answer the phone – basically we’re thrust into this frenzied capitalist world –
LL: All the stress, the caffeine, the work and the pressure make the menses all the more uncomfortable. The fact that you have no time to go into yourself and actually rejuvenate makes it worse. And of course cramping and frustration are just going to feed off each other. Everything is compounded; there’s no time to just allow the menses ritual to take its time for regeneration, like animals do who are more in tune with themselves – who are not blinded by the 9-to-5 paycheck chase.
AJ: …Why did you choose “Widowspeak” as a name for your record company?
V: - like the Black Widow Spider?
LL: More like the woman without a husband who doesn’t need the man…or who’s outlived the man. I think it sums up a philosophy: the sisters are doing it for themselves.
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Part II
V: Do you always get up at 6 AM?
LL: I like to, because the first four hours of the day are the most peaceful. No one’s calling you on the phone, I can assure you of that. No one’s knocking at the door, and even the mailman doesn’t come ‘til noon. So I like to get an advantage on everyone else; have some peace time. Also that’s just my natural rhythm – that’s when I wake up. I’m not really a night person like so many artists [sneers] – fuckin’ clowns. (Yeah, the circus happens at night, too!) I prefer to rise with the sun. That doesn’t mean I go down when it goes down – if only I were so lucky. So many of the nights of my childhood were based around fear and apprehension of night which has to do with the fact that my night life was stolen from me as a child at a very early age.
AJ: What do you mean: that your nights were stolen from you?
LL: Well. By an intruder in the form of the father figure.
AJ: And this started when you were really young?
LL: Yeah; I think that’s when my whole “night sickness” came in. And that’s why I’m probably much more active in the day. Because at night I would have to – as a preservation or a survivalist tactic – shut down. When I lived in L.A., I was in a constant state of night panic, because it’s such a violent place. It seemed like people committed the most random violence just for pleasure and I really felt I could be the next target…
So it might seem that I would be so panicked at night that I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until 6 AM. But it’s the opposite – if I can get to bed before midnight, I’ll be okay. But if I don’t get to bed until 3 in the morning, then I won’t be able to go to sleep.
AJ: I read that statistically at least one out of three women have been victims of incest as children –
LL: And what about men?
AJ: Well, they don’t collect statistics like that because they want to protect male sexuality, right? But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s high for males, too. Little girls and little boys are basically –
LL: Fodder for abuse.
AJ: Yeah. Passive, powerless receptacles. But I think there’s a lot of self-empowerment coming out of that now. People are really starting to deal with that issue – deal with that rage.
V: You mentioned an idea for a seminar?
LL: To do a seminar for women only, that would bring together a lot of concepts about reparation, self-empowerment – getting over addictions, co-dependency, self-destruction, and loneliness.
That’s why I moved to New Orleans: to do a lot of research, reading, writing, and pull together different sources of information to try to arrive at some kind of “non-school-of-philosophy” basic how-to guidelines to help yourself not continue doing the same things you’ve always done…holding yourself back in the same ways.
I’d also like to set up a woman’s art coalition – an art therapy house where women artists and writers from all around the country (or the world) can come to just relax or work. So that they can have input from other women who are also doing progressive and creative endeavours, and also try to get over their own personal disabilities.
AJ: What are some of the philosophies you’d initiate?
LL: Well, to get over all bullshit now, and to quit harbouring pain from the past. Now is the time to take your stand and to empower yourself. We all have been beaten down repeatedly in every relationship that involves another person – to one extent or another. The seminar would be just for women to be able to look to themselves, empower themselves, and need only themselves. Instead of looking for another person to make your life happy – not to satisfy them or cater to them, but to be secure in your own desires and intentions so that you can inspire other people to get their act together. I think that’s the priority.
AJ: How did you achieve this for yourself?
LL: Thirty-one years of crawling through the shit…slowly and surely eliminating all the destructive patterns, habits and rituals, one by one. Trying to analyze where they came from, and where certain attractions, addictions and patterns originated.
I asked myself, “Who am I? Where the hell am I, and at this point why aren’t I further along the road than this?” I think people have got to give up the fear of being alone, especially women – and especially when after twenty-five they start feeling that already they’re too old. They don’t realize that they’re reaching their peak at thirty-five or even older – not twenty-one, not fifteen. If women could just be strong enough, secure enough, and happy enough to live by themselves – satisfying themselves – ultimately they’d be satisfying other people as well. This is a very important lesson. Most people are more lonely with someone else than they are when they’re by themselves.
AJ: That’s for sure. A live-in relationship leads to a daily dose of dulling ritual –
LL: It’s a pattern – and patterns are not good. What I originally started dealing with was my own personal internalization of the abuse of the world, because you have to externalize your frustration and anger in order to see it and get over it. You can’t just keep it bottled up inside, because eventually that will drive you insane.
V: What if you’re not a painter, writer or sculptor?
LL: There are other forms of expression. Even the ability to just confide in other people, and get things off your chest – that’s in the oldest tradition of storytelling.
V: Would you work with meditation?
LL: I think meditation is a good thing. Meditation gives you that twenty or thirty minutes where you don’t think about anything else…except for energy and healing. I think that has a very positive effect – because you need that free time, that free space.
People don’t give themselves that time; they don’t allow themselves to just give it up. They have to chronically obsess on what they’re going to do next, or what just happened. As opposed to just sitting back, shutting down, shutting up, and letting it out. This is such a basic concept, you know?
I mean – physical exercise is good for that. Bike riding is good, taking a walk – anything that puts you out of contact with everyone else and into contact with your self. I think even just breathing and physical exercise helps you concentrate more. Improving your physical condition can have a powerful effect on your mental health – just through the oxygen intake you can improve your outlook. Look at someone who’s neurotic, hyperventilating, panicking – meditation could be a necessary must!
V: You were talking about “letting go” – I think that’s easier said than done: to let go of past pain, guilt and unresolved trauma from childhood –
LL: The key is to resolve them and let them go. To distance yourself also –
V: You mean forgive yourself?
LL: Yes – to not take the burden. Most victims take on the responsibility as if they caused the problem. That’s the whole syndrome with child abuse: they always feel that they’re the ones that brought it on, they’re the guilty party. They take on the guilt because usually the violator does not. And the guilt has got to go somewhere.
I think the first step in self-recovery is to be able to say, “I am not the guilty one. It was not a personal thing against me. I was just the convenient battering ram. I was just used as the receptacle; I am not the receptacle.” I think that’s a big key to getting over personal pain overload – to distance yourself from personal responsibility about the act that was committed against you without your desire – when you were either too young or too weak to defend yourself. The first key is to forgive yourself and to take back yourself, reclaim yourself, and to heal the self-hate that these situations have forced you into. Because that’s the biggest plague of our generation anyway: self-hate.
Also, people propagate their own abuse. They get stuck in that pattern, it’s all they know, it’s what they can respond to, it’s what they know how to deal with. A great quote from Bataille’s Guilty: “The greatest desire is a wounded person’s need for another wound” – very true. Because that’s what you know, that’s what you can deal with, that’s what you understand, and that’s what you respond to – because through pain you have blocked out just about everything else.
I think that feeling of dislocation, limbo, and disorientation is the first thing that’s got to be healed or clarified in a victim’s life: “You are here now! That shit happened, but now it’s over!” Easier said than done, but – you first have to realize that the past is the past. And in order to prevent the future from mirroring and mimicking that, you have to take control immediately and focus on your emotional conditions which are not intrinsic to your true self, but that were ground into you.
So many responses that you have are not real responses – they’re conditioned responses. And that’s the first thing that’s got to be given up: “I’m acting this way because they did that, and this is the conclusion.” Also I find in the communication between people (especially two pained, frustrated, unwhole people) that between intention and interpretation there is so much perversion. Because people take a communication or response and then start twisting or perverting it to mesh with their own cycles and abuses and patterns. And that’s very dangerous. That’s also what locks people into cycles that propagate themselves in a relationship: so many things just keep getting misinterpreted, become cyclical and destructive: “Well you said that, and you did that, but you must have meant this. So I’ll act like that.” PAIN ATTRACTS PAIN. The more capacity you have for pain – well, when your pain threshold is your greatest accomplishment, that’s not much of an achievement! And being the Queen of Pain, I can tell you: There are other things that are more important!
V: Aren’t we always striving toward the goal of being nonexploitative in our relationships with our friends?
LL: Absolutely. However, I do think most people are more interested in conflict, because it’s more interesting and it’s what they’re familiar with. It’s more exciting (it gets the adrenalin going) than a “peaceful, happy, loving” relationship – which to most of us sounds pretty fuckin’ boring (although it doesn’t have to be).
I think the basic key to a long-lasting relationship is to realize that that person is not there to satisfy your desires and goals, but to satisfy their own. And if you at the same time are clear on your own goals and desires and satisfactions, then you can coexist (and I don’t say cohabitate). And then, if two people share so much in common that they can continue in a relationship for an extended period of time…freedom and respect for the other person have got to be the priorities: “You want to do that? Do it!”
Women are denied masturbation even more severely Than men…that’s another method of control – they’re not taught to please themselves. It takes most women a while to warm up to the “situation,” but once they get into it, they’re hooked – well everyone I know is!
I think that’s where most relationships begin their downfall: when one person tries to please the other – one person tries to live for the other, satisfy the other – be the ideal of the other. Why not be the ideal of yourself? Why not make yourself as satisfied and happy and full as possible? And if the other person can enjoy that ride, there’s a sidecar – “Strap yourself in! Put your helmet on – it might be rough!” But I think people are too dependent on other people for their happiness, their satisfaction, or to alleviate their loneliness.
I also think women are denied masturbation even more severely than men, and that’s another method of control – they’re not taught to please themselves. Whereas men jack off from the time they’re nine years old! Most women – it takes them a while to warm up to the “situation,” but once they get into it, I’m sure they’re going to get just as hooked as – well, everyone I know is! I think if women were taught to love themselves from masturbation on upward, that would make the whole sexual conflict a little easier to deal with. If women could really take themselves as their own lover, and enjoy their bodies and their sexuality, with and to and by themselves – that’s 50% of the battle. My favourite line is: “Masturbation satisfies what reality cannot withstand.”
AJ: [laughs] That’s a good one. Most women don’t even know their own genitals!
LL: It’s not like they don’t have mirrors in the house, honey. They’re all over the place. Get down there and start doing a little investigative research – unlock those mysteries. Because 98% of the men out there aren’t going to be able to.
AJ: So what do you think of the lesbian separatist view that men are incorrigible – that this world has gone too far, and men really cannot be coped with? LL: I don’t think we have to disregard half the population just because 75% of them are chronic assholes. We’ve got to think about the ones that are willing to change, and the ones that are capable of change, and the ones that are really fighting (in their own way) for the right side, anyway. I don’t think all men are bad, or that all men are evil and stupid. I’m not a lesbian and have no desires of becoming one in the near future. I don’t think it’s that simple – to just wipe out half the population. It would be nice, but I’d miss a few of the buggers myself. I think they’re useful. |
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I’d also wipe half the female population off the face of the fuckin’ earth if I could – because they’re not doing their job; they’re buying game; they’re swallowing it whole – they’re fuckin’ choking on it! What makes them better? Just because they’re not running the fucking game – why should they get more credit? They’re allowing it to continue in the same fashion too. So it’s not as if this side is good just because they’re women – that’s bullshit. You can’t just cut the population in half. It’s not that easy.
AJ: One of the dangers in a separatist community is that through hatred and conflict toward men, they internalize the very attributes they are against, thus perpetuating the same old game –
LL: Absolutely.
AJ: What do you think about pornography in general?
LL: I think the problem is not getting rid of what’s there – just expanding the boundaries of what exists. Mine is not to dictate – it’s to encourage.
Men have these concepts of female submission in the first place, and pornography caters to that. Pornography is a symptom of the problem which is sexual inequality. Eliminating one of the symptoms doesn’t solve the problem. You’ve got to go to the root cause and redress the imbalance.
AJ: It’s very important to distinguish what is fantasy and what is reality.
LL: Absolutely, because denying women pleasure and making them feel guilty about it, is to deny them power – that’s the bottom line.
AJ: Right. If people really gave pleasure a top priority, who in their right mind would go into an alienated office and sit and type all day – 40 hours a week (plus commute time) – for some corporation that doesn’t give a damn about them? How do you keep an insane system like that going – in which people willingly consent to the taking away of their own lives?
LL: If the American white male-dominated society is based on violence and way, then id women really want to get ahead, that’s the only route they can take. They can’t try to reason. We’ve been trying to reason with men for thousands of years, and it doesn’t work. Men are not reasonable people, for the most part – they’re too territorial. So now it’s time to say, “Well, this is our fucking planet. We gave birth to it, and it is in our likeliness that it is created. You are fucking with us – so fuck you.” Because that’s the only language they can understand. They’re not going to understand reasoning. Not at this late a date.
AJ: How do you see women evolving – getting together and organizing?
LL: I think there’s no choice – someone’s going to have to start organizing coalitions. What would I like to predict as the ultimate outcome? A complete overthrow. And real revolution, and for women to just shut the whole fucking country down. Just say No. Don’t pay the rent. Don’t pay the gas bills. Don’t pay any insurance. Just say, “No, I’m not working anymore!” But it has to be done totally – I mean, people have all got to be ready to take that stance. It can’t be ten isolated people or you’ll get squashed. It can’t be just a few women here and there sneaking into positions of power. It has to be done in the only way they understand, which is to dominate them and to completely overthrow them. Because otherwise it’s not going to happen.
AJ: So what would you like to see right now?
LL: I’d like to see a women’s army storm into the White House with Uzis and shotguns and eliminate at least half the population who work in politics. They’re killing you slowly – what’s the alternative? Kill them quickly, kill them now – before they kill everything else, okay? That’s the only choice. Sorry – I didn’t make it up, you know? Revolution is not a new concept – it just hasn’t been practiced for a long time in this country…not in the way other countries are willing to practice it. And there is no time left.
AJ: So what are you doing?
LL: I’m rallying the troops. That’s my job. Everyone should assume a position in the ranks of this army, because it is war, and that’s it. As I’ve said before: if 1% of the population controls 80% of the money, that shit has got to change.
V: … Would you advise women to keep journals and diaries?
LL: I think diaries and journals serve a function, at least to be able to have something (if not someone or somewhere) to put thoughts that totally plague you. But you’ve got to be willing to learn from the repetition that will be written in those pages. I always used to burn all my notebooks when they were finished!
V: Really?
LL: Yes, like: “Well I know that now – time to torch!” I don’t think that you need a specific artefact to express what you know, or what you’re going through, or what you’re doing, or what you’re creating. I think you just have to be able to open the floodgates – to be able to let that out in a way that’s going to heal…whether it’s into a book, into someone else’s face, into a tape recorder, into a typewriter, onto a canvas – I don’t think the format is so important as the fact that you just have to be ready to let it out…give it up. And also, if need, be, open that wound to scrutiny by other people (as opposed to the “male thing” of just closing down, shutting up, and keeping it inside). Women “naturally” tell other women what’s going on – they don’t seem to have that inhibition. They’re more open to expounding upon the disease of the day.
AJ: Shame is what the control system’s all about. The power system wants you to feel ashamed and secretive. For decades, women’s sexuality had been a source of abuse and denial – and that has just perpetuated the status quo. Secrecy and keeping things inside are all part of a mechanism to keep you down and powerless.
LL: Absolutely.
AJ: Where do you think you derive your strength from?
LL: I always gathered my strength from knowing that it was the rest of the world versus me. I took comfort in that fact – as opposed to other people who feel so alone, and get buried by it. I know that every problem I speak about (no matter how personalized it is or how unique the details are) is universal.
We forget how raw and exposed the feminine genitals are on the inside; how close they are to the inner organs. Every time a new unprotected partner is introduced into your feminine body – pollutants run rampant!
No matter how well I knew anyone else or how well anyone understood me, or how well I got along with anyone, still: you stand by yourself, at the end of the day and at the end of your life. So why not get used to the fact? Why not grow to become your best friend, your biggest confidante, and your staunchest supporter?
Maybe that started because within my family structure, I felt as though I didn’t belong to them. I didn’t look like them, had nothing in common with them – I felt I had been exchanged in the nursery – which my parents had told me and I always believed! So feeling separate within the family was a good introduction for me to the rest of the world. I felt isolated from the time I could walk, think, and talk – and with the abuse and all of that religious insanity compounded with incestuous alienation – well, at a very early age I just took comfort in the fact that I didn’t belong.
People have a focus on AIDS, but no one is talking about the twenty other common sexually transmitted diseases which plague mostly women.
I grew up in Rochester, New York, which is a fairly large industrial town. There’s a ghetto of every breed in every corner of the city: bike gangs, gangsters, and hard boys – the works. I loved it.
But by the time I was 13, I knew I would get out of that reality. I knew that I needed to get out on the road and start experiencing what lay beyond.
V: Did the movies have any formative influence on you?
LL: As a young teenager I went to the drive-in movies a lot. One of the first films I saw was Last House on the Left – probably at age thirteen. And that was a good education – it’s a small tale of psychotic revenge on three rapists who end up getting their own deaths served on a platter in a very grisly fashion. It was fascinating to me at the time – far more so than it is now.
But I think that music influenced me more – and writing. I was reading Freud, Sade, and Hubert Selby at 14 or 15, and those 3 writers probably influenced me the most – more than movies and more than music. Music influenced me to get out of Rochester and go to New York, because I saw and heard what was happening there at CBGB’s and Max’s. But reading those books – especially Last Exit to Brooklyn and the books by the Marquis de Sade – made me decide there was more to reality than the one I was functioning under, so…time to expand.
V: In Sade’s books, did you identify with the males who are torturing the women?
LL: I could identify more with the philosophy behind Sade – that behind all the actions was human or animal nature. And that “nature” is the intrinsic driving force behind murder, rape, domination, fear, and insecurity. Because Sade, more than anyone, understood human nature. Even when he was exaggerating to the fullest of his creative powers, he understood the basic fears. And he displayed them in horrifyingly graphic, exaggerated terminology, which made it obvious where they were coming from – every atrocity was excused by the fact that its origin was man’s human nature.
AJ: What do you think women’s human nature is?
LL: I think it involves nurturing, growth and development, and I think for the most part it’s a very peaceful nature – when it’s not pounded out of them, and when it’s not perverted in them. Find me a woman that hasn’t been perverted by the powers that be, and I’ll show you one that hasn’t been born yet!
AJ: You have a warrior mentality, but you also have grown beyond that. You aren’t going to fuck over other victims, or derive sadistic pleasure in-
LL: - eliminating the weaker. I get power from empowering weaker people than I do from obliterating them. It’s the ones that think they’re so strong that need to be obliterated. Why pick on the weaker?
V: Do you think that men wage war because they haven’t really come to grips with death itself?
LL: Well, I have a quotation: “Men are so afraid to die that they have to kill everything in sight.”
AJ: Exactly. Men are so chicken shit – they are so scared if death –
LL: - and losing control. And having to submit.
AJ: And the ultimate submission is to death –
LL: - a very natural progression, I might add. Thank god for death! It will one day be over – at least this version of it.
V: Do you believe in reincarnation?
LL: I don’t really like the term “reincarnation.” Karma – that’s another tricky one. I think things are recycled to some degree – I think energy gets recycled. Reincarnation? - I don’t know.
V: Well, maybe you’ll be reborn –
LL: No. I hope not to be reborn, actually. I think I’ve reached the limit of my endurance for this reality and would like to think this is my final life – that doesn’t mean I feel it may have been my only one, but I would like to feel it is the last one.
What we do with our lives is basically squander as much of them away as possible, until we get so near to the finish line that we panic. But in my own personal life I hope that this is it. I have no faith in reincarnation for myself in the future, and I would prefer it didn’t happen, thank you very much. I look forward to the relief of death. I’ve never shirked it. That it hasn’t greeted me at my front door yet is a miracle – I’ve left the door wide open.
V: But you don’t tempt death, do you? You’re fairly prudent.
LL: No, I’ve just lived in about 42 ghettoes in my life, where I was surrounded by maniacs of every dimension, from every walk of life. No, I do take precautions – I do wear clothes in the street. [laughs]
V: What do you think about women studying martial arts, self-defense, and handgun skills?
LL: Absolutely – more power to you. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to make you feel better, and better able to defend yourself. Hand-to-hand combat and the ability to do so is an important issue, but more important is the ability to protect yourself from all the other traps that “they” set for you – the more insidious pitfalls. That’s more important.
Men are so afraid to die that they have to kill everything in sight.
Of course, as violence becomes more predominant, one has to be equipped to face that reality, because it’s becoming an urgent issue. It is civil war that we are living in. Just because one’s safe little reality isn’t confronted with it every day because of blind spots, blinders, and defense mechanisms, doesn’t mean it’s not right there. It’s there. You’re just safe for now.
AJ: Rape is up 50% over the last 10 years – even taking into account the fact that more women are reporting it.
LL: I think if more men started becoming the victims of rape – or castration – that might help redress the imbalance of sexual violence.
One of the points in my “Capital Punishment” speech was that since women only commit 13.3% of all crimes, they should have their own subways, their own streets, their own cities, their own countries, their own continents, and eventually their own planet – yes! Run by and for women. Just for a change – just to see if it makes a difference. I think that in the past there have been matriarchal societies that have been completely unacknowledged or unrecorded by “history.”
V: In Bangkok, so many women complained of being harassed by men on crowded buses that they instituted buses just for women.
LL: Great. Excellent. Why should I be forced to mingle with the other 87% of the population?
AJ: What do you mean?
LL: Well, if women only commit 13% of the crime –
AJ: Yes, and that crime is usually prostitution or white collar crime or something relatively victimless. You certainly don’t really have to walk down the street in fear of a woman –
LL: No. Not yet!
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Discography
TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS: various records including songs such as Orphans; Less of Me; Baby Doll; Freud in Flop; The Closet; My Eyes; Race Mixing; Burning Rubber; Red Alert; I Woke Up Dreaming. On influential NO NEW YORK LP.
BEIRUT SLUMP: Try Me; Staircase.
LYDIA LUNCH: LPs: Queen of Siam; Conspiracy of Women; Oral Fixation; Hysterie; The Uncensored Lydia Lunch; In Limbo. Plus “The Agony is The Ecstasy.” “Twisted/Past Glas.”
EIGHT EYED SPY: Diddy Wah Diddy; Dead Me You Beside
13.13: Lydia Lunch; 13.13 LPs.
HARRY CREWS: Naked in Garden Hills LP.
VARIOUS COLLBORATIVE RECORDS with: Rowland S. Howard (Shotgun Wedding); Einsturzende Neubauten; Die Haut; Michael Gira; Lucy Hamilton; No Trend; Birthday Party; Thurston Moore; Clint Ruin; Don Bajema, Henry Rollins and Hubert Selby Jr (Our Fathers Who Aren’t In Heaven). (Note: some of the above available from Widowspeak Productions, PO Box 1085, Canal St Station, NY NY 10013-1085. Catalog $2 – make checks payable to “Lydia Lunch.”)
Film & Videography
With James Nares (1978): Rome (1978). With Beth & Scott B (1978-81): Black Box, The Offenders, Vortex. With Beth B (1990): Thanatopsis. With Vivienne Dick (1978-80): She Had Her Gun Already, Beauty Becomes the Beast. With Babeth (1990): Kiss Napoleon Goodbye. With Richard Kern (1984-86): The Right Side of My Brain, Fingered. With Penn & Teller (1986-1990): The Invisible Thread, BBQ Death Squad. With Merill Aldighieri & Tripician (1988): The Gun Is Loaded. (Note: Fingered & Right Side of My Brain available for $26 each ppd from: Richard Kern, PO Box 1322, NY NY 10009.)
Books
Adulterer’s Anonymous, with Exene Cervenka. Grove Press, 1982.
Incriminating Evidence. Last Gasp, 2180 Bryant, SF CA 94110.
AS-FIX-E-8 (comics by Mike Matthews, Lydia, Nick Cave)
My Father’s Daughter. Unpublished autobiography.
Film Script & Play
Psychomenstrum: The Case of the PMS Murders. Film, 1991.
South of Your Border. Play w/Emilio Cubeiro, performed NYC 1988.
