I want to take this particular minute and address the shared concern some of you have expressed to me — that I seem to hate my old songs, particularly Throwing Muses songs. I’m in London this morning, having played an entire set of Throwing Muses songs at the Scala last night and I want you to know that I truly enjoyed every song I played, though I was close to tears for a few dangerous moments.
These old songs are difficult, prickly and angry and I can handle that. The problem, I believe, is one of relevance, and not in the way you might think: it’s that they are STILL relevant. If I could leave these feelings and stories behind me, I could fly through the material like a cover band: wheeeeeeeeeeee! But those same goddamn feelings are ongoing and so is that same goddamned story. I’m ashamed of this, to be honest. I had big plans that did not include being the same person who wrote those songs 20 years after the fact.
Solo acoustic and 50FootWave songs move me just as hard, tear me the hell apart, in fact, but in a GOOD way. And I don’t have to remember anything but the music when I play them. To be in the middle of an old Throwing Muses song is to be living in my car again, pregnant, diagnosed schizophrenic and subsequently drugged, cutting myself, sleeping on floors, hiding from stalkers I wasn’t famous enough to deserve, getting felt up at the bar, fighting for the $50 in gas money the band earned per show (club people regularly pulled guns on me), each new song a Sheherazade story keeping me alive only to hear how it ends.
So, I’m not whining, I’m just saying that life was unpleasant back then and was actually about to get much, much worse. Life is real hard…duh-uh.
And now, I gotta say, life isn’t easy: I work harder, I care more and if I was ever crazy, well, then, I feel the same as I always did, so I guess I’ve got that going for me, too. But life is amazing. Really amazing.
I appreciate your concern, but I’m nobody to worry about.
Love,
Kristin
Posted in: words on November 22, 2005