Do you ever think about what you’d like to do if you were given a year to live? I used to, but then I stopped cos I always said the same thing: spend some time in the desert, then head to Rome, have my fill of great food, sites and boys, and that would be perfectly fine with me. But, then again, a friend once said of me that I had ‘ a flair for the dramatically inopportune’!!! It’s true! To me, everything seems epic anyway.
I think that writer’s lives, artist’s lives, tend not to be as interesting as their work.
I’ve been raped once.
_____ was a psycho – beat the shit out of me many times. And pre-Mike Tyson, bit through my earlobe – for no reason. He’d been mad at something – then walked towards me like he was going to kiss me – but – YIKES! By the way - I found out later that for some reason earlobes really bleed a lot. Odd.
____ kept calling me, always drunk. Called in the middle of the night to say, ‘I’m f***ing a woman.’ I didn’t know what to say, so I channelled my inner Noel Coward and said, ‘You should at least have the decency to put down the phone!’
Psychotics have always been attracted to me! I wonder why.
All my life I’ve been fascinated by extremes of socially acceptable behaviour. [But] I just hate anger. Or rather, I hate being angry. Seems a basically pointless and destructive emotion. Joe Orton wrote in his diaries that people love being angry cos it makes them feel superior. I agree.
Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club told me in 1993 that in 1979, a friend of hers was dating Elvis Costello, and during sex he gave her two black eyes and got really violent.
I love life so passionately that it hurts to see 99.999% of people f***ed up and pissing in the wind. Such a destructive race of people.
In one’s life and art, preoccupations are the same thing as ‘themes’.
I’ve always had a hard time keeping feelings inside. There’s always a need to share them. I felt so starved for love and attention when I was growing up that I vowed to be very emotionally and physically demonstrative. And I am!
Minds attract me first, then bodies. Then I remember the remark of Wilde’s, ‘Most crimes are committed in the mind’!!! Made me laugh!
The love of my life was Juan.
____’s been the only person to ever attempt to write me anything. It was sweet as I remember. But that’s it. I LOVE sappy romantic shit like that. We live in world where stuff like that isn’t valued anymore. Which is a shame.
I went through a Leonard Cohen phase after Juan and I broke up, and that and Nick Cave were the only two people I listened to.
My brush with Leonard story. Yes, there is one!
In 1993 I was doing full time music writing. Leonard was about to come out with his newest studio album. I was hoping to try and score an interview with him, so I kept phoning his song administration company. I spoke with the head a lot, a nice woman. I got an advance CD and phoned her to say how much I liked it, was Leonard gonna tour? She said, ‘I think I could answer that but there’s someone here who would have a better take on it, hold on.’
She put me on hold and a few minutes later a man said, ‘Hello, how are you today?’ It was Leonard. I got stage fright. Barely said anything. Leonard talked for a few minutes and I was like, ‘What can I say to this man? Nothing.’ What do you say to Leonard Cohen?
Very scary. Sounds like he smokes 10 packs of fags a day. And that was it. I hate that stage fright feeling. Where you can’t speak or do anything.
I wouldn’t resort to Leonard unless there was need to induce mass audience suicide. He’s someone that I did like a lot, but grew out of it, thankfully. I attribute my nervous breakdown in the autumn of 1993 to listening to his first album too many times.
The quest for love is so f***ing absurd. Sometimes makes me feel like a penguin walking among humans. Dire. |
