Larkin Says...

dreams

Thu, 8 Apr 2010 11:12:11 -0400

The bonsai magnolia tree had become infested with caterpillars and small lizards. The caterpillars moved like a stream of agitated water over the roots of the tree and through the trunk. The tree was all but dead. Only a few leaves remained along the trunk, which was more like a husk. The lizards were slowly eating the caterpillars, and changing colors from light green to brown to red as they moved over the tree.
I was coming back from a trip with James. He was overcome by a neurosis that caused him to pick his skin, and the skin on his face had become so raw that he taped strips of colorful cereal boxes over his forehead, cheeks, and his square chin. Cardboard armor faceplates. Despite this strange armor he was very handsome. He had a face that always reminded girls of Elvis Presley. Clear blue eyes, magnificent chin.
All of our friends were coming over to the house to celebrate our return. THey were mostly gnarly drunks with tattoos on their faces. Not so much friends as drinking buddies. Not so much buddies unless you were able to afford enough alcohol to keep them occupied all night. I didn’t really want them in the house, so they sat on the front porch, dissecting the worm-eaten magnolia husk.

Free at last

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:26:08 -0400

After two years of excruciating artistic pain and creative differences, Young God Records and I have decided to try having an open relationship. It was, at best, a mutually abusive union, and I am currently seeking a record label run by young, exciting, enthusiastic people who will trust me to make an album exactly the way I want to make it. Yes, even indie labels can be domineering and controlling. Michael Gira has decided to revive the Swans, and I have decided to live a happy life. Good luck to the both of us. I am currently working on the best album I’ve ever made, and I’m finally the person in control of its final sound.

Eeek

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:17:18 -0500

I am snowed in right now, wishing this teensy weensy Manhattan apartment was instead a magical cottage in the middle of some undiscovered mountain range. I’d be boiling my old shoes and eating their leather, with 10 feet of snow outside my door, writing the darkest, evilest music ever written by a wood nymph. I’d probably be screaming if I were in a place where nobody could hear me, but this is New York City. I have to adjust to a different way of dealing with the winter of our souls.
My new record is going to be finished soon, and I hope it goes somewhere nice on its own merit. I like it. I think I’m gonna call it “Soul Retrieval”, which is the shamanic process by which you recover the parts of your soul that run away when you have been traumatized by something. I think we can all relate.

The other day I nearly threw a chair at a strange houseguest who said he was the most unfortunate of all the miserable sufferers in the world. For some reason, it made me want to smack him upside the head. The same day I gave my only pair of snowboots to a perfect stranger. It’s not like I lack compassion. It’s just that we have to get beyond self-pity.

I have a new friend who is a superhero. She enjoys everything. She makes me want to write dance music and have a cheerful life. What a change that could be.

I’m getting married. My name is changing to Larkin Lee.
Grimm was fierce and seriously, maybe a little too dark for me.

Dreams for the Future

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:59:38 -0500

I was born under the astrological sign Virgo, the archetypal female. Now we Virgos are supposed to be one of the most intelligent signs, however we are also the greatest believers in astrology, a dubious science. This year I am supposed to start experiencing my Saturn Return, a mystical rite of passage that tests the foundations upon which you have built your life and career. It is at this age that many young musicians experience their greatest success or failure, often resulting in fame or death or both, as in the cases of Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. I am hoping that mine will go well, as I have tried to be as true to myself as possible over the last 27 years or so. Lately some wonderful things have been happening in my career, not the least of which being my introduction to Tony Visconti, in my opinion the greatest producer in Rock n Roll history. You can see him playing the bass in the picture above. I have also been playing with my favorite drummer in the world, Otto Hauser. In fact my band is beginning to be populated with people who are like the Greatest Hits of people I’ve met in my life: Paran the Iranian princess, Caley the most creative violinist I’ve ever known, Jesse the harp elf...

So I am hoping that things are going well for me and I am not spiraling towards ruin and corruption etc. and I have decided to be super ambitious this year. So in addition to becoming an enlightened being one with the universe and filled with compassion and love for all living things, I would also like to have these material things:
1. Brian Eno playing synth on my record, and my record becoming a huge underground hit, and breaking into the mainstream
2. To become the greatest Female Guitar Hero of the twenty-teens
3. Alexander Mcqueen begs me to design stage attire for me and my band, in exchange for me writing some really wacky music for his next short film/ad campaign.
4. To publish a best-selling novel about my life as a cult child with a cult following, my travels on tour, and the magical people I’ve known and loved
5. To make a buttload of money when a talented off-kilter director like John Cameron Mitchell decides to turn my book into a movie starring Miley Cyrus as a young me, and Angelina Jolie as an older me.
6. To make enough money to retire from commerce completely and devote the rest of my life to producing awesome records by really sexy teenaged girl bands, and having enough free time to become a mommy.

A new kind of money

Sat, 5 Sep 2009 02:02:34 -0400

Yesterday’s show was super fun. Johnny sang multilayered vocoder backing vocals for the first time and people thought he had been doing it for years. Johnny is just brilliant like that. He makes everything look effortless. He had a show of his own tonight but I missed it because I was sleeping off my hangover. What’s wrong with music clubs? They think musicians only deserve bottom shelf whiskey? Ugh. I had the worst hangover of my life today. I experienced what it is like to be dumb. I also remembered that last night I took my pants off onstage and said, "I've been told that this is what I have to do to sell records."
No wonder musicians die young. We are offered the most dreadful poison to drink night after night.
While I was sleeping off my hangover, I had the most wonderful dream. I was back at home in Georgia and walking through lush green foliage inside my parents’ house. I found an old dresser which contained tightly packed rolls of money. I stuffed my pockets full of money. Then I went downstairs, where my mother was calling me. She said I had to get ready to go see a concert. She had bought me a ticket to see Marc Bolan with Antony and the Johnsons at the country ampitheatre on the 4th of July. This was particularly odd because the ampitheatre was a place in the North Georgia rainforest where thousands of southern baptist rednecks were gathering for a patriotic holiday, and they all wanted to see Antony, a beautiful transgendered singer. On my way to the show I started looking at all the money in my pockets. It wasn’t normal. There were bills of all kinds, $100s, $20s, $10s, $5s, $1s, and even a $2 and $6 and $777. Instead of the normal presidents and masonic symbols, the money showed beautiful psychedelic nature scenes in vibrant colors and watercolor portraits of happy brown-skinned people and children and birds. Each bill was actually a tiny canvas, intricately painted by hand. I wondered if I could get away with spending it at a store.

I was getting closer to the ampitheatre, and I could hear someone sound-checking a piano. A very genteel southern woman approached me and offered to lead me to my seat in the VIP section of the concert. She brought me into a nice, clean, sunny room and made me wait. I was very impatient because I didn’t want to miss Marc Bolan. He has been dead for 32 years so he hasn’t performed in a while. I was very excitedly listening to the distant sound-check now as the room was filling up with people, mostly homosexual men of the southern variety.
“Please,” I said to the lady, very politely.
“Please let me go in there.”
She smiled at me gently and with a tinkling laugh she said,
“I am your jail warden.”
Then a huge thunderclap rang out and a massive tropical thunderstorm swept over the hills, drowning out the sound of the musicians preparing to play. I woke up.