Kristin HershInterview

Autoreninterview

Kristin Hersh is best known for her music—Throwing Muses, 50FootWave, and solo work. Rat Girl is a memoir based on Hersh's journal from 1985, chronicling a particularly intense year. At 18, Hersh was recording an album and negotiating record deals. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and she was pregnant. Written in the voice of her 18-year-old self, Hersh offers a view into her brain and her past, with snippets of lyrics interspersing the text. Rat Girl comes with downloadable songs from the book.

This isn't Hersh's first foray into writing—she wrote the children's book Toby Snax, and the album Crooked, which includes a book with art, lyrics and an essay for each song. Hersh is touring with Rat Girl, and you can see events on her author page.

It's a brave thing—laying out what is essentially your diary—rather than songs, which have lyrics that can obfuscate who you are. This book is laying out your life, explicitly. How did publishing your diary happen?

Writing this book didn't feel brave until I came home from a European tour a couple months ago and saw a big stack of Rat Girls sitting on my front porch. It was like a kick in the stomach: "What have I done??" I mean, most of the people in it are still alive...

I only ever started this project because other people had threatened to write books about me and that would have meant months of me Talking About Feelings to Strangers: a nightmare scenario. I'm very shy and I don't like Feelings. So I tried it myself and got hooked on the time-tripping. Now I miss it. I used to get up at 2 in the morning and write until the sun came up. Now if I wake up at 2, nothing much happens.

But luckily, my bandmates and the other characters in Rat Girl have all given it their blessings. I mean, they should...I'm the only one who comes off badly in the book.

At the time, you thought your double concussion led to you being able to hear music in your head. You mentioned recently that the songs seem to be based on ambient noise. Has knowing that changed the magic of the songs, that they are based on real sounds and not the whispered words angels and demons? Like, "Oh, that's just the heat register kicking in."

Ha ha! Maybe the heat register has something to say...

It never occurred to me that the noise, however real, wasn't magic. Sounds seem to be a language and arrange themselves accordingly. Tornadoes are magic, too, the way their energy feeds on itself and sweeps up everything around them. Ingredients our universe offers us are often rearranged in creepy and enlightening ways, no matter who or what is in charge.

Going back to this extreme year, to go over the thoughts you had and actions you took, has this had a therapeutic effect? In hind sight, do you know more now about that year or less?

I had always held this year in the back of my heart as a good reason for me to not be on planet earth; proof that I didn't belong, etc. It was only after writing the book that I realized none of the bad shit was really my fault. None of the good shit was, either, but that's a healthy lesson, too.

Are there aspects of 18-year-old Kristin that you were glad to be reminded of?

I liked *liking* us. We were sweet 'cause we were kids and very non-judgmental for the same reason. What happened to us was just "what was happening" rather than falling into a category like sad/embarrassing/painful/unwarranted, etc.

Goofiness was very important to me. Still is, in fact. I like that it sits right next to shame, but opens your heart enough to allow you to feel a kinship with others rather than shutting down.

Rat Girl is based on your journal—so how did you decide how to tackle turning it into a book? Is there much that is verbatim from the diary? To quote: "Betty taught me that you can't tell the whole truth, as not all of it is pertinent or lovely. You have to leave things out in order to tell the story". What kinds of things did you leave out?

I left out anything or anyone that didn't directly help me bring art to pop music. I left out boring things and horror, because nobody needs those. I left out anything that happened more than once and I left out feelings, much to Penguin's chagrin. Mostly because I'm not sure I had any.

What would you like women who are dealing with mental illness along with pregnancy and parenthood to know?

Rat Girl offers no good advice, really, even though my heart was in the right place: don't take your meds, blood loss is a cure, so's pregnancy, rock band is a valid career choice, etc. But I do think having a reason to hide your feelings helps! I get fed up with bipolar people who complain to me that they "couldn't get out of bed for a year"—what about the people who HAVE to get out of bed? Every day??

A child shows you that you are NOT the story. This is wildly freeing, a calling, a reason both to exist and disappear. For a certain kind of person, taking care of a child is the only reliable reason to function.

Have any of your children read Rat Girl? How much do they know about you as a teenager? Do you talk openly with them about your youth—your brain back then, and the scene (drugs, music, etc)?

My children are older, smarter and funnier than me. They seem to know everything and what they don't know already, they understand instantly. Don't know how I lucked out this way, but the terror I felt at the prospect of any of them reading Rat Girl was as useless to me as the cookies I bake to solve their problems. My two older boys read it and saw the spoken word show; they were moved but unfazed. This is just how they are.

The two younger boys, however, still let me bake them cookies...and they're NOT allowed to read the book.

If Rat Girl is the beginning of so much of your life, can you give a life spoiler, and sum up the important points that happened next?

Every element in Rat Girl is foreshadowing of future life events, from Betty's "show biz tips" and entertainment industry savvy to the creepy fan I called the Dripping Tree Guy; from my struggle with manic depression to my tendency to run away. I guess I'm saying that the book never really ended, just kept going along that way for 25 years. I don't know the end of the story yet, but the middle is very much the same. I still love my bandmates, I still hate the music business, I'm still an insomniac who hears music at 4 a.m.

I just don't live in my car anymore.

In the book, you talk a lot about the music industry, and have have some vehement opinions about it. Now you have experienced the book industry. Any similarities or differences you absolutely love or hate (or love to hate?)

So far, so great. Record companies don't have to pay musician; they can *charge* them for any promotional costs incurred while working the record (whether those are real or invented!) and, in, fact, the Muses were deeply in debt to Warner Brothers by the time I bought us off by sacrificing my first solo record to them. The recording industry is also very much about dumbing down the product and tarting up the bimbos, 2 things for which I have very little patience.

Authors receive payment on the first copy of their book sold as soon as their advance is recouped and that book is NOT supposed to be stupid. Neither is the author asked to look/act like/be a bimbo. So far, I'm impressed.

From LibraryThing member elenchus: I'm very curious as to whether she had a model for what she'd hoped to accomplish with the book/album Crooked, or if she'd never seen anything like it before and aimed to address a specific goal or curiosity she had. The very idea of releasing a musical album in a book format, with full annotations on lyrics, music, and so forth—it's really quite compelling. At the same time, I immediately fear it could turn into a gimmick. I trust Hersh to navigate those shoals, but I'm interested to know if she had any of those concerns when putting her work out there.

I didn't think of Crooked as a particularly interesting release—more as extensive liner notes minus the plastic CD that nobody wants anyway! It was a chance for me to sell the concept of music in the essays and to ask that listeners be as active as I am in the process. I truly believe that music happens between people and that demands a certain response from the listener. Resonance can only take place when one brings one's own substance to another's work.

Since the industry has crumbled to such an extent that most of us are asked to go about our business in a different way, I chose to give away the songs and charge for something we still value: a book.

That said, I would love to be gimmicky; I've never really been able to pull that off...

Do you have plans to write any more books? What, in general, are you working on now?

I loved writing Rat Girl the instant it started writing itself, but I have 3 records in the works right now (solo, 50FootWave and Throwing Muses), and Rat Girl took me 4 years to write, so I'm guessing it may be a while.

But I also write from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. and so far, nothing else has moved into that slot...

What books did you love as a child? Which of your children's books do you love?

I loved a book called Mr. Pengachoosa about a...hamster? that we lost in a flood a few years ago with 2,000 of our other books. And something called Meal One about a kid whose house is taken over by a plum tree. I still want a plum tree to take over my house.

If I start listing childrens' books, I'll never stop, but this morning, I caught my 7 year old reading the one I wrote for him, Toby Snax, about a scared bunny who doesn't...well...wanna go on tour with his mother's rock band, I guess, though it isn't that explicit. I tiptoed out of the room and left him to it, but I was nervous! Afraid that he wouldn't like it. Kids're tough critics.

What's on your bookshelf?

I read mostly science books, though Natalie Angier helps me bridge the gap between science and poetry. I've also been meeting a lot of writers, as I'm doing publishing events for the first time, so I carry around a stack of their books I'm anxious to read.

I'm loving Colum McCann's Dancer—he gave it to me in Aspen this summer and I'm just now reading it because I usually don't "get" fiction (I know, I know, it's a brain thing...I keep thinking "but you just made this up! it didn't really happen!"). But I love it. A real planet to visit; sensuous and vivid and smart. I wish Colum was a band.

—interview by Sonya Green