Kim Gordon

Music that could only have come out of New York’s bohemian downtown art scene and the people in it—Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage, Glenn Branca, Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell, Blondie, the Ramones, Lydia Lunch, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and the free-jazz loft scene. I remember the thrilling power of loud guitars and finding kindred souls and the man I married, who I believed was my soul mate.

All that young-girl idealism is someone else’s now.

That city I know doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s more alive in my head than it is when I’m there.

eople pay money to see others believe in themselves.” Meaning, the higher the chance you can fall down in public, the more value the culture places on what you do

“People pay money to see others believe in themselves.” Meaning, the higher the chance you can fall down in public, the more value the culture places on what you do.

Maskenfreiheit. It means “the freedom conferred by masks.”

Onstage, people have told me, I’m opaque or mysterious or enigmatic or even cold. But more than any of those things, I’m extremely shy and sensitive, as if I can feel all the emotions swirling around a room. And believe me when I say that once you push past my persona, there aren’t any defenses there at all.

This was the late fifties and early sixties—people took their cocktail hours seriously

Someone once wrote that in between the lives we lead and the lives we fantasize about living is the place in our heads where most of us actually live.

I wanted to look more girl. Looking back, I was trying to make more of a definite statement about what my look was and how I wanted to present myself. Tomboy, but more ambiguous than tomboy, too. The increased media attention, and seeing more photos of myself, and of Sonic Youth as a band, had made me more self-conscious.