Lydia Lunch: Thank You And Goodnight.
Lydia Lunch Performance
By Allen Whitman

The chill wind scythes through the open front door of Slim's in San Francisco, bringing with it the cafe racing motorcycle roar of 11th St, downtown, after dark. It's time for the main event of Readings from the Erotic Salon. Lydia Lunch approaches the mic. After a brief look at the crowd says: "This is from Paradoxia - A Predators' Diary."

And we're off.

beat poet short black dress and black tights and expressive face framed by red, red rock and roll hair. her voice is dry and sandy but smooth, wet sand, with a little occasional squeak musical voice, meter rhythm, street pain, she stands, holding the mic and bouncing and waving her free arm...gritty, sandy voice stacatto syllabic strafing.

she talks until dry, and beyond...to breaking voice and has to stop cold to open a bottle of water. wet, she continues into the description of quaaludes and murder. her head wanders on her neck like a snake. the audience laughs. but no one believes her. after a while no one laughs. after all the truth leaked off of the stage earlier this fictional stream of consciousness out of a David Lynch nightmare turns attention inward. Lydia Lunch cocks her jaw after a particularly heated narrative, pulling her face back from the mic, winding up for another salvo at the riveted audience. practiced poses and waved hands.

"fear is the greatest aphrodisiac," she says. No, I think. "honesty is the greatest aphrodisiac..." and you're not telling the truth. it's good, it's mean, but it's not REAL.

she's the dark Stevie Nicks...plotting witchy death mask expressions and breathing spells of noisome corpselight, illuminating the "boost of someone else's fear" to give her and her repulsive paramour an opportunity to draw ditches of pain and decay in the skin of helpless tourists.

"hunting for hitchhikers." she says, Clint Eastwood inflection coloring her voice.

"blood sucking murder junkie," she says.

relentless psychosis she's "scaring the shit out of us with the vitality of her power source"

and she's done with the phrase: "sucking up the filthy remnants that trail fears shadow."

Thank you, good night.

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