Guest Author
Like many fans of punk and alternative music, I felt sad when Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, broke up.
I was a casual fan and knew them mostly for their influence. Kim Gordon especially was important as an original rocker/feminist and she always seemed so unconventional and unapologetic about it.
When I first moved out of my parents’ house, I read an article about her where the interview explored her domestic side.
I devoured every word.
Throughout the entire article she seemed tongue-in-cheek. The reporter covered her role as a new mother and devoted wife, how she was balancing those responsibilities with her professional gigs, and all the while never noticed she had a welcome mat that said SCRAM.
I noticed it in the picture accompanying the article.
I had to have one of my own. Finally, I found someone at a flea market who made one for me because I couldn’t find it anywhere else — this was before the Internet came along.
I’ve had a SCRAM mat ever since.
What attracted me most of all was that she and Thurston Moore made something unconventional work – a modern marriage where they wrote their own rules. So original and unique — they seemed like a good team.
So yeah, their break-up bummed me out.
Then I read Kim Gordon’s new book, Girl in a Band.
And now I’m bummed even more.
Despite its interesting tales of art, city life, abandon, and revolutionary thought, in too many ways Girl in a Band reads like a memoir written by a bitter first wife.
And don’t we have enough of those?
Her tales of checking his emails and texts, only to discover the inevitable, were almost too much to bear. My heart broke to think of Kim Gordon in such a typical, and sad, way.
She and Moore were together for 30 years, until recently when he fell in love with another woman, and that’s when their personal and professional union came to a halt.
This is Kim Gordon’s take on the whole thing, and she admits it’s hard to explore with a broken heart. I know there’s her side, his side, and the truth. But I was still hoping for some insight into what role she played in the process, and I hoped for some wisdom as she came through the other side.
There isn’t a whole lot of that.
Gordon doesn’t mention “the other woman” by name, but she fills more than a few pages with character assassinations against her.
I appreciate the honesty, but will never understand the general disdain toward the “other woman.” After all, the “other woman” never took an oath, before God or witnesses or anyone else, to love and honor Kim Gordon for the rest of her life.
This isn’t to say that I understand the contempt she shows for her ex-husband either. It doesn’t make any sense.
And wouldn’t it be nice if we, as women, starting making more sense?
When you love someone, why is it not heartbreaking to realize they’ve been wearing a mask for 30 years, as Gordon asserts in this book about Moore?
Why is bitterness the default emotion, rather than compassion and release, when that person sheds his mask and is reborn?
Is it because that evolution happened on his terms, rather than hers?
That doesn’t strike me as love. That sounds more like selfishness.
Most young people have only the best intentions when they unite in marriage. They try for years to make the promises work – sometimes two people grow together, sometimes apart. Perhaps disappointment is better directed at society or religion for the realization, sometimes decades later, that unrealistic vows aren’t always relevant after they’re made.
Why does a union that produced so many good times, such important art, not to mention a brand new human being, have to end in animosity?
Hating on someone we love, or have loved, seems to me a much bigger betrayal.
I was kind of hoping for something different from one of my heroes.
Catherine Durkin Robinson is a political advocate and organizer, living in Tampa. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
