This is not background listening. Kathy Acker's work is not a love-it-or-hate-it proposition: it's a get-it one. Either you get it, or you don't. Redoing Childhood, excerpted from her book My Mother: Demonology, is in many respects the most accessible way to experience Acker. Her voice, cool and precise but with an almost invasive intimacy, gives her work clear depth and dimension, creating a full and rich landscape. Every so often, entire concepts spring from throwaway lines: "But this is the question: is it possible to communicate with another person?" "I've got a terrible need to write to you, and for you not to reply." "Virginity doesn't know its own name." And, in the midst of a panoply of sensual images that wouldn't be out of place in a Terry Gilliam film, there's this: "I don't know what to do about all I see and experience." Between the often stunning visuals that arise from her words, the incredible variety of background music (ranging from chanting monks to San Francisco hardcore band Tribe 8), and the startlingly Zen-like revelations, Kathy Acker on record might be one of the last legal hallucinogens on the planet. Happy tripping. --Genevieve Williams
|
