"all weightless grace with no effort required"

Last night I finished Kim Gordon's memoir Girl In A Band.  It was smart as hell,which comes as no surprise, but also pretty funny in parts which I didn't expect.  It's also brave.  It begins and ends with stark reflections on her divorce from Thurston Moore, with no punches pulled.

On playing live with Sonic Youth in the early days:

"When I first began playing onstage, I was pretty self-conscious.  I was just trying to hold my own with the bass guitar, hoping the strings wouldn't snap, that the audience would have a good experience.  I wasn't conscious of being a woman, and over the years I can honestly say I almost never think of 'girliness' unless I'm wearing high heels, and them I'm more likely to feel like a transvestite.  When I'm at my most focused onstage, I feel a sense of space with edges around it, a glow of self-confident, joyful sexiness.  If feels bodiless, too, all weightless grace with no effort required.  The need to be a woman out in front never entered my mind at all until we signed with Geffen."

Highly recommended, especially if you aren't convinced that Courtney Love was always awful.