When I moved out of my mom’s house at 18 I was almost as sad to leave her sewing machine behind as anything else.
I was overcome by the Holy Ghost one time, but in a Baptist way. I was six or seven, and I was saved. I just cried and cried. It was joy!
I believe I owe all the best parts of my adulthood to embracing my imperfections and showcasing them.
Just like my straight friends, I am repeatedly asked when I plan to have kids, and have been told many times, by various branches of my bloodline, that ‘even lesbians can have babies these days.’
My life hasn’t been conventional and it hasn’t been linear. I’ve had to make it up as I’ve gone along, which has taught me a lot. If you don’t accept the obvious options that are laid out for you, it’s up to you to work out where you’re going and to create your own specific rules and goals.
My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn’t stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer, and Homer chose me, so he lent me his name even though I didn’t have his blood.
Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It’s proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.
I hate to do what I’m told, that’s why I’m not good at 9-to-5s.
Products are a must – full stop. I’m sorry to say it, but that bob won’t look so sleek on its own – you need a little help. It doesn’t have to be the high-end stuff that they sell in the salon. Products you find in the supermarket are just as good, and sometimes better.
I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn’t understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.
In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: ‘That must be nice.’
Someone told me once that Lucinda Williams takes six years between albums, and that’s what stuck to me; it’s like, you really are a factory. You don’t do things to make them, on your own time.
I’ve never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn’t work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine.
I’ve had people ask me in interviews what it’s like to have money, but that’s not how it is. I have a middle-class life. I have a room in London but not a house, nor a BMW.
When you get a certain amount of media attention, I think people are like, “Where’s your other album?”
I’m constantly thinking about what I’ll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don’t know, because it’s not in your hands, you don’t make the decision.
I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It’s incredible – Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.
Starting out really punk came from not knowing any better and listening to music like that, not knowing how to play music – well, still not knowing how to play music.
I think if the world were a fair and just place, there wouldn’t even need to be a gay label.
This archaic idea – that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural – will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.