Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh - review

My review of Paradoxical Undressing has now been published online in the Journal of Mental Health and is due in print soon. You can read below or through the Journal. 

Kristin Hersh with Throwing Muses 
The Mayfair, Glasgow - March 1991
More photos of band, Tanya & David

Starting in spring 1985, singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh's teenage diary-inspired memoir recalls the creative, yet turbulent year that culminated with her band, Throwing Muses, recording their self-titled album. Exceptional enough when 19 years old, even more so after being hospitalised with manic depression ("but it's not called that anymore"), commencing lithium and falling pregnant. 

While mental illness confessionals and self-identification as "bipolar" has become increasingly common, Hersh does not revel in the telling of hers. Instead she refers to her, then unrecognised, mood disorder occurring amidst the rise of her unconventional, "uncool" band who play "ugly, pretty" music with complicated time changes while she stares-into-space on stage. The aptness of her memoir's title refers to the hypothermia-associated phenomenon when people disrobe in freezing conditions (Paradoxical Undressingʼs American edition is entitled Rat Girl) continues with her experience of "seeing sound".

In Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks (2007) details the synaesthesia of composers who see music as colours. Hersh recalls a similar awareness aged six, when disappointed that her father's introductory guitar chords "didn't sound magenta enough". While recovering from a life-threatening head injury aged 16, she similarly perceived a "wash of ocean waves" in her head that compelled her to transcribe songs for her band. In turn, her bandmates Tanya ("we're 'step-twins'"), Leslie and Dave (each of whom "never misses a beat"), provide more than just musical support to their restless, fragile leader.

Before their career-making move from provincial Rhode Island to Boston ("to focus on Throwing Muses"), Hersh describes a series of disjointed accounts, suggestive of a severe mixed affective state. "I'm falling so fast. Falling up, on a high that's spun out of control". Songs that she heard clearly are now "soaked in static", colliding noisily with recurring visual hallucinations of snakes, wolves and bees, as razors "cut the songs out of me".

Undoubtedly, there is concern that a memoir recalling events of mental disturbance from a quarter of a century ago, might paint an unrealistic account of recovery. Hersh herself admits to lacking memory for some events and fragmentary amnesia does occur during severe mood disturbance. However, what grounds her account of what happened then are the creative inclusion of lyrics from songs like Delicate Cutters, Hate My Way and Fear that are interspersed throughout the text and now acquire added poignancy.

 While reference to her mental illness is unavoidable, Hersh also makes clear that it is not an identity she deliberately seeks. Her illness might even have finished the band, when on the verge of being signed she became unexpectedly pregnant. While considering whether to continue taking lithium that morning sickness cannot keep down, she receives cautious reassurance and advice from a psychiatrist, who distinguishes her "musician's imagery" from her mood disorder. Thus, free of her lithium tremor, she resumed playing guitar and her memoir concludes with the recording of the band's debut album, midwifed by 4AD records.

Although not a household name, Hersh has maintained her creativity and gained more success as a solo artist. As for 25 years ago, she states "that girl isn't her anymore" and is now "just a story", one where things have been left out as "not all of it is pertinent and lovely". Here, her songwriter's mastery of providing an engaging understanding without revealing all has delivered a unique memoir that is part rock autobiography and an even more a moving account of an original voice coming of age, via and in spite of mental illness.

Sacks, O. (2007). Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Picador. London. Great Britain.

Paradoxical Undressing book review, Greg Neate, Journal of Mental Health: 1–2. Posted online on 11 Oct 2011, Copyright © 2011, Informa Healthcare 


Other related links; Throwing Muses interview by John Freeman, Kristin Hersh interview by Petra Davis both for the Quietus, Paradoxical Undressing review by Lucy Cage  for the Collapse Board.