She isn't afraid of the possibility that you're not going to like what you see. She is counting on that.

I like what she represents and I don't care if not everything about that is something you can shove praise at.

It might sound like I don't like her, but I do.

There would not have been Teenage Jesus and the Jerks if she was not like this.

She is committed to seizing your attention and defying your expectations.

And artistically, it's a good thing.

Being intentionally provocative and over the top is what she does.

But there is a well crafted mystique that is part of her brand.

That isn't to say I think she makes everything up. In some ways she is more honest than her contemporaries were.

There is an amount of fantasy to everything she does and says.

In all the stories that she tells, I consider her to be an unreliable narrator... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

She can be kind of a bitch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E92qnnRlQ2w

To be fair, she was hardly the only person to have small patience with Nardwuar in the 90s. I wouldn't judge her too badly from this.

They are all about Lydia's favorite subject: Lydia Lunch.

This is a woman who can talk about herself uninterrupted for over an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMyqh0gDb-c

But I suppose few people are as interesting as she is, so she has some license to do this.

Yes, she was hot.

But she's also very good with words. She's written several books.

https://www.lydia-lunch.net/books

The first was Paradoxia from 1997 and since then she's been still kicking.

Here are some excerpts from So Real It Hurts, written in 2015.

https://www.howlarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/LunchEssay_NoWaveNow.pdf

https://www.howlarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/LunchEssay_WillWorkForDrugs.pdf