Found this article in the digital edition of the
National Post yesterday and thought I'd share it with you all.
k.d. lang has a new collection of songs out called
watershed. In the article, she describes a writer's block due to 9/11 and her overcoming it due to a new love... in other words, she found her muse...
Why this lady is smiling
After 9/11, she questioned the need for art and love songs.
A change of heart has k.d. lang singing a new tune
SHINAN GOVANI
National Post (sgovani@nationalpost.com)
Not heard much about k.d. lang lately? Well, what would you like to know?
That she lives in Rock Hudson’s old house? That she’s a bang-up Buddhist? That so bad is the torch singer’s writer’s block that she actually named her song publishing company — wait for it — Pulling Teeth?
Fortunately, k.d’s latest extraction stopped long enough for her to give us another primo work of new material. It’s called Watershed, and it’s out next week. And they say it’s less of a coming-out than it is a coming-of-age.
Eight years it’s been since the Canadian’s last album of original compositions, and she blames at least part of the “block” on 9/11. The terrorist attacks, she told The Scotsman, “turned the atmosphere in America — politically, emotionally and artistically — on its ear. Afterwards I couldn’t write love songs. They just seemed so frivolous.”
What snapped her out of it? Well, that oldest of artistic incentives: a new lady love. I saw them together — k.d. and the woman she calls her wife — back in November, at the party in Las Angeles I attended for the Louis Vuittonsponsored Murakami museum exhibition. She was, as far as reductionist categoryboxing goes, a “lipstick lesbian.” Or at least more of a lipstick lesbian than our k.d. is likely to ever be. She also smiled a lot.
The constantly craving chanteuse described her this way recently to London’s The Times: “She is very honest with me, very mature and intelligent; incredibly honest in refining my best attributes and curbing my less attractive ones.”
Oh, and the other thing: Though k.d. was once the very apotheosis of gaydom, out long before George Michael or R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, she’s over playing the poster-gal. To wit, this quote in the Times article: “It’s crazy for the gay community to let itself be defined by its sexual preferences.”
Ms. Lang, by the way, plays the Courthouse in Toronto on Feb. 21.
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