Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

I was relieved that music had done exactly what I had always wanted it to do, which was turn me into someone else.

And to be a fan of music also meant to be a fan of cities, of places. Regionalism—and the creative scenes therein—played an important role in the identification and contextualization of a sound or aesthetic. Music felt married to place, and the notion of “somewhere” predated the Internet’s seeming invention of “everywhere”

But it’s all a part of you, it doesn’t feel fractured, just mutable. But once your sound exits that room, it is no longer just yours—it belongs to everyone who hears it. And who you are is at the mercy of the audience’s opinions and imagination. If you haven’t spent any time deliberately and intentionally shaping your narrative, if you’re unprepared, like I was, then one will be written for you. And if you already feel like a fractured self, you will start to feel like a broken one. That’s how I felt the day I was outed: splintered and smashed. I had not yet figured out who I was, and now I was robbed of the opportunity to publicly do so, to be in flux.