DON'T TELL ANYBODY THE SECRETS I TOLD YOU by LUCINDA WILLIAMS : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Am I Lucinda Williams fan? Not really. I first heard her in her Sweet Side era. (World Without Tears album.) But I have been reading musician memoirs. This one is forthright and personal and moves at a good pace. And, unlike some I've reviewed, this one has introspection and change. Lucinda Williams was told not to write about her childhood but she did and it's important to her development as an artist. Lucinda tells about her mentally ill mother and dysfunctional childhood, her poet-lecturer father, her roots in Christian fundamentalism, being an anti-racism Southerner, dropping out of high school and not looking back, and a variety of relationships with men and which songs were inspired by which men, which is something I think most readers are interested in. This book contains the poetry of others and song lyrics of hers, planted in the right places. There is also sexism;  she was not allowed to do erotic videos though so many men in music have and do. She also tells that she has had dozens of inconsequential jobs to pay the rent into her early 40's when, after years of believing it would happen and putting in the work, it finally did.  Money enough.  No more "day jobs."

What this memoir did for me was make me want to listen to more of her music. 

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

Excerpt page 94: I've been called an 'erotic' song writer. I don't disagree, but even though I had plenty of sex when I was younger, I was never promiscuous. I always had partners. Some of them didn't last that long, but I wasn't sleeping around willy nilly. The brain is the real erogenous zone, at least for me, so I have to connect with someone intellectually and almost spiritually in order to be attracted to them physically, and that rarely happens immediately.  I realized early in my adult life that talking - real, honest, substantive conversation - could be superhot, and it didn't have to result in anybody taking their clothes off for it to be erotic in a lasting way, in a way that can really last longer in your mind and memory and in your feelings than physical sex. Very often a good conversation is more memorable than fucking. That's what I was getting at with my song "Something About What Happens When We Talk" on the Sweet  Old World album.

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Lucinda Williams was interviewed on the Seth Rogan show.  She said she wrote her entire memoir by hand as she has never learned to type.