Lynn Breedlove

Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show by Lynn Breedlove. Manic D Press, San Francisco, 2009. Softcover, 128 pages. Illustrated.

This little book’s big impact will continue to grow, along with that of Lynn Breedlove’s previous novel Godspeed. Breedlove’s life is full of drama and scandal and vice and redemption, but what’s important about One Freak Show is the perspective.

Breedlove is the outsider’s outsider – both a beloved figure in several communities and a member of no community on Earth. Think you’ve felt alienated? Next to Lynn Breedlove, the rest of us self-defined weirdos are like lemmings. Try being an angry peacenik, the front person for a dissolved punk band, a cosmic teacher who consorts with sex workers and drug addicts, while your gender identity changes several times a day, you are always a party of one, no matter how lovable you are. Who can relate to your life experiences? Most people would retreat into a hermit’s cave, but Breedlove has chosen instead to create an ever-changing performance called “One Freak Show,” touring Europe with it before capturing it between the covers of this book.

One Freak Show is written in short, energetic bursts, with a page now and then of song lyrics or quotes from very young children. Breedlove is not interested in being Spaulding Gray, pouring out Proustian reams on the merits of choosing a sandwich or taking a walk. I found that I could not just sit down with it and read it all at once, though the whole thing is only 128 pages. I also found resistance within myself about reading the book in order. I felt more comfortable opening the book at random and reading two or three pages, then stopping to process it. The photo illustrations include both historical passage points in the author’s life, and documented ephemera from an ever-changing life in art and music.

My favorite thing about One Freak Show is that Breedlove’s writing is provocative without being hostile. I’ve spent so much time reading and watching work whose sole purpose was to vent the creator’s anger and disgust. Often I’ve felt slimed by someone who had promised edgy insight and then spewed bile all over me after I paid twelve bucks and sat on a really hard plastic chair for two hours. Lynn Breedlove never makes me feel disrespected even when the two of us are as far apart as opposite points on a compass.

And funny? Lemme tell you. Breedlove’s imagining what it would be like if the crew from MTV’s “Cribs” or one of the reality shows came to see a punk artist’s real living space is hilarious. And then there’s this: “Down the middle of my once-perfect abdomen, I have a six-inch scar, though. Chicks dig scars. They want to know what happened. I tell them: I got in a knife fight with a surgeon He won. It was only ‘cause I was asleep.”

One Freak Show isn’t all fun and games. If you can’t stand mentions of pornography, street drugs, or peeing on trees in the woods, this book will be too “outsider lit” for you. It’s not graphic or shocking, but there are two or three perverse things on nearly every page. There’s also plenty of contradiction, with occasional Breedlove vs. Breedlove arguments. Now that’s the work of the outsider’s outsider’s outsider: nobody’s always in your corner, even you.

Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show is honest, entertaining, and sparely written. The chapters are short and separated by topic, so you always know what you’re about to get. Fans of Breedlove’s earlier book, Godspeed, will get a large charge out of this second book by someone who is shaking up the world 128 pages at a time.… (más)