Music of my mind

INGRID SISCHY: What role did music play in the development of your consciousness? What was the first music you remember hearing, and where was it?

CAMILLE PAGLIA: Excerpts from Bizet's Carmen. I was three years old, and it was in Endicott, New York, a small factory town with few cultural opportunities. Carmen struck me with electrifying force. Another thing my parents played that hugely affected me was Leopold Stokowski's orchestration of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"--magnificent and overwhelming. From the start, I saw music as something that transports you, takes you to another world, and turns off the mind to unleash the emotions. I always linked music with dance--activation of the body connecting us to the elemental. Later, I encountered Nietzsche's Dionysian theory of music. Music for me is universal and eternal, while words are flawed and culture-bound.

IS: Do you find your writing is affected by what you listen to?

CP: I think and write to music. My book, Sexual Personae (Yale University Press, 1990), was completely written to music. I found music for every artwork I analyzed and tried to recreate its rhythms and mood. Many general readers told me, "I couldn't stop reading that book. There's something that propels you forward." And I'd say, "Yes, it's the music!" I was listening to Chopin, Wagner, Puccini, Debussy, Ravel, Borodin, Delius, plus film scores by Miklos Rozsa and Bernard Herrmann. My number one influence, however, was Brahms' four symphonies, which I was obsessed with. For me, those symphonies, especially the third, are the story of Western culture with all its aspirations and tragic limitations.

IS: Did music play a role in your evolution as a person?

CP: As a baby boomer, I started listening to rock in the mid-1950s. My entire life has been interwoven with the artistic development of pop music.

IS: Who are the key figures you listened to?

CP: '50s teen magazines pitted Pat Boone, the goody-goody Christian my parents' generation admired, against hoody Elvis Presley, whom I adored. It was my first identification with cultural dissidents. We were immigrant Italian Catholics in upstate New York, where the social elite was Protestant. To assimilate, Catholics started acting Protestant, a style I found suffocatingly bland. I loved loud, raucous, working-class rock 'n' roll. We rock fans felt it connected us to our generation nationally and, with the British invasion, internationally. The twist was the craze when I was an adolescent. All that pelvic undulation helped trigger the sexual revolution and tied us to non-Western tribal cultures.

IS: Tell us more about groups you listened to.

CP: I liked the Everly Brothers and Del Shannon but also Connie Francis and Lesley Gore-that big, belting aria style that's both Italian and Jewish. Those Middle Eastern melismas were also in Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka, who are Lebanese and Turkish. Music then was richly emotional, and Top 40 hits were cut like jewels. It was very liberating when Bob Dylan broke open the three-minute song, but over time young artists lost the ability to construct songs. Dylan's hit single "Subterranean Homesick Blues" was under three minutes but packed with dynamite images! The early Beatles, before Dylan prodded them toward social relevance, had such energy and intensity. The best rock music has been produced by countries influenced by Britain, like the U.S. and Australia. When continental Europeans try to write a rock song, it's hilarious! They treat it like Jacques Brel, or it's all clunky power chords, or it's charmingly corny, like Nena's "99 Red Balloons." It's because they lack the structure of the British ballad tradit ion. You've got to hear it in your head. The great Keith Richards still takes his blues records on Rolling Stones tours. Much less music was produced in the '60s, so everyone experienced major releases at the same time. The audience hadn't fragmented yet. Word would go out in college: "So-and-so has the new Beatles album, Revolver. You've got to hear it!" People would gather. Pop music was truly the cutting edge of culture. Each album was like a coded message sent to us from London or the West Coast. We crowded into a dorm room to hear the long version of the Doors' "Light My Fire," and I stood there breathless, peering over someone's shoulder, and just stared at the turntable. I was mad for the Doors' dark, occult themes. I never took LSD, but my vision of things is very psychedelic. I was knocked out by Jefferson Airplane's stereo experiments on After Bathing at Baxter's: On earphones, the voices bounced back and forth through your brain. My cutting writing style was modeled on San Francisco acid-rock lead guitar. I followed the Stones, the Yardbirds, Cream, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Motown, and soul music-Martha Reeves, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and, above all, James Brown with his amazing bass riffs.

IS: Was there a group that represented a kind of personal rebellion for you?