Baby Dee sets the record straight about her checkered past in the crabbiest interview ever...
Recently Baby Dee was interviewed on her concert in Warsaw by the Polish newspaper Zycie Warszawy. Online the newspaper only announced the concert (Google translation), and it's unsure whether the interview was ever published. But if it was, is should read as follows:
Interviewer:
In your fairy tale "Brother Slug and Sister Snail" you seem to understand these animals or even identify with them. Could you tell me: why slugs?
Baby Dee:
I like slugs. They represent the most humble life-form that I can actually identify with. I mean to say, I don't go around squishing ants or spiders but I do find it hard to put myself in their place. With slugs it's a little different. I can really relate to a slug.
Interviewer:
Why did your "church career" end? Was the conflict between your sexual identity and Church's view on transsexualism one of the reasons?
Baby Dee:
I don't normally answer questions like this for a lot of good reasons, not the least of which is this. Though I'm sure you're a perfectly nice man (or lady?) you almost certainly won't be able to publish my entire answer. You will have to pick out a sentence here or there that will maybe entertain your readers but will certainly not convey what I'm trying to get across. Also there's a language barrier.
So -- fuck it! I'm going to answer this question to the best of my ability. But I challenge you to this -- that if you can't print the whole of it then print NONE OF IT.
This is a thing that's hard to explain to people. My church gig was a really terrific gig. My boss, the pastor of that particular church, was a very smart man. He had taste. He had tact. He wasn't even a little bit of an asshole. He was incredibly wise and very compassionate. And the only thing that he was absolutely intolerant of was crap music.
For somebody like myself at that time in my life, being completely obsessed with the music of Palestrina and Bach and obscure early music manuscripts like the Glogaur Liederbuch, it was a dream job.
When I decided to make the change he was the first person apart from my shrink that I talked to about it and he even wrote me a gender neutral letter of recommendation. But the fact was that I was moving on from that arcane cocoon of ancient music and needed to find a new way in the world. It would have been the stupidest thing imaginable to try to make a statement out of holding on to that job.
I needed to become fabulous. It was my birthright and I went for it.
There is no such thing as a fabulous church organist.
Interviewer:
Your art sometimes resembles old sacred music, in your lyrics there's a lot of religious motifs.
Baby Dee:
What can I say? Lots of people have a dodgy past.
Interviewer:
You also had an opportunity to observe religious institutions.
Baby Dee:
What I observed about the catholic church was that it's a very big institution. Like a lot of other big institutions it's got more than its fair share of shitheads. As an institution of course it sucks. But in a place like the South Bronx at that time there were no institutions that didn't suck. There weren't even any banks. You couldn't even find a fucking bakery! So there were some catholic churches up there that were doing unbelievably good things for people. And yes, though perhaps little or none of that good lasted beyond the tenure of my kindly boss and a few others like him, and though from what I've heard his good work didn't go unpunished, I won't condemn that "ïnstitutional" church for one simple reason -- because I know he wouldn't.
Interviewer:
What's your view on spirituality in music and what do you think about institutional religion?
Baby Dee:
Enough of this bullshit! Let's talk about something else.
Interviewer:
Your music's emotional atmoshpere has this characteristic vagueness - it's like sadness, longing on the verge of grotesque. Do you ever think about your artistic expression as a kind of therapy?
Baby Dee:
Well, that's too bad. I don't think it's sad. I don't think it's grotesque either. And I sure as fucking fuck don't think of it as therapy. So I guess perhaps I have a very poor understanding of my music.