On the Lamm: Punk Prophetess Nomy Lamm Sounds Off

If Olympia, Washington's legendary punk scene had ever chosen a poster girl, Nomy Lamm would have been a perfect contender. From Riot Grrl 'zines in the early 90s––her

"I'm So Fucking Beautiful" was a classic body-image manifesto––to The Transfused, a punk opera she co-wrote with The Need and produced in 2000, Lamm's projects have always been brutally honest and original. Her second solo album, Effigy, was released on Yoyo Recordings last year, and in July she toured the U.S. with a pop-diva-style production––all, of course, with a characteristic Nomy twist.

Heeb: The title song on your album has one particularly cryptic line, "You free your mind, you free your effigy." What does this mean?

Lamm: It's about letting go of all the images we feel like we need to live up to. Basically, letting them burn. A lot of it has to do with mental discipline, focusing on the moment, being in your body, and breathing. These things are the most real things we can experience, so when you can focus on that, all the rules and insecurities are irrelevant. I've been working in the realm of identity politics for a long time. It's very real––things are being projected on me all the time by different social forces. But I'm trying to go deeper.

For a long time, you had a set definition––"bad-ass-fat-ass-Jew-dyke-amputee"––that was practically attached to your name.

Right, and it still is. It's one of the paradoxes of the work I'm doing. It gets me more attention to use that. It appeals to the people who aren't usually spoken to, and who are going to be like, 'Whoa, here's this disabled person being a pop star!’

But it sounds like your relationship to those identities has changed over the years.

It's definitely changed. I think I had to embrace a lot of those terms at first, to get myself okay with it. For a long time I didn't want to acknowledge that I was fat. But I need to be acknowledging it and talking about it to feel like a part of the world, and find other people I can relate to and dismantle these systems of oppression that keep us dissociated from ourselves. As I become more comfortable with myself, I'm moving past ‘I'm fat and have a fake leg, and you need to know this because I'm oppressed.’ I focus more on the other ways that it impacts me throughout the day. For example, I need to take my leg off sometimes because it's uncomfortable, and fuck anyone who has a problem with it. I'm kind of sick of writing essays that are like, 'My identity... have felt….blah, blah, blah.’ I'm more into integrating all of those things through my art. People can interpret it however they want.