For Carrie Brownstein, an artist's journey 'from the margins'

Carrie Brownstein, one-third of pivotal punk band Sleater-Kinney and star of the comedy series Portlandia, has just released her memoir, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. The book showcases the drive, passion, and anxiety of creating music that was polarizing - for the listeners, between bandmates, and, for Brownstein, internally. Her writing is lyrical and her story forthright. This fusion of style and content reveals a dark, introspective voice from someone who thrashes around on stage in her band and elicits hysterical fits of laughter on camera.

Brownstein will be at the Merriam Theater on Thursday for a book event hosted by the Free Library of Philadelphia. Saturday Night Live cast member Aidy Bryant will join as her moderator.

The book centers on your 20-year career in Sleater-Kinney. I was surprised there was no mention of "Portlandia." What was your reason behind this focus?

I was really inspired by Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, which is a memoir that essentially takes you through the backstage corridors (metaphorically) of his life. It's almost as if he stops the narrative right when the stage lights come on and he begins SNL. It ends at the moment where we presume we know Steve Martin.

I really wanted only to go up to the end of Sleater-Kinney. I was not interested in writing about Portlandia yet. Also, the story of Sleater-Kinney served the narrative of the piece more. It was the container for talking about invisibility vs. visibility - a journey toward the center from the margins. Sleater-Kinney is a much better conduit for all those things. To me, Portlandia is very present in the subtext of this book. So many incidents on tour, or in the contents of a small town, or in the parameters and dogma of the indie community, completely informed Portlandia.

When writing about music, your descriptions are kinetic to the point at which you really hear the music you are describing. Is writing about music in this way a fun process?

Well, I hesitate to call writing fun. It's very rare to actually have a sense of amusement and pleasure in writing. But I think specifically with music there is a kind of rhythm and tempo that I aspire [to] in the writing of it. And I try to think of the musicality of a sentence and in that way there is a pleasure to it, I suppose. When I do stumble upon that musicality and I can feel a propulsion in the sentence or in the paragraph, then it is very satisfying.

During your several hiatuses from Sleater-Kinney, you went to grad school, became a substitute teacher, and volunteered at the Humane Society. What was the drive behind having this constant workload and also talking about these careers in your book?

The drive at the time was fear-based. I worried that I would have too much down time and that would induce an anxiety that I have. Busyness really helps me. It helps me focus creatively. I find if I just have unfettered time ahead of me, that becomes my enemy. I like structure and ritual. They are very crucial for me to be creative. I wanted to make sure that my days had a shape to them, and sometimes I overcompensated and made myself too busy out of fear that we would just never go on tour again.

I think one reason I talked about them in the book is because I like to be grounded and have a sense of place and immerse myself in a city or an environment. And I think that so much of being in productions, on television or touring, is about creating a heightened sense of place, but not a real sense of place. And there's something about other kinds of work that really tethers you to a location in a way that I find very inspiring. You can create those things on tour. The longer you're on tour, the more you're potentially just going to write about touring. Everything becomes very meta and abstract, and that is not very interesting to me.

Tell me about your book tour event. At each stop, you're having an onstage "conversation" with a different moderator. What's going to happen?

I know about as much as you do. Part of the excitement that I have about the tour is that I think each [guest in each city] will have a different perspective, a different take on the book. I don't expect everyone to ask me the same questions, which I think will make each night different and unique. I feel very uncertain as to what will transpire, but I look forward to that surprise. I am totally open to deviating far from the book and having the conversation be tangential and site-specific and particular to the person.

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Carrie Brownstein: "Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl"

7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Merriam Theater, 250 S. Broad St., presented by the Free Library.

Tickets: $45-$80. Information: 215-893-1999 or www.kimmelcenter.org EndText