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TALES OF DESIRE

PALBERTA is a band, three girls from Upstate New York. Best describe their music what I’ve found on their FB page

„You wanna wabbada? Wap wap wap dabbada?
You see that mabada? ding ding dack dabbada?”

Their new album has been released recently on Wharf Cat Records. I was listening to it when I suddenly burst out – Hú bazmeg!

It was the 5th song, titled Nose. Hú bazmeg! is a Hungarian phrase, we use it on the occasion of sudden revelation, surprise, shock or in similar cases. For example when you drink a shot of spirit, and it is unexpectedly strong. It means literally Oh fuck!

This was the moment when I have thought I ask them what they are reading. I don’t know why.

Lily: I most recently finished reading Tales of Desire by Tennessee Williams just began Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse. I read Tales of Desire because my dad gave it to me for my birthday and I trust his taste. It was really freaky and awesome and I highly recommend it. I’ll get back to you about Narcissus and Goldmund when I’m done. It’s the story of a young man, Goldmund, who wanders aimlessly throughout Medieval Germany after leaving a Catholic monastery school in search of what could be described as „the meaning of life,” or rather, the meaning of his life.

Ani: I just finished I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. For some reason, I slacked on reading this book and it is amazing. A super emotional book and reading it in our current political climate is so heavy and also necessary.

– Excuse me, that I am cutting into, but I need to explain what is so heavy.

At the age of eight Maya Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She told her brother, who told the rest of their family. The man was found guilty but was jailed for only one day. Four days after his release, he was murdered, probably by Angelou’s uncles. Angelou became mute for almost five years. Later she held many jobs, among others worked as a prostitute, table dancer, and madame.

Learned modern dances and became a professional dancer, joined the civil rights movement in 1960, and maybe of course, she was also a pro-Castro activist, but like so many other fans she also did not know anything about the real nature of the Castro regime, she just wanted to believe her dreams.

In the first half of the 60s she lived in Africa, first in Egypt – with a South-African lawyer and civil rights activist -, later in the newly independent Ghana. She worked as an editor and journalist for various media as The Arab Observer, African Review, Ghanaian Times and Radio Ghana, but also worked and performed for Ghana’s National Theatre.

In Ghana, she met with Malcolm X. Then she went back into the States and helped him to build the pan-black Organization of Afro-American Unity, which was described as a threat to the national security by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Mr. X. was assassinated by members of the concurrent black power organization Nation of Islam in 1965. Not long after Angelou’s first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published. It is up to 1944 when she was 17.

Ani – So I just finished it. Now I’m in a totally different direction, or maybe not but I have yet to find out. I am starting the book Dune. I’m trying to explore the other worlds out there and I haven’t spent much time in the science fiction realm so here it goes!

– Do you know about the never realized film adaptation by Chilean director Jodorowsky? Starring Orson Welles, Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Alain Delon, Hervé Villechaize, Mick Jagger, and Salvador Dali as the mad emperor of the galaxy. With the music of Stockhausen, Henry Cow, and Magma. It was planned in 1975 and was so grandiose that a documentary has been made about the unmade film.

Nina – I am reading a book called The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, and am loving it so much because it’s an incredibly bold, courageous, smart, funny, insightful memoir. I feel like I am learning new, nuanced ways of thinking about gender – specifically lesbian and trans identity -, motherhood, and identity in general.

– On the picture lying the body of Jane Mixer, aunt of Maggie Nelson. She wrote two books about the murder of her aunt. Jane was a 23 years old law student in 1969. She posted a note on a college ride-share bulletin board, seeking a lift to her hometown. She was strangled with a nylon stocking and shot twice in the head with a .22. The killer pulled up her jumper to reveal her underwear, then carefully covered the body with her yellow raincoat and positioned it atop a grave, and set Mixer’s shoes and her copy of „Catch-22” near the body.

He was unveiled in 2002 on the basis of three drops of sweat and one drop of blood which were found on the victim’s panties.