Diamanda Galas[/caption]You seem to derive some of your greatest joy in the stories of people you admire, many of whom we aren’t normally supposed to admire.
Turkey is truly a sultan’s country, because that was the whole sultan thing, going to the countries like Romania, where Vlad the Impaler was in charge, and saying, “We need 500 boys for the army” — for fucking. But that’s why Vlad was impaling all his own people; he said, “You steal from your neighbor and I can tell you that the only way to get our country to be morally strong enough to fight the Turks is if you fear me.” He got people fuckin’ terrified so they could fight the Turks.
Vlad the Impaler was a political hero?
He did it with big ol’ stakes, they went right through the asshole, right through the larynx. People took five days to die. He said, “You’re not afraid to be decapitated anymore. I’m gonna give you something to be afraid of.” Gotta respect a man like that.
Yet you speak for the dead. At least that’s what the press releases say.
People say that, but I don’t know what they mean. [laughs] I’ve felt dead enough in my own life. Not to glamorize it too much. I am not a Goth — I’m a Greek. Goth means German. Being a Greek is not a geographical reality, it’s a spiritual reality. I’ve heard it said you have to go through a wall, and you have to push very hard to go through it. So you have that amount of force to get through it. Also, Greek people are always talking loud, they’re screaming all the time, it’s part of the culture that came up with Greek tragedy. That’s why I love this psychotic art form. Every tragedy that comes out is the avenging of someone by revenge — the mother whose son has to be killed, who killed the daughter, who killed the father. It’s so close, these things, and blood is too close.
But a song is in a sense a point of being really alive, really very vitally alive. I find it interesting when I hear people say I’m doing dark subjects, because I think, well, maybe they’re thinking that because what I’m doing is the opposite of being dead, and maybe I have to be extremely energized, or I’m fighting to get away from something, just getting away from that depression, so I have to fight harder than other people, and maybe that struggle is evident.
Read the whole Diamanda Galas interview here
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The burning of Smyrna[/caption]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYL6FCCOg8w
This is a tribute & a reminder to all the dead of the Destruction & Massacre of Smyrna in September 1922. We will Return.
"But I have orders from the dead that warn me: "Do not forget me. My blood will fill the air you breathe forever. My death-bird is not dead. He carries all my teeth, my smile of unforgetfulness, my laugh! Βρυκόλακα! (Vrikólaka! [Vampire!]) I am the man unburied who cannot sleep in forty pieces! I am the girl, dismembered and unblessed. I am the open mouth that drags your flesh and that can never rest until my death is written in a rock that cannot be broken!"
And these are the orders from the dead."
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