Rachele Bastreghi takes off the mask and in its place here is the mask of all time, that oblique lip as if by a magone held back, and those transparent eyes on which the world, for forty-four years, has been throwing stones and then making splashes and bouncing. After two decades together with Baustelle he recorded his first real solo album, Psychodonna (out April 30 and anticipated by the single Penelope), eight songs plus a cover composed by Ivano Fossati for Anna Oxa in the seventies, which Rachele included for her pioneering feminist strength but which in the record appears wrong and perhaps too much. Because the songs she wrote, conceived over two years of doing and undoing alone in her bedroom in Milan, are truly wonderful. Dense. Complexes. Made of chiseled poetry with verses by Anne Saxton and Antonia Pozzi, suicidal poetesses, on the nightstand. “It’s a concept album about my soul and the soul of women,” he says, “it’s my conscious dance in the mud.”
Those lips, that look.
“It’s the same expression I had as a child, already melancholy then. I’m sentimentally heavy. Sensitive. With that way of absorbing things. Feel what your eyes see inside ».
Two years ago. Now.
“I was the same, but less aware. I always wanted to make my record but I felt I didn’t have the tools, the conscience, the experience. I had to find a place of synthesis between the two extremities that tear me apart, faces of the same restlessness: sleep and disappear, or run and roll. I had to find the courage to look at my truth ».
Through the poetry of desperate women.
“And thanks to psychotherapy, which helped me finally take what I was feeling seriously, without always feeling wrong. Little by little the perception of things changes. Believe in yourself. The block of your expression dissolves ».
Free yourself by increasing your specific weight.
«Yes, because I was hiding behind self-irony, to desecrate myself. The psychologist has often scolded me: Rachele, you said something important, why do you have to immediately weaken her with a joke? He was right. Now I know how to weave my effort. Fatigue that is part of me. And it gives its fruits ».
His desire to tell about himself amazes.
“Me too. I’ve always been used to not talking, to using only facial and hand mimicry. I could act in a silent film… As a girl, friends nicknamed me “millegesti” ».
The incision of Penelope: The ruse / That deceives the heart / Lasts every night / And the day dies.
“Talk about the creative process, about postponing. Penelope is the nickname one of my collaborators gave me, because I kept making the song and then destroying it at dawn. At one point, I had seventeen different versions of it. ‘
On those nights to roll in the mud.
“Made of wild dances, of frustration that makes you punch at the Midi keyboards until they break, of clumsy gestures with which I broke a guitar and now I have a hole in the floor in my room”.
Then dawn.
“The day shakes me. it’s full of people and I don’t like elbowing. At night, for the others, you do not exist ».
Wild.
“Grew up among tomboys. Shy but also capable of suddenly becoming the jester of a party. I’m a pout laughing. Many Polaroids that become a painting, like in the works of David Hockney ».
A word that comes back: cradle.
«I always find myself thinking of myself as a newborn, I hear the voices of the house around me, I perceive those sensations. There is protection. Are there any questions. There are my eyes as big as question marks. On this journey I have returned to reconcile myself with my dearest affections, which we sometimes forget. It’s also my way of apologizing. For having often turned away from me ».
The other components of the Baustelle.
“They haven’t heard anything.”
She doesn’t care.
“I care so much that I prefer not to know. I ask for advice but then I don’t want to hear the answers, I just want people to say what I already think. It is the opposite of arrogance. It is a profound shyness who still travels in front of me ».
Anne Sexton, whose verses she used in Resistance, was excited by listening to her own voice again.
“I like the way she traces the image of a witch woman, coming out into the night and rebelling. I found out he was playing poems with a rock band. And in a portrait that Joanna Rusinek made of her, the resemblance of our faces is disconcerting. I don’t get excited about resenting myself, quite the contrary. But this time I felt real revelations. In front of verses like Enjoy but it’s hell I said I was good, you had the courage to say it. You opened your eyes against fear. You have stopped courting your pain ».
And she has become perhaps the greatest singer-songwriter our country has ever had.
“Also thanks to the fact we have always been sidelined. There is a wonderful documentary narrated by Laurie Anderson, Sisters with Transistors, which tells the story of the pioneers of electronic music. Unknown. Hidden seals. We are a minority. Keeping the books of women who have fought the demons close, like my beloved Alda Merini, gave me courage ».
Nine songs, and not even a love song.
“Because in this case there were high knots to deal with, other things that blocked the throat. Although there is actually a love song: Two girls in Rome, which I wrote together with Meg ».
Two girls.
“It’s my story. The genesis of a feeling and a passion. Entrusting oneself to the other, letting oneself go, abandoning oneself to the grace that unleashes the devil ».
Un coming out.
“Yup”.
Of a new relational modality.
“No, discovered when I was twenty.”
Amare.
“That thing that pushes me to strive to be a normal person, not to lose myself completely in myself, when you have the words and the music in your head and live constantly in a kind of intensive therapy where you constantly talk to your soul, with ghosts, with the wall ».
Born again.
“I have no doubts about that. If I am born again, I want to be Jim Morrison. ‘
Photo by Elisabetta Claudio.
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
