Johanna Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives between LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poetry, performances, and essays, and the novel On Hell. New Give me five of the week.
| Duration: | 30 minutes |
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Album: Lost Rivers, by Sainkho Namtchylak
The 1991 voice-only album Lost Rivers by Sainkho Namtchylak attacks and howls and growls and bleats and it's all I want to listen to right now. I can feel the title track, Lost Rivers, zapping through my spine. It grinds through my bone like a beautiful drill. I'm kind of worshipping at Sainkho's feet these days, these years.
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Youtube archival video: Conversation between James Baldwin and Maya Angelou
This clip from a TV show in the 1970s shows an intimate conversation between two friends: James Baldwin and Maya Angelou. They are sitting outside with a couple beers and some cigarettes, talking the way that people deeply connected with each other, through work and life, can be. Their voices are velvet and I watch this over and over again.
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Book: With My Dog-Eyes, by Hilda Hilst
In this slim novel, a mathematician searches for the equation for God, which means he is annihilated at the limits of language. The prose is jagged and transcendent. I'm new to Hilda Hilst, but already know that I will adore her forever. Surrounded by a hundred dogs on a rural estate—where she went, she said, "to make myself ugly"—she wrote wildly for 50 years, publishing more than 20 books, most in small limited editions with her friends. She was known to her neighbors as "the woman who levitated." Icon.
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Album: Live at Sin-é, by Jeff Buckley, particularly his cover of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Yeh Jo Halka Saroor Hae
I got this album when it first came out as 2-CD set in 2003, and over the years it's come back to me, like waves, or the cycles of the moon, something that reminds me who I am. It's one of those records that words like "my favorite of all time" fail to describe in its totality. It's just one person with a guitar on a small stage in a small room and the hugeness of what happens is ineffable, impossible, and yet, there it is.
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Movie: Robert Altman's movies
When lockdown began last year, I embarked on watching all of Robert Altman's movies, which is no small feat: there are at least 40 directing credits to his name. I haven't yet made it through all 40, but that's been part of the joy, knowing that I have so many good ones waiting for me. I can't say which of his is my favorite, because so many are favorites. At any time I could rewatch, even if I've just watched it yesterday, Three Women, The Long Goodbye, Cookie's Fortune, The Player and Short Cuts, and I could go on, but I'll stop there.
Johanna Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives between LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poetry, performances, and essays, and the novel On Hell. Their album The Sun and the Moon was released in March 2019; two of its tracks were played on the moon. Their new LP, Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a doom-metal guitar and voice performance influenced by Korean shamanist ritual, was released 1 January 2021.
