📻✨The Nexialist #0119

ancient sacred well | radio gaga | a trip around the sun | the second sun | señoras bien | inherent vice | that! feels good! | moonlight

May 04, 2023

welcome to another week of random cyber-synchronicities, the nexialist

hello, you! i hope this message finds you ~~not in the bottom of the~~ well. this week i’m writing you from beautiful sardegna, a super special mediterranean island. i’m here visiting my boyfriend andrea’s family, and i’m in awe with the history and beauty of this place. i made some time to write, so we’ll keep it light for today. read until the end for some road-trip-inspired content. 🫀

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🌞ancient sacred well

last summer i came to sardegna, i learned about the nuragic civilization (tn#83), which was here in the island from 18th-century bc (or even before) until around 200 ad. their name comes after the nuraghe, or these fortress structures that are all over the island. around 7 thousand have been found and they estimate there were more than 10 thousand.

this time we went to see one of the best conserved sacred well structures, called pozzo santa cristina. the nuragic civilization worshipped water, and many of these fortresses had a central well like this one. santa cristina is different, however. they keyhole shape is unique and it has a perfectly diagonal staircase that aligns with the sun during the equinoxes. when this happens, one can see their image reflected on the water, which then reflects on the wall, as if duplicating oneself. it is truly incredible. there is also a pretty well conserved nuragic village around it.

In September from 21st to 23rd at 12.00 and in March from 18th to 21st at 11.00 on the occasion of the equinoxes the sun perfectly lights up the bottom of the well through the stairwell. The sun, with its rays, is reflected inside the well until it touches the water. In this circumstance the observer, while descending the last 6 internal steps, is accompanied by two shadows:one is projected into the water, the other descends from the tholos chamber upside down. The phenomenon, obviously, arouses much wonder in those who live it.

something funny that happened is that i was there on the same day i realized messy nessy chic’s blog, one of my favorites, introduced a new logo with a similar aesthetic/vibe to the santa cristina’s well.

📻radio gaga

on the road going to alghero (a part of the island once dominated by the catalans), andrea’s parents played queen’s best hits cd. even if i hadn’t really paid attention to the lyrics of radio gaga (which lady gaga herself credits her name for), it manages to give me chills every time.

looking it up, i realized it was a bit of a reality check/love letter to the radio, as MTV had launched 3 years before this song, in 1981. also, i had never seen the video, in which they are integrated into the 1927 sci-fi silent film, metropolis. it is quite clever that while they talk about the history of radio in the lyrics, they show such an influential movie in the video.

it also seems like a prediction of the “new golden age of sound” which we’ve been hearing about every year since 2018 as podcasting and audio streaming keeps growing.

Let's hope you never leave, old friend
Like all good things, on you we depend
So stick around, 'cause we might miss you
When we grow tired of all this visual
You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio (radio)

🌇a trip around the sun

this top40 italian song keeps playing everywhere, and i think i can share this here since we are talking about sun and traveling. i thought it was CHVRCHES playing the first time i heard it, then i thought it was thegiornalisti (an italian pop band) when his voice started, only later to learn tommaso paradiso left the band a few years to start a solo career. get ready for some synth-pop.

🌅the second sun

of course, this sunny talk brought to my mind one of brazil’s most iconic voices who unfortunately left us too soon. cássia eller’s segundo sol (second sun) is a poetically touching song with a kind of sci-fi vibe. it also still gives me chills every time. the lyrics were written by nando reis, and its meaning remained a mystery for many years. recently he made a video explaining that it came to him as a kind of apology to a mystic friend who he had made fun of for believing in a second sun; and then realizing two truths and faiths can coexist.

I just wanted to tell you / Eu só queria te contar
That I went outside and saw two suns in one day / Que eu fui lá fora e vi dois Sóis num dia
And the life that kindled unexplainably / E a vida que ardia sem explicação
When the second sun arrives / Quando o segundo Sol chegar
To realign the orbits of the planets / Para realinhar as órbitas dos planetas
Overturning with astonishing example / Derrubando com assombro exemplar
What astronomers would be about / O que os astrônomos diriam se tratar
Another comet / De um outro cometa

👁️inherent vice

marina sena just released her new album last week for our happiness. vício inerente (inherent vice) is full of delicious sounds, sexy/cheeky lyrics, and putting the best of her unique voice forward. i never knew the meaning of inherent vice, so here it is:

inherent vice: also known as inherent fault, is the tendency in an object or material to deteriorate or self-destruct because of its intrinsic "internal characteristics," including weak construction, "poor quality or unstable materials," and "incompatibility of different materials" within an object.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings.”

😎señoras bien

las bistecs is one of my favorite musical acts, and this song especially is one of those that gets better everytime you listen. to me, they are the queens of electro-trash (or electro-disgusting, as they call it). somehow this weekend has reminded me of this video’s location, so it resurfaced in my nexialist brain. i still hope that they come back together and release something new.

Fine ladies / Señoras bien
Excellent ladies / Señoras feten
Capitalists / Capitalistas
Pussy-centrics / Chochocentristas
Evil ladies / Señoras mal
Fatal ladies / Señoras fatal
Neo-cheap / Neo-baratas
Anti-democractics / Anti-democratas

🍾that! feels good!

if there is one thing you’ll choose to listen in this week’s nexialist, this is it. jessie ware’s new album is just a blessing for our ears, bodies and souls. it also got great reviews: an amazing 8.3 on pitchfork with the “classic disco revival done right” stamp. Julianne Escobedo Shepherd writes a great piece about it. below is the first paragraph:

I’m told that we’re living in a sexless era—that Gen Z simply isn’t doing it and that everybody else is too busy or too addicted to their phones or just too freaked out to fuck. There are other great reasons for this—the pandemic, the widespread suppression of bodily autonomy—but historically, eras of oppression lead right into Dionysian excess, where all that apocalyptic dread manifests in, say, clubwide make-outs at 4 a.m., bods grinding under the purple glow of bisexual lighting. New York in the 1970s was the apex of this concept: the need for temporary relief from widespread poverty, racial and queer discrimination led to the creation of a queer, Black, and brown space—the disco—where the youth could unloose and commune with like-minded peers. “You could be on the dance floor and the most beautiful woman that you had ever seen in your life would come and dance right on top of you,” the legendary house producer Frankie Knuckles once said of the original disco, The Loft. “Then the minute you turned around a man that looked just as good would do the same thing.” Which is to say, repressive eras often find an antidote in the nightlife underground, usually soundtracked by music that demands a kind of spiritual freedom.

🌝moonlight

nothing better than closing this edition with another celestial body, or kali uchis’ moonlight. it leads back to the beginning of this nexialist and the sacred well of santa cristina. it has also been studied as an ancient lunar observatory.

The Greater Lunistice: Every 18.6 years, during the period of greater lunistice, the moonlight reaches the mirror of water reflecting perpendicularly through the hole of about 30 cm of the tholos room. Theories established since 1972 by intuition of Carlo Maxia and Lello Fadda with the support of the astronomer Edoardo Proverbio. Theories that in 2005 bring to Sardinia Professor Arnold Lebeuf author of the book “Il pozzo di Santa Cristina a lunar observatory ” in 2011, after 5 years of study.

see you next week, sunshines 🌞

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