I used to hide out from a dangerous situation at my Portuguese grandparents’ house (my other grandparents had returned to Brazil).
I had an aunt and uncle who were more like siblings as they were somewhat close to my age, but 6 and 7 years older. My aunt’s pride and joy was her record collection and she was absolutely crazy about Mick Jagger. She had an album called Quadraphrenia which made no sense to me but that’s the first place where I saw the type of scooter I always ended up wanting.
One Christmas, I could actually please my aunt for once by giving her an album called Dark Side Of The Moon. I liked the rainbow on the cover but I couldn’t understand why she wanted it so much.
I remember when this Sticky Fingers album showed up one day - there was something naughty going on from how she and her friend were acting but I couldn’t figure it out. They were really afraid to play with the zipper or else they feared the cover would rip.
Many years later, I told my aunt that a lot of the Mick Jagger music she so adored was really country music. She seemed shocked and I have no indication that she really ever came to believe me. Needless to say, I failed at my attempts to get her into Koand.
It’s very difficult for me to reach an understanding with the ones I was close to in my past because my reality now is so outside of what they have been programmed to believe real or possible. This is a terrible consequence of us all living under the big lie. Knowing the truth is extremely isolating and I’m convinced that is by design and one of the intended results of the big lie.
This was me and my uncle Tony who was a rock and roller and I admired him a lot. His birthday was November 7th, the day after mine. I’m not exactly sure how he died but it had something to with alcohol and getting hit by a car. My grandfather never ever ever got over it and I did what I could to console him. He was really proud of me for studying in France and doing work which he considered “cultured”. My grandmother was afraid for me and thought I’d end up getting myself into trouble if I veered too far away from doing real work. My grandmother was never the same after we lost Tony and she died not too long after with Alzheimer’s.
Bizarrely, the best way to show what my aunt looked like is this picture of Charlotte Bonaparte (right). Charlotte Bonaparte was Napoleon’s brother Joseph’s eldest daughter. She married Hortense’s son Napoleon Louis who died after getting lured into a snare in Italy. I’m not exactly sure why Napoleon wanted cousins in his family to marry but he did. Napoleon was very focused on how to resurrect his dynasty in the future and I have to imagine this guideline had something to do with this aim.