Nina Nastasia
Riderless Horse

About love and the importance of always carefully covering the floor with newspapers and masking tape before any masonry/painting work.

Is This Love?

By nature, and I would add by biographical luck, I've always had a positive, joyful, and a bit naïf vision of love, like Joni Mitchell’s All I Want

I wanna be strong, I wanna laugh along/ Voglio essere forte, voglio ridere insieme
I wanna belong to the living/ Voglio appartenere ai vivi
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive/ Viva, viva, voglio alzarmi e ballare
[…]

All I really, really want our love to do/ Tutto ciò che davvero, davvero voglio che il nostro amore faccia
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too/ È tirar fuori il meglio di me e anche di te
[…]

I wanna have fun, I wanna shine like the sun/ Voglio divertirmi, voglio brillare come il sole
Wanna be the one that you want to see/ Voglio essere quella che vuoi vedere
I wanna knit you a sweater/ Voglio farti un maglione ai ferri
I wanna write you a love letter/ Voglio scriverti una lettera d'amore
I wanna make you feel better/ Voglio farti sentire meglio
I wanna make you feel free/ Voglio farti sentire libero

Well, maybe without the sweater…

Then, this summer, Nina came along.

Riderless Horse was the album of the month in the July/August issue of Blow Up.

I always read the review of the month. Next to it, there was a photo (I believe taken from the press kit) of Nina Nastasia, the artist, holding her face in her hands with half-melted black eye makeup and an overly dramatic pose that didn't make a great impression on me. In fact, I moved on.

Days later, I was bent over the floor removing traces of paint and plaster from the tiles, a gift from a not-so-careful renovation. In a strangely sad and melancholic mood, unsure of what to listen to and perhaps looking for something to match my state of mind, I decided to give the album a chance.

What happened afterward, the small obsession I developed for this album, I believe can only partly be explained by its objective artistic merits or its adherence to my music ideal: sadness with acoustic guitar. I suspect that the fumes from the acid used to clean the tiles played a significant role. Because if there's one thing I blindly believe in, it's the power of chemistry!

Is this love if it feels so bad?

Riderless Horse is what happens when one no longer laughs, our sun eclipses, and there is no more desire to dance or knit.

The sweetness of Just Stay in Bed introduces us to fragility; the couple, however, is still a refuge, a relief. Then something happens. Caught up in oneself, one doesn't notice the other's suffering, and something breaks (You Were So Mad). Then you plunge into darkness, hurt each other, hate, suffer (Ask me, This Is Love), and although there are moments of sweetness and amnesia (Blind as Batsies, Lazy Road), you can't get past it

The two of us the two of us make one / Noi due, noi due siamo uno
Deep in the shit / Immersi nella merda
Trying to crawl out of this dung/ Cercando di strisciare fuori da questo letamaio
The stink of it / Il suo odore
Overwhelms the good we've done/Sovrasta il bene che abbiamo fatto

Can we talk about love even when being together brings out not the best in us, but the worst?
Can we talk about love when violence even enters a relationship (Nature, Go Away)?

In an intimate atmosphere, with only voice and acoustic guitar expertly modulated to express different emotions, now sweetness now anger, now hate now pity, now hope now despair, Nina answers these questions, and even when describing hell, as in Nature,

Sometimes you get ahead of it / A volte riesci a prevenirlo
And sometimes you're in the thick of / E a volte sei proprio al centro
All his anger and pain I've seen such rage / Di tutta la sua rabbia e dolore, ho visto una tale furia
It's embraced me / Mi ha abbracciato
Then squeezed all the blood from my brain / Poi ha strizzato tutto il sangue dal mio cervello
It kills me the instant I feel it begin / Mi uccide all'istante quando sento che sta per iniziare
And like a doll I stand lifeless / E come una bambola sto lì senza vita
And let it pour in / E lascio che mi travolga

And I say, "Stop!" over and over / E dico "Stop!" ancora e ancora
Over and over till it all fades / Ancora e ancora fino a quando tutto svanisce

she never ceases, incredibly, to talk about love.

This is Love

This is her conclusion, and even though I cannot (fortunately) fully comprehend it and thinking it shouldn't be like this, after listening, “feeling” it, I surrender to the possibility that, perhaps, it might also be like this.

When observing stories like this from the outside, toxic, dysfunctional loves, one wonders what keeps people from breaking away. In Ask Me, Nina asks her lover why he doesn't leave her, ending their mutual suffering. Then she imagines him turning the question back on her, asking why she doesn't leave. But he is psychologically fragile, she would like to save him, but she knows in the end, she will choose herself.

But I'll be the one / Ma io sarò la sola
To choose life over illness / A preferire la vita alla malattia
To be born from this deadness and leave / A nascere da questa morte e andare via

And I might think twice / E potrei ripensarci
When the damage is done / Quando il danno è fatto
And oh what a price I will pay / E oh quale prezzo pagherò

Yes, the price.
After a long relationship with her manager and mentor Kennan Gudjonsson, which fell apart in recent years due to drugs, economic and mental issues, Nina decided, shortly before the pandemic began, to break off the relationship and leave.
Kennan committed suicide the next day.

Direct, sincere, terrible. Yet musically Riderless Horse, in its drama, appears extraordinarily light, almost reassuring, quite different, for example, from the much darker atmospheres of the beautiful Run to Ruin from 2003.

The Blow Up review called it sparse and simultaneously dense. For me, wrong photo but right adjectives.

Perhaps nothing astonishing: just folk... and pain transformed into beauty.
Afterwards, the last song on the album, closes with the verses:

I want to live / Voglio vivere
I am ready to live / Sono pronta a vivere

In its own way, a small monument to the spirit's ability to survive despite everything.
Something that never ceases to amaze me personally.

After months of repeated listening and a period of pause, I thought the “crush” had passed. Then, a few days ago, I was a bit sad again. So, I put on Riderless Horse and ended up listening to it three times in a row.
At this point, I fear the neurological damage from the acid is permanent: think twice next time you decide to freshen up the walls of your house.

P.S.: I almost forgot, the production is by Steve Albini.