Rona Castrioti. British born – of Albanian, Greco-Italian and Israeli descent. Award Winning Music Director, Classical Composer and Writer for Film, Theatre, Musicals, Opera.
Affiliated with The Jamie Lloyd Company, The Budapest Strings Orchestra, Czech National Symphony Orchestra The National Theatre of Albania, Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Tirana, The National Theatre of Kosovo, The Harold Pinter Theatre London.
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
I’m always ‘on’. I’m a very sensual, emotional person. Maybe not very spiritual but I feel everything with the force of a tsunami. I am turned on by little things; the simple things of everyday life. I take long walks in nature and just wallow in the eroticism of it all. The smells, the sounds – I let the weather bathe me. Cold or warm. Everyday I have a conversation, I feel a feeling, I meet someone, I get touched by a movie scene, read something evocative, have sexual fantasies that drive me insane, am hurt by someone, loved by someone, tormented by my own mind, hurting for others, hurting for and longing for my home – it never stops. It’s why I channel so much into different creative outlets. One minute I need to write words, one minute I need to write music. But everything I have created so far has been an impromptu moment of pure feeling – musically, I get this urge to play the piano with no idea in mind to start with and it hits me like thirst and I just sit – I don’t think, I just feel and I couldn’t for the life of me describe what I am feeling ever but the notes on the piano seem to do that for me.
I see music as a way to paint time with the expressions of wordless emotions. Being raw and real turns me on.
What turns you off?
Following the rules.
What is your favorite virtue?
Compassion. If you asked me this last year I would have said Self Control but, Compassion is what is needed to obtain a healthy amount of Self Control. I think you shouldn’t be too rigid in life. Be free, and when you fuck up show yourself the same compassion you would show others. That’s how you understand yourself better – the more you understand yourself, the more you will want to relieve your own suffering.
What Is Your Purpose in Life?
I am a storyteller. My emotions are rather transformative. I think in an intuitive way, and express my energy in a sensual way. My role in the world is The Healer. I think before I didn’t know how to embody this but as soon as I put my fingers on that piano I started healing myself and now seem to be healing others too.
Are you ready to fight for a cause? Which one?
Visa Liberation for the people of Kosovo. Isolated in the heart of Europe. How many more youth have to kill themselves for Europe to do anything? My people are screaming but no one can hear them.
You want to keep reinventing yourself?
Never stop – we are fluid, constantly evolving, always learning something and shedding versions of ourselves that no longer serve a purpose. The day you stop is the day you die.
What is an emotion?
I have this theory emotion is like a force, like gravity. Take Love for instance. Love, to me, is just as powerful as Gravity. It’s the glue keeping humans together just like how Gravity is the glue keeping the universe together. We are planets, stars, orbiting each other, existing harmoniously. Then sometimes the force is so great and we collide. For good and for bad. Creation and destruction.
Is society greater than the individual?
We are a hive mind. As great and as bad as each other. We are the society even if we think we stand alone.
How can you prove that anything exists outside your own mind?
I hate this question – If I start to think about this I will go insane. How can we prove that anything exists at all?
Have we become less happy in this age of technology?
Less happy, more happy. Less connected, more connected. Less empathic, more empathetic. Brainwashed and yet more intelligent. Yin and Yang. But as a collective we are a mess. We are aware. So yes.
Are humans obligated to better themselves and will that make them happier?
A healthy mind and body counts toward your own happiness and gives you the ability to do the thing that will get you as close to happiness as possible, which is helping others. There’s no other feeling.
Does life require a purpose and a goal?
For me personally, yes. It’s incredibly important. To strive toward something. To have goals, dreams, ambition.
To live life fully, with passion and intensity and do great things. Those people that say life is just existing and that needing a purpose creates suffering are just lazy as fuck. If you are one of the lucky people of this planet that has the ability to strive for something – do it. There are people out there that have no food, can’t dream, can’t travel, can’t create and or have amazing ideas that will never come to fruition because everyday they are fighting for their lives. So if you think you have no purpose and are in a position of privilege, why don’t you go and make saving those people a purpose?
What is happiness?
Belonging. Connection. Intimacy. Safety. Freedom.
Does evil come from within, and if so why?
Evil is made. We are fragments of everyone we’ve ever known. From the day we are born we absorb everyone’s energy, thoughts, feelings, mannerisms. All the villains of every story are hurt. Hurting. We are born pure, then we fuck each other up.
Why is beauty associated with morality?
When we first see the elephant man without his burlap mask in David Lynch’s 1980 film, our first impression is that he is ugly. We then come to understand throughout the movie that he is a beautiful person. This extreme example represents the confusion in which we often find ourselves between morality and beauty. People who are physically beautiful can be later seen as ugly because of the immoral behavior; likewise, someone initially thought ugly may be seen as beautiful through their high moral character and behavior.
We are obsessed with beauty. And rightfully so. I love beautiful things. Beauty, as a form of pleasure, is either trivial or potentially irresponsible in the face of serious moral concerns. Such an objection only arises if aesthetic value and moral value are independent of one another, a view that gained traction in the twentieth century due to the relegation of beauty to a merely sensible phenomenon of enjoyment. By describing beauty as indicative of something more than a mere evocation of pleasure, Immanuel Kant gives beauty an inherent moral significance in two key ways. First, beauty reassures us that nature can be amenable to universal moral ends and thereby help us avoid falling into moral despair when faced with nature’s indifference toward moral virtue. Second, since beauty is a disinterested feeling that is not responding to any interest or desire of the subject, it is similar to the disinterested feeling of pleasure involved in moral appraisals. Thus, the cultivation of taste can assist us in recognizing moral feeling associated with correct moral action.
The advantage of Kant’s theory over other theories
of beauty in the twentieth century is that it does not require us to be suspicious of beauty and allows us to pursue aesthetic value without compromising moral value because beauty itself is morally valuable.
You can be the most aesthetically pleasing person to look at but if you’re horrid inside we won’t see that. It won’t matter. It will devalue you. Be a good fucking person. You will see your own value and beauty as will others. And you will see beauty in everyone too.
Do we love ourselves more in the virtual world and less in the real world?
I definitely do, don’t you?
Is humanity doomed to head in a destructive direction?
I think we are already there – or have been going in that direction for a very long time. We will either end this planet or the planet will end us as it’s tried to many times, and rightfully so.
Your message for the utopian world?
Thank you for making me stop and think for a second. I look forward to seeing you evolve and grow.
