Rayya Elias interview on Better Reading TV

she she's a Syrian ex-junkie glamour butch lesbian punk rock and roll musician Raya Elias has lived enough lives for us all she's in Australia to talk about well whatever we want to know Alice Alan Helen Helen welcome to better reading TV and thank you so much for coming ah thank you for having me well it's a pleasure I feel the honor is all mine I really do I took the book home and I read it and I read it last night and I started at about 10:00 p.m. and after I read the first I think it's the first or the second chapter which was so shocking and so confronting I had to put the book down to recompose myself and start reading it's a hard life that you have lived putting putting my story out there I found that people have come out of the woodwork people that are in my families community you know that I have never really spoken to me much or we've never really connected on anything and they have read the book sort of in secret and then I'll be at an Arabic at a Syrian party and someone will come up to me and say I you know my brother my brother's son was a heroin addict and we sent him to Kuwait and he's you know and and I'm just shot and they're crying and they're saying thank you for helping me to understand that it's not just willpower that there's a bigger that you know what happens is it ricochets into the family it doesn't and it really affects everyone I've got to say you know I mean I'm from a Lebanese background I was born here but my family came to Australia but I still feel that I don't belong here but it has been a strong thread through my whole life is that I never feel American enough and I never feel Syrian enough that's right and you know and it's such a hard place to which is why sort of found New York because New York was so diverse you can be anybody and at any given moment if I need to be Syrian I can be Syrian Rocky oughtta be rakia hella V and ever beneath backyard in a wacky hella weekend and or you know or if I'm if I'm in a you know in a club with Americans you know I can speak the best and undetectable English right because I forced myself to do it yeah so I can be undetectable oh you certainly don't have an accent yeah yeah I look at people and I think you know when they're just like I'm American I'm from Connecticut I'm from Texas I'm from you know and it's just a sure thing and I always think it's a sure thing I've never described it as that but it is the same thing I like that yeah yeah do you know also the lunches I mean really the lunches there were a trauma in my primary school because my mother would make his falafel rolls she would make us exactly what was yours lamb brain fried lamb brain sandwich fried lamb brain which I loved exactly we got to Detroit sandwiches and my father said down at the Eastern Market they sell lamb brains and they're cheap because you know that's a little it's a delicacy it's so expensive and we would only have it on very special occasions we were buying it all the time you know my mother was putting fried lamb brain sandwiches in pita bread and sending us off to school and you know and there's that moment where you look around and you realize that everybody has salami or peanut butter and jelly or I gave them the sharing of you know putting things on a platter and helping yourself I mean it just was so uncommon here absolutely and for us it's love so you go to New York myself I go to New York by myself I'm any hair industry I move there because of a wonderful Lebanese woman named Heidi yes I like time she I love Heidi love love you Heidi and she you know offers me this job in Connecticut and that was the only way that I could actually have my parents allow me for them to let go you know and once I got there I just realized like oh my god this is exactly what I want and you know I was in a band and and I wanted to do fashion and so New York was she why did you mock it up because because I wanted I thought that I wanted to feel and experience everything that I never got a chance to experience before that it seemed like everyone was using drugs and having it just everything was so extreme I mean it seemed to me at one point you're just taking everything everything I was a garbage head but you were looking for feeling yeah you're looking for a motion which is so funny isn't it because it divides you of any bill of that yeah yeah so I always say you know my favorite line to say is you know if you're really looking for feeling try life out on life's terms because you're going to get it straight to the gut right it cuts the deepest that's where the edges I mean you know at the end I sort of dared myself I was like okay Rhea because you would numb to everything at the end just numb to everything and what had started being this incredible full life with these incredible people a lot riding opportunities and great opportunities and you know being standing in the middle of Andy and John Cage talking at a bar and all I wanted to do was go to the bathroom and do another fix could you imagine how much I would have learned that always ended up in the same place alone on a bathroom floor in a shitty little place right alone and so it came to where everybody left me everyone my family my partner's my lovers everybody and and I ended up really alone and it was you know I had to take a really hard look and say this is the only place you're ever going to end up and you've tried you've taken this thing to every bottom including a lot of trapdoors right so you can stay here and suffer because this is all you're going to do or there's this other thing that they call getting clean like life without drugs and it's going to be hard but why don't you be brave I'm so glad to see you so well so beautiful so lovely so smart and on a book tour and that you pulled it together and you know I feel that you're just so extraordinary you know if you haven't read it you've really got to read it harley loco i just loved every word of it rheya elias thank you so much sugar Oh sugar another election and it is here Oh beauty thank you happy there and thank you for coming thank you so much all right thanks very much and thanks for joining us on better eating TV

Channel: Better Reading

Views: 45,558

Rating: 4.9181819 out of 5

Keywords: Rayya Elias, Harley Loco, Cheryl Akle, Better Reading TV, Bloomsbury Publishing (Publisher), Memoir

Id: HfGOxPeuems

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2015