interview questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maidenjedi
Jun. 12th, 2003 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauraque_bk1. You've demonstrated several different creative talents, among them drawing, writing, and playing a musical instrument. Which of these is your favorite way of expressing yourself?
Playing music isn't even in the running -- it's just too difficult, not a natural talent for me. But between writing and drawing, it's hard to say. Drawing is pleasurable in a unique way -- it puts me into a sort of altered state when I'm really into it, where my thoughts are all perception, no analysis. Writing is the opposite, in a way -- all words, all analysis. I know I'd end up very tense and unhappy if I had to give up either one, but I think as a method of expression, writing is my favorite. Though the process is more arduous, the end result is more satisfying. I'm better at conveying what I want to get across in words than in pictures, I think.
2. We've talked about the characters of Harry Potter to a certain extent in your journal. Which character holds your interest above the others and why?
I'd say Snape, for some of the same reasons I'm interested in Krycek -- we know who Snape is, but not why. You can take the character in all kinds of different directions. I like his moral ambiguity, his uncertainty over who and what is right. He reminds me of some of the worst parts of myself... I can be very caustic and supercilious when I'm frustrated, and I've sometimes been prone to intense jealousy and resentment. I've gotten over a lot of that stuff now, but I can still identify with the guilt and unease of knowing you have an ugly side, and trying to make amends.
3. What is your favorite book?
Man, that's hard. The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris would be up there somewhere; I read it when I was pretty young, and it really changed the way I thought. For sheer enduring fondness, I might pick Alice Through the Looking Glass. The White Knight gets me every time. When I was a kid, my favorite book was Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. I must have read it dozens of times. The protagonist is a well-meaning hothead who is falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned... and his name is Sirius. Huh. :)
4. Give me five words that you would use to describe yourself in "real" life.
Flirtatious. Sarcastic. Arrogant. Wary. Hungry.
(I mean "hungry" in... all kinds of ways.)
5. You mentioned that you're a Tool fan. What type of music is your favorite, and what other bands capture your interest?
I love the Impressionist period in classical music, towards the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th. Maurice Ravel (that handsome man in my user pic) was nothing short of a genius. Satie, Stravinsky, and Massenet are also great. It's that period when composers were moving away from traditional, predictable forms, and getting into atonalism and modal pieces where "nothing happens". There are points in Ravel's Miroirs that bend the classical form so far that it almost sounds like jazz, and that's both fascinating and beautiful to me.
In my teens, I was a huge Marilyn Manson fan (and a regular on the notoriously rough-and-tumble alt.music.marilyn-manson newsgroup). I see parallels between MM and Stravinsky... The music is brutal and ugly at times, and rarely resolves the way you expect, but it's still tremendously expressive and emotionally affecting... almost unspeakably so. I'm not an active MM fan anymore, but when I hear "1996" or "The Reflecting God" (or practically anything off the Antichrist Superstar album), I still get shivers.
Tool, on the other hand, is beautiful, though I know not everyone hears it that way. Tool does the same kind of experimenting with very slight variations in repeated phrases that Erik Satie was famous for, and sometimes the way a song wanders off and finds its way back at an unexpected angle -- that'll remind me of Ravel.
Radiohead is great, too. Their songs are a lot of fun to play. Ditto for Ben Folds Five. I listen to a little bit of just about everything. I'm starting to get into rap, though I'm still learning who does the things I like.
The only music I really can't stand is that mind-numbingly predictable "easy listening" sort of thing, where you can guess every lyric and every chord change. I know that sounds pretentious to say, but it genuinely grates on my nerves.
Whoo. Those were all good questions! I'll have some for you too, MJ.
[Edited because I was thinking of Miroirs, not Le Tombeau de Couperin.]
Playing music isn't even in the running -- it's just too difficult, not a natural talent for me. But between writing and drawing, it's hard to say. Drawing is pleasurable in a unique way -- it puts me into a sort of altered state when I'm really into it, where my thoughts are all perception, no analysis. Writing is the opposite, in a way -- all words, all analysis. I know I'd end up very tense and unhappy if I had to give up either one, but I think as a method of expression, writing is my favorite. Though the process is more arduous, the end result is more satisfying. I'm better at conveying what I want to get across in words than in pictures, I think.
2. We've talked about the characters of Harry Potter to a certain extent in your journal. Which character holds your interest above the others and why?
I'd say Snape, for some of the same reasons I'm interested in Krycek -- we know who Snape is, but not why. You can take the character in all kinds of different directions. I like his moral ambiguity, his uncertainty over who and what is right. He reminds me of some of the worst parts of myself... I can be very caustic and supercilious when I'm frustrated, and I've sometimes been prone to intense jealousy and resentment. I've gotten over a lot of that stuff now, but I can still identify with the guilt and unease of knowing you have an ugly side, and trying to make amends.
3. What is your favorite book?
Man, that's hard. The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris would be up there somewhere; I read it when I was pretty young, and it really changed the way I thought. For sheer enduring fondness, I might pick Alice Through the Looking Glass. The White Knight gets me every time. When I was a kid, my favorite book was Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. I must have read it dozens of times. The protagonist is a well-meaning hothead who is falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned... and his name is Sirius. Huh. :)
4. Give me five words that you would use to describe yourself in "real" life.
Flirtatious. Sarcastic. Arrogant. Wary. Hungry.
(I mean "hungry" in... all kinds of ways.)
5. You mentioned that you're a Tool fan. What type of music is your favorite, and what other bands capture your interest?
I love the Impressionist period in classical music, towards the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th. Maurice Ravel (that handsome man in my user pic) was nothing short of a genius. Satie, Stravinsky, and Massenet are also great. It's that period when composers were moving away from traditional, predictable forms, and getting into atonalism and modal pieces where "nothing happens". There are points in Ravel's Miroirs that bend the classical form so far that it almost sounds like jazz, and that's both fascinating and beautiful to me.
In my teens, I was a huge Marilyn Manson fan (and a regular on the notoriously rough-and-tumble alt.music.marilyn-manson newsgroup). I see parallels between MM and Stravinsky... The music is brutal and ugly at times, and rarely resolves the way you expect, but it's still tremendously expressive and emotionally affecting... almost unspeakably so. I'm not an active MM fan anymore, but when I hear "1996" or "The Reflecting God" (or practically anything off the Antichrist Superstar album), I still get shivers.
Tool, on the other hand, is beautiful, though I know not everyone hears it that way. Tool does the same kind of experimenting with very slight variations in repeated phrases that Erik Satie was famous for, and sometimes the way a song wanders off and finds its way back at an unexpected angle -- that'll remind me of Ravel.
Radiohead is great, too. Their songs are a lot of fun to play. Ditto for Ben Folds Five. I listen to a little bit of just about everything. I'm starting to get into rap, though I'm still learning who does the things I like.
The only music I really can't stand is that mind-numbingly predictable "easy listening" sort of thing, where you can guess every lyric and every chord change. I know that sounds pretentious to say, but it genuinely grates on my nerves.
Whoo. Those were all good questions! I'll have some for you too, MJ.
[Edited because I was thinking of Miroirs, not Le Tombeau de Couperin.]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 01:45 am (UTC)I used to say (well, still say, but I don't always stick to it myself) that everyone should read Alice at least once a year. *grin*
When I was a kid, my favorite book was Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. I must have read it dozens of times. The protagonist is a well-meaning hothead who is falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned... and his name is Sirius.
Hee! There's someone else on my friends list who gets very hotheaded about the Wynne Jones/Rowling similarities.
Great questions and answers!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 09:16 am (UTC)I probably do read one or the other about once a year. I'll be trying to remember some detail about it, or want to re-read one of the poems, and then I'll find myself reading the whole thing. :)
Hee! There's someone else on my friends list who gets very hotheaded about the Wynne Jones/Rowling similarities.
I'd never thought of it before, but now that it's occurred to me, I do see the parallels. Sirius of Dogsbody is written similarly to Sirius Black, IIRC, in addition to just being in a similar position. And there's a theme of being trapped in the cruel Earthly world and then set free by finding a connection to the supernatural world that is very reminiscent of Harry. Kathleen is also abused and neglected by (I believe) her aunt and uncle, and tormented by her cousin. Hm. I'll have to dig that book up and read it again, see what else I can turn up.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 11:29 am (UTC)I read Dogsbody again and again as a child--I'm a compulsive re-reader. I bought a copy recently and sat down expecting to enjoy it. And I did, but I was sobbing by the end of it.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 09:10 pm (UTC)It's rare for me to re-read an entire book, actually, which is why it's so striking that I, too, read Dogsbody again and again. It hit a deep chord with me for reasons I didn't fully understand until years later. I haven't read it in a long time, but my memories of it are vivid -- not the words, but my mental images. Running with the cold dogs, and Sirius's fight with the alpha... my memories of that are almost tactile. I know I have the book around here somewhere, I'm definitely going to give it a re-read.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-13 03:16 pm (UTC)But I can see where you're coming from, and I really have to admire the fact that you see things in Manson that most people wouldn't bother taking the time to look for (listen for?). I know I personally haven't - when he came on the scene, I was in my first blush of true love for all things swing, and didn't listen to the radio beyond what my friends were into. My tastes are wider and more varying now, but I still keep a lot of heavy music at arm's length.
I'm not much for "easy listening" myself, though I admit freely to having a love for the kitsch value of fifties pop (pre-rock). What I look for is an expressive voice, and personality (which is chiefly why I love Sinatra). What I dislike, though, is elevator music. Easy, soft jazz is annoying!!
Thanks for answering these!!