Interview Meme Redux
Sep. 1st, 2004 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseRules:
- Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
- I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
- You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
- You'll include this explanation.
- You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rfmcdpei asked me the following questions:
1. Ten years ago, what did you think you'd be doing now?
Ten years ago, Tim and I were rocking a little two-person band with me singing and playing bass and him playing guitar. We were probably already recording our album. Although, it's possible that at that stage, Snake was doing the singing and it was a pop band we were promoting.
In any case, it seemed to me that music composing, production and performance were going to be my life's work. In fact, around that time, Snake and I were looking at houses to buy and one that came up for sale in the neighbourhood was a cool recording studio that the owner had built up beautifully. It sucked as a place to live, but I've oftened wondered what would have happened if we'd bought it and I'd committed to running a profitable small studio. This is alternate TTL life #5731B.
I wasn't doing any comics at the time, though I was reading them and writing stories. The comics were an earlier and later part of my life. Now, I'm less obsessed with music production than I used to be, but that bug could be reignited at any time.
Coincidentally, Tim phoned me from his home out west just the other day after a couple of years of silence. I have to call him back.
2. Which comic-book artists would you recommend to a novice apart from Alan Moore?
Alan Moore is not a comic book artist, he is a writer. I actually happen to be reading both V for Vendetta and Tom Strong volume 1 at the moment, both on loan from the library. Do a search on "graphic novel" and you'll get hundreds of hits. He is wonderful in being able to work in many styles and to adapt his writing to the type of artist he is collaborating with.
Here's some variety for you: Read Finder by Carla Speed McNeil for brilliant social science fiction. Read James Kochalka's Magic Boy stories for heart-wrenching whimsy. Read the original run of the Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for a rush of "anything's possible" and a real sense of the fulcrum between the techno-future 50s and the hippie search for enlightenment. Read Hayao Miyazaki's only manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Like his movies, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away, the book is an epic investigation of morality, environment, technology and the power of the individual to change the world. It is as important a piece of 20th Century fantasy as anything by Tolkein or Leguin or whoever.
3. Who's your favourite musician, and why?
I hate questions like that. My answer would likely be a singer because song is my area of fascination. Ninety-five percent of my music collection is song. I don't know. Elvis Costello? Jacques Brel? Joni Mitchell? "Favourite" is such an Acadmeny Awards type of concept. All of my favourites are searchers of truth, incredible masters of construction and are able to balance the earthy with the artificial. Tchaikovsky?
4. Say that you had to leave Toronto forever. Where would you like to
settle down?
New York, maybe but I don't want to live in America. Amsterdam is a similar oasis. Shanghai would be cool but troublesome. Anywhere where I can be a pedestrian and find beauty, culture and human connection. No suburbs. Never. Or an island near Vancouver where I can be with nature instead of humanity if I get to be too much of a curmugeon.
5. What's wrong with Neil Gaiman?
His stories have no damn tension. I wanted to like Neverwhere because the concept was just SO GOOD! but I ended up not caring. Sandman never seems to transcend its concept. Except maybe with the Death stories, but even there we have the trappings of adventure without the thrill.
Okay, who wants to be interviewed?
- Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.
- I'll reply and give you five questions to answer.
- You'll update your LJ with the five questions answered.
- You'll include this explanation.
- You ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
rfmcdpei asked me the following questions:1. Ten years ago, what did you think you'd be doing now?
Ten years ago, Tim and I were rocking a little two-person band with me singing and playing bass and him playing guitar. We were probably already recording our album. Although, it's possible that at that stage, Snake was doing the singing and it was a pop band we were promoting.
In any case, it seemed to me that music composing, production and performance were going to be my life's work. In fact, around that time, Snake and I were looking at houses to buy and one that came up for sale in the neighbourhood was a cool recording studio that the owner had built up beautifully. It sucked as a place to live, but I've oftened wondered what would have happened if we'd bought it and I'd committed to running a profitable small studio. This is alternate TTL life #5731B.
I wasn't doing any comics at the time, though I was reading them and writing stories. The comics were an earlier and later part of my life. Now, I'm less obsessed with music production than I used to be, but that bug could be reignited at any time.
Coincidentally, Tim phoned me from his home out west just the other day after a couple of years of silence. I have to call him back.
2. Which comic-book artists would you recommend to a novice apart from Alan Moore?
Alan Moore is not a comic book artist, he is a writer. I actually happen to be reading both V for Vendetta and Tom Strong volume 1 at the moment, both on loan from the library. Do a search on "graphic novel" and you'll get hundreds of hits. He is wonderful in being able to work in many styles and to adapt his writing to the type of artist he is collaborating with.
Here's some variety for you: Read Finder by Carla Speed McNeil for brilliant social science fiction. Read James Kochalka's Magic Boy stories for heart-wrenching whimsy. Read the original run of the Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for a rush of "anything's possible" and a real sense of the fulcrum between the techno-future 50s and the hippie search for enlightenment. Read Hayao Miyazaki's only manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Like his movies, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky and Spirited Away, the book is an epic investigation of morality, environment, technology and the power of the individual to change the world. It is as important a piece of 20th Century fantasy as anything by Tolkein or Leguin or whoever.
3. Who's your favourite musician, and why?
I hate questions like that. My answer would likely be a singer because song is my area of fascination. Ninety-five percent of my music collection is song. I don't know. Elvis Costello? Jacques Brel? Joni Mitchell? "Favourite" is such an Acadmeny Awards type of concept. All of my favourites are searchers of truth, incredible masters of construction and are able to balance the earthy with the artificial. Tchaikovsky?
4. Say that you had to leave Toronto forever. Where would you like to
settle down?
New York, maybe but I don't want to live in America. Amsterdam is a similar oasis. Shanghai would be cool but troublesome. Anywhere where I can be a pedestrian and find beauty, culture and human connection. No suburbs. Never. Or an island near Vancouver where I can be with nature instead of humanity if I get to be too much of a curmugeon.
5. What's wrong with Neil Gaiman?
His stories have no damn tension. I wanted to like Neverwhere because the concept was just SO GOOD! but I ended up not caring. Sandman never seems to transcend its concept. Except maybe with the Death stories, but even there we have the trappings of adventure without the thrill.
Okay, who wants to be interviewed?
