1 - Tell us how
your project (main, or numerous) was started.
Helicopter Helicopter was started prior to my joining, so the details are somewhat lost to me. However, I know that it was begun by our two frontpeople, Julie and Chris.
2 - What does music, in it's entirety, mean to you?
Music to me is
marked by divergent impulses. Community - the feeling that you want someone
to hear something great that you just heard, or the
togetherness that occasionally happens in great live shows; and also solitude
- the feeling that an artist is talking to you directly, or that a piece of
music expresses something meaningful to you, and that's why it exists at that
moment. Structure - the well-conceived, logical ideas that make sense technically
and emotionally; and disorder - the noisy, improvisational element that often
makes music thrilling. And so on - music encompasses so many of these contradictory
ideas that you can eventually get to John Cage-ish "What is music?"
territory. However, I think he had that area down pretty well, so I'll leave
it alone.
3 - What does art, in it's entirety, mean to you?
Art as a whole is a means of expression and of questioning. It's a way of finding like-minded folks, or people doing, saying, or thinking things you never dreamed about. It can pierce the often hideously boring veil of everyday life and remind folks why it's worth being around here in the first place.
4 - Who is your
favorite author, and why?
Hunter Thompson, because he blends fact and fiction in such a way as to get at a greater truth about the world.
5 - As your best friend, describe yourself.
Accomidating, friendly, dependable, articulate.
6 - As your worst enemy, describe yourself.
Afraid of conflict, procrastinating, unmotivated, tendency to self-pity.
7 - If your persona were immortalized as a cartoon character, who would it be?
I don't have the slightest idea.
8 - Do you think
there are conspiracies against the "everyday person"?
Yes, in some sense.
There is a constant conspiracy to suppress and marginalize alternatives to current
ways of being, doing, and thinking.
There is also a conspiracy to bury histories of people rebelling against the
status quo and forming alternatives of their own. However, it's not
entirely some high-living cabal in the Swiss mountains that makes these decisions.
Powerful folks as a class have an interest in this, and make decisions to this
end. So it doesn't much matter whether they sit and conspire overtly about these
things or not - their interests dictate by and
large what they will do. Occasional chinks in the armor show up, just enough
to give the impression that the entire apparatus is not monolithic.
However, any true threats or alternatives that appear are immediately attacked
with the full force of "the system".
9 - What do you
do with your spare or free time?
Volunteer with Food Not Bombs, watch movies, argue the merits of Eminem and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer with all comers.
10 - Please give us your interpretation of "the meaning of life".
The meaning of
life is, I would argue, self-created. It is influenced by things such as societal
mores and the, for lack of a better word, universal
moral sense that all people have. However, it is up to the individual to create
meaning out of these often divergent impulses and ideas.
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