Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Interview with the Man Who Wouldn’t Shut Up
It’s not like I can watch you suckers all jumping off bridges and not hop the railing myself. It’s not in my nature. Plus, I don’t even close my blinds when I change clothes, so why should I shrink from exposing myself to you, my dreamlike and incorporeal public? Well only because I’m so deathly dull and have nothing of value to tell the world - but that’s never stopped me before and it’s sure as hell not going to stop me now. So here’s what I did: I watched most of my imaginary friends answer five different provocative questions each, and then I waited for a while, and it seemed like the coast was clear, so I asked Jules to interview me and here are her questions and my answers. And for the record, she got the questions to me toot sweet but I have dawdled over my answers because they were not sufficiently ponderous and overworked. Hope you enjoy, and remember, this is a non-smoking flight.
1. When you’re dead and gone, what would you like people to look back at as your “life’s work”? (This may or may not be connected to your profession, and may include things you have not accomplished yet.)
I’m intrigued, answering this question, by the distinction between being remembered and being famous. In the end, I ask myself if I’d rather be famous - my name known by millions - but not to have had an impact on anybody’s life; or if I’d like to be unknown in the larger sense throughout my life but to have really had a positive influence on someone else. And I have trouble with this because I am, at heart, selfish and egocentric and mercenary. I love adulation and positive feedback, and my occasional experiences of these have mainly been in the context of doing theater, photography, or writing. So I do dream idly of a future of fame and independent wealth resulting from the exercise of my artistic faculties, such as they are. But this is an outcome which I consider, frankly, fairly unlikely - and more to the point, I don’t think I’d find it particularly fulfilling unless I achieved the second goal through it: that someone found something in what I’ve done or said that was helpful or inspiring, resulting in people winding up generally happier and more integrated within and among themselves, and a consequent amplification of the overall quantum of positive energy in the cosmos. (More or less.) If upon my death all my creative writings and eyecandy photographs were lost and all my brilliant performances and funny voices and soulfully sung songs were utterly forgotten till time ended, but somewhere someone remembered that I’d once taken a bit of effort to help someone else or to stand up for a principle, and for no other reason than my example went and did something similar, I’d feel as if my time hadn’t been wasted. Everything goes away eventually anyway. Optimally, I’ll be remembered world-wide by an adoring and generous public that uses my life and philosophy as a basis for a religion that establishes world peace and unity, but on reflection that seems a little too Bill and Ted. And as an aside, San Dimas High School Football sucks.
Okay on final consideration, the one thing I’m really proud of as of now, and that I don’t see myself equaling from here on out, would be my hagadah - a guidebook to celebrating Passover. There are thousands of different versions, but my own effort has really worked out particularly well. It’s made the experience meaningful and constructive for a lot of people, many of whom have neither familiarity with, nor connection to, any of the old rituals or traditions. If my hagadah remains in use and is valued by generations down the line, I’d feel as if my existence hadn’t been a total waste of resources.
2. (I once dated a boy who tossed a CD of mine out the car window on the freeway because, although I loved it, listening to it made me instantly sad.) What beloved CD should be removed from your collection due to its effect on your moods?
This is a tough one for me because I’ve been winnowing the collection for a long time. I am not one of those weepy Morrisey nihilist types who likes music that makes me feel empty and useless. A lot of what I own does have an impact on my mood, but an impact that I like: Gene Harris makes me feel cool, Dick Dale gets me pumped up; Lee Morgan makes me feel inspired but a little wistful; Elvis Costello can put a hell of a lot of moods in my head but always cheers me up after he bums me out. But if music doesn’t make me feel better overall, I don’t need to keep it around. Amoeba will buy it back and I’ll find something I like better.
So I will expand the inquiry to include cassette tapes and - lord love me - LPs. Now I’m getting to paydirt. I have a few LPs from the olde days that definitely steer me off my intended course. The Story of Old Mack (and let me point out that the graphic on the link is for a different record but the tunes are all pure Mack) was my favorite album as a small child; now it creeps me the hell out. I might get rid of that because of the way it makes me feel. But on the other hand I generally internalize that weirdness and it doesn’t make me immediately difficult to be around, it just feeds deep-seated neuroses that will eventually have me pacing the rooftops with a bodkin, but not actually bothering other people.
However, Smash Flops makes me completely irritating. I know all the songs by heart and sing along with them. Then I sing them to myself for days afterwards. After about 10 minutes of me singing this cloyingly cheerful crap you’ll want to kill yourself and then me and then the original performers and then me again. The personality change I experience from this album is more intense than what happens when I listen to the old Monty Python or Tom Leherer stuff, or even Flanders and Swann (though I’m pretty insufferable after them, too). So for the good of the country, I’d dump Smash Flops - and just keep that Best of Beastie Boys Funk and Groove Mix spinning happily ever after.
3. It’s 5:30 p.m. on a Friday. You have nothing out of the ordinary planned for the weekend. How does your evening play out?
This is a trick question. Kel’s schedule is so fluid these days that it’s hard to say whether, on a “typical” friday, she’d be home - so I’m going to have to take it both ways, so to speak. And just to set the stage with basic definitions, for me, “nothing going on” means a night expressly dedicated to reading, writing, tidying, and if I’m particularly alert, remembering to watch an episode or two of The Tick on video. The dog will have to go out around 9 or 10 for relief and the cat will need to get her insulin around the same time. Pretty dull stuff, but I’m basically a homebody. I don’t go clubbing or to many shows or nitespots or such. So:
It’s 5:30: typically I’m at my desk, reorganizing stacks of paper and trying to develop a sense of having accomplished something during the week. But I’m probably feeling like not much got done, and my mental checklist is full of stuff that’s going to have to go on next week’s “Do It Now Damnit” list. The office is quiet, most everybody has gone home.
Scenario One: Kel is Not Home tonight - ie, she’s out till 11 or so, or overnight, as sometimes happens because of her professional and academic responsibilities. Has she been home today? Sometimes she is, sometimes not. Nothing’s taken for granted anymore.
If Kel has been home today, we have Scenario 1-A: I don’t have to worry about the dog or go home at all after work. I pack up my bag and walk two blocks from my office to the Embarcadero Muni stop where I take the J, K, L, or M lines to Church street, where I walk half a block to Lucky 13. I greet Ratchet with a swift kick to the plastic bottle she’s deposited at my feet and step to the bar. Typically Martin is working and has my Anchor Liberty poured before I have a chance to order it. I take it to the patio and hang out for 2 or 3 hours with 10 or 20 friends. Many laughs are laughed and many soul-searching truisms are somberly (not soberly) uttered. Butts are occasionally felt. When I leave I’m hungry so I’ll grab a slice or two at Sybelle’s, or a burrito at the second place up Church street. If I’m flush I’ll have a cheesesteak at BurgerMeister. By 9:30 I’m scooting home on the Fillmore 22, listening to my headphones and maybe writing a few notes to myself. At Geary, I dismount and reboard the 38 outside of the Boom Boom Room, gazing up across the street to the everchanging mosaic of posters on every interior wall of the Fillmore Auditorium. The 38 will take me within a block of my home, and when I get there I take the dog outside and then shoot the cat. I hope I remember to wash my face but I do brush my teeth and pour myself into bed with my notebook. I write for a short time and am asleep by 11.
Then there’s Scenario 1-B: Kel has been out all day and will not be coming home tonight: I leave work NO LATER than 5:30 and cruise home on the 38L to feed the cat and feed the dog and walk him around a bit. I might change my clothes to something a bit less square than my usual Armani jumpsuit, riding boots and opera hat, and then hop the 38 or 38L to Fillmore and the 22 south to Market and I’m at Lucky 13 by 7 - the rest of the evening plays out pretty much the same as above.
Scenario Two: Kel is home tonight. It bears reiteration that I have no plans with her - she’s just reading or whittling or plotting corporate takeovers or whatever she is currently doing to relax. I leave work at around 5:30 and hit Lucky 13 for an hour or two - I’ll be home by 8:30 and I’ll munch a little supper once I get there. We might watch some VH-1 or a televised action movie or something brainrotting like that. We retire before 10.
Damn, I’m really as dull as I ever feared. Well, now I know it. And so does the world.
4. Your apartment is on fire. (Kel is safely outside.) You can save only five items from the flames. What are they?
Well the first two are too easy: there’s a dog and a cat. Then things become more complicated, because most of what I have is eminently replaceable - even my cool new cocktail shirt is just a shirt when all is said and done. I’d want to save my camera, which I got in 1980 - a workhorse Yashica FX-3, fully manual, built like a tank. It’s replaceable too but I’d hate to go even a few days post-inferno unable to document my experience, and while I only need a pad to be a writer, I need a camera to be a photographer. So that’s number 3. Numbers 4 and 5 might be my photographs and my writing files, but I realize this might be pushing the envelope a bit because they’re not “objects,” exactly, they’re collections of objects - in the case of my photos, a whole slew of boxes and albums, both photos I’ve taken and family heirlooms. Too much? Those aren’t “items” and I can’t save them? Bugger all, and let me re-choose as my hovel collapses around my ears. Okay: two works of art in the house - a painting of Mt. Mingus over the dining room entry that we got in Sedona last year, like a pair of purple lips pressed up to kiss a cornflower sky; and a tangka in the living room that’s particularly serene and detailed. I’d miss everything else, terribly badly in some cases, but I can’t think of anything that couldn’t ultimately be replaced AND that I would need to restart my life. But with the blissful Buddah calming my thoughts and the Arizona landscape helping me remember the connection between spirit and earth, I would at least have a decently decorated “square one” from which to proceed.
5. Deep down you know you’re “a writer”. When did you first decide/realize this?
I never really thought about it, and I suppose I rarely do even now. I always enjoyed words and playing with them, and writing was a natural outgrowth of that process. When I was six years old I asked my dad who was the fattest knight of the round table. He didn’t know; I said, “Sir Cumference.” I don’t know how I knew about the Arthurian saga at that age, much less the word for the distance around a circle, but I’d put the damn thing together and it was my first pun. I received undue encouragement and kept making increasingly painful and longwinded jokes. In second grade I wrote my first poem, about spring. (I had it in my “100 Things” but those are not working right now so it went like this: “Spring is here / Spring is dear / I am happy / Winter was crappy.” I still recite it in season annually.) From there I just kept on writing, for entertainment and when I felt lonely and whenever I had a theme or topic. Just basically whenever. But with all that, I never considered myself “a writer” and I suppose I still don’t. I’m just a guy who writes. If there’s a difference I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to stick with this version of this answer: I never “knew” I was a writer because that term seems to imply something that I just don’t see in myself. What it is, I’m unable to articulate. I cook, but I’m not a cook; I do yoga, but I’m not a yogi. My dilettante forays in each of these fora give me some pleasure, but I’m not doing what the “pros” do. And even though I write, and try to write every day if I can, I don’t see myself as a writer. If I really threw myself into it, maybe I could assume that mantle - but right now it seems too heavy for me. I just can’t commit. Maybe that’s it. (Look I rhymed. (That’s what I’m talking about.))
Well that was fun. I got some damn good questions (thanks Jules, I knew I could count on ya) that made me think harder than I thought I’d have to on first reading. And of course I love to talk about myself at excruciating length and with the slightest pretext whatsoever. So this worked out great for me. You can wake up now - and if you have any interest in enduring a similar interrogation from ME, Chuckle T. Hutt, feel free to review the following legal disclaimer:
If you would like to play along and have me interview you....the following rules apply:
1. If you want to participate, leave me a comment [or an email] saying “interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions - each person’s will be different.
3. You will update your website with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Tomorrow: how I feel about how I feel - the introspection deepens. Can you smell the excitement? Or does the dog just need to be taken outside again?
