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yakalskovich) wrote2004-01-30 09:46 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2004-01-30 09:46 pm
Entry tags:
Mercredi interviewed me!
Here are my replies to her questions: just click on them, and LiveJournal will take you there...
1. Many of us know that you are writing a novel about Rasputin and you have done a great deal of research on him. Given the chance to communicate with him in the great beyond, what five interview questions would you ask him?
If it was this same interview format containing not just simple questions, but encouragement to elucidate, explain and tell, I guess I would ask him the following:
2. Like me, I know that you were very taken with Andy Collins presentation on Watchers at Grissecon. Do you know any people who you think could be descended from the Watchers -- either spiritually or physically?
We all are their descendants, actually, both physically and spiritually.
Our culture is their culture, spread thinly and diluted throughout the whole world. While they kept to themselves, they knew themselves to be superior. Our ancestors were different from them, savages, and we all left it at that, and balance still held. When "the sons of God knew the daughters of men", and their knowledge passed into our culture, and their blood spread thinly and persistently into out gene pool, we were transmuted from being tribal "savages" that stayed the same over the millennia and lived in balance with the world all around into the self-styled rulers of the earth, gobbling up more and more of it until all was consumed, calling this progress. Progress was unknown to people before the Neolithic revolution, which is really the critical juncture in history where we find the Watchers. The Watchers, and the development they started, made it possible to have more food, have more people, conquer the tribes all around you and make a nation. Humanity stopped treading lightly on the planet and made it theirs, and it's that mental leap the watchers experienced some ten or eleven thousand years ago in their original Ethiopian mountains (long before they moved north to Egypt and then Kurdistan) that has made humanity what is it.
These ideas are by no means my own, this is just a short abstract from what I soaked up from the meme pool in recent months. Apart from Andy Collins, of course, I have to credit Daniel Quinn and his philosophical novel "Ishmael" (and Maria who recommended it to me), and also Ricardo, especially the second book of "Stone Dance of the Chameleon", by name of "The Standing Dead", where he has just that revolution happening before our very eyes.
3. Despite having a bad opinion of the United States of America and its politicians, what is one thing that you like about the USA?
Disliking the current politics of a country is not the same as disliking that country. So much for a serious preamble.-
What I love about the US of A: one word: baking!!!
Oooh, give me those chewy brownies secretly dripping from an overdose of chocolate, that wonderful, smooth cheesecake that glides silently over your tongue like silk, grainy cornbread with its slightly odd, acidic, sticky quality on your teeth. Plain, reliable bagels with your coffee to wake up. Pumpkin pie, sweet and spicy at once. Chocolate chip cookies to comfort or strengthen. Cupcakes in their colourful levity. And then the muffins!! Plain chocolate chip muffins, apple-and-cinnamon ones for the winter, muffins with nuts and berries, with pineapple and coconut, with fillings, glazing, hidden surprises and unexpected turns.
You should have tried the pina colada muffins the Nazgul and I had last night while watching Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time on DVD. Ah, yes, of course, Johnny Depp is another reason to like the USA...
4. Do you think that humanity overall is better, the same, or worse than it ever has been. If it has gotten worse, at what point do you think our planet was more utopian?
Actually, this question brings us right back to the second one.
When the particular culture of the Watchers, their innovations and ideas, the concepts of progress and growth, started seeping out (oh so slowly at first) into the global meme pool of tribal humanity, we lost our innocence and set out, inexorably, towards the highly problematic and disjointed state we find ourselves in nowadays. Man set out to rule the Earth and considered himself better suited for the job than whatever or whoever had originally made the place.
A chicken can never crawl back into its egg, and a snake can never take up its discarded skin once more, and so we cannot un-know what we have learned and thought these ten thousand years, and all attempts to return to a "simpler" way of life "closer to nature", in "harmony with the Earth", are doomed to abject failure. We can only take that one step further, we can only pray and work for the next step of evolution to happen before we ruin ourselves utterly. The utopia of Wraeththu as the next rightful Great Leap (after the one the Watchers made) ties right into this.
5. You enjoy chatting through the voices of your figments. If you could actually become a character of your own creation, who would it be and why?
Ah, yes. Nesting questions: this brings us back to the first question, actually.
I've probably said more than once that my figments at the chat are actually the characters I write about? You know, we work together quite seriously most of the time (I can't quite say whether they work for me, as characters in my novel, or whether I work for them, trying to reconstruct and re-tell their story to the best of my ability and imagination), so of a Saturday, we go out to have some fun and levity at the Stone Inn. They are free to interact with people and fool about, so I can observe what they will be like in an environment I cannot control down to the last comma, that is spontaneous and adds external input. They can go and surprise me (they do that anyway, but here, we have unexpected things thrown at us). On top of that, it's just plain simple fun.
If I were to chose one of them, now, to be in real life (not necessary their own real life, as that would make me chose in hindsight from my knowledge of what happened to them, but some sort of contemporary real life), I guess it would be terribly strenuous to constantly have to be Grigori (all that religious raving, the drinking, and the sheer amount of sex, ugh!), so the so-called "Princess" would be it. There's a laziness in that character that is very much mirrored in myself, an unwillingness to do the expected and just roll along the laid tracks of least resistance. And beyond the all-too-obvious decadence, all that posing and "Oooh, look, how bad I am!" and the "Do we need windows? We live at night anyway, when it's dark", there is a person who's very energetic once stirred to action, extremely helpful once won over, always willing to go the extra mile for anyone who might need assistance. That is a trait that I admire very much. The "Princess" can be inattentive to absent friends - if you're not there, you're happily forgotten, and you can never expect that a correspondence will be kept up for the mere sake of keeping in touch. Thinking about someone who's not there, perhaps even worrying about them, is a sign of deep attachment from the "Princess".
And then there are some things I don't share but wish I did: that tenacity to start over and over and over again, no matter what hand life deals; the willingness to tackle any foe; the ability to make do with just anything that's provided at the moment, despite having been used to great luxury at some earlier point. The willingness, nay, even conscious decision, to trust people again and again despite bad experiences. I can't find the literal quote at the moment in my source material, but there is one that says, basically:
As somebody who's basically of the "only the paranoid survive" kind of mindset, I can only admire this easygoing principle of the "Princess" with great envy.-
MEME RULES
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.
1. Many of us know that you are writing a novel about Rasputin and you have done a great deal of research on him. Given the chance to communicate with him in the great beyond, what five interview questions would you ask him?
If it was this same interview format containing not just simple questions, but encouragement to elucidate, explain and tell, I guess I would ask him the following:
- 1. Undoubtedly, you possess many astonishing abilities and insights in dealing with people. What is the source of the energy that you manifest in such an impressive manner, and what methods do you use to access and harness that energy?
- 2. We both know that the outrageous claims your detractors make about you are for the most part pure invention. Still, there must have been things you did that were ill-conceived or misunderstood, or which you plainly and honestly should have left off. So, which are your greatest mistakes and weaknesses in life, and what do you do to combat them within yourself?
- 3. One of the most crucial decisions in your life must have been leaving the monastic life on Mount Athos after almost one year's noviciate shortly before taking final vows. What actually happened to make you turn away, what did you see or experience and what did you conclude from it about yourself, the church, and the monastic way of life?
- 4. You dedicated a photograph to Prince Felix Yusupov with the words, "Live, not in debauchery and dissipation, but in happiness, in the light, and in true joy." As I know him, a very apt thing to say to Felix. Could you tell me a bit about how you arrived at that impression, and what transpired in you sessions with him?
- 5. Astonishingly, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich clearly and squarely numbers himself among your most vocal enemies, although he is by no means the most obvious person to hate you so much. On the contrary, many people consider him generally unimportant and shallow while others think him a rather private and reticent character. Are you aware of having done anything to engender such anger in him of all people? Have you ever met him at all, and what is your opinion about him, firsthand or by hearsay?
2. Like me, I know that you were very taken with Andy Collins presentation on Watchers at Grissecon. Do you know any people who you think could be descended from the Watchers -- either spiritually or physically?
We all are their descendants, actually, both physically and spiritually.
Our culture is their culture, spread thinly and diluted throughout the whole world. While they kept to themselves, they knew themselves to be superior. Our ancestors were different from them, savages, and we all left it at that, and balance still held. When "the sons of God knew the daughters of men", and their knowledge passed into our culture, and their blood spread thinly and persistently into out gene pool, we were transmuted from being tribal "savages" that stayed the same over the millennia and lived in balance with the world all around into the self-styled rulers of the earth, gobbling up more and more of it until all was consumed, calling this progress. Progress was unknown to people before the Neolithic revolution, which is really the critical juncture in history where we find the Watchers. The Watchers, and the development they started, made it possible to have more food, have more people, conquer the tribes all around you and make a nation. Humanity stopped treading lightly on the planet and made it theirs, and it's that mental leap the watchers experienced some ten or eleven thousand years ago in their original Ethiopian mountains (long before they moved north to Egypt and then Kurdistan) that has made humanity what is it.
These ideas are by no means my own, this is just a short abstract from what I soaked up from the meme pool in recent months. Apart from Andy Collins, of course, I have to credit Daniel Quinn and his philosophical novel "Ishmael" (and Maria who recommended it to me), and also Ricardo, especially the second book of "Stone Dance of the Chameleon", by name of "The Standing Dead", where he has just that revolution happening before our very eyes.
3. Despite having a bad opinion of the United States of America and its politicians, what is one thing that you like about the USA?
Disliking the current politics of a country is not the same as disliking that country. So much for a serious preamble.-
What I love about the US of A: one word: baking!!!
Oooh, give me those chewy brownies secretly dripping from an overdose of chocolate, that wonderful, smooth cheesecake that glides silently over your tongue like silk, grainy cornbread with its slightly odd, acidic, sticky quality on your teeth. Plain, reliable bagels with your coffee to wake up. Pumpkin pie, sweet and spicy at once. Chocolate chip cookies to comfort or strengthen. Cupcakes in their colourful levity. And then the muffins!! Plain chocolate chip muffins, apple-and-cinnamon ones for the winter, muffins with nuts and berries, with pineapple and coconut, with fillings, glazing, hidden surprises and unexpected turns.
You should have tried the pina colada muffins the Nazgul and I had last night while watching Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time on DVD. Ah, yes, of course, Johnny Depp is another reason to like the USA...
4. Do you think that humanity overall is better, the same, or worse than it ever has been. If it has gotten worse, at what point do you think our planet was more utopian?
Actually, this question brings us right back to the second one.
When the particular culture of the Watchers, their innovations and ideas, the concepts of progress and growth, started seeping out (oh so slowly at first) into the global meme pool of tribal humanity, we lost our innocence and set out, inexorably, towards the highly problematic and disjointed state we find ourselves in nowadays. Man set out to rule the Earth and considered himself better suited for the job than whatever or whoever had originally made the place.
A chicken can never crawl back into its egg, and a snake can never take up its discarded skin once more, and so we cannot un-know what we have learned and thought these ten thousand years, and all attempts to return to a "simpler" way of life "closer to nature", in "harmony with the Earth", are doomed to abject failure. We can only take that one step further, we can only pray and work for the next step of evolution to happen before we ruin ourselves utterly. The utopia of Wraeththu as the next rightful Great Leap (after the one the Watchers made) ties right into this.
5. You enjoy chatting through the voices of your figments. If you could actually become a character of your own creation, who would it be and why?
Ah, yes. Nesting questions: this brings us back to the first question, actually.
I've probably said more than once that my figments at the chat are actually the characters I write about? You know, we work together quite seriously most of the time (I can't quite say whether they work for me, as characters in my novel, or whether I work for them, trying to reconstruct and re-tell their story to the best of my ability and imagination), so of a Saturday, we go out to have some fun and levity at the Stone Inn. They are free to interact with people and fool about, so I can observe what they will be like in an environment I cannot control down to the last comma, that is spontaneous and adds external input. They can go and surprise me (they do that anyway, but here, we have unexpected things thrown at us). On top of that, it's just plain simple fun.
If I were to chose one of them, now, to be in real life (not necessary their own real life, as that would make me chose in hindsight from my knowledge of what happened to them, but some sort of contemporary real life), I guess it would be terribly strenuous to constantly have to be Grigori (all that religious raving, the drinking, and the sheer amount of sex, ugh!), so the so-called "Princess" would be it. There's a laziness in that character that is very much mirrored in myself, an unwillingness to do the expected and just roll along the laid tracks of least resistance. And beyond the all-too-obvious decadence, all that posing and "Oooh, look, how bad I am!" and the "Do we need windows? We live at night anyway, when it's dark", there is a person who's very energetic once stirred to action, extremely helpful once won over, always willing to go the extra mile for anyone who might need assistance. That is a trait that I admire very much. The "Princess" can be inattentive to absent friends - if you're not there, you're happily forgotten, and you can never expect that a correspondence will be kept up for the mere sake of keeping in touch. Thinking about someone who's not there, perhaps even worrying about them, is a sign of deep attachment from the "Princess".
And then there are some things I don't share but wish I did: that tenacity to start over and over and over again, no matter what hand life deals; the willingness to tackle any foe; the ability to make do with just anything that's provided at the moment, despite having been used to great luxury at some earlier point. The willingness, nay, even conscious decision, to trust people again and again despite bad experiences. I can't find the literal quote at the moment in my source material, but there is one that says, basically:
"One might think that I have all too often become the victim of confidence tricksters and bad business deals, but I simply refuse to distrust everybody I meet from the outset. That would make life so grim and devoid of all fun and friendship. I trust everybody unless they give me reason to think otherwise, which, in general, makes life much easier".
As somebody who's basically of the "only the paranoid survive" kind of mindset, I can only admire this easygoing principle of the "Princess" with great envy.-
MEME RULES
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.