Inequality of interview
Mar. 21st, 2008 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusYou find me in Vienna, where I've been interviewed for local magazine Falter about a performance I'll give in May at the Technical University.
I must say I love being interviewed, I love the way it makes you feel that people really care about what you think. Sitting in a Vienna bar last night, with a photographer shining bright lights and two reporters (one, Tex, a local TV star) alternating questions, I remembered what Morrissey had once said: being a celebrity is sometimes the only way to be treated at least half-decently as a human being. As all human beings should be treated.
But I also thought of the song at the end of The Threepenny Opera, the epilogue about "some in light, the others darkness". The photographer seemed to guess my thoughts. "You must have been photographed so many times!" he said. But there are lots of people who are never professionally photographed, never interviewed. My own brother, for instance. I don't think there's a single interview with him anywhere, despite the fact that he's the head of a university department. Perhaps he wouldn't enjoy the self-revelation as much as I do, but there's undoubtedly an inverse relationship between willingness to speak and the interestingness of the results.
We should turn the spotlight on the taciturn, interview the never-interviewed, turn and face the strange, squeeze blood from a stone. We should introduce genuinely new information into our media systems, and attempt to establish "equality of interview". We could start right here, right now, by interviewing the Anonymous Detractors and trolls who haunt these pages so enigmatically. Who are they, and what are their thoughts on the issues of the day?
I'll be on trains now until midnight, but I'd love to read some really telling interviews in the comments section when I get home. Today is the day to ask one another questions, and answer them in good faith.
I must say I love being interviewed, I love the way it makes you feel that people really care about what you think. Sitting in a Vienna bar last night, with a photographer shining bright lights and two reporters (one, Tex, a local TV star) alternating questions, I remembered what Morrissey had once said: being a celebrity is sometimes the only way to be treated at least half-decently as a human being. As all human beings should be treated.
But I also thought of the song at the end of The Threepenny Opera, the epilogue about "some in light, the others darkness". The photographer seemed to guess my thoughts. "You must have been photographed so many times!" he said. But there are lots of people who are never professionally photographed, never interviewed. My own brother, for instance. I don't think there's a single interview with him anywhere, despite the fact that he's the head of a university department. Perhaps he wouldn't enjoy the self-revelation as much as I do, but there's undoubtedly an inverse relationship between willingness to speak and the interestingness of the results.
We should turn the spotlight on the taciturn, interview the never-interviewed, turn and face the strange, squeeze blood from a stone. We should introduce genuinely new information into our media systems, and attempt to establish "equality of interview". We could start right here, right now, by interviewing the Anonymous Detractors and trolls who haunt these pages so enigmatically. Who are they, and what are their thoughts on the issues of the day?
I'll be on trains now until midnight, but I'd love to read some really telling interviews in the comments section when I get home. Today is the day to ask one another questions, and answer them in good faith.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-21 10:00 am (UTC)Q- Name/age/location
Q- Are you a morning person or an owl?
Q- Can you name all the characters in Friends (Including the guy in the coffee shop)
Q- If you had to use one album in your collection as a frisbee what would it be?
Q- Do you love someone?
Q- Fear?
Q- Do you hate a nation / peer / shop / celebrity.
Q- Euthanasia?
Q- Ambition? Or career? What are you going to achieve in life, what have you achieved?
wwb
Oh Go on then
Date: 2008-03-21 10:31 am (UTC)Q- Name/age/location - DictatorHall / 34 /Orlando, Florida
Q- Are you a morning person or an owl? I am a night owl.
Q- Can you name all the characters in Friends (Including the guy in the coffee shop) - Yes, well yes i can, information absorbed by osmosis from my wife.
Q- If you had to use one album in your collection as a frisbee what would it be? I have a CD by "The Nutty Boys". Dreadful.
Q- Do you love someone? Yes.
Q- Fear? Yes.
Q- Do you hate a nation / peer / shop / celebrity. No / no / no / Celebutarts.
Q- Euthanasia? They Need to pull their pants up and listen to proper music, not all this electronic nonsense.
Q- Ambition? Or career? What are you going to achieve in life, what have you achieved? I have achieved alot on paper. My goals are more emotionally fulfilling.
See... another fascinating interview, and another indicator of my chances of achieving celebrity.
DH
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-22 12:38 am (UTC)Russ Woods/23/Bloomington, Indiana, United States
Q- Are you a morning person or an owl?
Not much of either, really.
Q- Can you name all the characters in Friends (Including the guy in the coffee shop)
Nope.
Q- If you had to use one album in your collection as a frisbee what would it be?
Tom Petty's Greatest Hits
Q- Do you love someone?
Yes
Q- Fear?
Yes
Q- Do you hate a nation / peer / shop / celebrity.
Yes. I hate David Lynch, Slavoj Zizek, Leonard Cohen. Or at least their cultural presence.
Q- Euthanasia?
At every opportunity.
Q- Ambition? Or career? What are you going to achieve in life, what have you achieved?
I play music under the name Tinyfolk, but I'm going to school to be a librarian.