alonewiththemoon | questions

I am come late to the interview meme, but better late than never. Herein I answer questions from

brigid. And if you would like me to ask you questions, leave me a comment!

1) what the hell is up with nick cave being lame now? Ok more seriously, what about nick cave/en draws you in so much? you are the epitome of the die-hard fan when it comes to those bands, and i think that's really cool...but sometimes i wonder what is it about themthat grabs at people since generally stylistically they are not similar, even though they used to :( share band members

I wish I knew the answer to the first part. I can definitely understand/appreciate that he might sing about different things now with a different approach than he used to, but I don't know where his sense of musicality and good taste went >:( But on the more seriously side, speaking for myself, when I first started listening to nick cave and EN, I think there were more similiarities than one might expect. The Birthday Party had a lot of the desparate energy of earlier EN, and on the other side some EN songs like their cover of Morning Dew had some commonalities with Bad Seeds material. Since I don't understand German, I can't exactly say the two bands had similar content, but somehow NC's misanthropic lyrics and often painful voice and EN's mad mechanical instrumentation seemed to speak the same language. Nowadays, there aren't too many similarities between the two bands, but there's a shared history there. And No More Shall We Part grabbed me very much on an emotional and facing-growing-older level, the recognition that one has to be a responsible adult sometime but one doesn't have to lose that sardonic, caustic edge. EN's recent stuff completely engrosses me on an intellectual level these days--of course I enjoy the music aspect, but the words (in translation, anyway) are what take my breath away.

2) do you think you'd ever be interested in any other pets in addition to the ferrets?

I don't know... I love ferrets so much, and it can be hard to integrate other animals with ferrets because there's always safety concerns. I would hate to limit the ferrets' freedoms by bringing in another animal. I know Mathew would love a cat, but I'm allergic to many cats. I think if I did have other pets, if I did not have ferrets, I would have a dog, some big kind of non-water dog (allergic to dogs with oily coats). I used to be a cat person but somewhere along the line that changed. A horse would be super swell but sadly I'm aggressively allergic to barns and stables--I suspect it's the straw and not the horses themselves, but you don't really get one without the other. I don't really get the appeal of non-mammalian pets--they look neat and all, but it's just not my thing.

3) how do you pull off the goth thing so elegantly? seriously, i feel like it really fits you, more than most people i know, and i've always sort of been in awe of that..which is interesting because you don't strike me as a 'dark' person per say...so what do you think makes it all click?

*blush* I think being of Irish, Welsh and German descent I was destined to be melancholy at heart, the angsty Romantic poet type, only without so much writing of poetry ;-) More seriously, when I first encountered goth, it was through Bauhaus, who contrary to popular image do have a light side to them, and it completely clicked with me. You can ponder the depths and intricacies of the universe and what makes us feel alive, and the next minute you can sing about the hope for a brighter morning or even about fish cakes. I don't know--shrug--I guess I just honestly love and *feel* the excesses of gloom and doom while at the same time keeping a sense of humor about it. Have I sounded pretentious enough yet? ;) I would also say that I have lightened up as I have grown older--any elegance I have, I definitely had to age into. Like a lot of us, I had my own trials and tribulations.

4) what's up with the horse racing? how/why did you get into that? it sort of seems like a non sequitor

Actually, that's pretty straightforward--I was a horse-crazy kid, and never really outgrew it. I think they are beautiful animals, and watching a brilliant race by an amazing horse can make me cry with joy (I don't know how many times I've seen it, but every time I see the footage of Secretariat winning the Belmont, I lose it). I don't have any illusions about how unethical the sport can be at its worst, but horses do love to run, and when you see them out on the track that love is contagious and you just want them to go and go and go. And it's a way for me to enjoy horses vicariously, since up close doesn't work out.

Or it could just be that Irish blood again ;)

5) you've lived in lots of different places, do you think you want to stay here long-term? (aside from the friends and family) what do you like most about MA ?

I definitely plan to stay here long-term. I was pretty unrooted through most of my 20s, and one winter vacation as I flew into Boston at night, the skyline came into view in the plane window and this feeling just swelled in my heart--this was home. I knew partly I felt like that because I was taking refuge with my parents during the initial stages of my divorce, but it was a very powerful feeling. What I like about being here--part of it is cultural. I fit. I have lived in places where I dramatically did not fit (California, for one) and it made me miserable. I like the size of Boston, because it's big enough to have a lot in it yet small enough to make me feel like I can have some handle on it all. I know for some people that feels limiting, but it's what makes me feel comfortable in a place. That's probably part of why I liked Montreal so much. And Boston is a relatively intellectual city, something else that is important to me even if academia did not work out for me as a career path.

The cost of housing, though, that's not at all a nice aspect of Boston :(