Close Encounters of the Shower Meme Kind (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kenhighcountry, that
Jun. 13th, 2003 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coyotegothOnce again, my thanks to anoisblue, for coming up with this niftiness. A friend of mine from college still owes me questions, along with one or two other people. Other than that, I should be finished with my answers- and questions, for those that requested them- by Monday.
Goffchick’s questions
1. Where did your nickname Coyote come from? I’ve had it since college; I’ve always loved the Native American conception of the Coyote as a laughing prankster, performing all kinds of clever feats for the benefit of his people.
2. What is your favourite conspiracy theory, and do you believe in it? It's not really a conspiracy theory, but I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for the school of thought which maintains that Orson Welles was involved in the Black Dahlia case. He would’ve been busy making The Lady From Shanghai, but you never know with Welles...
3. What is the most important thing you've learned so far from life? A friend of mine had a mother who’d go around to school, talking to elementary students about the faint blue number tattooed on her upper arm; she was one of the most emotionally healthy, most secure people I’ve ever known. Once, I was watching her stir something in a pot on her stove; I asked her, "Do you ever dream about it?" She turned to look at me, putting the spoon down for a moment. "Yes, I do," she finally said, "but I know they’re just dreams."
4. What dream has stuck with you the most? Literal dream? It’s a dream I had about ten years ago; I’m sitting at the kitchen table of my college apartment, talking to a friend of mine who had committed suicide about five years previously, as we sip bad coffee from styrofoam cups. He’s telling me about why he killed himself... yeah. That one.
5. If you were stranded on a desert island, what five people would you want to be stranded on the same island with you, so you could hunt them down, kill and eat them for food? Any five plump, non-muscular types, I guess; most of my best enemies are too greasy to eat.
Lawnrrd’s questions
1. What about movies as a form of art and entertainment makes them appeal to you so much? One of the most fascinating things for me about my love of movies has been charting how my own responses to have them have changed and grown over time. The first (adult) movie I ever saw was Jaws, in 1975; more than any other aspect of that brilliantly directed movie (and a particular tip o' the Stetson here to Verna Fields, whose Oscar-winning editing is still a benchmark for film editing work), I remember empathizing with Roy Scheider's Brody. From seemingly hapless, knocking brushes off a shelf as he tries to jury-rig signs in the face of opposition from the city council; through his increasing determination to kill the shark that threatened his son, despite his own fear of the ocean; to finally laughing with Hooper as they swim back to shore, the monster defeated (I still remember that almost subliminal dragon's roar as the camera pans to follow the shark's shattered body as it sinks to the ocean's bottom), we’re with him all the way.
Later, when I began to seriously appreciate film as film, I was all about the auteur, whose frames and flms were his. (Alas, Leni Reifenstahl aside, most auteurist directors have been male- but that's a subject for another rant.) This is a film by Kubrick, this one by Gilliam; this is a film of Welles'; I've always been fascinated by the process by which one man makes a million manifold, seemingly unrelated artistic decisions, and focuses the world into his own unique vision.
Just now, I most appreciate the collaboration of the arts which is possible in film- this piece of music with that close-up gesture; that angle on the photography, punctuated by this edit. A movie is hundreds of seemingly disparate artists working together to bring a story to life; at their best, they make their results flow together seamlessly, like voices raised in song.
2. Who are your favorite actors (living or dead), and why?
(I’m going to arbitrarily limit this to ten people, as space is limited.)
Mitchum- The laconic fatalism; the threat lurking beneath the affability; I'll always wish he could have played deputy sheriff Lou Ford in Thompson's The Killer Inside Me.
Bogart- it's Bogart; what else can I say? No one else understood the pain of romantic sacrifice the way he did, and no one bro ught cheap, seedy characters to life like this actor from the Upper East Side.
Mifune- Kikuchiyo. Yojimbo. Red Beard. An emotional rawness that can only be compared to Brando, coupled with a panther's lethal grace.
Welles- An incomparable presence, with a vitality and enjoyment of life most people never dream of. His acting is often given short shrift next to his directing, but that isn't fair: the eerily privileged moment in Citizen Kane, where Susan thoughtlessly blurts, "You know what mothers are like." The camera cuts to Welles, in one of the comparatively few medium-close shots in the film, as he softly answers, "Yes..." You don’t have to know Beatrice Welles died when Orson had just turned eight, or that he carried unresolved feelings about her passing for the rest of his life, to understand the depth of emotion here.
The hurt look in Falstaff’s eyes, at the end of Chimes at Midnight, when Prince Hal has dismissed him, having outgrown their games. You can feel both Falstaff and Welles looking ahead here, to the emptiness, and the end.
The gleeful, calculating glint in Harry Lime’s eye as he greets his old school friend, Holly Martin, on an abandoned ferris wheel, smiling as he casually remarks how he could rid himself of Holly’s complicating presence with a shove. Lime is a schoolboy Machiavelli; in the end, his dreams of comradeship catch him up, preventing him from finishing the job of covering his tracks, thereby sealing his fate. He’s not the only Welles character to die pursuing a childhood dream of sorts (and for the first time, it occurs to me that Lime has more than a little in common with Jay Gatsby. Must think further on this).
Von Stroheim- Anyone who loves the self-invention that is possible in the movies should study the life of this millner's son, who invented a life for himself as a member of the Austrian nobility on the boat to America, and spent the rest of his life living up to that myth. The past as a member of the nobility was spurious; the ache of mourning for a vanished age was all too real.
Lange- Such strength; such power on a screen, coupled with a face you could look at for days. Our best contemporary Hollywood actress.
Kay Kendall- A knockabout comedienne, with matchless beauty, as well. A magazine recently referred to Emma Thompson as "the new Kay Kendall;" as much as I enjoy Thompson's (post-Branagh) work, I threw it across the room.
Garbo, Dietrich, Louise Brooks- If you know who they are, you'll know why; if you don't, you sho uld.
3. What do you most want to achieve in the near future? I want to be riding my bike with at least a shadow of the endurance I used to have, to be able to write again, and to have my damn camera out of the shop already (but I’m not bitter, mind you).
4. What, if anything, have you learned from being on LiveJournal? I don’t think I would formerly have ever used the word "sociable" to describe myself (other than a character in one PBEM game I used to be a part of); that’s been a surprise, and a pleasant one.
5. What, if anything, do you do for fun that might surprise people who don't know you very well? Write poetry.
Scheherazade’s questions
Q1: We all know what we would do if (God forbid) we found that we had, say, only 6 months to live. However, what would you do if a close friend of yours had been delivered of similar news and had asked you to go travelling with them for that time. Bear in mind that the time may be more or less than the six months and that their health will, undoubtedly, fail more as the time goes on and that you will be there at their death. If I hesitated, it wouldn’t be because of the emotional intimacy involved; I had a seriously ill friend visit me here recently, and hope to see her again soon. I’d probably just ride on my (hypothetical, but let it pass) credit cards; whatever it took.
Q2: I call round today, unexpectedly, and offer to cook dinner for you. What would I find in your fridge/cupboards? Almost nothing; I strongly dislike one of my apartment mates, and as the kitchen is a common area, I spend as little time there as possible.
Q3: The producers of a main channel reality TV show want to film you 24 hours a day. Would you do it and, if so, how would you cope with the positive/negative fame? Not only would I refuse, they’ll be lucky if the force of my invective doesn’t temporarily deafen them. "Smithers- release the hounds!"
Rmjwell’s questions
1. What's the origin of your LJ handle? "Coyote" has been a name of mine since college. When I started my LJ account, I was frequenting the nycgoth.com chat room, thanks tothat pernicious bad influence my best friend, frostythoughts. I needed an LJ name; "Coyote" was taken by some guy who posts about once a year; while staring at the screen at 3 am one morning, I finally said "Coyote... goth! Well, at least it's different..." If I’d known I’d still be using it two years on, I’d probably have put more thought into the matter- but there we are.
2. Who inspires you the most? Honestly? When I look at where I am now, and compare that with where I was in, say, 1996, that inspires me beyond measure. To quote Lawrence of Arabia, "Nothing is written."
3. Parents: devoted role models or agents of Satan?The one precludes the other? Maybe in YOUR belief system... Neither one, of course- merely flawed, loving (if you’re lucky, as I was) beings.
4. What is your secret mutant power? Three times in the last six weeks or so, in the midst of wide-ranging discussion, I’ve turned out to have a book on the exact subject we wound up discussing in my backpack, as well as having a certain CD that hasn’t been on the market in years. (What else is in there? you ask?The shrunken head of Ambrose Bierce Why, nothing much, I reply.)
5. When was the last time you did something that you knew in advance was not a wise thing to do? Voila. We’ve all had bad pickups; it’s something else to know in advance that you’re going to be miserable- but I needed to get my mind out of its then-current train of thought. (How bad was it? I typed at her computer until she fell asleep, then left; rather than take a shower and risk waking her up, I walked the 75-odd blocks to Union Square, so that the wind could wash away some of her cloyingly sweet perfume. More, I knew it would be roughly like that, going in.)
Greentara’s questions
1) Are you more like your mom or your dad? Wow- if there were an award for "shower meme question that dovetails uncannily with certain matters that have been preoccupying my own thoughts of late," this would win in a walk. I’ll simply note that I hope I’ve taken away certain characteristics from them both, and leave it at that.
2) If you were going to live in another country, do you know which one it would be? Italy, Japan or New Zealand.
3) Are you in love? As I believe you mean it- no, although I have many, many loved ones in my life.
4) What does it feel like to perform for an audience? In the moment before I begin, there’s "I’m about to jump out of this plane" anxiety; I’m usually running the first line of dialogue/song through my mind. Once I begin, and have the performance to focus on, the anxiety tends to go away; I’m busy running a moment-by-moment evaluation of how I’m doing need to take bigger breaths enunciate that line look at the audience more, coupled with moments of joy where I simply connect with the work. The fun part comes afterward, with (if I’m lucky) applause, and a huge whew of relief.
5) Has starting voice lessons changed the way you approach other areas of your life? Immeasurably. The part of my life where I sang was blocked behind some extremely scary memories for a long time; singing has helped me connect with other such blocked parts of my life, as well. I’m no great vocalist, but the process itself is beyond price for me.
Alifeofherown’s questions
1) Do you sort your laundry, or do you dump it all in the washer together? How 'bout the dryer? I send it out- our building doesn’t have a washer/dryer :) {After an unfortunate experience with a red towel, I ALWAYS sort (ed).}
2) What is your favorite Shakespearean play? Why? Oof- this is like asking me my favorite Kurosawa film. It changes every now and again, depending on my mood and ten thousand other things. It’s hard to beat Othello, but for the moment, I’ll have to go with Antony and Cleopatra (one of the comparatively few Shakespeare tragedies in which the protagonist never escapes into madness; both Antony and Cleopatra remain aware of their failure, and their failings, to the bitter end.) Shakespeare does a reasonable job of staying close to historical fact, and a matchless one of conveying the tragedy of Cleopatra and Antony's doomed love; even the supporting characters, such as the rough-hewn Enobarbus, shine. "What shall we do now, Enobarbus?" "Think, and die." Entire plays have said less.
3) Take a landscape portrait with infrared film. What is the focus in the picture? I love the silvery look tree leaves get with IR photography; a leafy tree, with plenty of eerily black IR sky in the background.
4) If you could take a college course, what would it be? One course? My first thought was "American history"- but it would take a PhD level of study to begin to do the complexities of that subject justice. Off the top of my head, I’ll pick a drawing course; I can bash out a landscape or an object, but the human face and figure have always confounded me. A brush-up on darkroom technique wouldn’t suck, either.
5) What (non-naughty) part of a woman's body is the most sensuous? You take your fingertips, and brush them along the nape of the neck... :)
6) Bonus round!
Power is _________________. Mercy is _________________.
Power is neither bad nor good; it simply is, like any other tool.
Mercy is absolutely necessary and invaluable for one-on-one interactions; however, if I had to choose between a society that emphasized mercy over justice, and one that favored justice over mercy, I’d choose the latter, hands down.
And once again, we're through. Welcome toeduncan and kadenza (whose LJ user info page amused me more than a little); per shower meme rules, if anyone want to be interviewed, simply drop a request. My apartment mate is gone this weekend, which means I can actually work on a computer which reliably allows me to reply to comments; oh, frabjous day!!!!
anoisblue, for coming up with this niftiness. A friend of mine from college still owes me questions, along with one or two other people. Other than that, I should be finished with my answers- and questions, for those that requested them- by Monday.Goffchick’s questions
1. Where did your nickname Coyote come from? I’ve had it since college; I’ve always loved the Native American conception of the Coyote as a laughing prankster, performing all kinds of clever feats for the benefit of his people.
2. What is your favourite conspiracy theory, and do you believe in it? It's not really a conspiracy theory, but I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for the school of thought which maintains that Orson Welles was involved in the Black Dahlia case. He would’ve been busy making The Lady From Shanghai, but you never know with Welles...
3. What is the most important thing you've learned so far from life? A friend of mine had a mother who’d go around to school, talking to elementary students about the faint blue number tattooed on her upper arm; she was one of the most emotionally healthy, most secure people I’ve ever known. Once, I was watching her stir something in a pot on her stove; I asked her, "Do you ever dream about it?" She turned to look at me, putting the spoon down for a moment. "Yes, I do," she finally said, "but I know they’re just dreams."
4. What dream has stuck with you the most? Literal dream? It’s a dream I had about ten years ago; I’m sitting at the kitchen table of my college apartment, talking to a friend of mine who had committed suicide about five years previously, as we sip bad coffee from styrofoam cups. He’s telling me about why he killed himself... yeah. That one.
5. If you were stranded on a desert island, what five people would you want to be stranded on the same island with you, so you could hunt them down, kill and eat them for food? Any five plump, non-muscular types, I guess; most of my best enemies are too greasy to eat.
Lawnrrd’s questions
1. What about movies as a form of art and entertainment makes them appeal to you so much? One of the most fascinating things for me about my love of movies has been charting how my own responses to have them have changed and grown over time. The first (adult) movie I ever saw was Jaws, in 1975; more than any other aspect of that brilliantly directed movie (and a particular tip o' the Stetson here to Verna Fields, whose Oscar-winning editing is still a benchmark for film editing work), I remember empathizing with Roy Scheider's Brody. From seemingly hapless, knocking brushes off a shelf as he tries to jury-rig signs in the face of opposition from the city council; through his increasing determination to kill the shark that threatened his son, despite his own fear of the ocean; to finally laughing with Hooper as they swim back to shore, the monster defeated (I still remember that almost subliminal dragon's roar as the camera pans to follow the shark's shattered body as it sinks to the ocean's bottom), we’re with him all the way.
Later, when I began to seriously appreciate film as film, I was all about the auteur, whose frames and flms were his. (Alas, Leni Reifenstahl aside, most auteurist directors have been male- but that's a subject for another rant.) This is a film by Kubrick, this one by Gilliam; this is a film of Welles'; I've always been fascinated by the process by which one man makes a million manifold, seemingly unrelated artistic decisions, and focuses the world into his own unique vision.
Just now, I most appreciate the collaboration of the arts which is possible in film- this piece of music with that close-up gesture; that angle on the photography, punctuated by this edit. A movie is hundreds of seemingly disparate artists working together to bring a story to life; at their best, they make their results flow together seamlessly, like voices raised in song.
2. Who are your favorite actors (living or dead), and why?
(I’m going to arbitrarily limit this to ten people, as space is limited.)
Mitchum- The laconic fatalism; the threat lurking beneath the affability; I'll always wish he could have played deputy sheriff Lou Ford in Thompson's The Killer Inside Me.
Bogart- it's Bogart; what else can I say? No one else understood the pain of romantic sacrifice the way he did, and no one bro ught cheap, seedy characters to life like this actor from the Upper East Side.
Mifune- Kikuchiyo. Yojimbo. Red Beard. An emotional rawness that can only be compared to Brando, coupled with a panther's lethal grace.
Welles- An incomparable presence, with a vitality and enjoyment of life most people never dream of. His acting is often given short shrift next to his directing, but that isn't fair: the eerily privileged moment in Citizen Kane, where Susan thoughtlessly blurts, "You know what mothers are like." The camera cuts to Welles, in one of the comparatively few medium-close shots in the film, as he softly answers, "Yes..." You don’t have to know Beatrice Welles died when Orson had just turned eight, or that he carried unresolved feelings about her passing for the rest of his life, to understand the depth of emotion here.
The hurt look in Falstaff’s eyes, at the end of Chimes at Midnight, when Prince Hal has dismissed him, having outgrown their games. You can feel both Falstaff and Welles looking ahead here, to the emptiness, and the end.
The gleeful, calculating glint in Harry Lime’s eye as he greets his old school friend, Holly Martin, on an abandoned ferris wheel, smiling as he casually remarks how he could rid himself of Holly’s complicating presence with a shove. Lime is a schoolboy Machiavelli; in the end, his dreams of comradeship catch him up, preventing him from finishing the job of covering his tracks, thereby sealing his fate. He’s not the only Welles character to die pursuing a childhood dream of sorts (and for the first time, it occurs to me that Lime has more than a little in common with Jay Gatsby. Must think further on this).
Von Stroheim- Anyone who loves the self-invention that is possible in the movies should study the life of this millner's son, who invented a life for himself as a member of the Austrian nobility on the boat to America, and spent the rest of his life living up to that myth. The past as a member of the nobility was spurious; the ache of mourning for a vanished age was all too real.
Lange- Such strength; such power on a screen, coupled with a face you could look at for days. Our best contemporary Hollywood actress.
Kay Kendall- A knockabout comedienne, with matchless beauty, as well. A magazine recently referred to Emma Thompson as "the new Kay Kendall;" as much as I enjoy Thompson's (post-Branagh) work, I threw it across the room.
Garbo, Dietrich, Louise Brooks- If you know who they are, you'll know why; if you don't, you sho uld.
3. What do you most want to achieve in the near future? I want to be riding my bike with at least a shadow of the endurance I used to have, to be able to write again, and to have my damn camera out of the shop already (but I’m not bitter, mind you).
4. What, if anything, have you learned from being on LiveJournal? I don’t think I would formerly have ever used the word "sociable" to describe myself (other than a character in one PBEM game I used to be a part of); that’s been a surprise, and a pleasant one.
5. What, if anything, do you do for fun that might surprise people who don't know you very well? Write poetry.
Scheherazade’s questions
Q1: We all know what we would do if (God forbid) we found that we had, say, only 6 months to live. However, what would you do if a close friend of yours had been delivered of similar news and had asked you to go travelling with them for that time. Bear in mind that the time may be more or less than the six months and that their health will, undoubtedly, fail more as the time goes on and that you will be there at their death. If I hesitated, it wouldn’t be because of the emotional intimacy involved; I had a seriously ill friend visit me here recently, and hope to see her again soon. I’d probably just ride on my (hypothetical, but let it pass) credit cards; whatever it took.
Q2: I call round today, unexpectedly, and offer to cook dinner for you. What would I find in your fridge/cupboards? Almost nothing; I strongly dislike one of my apartment mates, and as the kitchen is a common area, I spend as little time there as possible.
Q3: The producers of a main channel reality TV show want to film you 24 hours a day. Would you do it and, if so, how would you cope with the positive/negative fame? Not only would I refuse, they’ll be lucky if the force of my invective doesn’t temporarily deafen them. "Smithers- release the hounds!"
Rmjwell’s questions
1. What's the origin of your LJ handle? "Coyote" has been a name of mine since college. When I started my LJ account, I was frequenting the nycgoth.com chat room, thanks to
frostythoughts. I needed an LJ name; "Coyote" was taken by some guy who posts about once a year; while staring at the screen at 3 am one morning, I finally said "Coyote... goth! Well, at least it's different..." If I’d known I’d still be using it two years on, I’d probably have put more thought into the matter- but there we are.2. Who inspires you the most? Honestly? When I look at where I am now, and compare that with where I was in, say, 1996, that inspires me beyond measure. To quote Lawrence of Arabia, "Nothing is written."
3. Parents: devoted role models or agents of Satan?
4. What is your secret mutant power? Three times in the last six weeks or so, in the midst of wide-ranging discussion, I’ve turned out to have a book on the exact subject we wound up discussing in my backpack, as well as having a certain CD that hasn’t been on the market in years. (What else is in there? you ask?
5. When was the last time you did something that you knew in advance was not a wise thing to do? Voila. We’ve all had bad pickups; it’s something else to know in advance that you’re going to be miserable- but I needed to get my mind out of its then-current train of thought. (How bad was it? I typed at her computer until she fell asleep, then left; rather than take a shower and risk waking her up, I walked the 75-odd blocks to Union Square, so that the wind could wash away some of her cloyingly sweet perfume. More, I knew it would be roughly like that, going in.)
Greentara’s questions
1) Are you more like your mom or your dad? Wow- if there were an award for "shower meme question that dovetails uncannily with certain matters that have been preoccupying my own thoughts of late," this would win in a walk. I’ll simply note that I hope I’ve taken away certain characteristics from them both, and leave it at that.
2) If you were going to live in another country, do you know which one it would be? Italy, Japan or New Zealand.
3) Are you in love? As I believe you mean it- no, although I have many, many loved ones in my life.
4) What does it feel like to perform for an audience? In the moment before I begin, there’s "I’m about to jump out of this plane" anxiety; I’m usually running the first line of dialogue/song through my mind. Once I begin, and have the performance to focus on, the anxiety tends to go away; I’m busy running a moment-by-moment evaluation of how I’m doing need to take bigger breaths enunciate that line look at the audience more, coupled with moments of joy where I simply connect with the work. The fun part comes afterward, with (if I’m lucky) applause, and a huge whew of relief.
5) Has starting voice lessons changed the way you approach other areas of your life? Immeasurably. The part of my life where I sang was blocked behind some extremely scary memories for a long time; singing has helped me connect with other such blocked parts of my life, as well. I’m no great vocalist, but the process itself is beyond price for me.
Alifeofherown’s questions
1) Do you sort your laundry, or do you dump it all in the washer together? How 'bout the dryer? I send it out- our building doesn’t have a washer/dryer :) {After an unfortunate experience with a red towel, I ALWAYS sort (ed).}
2) What is your favorite Shakespearean play? Why? Oof- this is like asking me my favorite Kurosawa film. It changes every now and again, depending on my mood and ten thousand other things. It’s hard to beat Othello, but for the moment, I’ll have to go with Antony and Cleopatra (one of the comparatively few Shakespeare tragedies in which the protagonist never escapes into madness; both Antony and Cleopatra remain aware of their failure, and their failings, to the bitter end.) Shakespeare does a reasonable job of staying close to historical fact, and a matchless one of conveying the tragedy of Cleopatra and Antony's doomed love; even the supporting characters, such as the rough-hewn Enobarbus, shine. "What shall we do now, Enobarbus?" "Think, and die." Entire plays have said less.
3) Take a landscape portrait with infrared film. What is the focus in the picture? I love the silvery look tree leaves get with IR photography; a leafy tree, with plenty of eerily black IR sky in the background.
4) If you could take a college course, what would it be? One course? My first thought was "American history"- but it would take a PhD level of study to begin to do the complexities of that subject justice. Off the top of my head, I’ll pick a drawing course; I can bash out a landscape or an object, but the human face and figure have always confounded me. A brush-up on darkroom technique wouldn’t suck, either.
5) What (non-naughty) part of a woman's body is the most sensuous? You take your fingertips, and brush them along the nape of the neck... :)
6) Bonus round!
Power is _________________. Mercy is _________________.
Power is neither bad nor good; it simply is, like any other tool.
Mercy is absolutely necessary and invaluable for one-on-one interactions; however, if I had to choose between a society that emphasized mercy over justice, and one that favored justice over mercy, I’d choose the latter, hands down.
And once again, we're through. Welcome to
eduncan and kadenza (whose LJ user info page amused me more than a little); per shower meme rules, if anyone want to be interviewed, simply drop a request. My apartment mate is gone this weekend, which means I can actually work on a computer which reliably allows me to reply to comments; oh, frabjous day!!!!
