Questions Answered v.1

From Kaaawababy:

1. What are YOUR fondest and worst memories QO?

Fondest: Mornings at McDonalds before school, or hanging out at the 7/11. Sleeping through physics class, and having Mr. Patchett drop a metal trash can in front of some other kid’s head who was sleeping – which woke us all up. The kid yelled, “How come she gets to sleep through class??” And he said, “She learns by Osmosis. When you start getting all A’s on your tests, you can sleep too.”
Worst: Crying in Mrs. Runyon’s art office after finding out my mother refused to sign my financial aid papers so I could get money for college. Having her call up my mother to yell at her, only to have my mother put her in tears, and then having her apologize to me for every having a mother at all. (this was after she threw me out, my senior year). Christ, now that I think about it…High School was my refuge from my mother. There’s not too much about it that I disliked other than the same embarrassing moments all kids went through. If it wasn’t for my teachers – I’d have never gotten through it. I’ve actually written several of them letters to let them know what an impact it made in my life, and how responsible they are for my success.

2. What inspired you to start dancing tango? (And do you still do it?)

Argh. Many moons ago, at the ripe age of 24, I nearly married a guy. During this time period he suggested we checkout a class, as a mutual friend of ours we worked with also was taking tango lessons. We took the beginning lessons together…and a month later, we broke up. He swore never to dance tango again (because he felt it was “our” thing), and I kept right on dancing. It was catharsis during the break-up; a way for me to turn my brain off and just not think; only dance. Pretty soon…I was competing, performing, and then teaching. I do still dance socially, but since the car wreck last year my knees have been pretty shot – so I’m limited to how long I can be on my feet. Surfing is helping with that though. I no longer teach groups – only the occasional private lesson with existing students from the old days, and I no longer perform. I only dance socially, purely for my own enjoyment. Not very often, though.

3. If you could live anywhere, where would you choose?

I love living here. But I’d also love a summer house in Buenos Aires, too. I’d spend the summers here writing, and the summers there surfing Mar Del Plata, dancing in BsAs, and perhaps some wine trips to Mendoza. I would love an apartment in Buenos Aires.

4. What's your favorite place you've ever visited and why?

That’s tough. I could tell you my least favorite place was Ensenata, because it was such a contrived tourist city with no soul. Favorite…I have so many favorites.

5. Which of your sisters was in the fifth grade where I student taught? (It kills me that I can't remember her name.)

That was Jami – the one I named after the bionic woman (she hates that).

Labels: meme

posted by Rain at 4:13 PM

On the understanding that this may take me days...

THE RULES:
1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like your favorite lyric to your current favorite song. Or your favorite kind of sandwich. Something random. Whatever you like.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your Blog with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions.


Deb Grabien asked me the following:

1. You and me and Mr. G: an evening on the town in San Francisco, no
strings, no holds barred, no financial considerations. What are we
doing
with it?

Wow – so many possibilities. I think we’d start early with dinner at your house. I hesitate to say that playing tour guide would be exciting at all – I mean, what’s to show him that he hasn’t seen here, that can be seen through the evening fog? Thing is with us three, we’d have more fun talking around belinis and/or good wine with the myriad of large felines ambling by. The only difference would be if I still had a dance partner in SF…or if one was visiting from Argentina. If that were the case, I’d organize a show at a local theater, as neither one of you has ever seen me dance (unless you count a dvd of a show at the SF Conservatory of Music I sent him…but I don’t think he ever got to watch it). Then we’d go to a cast party someplace…maybe at my friend’s Gallery (where they have bubbly), and chat the night away about dance, books, and rock and roll and why he stole Lou Reed’s look. (haha)

Seeing as how I can’t take either of you surfing. (see—that’s the look I’m talking about. You’re doing it right now).


2. Do you regret not staying with the rock and roll world?

The only time I ever regret it is when I go to see a live show. That surge of energy, the hum of the amps, the hot lights, the crowd – I miss being on stage. I miss my old band. I miss everything about feeling every note of every song I ever played in that moment. The beauty of this tiny pang of regret isn’t so much in ‘what could have been,’ as it is that it could still be…if I wanted to get back into it. I still have my voice, even if I don’t have my chops up on the guitar. Once a musician, always a musician – with a few thousand dollars I could always buy an old ’57 Gold Top Les Paul (or maybe a coffin burst…I miss those), hop in the car, and head to your place to plug into the boogie and begin the awful, arduous task of re-learning what I’ve let go. It’s not anything I want to do, though I’ve thought about getting back into a band with the voice.

3. Suppose you could take six months and go study guitar with any
guitar
great on earth. Who?

That’s extremely tough to answer. There are so, so many…for different reasons. If Randy Rhodes were still alive, for example – I’d pick him. It was Randy Rhodes and Jimmy Hendrix that first sparked my love of guitar and my yearn to learn. Joe Satriani maybe, right now, only because his was the first concert I ever went to (at 16), and I studied Surfing With The Alien to the point of exhaustion back then, learning this and that…figuring out his tapping…but his wide use of arpeggios and scales always seemed so very Mozart-like in his compositions, and there are so few Mozart-like people left who actually *compose* music, instead of just play it. Not to mention, learning to surf, I understand that record so much better now. “Always with me, Always with you,” for instance…is exactly like riding a wave on a summer day.

Actually…I take all that back. I’d study with the Gypsy Kings. I’ve always, always, always wanted to learn flamenco guitar. Or maybe Robbie Robertson…because he’s simple, fluid, and soulful.

Or the Edge…or Flea…ah crap. See what you’ve done? And I’m omitting the obvious ones based mainly on attitude alone (Ronnie Wood, for instance…Tommy Bolin because he’s long gone, and was so hopped up on drugs when he was alive that he’d never have been a good teacher. Dick Dale, too, but he always refers to himself in the third person and that bugs me).

4. One decision, one life-impacting change, that you made before the
age
of 21. You get to revisit it, and alter it. What is it? Why that one?

In the 4th grade, I was made to choose an instrument to learn in school. This was mostly to get out of an afternoon class (you got to miss it to study music). They made you try out all sorts of instruments to see what you were good for – some kids couldn’t blow into a trumpet, for instance, but I could. Some kids couldn’t finger a violin or make the bow work. But I could. I infinitely regret having chosen the flute instead of the violin…it would have changed how I approached the guitar in 7th grade, when I fell in love with it. It would have made things easier, I think…grander…more open of a learning experience. I might have continued with it, where I didn’t with the flute after 6th grade.

There are no other decisions that I made before 21 that I regret.

5. You're a poet. Three poets, genre or non, that you either admire
or
think are way overrated?

Lord Alfred Tennyson is perhaps my all time favorite, because of his Idylls of the King. I fell in love with Tennyson as a teenager, and have loved him ever since.

Carl Sandburg, because he wrote “Lines for Gene Kelly to Dance to” and gosh darn it, if you couldn’t dance to that poem read aloud. As a dancer, I appreciate that.

Clark Ashton Smith…because no one ever really got to read his poetry, since it was published in only 500 copies. I had the opportunity to read a rare copy one day at Odyssey Books (RIP) in San Rafael, when the owners had acquired one at a yard sale for $.50 (wow!). As genre stuff goes, it was early and innovative and no one was doing that sort of thing in the 30’s and 40’s. Not in poetry, anyway…not in poetry that got published. And…he was a hopeless romantic at heart.

Labels: friends, meme

posted by Rain at 10:32 AM