Meme - Interview
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I respond by asking you a couple of personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
From idolatrie
1) Describe the single best moment from your recent trip? (You can be liberal with the definition of moment)
There's a lot of competing moments for this, and at first I was tempted to describe a few scenes from my Italian gallivant. But in terms of extreme endorphin high, goofy grin and general euphoria, it actually has to be a day spent wandering round London capped off by a homecooked dinner with my Dad's brother Martin, his Italian wife Gina, and their totally gorgeous hilarious generous 12-year-old daughter Antonia.
That day made me have two minor epiphanies: (1) Yes, yes, I really absolutely can and do want to live in London; (2) Though part of me is stunned at how trite this is, I can't imagine anything more pleasurable in the world than being part of a happy home. A warm and openly affectionate father (and this, my dad's brother!), an irreverent, down-to-earth mother (both of whom believe in taking a little more time and effort to make meals and homes beautiful in the Italian way) and a child so totally secure in her parents' love for her and for each other that she bounds with confidence and energy, and the shadow of grief falls on her only as something she can help others with.
There actually are families like that.
2) Who is the most attractive man ever, in all history, and why?
Ach! You know I can't choose! It's so dependent on my mood, and whether I'm twelve (Mr Darcy!), thirteen (Byron!), fourteen (Faramir!), fifteen (Cicero! Caesar! Napoloeon!), sixteen (Euripides! Hornblower!), seventeen (Robert Browning! Trotsky!- shhh you-) eighteen (T.E. Lawrence! Peter O'Toole!) or Am Far Too Mature These Days to have such crushes, thank you (handsome, gloriously-voiced barrister spotted at the Royal Courts of Justice!)
But if one were to choose the Most Attractive Man Ever, a brief scan over my answers indicate the criteria would be (1) Charisma, charm, some form of magnetism; (2) Good looks (optional); (3) Excellent writing and/or oratorical ability; (4) Megalomania.
That was a total question dodge =)
I have weird taste in men, huh?
3) You have only two choices: to be an excellent lawyer and a fair-to-middling mother, or an excellent mother and a fair-to-middling lawyer. Which do you choose? (Please ignore the problems with the basic assumptions of the question. Or replace 'mother' with 'wife' if necessary)
I'd rather be a fair-to-middling lawyer and an excellent mother and wife. Once upon a time I may have answered the opposite, with the rationale that anyone can be an excellent mother, and how many have the intellectual capacity to be an excellent lawyer? Surely that's what makes me special? - I think visiting my uncle's family in London has made me reassess my priorities. It's important not to subsume your identity into your family, and it's important to keep a separate bank account (my mother's experience taught me that!), but I don't think the superstructure of "career" would in the end be as important to me as my domestic situation. Winning awards gives me a buzz, loving my sister Jenny makes me happy.
4) You have the one-time-only option of replacing English as your 1st language with any other language of your choice. This would involve losing your native fluency in English permanently (albeit gaining it in another language). Would you take the option, and if yes, for which language?
Thinking about all the languages I've ever wanted to learn (French, RUSSIAN, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian), I couldn't pick just one of them. Certainly none are as useful as the new lingua franca. And I cleave like a child to my mother tongue. Even though I left Italy wishing I were Italian, native fluency in Italian wouldn't make up for losing my English writers and poets, and all the words ideas & connotations embedded in my thoughts. (Who can think of the word "incarnadine" without adding "multitudinous seas"?)
5) So...what's the most important thing in life?
Living the good life, however you define it*.
I don't consider "being happy" to be the result of a specific action or as a fixed state in which one stagnates, but rather as the byproduct of performing one's personal preferred actions (which could range from drinking gin on the beach to serving country in the army to family to working eighteen-hour-days in a field you love).
Every other value like duty, honour, sin etc is social and transforms over time - the only real constant in your life is your own perception of pleasure and happiness, and therefore yours is the only one that matters.
*Hedged in with a bit of "do unto others" and Mill's harm principle etc.
2. I respond by asking you a couple of personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
From idolatrie
1) Describe the single best moment from your recent trip? (You can be liberal with the definition of moment)
There's a lot of competing moments for this, and at first I was tempted to describe a few scenes from my Italian gallivant. But in terms of extreme endorphin high, goofy grin and general euphoria, it actually has to be a day spent wandering round London capped off by a homecooked dinner with my Dad's brother Martin, his Italian wife Gina, and their totally gorgeous hilarious generous 12-year-old daughter Antonia.
That day made me have two minor epiphanies: (1) Yes, yes, I really absolutely can and do want to live in London; (2) Though part of me is stunned at how trite this is, I can't imagine anything more pleasurable in the world than being part of a happy home. A warm and openly affectionate father (and this, my dad's brother!), an irreverent, down-to-earth mother (both of whom believe in taking a little more time and effort to make meals and homes beautiful in the Italian way) and a child so totally secure in her parents' love for her and for each other that she bounds with confidence and energy, and the shadow of grief falls on her only as something she can help others with.
There actually are families like that.
2) Who is the most attractive man ever, in all history, and why?
Ach! You know I can't choose! It's so dependent on my mood, and whether I'm twelve (Mr Darcy!), thirteen (Byron!), fourteen (Faramir!), fifteen (Cicero! Caesar! Napoloeon!), sixteen (Euripides! Hornblower!), seventeen (Robert Browning! Trotsky!- shhh you-) eighteen (T.E. Lawrence! Peter O'Toole!) or Am Far Too Mature These Days to have such crushes, thank you (handsome, gloriously-voiced barrister spotted at the Royal Courts of Justice!)
But if one were to choose the Most Attractive Man Ever, a brief scan over my answers indicate the criteria would be (1) Charisma, charm, some form of magnetism; (2) Good looks (optional); (3) Excellent writing and/or oratorical ability; (4) Megalomania.
That was a total question dodge =)
I have weird taste in men, huh?
3) You have only two choices: to be an excellent lawyer and a fair-to-middling mother, or an excellent mother and a fair-to-middling lawyer. Which do you choose? (Please ignore the problems with the basic assumptions of the question. Or replace 'mother' with 'wife' if necessary)
I'd rather be a fair-to-middling lawyer and an excellent mother and wife. Once upon a time I may have answered the opposite, with the rationale that anyone can be an excellent mother, and how many have the intellectual capacity to be an excellent lawyer? Surely that's what makes me special? - I think visiting my uncle's family in London has made me reassess my priorities. It's important not to subsume your identity into your family, and it's important to keep a separate bank account (my mother's experience taught me that!), but I don't think the superstructure of "career" would in the end be as important to me as my domestic situation. Winning awards gives me a buzz, loving my sister Jenny makes me happy.
4) You have the one-time-only option of replacing English as your 1st language with any other language of your choice. This would involve losing your native fluency in English permanently (albeit gaining it in another language). Would you take the option, and if yes, for which language?
Thinking about all the languages I've ever wanted to learn (French, RUSSIAN, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian), I couldn't pick just one of them. Certainly none are as useful as the new lingua franca. And I cleave like a child to my mother tongue. Even though I left Italy wishing I were Italian, native fluency in Italian wouldn't make up for losing my English writers and poets, and all the words ideas & connotations embedded in my thoughts. (Who can think of the word "incarnadine" without adding "multitudinous seas"?)
5) So...what's the most important thing in life?
Living the good life, however you define it*.
I don't consider "being happy" to be the result of a specific action or as a fixed state in which one stagnates, but rather as the byproduct of performing one's personal preferred actions (which could range from drinking gin on the beach to serving country in the army to family to working eighteen-hour-days in a field you love).
Every other value like duty, honour, sin etc is social and transforms over time - the only real constant in your life is your own perception of pleasure and happiness, and therefore yours is the only one that matters.
*Hedged in with a bit of "do unto others" and Mill's harm principle etc.