interview ?'s from angelsil, & then some.

[jeniphirsummers]

1. What's on the top of your to-do list?
to secure a second job & get my bills paid off so that i can focus on attaining needs & wants (cell phone, apartment, new clothing, financial security).

2. Do you have a lot of acquaintances or a few very closer friends?i used to have tons of friends, but when things started getting rough in my life, i felt

Comments

Did I warn you I'm long-winded when I talk about myself?

[oberstgreup]

1) why charlottesville? hell. why virginia?

I was born in Richmond and my family goes back almost 400 years in VA. It's my home and I want to be buried here. I came to C-ville for a job and stayed because I haven't had any particular reason to leave - work takes up more of my life than anything else outside my home anyway, which is sad but necessary. It's pleasant enough here, and quiet, which suits me better now than at twenty. And I love the mountains.

2) what draws you to "twin peaks"?

Lynch's visual flair, unusual direction, willingness to take chances with non-linear plot and storytelling, and willingness to let the characters take the story where they need to take it rather than follow the dictates of the standard playbook make it unique in the history of TV. It's incredibly rich in esoteric, layered symbolism which can be explored to whatever depth the viewer chooses, but much of which is ultimately meaningless - a wonderful metaphor for life. The musical score is not to be underestimated. And I'm drawn to Laura Palmer just like everyone else is.

3) what drew you to the gothic subculture? what pulled you away?

Mostly my tastes aging away from punk (no one can stay that angry forever and not die, burn out, or turn fake), and punk becoming stale and obsolete in the late 80's and needing to die, and me drifting apart from other friends who had given me other stuff to be around. Goth reflected a lot of things that had always been a part of me: morbid obsessions, a bizarre mix of imagery with sex, religion, and violence, the need to find hope, meaning, and beauty in inevitably melancholy... it probably all sounds cliched, but it didn't at the time. Anyway it wasn't the subculture that drew me in, it was the music and aesthetic that drew me in; the subculture was just a way to find out more about those things and be around other people who could appreciate them and teach me more about them.

As to what pulled me away, I get older, the scene gets younger, the scene is plainly dying, its focus has pulled dramatically away from the things that attracted me to begin with, I don't know many people in it any more, and I work 60 hours a week and have nonstop migraines and never feel like going out. I'm no less "goth" than I ever was - it's just that I'm a less regular clubgoer now than I was when I had more time on my hands.

4) i'm often asked where i want to be in life in the next ten to fifteen years. where WERE you in life at my age (twenty)?

I had wanted to be a pilot for the Navy, fucked up my leg and had to leave the school and NROTC scholarship program I was in, moved back in with my parents and went to VCU because it was there - a lot of people ended up there who had no idea what they wanted to do with themselves. I had been dating an old high school sweetheart since the start of my second year of college, but she broke up with me right around the end of that year, and I think she was the last "normal" girl I dated for about 6 years after that.

So I drifted through life got a succession of McJobs ending at a record store, went to school part time, hung out with a bunch of punks in the Fan and Oregon Hill, and spent much of my life going to shows, smoking up, keeping a cup of coffee going at the Swillage all night, and trying (mostly in vain) to hit on girls. If you've seen High Fidelity with John Cusack, that was basically my life's path at ages 20-22.

5) i want to have ten thousand of your babies.

That would require a LOT of stamina. I don't know, too, it would also require, you know, fluid exchange, and I've seen Sex Chart and I know where you've been. ;-p Can we just have wild and raunchy but protected sex instead?

Besides, I hate kids (at least, in the spawning them myself sense as opposed to the having other people's around for a few hours at most to play with and warp their fragile little minds).

what do you do?

Are you actually asking about my job? How quaintly bourgeois! I thought we'd had that discussion, anyway. But one thing I absolutely insist on doing is keeping my professional life and my LiveJournal separate, except for generic bitching about how overworked I am. If that is indeed your question, ask again in private mail.