johncomic | angelamermaid agreed to interview me!!

1. If you could permanently cure someone's blindness by being blind yourself for six months, would you do it? Whose blindness would you cure?

I would do it, if I had lots of help during the six months taking care of daily mundanities. I'd listen to lots of music (as if I don't already), and I'd dictate notes into a tape recorder for comics and stories and songs and whatnot, to work on when I got my eyes back. I'd get by okay... at my age, six months goes by just like that.

As for who to gift that way, I dunno... I don't know anyone personally who needs vision restoration.... all the great blind humanitarians I can think of offhand are dead... Right now, the only one I can think of is Stevie Wonder. Not that I'm a raving fan of his or anything, but I gotta admit that he has shown talent bordering on genius in any artistic endeavor he's turned his hand to... so it'd be interesting to see what he'd come up with as a visual artist... especially with the added vantage point of "fresh eyes".

2. What is your favourite Nirvana song and why?

In Bloom ... because everyone turns in a particularly sharp and walloping performance, the lyrics are sassy, the verse riff has this unusual twisted-wire quality yet is still instantly memorable, the sing-song-ey chorus always makes me smile, and the guitar solo is a personal all-time fave, one the most gorgeous "chunks of electronic howl, roughly chiseled into music-like shapes" ever to be recorded...

3. When people say, "Oh, I don't like jazz", what are they missing?

On the most superficial level, they're missing a chance to experience the pinnacle of musical performance. Jazz artists have done more than anyone else to push instruments to their physical, technical and expressive limits. This is musicianship as good as it gets.

Aside from that, 99.44% of jazz is music made with no hope of ever being a "hit" in clubs or radio or sales charts or anything, it's made purely because it's what the musician feels and wants to express. It's personal, it's pure, it's honest. It can express the entire range of the human heart. When you're feeling down, jazz can uplift you... or it can get down in there with you and let you know you're not alone. It's one of few musics that can surprise you and show you new possibilities. It's the human spirit unfolding in real time, sketching the moment that will never come again. It's alive. It is truth.

4. Tell me in a paragraph what is the most gorgeous photograph that the camera just wouldn't capture?

My daughter Paisley's smile...

I know from experience that the camera never really picks up the light in her eyes... but it also gives no idea of the warm ghosts that live in that smile... memories of her first laugh, toddling visits to the park, so many moments from those days when this dad sutff was all new to me (and of course being a kid was all new to her)... how her smile has grown more knowing over the years, watching her mind get sharper and deeper and her wit get quicker and keener... her smile contains the entirety of her, of us through all her years, and reminds me that I love her in a way I never knew I was capable of... I still feel like I never see that smile often enough to suit me...

And the camera misses so much of all that, it's surprising actually.

5. What was the worst thing that happened to you as a teen?

First, I stole my best friend's girl and convinced myself that it was okay to do so.

Second, I was then granted years of having my best friend's girl... an experience which warped my view of male-female relations in horrible ways for years afterward... looking back now I can see it was karma at work.

So I'd have to say that getting mixed up with her was the worst thing that happened then, even if it took me a while to realize it.

angelamermaid agreed to interview me!!

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