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Barbelinterview: Flyboy is dancing if you're asking...

  
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
17:45 / 15.10.02
I know we now have three of these running at once, but since exp has PMed me the questions I figure that's my cue... Better that than letting this fall hopelessly behind, right?

And the cry came back:

"Oi, sunshine - we'll ask the questions."

Very well...


Do you want to be famous? How do you want to be famous?

Let's start with the kind of honesty that ought to characterise these interviews: of course I want to be bloody famous. Fuck yeah. *However*, I care about such a thing much, much less than I did a few years ago, and a damn good thing this is too. My desire for fame was nursed in a teenage bedroom poring over endless music magazines and 'cult' books, and exacerbated by three years at a University where I came into occasional contact with people who were either related to famous people, or privileged and confident enough to make a degree of fame in their future quite likely, or already famous within the rather insular world of the Uni itself, or in the case of one attractive but EVIL person I once got horribly drunk with and leared all over, former stars of kids' tv...

Thankfully, the much-discussed and semi-mythical "real world" (and not The Real World, that only made me want to be famous as well, whatever the cost in loss of dignity... *shudder*) has taught me various lessons - and not so much hard lessons either... More that life can be very good without any of that fame and fortune nonsense - that you can meet the most incredible people in mundane 'normal' life... That you really *aren't* defined by what you do for a living... That whilst a little more money would be a big help, I'm not actually that materialistic, and would end up spending all my fortune on lager anyway, thus rendering me fat and objectionable. More so. Essentially, what I've learnt in the past few years is that I'm not as shallow as I once thought - go me - and that I'll also never be ambitious, in that sense.

However, what remains is the desire to create, and the desire to share what I create with other people, and for those people to offer me tribute as like unto a golden god - I mean, er, for those people to get a bit of a kick out of it. So in answer to the second question - I'd like people who like the kind of stuff that I like to like the kind of stuff that I do. Currently, for example, I'm only writing in the format of comic scripts, a direct result of having finished one for the first time back in March and having a kick-ass artist be very close to completing the art. Sure, I can lose myself in dreamy reveries (is that tautology?) about what a kicking the first issue of the latest trendy 'mature readers' X-Men spin-off, X-Grrls would get in the Comics forum here*, but for now, I'd be more than happy just to have one measly eight-page strip online somewhere that half a dozen people read and thought "hey, that wasn't bad".

Ah, yes. My big dream right now is to be not-very-famous in a field wherein even the relative superstars are, er... not very famous. Feel the megalomania. I told you I was cured.


Can you dance?

A few years ago, I came to two key realisations about dancing. One: that nine times out of ten dancing is a real case of 'fake it til you make it', ie if you believe that you can dance, then you can dance. Two: that dancing is something you do primarily for your own enjoyment and entertainment, not for the enjoyment or entertainment of anyone else who happens to be in the room - if anyone else likes it, that's a bonus.

So yes, I can dance. Actually, I find it interesting that this question has been phrased like this, because... well, surely anyone can dance? Ah, but can they dance well? Who cares? As long as you're not doing it in an anti-social, obnoxious fashion (by which I mean bumping into people who don't want to be bumped into, or grinding into people who don't want to be frotted, that kind of thing - not dancing to anti-social, obnoxious music - that's fine), this shouldn't even be an issue.

Although I must confess that I am a fan of people who can dance well (how exactly one judges this, I don't know, but we all have our preferences). Thing is, they tend to be the people who have reached the "I don't give a fuck how this looks" conclusion anyway... It's not something you can do and think about at the same time, you know?

In fact, these days my problem is not that I can't dance, but that - cue cray-zeee voice - I can't stop dancing. Walking down Euston Road with the discman on, some beat comes in, I start doing a little wiggle uncontrollably... sit in some bar and *that* tune comes on, I have to start nodding my head... It's a lot better than the other way round though, and while it was a long time ago, I've been there.


Have you ever taken ballet lessons?

No. But I'm beginning to think that ballet might be a much cooler pursuit than has previously been suspected, what with the alleged tutu-clad pasts of hardcore rappers Tupac Shakur and Havoc from Mobb Deep (were they in the same class, d'ya think - hence the later bitter rivalry, stemming perhaps from Havoc being stuck in the chorus line for being a short-arse?), and the recent episode of Angel devoted to it.


More on way, but keep 'em coming in the meantime...

*Don't worry kids, I don't really harbour a desire to write a comic for Marvel called X-Grrls. It's called Anarchist Lesbian X, silly.
 
 
Lilith Myth
17:53 / 15.10.02
Can't remember what the rules are on question asking, so hit me if I'm out of line. My question is: why/how did you get interested in middle east politics?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
18:22 / 15.10.02
No problem, LM, I'll get to it as and when. Good question, by the way.

What are you obsessed with? Tell us about it, please.

What *aren't* I obsessed with? (I identify too much with what Haus said about not having obsessions apart from all the obvious ones...)

I suppose my continuing broader obsessions are probably music, pop culture generally (by which I mean everything from comics to Craig David, Bret Easton Ellis to Eastenders), fiction - I say fiction rather than 'literature' for fairly obvious reasons, ie I hate the implications of the latter in some ways and like the inclusiveness of the former - all of which I suppose fall under the more general heading of aesthetics. Which in turn is quite neat because it leaves everything else to fall under the heading of politics... not that I entirely believe in keeping the two separate, but you get the point.

Politically I'm obsessed with... hmm, how to sum something like this up glibly. People who don't compromise. People who aren't afraid to be called 'militant', people who would rather not be called 'moderate' if it means brushing injustice under the carpet. People who speak unreasonable truths rather than reasonable truisms. People who know that some binary opposites turn out to be true, after all. The necessity of redistribution of wealth. The desirability of abolishing immigration controls. David Blunkett's head on a stick. You get the picture...

There are other obsessions which only surface now and again - eg religion in general, Christianity in particular, and even more specifically heresy/apostasy. What would be another one - oh yeah, crap father figures. Both of these are well-trodden and slightly angsty but they occasionally yield useful thoughts.

Tempted at this point to say 'sex', but... I've more or less always stuck to my guns about not talking about sex in a personal sense on Barbelith, and this holds true in 'real' life, too (although shit, how many people do you meet outside of Barbelith who drop "I have regular sex/breasts/functioning gentials, you know" into the conversation arbitrarily). I think it's fair to say that I'm obsessed with sex in a curiously detached way (although quite common amongst some people I know, so maybe not that curious)... I'll come back to this because it ties into some later questions, but I often obsess about sex, or people I find sexually attractive, in an almost narrative sense, a sense that ties in almost exactly with the ways I obsess about fiction or music... Does this just make me a voyeur? Maybe it would be more accurate to say I am obsessed with women - in a way that hopefully combines the aesthetics and politics and doesn't make me sound like too much of a dribbling, well, fanboy for want of a better word. But as I side, we'll come back to this, especially when I start feeding myself questions about being a heterosexual male feminist...

Currently I am obsessed with these more specific things: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Neptunes, Farscape, Angel/Buffy (that one's almost a constant), Paul Pope, Philip Bond, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Office, Missy Elliot's 'Work It', the general underappreciated brilliance of shiny POP! music, black and white comics about kids kicking ass, Baader Meinhof (the band, not the terrorist gang, except by proxy)... these are pretty much all pop culture things, eh? Why don't I come back to this one adding new things I get obsessed with as and when...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:48 / 16.10.02
Do you miss Barbelith now your posting is so much less regular?

Not as much as you might think, largely because I visit Barbelith without posting a lot more than I used to... I think I actually spend only a mildly unhealthy amount of time here now rather than an unfeasibly unhealthy amount. The restriction of my access to the net probably impacts on other things more: I hardly ever discover new sites, I've stopped following certain blogs etc, I'm really bad at keeping in touch with people online, I find it impossible to maintain my own blog with any kind of regularity.

In terms of *how* it's affected my Barbelith posting... on the one hand, it's probably cut down quite a lot on the amount of rubbishy stuff I both post and read (I've finally learnt to ignore threads if their first few posts or even title aren't promising). In this sense I am very much in favour of Tom's imposition of posting limits. On the other hand, I frequently find these days that I want to write longer, more involved or thought-out replies to things but don't get round to it - I have a bunch of half-written posts stored on my non-net-accessing computer at home, some of which may hopefully see the light of Lith but most of which won't. I can't fight every 'battle', either, which sometimes means I end up in the ridiculous position of wanting someone to counter something, but not being able to myself (I have to sit on my hands to stop myself posting "oh just shut the hell up, you unbearable buffoon", which would help nobody). In fact sometimes I think I have definitely been guilty of posting something, being challenged on it, and not getting round to coming back - the threads get updated and the one in question drops off the bottom of the page, and so on. However, I think the solution to this is yet more disciplined use of Barbelith rather than increased access...
 
 
Our Lady of The Two Towers
16:42 / 16.10.02
If you went back in time and killed Tom, so that you could create and be the lord of the Barbelith Underground, how would it differ to the forum we know and love?
 
 
Mazarine
21:26 / 17.10.02
Is that all you're answering, Fly?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:46 / 18.10.02
Of course not - but this might take a while. I'll try to get a substantial number answered over the weekend...
 
 
Whisky Priestess
18:37 / 18.10.02
Will you sign my breasts?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:51 / 19.10.02
Ah, the silly season has begun.


Will you sign my breasts?

That would be unprofessional. Ask Jack the Bodiless. Although be careful, he might tattoo them instead (the upside of this might be a potential career move into hip-hop as the new Lil'Kim/Charli Baltimore, although this might necessitate faking Jack's death first and releasing a tribute single - sampling huge chunks of Marillion, obviously).

Has Grant Morrison, for your money, ever topped the "Black Zoid" storyline?

I don't really remember the Black Zoid. I do remember Silverman, though, and the story in which he went evil, and was then revealed to be an android - or maybe we knew he was an android all along - really someone should have guessed this, though... Silver. Man. Do you see? Anyway, then he came back built out of Zoid parts in a half-humanoid, half-spider stylee, an image which Morrison would later use again in Doom Patrol, and as a wee lad this was the first shockingly memorable GM moment I would encounter. Later ones included Animal Man's arm being ripped off (I didn't find out what happened next for about a decade), and various marvellous Zenith moments - at no point did I realise all these were written by the same guy though, not until much later.

So, Zoids was my first exposure to the man's work, and I still enjoy reminiscing about it. His best though, to my mind, and the one he's struggled to top, has to be Kill Your Boyfriend. "Have you read Giovanni's Closet?" "No, but I've a good idea what he keeps in it."
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
13:18 / 19.10.02
Who's your Great Briton, and why? Or do you reject all such nationalistic categories, and if so, why?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:33 / 19.10.02
If you were given the choice between punching Tony Blair, kissing somebody you found enormously attractive but had previosuly never really spoken to, and shooting Daniel o'Donnell in the lungs, what would you do?

Make love, not war, man. Or rather: I have no beef with Daniel O'Donnell - indeed I have only a very vague sense of who he is. He intrudes on my life very little, and shooting him would thus be an unconscionable act, not to mention a waste of ammunition.

Meanwhile, my ability to throw a good right hook is hardly legendary. Were I to punch Tony, my puny blow would probably glance off his teeth and scrape my knuckles, achieving nothing. Besides, even if it was satisying for me, 'Bomber' Blair would still be left at the end of the day to go back to orchestrating mass murder, corruption and injustice.

So we're going with the stranger-snogging, which as Dread Pirate Crunchy has pointed out can be an act of political rebellion in itself. Am I allowed to choose who, or is this just the archetypally spunky grrl with Quentin Quire's haircut with whom I just made half-a-second's too much eye contact at the bar of a bar somewhere between Old Street and King's Cross, and then eulogised upon my return to a table packed with members of the Barbelith London Clique, in the process spilling lager all over Haus' comfy-yet-practical synthetics and sleazenation's shiny temples? Actually, waitasec, that'll do fine...

(Let's be clear that this does not represent me disowning violence completely, though - if you'd made the other two options "garrotting Jack Straw with barbed wire" and "kicking a sack containing the lead singers of Toploader, Travis and the Stereophonics down a flight of concrete stairs", it would have been a much-harder decision to make...)


Did you ever have to wear braces on your teeth? What about headgear? Or retainers? Did you have nightmarish experiences? If you didn't wear these things, did you want braces, headgear, retainers?

No to all of these questions except the fourth. In the UK, we don't really have much truck with braces, and we barely know what a 'retainer' is (although wait, I've seen Ghost Dog - is this something to do with Samurai?). We prefer to let our children's teeth run free and crooked. Point is, most of my schooldays were nightmarish enough without any bolt-on extras to enhance my swotty punchability. It's a wonder I'm sane: remind me to tell you about it sometime...

(I've no idea what 'headgear' means, actually. Hats? We didn't have to wear caps at my school, it wasn't that posh, but it was posh enough to ban any other kind of hat, especially the dreaded baseball cap, perenially associated with Americans, commoners and blacks. Anyway, I cannot wear any kind of hat without looking utterly ridiculous - don't know why, just something to do with the shape of my head. Pity, since I quite fancy a nice fedora - possibly even a bowler, me droogs - but no: they make me look like Terry fucking Pratchett.)
 
 
The Apple-Picker
16:21 / 19.10.02
No time like the present....

Flyboy: How were your schooldays nightmarish enough to put your sanity at risk?


[All those things--braces, headgear, retainers--are all terrific devices of torture to the end of being orthodontically correct. Headgear is a strange-looking wire contraption that kind of bolts into special fixtures on one's braces. Headgear is considered the most socially torturous of all orthodontic equipment. [See Joan Cusack in 80s movie "Sixteen Candles"] The wires stick out from your face in a half moon, the other half is completed by an elastic band that wraps around the back of your head. Retainers are the wire and plastic mouthpieces that are usually worn after one has their braces removed.]
 
 
grant
13:22 / 20.10.02
Do you drink as much as you seem to, from references online? Does this ever worry you?
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
15:07 / 20.10.02
I was going to group these into things like 'comics', 'music', 'personal', etc, but a) I can't be arsed, and b) isn't it just more *fun* this way, kids? Isn't it?


If the writer of Team Achilles collaborated with Phil Bond on a cartoon about a plot by the Iraqis to clone Electrelane to use as shock troops, would you buy it or burn it, or both?

Haus: you’re kidding, right? Dude, I bought the last Angel & The Ape mini for the Philip Bond art, and this hypothetical project can’t be worse in the writing department than that. Add the sheer appropriateness of Bond drawing Electrelane (especially the drummer), and the way the whole pitch reminds me faintly of Big Dave, and I’m sold. On a general note: things which are politically/ideologically dodgy in content but brilliant in artistic execution are usually worth a look. Avoiding them tends to make life that little bit glummer and grayer – more on this when I answer one of Flux’s music questions. (To get back to the specifics though – the reason this is a much easier question to answer than you might have thought is that you’ve inadvertently given Micah Wright a premise far funnier and cooler than anything he would have ever dreamt up himself, thus essentially ratcheting the quality of the whole project up a notch.)
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
18:34 / 22.10.02
Come on, old thing... paltry net access is a reasonable excuse, but I want some more entertainment...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
19:39 / 13.11.02
I am very crap and slightly sorry.

Would you ever consider running for public office, to get on the inside of public office and try to make a difference? Do you think that if you did get into office, you could make some kind of positive change?

‘Ever’ and ‘consider’ offer quite a lot of scope, so I’m going to have to say yes. It’s not *likely* to happen, but I think it would be a mistake to write it off at this stage. Would I be able to change things for the better? Difficult. We’re talking local councilor level here, presumably, in which case… if I were able to maintain the stamina, perseverance and motivation necessary to keep plugging away in the face of what I imagine might be ceaseless frustration, I might end up making things ever so slightly better in a small way for a few people.

Now, if we’re getting imaginative here and talking about big time crazy power, thinks get a lot trickier. The idealistic anarchist in me knows that political power as we understand it is essential a very bad thing, but were I to, say, accidentally wake up with the kind of mandate we might call ‘absolute power’, the authoritarian hard-left extremist in me would relish the opportunity to dismantle corporations, forcibly redistribute wealth, abolish border control & freedom of movement restrictions, impose all kinds of political-correctness-gone-mad hate-speech/anti-discrimination laws (goodbye, clause 28). We’re assuming I’m what, Prime Minister of the UK? Or what was it Cromwell called himself, Lord Protector – I’ll be dat. So Britain is probably pulling out of all kinds of foreign policy agreements as well (let’s face it, the special relationship between the UK and US is fucked, unless [Your Name Here] just seized power there and is dismantling the entire US military-industrial complex…), and if we do go ahead and apply the principal of not doing business with any nation state or government engaged in the repression of its people or another’s, Britain will soon be diplomatically isolated and subject to innumerable sanctions... Suffice to say, before we know it, there would be enough popular unrest to make a coup (probably US backed) and my subsequent exile or execution inevitable, and not even my S1W-style personal militia would save me.

Nah. Better to work on subverting things from the outside. I’m amazed no-one thought of it before.


Do you drink as much as you seem to, from references online? Does this ever worry you?

I don't drink anywhere near as much as used to be fairly commonly referenced on Barbelith - or at least, not in the sense of 'as often' or 'as frequently'. I'm not actually an alcoholic, and specifically I'm certainly not someone who likes to drink alone, or have some alcohol, even a small amount, every night. However, I do have a tendency to not *stop* drinking once I reach a certain level of drunkenness which might accurately be described as 'pissed'. I think this is where the 'reputation' comes from, the fact that I'm actually a complete lightweight who just doesn't respect their own limits and who has therefore behaved in various amusing/embarrassing/offensive/irresponsible ways at social gatherings. (Incidentally, Barbelith meets tend to start in the afternoon and be full of people, some of whom I won't have met before, and the two are often a recipe for more drinking than usual...)

Am I worried about my drinking? I guess, although not so much these days as, due to money/work/other factors, I don't get drunk to the extent that I do bad things and then don't remember them anymore, much. That *was* worrying when it was a regular occurence, but it hasn't been for a while. The proportion of available finances I spend on drink is also a cause for concern (only cuz I'm broke though, it's still not that much), but really that's due to an inability to turn down socialising invitations, which tend to mean drinks in pubs (yes, I could just nurse a coke all night... not the same). But all in all, there are a lot worse vices to have, and a lot more worrying things to worry about, so... It doesn't really pray on my mind.

(There may also be a degree to which I am still guilty of falling for the romanticised image of the drunk... Deano, Withnail, ODB, yada yada... But that's another question, I think.)


And now, a word from our sponsors: Buy the hot new Cristina Aguilera single, 'Dirrty'! It's got Redman on it and anything suds says about it is a filthy lie! Thank you.
 
  
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