queste sono quelle tirate giù dalla signorina shelly griska...
CITAZIONE
I'm trying not to come here much, and I have to keep coming back to check this thread for information on where to post my questions!! Frustrating. So, I'll post them here for now, and hopefully won't miss it when actual information gets posted about how these things are going to be handled -- cover all my bases...
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Cedric
I have been interested in your use of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's image on the band's merchandise recently, and have noticed a tie-in between her 1880 essay on the number seven with the title of the b-side of your 12" single, "Sapta Loka". I wonder if you might speak about your interest in Blavatsky, and also about the significance of the Indo-Tibetan Seven Realms of Existence in terms of your piece by that name. I am also interested in your usage of tantric imagery in general -- from the flashing of the Kalachakra mandala during the "Inertiatic ESP" video, to the usage of Grdhimukha the vulture-headed dakini mentioned in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and associated with the Queen of the Dakinis, Vajrayogini, whose pure land bears a striking resemblance to the realm depicted in the "L' Via L' Viaquez" video, and on to the charnel ground lyrical imagery found in "Cassandra Geminni" and several of your live vocal improvisations. How did you come to be interested in tantra, and what is the significance of the usage of this imagery in terms of your work as a whole?
With regards to your 12" single, who besides you played on those pieces? Which instruments did you play? Would you ever consider recording a complete solo album? I really loved those two songs, and would be interested to hear more from you, outside of the confines of the band.
"Sapta Loka" is very firmly rooted in the Tibetan musical aesthetic, with its polyphonic drone base, on which the melodic elements dance with a freedom of rhythm and tonality that to a Western ear sounds almost chaotic. It seems to me that this type of aesthetic sense represents a logical extreme of the musical freedom that The Mars Volta have been pursuing. Was this a conscious point being made, or a happy accident?
Very soon after you debuted the song which we would come to know as "The Widow" at the Wiltern Shows in 2004, the song was identified by the title "El Viudo." By the time Frances the Mute was released, the title had apparently changed to "The Widow" -- representing not only a change of languages, but an apparent change of gender for the narrator. I wonder if this was a case of bad information getting spread around the internet early on, or did the title of the song actually change, and if so, why?
The motif of penance comes up repeatedly in your work -- stretching all the way back to the Dregtones' "good for my karma but don't be alarmed if I don't make it," through the "ectopic shapeshifting penance-propulsion" of the DITC storybook, the "karma debt" alluded to in "Frances the Mute", and onto the title "Vicarious Atonement" from your latest album's tracklisting. It seems as if your characters are very frequently making amends for their pasts, or suffering through retribution for them. Do you think any of your characters have ever made any real headway in clearing out these piles of debts, or do they only dig themselves deeper through trying to pay them off? Is there an exit door anywhere in sight, and if so, what is it?
Do you read much literature? Who are your favorite novelists, poets? Have you written any prose, besides the DITC storybook? Would you be interested in writing an actual published book, and if so, in what genre?
The collages you have made that have appeared on your merchandise have been very impressive, and fit so well visually with the feel of your music. Why don't you create all of the album covers yourself?
Someone had posted a while ago that you had said to them that you collect dolls, and that you make stop-action movies with them. First off, is this correct? If so, what type of dolls do you collect? What are these movies about? Is there any chance we will ever get to see them?
I have always been a big fan of vocal improvisation, and you are hands-down the most talented artist at that particular skill that I have ever heard. Do you go into the show with any preconceived notion of what you're going to improvise, or is it all strictly spontaneous in the moment it happens? You seem to embody a variety of characters and entities from one improv to the next, sometimes seem to even have conversations with yourself within a single improvisation. How closely related are these characters to the characters narrating the songs in which these improvs occur? With each song that you typically improvise in, there is a distinct style to your improvs, a given structure you typically follow, but these structures and styles differ from each other radically from one song to the other -- ie., Cassandra Geminni improvs typically feature a lot of call-and-response segments and listed segments, with a particular type of imagery that shows up again and again, whereas the Drunkships appear to tell a story of a dyad which has been split, the dynamic of which seems to evolve serially from one improvisation to the next, etc. It seems that with so many very different structures and constraints into which you are constantly working new thoughts, you have essentially a very rigorous series of writing exercises you perform every night. How important is this process to the development of your lyrics? Or does this process stand on its own and only tangentially influence your actual writing? There are times when it seems you are completely possessed by the entity doing the narration, where "Cedric" seems to have totally disappeared. Are you just a really good actor, or do you think there is something metaphysical going on? Both?
If you could have dinner and drinks with any three artists (visual, musical, written, whatever) from any era of history, who would they be and why?
If it weren't for your various creative pursuits, what do you think you would be doing with your life?
Who is the better cook, you or Omar?
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Omar
You have mentioned that you meditate. What style of meditation do you do? When and how did you get started? What benefits have you seen from meditation, both as an artist, and in your day-to-day life? Do other band members also meditate? You have also mentioned fasting and eating certain foods or combinations of foods as a means of controlling psychic/emotional/physiological energy levels. Do you fast and eat like this in conjunction with a given formal spiritual practice, or have you arrived at these practices informally within the context of your own experiences? What benefits have you seen from these practices, both in your work and in your everyday life?
What inspired you to move to Amsterdam? What do you enjoy the most about life over there? Do the others plan on staying in Los Angeles? Does the distance involved cause any challenges with regards to the band? What do you miss the most about living with Cedric? What do you miss the least about living with Cedric?
Tell us something about each member of the band that we don't know, but should.
What's the best prank either you or Cedric have ever played on each other?
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