Egad! ANOTHER Interview?

Edited to add the people who answered my questions.

Why yes, it IS another interview. I cannot get enough of this meme. So I asked Sage to interview me this time.

The woman responsible for putting together the Breast of Canada fundraising calendar lives in G-town. Would you ever pose for it?

Ooh, that’s a doozy.

Wow.

I’m really quite stymied by it. It’s never occurred to me that anyone would want me to pose in a calendar.

My first thought is no. But perhaps if someone did a really good pitch and had a really good reason for wanting ME in the calendar then maybe I would. But I’ve never been an artist’s model, so I’m just not that comfortable with putting myself OUT THERE in quite that way.

True or false? Redheads can most definitely get away with wearing pink.

True. Redheads can wear anything they damn well please and just you try to stop us. I‘ve heard people say that about pink AND red, and it’s all bullshit. Like anyone, you just have to choose the right shade. I wear a lot of red, and only recently began to allow pink, starting with a pink v on brown Vans shoes, into my wardrobe.

Why do people feel they can comment about what colours or clothes a person with a particular characteristic can wear? (Not that I’m suggesting that’s what you’ve done here, Sage, but other people – strangers, not even in clothes or shoe stores, just passing by randomly – have said things like that quite sincerely and it pisses me off.) I mean who gives a shit if I wear a colour that looks awful on me?

Have you ever started a rumour?

Well, I don't know about STARTING a rumour, but I have certainly passed them on. I remember in grade 8, my friend's mom got pregnant, and I found it quite scandalous because that meant they'd had sex -- recently! My friend had asked me not to tell anyone, I think because it was still quite early and maybe they weren't sure what they were going to do with the surprise, but I couldn't resist sharing the scandal that someone's parents had HAD SEX!

My friend got really upset with me, and her mom found out and everything, and I felt really bad. That was really when I learned that it's important to keep people's secrets.

Bellydance is rumoured to be a birthing ritual. Did you belly dance through part of your labour?

Well, as I mentioned here, I did until they strapped me to the monitors and we discovered that any time I spent upright caused the baby’s heartrate to plummet (I still can’t really refer to that baby, that baby who I feared might die, as Swee'pea). The shimmies were especially useful through a contraction, though I was only 2 cm when I had to stop moving. My belly dance instructor, who has four kids, said that belly dance doesn’t help at all in very late labour.

I’ve had it explained to me that belly dance was a way of showing girls how to be women, and I guess that would include all of our sexuality and reproduction, including conception and birth.

I started reading Kitzinger’s Ourselves as Mothers, but I stopped because it seems like in just about every culture she writes about that women are seen as inherently dirty who must follow strict codes to avoid infecting men with their dirtiness. This isn’t related to the question but I asked Sugar Daddy why this would be, why women would be seen as so awful, everywhere. And we both came to the realization that women’s sexuality is threatening in the sense that you can never REALLY be sure of paternity. Unless you very strictly control women’s sexuality. And what better way than to make women scared of it, to feel inherently dirty and evil?

Anyways, I like to think of belly dance going on behind closed doors and under veils, a secret celebration of our bodies and power and beauty.

If you had the power to make one Canadian artist (other than yourself), from any discipline, known to everyone in the world at large, who would you choose and why?

Ha! This fits right into my nefarious plan to blog about my brother ever since I discovered this weekend that he is a blogger. His blogs aren’t like mine, in that they’re all images, but still… he’s a blogger.

But first and foremost he’s an artist. He has incredible talent and drive, and I would love to see him able to support his family with his talent alone. He’s also the most well-read person I know, and he didn’t even finish university. He’s read all of Joyce and Pound and Eliot AND I’m pretty sure he even understood them all.

He has a normal website but I don't think he's updated it in a long time, though it shows his landscapes. He said he started the blogs so he had a place to put new work without having to depend on someone else. This blog shows his recent studio pieces, this blog shows a group of invented landscapes, and THIS BLOG showcases a great collaborative project. It's something to do with some guy named Rauschenberg, who I've never heard of. Anyways, anyone can participate: you download a photo, print it, then take a picture of it somewhere else and email it in to be posted. This one is one of my faves, and so is this one. Anyways, if you like to take pictures (Em and Denguy, I'm lookin' at you), check it out and participate.

AND if you have money and want to buy some art, his rocks, in my totally unbiased opinion.

PS I got the chance to interview some seriously kick-ass people:

aliki2006
notsosage
sewfunky
k-girl
denguy

Check out their interviews if you haven't already.