Mortaine’s Blog

Interview meme:

asked me these interview questions.

1)What is your earliest childhood memory you can capture whole - sight, sound, tastes and smells, as real as if someone had caught it on film?

I remember getting lost at the Seven Mile Fair, which is this huge flea market. I used to get lost there every time my family went there.

Either that, or stealing a Pez candy at the drug store– that was an awful feeling, my mom was pissed– I had it shoved under my shirt and she found it, and the plastic wrapper was crackly against my skin.

My earliest memory is falling down the stairs, but I don’t have any tactile sensation from it, and not really any sound, either. I fell down the stairs and broke my left leg when I was six months old; I don’t know if that was the same memory or not.

2)Someone has given you the keys to the biggest library in the world, that contains every book there is, and you can spend an afternoon there, and then take home one book. Where would you spend most time browsing, and which book would you leave with?

Umm…. actually, this one would be pretty easily met by sitting in the British Museum Library– I’d spend most of my time with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (there’s only one manuscript of it), but I’d leave it there so that someone else could enjoy it. I don’t know that I would take a book home– maybe the facsimile of the Gawain manuscript that was done in the 1930’s. I’m obsessed, really.

3)Who inspired you to write poetry, who still inspires you and why?

I’ve always written poetry– when I was little, I wrote little poems. In high school, my friend and boyfriend Andy inspired me– I wrote a TON of poetry in high school, most of it to him.

Lovers sometimes inspire me, sometimes not. My husband inspires me rarely, but when he does, I write some pretty good stuff.

I’m rarely inspired by death– I can’t write a eulogy poem to save my life, despite being called on to do so periodically. “Burn Still the Bright Stars” is one of the very few memorial poems I’ve ever written– I’m still stunned that I did.

Lately, I’m inspired by little moments in time. Sitting with a cup of mocha. Watching my dog try to find “just the right spot.” Holding hands. Little things that mean so much to the people living them.

4)On your website is a fantasy world builder guide - if you had to build a world and then live in it, what would it be like and who would live in it with you (in broad outline or you’ll be writing a novel in response!

Honestly, I like the world I’m in. I think I would just change a few things… but then, see, every time you think you’ve fixed one thing, you screw up another….

I would like a world in which I can fly, however. Not everyone, necessarily– but me. And I would have the people I love and care about living in my world– I would probably only exclude people who really piss me off– like politicians. And lawyers.

5) Choose a musical instrument that sings to your soul, and the sort of music you’d want it to play.

Ooooh. Um, bass clarinet sings to me, but only when I play it. I would love to play (or just listen to) the Brahms Cello Sonatas (Op. 72, I think, and its companion piece which I can never remember) played on bass clarinet. It would sound so lovely.

If you want me to ask you some interview questions, post here– first three to answer get interviewed.