Seven answers on 7Q (also known as the FAQs of life.)				Interviewed by Tom Mangan Jessamyn West, librarian, bi-coastal artist, free thinker. Her Web site is here. Her weblog is here.		AUTHORS Michael Fuchs Elizabeth Hilts Paul Riddell Gary Rivlin Jim Motavalli Barbara Shafferman Jules Siegel Keith Snyder ARTISTS/POETS/ PHILOSOPHERS Jon C. Allen Will Baker Mike Leung Jon Sarkin COOL SITE KEEPERS Mike Cash Scott O'Neal Colf Godfrey Daniels Cliff Davis, DDS Tammy Hocking Wes Modes Frank Rogan DIARISTS Ralph Becker J. D. Bruns Linda DeVault Mike Reed Moira Richardson Jessamyn West FILMMAKERS Ben Kufrin Dean Mermell JOURNALISTS Bernie Mary Cooley-Jones Lindsay Crysler Jamie Dupree M.O.A.T.M.A.I. David Moll Robert Niles John Orr Steven Ovadia Pierce Presley Mack Reed Rip Rense Curtis Ross Neal Ross John Scalzi Catherine Seipp David Sheets Dwight Silverman Matt Welch MOVIE MAVENS MaryAnn Johanson Brian Koller HUMORISTS Debbie Farmer Mike Jasper Madeleine Begun Kane Patrick Keller Bob Sassone Valerie Sprague Ken Swarmer Ian Wolff SOLDIERS Maj. Jon Anderson, USAF TEACHERS John Warner TECHIES Chris Adamson Mike Gunderloy Michael Ivey Greg Knauss Floyd Maxwell Ellen McDonough Mike Pingleton Wayne Thume John Worth TEENS Gary Baum Marty Beckerman UNDECLARED Bev Gibbs Beth Reid WEBLOGGERS Jason Kottke Jish Mukerji
ONE				What's your favorite "I can't believe this happened at the library" story? The library is filled with all the normal weirdo stories -- masturbators and perverts and strange people with stranger questions. I picked a guy up in the library once, when I was working as a librarian, showed him where we kept all the drug books behind the counter and he was mine for the weekend. I also fielded a completely innocuous question about fisting by someone who honestly had no idea what it was -- and was a bit embarrassed when I told him. My personal favorite library story involves my former boss, who was a wonderful guy who was a bit of a suit-and-tie guy, though friendly and not a power tripper. I was talking to him about Burning Man and he just kinda leaned back with a faraway look in his eye and started talking to me about this acid trip he had out in the desert once ... as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I realized I had chosen the right profession.
TWO				As a librarian you need a strong sense of proper organization. How do you reconcile that with recurring anarchist urges? I've said it once, and I'm sure I'll say it a zillion more times: anarchists are NOT against organization, or pro-disorder; they are against centralized forms of governance and hierarchical power structures in general. So, while hierarchy in the workplace is a problem, hierarchy in the card catalog is not. “Proper organization,” in your family, governmental system or workplace, does not necessarily mean that someone else has to make your decisions for you. I belong to a group of anarchist librarians [you can see our FAQ at http://www.infoshop.org/library/alib_faq.html] and we spend more time advocating free speech than we do advocating dismantling the state. We also read like crazy. I often tell people that my anarchist utopia is strongly rule-governed, we will all just get to make the rules ourselves.
THREE				What did you find most remarkable about Jessamyn West, the Quaker author? Flat out most remarkable thing about her is that she is a female writer, who started writing back in the 50s and she still managed to create female characters with depth and integrity and their own whole lives to lead. Her Quaker sensibility informs a lot of her writing and you really get a sense of specific tenets of the Quaker faith -- equality of the sexes, not believing anyone has more of a right to talk to God than you do -- from reading her stories. I corresponded with her briefly when I was in elementary school and just found the letters again. She answered my silly questions with respect and patience which means even more to me now than it probably did at the time.
FOUR				You've been living on both coasts but I get the feeling that's about to change. What's your next move? Actually, I've been contemplating living on both coasts for a few years and made my first foray into living in Vermont last fall. I have the I-love-you-both-in-different-ways problem with Seattle and VT and pretty much want to have a base in both places. However, I think my main residence needs to be in rural Vermont, both for my sanity and because that's where my house is. While the world seems to be safe for telecommuting, it's still tough to be bi-coastal if you don't want to just approach the problem by tossing money at it, which is not a long term option for me. My latest scheme involves buying a van and gutting it and turning it into a roadworthy Wired Winnebago, but I may have a new scheme by next week. I usually let all these ideas wrestle each other in my brain for a while until one emerges as the clear winner and that hasn't quite happened yet.
FIVE				Tell us where the idea for Odd Stock came from, how it evolved, some of the most famous (or infamous) moments and when the next one is. It's part of the larger Rent is Theft series of parties I have here in Seattle. I live in and caretake the Odd Fellows Hall. Correspondingly, I pay no rent whatsoever. I realize that rent is part of most people's day-to-day reality, and so I started having monthly parties where I would spend some of the money I would be spending on rent on food and beer and invite all my friends, as a way of giving back, or whatever. I've had about 30 of them. They max out around 120 people. At some point I realized that I had a lot of incredibly talented friends with no outlet for all their creative energies. I invited them all to one big party, coined the slogan "no act too weird" [as well as "anyone who doesn't perform has to serve beer on roller skates"] and Odd Stock was born. We have had 30-minute slide shows on Nepal, giant frog puppets, dirty tango dancing, tuvan throat singing, multimedia spoken word pieces and lounge acts. A lot of my local musician friends have played their first gigs at Odd Stock. Odd Stock is on a temporary hiatus while I work out pesky issues with its co-founder. I had always hoped that by having a lot of big parties, it would encourage people to do the same out here. Maybe it's just the weather, but it hasn't caught on quite like that, people just say “when's *your* next party?” I'm leaving the Odd Fellows hall sometime in the next few months, there will be one more big party of some kind before then.
SIX				How does a woman's life change after going from having lots of hair (five pounds of it that were a work of art in their own right) to having almost no hair? Well, I feel that I'm walking six inches above the ground even more than usual. And I've been getting used to walking into a room without everyone turning around and staring. And I'm remembering that I have a neck, not even a bad neck at that. And yoga is even more of a joy than it used to be. A haircut can be a nice transition marker, where you say “well, that was me before, with my old nutty hair, this is me now, with my new streamlined hair.” You seem different to people so it gives you a good excuse to actually go and BE different ... I do kind of miss hippies trying to buy drugs from me every time I'd walk out on the street, though. My alterna-cred is now somewhat suspect and I have to earn it back.
SEVEN				So much of the so-called counterculture of the last four decades has been so thoroughly co-opted and exploited by the forces of culture capitalism (rock music, movies, magazines, advertising and, especially lately, the Web) that I have to wonder, how can we tell if there is any such thing as an authentic counterculture anymore? I think there is, but authentic counterculture is now authentic by not being associated with a niche market, or a buying pattern, or even a taste for fringe-y kitsch. Of course, it's pretty tough to exist in this society completely removed from the forces of market capitalism, but to be truly counterculture, I think that's what you need to be aiming for. Or, from another perspective, there are now ranges of counterculture, but very little of it is removed from the giant umbrella of consumer culture. The Baffler does a really good job at describing the packaging and re-selling of revolution, from the popularity of Rage Against the Machine to all those new slogans with the word “different” in them. If you need to be a wage slave to keep yourself in counterculture products, how free are you? Although for most people, the question they need to ask themselves is “How free do I want to be?” and act accordingly. Back to the hair question ... I had a friend who asked me, when I used to have dreadlocks, why I wanted to always stand out in a crowd, why I always had to look different. I told him that I actually just kinda liked my hair this way and in my dream world, everyone would look different from one another and express their individuality in their own specific ways. This to me would be a true counterculture uprising -- acknowledgment that everyone comes from their own idioculture that is ever so slightly different from everyone else's. This is easier to do if you're not trying to make the false assimilating binary choices the market presents you with: Coke or Pepsi?
				THE BIG INDEX... Who they are, what they do, how they think. Go there now. A TO Z ARCHIVE... Everybody here, with quickie bios. Go there now. Return to the main Seven Questions page See the original Newsies 7Q project Contact info@sevenquestions.com Copyright 1999-2002, Thomas L. Mangan