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Responses to: five questions from christina[1]

1. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is drive with my window rolledown and the music turned up. What is on your summertime playlist?

Boards of Canada - the Campfire Headphase (whole album)

This came out in the Summer between my first and second year at college. I have great memories of those few years surrounding that time, with this album as a backdrop to a lot of it; either long walks home from parties or my girlfriend's house, playing on my minidisc, or chilled-out camping trips with friends.

Other summertime album choices include:

Fleet Foxes (self-titled)
Augustus Pablo - King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown
Ernest Ranglin - Below the Bassline

2. I recently moved back to the area where I grew up. Tell me about where you grew up - has it changed? If you left, what would induce you to return? If you've always lived there, what would induce you to leave?

It hasn't changed from what I can see. And that's quite spooky to me: a sleepy, leafy suburb on the edge of a big city. The same brickwork and paving stones and fences for decades. Bigger changes in the surrounding towns, but the suburb moves at a slow, slow pace. There'll be change some day, for sure - but everytime I go back it's a strange feeling of unchanging familiarity. I find that quite creepy, to be honest - I prefer change, transformation, difference.

What would induce me to return? Change. Maybe if I heard that there was politically active local radical community/initiative there, or if deep tree roots beneath the tarmac and the streets burst open through the roads and blocked traffic - and rather than hack this back and re-tarmac, the locals decided they prefered the new jungle and let it grow out of control.

Have you ever read 'The Unlimited Dream Company' by JG Ballard? Not his best, but Ballard understood the psychological landcape of the English suburb - and he's spot on at identifying our inner-most desires and realities and the wildness and promiscuousness of these set against the cold stone of our sleepy suburban life. There's untapped potential beneath the surface, it's just exhausted from selling its labour-power day after day, commute after commute.

3. What tree is your favourite and why?

The Willow tree. I can get on board with that desire to be by the water - lazily overhanging a gentle lake or stream.

4. What were you afraid of as a child? Are you still afraid or did you "grow" out of it?

I think I've always been freaked out by our ability to be unnecessarily harmful to eachother. Particularly in moments of eruption when it seems as though violence or cruelty comes from nowhere (in reality, more often it incubates and surges for years and years before pouring out into the surface).

5. Who are some poets that you enjoy? What is it about them that speaks to you?

John Burnside - Scottish poet.

~ flow

christina, circumlunar.space

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