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To hear something other than our own hearts
Still aten't sleeping. Because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yhlee asked me some questions:
1. What's the first myth you remember reading/being told?
Oh, God. That's actually a difficult question. From about the age of three, I read everything that wasn't nailed down and several things that were, so I have a lot of trouble identifying first contact with a lot mythic or folkloric motifs unless I can tie them to specific books or movies, and even then I'm often still not sure about when. I cannot remember ever not knowing the Greek myths, for example; I've been trying to figure out for years when in elementary school I was reading the book of Aztec myth/history that used "bitch" quite casually to mean a female dog (and therefore wrecked my ability to parse certain kinds of profanity until I was in high school). If anyone remembers the year of the Ramses II exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts [edit: 1988 and it was the Boston Museum of Science, saith my mother], it's a good bet that I became aware of the Egyptian pantheon around then, but the gods I remember learning are Khnum and Nut, not Anubis and Bastet. I got year-kings simultaneously from Peter Dickinson's Merlin Dreams (1988) and a book of collected world mythologies which included Tezcatlipoca. I wish I knew when my elementary school staged its student version of Gilgamesh. Let's just go with the Norse myths, because those have an identifiable start point: second grade, I discovered the D'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants (1967) in the Atrium library and kept not returning it.
It's not a myth, but I learned "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry" from my mother, who sang it to me as a lullaby. I don't know when I learned about mermaids, either.
2. What is your favorite dessert on an autumn evening?
(I don't know if they actually have autumn where I am now . . . I suspect not. I will live vicariously!)
I am one of those people who eat ice cream in the dead of winter, so I don't really have seasonal desserts except for things like Fourth of July strawberry ice cream or flaming plum pudding at Christmas; but I really like baked apples or apple pies, with a lot of true cinnamon and currants or cherries thrown in, and in this hemisphere it's easiest to get hold of apples in the fall.
3. What bird reminds you most of home?
One that I'll never lack for, I think; I used to get woken up by argumentative crows.
4. When you listen to music, what's the first thing you notice?
("It depends" is totally valid!)
If it has lyrics, whether it makes a story for me. This is not the same thing as a narrative. If it's purely instrumental, whether it's three-dimensional. This is not the same thing as a classical structure. Otherwise it's just a sort of sonic skim and won't particularly register. Also, of course, whether I think the musicians are any good. Periodically I run into a piece with a terrific concept and the execution just makes me want to remove my ears.
5. Rain or snow?
Snow. Winter is my second favorite season. Perhaps inevitably, it is raining right now.
If you would like five questions of your own, comment!
yhlee asked me some questions:1. What's the first myth you remember reading/being told?
Oh, God. That's actually a difficult question. From about the age of three, I read everything that wasn't nailed down and several things that were, so I have a lot of trouble identifying first contact with a lot mythic or folkloric motifs unless I can tie them to specific books or movies, and even then I'm often still not sure about when. I cannot remember ever not knowing the Greek myths, for example; I've been trying to figure out for years when in elementary school I was reading the book of Aztec myth/history that used "bitch" quite casually to mean a female dog (and therefore wrecked my ability to parse certain kinds of profanity until I was in high school). If anyone remembers the year of the Ramses II exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts [edit: 1988 and it was the Boston Museum of Science, saith my mother], it's a good bet that I became aware of the Egyptian pantheon around then, but the gods I remember learning are Khnum and Nut, not Anubis and Bastet. I got year-kings simultaneously from Peter Dickinson's Merlin Dreams (1988) and a book of collected world mythologies which included Tezcatlipoca. I wish I knew when my elementary school staged its student version of Gilgamesh. Let's just go with the Norse myths, because those have an identifiable start point: second grade, I discovered the D'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants (1967) in the Atrium library and kept not returning it.
It's not a myth, but I learned "The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry" from my mother, who sang it to me as a lullaby. I don't know when I learned about mermaids, either.
2. What is your favorite dessert on an autumn evening?
(I don't know if they actually have autumn where I am now . . . I suspect not. I will live vicariously!)
I am one of those people who eat ice cream in the dead of winter, so I don't really have seasonal desserts except for things like Fourth of July strawberry ice cream or flaming plum pudding at Christmas; but I really like baked apples or apple pies, with a lot of true cinnamon and currants or cherries thrown in, and in this hemisphere it's easiest to get hold of apples in the fall.
3. What bird reminds you most of home?
One that I'll never lack for, I think; I used to get woken up by argumentative crows.
4. When you listen to music, what's the first thing you notice?
("It depends" is totally valid!)
If it has lyrics, whether it makes a story for me. This is not the same thing as a narrative. If it's purely instrumental, whether it's three-dimensional. This is not the same thing as a classical structure. Otherwise it's just a sort of sonic skim and won't particularly register. Also, of course, whether I think the musicians are any good. Periodically I run into a piece with a terrific concept and the execution just makes me want to remove my ears.
5. Rain or snow?
Snow. Winter is my second favorite season. Perhaps inevitably, it is raining right now.
If you would like five questions of your own, comment!
no subject
At your journal?
Would you like questions of your own?
no subject
no subject
Please post wherever you like; if you wish to import the meme to your blog, be welcome!
no subject
The version of Linear A I created for my fictional universe (I wouldn't mind if the real Linear A were deciphered, either, finally giving the Minoans their own voice).
Érih káethe adíh, ir yerán.
Tásen eráni sorihén, Ánassa?
Dhi kéri ten sóran, táira -- sírathen Perihán Adhirén énis adáir.
2. Sky burial or catacombs?
Sky burial… or, better yet, resting in the arms of the sea.
3. What does your favorite color make you think of?
My beloved color, that nacreous band that unites sea and sky at dusk and dawn, makes me think of journeys to worlds where the stars are strange.
4. What musical instrument would you make for yourself to play?
A cousin of either the bagpipes (with a smaller ascus) or the Cretan lyre (with more strings).
5. Which historical figure would you most like to have known as a person?
Emily Brontë… and Crazy Horse. I think they would understand each other well, too, the two stoic fierce mystics.
6. Where would you like to live that you've never visited?
My third lodestone after the Aegean Islands and the Scottish highlands: Aotearoa.
7. What tree would you turn yourself into?
Perhaps a rowan, with its bright berries standing out stark against the winter twilight.
8. Who would you sing back from the dead for a day?
My paternal grandmother, my namesake. She would be likely to follow the thread of my song... and I have so many questions to ask her.
9. What instrument sounds most like the language you know best?
The sinuous laments of the folk clarinet, like a dark human voice singing by the sea.
10. Who's the first fictional character you can remember liking?
Captain Nemo, as I described in The Multi-Chambered Nautilus.
11. What landscape scares you the most?
Landlocked places make me claustrophobic with the exception (so far) of New Mexico where the endless sky compensates.
12. What book do you love that no one else has read?
Ann Arensberg's Sister Wolf.
13. What museum would you choose to live in?
Amid the middle-class Minoan ruins at Akrotiri (Thera) for reasons I discussed in The Hyacinth among the Roses.
14. Which myth would you want to be part of?
I wouldn't mind living as an Amazon, the way they are depicted in Ellen Frye's Story Bones.
15. What artist (contemporary or historical) would you like to have done your portrait?
Rembrandt, though I wonder how unsettled I would be by the result.
16. What shape would you take, knowing you could never change back?
I am usually a mountain lion or falcon in my dreams. So...
17. What fictional planet would you most like to live on?
Gethen of The Left Hand of Darkness -- as a Gethenian, but after the second Hainish contact, so I could travel to the other planets, especially Ki-O.
18. What bird reminds you most of home?
Swallows -- they are graceful yet indomitable and travel very far. When I was young, almost every house had a swallow nest… they were symbols of both exile and homecoming.