Podcasting

An interview introducing…me!

If I’m honest, I’ve wanted to be interviewed for some time. I’m proud of what I’ve done in music writing, so I thought there’d come a day where someone – anyone! – would want to interview me. It never happened.
I have researched and have dived into the back stories of countless artists and their music. Armed with loads of information, I always desired to come up with questions intended to make my interviewees think and maybe throw them off a little.
I never did this to be mean. There’s a method to this madness. I wanted to get answers to different questions. I wanted my interviews to be unique from everyone else’s. People who get interviewed a whole lot get bored with the same questions in every single interview, so I wanted to keep the person on the other side of the mike on their toes. I like to think that the person being interviewed feels that much more special for getting more than the standard set of questions, which is all too common in the music world that I worked in. And it wasn’t just in music that I applied this method to. Here’s an example of an interview I did with an editor colleague in my science day job some time ago.

After years of interviewing bands and musicians, the tables had finally turned. It was my turn to be interviewed, and as part of Amelia Hruby’s 2021 Fifty Feminist States Podcast Fellowship. I posted last month about an interviewing exercise we did in class one Saturday. You can read more about why I applied for the fellowship here, as well as listen to the result of that exercise, through here.

In the Fifty Feminist States episode that posted on Tuesday, Fifty Feminist States’ founder, host, and producer and our fellowship program leader Amelia Hruby interviewed me. Yes. Really! This podcast episode is intended to be a listener introduction to me and ahead of my own episode for Fifty Feminist States, which will follow this summer.
On the Fifty Feminist States website
On iTunes
On Spotify

The photo at top is of me interviewing brothers Ben and Ross Duffy of Fenech-Soler the afternoon of their show at Glasslands club in Brooklyn, 5th of April 2014. It was taken by my friend Lizzie Fetterman.


Prose

Number 45

When I was growing up, my father cared for the most perfectly deep pink camellia plant, grown in a big terracotta pot. Along with other tender members of our plant family, there was always a big production of bringing it into the house for winter, then taking it back out when the risk of frost had passed.

I love flowers. Always have, always will. But there is something special for me about the camellia. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the camellia is native to China, yet somehow, she made her way to Britain, where she would be treasured by others.

Camellias in Melbourne, Royal Botanic Gardens

The photo above was taken 12th September 2017 in Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. The below was written on 7th May 2021 and inspired by a real-life No. 45 as photographed by Bea @a_london_story

In the heart of spring, the pink camellia tree in front of number 45 continued to bloom. Across from it, on the opposite side of the top stone step, was a fruit tree, planted long ago in a repurposed whiskey barrel. Both of them exuded a warmth to passersby, but there were really only two people in the world who could truly appreciate them.
The front door, made of the blackest wrought iron and white frosted glass, was equal parts functional and romantic. The lines, circles, and curlicues of iron, for all their stoicism, stood weathered, yet firm in the face of the cold and inevitable rain the door would be subjected to in a year. In stark contrast, the white frosted glass, probably intended for modesty by the home’s original owner, had a new, sacred purpose.
They were all too frequently ships in the night. Like the sun and the moon, the path of one would often skirt that of the other, but rarely would they cross.
But when they did, there was a guarantee of fireworks. They would wait to withdraw behind the glass, out of the gaze of anyone else’s prying eyes. A cozy embrace would quickly lead to a passionate kiss. Behind the safety, privacy, and anonymity of the frost, the two souls could be themselves. Their best selves, for themselves and each other. In a moment such as this, they could forget what it had been like without the other.