Jenks Miller answered some questions for me. He prefaced them with: “I’m not being dismissive when I answer ‘I don’t know’ … just being honest.”
What is the best way to die?
I don’t know.
How do you think you’ll die?
I don’t know.
What makes you happy?
Sound, nature, new ideas, good people, my dog.
How can you die happy?
I don’t know.
How close have you come to death?
I’m not entirely sure. The distance in auto accidents and illness.
What does kindness mean to you?
Acting on a sensitivity to needs and desires outside of your own.
Where do you find love?
Sound, nature, new ideas, good people, my dog.
When were you most afraid?
In the time before I had accepted my whole Self, I was afraid of my shadow.
How do you listen to music?
On a CD or record player, with an open heart. I try to find something I can appreciate in whatever sounds I am hearing. I tend to spend time with sounds I haven’t heard before, those that push me outside of my comfort zone and want to be explored.
I think these interviews are failures, making rather amazing artists appear bland and unimaginative. I realize this is more your pet project than actual musical journalism but it makes me need to ask you: How can you ask questions that will garner an interesting, relevant, or insightful response?
What you’ve just said amounts to this: “Thanks for going out of your way to approach some of my musical heroes that I might gain some perspective, but since they phoned in the interviews, can you do a better job?”
What would you have asked them that would have compelled them to have an interesting answer? And how would you ensure that they actually answer it in an interesting way? Ask something too personal, they don’t feel the need to go into it. Ask something impersonal, it’s not relevant, as you put it. It could just be that amazing artists are just bland and unimaginative people. This is by far not the first example of musicians being piss-poor interviewees.
Thanks for the input JZ. I was hoping someone would contribute some honest criticism about these interviews.
My goal for these Q&A sessions is to ask artists I respect questions I’m interested in hearing the answers to. I brainstormed for a long time trying to find a rounded group of metaphysical questions and I think the ones I ended up with are engaging & important when approached from the right frame of mind.
With that being said, it’s very likely questions will be edited, added, or removed depending on how I think artists are responding to them. Like everything else on this site, this feature is a work in progress. I’ll be sure to keep your comment in mind.