...anything answered (part one)...
...questions that become answers then become questions...
“It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”
-W. C. Fields-
A few weeks back I begged you (yeah you, anyone) to ASK ME ANYTHING.
I want and wanted to see in the questions of others (I guess this makes you an other and me another other).
Approximately 99 questions returned. 9 is my number of completion and portal, so to get two of them feels correct. Here we are, all of us as two, you and your question, me and my answer.
Thank you for your asks, and advance appreciation to you for your answers. Let’s do this again and again sometime.
JOE IMWALLE
“The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.”
-Jean Cocteau-
::QUESTION::
You’ve got that Carl Sandburg quote. I like it. Do you like to read poetry? Which poets? Have you read WS Merwin?
Now the problem with getting so many questions is I am not sure whether to be a shit and make jokes of all this or to be dead honest and sincere. Are there people in the world who live fully as poets? Not that they live a poetic life but that they get paid to write poems?
It gives me hope to hear this is possible and true (I have never heard this).
You mentioning WS Merwin is the first time I heard the name. As you may or may not know, I am a big fan of mer-anything. Mermen, mermaids, mermers, calling the sea La Mer. On the quickest pass of his wiki I was excited to see the words deep ecology, a philosophy I was unaware of until pressing on wiki-wiki blue words.
Deep Ecology is “an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and argues that modern human societies should be restructured in accordance with such ideas.” As I write this a gigantic rat just ran through the walls of my living room. I am not sure I can endorse this philosophy, especially if that rat knocks over more of our bookshelf crystals.
I have gotten too far from your questions.
I like to read poetry, but don’t read it enough, and think it is pretty funny when performed out loud. A poetry slam movie like Dirty Dancing with words would totally rip. In high school I took a semester of poetry writing class and got into Jim Carroll. I’d go as far as to say that Fear of Dreaming is an influence on how I think and see words sometimes. Robert Frost rules. Muhammed Ali too. And as for Carl Sandburg I think that Rutabaga Stories is crucial kid lit.
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What artform should have more professionals?
WALTER SALTOS
::QUESTION::
How are you? What has been your proudest moment in life?
I am tired, thanks for asking. Pride is interesting and not just because it associates with Lion groups (how is there not a professional sport team called The Pride yet? Too woke?). I deprecate far too much for most people’s liking. This I know. Even this was a deprecation. Fart enough outloud and it might be a thing you do now. To which I say pfft.
…PFFT…
The worst movie I ever saw was Celtic Pride. It starred Daniel Stern and someone I forgot who steal Damon Wayans and then I fell asleep. I guess my disease is that I find pride boring unless it is lions. I think of the lion trainers who get mauled and then forgive the beast they whip. Every piece of that is a sad story.
My wedding day might be my proudest moment. It was no great feat but to be surrounded for a few days by so many family and friends felt purposeful. Some strangers have told me that I look like a lion, my long mane and wizard grey beard. So it tracks that my proudest moment was to be with my “family”.
“Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”
-Khalil Gibran-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What was the hardest core belief you ever had to lose?
CHAO LAM |
::QUESTION::
How did you come to be named CansaFis Foote?
Would it be cheating if I told you this was the very first thing I ever wrote and published online?
...to be your self you must name your self...
Who am I? What am I doing here? What is the point of it all? “How did I get here?” a talking head might ask you.
Perhaps then I can share the circumstances that probably led to such an event.
Let me start at the beginning…I was made by sex….
“I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.”
-Emily Dickinson-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What is the earliest memory you have of a piece of art that was meaningful to you?
RJG
::QUESTION::
My question, do you know what a good person you are? Not trying to kiss butt, but, I am not sure you know your value. That's also a softball question, cuz it's yes or no. So here's another one, if you could have any do overs in your life so far, would you have any? What would it be?
I appreciate the compliments even if I have a hard time accepting them. That’s my homework.
The do-over. How a child tries to win a game. Core tenet to a great practice habit. I have failed so much (to my wishes and standards) thus far. I also understand failure to be one of life’s greatest successes. It is a good time-travel question, at least how I frame it to myself. Immediately I start seeking regrets, and while again I have many mistakes, most filled with some sorrow, I don’t see a do-over resolving any of them.
But.
If given the gift of a do-over, a mythical unicorn opportunity, I’d have to take it. There probably would be no do-over on doing a do-over if I never did-over the original do-over. This one is going to sound purposefully vague because the details matter less than the idea.
I once was the part of something group large and as it neared its conclusion my ego clashed with something happening that I wanted to be lead to kick off and experience. I filled myself with childish rage and self pity. I made the story about me for a moment. If I could do that moment over I would bask in the chaotic truth that no group anything is about the self, and that it was better for the thing to happen without me than in my gluttonous shadow. Who knows how many potential paths I grew over and hid that night. I am not sure how different my world would be now, but to have that maturity then, would have certainly accelerated other elements of my existence.
I would also do over the 2016 NBA Finals and have the Warriors win.
“If I had to do it all over again, I would do it all over again.”
-Yogi Berra-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What is a lesson from each of your parents you keep close to you?
ED MIRAGO & FRIENDS |
::QUESTION::
Have you had the experience in this lifetime of feeling deeply connected, interconnected, in community, fully loved? Whether yes or no, do you imagine you might get some or many of those feels by interacting with folks in this space? (Really and absolutely no judgement in that question.) Do want to hang out substackers IRL? And if so how would you want to feel, what might that give you?
Delightful to see this quasi play out in real life (spoiler - I met one of Ed’s extremely close friends at a bingo night in El Cerrito and it was a pleasure ). Meeting online people IRL in real life is definitely a 22nd century life hack. The real version of people to me is always the most honest. The eye contact, the scent, the shape and size.
The online world is a facade no matter how many truths we put on here. Now for community, I think my problem is volume. I am part of so many across so many timelines so I do tend to feel a distance to most of them. Friends and family are probably the easiest to conjure deep connection. What could be deeper than wearing the same genes! But as anyone with a family can likely attest the closeness can vary for various reasons.
I get a lot out of knowing you and others here and online. Largely I get ideas I would never get otherwise. My family, my friends, my locals and locos, they give me my comfort, my regular regulations through relations. Here in the minds of the many who contributed to this piece I can find change or ways to consider difference.
If I were to shine what is best about this format it would be time. Writing lets you think and manage your thoughts. It is a careful approach. As you may have seen at bingo I spend lots of the time I have offline being unhinged. I become a door outside of a doorway laying on the floor. Here online I can be a whole hallway.
Going one more answer deeper. Let’s say in the future zoom could be a physical transportation device. You could take meetings online or zoom to the same room to be physically present with others. I would choose being materially present 9 times out of 10. I can hide online. I can’t hide next to you in a room. Zooooooom!
“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.”
-Mark Twain-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What is your favorite constraint?
ALDEN COX |
::QUESTION::
Thank you for asking. Thank you for asking me to ask. This morning, after a tiny rebuff to my effort to participate in making breakfast, I asked myself again, What is this YEARNING to participate, to collaborate, to make shit happen that feels good? Just this week, publishing here on Substack for the first time in over a year, asking for collaborative dreaming and play, I'm feeling that unbearable lightness of being loose in the world, when I want to belong to a chain gang, a murmuration of birds, working a collective project, relating to the movement of the Whole in resonant coherence, cooperating with you, a wingtip away, asking me, me asking you: What are we loving into being? I feel it. What does it look like to you?
Thank you for answering my asking to ask and for also using the word murmur. Easily a top 100 word if not a top 10. Words that contain double of themselves are so freaking rad. I mean how much radder would rad be if it were radrad. I wonder if there are triplicate words out there. What word has the most versions of its word in its word?
(spoiler - I asked the internet - and it recommended The Māori word "whakamākakakaka" which means "to stretch and bend the body (to relieve the muscles when weary)." It is derived from the reduplicated form of "kaka," which in this context refers to physical movement or flexibility)
*editor’s note :: kaka is what all the kids i went to school with in Buffalo Grove, Illinois called doody
So what are we loving into being? Cheesy me says ourselves. As everyone starts a tiktok or a substack or whatever attention devouring soul replacement lands next I think the hope of all of us doing this dalliance is to be seen as we are. I have never met someone outside of work who acts the same way they do inside of it. Work is drag. We make eachother wear costumes and manners to get paid. Social media is another type of drag, but at least in its current moment the hive mind is asking for authenticity. We want honesty of eachother and for many seekers we want the same from ourselves.
Do I love myself? Somedays. And somedays I don’t love that love. And somedays I lust for me. And somedays I think meh, mur, I’m aight. That is part of the project. I can increase my capacity to love myself and others by just removing the question (a previous iteration of this sentence started as “can I?”).
Love is so impenetrable, both the easiest and the hardest emotion to conjure. The side effects of love, pain, heartache, rejection, are so tainted and cadaverous that I probably don’t love, or love love, as much as I should and can. I can fix that though. I’ll fix it now. I love you and this question. There. The world has more love now.
And now that love has loved love into being the world looks exactly as it was, but slightly more lovely.
“You've got to ask! Asking is, in my opinion, the world's most powerful - and neglected - secret to success and happiness.”
-Percy Ross-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What is something missing from the universe?
SANDY CONNERY |
::QUESTION::
How is the idea of the "corporate clown" coming along? Any takers?
What a great question.
Context for readers - expect soon an article and an offering from me to be your company’s “Techno Corpo Jester”, details of which if I revealed now would lose their oomph (clown horn sound) later.
So to better use the time here I will muse. What is more clownish, a paid clown showing up to show up the architectural limitations of existing corporate structures or the humans holding together and deploying said structures? I quit linkedin the other day and will stand firm on this denial until Carrot Top has an official page there.
It is an attitude and a belief to wear suits and lies to give myself life. Work is drag. It is a drag. I want to live in the world where we get paid to play and we work as our hobby. I don’t think going to a corporate job is showing up as my most coveted true self. It is a show. I have to be someone else, to be worth money to someone else.
My Linked-in-dentity is definitely more covetable in the market. My resume littered with results and done doings has made me my most introductory phone calls with strangers. My resume here, these words and ideas, is too long and too real to get me a job.
So to answer. I have always been a clown. And I will continue to be one. And as I improve my makeup, hopefully that will lead me to the takers and payers. And I will take them as they take me. As many of us that can fit into a car wearing wigs carrying seltzer.
“The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.”
-Oscar Wilde-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What did you want to be when you grew up?
MARK LEVIN | [HRIF]
::QUESTION::
“You hanging in there?”
Clearly some existential stink was aroused by this latest creative yearn party. If I were to yearn further into said philosophy I might just scratch a match, wetlip a french handroll, deep inhale a chimney grey and while it dithers chalked mist around my squinty gaze exhale to say, “Where is there, man?” But I am polite, majority pollack blood, born in the midwest and so my answer is intentionally blank.
See here.
True life check-in, the past three years have probably been my most challenging. I am working on change on a day to day basis and wrapped in the uncertainty such actions can give. My life is richer and honester for the pursuit, but as of now the ease I used to have option of has completely vanished. I get no days off. There is no vacation in sight. Financially I am exactly dead broke. I had two different life coaches recommend I talk to strangers on the street for a living.
I believe though. That this is just a moment. That change can hurt. That opportunities are around the corner. That I am the surfer of my own destiny.
I am not a fit in. The world is filled with fit outs and we give some people fits. It’s confusing, sometimes upsetting, and hopefully hilarious. If I only get better from here, how great I might be. I’m surfing man. I’m hanging ten here.
“Change is the only constant. Hanging on is the only sin.”
-Denise McCluggage-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What songs would you play for a stranger that could change their lives?
LICINDA P. HESS |
::QUESTION::
“How has your weekend been, CansaFis What’s the most original thing you did this week?”
Weekend has been tremendous. Now mind you there have been almost a dozen since I asked you to ask me anything. Right now I am thumb typing to you from a lagoon trail in Santa Rosa. A small brown bird just came and posed for me. I slept in a trailer to the sounds of chickens and dogs all hunting for a friday night to never end. I have a spring cold gifted from an anxious week of other people’s anxieties. Building boundaries should be kindergarten canon.
Today I will watch my friend’s kids play baseball and I’ll drive down the sunset to home. My wife and I will gather a ratty pink bunny suit and tomorrow we will brunch DJ a 4/20 set for our friend’s Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson themed Easter gin brunch. My sister will remind me to go to church. I’ll fall asleep editing videos as King of Kings plays in silent on my TV.
I’m a week after this when I get to respond again and thankfully time allowed for originality. I just passed on the trail the same woman and same dogs as I saw at the same time as I did yesterday morning. It has been months since I went weekday walking here. The space is converted landfill, homemade art projects nested in blackberry thistle. On the winds you can hear the canine companions yell names like Jake, Bobo and Toby to unlistening beasts communicating through the language of piss. I have been to this park more than any in the bay. And even when I come here daily there is never a visit where I don’t see something I have never seen before. Today I saw this
and this
and also this
A decade ago the park was home to a rotating cast of 30-60 scragglers. I attended an overnight hootenanny that featured a random needle stabbing. Some mornings I meet the folks making ukulele trumpet sounds overnight there and remember when I too was a wandering local. The most original thing I did this week was the thing I have done the most, hang out at this park with my dogs and wander unsure about what is coming at the next corner. Sometimes I have seen it before. But it always looks different.
“An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.”
-Jean Cocteau-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What are the best conditions for joy?
CLAIRE COLEY |
::QUESTION::
“What’s the one thing that if removed, would create the best version of your life two years from now?”
Emptiness? Empty wallet. Empty tank. Lack of time. Empty opportunities. Other people’s emptiness. Empty plates. Empty attitude. Blank paper. Possibility. Dreams. Wishes. Hopes. Filling the void of anything missing with the right amount of needed something (even if the something is nothing) would seem to be the best path to my best. I told myself earlier this year I want to become an action. No hesitation. Life as Jason Statham as a metaphor. Fast and less furious (serious). All answers (including questions). Belief. Trust. Confidence. Appropriate attire.
Only now on rereading this do I realize I removed nothing and added everything. Maybe I should remove MORE and settle for LESS. Gah this is a thoughtful question.
On a reread of my reread I am certain I need to remove one thing to be best. Uncertainty. I’m certain (or at least I want to be).
::QUESTION::::QUESTION::
“lighter one — best live music moment (like 10 seconds worth) of all time?”
Easy.
Any moment you want to pull from Prince. Prince commanding the gods make it rain while he played Purple Rain at the Super Bowl. Prince throwing his guitar to heaven after ripping a guitar solo at the George Harrison tribute. Prince practicing to dance over a demo of Nothing Compares 2 U. Prince making Appolonia ditch him for Morris Day after sexing the First Avenue stage to Darling Nikki.
Any moment of Prince anytime suffices.
::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::
“If you could teleport between current location and one other place FOREVER, where would it be. Immediate access BUT those are the only two places you can visits. (Your post is legit going to be weird ass questions from me)”
I have to be strategic here considering the constraints. The place would need city and nature access so that I have all leisure possibilities. I am guessing I can’t leave the confines. Maybe somewhere with a disputable border so that eventually I can rally the citizenry to expand and then I can get to at least neighboring spaces by way of territorial enlargementess (a totally real thing).
But I have no political acumen. So somewhere I could work with scientists who invent teleport devices in the hopes they make me one that isn’t confined back and forth. Now granted a location could technically be a four corner border thus giving me access to four separate provinces. I wouldn’t want to be stuck in one country forever so definitely overseas.
Hard to choose someplace I haven’t been because what if I don’t like it. I wanted to put a dot somewhere in Australia but then I remembered the spider size. Asia feels closer but gigantic and so many choices and I have only been to Korea which I hear is having air quality issues.
Now smart me should say like the Smithsonian or the Vatican library so I would have access to enough information to resolve the portal constraints. Dumb me just wants to choose Jamaica because it rules.
When all else fails the answer is Jamaica. I’m gonna surf, snorkel and make sweet rubba-dub-dub-dub-dub. I love my portal.
::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::
“Best writing advise to write with rhythm? You got that vibe down.”
Pretend you are Dick VanDyke who never danced until he was hired on stage to do so. Play arrhythmic noise music with friends until you hear the sea notes. Listen to the best era of hiphop (90’s don’t test me) until you can spit three lines of one verse. Set a metronome. Read what you wrote out loud to yourself. Act like a song. What’s weird is this whole response has no beat. Let me fix this.
…bah…ba-ba-ba-bah…bah…ba-ba-ba-bam…
The secret to writing rhythms
Is finding words with something in ‘em
Turning terms into addendums
While being random with set intentions
Did I mention to pause
Focus on visible flaws
Let your hemms become your hawws
The beat is meant to break
All reality is really fake
The faster I think I think these thoughts
The longer I can swim across the lake
*note to all real rappers the above is confirmed wiggedy-wack, not wiggedy-wiggedy-wiggedy-wack, but confirmed one full wiggedy of wackness
**note to all real readers - remind me to tell my story about dressing backwards on purpose
***note to all realtors - thanks for keeping it real
::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::
“If you could be a colour — which one and why?”
Black because I could say “look into the void” and mean it and then you could say “Geeze fuck did the color black just talk to me” and then I would say “you bet your bloody knickers I did” and then you would say “that’s a trash english accent, why does the color black have a shit english accent” and then I would say “that’s what i thought the color black would sound like” and you would say “wait does the color black talk in third person” and then I would say “hmm I wonder if The is my first name or maybe it is Color or maybe I am just called Black, like Madonna or Prince” and you would say “this conversation is a bit ponderous, I didn’t expect Black to be so self involved” and then I would be self-conscious and silent for a second too long and then when I try to talk again you talk at the same time and we both keep stop starting an interrupting conversation and then awkwardly one of us will say “I think this is done now right?” and then I’ll wait for two beats and muffle whisper “always bet on black” and shriek like a quiet Brian Johnson (ACDC) “yes I’m back in black…”
::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::
“Would you rather be a snake or a ladder?”
Why not both?
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”
-Euripides-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
If you could add and delete one THING from the world which would they be and why?
RICHARD SCHULZ |
::QUESTION::::QUESTION::::QUESTION::
”Tea or coffee? I’m listening to SlipKnot. Do you listen to SlipKnot? What is your day job?”
Iced tea unsweetened with lemon, all varieties in rotation from jasmine to oolong to roasted, tall glasses, free refills.
So in college I won tickets to an alt-metal nu-metal festival at a suburban arena on the local alt rock radio station. One of those stations that says it is the new alternative but then it only plays old music, and the same old music at that. At the time I was being courted to join a fraternity by a skeptical drunkard who was on their sixth year of undergrad.
He drove me to the show under the auspices of too much vodka and energy drink and on arrival will call had no reference to the tickets and the radio station wasn’t answering our calls. We decided to reenact Heavy Metal Parking Lot, mainly in that we trolled the lot to see what the weirdest drugs we could find were. I think the score results were like 90% ecstasy and 10% nitrous with 100% of “here smoke this joint with us”.
Dumbed off of whatever we shouldn’t have imbibed we tried to sneak into the show through the loading zone, thinking in a piss drink haze that the roadies would find sympathy in the radio station’s mistakes. One bearded lifer who looked like he wrestled as a hobby drank with us and cavorted but was unwilling to test looking away and letting us in.
Through the basketball bricks we heard the tinny din of scream shouting buzz, an external tone that matched my skull’s amplified internal hiss. Eventually we tired of all ruses and settled on sleeping in his car until sober enough to head home. I awoke like a broken accordion, atonal half played wrong notes, and we scored gas station orange juice to wash down microwaved sausage egg muffins.
A month after the show my suitor disappeared from the school. Rumor was that his parents stopped funding his endless undergraduation and that he was apprenticing entry level at the family business and/or stinting at a rehab or mental hospital. He had had a goatee that read like someone who breathes Fred Durst, but dressed preppy as though auditioning to do stunts for a young Ryan Reynolds.
If I remember that night correctly he had a slipknot cassette that I politely asked “what do these guys sound like” to and he never gave an answer, just a rolled window alongside the shaky greys of interstate loops and youthful mindlessness. American spirit handrolls tacky to the lip charred and covering up the scent of not knowing why we did the things we did. I bet he is a terrible electrician.
As for my day job, I work for UIU, DJ, call bingo and occasionally help build out security conferences.
Watch about UIU here.
“It's always tea-time.”
-Lewis Carroll-
::QUESTION 4 YOU::
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t or conversely what is something you haven’t seen that you hope to?
…if you have made it this far here is my deep thanks for your time, interest and energy…it is fun to be talking to people…having recorded conversations…i think we got about a third of the way through the questions so more answers to come…would it be a spoiler to say here that we all failed…not one person asked me what i asked for…
…anything?…
“Geeze fuck did the color black just talk to me,” I think as I wake up. “Bloody hell that colour gets my knickers in a twist,” I say in a shit english accent. And then I realise…it’s me talking.
Keep mulling over the ‘what would you take away’ q, everyone gives an answer that ends up adding something. I think the answer to progress is often counter productive.
Ah this is so good. All of the questions but especially slipknot, I wish I got asked that one. Had a mix tape which came to a random trip to Ireland with me when I was 14. It had slipknot on and the grunger guys thought I could maybe be one of them for the first time.
Loved reading this, more please 🖤