1. What is your name? Dags
2. How old are you? When Aubrey Beardsley was my age, he’d been dead 26 years.
3. Where are you from, where do you live now, where are you going?
Holland, England, South.
4. What is your first memory?
Being born. I shit you not.
5. Are there specific sounds, scents, temperature, noises, colors, etc. associated with this memory?
Sounds, scents, temperature, noises and colours are the ONLY memories of this. Very bright, very fucking noisy, cold as hell and ear-piercing sound. Everything was sharp - in all senses of the word. Imagine having spent your whole life in a womb and just when you were really getting used to the secure cosiness, you’re shat out onto a sidewalk in Cleveland on a rainy afternoon in February - that’s what it felt like.
6. What is your most cozy, pleasant, or ebullient memory? Please note sounds, scents, etc.
Obviously, this is going to be something womb-like. I think it was a sitting womb in a cottage in the west of Ireland. Roaring log fire, rain drumming on the ancient window panes, cradling a large Jameson’s, doing the Telegraph crossword. It’s either that or being held upside down by my ankles and having my arse slapped in Cleveland.
7. What is one of your favorite images, artists, paintings, photographers/photos, etc. & why?
In the 80s, there was a newspaper here called the Sunday Sport, which was published on a Tuesday and didn’t cover any sporting events. It was mainly female breasts and made up stories. One day, the front page had a picture of the surface of the Moon, with a Lancaster bomber crudely superimposed on it. The headline screamed, ‘WW2 BOMBER FOUND ON MOON’. The following week, they printed a picture of the surface of the Moon, with the headline, ‘WW2 BOMBER DISAPPEARS.’ It was clearly influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s ‘L.H.O.O.Q.’ and the follow-up, ‘L.H.O.O.Q. - Shaved’. Dada on the newsstand - wonderful stuff.
8. What is one of your favorite scents (can be perfume but doesn’t have to be - for example, mine is the smell of coffee mixed with Mrs. Bradford’s perfume in the 5th grade, it’s particularly comforting)?
Variously, it is said that dogs have a sense of smell 500 times, 20,000 times and 100,000 times more sensitive than humans. All figures are correct. It depends on the smell. And humans possess the same skill. Only our repertoire of scents is much more limited. However, coffee is a notable exception. To most other species (including dogs), coffee smells like glass, ie, it doesn’t smell of anything much in particular. No one nose why. Another one is pineapple. If you managed to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool with distilled water (so it’s free of additives like chlorine) and poured in a cupful of pineapple juice and mixed it up, humans would be able to taste it. This is why any fruit punch made with pineapple (however small the amount) will always taste only of pineapple. The general rule here is to omit pineapple from the ingredients. Unless you particularly like pineapple.
9. Please describe your bedroom.
The most remarkable thing about my bedroom is the bed. It’s the size of an ocean liner. If a person on the starboard side of the bed sneezes, it takes a good three seconds before it wakes anyone sleeping on the other side. There’s not much room for anything else in my bedroom, which is handy, because the only thing I really use in my bedroom is the bed. The chair by the window is more of a clothes horse.
10. What reminds you of me (I mean, be kind, but you don’t have to be censored)?
Rhubarb in the snow.
