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Retsoor Asks

Retsoor Asks: Christopher Morris vii

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images courtesy of Christopher Morris vii

foreword by Rob Kaniuk

I called Christopher after I got the answers via text. We had to clear a few edits, a couple emojis. I’d just come back from mom’s birthday dinner. My nephew was the main catalyst behind me contacting Mr Morris, and he had asked, at the dinner party, when the call was happening. 

“In about an hour.”

He said he was hype to hear how it went. I told Chris all of this, and it seemed to make the call feel like talking to a friend of the family. Mom was born in ‘52, and he was born in ‘58, so we talked about the nineteen-hundreds for most of the call. I was acutely aware it was the legend conflict photographer himself on the line––best of my generation. We talked about allegorical editing and Jungian symbolism in his work. About documenting men who do not want to be documented, about remaining invisible in hostile territories, and how genocide is a disease that never stops.

His work during the fall of Yugoslavia earned him the Robert Capa Gold Medal in ‘91. He told me it was that night, looking at the snow white linen, black ties, and what would now be considered the Epstein Class, he decided he’d never accept another award or attend an opening night for his work in conflicts.

“I stood there, looking at all of that, getting an award for taking pictures of dead children––and you have to understand, I left Somalia a week before (Apr., ‘92). They fit me in a suit and got me on stage in a hurry. I was wearing the same shoes that I’d had in Vukovar (Nov., ‘91)–– all I could think about was the absolute horror that was caked on my shoes. I felt disdain, I felt physically ill, like there was a real chance I’d make a mess of the stage. I had a hard time looking at society in the same way I always had, so I left as soon as I could and caught a flight to cover the siege of Sarajevo. That’s the last time I accepted an award in person.”

He went on to tell me he had to stop working with AI because it started asking creepy questions. Captions have always been a problem for Mr Morris, so he asked an AI assistant to help. It wasn’t long before the assistant had questions. Who gave you permission to take pictures of dead children in morgues? What right did I have, he asks himself over the phone. I want to tell him thank you, but that’s not right. What I mean is, we need people like Christopher, who, for whatever their reason(s), go to the world’s darkest places and risk their lives to show us what we do not want to see from places that don’t want to be seen. It’s imperative we pause from our manicured lawns and Sunday roasts to be gut-shot by images that tell the stories we refuse to hear.

We ended the call the way it started: talking about family and what it means to be human.

Retsoor asks: can people change? 

CMvii: Absolutely that’s what life is all about. Every day is about change and the knowledge you allowed yourself to absorb, leading to change, specifically mistakes throughout what you believed before, every day should be about growth and change

—

RS: Is the belief in God a choice?

CMvii: Yes, understanding that you have control over where you want to let your mind travel  

—

RS: Is everything singular or plural? 

CMvii: Plural… how could it be singular, this makes no logical sense, just hold your hand out in front of you and look at the infinite world around us, and this is only what you can see in the now, with the factual understanding that there is only the present now, every living thing is in in this “now” 🧚🏻‍♀️ the past is gone and the future has no existence yet. Very plural world 🌎 we are in. 

—

RS: What percentage of the world is evil? 

CMvii:  If you’re asking about us. 100 percent have evil tucked away inside, built in as part of some animal survival instincts, that all of humankind understands. This may be kept locked away in the societal box of evil, only to be deployed for some faux moral righteousness and/or belief that your god condones the slaughter of others. Not to mention the destruction of life on our planet. That we smother and destroy for profit. So the percentage of evil in this world is all of humankind. 

—

RS: What % of your personality can you choose? 

CMvii: Another trick question?  Also infinite choices in the direction of your mind and where you allow it take you, even the belief that Santa Claus is real. Our beliefs form our personalities. Our kind is constantly trying to trick us with fantasies. Playing off emotions, fear, hate, jealousy, lust,  greed. Where we have the absolute choice in what to absorb and believe is real. If you’ve ever had to sit and stare at someone diagnosed as clinically insane, they can look into you and start to smile, for they see something in you that not even you can see.  

—

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life? 

CMvii: Dealing for over three decades of covering man at his most evil and the true horror that they bring onto mothers and their children, standing over the dead like some kind of “Weggee” police photographer, focusing the camera on the destruction of innocence, with all the smell and sounds. This gets tucked away not only as film, but as traumatized neurons in my brain. With this constant discomfort, it allows me to see in an allegorical way of storytelling with symbolism and metaphors throughout all my work which is directly related to man. 

—

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry? 

CMvii: My mother and her Italian heritage 

—

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet?

CMvii: I don’t know if I can answer that clearly or properly, but I know that if all our devices stopped working today, society would have a difficult time functioning just trying to find their way from point A to point B on the planet. So yes, we have lost a lot but we’ve also gained an extreme amount of knowledge that is at everybody’s fingertips if they have access to a device that can connect them. 

—

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are? 

CMvii: since my childhood I fell in love with the craft of photography, it was never even a choice as a way to make an income to survive, it’s always been a pure love of mine, even to this day as I typed this, I live for creativity, even when I’m in my most depressed state, and my true depression comes from not being able to share all my creative ideas and thoughts, but this just inspires me to create when I enter depression and if I’m in extreme happiness, I also just want to create. 

—

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you?  

CMvii: No I have no worries. Anybody that knows me knows that I speak my mind freely even when it causes me extreme problems. I have nothing to prove to anybody. I have many haters out there and I have many people that have some kind of respect for me. Nothing I say really matters. 

—

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything wrong or a list of everything that isn’t?

CMvii: For me, it would be the list of everything that’s wrong if you’re talking about myself personally. In my life, by identifying all the things that are wrong, I can rectify that and change to turn them into something positive. If I look at a success, or list of everything that is right, it’s not very motivating. 

—

RS: If you had the choice, would you choose to live again without knowing you were given a choice?

CMvii:  I’m having a hard time comprehending the question.  My answer would have to be definitely not., I had the most unbelievable life anybody could ask for, invigorating, but also quite frightening. 

—

RS: Bonus question: Drugs? 

CMvii: Yes, for everything is a drug, waking up in the morning and opening your eyes is a drug. Everything you do about your day is drug induced.  From the coffee you might drink, to washing your face, hugging your dog, life is the drug 🧚🏻‍♀️

—

RS: Bonus Jeopardy: one small regret (big ones also welcome) I have is: 

CMvii: Not understanding the now, always chasing, no time to breath and just absorb the beauty of life all around me, to lay on the ground on the ground for hours and stare at the grass and little insects that are alive and grunge to survive in the same now, no future no past, we share everything with all life forms. I’ve encountered this lying in fields pinned down by men trying to kill me. Lying there with ants and living grass looking up at the be the beautiful, beautiful clouds ⛅️ slowly drifting bye… 

Thank you! 

J

Christopher Morris is one of the most celebrated photojournalists of the last four decades. A founding member of VII Photo Agency, he was on contract with TIME Magazine from 1990 to 2020, documenting close to 30 foreign conflicts and covering the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as a member of the White House press pool. His work spans conflict, politics, power, and culture — from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the wars in Yugoslavia, Colombia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, Yemen and Panama, the first Gulf War, to the US invasion of Iraq, and the Arab Spring in Libya. 

Morris is the recipient of numerous major awards including the Robert Capa Gold Medal, the Olivier Rebbot Award, the Infinity Award for Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography, and a multitude of World Press Photo awards. He has published two books with Steidl “My America” was published in 2006, and “Americans” in 2011. Outside of Time magazine, he has worked for an extremely long list of global publications worldwide. 

In 2009 with Time Magazine leaving the White House coverage. Morris was approached by the Italian fashion magazine AMICA, for an assignment in New York, after the Editor in Chief was shown a copy of his “My America” monograph, which led to a four year collaboration, bringing his unique journalistic craft to Milano and Paris, where he was based until 2017, documenting fashion, government leaders and celebrities.

In 2022 he started long term grant on the environmental changes in his home state of Florida. 

Currently he has been working for the past years organizing his 40 year archives into what he likes to call a “Living Archive.” 

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Retsoor Asks

Retsoor asks: Ryan Boldt

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I picked up my tickets at will-call and saw Robert Earl Keen’s guitarist pleading with the window to let his two guests in. They didn’t think he was in the band. I got in the door and heard an organ wailing. It was Geoff Hilhorst. It was Ryan Boldt singing soft like Orbison and the band was The Deep Dark Woods. They crushed with originals like Two Time Loser, All The Money I Had Is Gone, and a rollicking Peggy-O. REK came out and made a joke about them being from Saskatoon and their moose shitting all over the tour bus. 

I kept in touch with Ryan. We bet Flyers vs. Oilers games. He said Dave The Hammer Shultz tried to pick up his mom in high school. I bought every record they put out. I paid attention to what he was playing on his Radio Hour podcast. Ryan has a Rainman-like knowledge of traditional songs, and his original arrangements bring the achingly beautiful sound of The DDWs while staying true to the song.

The new album feels very much like all the best parts of Ryan’s sound in one spot. From the early songs like Hallelujah to today’s The Circle Remains Unbroken, there feels like a throughline in his work. He writes of slain lovers and unrequited love, big cities and back alleys, whoring around and trading in your name––and, always in the background, birds softly singing.

Boldt and his many band iterations are Canadian Folk Award winners (2009, 2012), Western Canadian Music Awards Roots group recording of the year (2009, 2012), and a Susan Lucci amount of noms including Junos, Americanas, and, for Boldt himself, a songwriter of the year nod in the 2012 Western Canadian Music Awards. 

Go out and buy Winter Hours and The Place I left Behind and Jubilee and lock into the groove that Hilhorst and Boldt lay down. Swipe the new album, The Circle Remains, from Victory Pool Records and go see them live. 

When introducing The Deep Dark Woods to friends, it’s always one of two songs, depending on the friend. Since I don’t know what kind you are, I’ll suggest both River In The Pines and Teardrops Fell. 

Thanks to Ryan for doing this. Thanks to The Deep Dark Woods for being the soundtrack of my life the past 15 years.

-Rob Kaniuk

Retsoor Asks: Ryan Boldt of The Deep Dark Woods

Retsoor: Can people change? 

Ryan Boldt: Of course! I’m a different person upon return from each tour. It can be hard, sometimes I’m a person I like, and other times I can’t wait to get back on the road so I can come home again and hopefully be the type of person I like and others like, especially my wife and daughter. If I’m home too long without any scheduled tours, I start slowly changing in a negative way. I have to keep my mind straight and not watch news programs or sit on my phone looking at all the hellish garbage happening across the world. That’s the most important way to preserve the person I like when I return home. 

I believe that in order to be a good artist, you have to allow yourself to age and change, or else you’ll end up like so many 1970s rock stars that still want to be 20 years old, which can be quite nauseating. 

RS: Is the belief in God a choice?

RB: It starts off as inherited, and then as you age, you have to make a choice whether you believe in God or believe in nothing. I’ve made my choice, so, yes. 

RS: Is everything singular or plural? 

RB: We have choices throughout life, but those choices accumulate into one event.  

RS: What percentage of the world is evil? 

RB: It’s a lot more than I would’ve thought a couple of years ago. It’s quite depressing, to be honest.

RS: What % of your personality can you choose? 

RB: I didn’t choose any part of my personality. I’m a mashup of all of my ancestors. I try to tame certain parts of my personality and nurture the good parts, but that can be hard, especially when we’re bombarded with hateful and angry internet content at all times. I have to get rid of my phone, but I keep making excuses to myself, and I never do it. 

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life? 

RB: It is the driving force behind most of my songs. Making music is a way to help with my mental health issues. When I’m playing music and writing, I try to achieve an almost trance-like state of mind where my body and my brain feel kind of numb and relaxed, like I’m high or something. When I’m playing piano at home, I get that feeling often. Onstage, as of late with the current band lineup, Geoff Hilhorst on organ and Mike Silverman on drums, I’m able to zone out most nights. The high I get lasts for several weeks after I return home. This is the reason I play music. It’s a hard thing to explain to someone who has never experienced it. I’m very lucky to have a very understanding wife who has also experienced that same state of mind. 

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry? 

RB: Both my parents are very calm when they get angry. I, on the other hand, get angry, and I’m not exactly sure who it came from.  

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet?

RB: Most of it. We’ve lost our empathy, creativity, and curiosity. We’ve lost our ability to forgive people and converse with people that we disagree with. It’s mainly the social media that has made us lazy and useless. The internet was fun when it was only available on a desktop computer in the corner of your dining room. Now we have been poisoned with a hellish anger that has been caused by the internet. I liked the world prior to the invention of the laptop computer. 

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are? 

RB: I started off playing music and writing songs because I was sad, but nowadays I have to play it to keep myself from being sad. I have to know that there are shows booked and recordings to be made in order to keep myself from being filled with dread. Aside from my family, it’s really the only thing that keeps me feeling sane, that and playing with electronics.  

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you? 

RB: It worries me. I change a lot, and I’m embarrassed by things I’ve said in the past, so I’m usually quite quiet and don’t say a whole lot. That being said, I find these questions much more inspiring than usual questions like “How did you come up with your band name?” 

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything wrong or a list of everything that isn’t? 

RB: A list of everything wrong. I should probably change that and start looking at more of the positive things in life, I’d probably be a happier person. It just seems like the world is getting worse. It’s becoming harder and harder to make a living making music. I’ve been forced to work other jobs and after 15 years of being a full-time musician, that can be upsetting. That being said, my life is much happier than it was 10 years ago, I’m not sure if that’s because I’m not constantly on the road or what. 

RS: If you had the choice, would you choose to live again without knowing you were given a choice? 

RB: Yes. Maybe I would have become an electrician. I would’ve liked to have been an electrician. 

RS: Bonus question: Drugs? 

RB: No, thankfully. 

RS: Bonus Jeopardy: one small regret (big ones also welcome) I have is: 

RB: Wasting my time with people that have taken advantage of me over the years. I’ve realized that, unfortunately, some people aren’t as loyal as I’d hoped. 

Ryan Boldt is the lead singer and songwriter of the Canadian roots band The Deep Dark Woods. He lives in Ontario Province with his wife, their child, and dog where he spends his spare time curing meats.

Jason Sebastian Russo is a founding member of Mercury Rev, Hopewell and numerous other bands and creative spaces. He holds an MFA from Bennington, was named Lead Scout, holds positions of spiritual guidance with several institutions, and runs the Retsoor accounts, worldwide.

Rob Kaniuk lives in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania with his wife, Erin, and their dog, Virgil Caine. He runs FT.

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Retsoor Asks

Anton Newcombe

Retsoor asks: can people change? 

Anton Newcombe: A person can change, however, it can be difficult for a person to change people.

RS: Is the belief in God a choice?

AN: Who am I to ponder the mind of god?

RS: Is everything singular or plural?

AN: It can be either, but it’s definitely singular.

RS: What percentage of the world is evil?

AN: 33.356397%

RS: Why do you get out of bed in the morning?

AN: To pee.

RS: What % of your personality can you choose?

AN: The answer is maths.

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life?

AN: Half crazy in a totally insane world is stronger than a pint of Guinness. 

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry?

AN: My parents are both dead, so neither, but if I had to guess, I would say it’s my mother.

RS: What % of your unhappiness do you have control over?

AN: Who attempts to reduce emotions to mathematical equations? Oh, evidently you do.

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet?

AN: I think if monopoly taught us anything, it’s that deregulation of public utilities is a huge mistake. 

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are?

AN: I do what I do and I do it well, I do it for you sugar baby honey can’t you tell.

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you?

AN: I find it helpful to imagine that everyone is naked, for instance, you right now sitting there naked, reading this… it’s like magic, and instantly I am in your mind, as you imagine yourself naked…

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything that is wrong, or a list of everything that isn’t?

AN: Lists are stupid, I prefer to leave post it notes everywhere, i tilt to the aggressive end of the passive aggressive spectrum. 

RS: Would you choose to live again, without knowing you were given a choice, if you had the choice?

AN: I focus on the carnate as in incarnate, from the latin carne or in flesh, the now, be here now. Why waste energy on answering hypothetical questions only to forget them.

RS: Bonus question: Drugs?

AN: Yes.

RS: Bonus Jeopardy: one small regret I have is: (no big regrets allowed, please).

AN: Not kissing you enough.

My memories of meeting Anton are a handful of scenes from my very first tour out west, probably in my late teens or early twenties, when The Brian Jonestown Massacre played with Mercury Rev at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill, circa 199—? In a pattern I’ve recognized since, he was preceded by emissaries, most memorably Jeffrey Davies in a house frock, beehive hairdo, and ascetically long finger nails, with which he played guitar as deftly as he picked through a constellation of tiny, multicolored balloons to make sure I got “the second fattest one.” It was my first encounter with the “dark side of the 60s” and the underbelly of Summer of Love idealism that the band cultivated and it changed my idea of what our generation could do with the failed art form we’d inherited from our parents. I credit them with starting the initially ironic trend of poaching motifs from our Boomer forebears, before it became a requirement when bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes and Interpol took it to its commercial extremes. All of which set the stage for the layered irony of online discourse and memes, a.k.a. our species’ gradual transition to communicating with already existing bits of culture.


Our friendship gathered anecdotes without any real effort, we rarely met under “normal” circumstances. I manned the floppy camera hat Ondi Timoner used to capture the more salacious moments of DIG!, for example, a documentary widely cited as the “Disney version” of the band’s story, on a week long Japanese tour during which the filmmaker crashed on our hotel room floor. We played an historically-flooded-out Truck Festival in England with Garth & Maude Hudson that included Oxford music luminaries like Mark Gardener and Andy Bell—both of whom Anton sat onstage in enormous stuffed arm chairs from the lobby so they could watch his set. He routinely cooked me dinner during a particularly impoverished NYC period, gifting me vinyl to sell on eBay for groceries, and on and on. Generation X enjoyed the last moments of rock & roll being a career option for working and middle class musicians, before Napster rendered it a plaything of the privileged class, and Anton and I continue to look out for one another as the internet kicks the roll of “artist” around at the mercy of commerce. Thank God for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, thank God for mental illness, thank God that “danger” still has a representative in an art form originally designed to include it and us. – Retsoor

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Retsoor Asks

The ReStacks

Winter, 2024

Retsoor asks: can people change? 

Shielah Restack: Parts of them can. 

If one has the will and the capacity to seek help, a mentor, the gift of friendship, support… I think then many things are possible. I have witnessed too many stories of great change to doubt this. Even me, on a smaller scale. I started life as a horribly shy kid who couldn’t even speak, but now—close to the age of 50—I can fit the expected mold of outwardness. So it took a long time, but I changed to fit the extrovert world. It all takes so much work, and it’s so easy to slip back. I think change is a constant commitment—not a check-the-box and-done kind of thing, which makes it harder. 

Dani Restack: Yes

Transformation is an inevitable part of any living experience. A microscopic fertilized egg changes to a deteriorating dead body, then back to the soil to become another creature or plant. 

Could we be biologically of each other? The Hopewell people lived (Columbus, OH) here thousands of years ago. A contemporary corn farmer grows in the soil where they died. We eat the corn. Are we of each other now? I guess that’s not someone’s change; it’s just a fact. But, inside, I changed from a traumatized child to an addicted teen to a lonely, sober adult now enriched with a love-pulsing family living in a house. 

RS: Is the belief in God a choice? 

SR: Yes, it is. 

DR: I’d say belief in God is a choice. But I feel God is present in everything, including inside us, whether we like it or not. 

SR: I agree with Dani that there is a higher power of nature, life, and force that awes me. That is also a choice, I think, to let it in.

RS: Is everything singular or plural? 

SR: I am not sure. Maybe? I am one person, but at one poin,t I was pregnant, and I was two. When Findley the dog lays with me, I am two. The pencil plant next to the bed is one plant but has many branches that could become plants. Latent plural potential just depends on where you draw the line. 

DR: I’d say everything is plural. We can say, “I drove to the store.” But not really, I drove because someone invented the pavement, cleared the trees, paved the road, and built the car, which was invented by people getting to the store via horse…

SR: I love this answer of Dani’s – it reminds me of when Michael Morris (who lives here in Columbus) told a class we were leading, ‘NONE OF US ARE SINGLE!’ 

RS: What percentage of the world is evil? 

SR: I see evil as an unbridled quest for money, power, and domination. This probably exists in most of us to some degree, but when it goes unchecked or unquestioned, it gets bad. When you deny the rights of a people, when you are profiting obscenely, when you put others down to allow yourself to ‘rise’—that is evil amongst us, and sadly, those with the most power seem to have let more evil in. 

DR: I wholeheartedly agree with Sheilah. And why the fuck can’t the fascists of the Israeli government own the fact that the holocaust is over and they are currently committing genocide? The biggest hypocrites on the planet… 

RS: Why do you get out of bed in the morning? 

SR: Because I have to make sure our daughter, Rose, wakes up and gets off to school by 7:20 am. 

DR: Same here. Even when I don’t get up for Rose, I have to get up when Sky climbs into our bed. Pema Chodron asks the same question on a soul level. What wakes you up? What puts you to sleep? 

I get up some days ready to join the rapid rivers, observe, work, help someone out, and experience the pleasure of food…other days, it’s a slog with another orthodontist appointment, car repair, post office lines…

RS: What % of your personality can you choose? 

SR: 37% or maybe none. 

DR: Is personality a question of perception? 

Where does mental illness fit into this equation? 

RS: How has mental health affected your creative life? 

SR: That is hard to say because I think part of what I work out creatively is all the ways in which I struggle in the world—or the creative life is to translate struggle/ questions through material and form. I am in love with someone who has bipolar, which affects me and my own creative life, as well as my anxiety, neurosis, and quest for perfection, which can have me obsessing about cleaning a stain, responding to a work email, worrying about a student before getting to the studio. So, mental health can both push me away or towards being creative – ultimately,y I just want to communicate a feeling or an experience or make real the reality that feels unseen. 

DR: I’m driven to the studio when manic and still driven to the studio when depressed.

RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry? 

SR: Good goddess. Probably both of them. My mother tended towards silence, and my father similar, but both interspersed with bouts of intense rage.  Several holes were punched in the walls and hollow core doors of my childhood home. I keep trying not to fall into those traps—to make myself make words so I don’t wall off with silence. 

DR: Good goddess indeed! My mom is a secretive, passive aggressor. My dad holds no reins on his rage. I guess I’m a bit of both. My fury is deep; my strategy at home is to keep my mouth shut and draw it or journal hateful words. I’m trying to break this cycle with Rose and Sky. 

RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet?

SR: It is an amazing tool, but it is also a vortex. I love being able to want to know something, and I can just google it so easily – but at the same time, I miss the intentionality of research in a library, looking for books, and having to find multiple sources. Right now I feel like students (and myself sometimes) often feel like the result of any question could be found on Wikipedia.  I would say it has increased our capacity so greatly, but it’s also made us feel like we have to be on top of things and given us a permanent state of FOMO vis a vis the ways the internet and social media work together, which is really a sad way to live a life and makes me always feel like I am running to catch up. 

DR: The internet is fucked. An incessant capitalist tool. However I like getting Democracy Now on my phone to watch while eating lunch.  

RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are? 

SR: Both. 

DR: One of the best things about my job is that as soon as I walk into the classroom and face those young people, my self-centered emotional wormholes disappear. 

SR: This is so true, Dani. I think teaching is a way out of oneself. Same with being a parent. Gotta show up for another. 

RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you? 

SR: I like best to answer questions in public with Dani. She gives me courage. I love it when we argue or say something the other one doesn’t expect, and the electricity of our connection is made public. In other words, I am deeply nervous about public forums, but I can do it more easily with Dani, and sometimes things come forth that are surprising. 

DR: Lately, I’m curious about the complicated discourse that can ensue from a Q&A. For instance, when we were fostering Sky, it was illegal for us to show her image; now, with adoption, we can include her in the work, just like we do with Rose (Sheilah’s bio daughter). But Sky is brown, and we are a queer white family —people have very strong opinions about interracial adoption. We haven’t done it yet, but we know with our new video, Stovepipe To The Sun, that there will be some difficult questions that I need to consider, and I have some things to say that I hope other people will consider…

RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything that is wrong or a list of everything that isn’t? 

SR: It really depends on the day for that one. 

DR: Yeah, life is fucking hard, but the practice of gratitude can increase the list of what is right. Living through the lens of gratitude is exponentially better when I can do it. 

RS: Bonus question: Drugs?

SR: I just listened to Eileen Myles give a talk on drugs, and they say it all for me. The beauty, the horror, the way it makes you see, and the way it can take you over. 

RS: Would you choose to live again without knowing you were given a choice if you had the choice? 

DR: Hell, yes. If I had the choice, I’d come back as an otter. 

SR: Horse.