1: Analog or Digital?
Analog, no doubt. You can’t replicate the energy of human interaction with a machine. Analog is all about the present, whatever that may be.
2: What time did you wake up today?
6:30 a.m.
3: Last thing you read?
Robert Frost’s poem, “Directive”.
4: What’s your first memory?
Sitting next to my mother while she sorted laundry, and her telling me that I was going to start violin lessons. I was bummed because I wanted to join the children’s theater group my older sister was in. In a way nothing has changed since then.
5: Tea Or Coffee?
Green tea. Unless we’re in South America, in which case, café con leche.
6: Last thing you cooked?
Lemon pudding cake.
7: If you’re reborn who or what would you like to be?
Either a douglas fir tree or a mountain. I’d like to spend my next life, if such a thing exists, in a place as devoid of human-made sound as possible.
8: What inspires you?
The forces of nature. Weather, trees, rain, snow, rocks, hunger, unforeseen combinations of sounds, the beautiful minutia of everything. Also my two sisters, both of whom are forces of nature themselves. My older sister taught me how to make bread last month – that is my biggest inspiration yet this year.
9: Last record you played?
Arvo Part’s “Berliner Messe” sung by the Paul Hillier Theatre of Voices. The “Credo” section of that piece is one of the all time greats.
10: Favorite piece of musical equipment?
Impossible to answer. But my current favorite is my Bina 23B Deluxe harmonium. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in the last 3 years. And the first piece of equipment that has significantly changed the way I think about making music.
11: Last movie you saw?
I’m sorry to say it was the new Indiana Jones movie.
12: Who do you love?
Danica, my family, and my closest friends, who are no different than family. Also Johnny Cash. Oh, and Ali Farka Toure, and Sergei Prokofiev. And John Muir. And Wendell Berry, Rick Bass, Barry Lopez, Rachel Carson, and James Galvin. And Derek Jeter, and Springsteen. And basically anyone who is kicking ass and taking names.
13: Do you have any pets?
Dusty. A scruffy, self-possessed, reformed stray dog.
14: Are you useful?
To a very limited number of people, yes I think so. I worry about this quite a lot and would really like to be more useful. In the end, being useful to a few people that I love is all I can ask for, and though that’s enough I’d like to try for more.
15: Biggest fear?
I don’t fear much, but I’m scared shitless of dying in a fire. I get scared when I’m alone in the woods in the middle of the night, but have resigned myself to getting killed by a wild animal if it comes to that. There’s justice in it, and it would be a respectable way to go. Plus they just owe us for all the bullshit we throw their way.
16: What do you value the most?
Health (my own and that of those I love) and time.
17: Famous last words?
I saw this on a gravestone in Greensboro, Vermont a couple of months ago, three lines from a Gary Snyder poem:
“Stay together,
Learn the flowers,
Go light.”
That pretty much says it all.
Tony Cross lives, works, drinks tea & makes music in San Francisco. His first solo CD “A Light In The West” is now out on Digitalis. Go pick it up!
