muninnhuginn | The colour of that suite... chained to the launch pad... incredibly desirable... Orkney... bats...

The ravens croaked the following answers to yonmei's exceedingly good questions.

1. You cited one of Philip Larkin's poems but said that for you, it would be avocado. Describe the new religion you would construct using avocado.

Avocadianism

[Think of all the pantheons there've been before, full of spirits, humans, animals, animal-headed humans.... Has there ever been a totally vegetable pantheon? Well, maybe due to our carnivorous-leanings and adherence to atheism, we've failed to notice. So, here goes, the first tenets, at least...]

The laws of Avocadianism:

Every dwelling shall have a shrine for the performance of ritual ablutions. And the colour of that suite shall be avocado.
For the layers of the avocado are three, skin, flesh and stone. And the layers of the earth are three, crust, mantle and core. Respect, therefore, the earth for it is like unto the avocado.
The skin may be smooth as the frog's or it may be wrinkled like unto the toad, but the flesh beneath is as sweet withal.
Thou shalt squeeze gently at the ends and not in the middle.

2. You are invited to be part of the first big group of colonists on a mission to a planet discovered orbiting a neighbour star. The planet has no sentient life and will require terraforming by you and the others before you can step outside except in a suit. You can't take any of the people you love with you, and you can't come back: but if your work is successful, others can and will follow. Do you go?

Putting aside the thought that I've nothing very much to offer as skills, I'd be off like a shot, no question, no regrets, bye-bye don't wait up I'm leaving for the stars, except for that phrase "no sentient life". Reading that, I immediately assume that the planet might have some life. So, no way am I going. I'm lying on the runway/chained to the launch pad trying to stop the mission. I'm not hugely happy about the way the human race treats its home planet. I certainly don't think we should be messing around with, and possibly (probably?) obliterating, life on another planet just for our own expansionist dreams. If the target were very definitely just a ball of completely lifeless dust, that's fine. But not if there's life.

3. Why do you want an Ondes Martenot? What is an Ondes Martenot, anyway?

Did you watch the serialization of Flambards on the TV in the early eighties? Do you remember the theme music? There you go then: Ondes-Martenot at work!

To switch the order around, this is an Ondes-Martenot. You've almost certainly heard it providing creepy music in some sf or horror movie: it's weird space music sound par excellence.

Why do I want one? Everyone's got to have an impossible dream, or two. This is one of mine: they're big, rare and presumably expensive.

In general, there is something incredibly desirable about musical instruments as artefacts. They're useful (after all, they are tools for producing sounds), artistic, manufactured artifacts. Because they're often complicated and also produced in small numbers they often combine the best of precision engineering and loving hand crafting. They can be mass produced and still often manage to develop individual characters. Then there's their use: the interplay between a human body and a musical instrument is fascinating and sensual.

So, why the O-M? Well, the sounds it produces are incomparable. If you've sound, try the links at the bottom of the www.obsolete.com page. It's a music unlike any other. My WX5/VL70-m combination (wind input device plus single voice synthesizer) has a preset O-M/theremin voice, but it's no substitute (the F1 engine sound's no substitute for the real thing either!). It's also a beautiful object.

I'm also prone to lusting after gadgets, generally small ones like my dinky mobile phone or the Psion 5, but also some bigger ones too, the Caterham 7 springs to mind. So that's another reason.

Okay, I want a theremin, too. That's a slightly more likely dream (you can buy them on eBay).

Who would want to stand their family photos on the baby grand if they could arrange them on top of the O-M instead?

4. Lancelot had a son, Galahad; Arthur had a son, Mordred. Guinevere never had a child. Guinevere's childlessness is part of the Matter of Britain in every version; she cannot have a child, though both the men in her life can and do. What are your feelings for Guinevere, and her part in the Matter?

I don't think I've ever had feelings for or about Guinevere at all. Why? Well, the bits of the Matter of Britain that really interested me didn't have much of either Arthur or Guinevere in it: in Chrétien de Troyes' romances, Arthur's a figurehead rather than an active participant, Guinevere too. Before that, with T H White, I found the Orkney strand far more of an attraction through the middle part of the novels, Arthur was only interesting in The Book of Merlin, and Guinevere not at all (I always thought A, L and G rather infantile and annoying). I'm going to skip commenting on Malory and Tennyson 'cos it's so long since I read them, I really can't remember what I thought.

Considering the subject now, my first reaction is, L and A had sons? Much good it did them. But that's trite and unjust to the stories. On a practical basis, considered as if she were an historical figure, G failed in her prime task of providing the king with an heir. However, as a convicted adulteress, maybe that's safer: might the legitimacy of any offspring have been called into question too (rather repeating the promblematic nature of A's own conception and tenuous legitimacy)? I always had rather more time for Trstan, Iseult and Mark, anyway.

Hah! The Matter of Britain: The Next Generation. Tweak the ending so that Galahad and Mordred both survive (probably hideously mutilated in the case of the latter) and allow Guinevere to have a surviving child too. There're possibilities there.

5. You're a millionaire. (Just pretend a minute that you are, okay? Thanks.) Would you spend $1701 on a bag of Ti Kuan Yin? If you would, under what circumstances would you drink it?

Yes. If I liked it, I'd probably continue to do so.

Under what circumstances? On my own, in the specially constructed tea pavilion at one end of the island I'd buy with the rest of my million (will a million stretch to a small island off Scotland these days, I wonder?) in the very late midsummer evening with the bats flitting in and out of the structure and the waves whispering on the shore. I'd probably leave it to cool in its perfect porcelain cup standing on the Ondes-Martenot whilst I attempt to charm the seals with my playing, before committing seppuku with the most exquisite blade I could afford.