The Compulsive Splicer: The Loreniuska Interview

Thank you, Lore­nius­ka for these questions.

1. What is your biggest regret in life?

First the cop-out answer: i don’t real­ly have any regrets. I’ve made some bad deci­sions, but they’ve all led to me being where I am right now, and most of the things I wish I could have done dif­fer­ent­ly I could­n’t have known why it was wrong until after I’d done the wrong thing. But that’s a kind of philo­soph­i­cal view, and I do have painful mem­o­ries, things I look back at and cringe.

There are things like, “I wish I had­n’t treat­ed so and so so bad­ly.” Liisa, who I dat­ed when I was 22 and then avoid­ed after she came to vis­it me at my par­ents’ house because being in close quar­ters with her for a week we each got on one anoth­er’s nerves and i was glad to see her go. But she was real­ly great and did­n’t deserve to be treat­ed like that. I file her under regret because I don’t know how to get in touch with her.

Then there’s I regret hav­ing sex at 17 basi­cal­ly to get my friends off my back about nev­er hav­ing had sex. Talk about wrong rea­sons! And that pret­ty much shaped a lot of my life from there forward.

I think what I have to say is my sin­gle great­est regret is how I live my life on a dai­ly basis. Every day that I don’t give my best to my clients, every day that I don’t pray and med­i­tate, every day I don’t tell the peo­ple I love that I love them, every day that I don’t draw or sketch, every day that I don’t ride my bicy­cle to see more of this beau­ti­ful city I live in; I’m not sure there can be a greater regret than how far I’ve fall­en short of my ideals almost every day of my life.

2. What is the most valu­able les­son life has taught you so far?

Fix­ing things out­side myself does­n’t help. I can’t make my life bet­ter by mov­ing 100, 1,000, or 3,000 miles. That’s why I’m think­ing that maybe 8,000 will work.

The con­cept of dhar­ma is that life and life lessons are not dif­fer­ent ideas. Dhar­ma is my life; the ques­tion is whether I am the atten­tive stu­dent of life in the front row, or the Goo­fus in the back row.

3. What is the most dif­fi­cult thing you’ve ever had to do?

Sur­vive my last breakup. I know that oth­er peo­ple are even more sick of hear­ing about Vic­to­ria than I am of men­tion­ing her, but Feb­ru­ary, March and April of 2001 were prob­a­bly the worst tri­als I had to face. My first two weeks of sobri­ety were pret­ty fuck­ing bad too, but I think that prob­a­bly gets first run­ner-up. It’s hard to tell, because as time goes by, the mem­o­ry of pain fades, and get­ting sober hap­pened a lot far­ther back.

4. When have you been hap­pi­est in your life? What moment, with whom, doing what?

When I was 16 years old, I pub­lished a nation­al­ly-dis­trib­uted com­ic book. The all-nighters that Tim and I pulled mak­ing it all hap­pen were the best time of my life. We had music, and plen­ty of work that we loved. We worked hard and walked to the gro­cery store to get caf­feinat­ed bev­er­ages and spent a lot of time real­ly being a part of what we were doing. It was the last time I felt real team­work and real own­er­ship over my work, and the last time I did any sus­tained work at any­thing I was good at.

5. Describe you dream vaca­tion, and who would you go with?

I’d like to spend a cou­ple weeks on the beach­es of Cuba with my 17-year-old girl­friend. There’s some­thing deli­cious about the num­ber of Fed­er­al laws I’d be breaking.

Seri­ous­ly, I think it would be a bicy­cle tour with my father. We’ve talked about going across the U.S., but if it’s my dream vaca­tion, I think maybe it would be a bike tour through Aus­tralia. Or hell, maybe my dad and I could take a bike tour around Cuba! Who knows?

THE RULES!
1 — Leave a com­ment, say­ing you want to be interviewed.
2 — I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 — You’ll update your jour­nal with my five ques­tions, and your five answers.
4 — You’ll include this explanation.
5 — You’ll ask oth­er peo­ple five ques­tions when they want to be interviewed.