Tag Archive for 'interview'

Glen Hansard Interview

Published on 19 December 2005 in Asides and Memorable. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .
In more Frames news, Ross of Broken Sounds has posted the results of his interview with Glen Hansard:
Fans will know that Frames concerts are peppered with verbal interludes of Glen spinning tales about the inspiration behind his songs. This works both as entertainment and as an insight into the songwriting craft. If pressed further on the subject, however, Glen is entertainingly elusive. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you what informs my lyrics even though I write them,” he laughs. “I was watching a Bruce Springsteen DVD recently, and he was asked a question about the meaning behind one of his songs. He said, “Now, was I thinking that when I wrote it? Not at all. Was I feeling it? Every bit of it”.” #
On a personal note:
It is this openness and abundance of affection for his audience that continues to attract new listeners to The Frames. One fan recently wrote on a music website that the appeal behind the band’s majestic yet intimate live performances was that, in spite of the adulation he receives, Glen remains human and down-to-earth. “That’s good to know,” Glen says, sounding genuinely flattered. “What other option is there? What else can one do? If you are not singing about human, then you are lying.”
That fan would be me.

Gregory Maguire Interview

Published on 7 October 2005 in Asides. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .
"One of the things that I wanted to do when I started writing Wicked--and that I liked to do when I came back to this terrain ten years later--is to try to write about a fantastic situation that includes material that most fantasies--swords and sorcery type fantasies--leave out. For instance, critics of Tolkien are always saying, "Hey, what about the other half of the species? What about the female gender? What about romance, lust, passion, and betrayel? It's only male bonding in Tolkien, pretty much." So I wanted to put in sex, romance, philosophy, politics, violence, human bodily functions in order to make it seem as if these people who were contorting through a dangerous time in a dangerous, magical land were still people and are recognizably dense and complicated in the same way that a character out of, say, Dostoevsky might be dense and complicated." -- Gregory Maguire
Well put, I say. That's exactly the attitude with which I try to approach my own writing. The full interview, available via podcast, is great, as is Maguire's new novel, Son of a Witch, which picks up where Wicked left off ten years ago after the death of the Wicked Witch of the West.