If you could hang out for an evening talking with any living person (or persons), who would your top 5 choices be? Here’s my list:
- Thomas Pynchon
- Brian Eno or Stewart Brand (or both)
- Woody Allen
- Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen (or both)
- the Dalai Lama
Who would you choose?
Some time in the future, I may look into the controversial work by the Dalai Lama with American scientists to study meditation using functional brain imaging.
1. Bono
2. Gordon Parks
3. Imogene Cunningham
4. Jane Austen
5. Henri Matisse
Interesting, how we, so far, have been misreading your question. I was totally wrong and Jane Austen is not a living person.
oops…I totally misread the question then…
thanks for the heads-up Birgit…
LIVING people…..hmmm
1) Bono
2) James Morgan
3) Alice Walker
4) Elliot Erwitt
5) Madonna
On your list, definitely the Lama.
Mine:
1. Plato
2. Alexander
3. Anaxagoras
4. Octavian
5. Miamoto Musashi
Oh. You said living. Hmm…
-MLK… No…
-JFK… Drat. (And not really, actually; he’d probably hog the conversation.)
-Jack Kerouac… Shoot.
-Kurt Cobain… Er, speaking of nice shots.
-Did William Burroughs kick?
-Ayn Rand?
Aw, forget it, sorry. I tried. :)
Rex, unlike Thoreau, you’d only need two chairs (or just one if the DL sits on the floor).
:)
I’ve heard he is surpisingly sweet, funny, and candid. I’d certainly sit on the floor if he did.
So Rex, is he really the only living person you’d want to talk to? C’mon. All the dead people you mentioned were alive at one time. There must be a few more who are still breathing :)
Problem is, David, there’s hundreds. Thousands. I want them all. Now!
Seriously, ever since I saw on a military only issue training film (the now Senator) John McCain jump from the nose of his burning jet on the Forestal into the awaiting arms of the firefighters, I’ve always wanted to meet him. You really don’t get many genuine warriors in politics.
I’d love to meet Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. My brother met Arnold while working on one of his buildings in Pasadena. He said he was warm with a great ability to admire good work, and I’ve heard Clinton packs a charismatic wallop when you get within ten feet of him. I like that in others.
Then there are several gorgeous athletes I’d love to get quite close to, but we’ll leave those out…
And there’s not a person who posts here that I wouldn’t love to meet.
How’s that?
Then there are several gorgeous athletes I’d love to get quite close to, but we’ll leave those out…
Yeah, the question this time was just about conversations. If it was other stuff my list would be quite different (and all women).
Oh, I’m sure there’d be plenty to talk about. Like, “Tell me how you shape your < fill muscle in here >.” :)
I thought a lot about people in the news and with each of the famous people out there, I found some nagging aspect that made me not want to meet them – maybe too much publicity or too much exposure.
So here goes my list…
I would like to spend time with…
1. The modest aid worker in a third world country silently saving hundreds of lives and prefers not to talk about it
2. That silent widow of a fighter who went out to liberate the world and prefers to brood in the darkness of her home
3. The young girl who was sold into the flesh trade in Central Europe after being promised a decent job
4. The un-named refugee crossing miles of ocean escaping persecution only to end up in a foreign prison cell
5. To the silent mother who keeps her family together despite knowing her husbands infidelities.
Ok David,
“Yeah, the question this time was just about conversations. If it was other stuff my list would be quite different (and all women).”
So all the folks you want to actually talk to are men (except Joni)? I couldn’t let this one go =)
Sunil,
Great list. I tend toward regular people myself, in fact my dad is one I would put on my list just because I don’t get to see him very often. And he is one of those silent, invisible heroes.
But let me list some we all might know anyway:
1. John Stewart because I would be laughing nonstop
2. Ida Appelbroog because she is super intense and kind of scary and I love her work
3. Adrienne Rich because she is a genius
4. Barak Obama because he is a visionary and gives me hope
5. Michael Ondaatje because he is a beautiful writer and has a sultry voice
Only one visual artist on that list…hmmm… not many on other people’s lists either. I guess they have to be dead before we want to meet them?
So all the folks you want to actually talk to are men (except Joni)? I couldn’t let this one go =)
Ha, I knew I was going to get in trouble for that one :)
It’s probably also odd that I have no visual artists on my list. Actually there are plenty of people I’d love to talk to, including many women and of course visual artists, but for my top five I had to pick the people I’ve never met who’ve had the most influence on my thinking. If I made a longer list it would probably be much more diverse.
Also, I’d just as soon hang out with my very unfamous friends as with anyone on my list. This was more about people I’ve known through their work but have never had a chance to talk to. It all started with a conversation my wife and I had over dinner the other night. She’s a screenwriter and yoga teacher, and she had a somewhat different list than mine, but both our lists included Woody Allen and the Dalai Lama.
Woody Allen: 90% of success is showing up.
[or is that 80%?]
Karl, I think I may have quoted him the other day (uncredited) when you asked me how it went in the studio. I seem to have internalized both the quote and the misquote :)
Dalai Lama: 85%
Ha!
David Hockney
Frank Stella
Tracy Emin
Liza Lou
Wolfgang Laib
Then there’s Bill Clinton, on whom I have a long-standing crush. And I actually hung out with Adrienne Rich and Alice Walker in another life — “hung out” meaning I got to watch the adoring students at Rich’s feet in my living room, and I chatted in a bar with Walker about Tea Cake — a fictional character whom we both swooned over.
Oh, and Beverly Sills and Placido Domingo.
mmm Tea Cake….one of my all-time favorite characters
June,
I am jealous of your Adrienne encounter! Thanks for the intro to Liza Lou – what a hoot. She would make a good dinner guest!
Leslie,
I moderate an email list on art history and themes, and one of our members spent a month taking us through Liza Lou’s work. Before that I barely knew anything about her.
Do you think obsessives make good dinner guests? I suspect so, if their obsession happened to match one of my interests.
And those students were literally at Rich’s feet — sitting on the carpet in front of her chair. I felt a bit out of place, too middle-aged and straight and un-famous. Rich, however, was a delight, even while being adored.
Thinking about whom I would like to talk to?
In my field of science? It is enough for me to happily remember the quirky characters of many Nobel prize winners from my Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory days.
Literature? Way back, I was fascinated by how Alice Walker prepared to write the Color Purple reading a NY Times Magazine article: To avoid noise, she moved from Boston to San Francisco and then to the Country side. To let the characters in her novel fully occupy her mind, she gave up writing magazine articles. And how the characters in her head worried about her daughter coming to live with her, an event that changed the intended outcome of her book. I read all of Alice Walker’s earlier books which allowed me to understand how she learned to crystallize her characters better and better until she could write the Color Purple. I remember a photograph in the NY Times article showing her walking through the countryside with her partner. All this stuck in mind over the last 20 or so years. Do I want to meet Alice Walker? No. My fantasies are so vivid that I do not want them disturbed. Do I want to see the musical? No way. I am still trying to forget the Darcy character from watching Pride and Prejudice two years ago.
Music? When I learned playing the piano from Bela Bartok’s Microcosm, I fell in love with him and would have liked to meet him to listen to how he played his music.
Politicians? I listened to Clinton’s speech at my University out in the open, only a few feet away from him. His charisma was truly amazing. I don’t know how I avoided shaking his hand when I found out how many of the people that I know had their hands shaken.
Art? I would love to watch how everyone leaving comments here on A&P does her/his art. Thus, I would rather learn by watching people work than by only talking to them – my hands-on approach.
I would rather learn by watching people work than by only talking to them
Birgit, I think that’s why there are no visual artists on my top 5 list. There are plenty of artists who I would love to watch work and whose company I might enjoy, but for just hanging out and talking people in other fields seem to be higher on my list.
Birgit,
What a pleasant set of thoughts.Alice Walker was just as wonderful in reality as I had imagined her to be.
Oddly enough, while I would like to watch the artists on A&P work now that I’ve heard a bit of their voices, I fear that the itch to create would overcome me. I think I would rather have a very large dinner party (catered, of course) and just blather away with all of you.
I find it very hard to watch artists, particularly accomplished ones, do their work. I always want to dive in and try doing the work for myself. I didn’t make a very good student at those demonstrations in art class. And I’m always forgetting my camera and then telling Jer (my husband) that he should try getting the image from “this” (read that as “my”) viewpoint. He ignores me, as well he should. I don’t have this problem with music, although my throat does ache a little when I’m at the opera…..