(no subject)

kass asked me some questions.

1. If you were assembling a reading list to encapsulate your priorities and personality -- "Seekingferret 101" -- what would be on that reading list?

I think it's impossible to construct a finite reading list to accomplish such a thing, my reading taste is constantly evolving. But here's a go at a first order list of the books that most primarily implicate who I am as a reader and a person.

Ulysses by James Joyce

The Periodic Table> by Primo Levi

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin

The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text English Translation and Commentary ed. Rabbi J.H. Hertz

The Education of Robert Nifkin by Daniel Pinkwater

Buffalo Brenda by Jill Pinkwater

The Chosen by Chaim Potok

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Dramatis Personae by Robert Browning

Cyteen by CJ Cherryh


2. What five figures (historical, fictional, scriptural) would you most like to meet / have dinner with / learn with?

I chose to answer this as 'most like to learn with', because I don't think I have seen the question in that form before. Not that I could in any way hang with these people in terms of lomdus (heck, Moshe Rabbenu couldn't hang with Rabbi Akiva, right?), but they are the people I most wish I could.

-Rambam

-Yochanan ben Zakkai

-Ibn Ezra

-Akiva

-Moses Mendelssohn


3. How did you discover vidding fandom, and what have you enjoyed most about being part of vidding fandom?


I'm not exactly sure how I discovered vidding fandom... I've been a writer of fanfiction since I was, like, eight, and participating in Fandom in various forms since I was about sixteen. But I got hooked into the particular LJ-oriented fic writing community in around 2008 or 2009 (so... a couple years out of college), and fanvidding was... adjacent and connected. There wasn't, it seemed to me, a lot of difference between the people who were responding critically to canons by writing fic and the people responding critically to canons by making vids. Being community-adjacent to fanvidders is what led to me thinking that maybe I could make my own vids. My first vids, never finished or posted, were a Sports Night vidlet to John Zorn's "Shabbos Noir" and a West Wing CJ vid to Dessa's "Dutch". The first vid I finished and posted was a Fringe vid to Josh Radin's "Everthing'll Be Alright".

I enjoy many things about being in vidding fandom, but one underrated aspect is what I refer to jokingly as my 'vidding superpowers'. By which I mean all the tech skills I have picked up while vidding that apply to other things I do. Not just video editing, which I have directly applied a few times on non-vidding projects, but also sound editing skills honed while vidding, and photo editing skills honed while vidding, and other technical skills. I have all these tech skills as a result of vidding and I have used them at work and I have used them to do favors for family members and friends and whenever that happens, I think of it as using my vidding superpowers, these hidden abilities (because I don't talk about being a vidder at work) that can come out when I need them.

Perhaps that's not really about being in vidding fandom, per se. But being in vidding fandom is about spending time with other people who also have vidding superpowers, and learning new tricks from them, and sharing advice with them. I have many other hobbies, but none that are as focused on self-improvement as vidding is. Vidding is a terrible hobby, but I love that we are always trying to get better at it.



4. What is your favorite holiday and why?

Many of the Jewish holidays make very strong cases. I like Sedarim an awful lot, and the fact that I was born Second Seder night so every year I get to celebrate my birthday with a massive feast with my whole family is great. Tikkun Leil Shavuos is a magical experience of learning and friendship. I love spending Rosh Hashanah dinner with my family and doing all the simanim and reflecting on the year together. But my favorite Chag is Sukkot, because building a Sukkah is my favorite mitzvah.

When I explain this to a lot of people they don't really understand, but whereas there's this sense that people often have that SCIENCE and JUDAISM are these big concepts that one needs to reconcile in order to be an observant scientist, most people don't have the same sense that ART and JUDAISM need to be similarly reconciled... but I think if anything it's harder to reconcile ART and JUDAISM. Talmud and Torah are very, very constrained in their understanding of what's acceptable in terms of art, because there's a significant wariness of getting anywhere close to inappropriately Representing the Divine. The Rabbis are very aware that it's possible to do art in profane ways and idolatrous ways and they caution severely against just how great a sin that would be. But if art is not allowed to engage with the numinous, what is its purpose?

And as a mechanical design engineer, what I do (both professionally, and also in terms of Engineer being an identity position I take) is a combination of Science and Design, and so I'm always trying to figure out that balance, how do I do the Design part of being an engineer in a Godly way?

And so enter two mitzvot in particular that are my guideposts. The commandment to build a Mikdash so that God can dwell among Israel, and the commandment to build a Sukkah to dwell in on the holiday of Sukkot. In so many ways, the Sukkah is a miniature Mikdash and it parallels that no longer viable Mitzvah. In effect, it's saying that once a year we have an opportunity do build a miniature dwelling of God. Once a year we get to practice Design and Art and Engineering in a divine way, with assurance that we're not straying into idolatry, with the blessing of God on the dwelling.

(And of course Sukkot is a holiday full of opportunity to use the dwelling, too. To invite family and friends into your Sukkah for meals, to go to their Sukkahs for meals... Once you get past the building part, it becomes a holiday about celebrating community whereas most of the other Chagim are more insularly built around family and I love that about it too.)

(Picture of this year's Sukkah:



)


5. If you could spend time in any fictional world (and then magically return to RL without anyone noticing that you'd been gone), what world would you choose to visit and what would you want to do there?

Ha, this is a funny question because I'm so generally resistant to portal fantasy as a thing, and this came up with kass just last week in terms of her recommendation of the anti-Narnia Tikanu in Ruthanna Emrys's Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land. Jews conceive of this world as one with the potential for miracle and wonder, and so the idea of spending time in a fictional world and returning to RL without anyone noticing you'd been gone is a sort of alien one; Why would you want to?

That said, I have done a considerable amount of Star Wars roleplaying in my day. The Star Wars universe is not one I'd necessarily want to spend time in, it's too damned dangerous, but a parallel version of the Star Wars universe that wasn't in a constant state of Manichean war, that'd be cool to visit. A place with thousands of interesting species to interact with and wondrous technologies around every corner is my kind of place.