Ask the Author: Mabel Yu
[admin / June 1st, 2010 / Interviews ]Mabel Yu’s writing will be featured both in PANK 5 as well as in the May issue of PANK. She talks about the executioner’s song, the embarrassing things that can happen in groups and more.
1. What song would you want a choir to sing for you if you were to be executed?
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this.
2. Why did you choose singing over another activity, like an orchestra or a dance crew?
A choir is usually associated with the church, ceremony, and a celebration or reverence for life, which juxtaposes with the destruction of life during in an execution. There is something beautiful and cathartic about a chain of voices. Allowing pop songs makes the situation a little absurd, but also contemporary. Perhaps this is a fine line, but a dance crew feels like it pushes too much toward parody.
3. What embarrassing youth group activity did you participate in?
None. Latchkey kids unite.
4. What would be on your execution mix tape?
A little bit of everything, from the energetic (Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Heads Will Roll”), to the dramatic (Shearwater’s “Rooks”), to the plaintive (Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”).
5. How would you want to go?
Having been happy.
A good poem, Mabel.
Shearwater’s great, too.
Remarkable Leonard Cohen. I just love him. Leonard Cohen is back with a new album, Old Values – and more humor and wisdom. Old Ideas is simply awesome. Did you know he was born in Montreal in 1934 ? He was in fact a poet before becoming a composer and performing. You can get Old Ideas from Amazon … http://goo.gl/oZH6N