Looking for a new interview?

For those of you who've been waiting, breath held tightly for a new face to appear here on Interviews with Rita Mae Baker, you won't have to wait long. We've been talking with several talented artists and entertainers from Austin, Texas and you won't want to miss what they have to say.

In the meantime, if you have a suggestion for someone we might interview for the site, please send your suggestions to us here at ritamaebaker@yahoo.com.

Introducing Ficali McPipe

Age: 27
Gender: Female
Location: New York
Occupation: HR bod
Blog link: Sea Horse Chronicles

How did writing become your form of creative expression and what role does it play in your life?
It's something I've always enjoyed, even as a child. Being visually, musically and spatially inept, writing has always been my means to express myself. Words can be fun, and I enjoy the art of playing with them, albeit often with rather unsuccessful results. I guess it started in grade school, when I used to write poems of a ridiculously childish nature, and insist on reading them out to anyone who would listen. My parents, bless their hearts, found it in themselves to somehow convince me this was a talent and encouraged me to grow it further. If I'd been them, I'd have probably thrown those poems away.

Today, my medium for writing is my blog. I don't really use it to keep friends and family aware of the haps in my life, but rather as a means to express myself. Usually, the content is an exaggerated distortion of the truth it's based on, but it's important to me as my outlet for creativity, while at the same time allowing me to step back and retrospectively view my own life with a sense of humourous objectivity.

You have lived in Bombay, London and now New York? Where do you feel your sense of home?
It's a great question and one I've often asked myself in the past. Sense of home is not tied to geography for me, it's really a question of emotional attachment, I suppose as predominantly driven by the people I care about. As long as my parents continue to live in Bombay, there will always be a part of me that will think of Bombay as home. And the same for London, with the close friends I have there. But if I had to pick one, given how happy I am right now in New York, and given that I don't envision myself moving elsewhere anytime in the near future, I'd have to say this is home. I guess the acid test for me is, when I come home from a terrible day at work, or when I'm ill, at a psychologically vulnerable point, I don't yearn to be elsewhere. I'm happy, even relieved, to be home, and that's when I know this is really "home." Now, if only all my friends and family would be compliant and come live here in New York, I could give you a much more definitive answer to this question :)

A year ago this month, you walked past a diner in New York and saw a man who appeared to be Salman Rushdie eating eggs at your favorite diner. It made you think seeing him there was a sign. A sign of what?
Most of us, I think, are at risk of being lulled into a complacency by the quotidien routine of life. Often, I'm so busy rushing from one thing to the next, so focused on the objective, that I fail to notice the little things happening all around me on the way. So when something slightly out of the ordinary happens, however small, but yet significant enough to have grabbed my attention for that moment, I take it as a sign. Not a sign to portend great or terrible things to come, rather just a sign to me, because it's made me pause in my course of action, and alter my sign of thought. For haven't these moments ultimately, however infinitesimally, altered the course of your life in some way? In all honesty, I'm not even sure if it was Salman Rushdie I saw in the diner. But all the same, thinking I saw him there just brought home to me the specialness of the place, and the central role it continues to play in my life.

How do you feel about Rushdie's writing and the controversy surrounding it?
I admire Rushdie's writing greatly. I certainly haven't ready all of his books, but both "Satanic Verses" and "The Moor's Last Sigh" left me with a sense of awe. He's an extremely talented writer and definitely deserving of the accolades he received. In my opinion, the controversy surrounding his writing is not different from that surrounding any strongly opinionated political or religious work, and while the reaction (especially to "Satanic Verses" I believe) is perhaps inevitable, he's ultimately only exercising his right to freedom of speech.

Who are your favorite writers?
I'm not sure if I have favourite writers, per se, as much as favourite works from a variety of authors. To highlight a couple of my absolute all-time favourites, I'd have to pick Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) and Nobody's Fool (Richard Russo). Most often I tend to stick to character-driven novels, which may even have little to no plot, but which express the depth of the multi-faceted human character truly like a work of art. I Know This Much Is True (Wally Lamb) is a great example of this.

In an entry on mental mapping, you wrote in September 2005, "With so much changing in my life around me, I find that more marked now than ever. Every once in a while, I have to pause and check in with myself, take stock of where I was, where I am, and where I'm going. And sometimes, my maps change so rapidly I feel like I'm caught in swirling waters, losing track of who I am." Do you think we get a clearer understanding of who we are as we grow older, or do we simple continue to add to the mental map?
I wrote this entry in a Kerouac-ian moment of philosophical inspiration, but I can't say it's a particularly wiser insight than most people probably do anyway, at some intuitive level. The concept of mental maps is the simple, life-old concept that we are continually influenced by our experiences in the world around us. I do believe that in the case of most people, this gets less as you grow older, mostly because a lot of the significantly life-altering choices have already been made, and life paths have already been embarked upon. So it's just a matter of one's sphere of daily experience getting narrower. This must lead to a clearer understanding of, if not who we are, then at least where we are in our lives. Having said that, I certainly don't believe that a person's capacity to adapt, change, and evolve along with the course of life diminishes with age - in fact I've seen much evidence to the contrary. I personally hope, and intend, to continue expanding my world of experience, and continue evolving with this irrespective of age.

Your native home of India is much different today than the days of your parents. What is better and what is worse, in your opinion?
I'm hardly qualified to give a thorough answer, though, like most bloggers, I'm happy to posit an opinion :). India has opened its markets to the global economy over the last decade or two, and this has had tremendous impact on the overall career, growth and lifestyle opportunities people there can now afford. It has opened a world of choice to people across the socio-economic levels, and this is a dramatic improvement for such a large society to go through over such a relatively short span of time. However, the greatest benefit from this lies not in the materialistic opportunities this presents, but rather the expansion of thought, awareness and a cultural open-mindedness which could only be achieved through a genuine inter-education of intellectual ideas in the world environment. This change, a more gradual one but far more powerful, manifests itself across the various spheres of life, from increased social liberalism, to environmental conscientiousness, intellection expansion and an encouragement of individual freedoms - and this, I see as a tremendous improvement from the times even of my own childhood.

I genuinely can't put my finger on what might have gotten worse (although I'm sure there are things which should be listed!), other than possibly pollution and congestion, which are natural products of population increase and I would hardly list them as specific to India.

Introducing Frank Rodriguez

Age: 35
Gender: Male
Occupation: Marketing Consultant

Photography Website and Blog: www.organicphoto.com

"You click some good personality," one of your customers wrote of your photography. It is clear that you have a gift for capturing human emotion and essence in your work. How has your interest in people and your skills in photographing them developed over the years?

The motivation for buying my first camera at 16 was to photograph the friends I made at summer camp. I enjoy many types of photography, but people are by far the most interesting subject to me. This eventually led me into event photography where there are often many opportunities for capturing human emotion and essence (to use your phrase), but there are usually very small windows of opportunities for making those photographs. As my eye and my equipment improved, I got more hits. After nearly 20 years of making photographs, I enjoy being at the point where I can often anticipate opportunities and capture many more hits than misses. I also have to thank digital technology because it's a feedback system that has allowed me to improve my skills more than film photography did. I should mention that I credit much of my people photo skills to having only made black and white photographs for my first several years in photography. Color is a giant distraction from the essence of a portrait. I love color, but I have no use for it if it doesn't serve the photograph. I turn many of my digital photos into black and white.

Your website is called organicphoto.com . What is the origin of that name?

I wanted a short and catchy name that was either descriptive or evocative of what I do. I originally wanted to get imagesniper.com but everyone I ran the name past reacted very negatively. A few weeks after trying to figure out a name, the name came to me in my sleep. I immediately knew this was the one so I got up and bought it.

You have a collection of photos from the annual Burning Man festival on your site. Can you tell me a bit more about the festival, how you came to be involved, and what its appeal is to you as a photographer?

I first learned about Burning Man from a National Geographic cover story many years ago. The cover photo was an elderly woman wearing a skin tight fluorescent tie-dye outfit and she was walking through a sandstorm in the middle of the desert. It looked like something out of an alternate reality. I was instantly intrigued, but it wasn't until 2004 when I read a Craigslist post of a person who was asking for help in driving their Volkswagen bus to Burning Man that I made the effort to get there. I was motivated by a desire to see a different aspect of American culture than I'd ever experienced. I'm half Puerto-Rican and I grew up in a Hispanic and black neighborhood, so white culture always seemed lacking in flavor to me. Culturally speaking, Burning Man is an entirely new level of flavor! It's also the greatest place on earth for a people photographer.

What is your history with photography? (How did it become your form of creative expression?)

As I mentioned, my original motivation was simply to photograph the friends I made at summer camp, but after having a terrific experience in my senior year of high school of making short films with Super 8 movie cameras, I became enamored with the visual arts. While in college, photography distinguished itself to me as a means to work independently, so I changed my focus to photography and I just keep getting deeper as I learn more about digital photography while also returning to my film roots by exploring medium format and Polaroid photography.

You wrote on your blog: "Most of the serious photographers I know do not shoot for money, they shoot for the love of it ..." This seems to be true for most people in creative professions, as well as service jobs like education and law enforcement. We all need money to pay the electric bill, but we do the work because we love it. Meanwhile, the bankers and engineers and salesmen are scooping up a bigger share of the profits and really do seem to make money multiply. What is your take on what this represents in our society? Is one group more self-serving than the other? How does money create a disconnect between a society and its values? (pick any or all of these questions)

That question deserves more attention than I'm qualified to give, but my take is that these seemingly opposite pursuits (chasing the almighty dollar vs following your bliss) are both expressions of a person's values and priorities, but it's important to note that these pursuits need not be mutually exclusive. There are many successful people who give back in different ways, so I don't think one group is more self-serving than the other. Money creates a disconnect in society by putting too much emphasis on personal gain to the exclusion of values and community.

In our day to day lives, the majority of our personal interactions are with people who serve a business purpose to us. We go to work with people because it results in a paycheck. We go to the store and buy from people who sell what we want. If you take public transportation to work, it's expected that no one talk to anyone else because everyone's purpose for being there is to get to the place where they earn a paycheck. This voluntary isolation from the many people around us creates a mental prison similar to the one that happens when a dog is put on a leash from the time it's a puppy. The limitation of that leash will become ingrained to the point that you can eventually take that leash off and the dog still won't go beyond the limitations of that leash. I think many of us are doing the same thing to ourselves when we isolate ourselves from people who don't serve an economic interest to us.

My wife and I had a tremendous experience at the Burning Man festival in Nevada over Labor Day week. Imagine living in a city of 45,000 people where you can't buy anything. In its place is a gifting economy where people are encouraged to give gifts to strangers, expecting nothing in return. Being gifted by strangers has the overwhelming effect of inspiring most people to reciprocate, not just to the stranger giving you a gift, but to everyone you come in contact with. People don't seem so weird or menacing when they're giving you a gift, so our usual defenses and excuses for not interacting with people are quickly and effectively broken down. Until I experienced this, I didn't realize how much I accepted the usual way that people in our society interact with each other. Money itself isn't bad, but our relationship with it has definitely made our society poorer in spirit.

Welcome to the site

Welcome readers! Sit back and get ready to read some intriguing questions and answers with some of the most common people on the Internet.

Here are a few FAQs about this blog to get you started:

Who is being interviewed?
Bloggers, visitors to message boards and chat rooms, people whose e-mail addresses can be found online.

Why are some people identified and others not?
We want the site to be open to all people who use the Internet, some of whom would like the opportunity to be interviewed in order to promote their work or their ideas. In other words, they want you to know who they are. Others are just taking the opportunity to share their ideas and experiences without the fear of those ideas and experiences coming back to haunt them.

Why are interviewees allowed to only use their first names or ficticious names?
The idea of Interviews with Rita Mae Baker is to have great conversations with real people, with real opinions, facing real issues, who live in the real world, where no one can be too protective of his or her identity. Allowing interviewees to speak anonymously increases the chances of presenting readers with more interesting and honest conversations about a wide range of topics.

If people are making up their names, how do we know they aren't making up fictious answers to your questions?
You don't. Part of the reality of the Internet and today's world is that with such a "flow of information and opinions" everything you read, even (or maybe especially) from the "mainstream media" must be taken with a proverbial grain of sand. I will do my best not to knowingly publish dishonest answers and will take special care to ensure that interviews are listed as the opinions expressed by the interviewee.

If you have other questions you would like for me to answer here, please feel free to submit them in the comments section. Remember also, I am interested in interviewing anyone about anything or something specific. Send me an e-mail if you are interested in being a part of the interview process.