Interview with the Text Artisan
The interview form has been so thoroughly debased by the demands of marketing and public relations that it is almost miraculous to encounter one as comprehensive, candid, and revealing as Frank Paynter’s interview with Dorothea Salo. And though anyone who has read Dorothea’s weblog over a period of time will be aware of the range of her interests, Tom Shugart is absolutely correct when he writes (in Frank’s comments) “it’s such a treat to learn more about someone whose blog you admire.”
As someone whose only regret is not having a child, I was deeply moved by Dorothea’s explanation of how she decided not to have children. It’s difficult enough to write about controversial subjects like this. To speak honestly from personal experience in a way that illuminates the process of arriving at such a decision requires a special kind of courage.
Dorothea takes pains to describe herself as an artisan rather than an artist. Yet I was not at all surprised to learn that she is a practising musician and singer. As Frank Paynter points out, she writes “beautifully, with economy and clarity.” No doubt she’d demur. After all, she describes her singing voice thus:
Though well-trained, my voice unfortunately lacks depth and resonance; it’s one of those strengthless altos that every choir has a few too many of. Its saving grace for choral singing is that it does blend well with other voices. I am useless for solo singing, except perhaps chant or other early music when a quiet, clean, vibratoless voice is a good thing. I haven’t sung since college except for a couple of audience-participation Messiahs.
This paragraph made me suddenly aware of one of the things I most admire about Dorothea, her writing, and her weblog: her honest self-appraisal. We live a society in which, as Carol Tavris says “the ‘empowerment’ movement seems to have replaced the self-esteem business, both being efforts to help everybody feel good about themselves without, as far as I can tell, actually giving anyone actual power or a skill to feel esteem about.”
Dorothea, to the contrary, has real power and tangible skills. She communicates a clear sense of her strengths and weaknesses—with an admirable mixture of confidence and humility—in a way that encourages all of us to engage in a similar, highly useful, act of self-assessment.
Perhaps the highest compliment one could pay Frank Paynter is that the interview encouraged me to fossick around in Dorothea Salo’s archives. Read the interview and you’ll almost certainly want to do some fossicking of your own.
