Interview #1, contributer Jazzmine Freedom

This is an interview I conducted at around 12am on a Wednesday night with my friend Jazzmine Freedom. My room is mildly chilly and messy, Cathy Davey is softly playing from my laptop.

Me: Jazzmine!

Jazzmine: Ari!

Me: Okay, are you ready?

Jazzmine: Um, i'm thinking about taking a shot. Should I not do that?

Me: No I think that's a great idea, by the way, I just watched tonights premire of LOST.

Jazzmine: Ah! I can't wait till I catch up, we're going to watch them on itunes.

Me: Yeah me neither, its going to be really great.

Jazzmine: Let me go get that shot.

Me: Do watch you need to do. Okay, first question, how do you sleep at night?

Jazzmine: In order to sleep at night, I need music or tv or a good phone conversation or someone next to me. Or else I can't sleep. I also have to spoon my pillow if I'm not at Cody's.

Me: What music would you listen too?

Jazzmine: Slow, familiar stuff. Last night it was Damien Rice. Sometimes it's Azure Ray or The Cardigan's "Long Gone Before Daylight" album.

Me: What's your favorite childhood movie?

Jazzmine: The Last Unicorn! I'm in love with Schmendrick the Magician. He's awkward and adorable and he's got this big nose and this hipster haircut and pretty much I want him. Once I woodburned his image onto a small wooden plank. I was in seventh grade. My dad used to woodburn everything. He even made a spear

Me: Do you feel, right at this moment, that you could use a fresh start?

Jazzmine: Absolutely. More than anything. Im reading On The Road and it's killing me.

Me: Why's that?

Jazzmine: They were just so free. They could go to any town and just get a job and make money and meet girls and then leave, and go to another town. Things don't really seem like that anymore.

Me: Why not?

Jazzmine: I don't know. It might just be me. I just feel like it's harder to get jobs, and that makes it harder to move and easier to get stuck. It might just be me though.

Me: No, I feel that way too. I think you and I both come from similar upbringings though. Where mobility was really difficult and expensive

Jazzmine: Yeah, definitely.

Me: It kind of carries through

Jazzmine: It does. I'm so afraid of just being like... poor and stuck in one place all the time.

Me: I hear you. Okay moving on, If you could play one song over and over for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Jazzmine: Oh man. I don't know -- "Red Right Ankle" by the Decemberists. Laughing How hip and lame.

Me: Why that song?

Jazzmine: Just right now, I feel like it makes enough sense to listen to it over and over for the rest of my life. "This is the story of the boys who love you, who loved you then and love you now..."

Me: Long nails or short nails?

Jazzmine: Longer than short. I hate it when people have bitten down stubby nails. But I don't like when they have cat claws that they can't use for anything but hair-flips either. I like nails to be. Longish but still practical.

Me: My thumb nails always end up really long and the rest really short for some reason.

Jazzmine: Laughing that happens to me, too. I think it's because thumb nails are stronger and break less.

Me: Do you have any creative projects that you want to do? Or are doing?

Jazzmine: I've been trying to write a damn story since October. I have this idea for it but it's so hard to write. Wanna hear the idea?

Me: Yes

Jazzmine: So it's about this girl who starts seeing the ghost of the boy she loves. But the thing about seeing his ghost is that. He isn't dead. He's just not around. She gets as attached to the ghost as she was to the boy. But the same complications arise, and even more because it starts to affect her relationships with the real people in her life. So eventually she and the ghost have to part ways. And at the end of the story, she meets up with the boy and he's nothing like his ghost, because his ghost was who he was and he has changed. I don't know. It's supposed to be about letting go. And about how you can't keep carrying ghosts around with you forever.

Me: Writers block?

Jazzmine: I guess so. I mean. I think I've got the whole plot down. It's just really hard for me to write things that don't sound super cheesy.

Me: I had this conversation with Meredith one night when we were playing our music for one another and our songs are so different. Because all of my lyrics are sort of complicated and wordy and evasive I guess in some regards. While hers are just really truthful and simple and relatable. But at one point she called her lyrics cheesy, and I think that people sometimes confuse simplicity and something that is easy to relate too as being cheesy.

Jazzmine: I think you're right.

Me: I have a few more questions, what makes you nervous?

Jazzmine: Everything. Ever. I get really nervous when people break rules, unless they are stupid or ridiculous rules. Like if I walk into blockbuster with someone and they're carrying a drink and there's a sign on the door that says no food or drink I get super fucking nervous. Which, on a bigger scale, is another reason I feel stuck. Because im so afraid to break "rules", so even though I don't really want to be here, or in school, I am, because those are the rules.

Me: Do you ever feel like you're from a place you've never been?

Jazzmine: Sort of. I kind of feel like im from the Midwest a lot. Like I always used to romanticize the Midwest, which is just plain crazy, and then when I saw it for the first time (and i've only ever really driven through it) I was like, "this is perfect!" everything seems so simple and green and almost. Just. Quiet.

Me: What is your most common complaint?

Jazzmine: Right now, it's that I don't have a car. Most of all the rest of the time, it's been that I want to get out of New Mexico. I think I'm obsessed with the idea of freedom.

Me: Probably because it's your last name.

Jazzmine: Probably. My dad instilled something inside of me when he gave me that last name.

Me: Last question - New England or New Orleans?

Jazzmine: New England. I like stuffy, quaint things. But I do think about New Orleans quite a bit. What a unique place.

Jazzmine Freedom is a freshman at UNM, majoring in English. She met me on the way to a Julie Doiron show and we soon found many similarities we share, such as our creepy - awkward interactions with most people we encounter. She's from Las Vegas, New Mexico, works at the Frontier where she wears a bandana and gives people sticky buns, she also really loves dinosuars and misses the year 2008.