A Conversation with Robert Fisher of WGC (continued)

PM: What have you been reading lately, and what are you reading at the moment?

RF: Well, right now, I'm reading a pretty straight translation of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

PM: Wow.

RF: Yeah. That's kind of been the thing I've been reading for a while, actually.

PM: When you say a "straight translation"--

RF: Well, there are children's versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales that are really--[laughs] "cleaned up" is probably the best way to put it. Because the original German stories are full of all kinds of things like incest and murder, and many strange and grotesque things.

PM: Really?

RF: Yeah.

PM: I had no idea. So how were they titled, and how does one find these straight tales?

RF: Well, actually, let me grab the version I have, and I can tell you.

PM: Thank you.

RF: I think this may be a version that Barnes & Noble put out on their own, like a special series of classic tales or something. Yeah, Barnes & Noble Classics, actually. I think it was translated by Elizabeth Dalton, maybe. Well, she did the introduction and the notes anyway. She's a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard. In the notes she talks about the translations, and she says they're very straightforward. I've had, over the years, a couple of different ones. I forget the titles. I've had a few over the years, but this is a really complete collection.

PM: Thanks for that. I'm sure a lot of us will find that and enjoy it.

RF: It's one of my little projects in my head, I keep thinking that one of these days I'm going to do a whole record of this kind of stuff.

PM: Oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that one coming.

RF: Yeah.

PM: On this record, you've got your binoculars on morality and death and similarly weighty topics, which we enjoy greatly. Are you what you'd call a spiritual person, and have you any specific orientation in that regard?

RF: Well, that's a tough one. I mean, I was raised a Baptist, a pretty strong Baptist upbringing. Then I sort of fell out [laughs] significantly.

PM: What a shock.

RF: Yeah, exactly.

[laughter]

RF: I think I was always aware of a spiritual nature of the world, even when I was at my worst in terms of drugs and alcohol. But I reformed my association with the spiritual side of things when I got clean, and I developed an understanding of how I relate to God, or whatever name you want to use for that. I don't do a church thing, it's not like that at all. It's sort of--I don't know, it's hard to explain. It's like an Aeolian harp, I guess, more than anything else: it's how the spirit moves through you. And an intent to be honest to that and be truthful to it, and to conduct my life with the idea that what goes around comes around. And both the best and worst parts of that phrase are true. I just keep an eye on how much I hurt other people and myself, [laughs] and try not to do that.

PM: [laughs] Try to minimize that.

RF: Yeah, exactly. And to, where possible, make amends for scenarios that I found myself in at another time and place.

PM: I hear some program in there. Is that part of your life?

RF: Yes, it is. Not a real active part of my life, but it was the tool that allowed me to get sober--

PM: Yeah, me, too.

RF: --and to get clean. I found, for myself, that the group wasn't as effective for me. I may be wrong, but there's a certain amount of romanticizing that becomes part of the experience of speaker meetings and things like that. And I don't want to romanticize what happened and what I was involved in. I want it to be as stark and realistic as it can be. So it's a part of my life, and the steps are an important part of how I live, but I don't really participate in the community.

PM: Yeah, don't go to meetings anymore, and so forth.

RF: Yes.

PM: I just can't get to a meeting anymore, but yeah, six years in and six years out, and six years back.

RF: I have twenty-four years now, but it's every day. There's still a reminder that I'm only as far away from whatever as the nearest bar is.

PM: Right. Was alcohol your thing, or--

RF: Alcohol and drugs, both. Sort of like [laughs] the smorgasbord deli approach to doing substances. Like, lay whatever out on the table and I'll take it. It didn't really matter to me.

PM: Yeah, I can relate.  continue

print (pdf)     listen to clips     puremusic home