
The following was a special interview we conducted in preparation for the Hamilton Fundraiser Event, to test out our interview questions on a friend of HUMANZOO. The interview took place at Jakob and Edward’s apartment in Toronto over a few glasses of wine, and though it was not their intention, Jakob and Edward couldn’t help but get involved with this particular interview, which lasted nearly an hour. Thus it has been separated into four parts. This is part 2.
/ indicates an overlapping of text
… indicates a pause or hesitation.
[NAME] indicates a name mentioned that has been censored for anonymity.
GARRY:
Does talking about sex make you feel uncomfortable?
HUMAN:
Sometimes, you know what, this what I’m try- you know what, I can, I can get uncomfortable, I’m someone that can do that. Some people can just like go off and like say like, like the craziest things and just be, like no…they have no… second thought, and I wish I was more like that, I wish I could just/
GARRY:
/What’s the difference between them and you? Why, why, why aren’t you like that?
HUMAN:
I feel like I’m in a chair right now, I’m like uhh, is this what its gonna be like? It’s gonna be like sitting like, is there gonna be like one of those like psychiatrist chairs…sitting down. …so probably just Kyle, Garry, Dr. Garry…It’s uhh…analysis. Sorry what was the question?
GARRY:
Why does it make you uncomfortable sometimes? /Talking about sex?
HUMAN:
/ Talking about sex.
GARRY:
Yeah.
HUMAN:
I don’t think it, well like talking about it, I don’t know if it makes me uncomfortable… I don’t know, maybe I’m, see this is another thing, it comes back to this, I’m scared of myself, I’m scared what I’ll say..I’m scared about the weird things in my mind.
GARRY:
Um…Do you believe ignorance is bliss?
HUMAN:
Yep. Suure is. (He sort of had a cowboy voice here)
The laughter that followed was very loud on the tape and lasted for 11 seconds. EDWARD in particular couldn’t stop laughing. GARRY then cleared his throat.
GARRY:
Um, tell me if you have any reoccurring dreams throughout your life?
HUMAN:
Ooo did I? I don’t dream anymore, well I do, but I just don’t remember them…stopped, I’m like, what’s that hocus pocus… forget about it.
GARRY:
What do you do if you uh/
Garry is interrupted laughter once more, EDWARD’s is the loudest on the recording and mostly drowns out the others, it also goes on for too long… just having to let it all out.
HUMAN:
I like these questions…they’re deep, they’re thought out.
GARRY:
No dreams at all?
HUMAN:
No, I have dreamt…
GARRY:
Of course.
Again so much laughter from everyone.
HUMAN:
(Through laughter) I dream, I dream every night.
GARRY:
But none that come back.
HUMAN:
Fuck…I don’t know…
JAKOB:
But a reoccurring, something that’s like…throughout your life.
HUMAN:
Oh..Oh! Swimming and breathing underwater.
GARRY:
Ahh okay. In a lake? In the ocean?
HUMAN:
Uhhh..Some body of water, I don’t know..
JAKOB:
What’s happens in the /dream?
EDWARD:
/ Yeah, are you breathing/
HUMAN:
/Uh Um, I, At first I think holy shit like, I’m gonna drown then all of a sudden I’m like wait a second (He takes a deep breath) then I’m like oh I feel good, then I’m like flying kind of but I’m in water…so it’s like…it’s really cool.
GARRY:
Do you encounter anything? What happens next?
HUMAN:
Sometimes I see rocks and stuff.
Hysterical laughing, HUMAN joins in on the laughter and through it in a laughing falsetto EDWARD repeats “he sees rocks n stuff!” and continues laughing. All the while GARRY is trying to ask the next question but the HUMAN can’t hear him over the laughter, the laughter dies and then:
HUMAN:
What’s that?
GARRY:
Is it an anxious experience?
HUMAN:
Before anything…I realize I can breath, and sometimes while I’m breathing I’m like, am I gonna die? But no I…. I’ve had some pretty scary experiences underwater, like I was snorkelling under a waterfall and uh, there’s tons of fish under waterfalls cause there’s so much oxygen/
JAKOB seems to find this pretty funny.
GARRY:
It’s true.
HUMAN:
And there’s all these cat fish, and I, I was snorkelling and there was like all these caverns kinda things so like, uhh close to the wall of the… waterfall of course, and I go under the waterfall so there’s like a lot of pressure pushing me down, but then I get like up to a more quiet area and I’m looking on these caverns and I go into this one that’s kinda like, I’m able to go into it and I’m like… coool, what’s in here? Then all of a sudden out of the darkness comes this like GIANT head of this fish and I’m just like (in some sort of robot/Steven Hawkings, inward breath voice) WHAT THE FUCK, and I like got the fuck outta there and from what I can remember from…those images of what the hell that was, it was a huge catfish with like eyes glazed over white and it was like, it was dis, it was disgusting, maybe it was dead, who fucking knows it just floated up, but…it was the scariest thing I’ve ever encountered and then I, since then, been scared of deep water…and I don’t know why I have dreams of…of being able to breath underwater. I think the most terrifying way to die would be to, you know uhh… have you guys seen the movie Aladdin? You know when he gets like shackled and then thrown into the water and he just goes like down down down down down and finally hits the bottom. Imagine that happening to you in like Marianas Trench, it’s just blackness, and then you finally get crushed by the pressure but you, I think you might drown first or pass out I don’t know..its just like that would be the most terri-fying thing, never.. ever knowing where you ended up..just..
JAKOB:
They say that drowning is peaceful
HUMAN:
That’s not true.
GARRY:
Have you not heard that before?
HUMAN:
I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard that but I, I don’t think it’s true and I’ve also heard other people say that’s its not true as well.
JAKOB:
But they say that you get high from the lack of oxygen/
GARRY
:/before you actually die.
JAKOB:
Of course, before that process, before that happens it’s obviously awful, and you can’t breath but/
HUMAN:
Well it’ horrifying! It’s horrifying.
GARRY:
But then there’s the bliss.
EDWARD:
Yeah then you have, you breath in the air/
HUMAN:
/ I think it’s better to die being burnt because you pass out by these uhh you pass out by the fumes before uhh your demise.
EDWARD:
You’d rather be set on fire then/
GARRY:
Uhhh not set on fire but if I was caught in a fire and be, had passed out by the C02 or whatever the fuck it is that’s burning
JAKOB:
So you’d rather die like in a/
GARRY:
/ In a blaze of glory
JAKOB:
Or uhh in a garage, like from fumes, just go to sleep..
HUMAN:
Oh like from a car? Oh yeahhhh, that’d be way better. Shit. And knowing you’re gonna die like uh…seeing your doom it’s just… Pills man, I don’t know, I was just thinking like you know like, why do people fucking, you know, shoot themselves or slice their wrist n shit, just like take a bunch of fucking like overdose on heroin… that sounds awesome!
GARRY:
It just takes a lot. Right?
HUMAN:
Well yeah, I mean if you’re gonna fuckin do it then do it, right?
GARRY:
How much do you need to over D, to uh O D… Over D..
HUMAN:
Yeah its true eh? You might not. Well then you got heroin…you might not die..that might be your saviour.
GARRY:
You may run just as much of a risk by..um slitting your wrists open and bleeding out and not knowing if you’re going to bleed out or not,/ as taking a bunch of a bunch of pills and having your stomach pumped or just waking up the next day.
HUMAN:
/ oh but that’s so painful, like that’s horrible. ..You do your research I don’t know…I don’t fuckin know what suicide people think about, I’m not one of them.
GARRY:
Um, what do you do when you can’t sleep?
HUMAN:
I…usually can sleep, I don’t really have that problem. When I do have that problem its fucking horrible, but I never do. What I do on those nights? Ohhhhhh.. Shit…. I don’t know. I just like turn on a fan or something and I just… get into the covers, but sometimes I get too hot, so then I just cool down..ill be fine.
GARRY:
You say to your body “cool down”, and it cools down?/
HUMAN:
/No, no no.
GARRY:
What are you talking about?
HUMAN:
I put a fan on and I like…I usually have a fan on every night when I sleep. This is bizarre, you guys are like…getting so much information from me.
JAKOB:
So you sleep pretty well.
HUMAN:
Yeah I sleep really well.
GARRY:
Doesn’t really remember… dreams maybe…
HUMAN:
Sometimes, sometimes my thoughts keep me up but… I can usually go forget about that.
EDWARD:
Wait, wait what kind of thoughts? What thoughts?
HUMAN:
I don’t know, if I’ve had like a stressful day or something I’ve been like…or something horrible has happened…something unresolved maybe, I can, I can just think about.. you know what will really, what can keep me up is just technology, like if I’m on my phone or on my computer, that will keep me up for hours and hours, but then I just no, just close that, close your fuckin eyes and go to sleep.
EDWARD:
Now if you’re mind is running and you’ve got things on your mind uh, do you find that there’s like a technique? Like counting sheep? Some people count sheep.
HUMAN:
No I never do that. /Uhh
EDWARD:
You never count sheep?/
GARRY:
Or watch TV?
HUMAN:
I just force myself into dreams, I’m like just think of something really nice or think of something..
EDWARD:
What..you know what kind of things do you, I assume that you probably have something that you go to/
HUMAN:
/ Maybe sex, maybe/
EDWARD:
You think about sex to go sleep?
HUMAN:
Yeah, maybe/
GARRY:
That would just make me/ masturbate
EDWARD:
/Yeah that would cause me to masturbate. I don’t know
HUMAN:
Well if I just like fantasized you know like…
EDWARD:
What kind of fantasies?
HUMAN:
Shit. Whatevers….
EDWARD:
If I said to you right now, [NAME]… go to sleep.
HUMAN:
I could do that.
EDWARD erupts in laughter.
GARRY:
You could just..(laughing)…right here?
HUMAN:
I’ve had a few glasses of wine.
EDWARD still can’t stop laughing.
HUMAN:
Turn that fan on and I’m out. Like yeah put a fan on my face just like uh just have that fan just blowing on my face/
JAKOB:
So a fan, really? You’ve mentioned the fan quite a few times, that’s really/
GARRY:
/ He sleeps, you sleep with a fan every night.
JAKOB:
Is it the sound, or the feeling of the wind on you?
HUMAN:
Both.
JAKOB:
Yeah.
HUMAN:
Both.
JAKOB:
Okay
HUMAN:
And like, you know if you ever, oh my god, sometimes I’m driving and my, my uh..fans on in the car, its like blowing in my face and I’m like Oh shit, I’m gonna fall a fucking sleep while I’m driving.
GARRY:
Um is that, how long have you been sleeping with the fan for? Always?
HUMAN:
Shit. A long time. I think, cause like my mum sleeps with a fan too and I think that’s how it got passed to me. Sleeping with my mum.
EDWARD:
Now…If there wasn’t a fan..would you have more trouble falling asleep?
HUMAN:
Uhhh sometimes. I, I used to panic before, I was like shit, theres no fan like what am I gonna do? (makes snoring noise) So. Its like not that big of an issue, I just go to sleep.
GARRY:
Do you think that uh, homosexuality is something you’re born or something that you learn in life?
HUMAN:
Youre…borrrn…with..it….from what I..knoww. But I don’t…I’m not like a scientist or anything so. From what I’ve heard it’s… you’re born with it.
JAKOB:
But what do you think? Like if you had to…
HUMAN:
I’d say born with it cause… I think it’s the right answer.
GARRY:
Is it?
HUMAN:
I think so.
JAKOB:
But you don’t think it then, you don’t think it could be like, from an experience that you had as a child, that because of that, youre…you become homosexual, you identify with that…Versus I’m born..from the moment I’m born I’m always going to be gay.
HUMAN:
I don’t know…I don’t, I’m not…Talk to some gay people I don’t know. I don’t know. Sexuality’s such a gray area…I don’t know, its so gray man, like people have like fucking sex with goats. Who knows right?
GARRY:
That strikes me as more a relief thing./
HUMAN:
But if they love the goat./
EDWARD:
/People do love goats.
HUMAN:
You know like, men like putting their dicks in things.
GARRY:
Tell me your thoughts about aliens.
HUMAN:
I think…I have a theory…that since the universe is so giant and time…is so vast, that there must be aliens…but are there aliens as in can connect with us, are intelligent enough or are around the same kind of capabilities…that we dream of…probably not. K, think about us right, think about this planets history.. if you take a piano, this is what what’s his name did, uh eh Richard Dawkins showed this in one of his documentaries, he had a piano a full piano keyboard and he showed the amount of time different organisms have been on this planet. Bacteria…seriously was past the centre C, from the low key all the way past that. Then he was like here are the dinosaurs, uh dinosaurs are extinct, and they’ve got like all these different things bluhblahblahblah. US? We were like one key and its like that’s being generous. And then think about like, K that’s the scale of this planet, then think of the scale of the entire fucking universe right? It’s like…we’re a needle in the haystack. What are the chances? Maybe? I don’t know, but I’m gonna say probably not. There’s probably nothing out there that’s gonna be contacting us.
GARRY:
Right. What about uh…life on another planet?
HUMAN:
Yeah maybe, maybe there’s bacteria or something out there, maybes there’s something that’s already been… and is no longer. Like you know, stars come and go, civilizations rise and fall…from what we know, but what do we know, we’ve only been around for a little bit?
GARRY:
Do you think we’ll ever make contact with intelligent life?
HUMAN:
I’m gonna say, well I’m gonna say probably not. And if we do, woooo! Well alright!