George Hirst

1.  Have you ever had a transcendent experience?  If so, what happened?

watching a scene I wrote transformed by the improv of the players involved.  I love good writing, and I love my writing (may I be blessed with the two converging with greater frequency) but this was something special - for all it was a dark and terrible scene, I sat mesmerized.  I started that night with a pocket full of seeds; I ended it with a garden.

2.  If you had to pick one sense and lose all others, what would it be?

whichever one is appropriate to the moment - surrounded by beauty, let me see; in a concert hall let me hear.  At dinner let me taste, and in love, let me touch.  The experience may not be as complete to my mind now, but to experience your everything as the one thing I should think would be quite different.  Later on, let me look or listen or taste or touch and know what I might've missed - again, one at a time.

3.  What is your favorite attribute in a person?

humanity.  We spend so much time in our lives dedicated to the rote and the mechanistic, to processes that satisfy other processes, all of which have exactly zero to do with our humanity.  Those who embrace their humanity and create for no more reason than it's what they Must Do, are truly special.

4.  Describe your happiest accident.

A steak pan sauce I once made with a Special Reserve bottle of Cognac.  Trust me, it had religion.

5.  If you had to choose one personal object to leave behind when you are gone, what would it be?

God willing someday I'll be published - after that day, it'll likely be my stories.  Until then, I don't have terribly personal objects, so I'll check that 'organ donor' card, and hope someone can get some miles out of what I leave behind... though you might want to pass on my liver; just sayin'...