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Our next interview really needs no introduction. Phoenix Quinn has been around for a long time, has been a much loved media presence internationally, and has devoted his eLife to turning our viewpoints upside-down and inside-out. He is considered by many to be the iconic member of SFP. Please note that the end image in this article was created by members partly in his honor.

In typical PQ fashion, he has talked at length about his views on RL and eLife, and I have chosen to break this interview into parts, part 2 to be published tomorrow. Without further ado, I present to you, Phoenix Quinn, in his own words!



In preparation for this interview, I have been reviewing some of the early articles in your newspaper. From your earliest days in the game, you have had a unique vision and voice. How is PQ, the eRep character like the RL PQ? How are they different?

In real life, my name is David and I am a couple of years shy of 60. My life-partner and I recently celebrated our 30th anniversary together. We were among the first gay couples to get married in Massachusetts 11 years ago. I have an adopted son who is originally from Mexico. He lives in Madrid now and has been a Spanish citizen for about 10 years. He is married to a Spanish woman, has a 4 year old son (who is named after my husband), and is a strong supporter of the Podemos movement. Sadly my command of Spanish is just barely enough to get through a not-too-complicated conversation. Luckily my son's command of English is impeccable.

My eRep character is sort of a pastiche of me from various points in my life, as well as something of an avatar, I think, made up from some of my perhaps wackier friends and relatives.



In my 20s and 30s I got involved in various liberationist politics and movements, as well as cooperativist communities and also indulged a bit in various streaks of drug and alcohol abuse, hitch-hiking around the country, odd jobs and love affairs. Nowadays I am considerably less active politically, boringly monogamous, nearly celibate and entirely sober. All of that earlier, ermmm, adventuring, helped me to break out of my somewhat sheltered, suburbanish, Midewestern upbringing. I explored a wide variety of perspectives and met people from countries, classes, nationalities, religions and so on.

The only thing I regret about those years is that I didn't study very hard in mathematics. Looking back, I think I would have been good at it if I'd applied myself.

I have always been a voracious reader, especially in politics, philosophy and history. I've also had a strong interest in poetry, especially American poetry, as well as a range of topics in the sciences, mathematics and computer science. I've been a computer programmer/IT specialist for about 30 years, specializing in data architecture for large-scale financial systems. I know more about the intricacies of fixed-income derivatives than I want to.

Although I've been interested in Buddhism since about age 12, over the past 10 years or so I've developed a very strong interest in Buddhist philosophy and its developments. My current avenues of investigation include: trying to understand the various Tibetan interpretations of the Madhyamaka, looking into the roots of Ch'an/Son/Zen in the Vajrasamadhi Sutra and the Lankavatara Sutra, and a certain fascination with the new Kadampa tradition, which focuses meditation on the mandala of Buddha Heruka.



My parents are still living. Though rather elderly and beginning to lose mobility at this point, their minds are sharp and they are still living independently for now. Through all of the bizarre twists and turns of my life, they've always been loving and supportive, whether we agreed or disagreed on matters of politics, religion and so on.

My mother is a something of a Betty Friedan style second-wave feminist, but with marked Protestant-Lutheran tendencies. She believes strongly in the idea that families are created through mutual caring and respect, and not simply through blood ties. All of her best friends are creative, clever women who don't take BS from men, but are happily married and not strident man-haters and whatnot.

Her mother (my maternal grandmother) was married to a man (not my Mom's father; that was another guy) who won a Pulitzer prize in 1942 for telegraphic reporting from the British Mediterranean Fleet. Prior to that they lived for a while in Madrid and then in Hendaye in the French Basque Country, where he reported on the Spanish Civil War. They got divorced in the early 1950s because he wanted to go to Cuba to cover the revolution. She'd had enough and moved back to the US where she married a wealthy man from Texas.



With her mother busy gallivanting around the world with the war reporter, my Mom was raised mainly by her grandmother and other relatives. By the time her mother settled down and my older brother and I had been born, sadly she and Mister Texas Moneybags perished in a fire. That was in the late 1950s.

My father's father was an alcoholic and his family life was not terribly pleasant, but not awful. Nonetheless, he and his brother and his sister all managed to get the hell out of Wheeling pretty quick after WW2. His older brother (my uncle) has fought as a tank gunner with the 3rd Armored Division. With his two Purple Hearts and "funny" stories about getting injured in intensive tank battles, he pops up every now and then on the History Channel. After that experience he went into the seminary and eventually became a Bishop in the Lutheran Church.

His second son (my cousin) was killed by a drunk driver when he was 7 (I was 6).

So I guess a bit of that tragic family lore -- the pain of war, losing loved ones -- kind of echoes in PQ as well.

My grandmother's sister (my great aunt) was an anthropologist who helped to pioneer the field of ethnomusicology. She studied under Franz Boas and in 1934 published a large collection of folk tales, creation stories and songs -- including musical scores -- collected from the Coast Salish people of the Pacific Northwest. Quite a character, she traveled across the country twice in a Model T.

After all that she came down with TB and had to go to a sanitarium in upstate New York to recuperate. For years we had a nice watercolor landscape that she'd given us. The story was that she'd hit it off with a painter who was similarly quarantined and he'd given the painting to her. It was quite a surprise when my Mom had it re-framed only to discover the real painting on the opposite site of the canvas... a lovely watercolor nude of her Auntie...

Another of my maternal grandmother's sisters (that is, my _other_ great aunt) has a chair in Educational Administration named for herself and her husband at a certain large University in Ohio, where they taught together for many years in that department. They never had any children but traveled the world together, going someplace new and interesting every year. As a kid I always enjoyed visiting them and seeing all of the photographs they'd taken and the artifacts they'd collected from around the world.

The brother of those 3 sisters (that is, my great uncle) sold Cadillacs for living. He married a woman named Lucille. They never had any children either, but I suspect that they had some pretty grand parties. I remember they had a little gold Cadillac convertible model on their coffee table. Take the top off and there's a neatly piled stack of cigarettes! When he passed away, we found two hundred men's suits and about a thousand neckties in his basement. I still have the white one with black polka-dots. Shortly before she passed away, soon after I'd moved to Boston, Lucille shipped to me a large orange tabby named Raul, with instructions to take care of him because she couldn't handle him any more. She didn't ask, mind you. Just called me up and told to get my butt over to Logan to pick up my new cat...



Both of my parents were born and grew up in West Virginia. But they are not hillbillies. Nor were they from coal-mining families. To the extent that West Virginia has an urban culture, that's where they came from. As you can see from the above, my Mom's family were quite a cast of characters. The Dad's family are less, umm, exotic, but have all the lovely qualities of children of alcoholics -- quiet, hard-working, conflict-avoiding, funny-in-a-cynical-way and "the nicest people you'll ever meet". I don't know how many times people at work tell me "You're too nice." I just smile politely, look away like I'm embarrassed, and think: "Fuck you.".

So all of that -- my own story, my reading of those characters from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s who in some way created me, as well as a bit of role-playing and a whole lot of literary theft -- is reflected in "Phoenix Quinn", a character who loves to question things, who isn't afraid to say "the emperor has no clothes" and who, rather obviously, has something of a complicated internal monologue going on most of the time.

[Editor's Note: Watch for part 2, where PQ talks about his views on eLife!]