Compilation CD (meta meme)

One of the questions I asked my new LJ friend lidocafe in the interview meme was who would compose the soundtrack of her life. She couldn't come up with any one composer; instead, she rather brilliantly listed a whole complilation CD. That, of course, got me thinking about my own list, and here it is:

Peter, Paul and Mary: "Leaving on a Jet Plane"
Joni Mitchell: "Both Sides Now" and "Case of You"
Simon & Garfunkel: "Scarborough Fair" and "America"
Carly Simon: "Anticipation"
Bach Violin and Oboe Concerto in A minor, slow movement
Bruce Springsteen: "The River" and "Dancing in the Dark" (and almost everything else)
Mark Knopfler: "Theme to Local Hero"
Dire Straits: "Brothers in Arms" (the single)
John Wesley Harding: "I'm Wrong About Everything"
Otis Redding: "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay"
Van Morrison: "Into the Mystic"
Prokofief: "The Montagues and the Capulets" from Romeo and Juliet
Albinoni's Adagio
Schostakovich: 2nd piano concerto, slow movement
Brahms 2nd piano concerto
Stan Rogers: "Northwest Passage"
Arlo Guthrie: "City of New Orleans"
Ricky Lee Jones: "Chuck E's in Love"
Waylon Jennings: "Amanda" (don't ask - I was in love with a country & western fan)
Ralph Vaughn Williams: "Rhapsody on a Theme by Thomas Tallis"

And probably the Star Wars theme.

The Revenge of lidocafe

More interview questions from lidocafe. Let me know in a comment if you would like five questions, and I will create some.

1. If you had become an actor and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, what role would you most want to be your signature role and why?
Rosalind, always Rosalind. Because she's so funny and intelligent and down-to-earth and wonderful. I'm assuming, of course, that I ever achieved the leading lady status to play such a part. Otherwise, maybe Juliet's nurse :)

2. This is kind of lame, but I'll ask it anyway. You inherit a bazillion dollars. Besides paying off debts and buying material objects like jewels and cars and first editions and plane tickets and houses, explain your top two dream projects.
I'd like to buy a big swatch of land somewhere - a few hundred acres, or an island or something - and donate it to the Land Conservancy, to ensure that it was protected for posterity, and then let them raise marmots or some such on it... you get the idea.
Then, there's something called The Farley Foundation, named after that cartoon dog in "For Better or For Worse," the one that died and everyone in the whole country cried for about a week. The foundation provides help for seniors and handicapped people who have pets and can't afford vets' bills... but it's only in Ontario. My mum absolutely loved "For Better or For Worse" and she absolutely loved dogs - I've already donated some money to it in her name, but I'd love to get a chapter of it started here in BC and really make a difference because it would be something she would have loved and that I care about too.

3. What is your greatest vice, and how do you feel about it?
Yikes. I think I'm going to take the fifth on that one :)

4. If you could have someone else's life (someone real), past or present, for one year, whom would you choose, and why?
That's a very interesting question. There's someone I went to university with, whom I was quite good friends with for a while, and she seems to me to be living the life I always thought I wanted. She has a PhD, she teaches children's literature at UofT, she's married, with two daughters, she has sisters, her family has a place on Hornby Island, where they spend every summer. She writes reviews of children's books for The Horn Book and the Toronto Star, and she's written a couple of books about children's books and a short story or two. Those were all things I dreamed of doing or having or being at one time or another (yet another road not taken, I guess, right down to the husband and two kids...) It might be interesting to live inside that life for a while. Would I find it deadly boring or stifling or unfulfilling, or would it fill me with desperate longing for what I'll never have?

5. Prostitute or soldier--which occupation would you find more difficult and why?
Jeez. You don't pull your punches, do you? That is a REALLY difficult question. I think, all things considered, probably soldier. Actually, seeing as I cried when I had to kill a rat once that had got into my basement, maybe it's not so difficult to explain. I think cutting a life short must always be a more terrible thing than offering your body to someone for money.