AN ALL-NEW CANDID CONVERSATION WITH DOE PAORO

interview by Michael McCarthy

I first heard Doe Paoro’s intoxicating music when she opened for a Sylvan Esso show back in 2014. Like her songs, the way she moved around the stage, dancing, was hypnotic. I felt like a snake moving to the sounds of a charmer. A night or two later, she was just as mesmerizing when she opened for My Brightest Diamond. I believe it was in between the two shows that I e-mailed her the questions for her first Love is Pop interview. If memory serves me correctly, it was done via e-mail because she was about to go do several other dates with My Brightest Diamond and was rather busy accordingly. We did her next interview on the phone one year later. At that point, she’d just released her spectacular album After, which still sounds as modern today as it did three years ago. The album was arguably as rich with electronic sounds as it was with live instruments. However, if you listen to her last few singles – “Guilty,” “Walk Through the Fire” and “Second Door – it’s obvious that this time around she’s taking a more organic approach with her songs. You don’t miss the electronic-vibe, though. These songs could simply be performed by Doe and a single guitarist and they’d likely be as fantastic as the studio versions. I’m sure the rest of her new album will be that way, too, when it’s released later this year. But for this interview, Doe and I didn’t focus so much on the music as we did on the many other things she’s into, such as meditation, traveling and sound-healing. In fact, I’d say that with this interview, in particular, you get to know the person even more so than their music, which only made the interview all the more intriguing to conduct and, hopefully, that much more fascinating for you to read.

MM: When we last spoke you were living in Los Angeles and I know you’re on West Coast time right now. Are you still living out there?

DP: Yes, I’m still out here.

MM: What do you think of Glendale? That’s where I lived for a few years.

DP: Oh, really? I didn’t know you were out here. Glendale’s nice. To be honest, I haven’t spent a ton of time out there. But I’ve driven through it. I don’t know; what do you think of Glendale would be a better question?

MM: I really liked it, but one of the reasons I had to leave was gentrification. The building I lived in was not far from the Barnes & Noble and that whole area changed. First, they opened a Starbucks at the bank across the street and then we had Whole Foods come in and things like that. And The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf —

DP: — The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are kind of the last frontier cause. You’re out! [Both laugh]

MM: And now I understand they built some kind of luxury mall next to the old mall. I’ve only seen pictures of it, but it looks pretty nice.

DP: Is that different than the Glendale Grove? I think there’s a grove or something in Glendale now.

MM: The mall when I was living there, which I believe is still there, too, is the Glendale Galleria. The Grove might be what they’re calling the new one. Have you seen it at all?

DP: No, I think I’m thinking of the Glendale Galleria. I’m not sure. I’m not super up on my different malls in LA, I have to admit.

MM: What area of L.A. do you live in?

DP: I live in Mid-City. Are you familiar?

MM: I’m trying to picture it. Is it in Los Angeles itself?

DP: Yes. It’s in Mid-City. It’s like maybe five minutes from Koreatown. It’s close to downtown. It’s really central, hence the name.

MM: It sounds like it would be a busy and inspiring area.

DP: Yeah. You know what, I actually like it. It’s fairly residential. Kind of close to everything but in its own world and mellow.

MM: So, it’s 10 A.M. out there right now, which makes me wonder, are you a morning person?

DP: Oh, definitely. I’ve been up since seven. I went out and voted. Today’s a California voting day.

MM: Is that when you usually get up, would you say?

DP: Yeah. I’m up early. I’m probably sharpest in the morning so I try to make the most of these hours. When I can, I also meditate in the morning since it’s kind of a peaceful time.

MM: How many hours of sleep do you usually need?

DP: Oh God. I need eight hours. I do not get eight hours. I usually get about six. What about you?

MM: Yeah, I need eight hours. I have PTSD, so I wake up often during the night, so I need eight hours but I’m probably getting seven.

DP: That’s too bad.

MM: Now, I know you recently did a ten-day vipassana. Is that the type of meditation where you don’t talk the whole time?

DP: Exactly. It’s completely silent. Not silent just in terms of work, but also any sort of physical contact. You’re not even supposed to make eye contact with the other people meditating. So you’re not distracting yourself.

MM: It sounds difficult.

DP: Yes, it’s challenging.

MM: Where did you do yours?

DP: I did this one in Joshua Tree. I’ve been doing these since almost eight years now. I completed one in India and one in Massachusetts and one in Wisconsin when I was making my last record as well.

MM: So, four times you went without speaking that long? Wow. That just blows my mind. Before you did the first one, did you practice not speaking for a day or two at home or something to prepare yourself or did you just dive right into it?

DP: I dive right in. I mean, for better or worse, sometimes I could really go for a little more preparation, but most of the time I just kind of learn by doing.

MM: Are you even allowed to read books during a vipassana?

DP: No.

MM: Wow.

DP: They really want you to just meditate. The philosophy is that any other sort of consumption of media is a distraction.

MM: Sure. I don’t know if it’s maybe just because I’m bipolar, but I just could not see myself going even one day without going insane.

DP: I know, but it’s so stabilizing for the mind, really, when you learn how to do that. It’s very challenging. There’s obviously something I’m getting out of it or I wouldn’t keep going back. You have to trust the process, but in the end you have this enormous sense of peace. And heightened intuition, I guess.

MM: Do you find the process totally relaxing or are there moments when it gets terrifying?

DP: The funny thing is the process is anything but relaxing. There are moments when it can be quite blissful, depending on what day it is, but a lot of the times you’re just so completely crazy. All the thoughts that come to your head when you have that much time without talking to anybody. You pretty much remember anything that’s ever happened to you and your dreams get extremely vivid.

MM: It’s interesting. I’d like to try it for a day and see how I do with that.

DP: Yeah, start there.

MM: So, what kind of things would you say you’ve learned from those experiences?

DP: A lot. I’ve learned that everything passes. This too shall pass. That especially because there are times when you sit to meditate and it’s just painful physically, you know. The minute you get up, it’s gone. The pain is gone. And you’re watching these kind of waves of joy and sadness go by and knowing that it all is going to change. There’s a redemption in that that I find pretty powerful.

MM: Have any of your songs been inspired by those experiences?

DP: For sure when I was making my first record and After I was thinking about a lot of those things because they were new to me at the time. So, a song like “Growth/Decay” is certainly inspired by that.

MM: Are vipassanas a Buddhist tradition?

DP: Yeah. There’s no sort of religious rituals associated with it, but it is in the tradition of the Buddha for sure.

MM: I often ask people to name three things from their bucket list that they haven’t done yet. Is it safe to say that doing one of those was on your bucket list?

DP: Yes. It was. For a long time, it was something I wanted to do.

MM: Can you name a couple of things on your bucket list that you have yet to do?

DP: That I haven’t done… Well, I think one day I’d like to own a house in the desert. That’s something I haven’t done. One day I’d like to publish a book of poems. That’s definitely on my bucket list.

MM: You can always self-publish one, too.

DP: Yeah.

MM: That’s what I’ve been doing. I write novels and I’ve been self-publishing them.

DP: How’s that going?

MM: So, so. I took an in-depth course on it and everything and I was doing OK in the beginning but the big thing is that it takes money to make money. You need the money to advertise.

DP: Right.

MM: I kind of maxed out the credit cards on that early on. So, I wouldn’t say I’m one of the successful self-published authors, but I can say, though, that all of my books have been downloaded at least one thousand times. So, at least people are reading them.

DP: Oh, wow, that’s great.

MM: One of the other things you’ve been involved with during recent years is sound healing. What can you tell us about how that works and how you got involved with it?

DP: Hmm. I don’t remember how I got involved with it. I’ve worked in a bunch of different traditions in the past few years and learning about different modalities in different cultures. And I was inspired by a certain tribe in Peru that work with plant medicines and they also use songs as part of a healing ceremony. And I started thinking about the healing capacity of songs. I think you know – maybe you know – I have my yoga teacher certification. And people started asking me if that was something I was doing, sound healing. And it wasn’t. I started realizing that during my travels over the years I’ve learned a lot of different songs that are written with the intention to heal and I built a drum – actually, that was on my bucket list – I built a drum. I started working with that and reading a lot about sound healing, the idea being that the body has an ideal frequency that it vibrates at, and when you’re out of harmony it gets out of that vibration, and sort of using different instruments and singing you can kind of bring them to their balanced state. I started doing that. And then I had a few yoga studios ask me to start doing singing during their classes so that’s a little side thing that I do here.

MM: Is there a specific type of yoga that you teach?

DP: You know what, I’m not doing so much teaching now. I do teach these breath-work workshops that are based on shamanic breath-work.

MM: You had also mentioned Cacao workshops. How does that work? I could find very little online when I looked it up.
DP: Interesting. Well, they’re doing them all over the world because people are facilitating Cacao workshops. It’s just chocolate in its raw form before it gets diluted with all the things that we put in chocolate. In that raw form, it has a certain quality where when integrated with breath-work it releases something called the bliss chemical because it produces an overall state of emotional release. When I was living in London for a while over 2017, I made my record there and then I was hanging around and I didn’t have a work visa so I was like, what can I do? And I realized I could just rent spaces out and offer these Cacao workshops because I had learned about Cacao and had been working with it for a while. So, we make the Cacao and then we do a bunch of prep work and yoga. You do it around the full and new moons.

MM: What do you actually do with the Cacao in the ceremony?

DP: You cook it down into like a liquid so it’s sort of a hot chocolate, but bitter. Bitter-tasting chocolate. You don’t drink too much. Almost two shots or something. So, the Cacao is considered almost, in this case, a plant medicine that can heal you and specifically promote emotional relief.

MM: That’s cool.

DP: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed sharing that with people and I was able to share it in London and Los Angeles.

MM: Were any of the teachers you’ve had for the different things that you do people that people might know?

DP: I’ve had amazing teachers. In India, I studied with Usha Devi, who’s a very famous, younger yoga teacher there. She’s really an elder at this point and teaching all the time. For music, well, I consider them my teachers even though I haven’t seen them in two years. My friend Samten who is at the Tibet Institute for performing arts out in India. Then I work a lot with The Paititi Institute in Peru and I’ve really studied under in the last few years in terms of learning more about plant medicines and work. Really making a lot of great work for the planet.

MM: What do you think about Reiki?

DP: It’s interesting. That’s another thing on my bucket list. I want to get my Reiki certification. [Laughs] I don’t know too much about it but years ago a boyfriend gifted me a Reiki lesson. I went into it not knowing much about it and just trying to stay open. You see all sorts of colors and powerful healing. A lot of physical sensations. They’re not physically touching you. The Reiki masters are just sending you energy during the session. Have you had one?

MM: No, I haven’t. A friend of mine is certified to do it, but I haven’t had her do it on me yet.

DP: Yeah. It would be worth giving it a shot. I’m interested. It’s something I really want to learn how to do because I think in terms of being intentional and with what kind of energy I’m sending forth in my performances in general.

MM: Do you think it works on a scientific level or do you think it’s magick in the way that pagans refer to magick?

DP: You know, I don’t know if I know enough about it to say. I haven’t read enough on it to say scientifically it’s been proven. I don’t know if I would say it’s magick. It feels like maybe it’s – I would call it like a healing art. Sometimes it can be difficult to prove, but I’m sure there have been studies on it.

MM: Do you identify as pagan?

DP: No.

MM: What religion, if any, were you brought up in?

DP: My family is actually Jewish. I was brought up with Judaism as a foundational building block.

MM: At what point did you find yourself exploring other things?

DP: You know, I think I was always really interested in so many religions. Every religion. I was just fascinated by the storytelling. From a very young age, I was very curious about it. I was always really interested in it. I remember in college I took a bunch of religion classes and would read different texts in the library. It probably started in my late teens.

MM: I was raised Catholic and I still believe in praying to Saints, but as far as the church itself goes — back when it came out that they’d been hiding that one priest here in Massachusetts that had molested over 150 boys, that’s when I decided I couldn’t agree with the institution. I’ll go to church on Christmas and Easter to make my mother happy, but that’s about it. I just can’t endorse an organization that hid that kind of thing for years. Now I identify as a witch.

DP: Right. On an institutional level there are just so many messed up things. That’s what you were born into and it’s a part of you and your relationship is so personal. So, it would make sense that it’s a conglomerate of all the things you’ve been exposed to or inspired by.

MM: I’ve actually read a couple of books – one was called The Christian Witch, which was pretty interesting. So, do you believe in tarot cards?

DP: [Laughs] I do readings for people sometimes. My family heritage is Russian and my background is Russian and my great aunt also read tarot cards and was really good at it. I take it all with a grain of salt, but I do find it insightful.

MM: Me, too. Do you have it memorized what all the different cards usually mean? Because that’s what my problem is. I can’t memorize all the cards.

DP: A lot of times I’m not using a traditional deck. I actually use an Italian “tarochi” deck and then I also use an Oracle deck. But there are so many resources online now for tarot. So, if you’re not sure what a card means you can look it up until they start becoming regulars. You’re reading tarot as well?

MM: No, no. I’ve only done them for myself, but I’ve had them done for me by other people.

DP: What did you think?

MM: I really liked it. Especially the first time that I had it done because the main card for me, the final one they flip over, was the high priestess. And some of the other cards pointed to magick, too. In my case, my great grandmother was a witch. I don’t know if she used that word to describe herself, but she had prayers she could say to heal burns and things like that. And a few years after she died my sister was badly burned by pouring a scalding hot cup of coffee all over herself when she was three and she was at Shriner’s Burn Institute in Boston and they were talking about having to do three month’s worth of skin graphs. But my mother prayed to my great grandmother and a week later my sister was completely healed. The doctors said they’d have to write it off as a miracle because it didn’t make sense.

DP: I feel like I remember you maybe telling me this story because it sounds so familiar and so specific and it’s amazing. There are a lot of miracles out there. Happening all the time. I was in India in the Tibetan region of India where there are so many miracles happening with the Dalai Lama. They try not to focus on them because they want people to focus on the practice of meditating and being a good person, but I’ve heard so many stories of miracles happening through prayers and intention. There’s a lot that we don’t know about.

MM: Without naming names, could you tell us one of those stories?

DP: I remember there was one where this child was very sick and had lost all her hair and came up to the Dalai Lama and he kind of said some prayers over her and petted her head and the story went that a week later her hair was all grown back. It was very thick. You know, stuff like that. Things that the community would pass around.

MM: We talked about reincarnation previously but not in depth. Since you also believe in it, I was wondering if you believe that we keep coming back here or that at some point after we’ve learned some lesson or done what we were supposed to do then that’s it and we go to paradise or the Summerland, as witches call it. That’s something I always wonder about. If we keep coming back or if it stops at some point.

DP: We keep reincarnating until we learn the crucial lessons. Until we go beyond detachment and aversion and really understand that on a full level and attain consciousness of our new life. I think we probably keep reincarnating. I guess it’s sort of once you’ve absolved yourself of all the bad karma maybe you have… I don’t know what happens after life, but something else. Whether it’s paradise or some sort of disillusion. Who knows? That’s my personal feeling.

MM: You mentioned that you’ve had mystical moments in your life where you felt like the past, present and future were colliding. Has that happened to you recently?

DP: With mystical things, you can never really know when they’re happening, but I had a very mystical experience recently. I had this dream about a snake. It was a very specific dream about a rattlesnake and I woke up kind of nervous and I opened my phone and the first thing I saw was that someone had posted an Instagram photo of a snake and I was going out to Joshua Tree to visit some friends and I told them I had this dream about a snake and I don’t know why but I feel a little bit nervous out here. Sure enough, the next day I’m taking this hike and there it is. I’m walking and I almost stepped on this giant – it must have been a five-foot – rattlesnake. The same one as my dream.

 

MM: That must have been scary.

DP: It was scary, but it was amazing though. You know, my whole life I’ve been scared of snakes. And it’s like I’m scared of this thing I’ve never seen in the wild. And then I saw one in the wild and it was so gentle. I was so close to it. I almost stepped on it. I didn’t see it. And then the second I saw it I was probably kind of repelled but it was not antagonistic at all. That was pretty mystical.

MM: How did you get away from it? Did you tip-toe, so to speak or….

DP: I was in total survivalist mode because I was shocked so I just ran back a few feet and then I realized it wasn’t coming at me. It was kind of just going about its way and I just stood there and watched it. I’ve got a video of it, actually, because I was like, this is amazing.

MM: Did you put it on Youtube?

DP: I didn’t put it on Youtube. It’s on my phone.

MM: Do you recall anything about your past lives?

DP: I don’t. I know some people say that they do, but I haven’t personally.

MM: Have you ever done anything in particular in your waking life because of something that happened in a dream?

DP: I wouldn’t say anything specific, but a lot of times if I dream about somebody I’ll reach out. Because I’ve learned to really trust my dreams. Like with the snake, it’s such a clear sign to me that my dreams are messages.

MM: Would you say that to some degree you’re psychic?

DP: I have very strong intuition. Through the art-making process, I’ve learned how to trust those more. I do have some psychic abilities. I wouldn’t say consistently but – I don’t know if I’m ready to take that on. It’s something I’m developing and have an interest [in] for sure.

MM: You’d mentioned that you were studying music at a school for Tibetan music. At the time of the interview in 2014, you had been back there three times to study with them. Is that something that’s continued during the years since?

DP: I was back at the top of 2017. I try to go whenever I can in the record cycle and I have a new record that’s coming out in the fall and that will take me on a journey. But, hopefully, at some point in 2019 I’ll go back.

MM: What can you tell us about the new record? Does it have a title yet?

DP: It does, but I can’t tell you yet because we haven’t announced it, but, yeah, I’m very excited about the new record.

MM: Can you say anything about it maybe like who you co-wrote songs with or who produced it or anything?

DP: I produced the record in London with this guy Jimmy Hogarth, who produced a lot of the early Sia stuff and worked with Amy Winehouse. We worked with an amazing band out there together that he put together for the project. Some really incredible musicians in my band. Including this guy Abraham. He’s a guitarist who works a lot with Brian Eno and is a producer in his own right.

MM: Sounds cool.

DP: For me, something that was important with this record was having it be a lot more organic and live. Because after performing the past few years I’ve realized that I want to create every instrument on stage. It was impossible with my last record because it was, instrumentally, a lush production. I couldn’t take out a band with a whole horn section. So, I really turned it down this time to try to get something that was a little bit more sparse.

MM: Can you give us any song titles?

DP: Some of the songs are already singles like “Second Door,” “Guilty” and “Walk Through the Fire.”

MM: I love all of those. I didn’t realize they were from a forthcoming album, though.

DP: Yeah, they’ll be on the record.

MM: Will the album be on the Anti- label like your last one?

DP: Yes, exactly.

MM: Regarding the singles you’ve released during the past few years, I was wondering if we could talk a bit about each of them? In terms of where they were recorded or how long they took to write or the stories behind them – whatever comes to mind when I name them. So, to start with the most recent one, what can you tell us about “Walk Through the Fire”?

DP: “Walk Through the Fire” was inspired by an experience with a friend. I wanted to help them and I realized I couldn’t help them. That was their path. I guess the idea, especially with that song, is that we get to do so many things together. We get to be in relationships. We get to march together. Create communities. But, ultimately, regardless of how much support we have, the hardest moments of our life we’re always alone. Nobody else experiences your trauma but you. That’s both your blessing and a curse and, ultimately, that’s just the reality of how we’re born.

MM: I was wondering, based on that song, if you’re someone who tends to feel alone even when you’re in a relationship?

DP: Yeah. I think I do. I do. [Laughs]

MM: Do you also feel like sometimes you feel lonelier when you’re in a crowd?

DP: Um, yeah. I don’t thrive in big groups. I much more appreciate being with somebody one on one. A lot of times a big group situation can bring out some feelings of loneliness.

MM: On “Guilty,” you wonder if you’ll ever be able to forgive yourself even though you have nothing to feel guilty for. Do you still feel that kind of guilt even when there’s no reason to?

DP: Good question. I don’t know. I have a habit of regretting different decisions. I’m such a perfectionist so I’ll think it over, did I make the right decisions? In a song like “Guilty,” you’re wondering, is it my fault? I chose people who were untrustworthy. You can really take on a lot of self-blame.

MM: My next question was about whether you tend to blame yourself for everything that goes wrong in your life even though you shouldn’t.

DP: I think I definitely can lean towards that. You know, there’s a good thing about taking responsibility for your decisions and actions. But the bad side is like it can be quite, I don’t know, devaluing of yourself. Often [you need to be] allowing the reality that it wasn’t just your fault, that it was a combination of factors.

MM: I once read that familiarity breeds contempt, which at the time didn’t make any sense to me, but now I can see how if I spend too much time with any one person I tend to detach from them. And that always makes me remember that saying. Do you have any thoughts on that?

DP: Yeah. I mean, I’ve experienced that for sure. I definitely do that. Not with people, just with routine. If I’m in one place for too long I get some sort of impulse to travel to shake things up.

MM: What can you tell us about “Second Door”?

DP: “Second Door” is also about that. Like looking back and going, “Could I have been better?” Especially in a relationship. And being like, well, I don’t know, and I can’t change that, so all I can do is hope that the next time around I will be the person I would’ve wanted to be the last time. And hoping that there is a next time, you know? Most of us get lucky, I guess, in love many times in life. But we don’t know when it will come or if it will come or how it will come.

MM: Some people say the album is dead now, that it’s all about singles.

DP: Yeah, I’ve heard that. I think that’s a very capitalist perspective. It’s definitely not driven by art. It’s driven by capitalism and like mass consumption of music. An album is an artistic statement. A lot of times there are songs on a record that aren’t commercial. That are important to the piece. With this single culture, it sort of breeds a desire for everything to be a single to be catchy and impactful on the first listen. As opposed to some great works of art that are neither of those things and they sort of reveal themselves in layers and awaken things in us that are kind of unusual.

MM: The other thing I find with this focus on singles is that you buy an album and the rest of the songs can be bland. Like they only focused on the singles and then the rest of it they half-ass.

DP: There’s that and then there’s maybe that’s the real music that’s really important. I just feel a lot of pressure now to have a hit single on Spotify or something. It’s tough.

MM: I saw that you get a lot of plays on Spotify. How do you think all of these people are finding your music?

DP: I’m not sure, honestly. I’ve been lucky on Spotify. I don’t know how people find my music. Somebody plays it for their friends.

MM: You had said you wanted your next album to be heavy on guitar. Is that something that proved true?

DP: [Laughs] I say that, but then I can’t really stay away from piano because I love it so much, but it’s heavier on guitar for me in that it has guitar on it. [Both laugh]

MM: In your E-mail you mentioned that you’d just done a tour with Gipsy Kings. Were you opening for them or touring as a member of their band?

DP: I was the opening act.

MM: Where was that tour?

DP: We went from Charlotte, North Carolina to Anaheim. So, right through the South.

MM: How did their audience respond to your music?

DP: They were really receptive. I did it with me and a piano player without having the premise of a band to fall back on. Just working on the songs at their purest. It did translate. I’m very happy to see that.

MM: I remember you having a remix contest before, but then the only remix you released on Spotify was the RAC remix of “Nostalgia.” I was wondering if the contest didn’t yield any remixes that were worth releasing or did the label not want to pay the remixers or something? Why did we never hear any of those released?

DP: I don’t know. I was just thinking about it the other day. Honestly, I think what happened was that the person who was in charge of the remix contest at the label ended up going to another label. Because I loved what came out.

RANDOM QUESTIONS:

MM: What was the last non-fiction book you read?

DP: I’m reading Silence in the Age of Noise.

MM: What’s it about?

DP: It is about a Norwegian explorer who spent 50 days alone in Antarctica.

MM: Do you read fiction at all?

DP: I don’t read too much fiction, actually. I’m a pretty big non-fiction person.

MM: Are you currently binge-watching anything?

DP: No. [Laughs]

MM: What was the last series you got into?

DP: The Handmaid’s Tale. I got into that.

MM: I still have to see that. I’ve been too cheap to get Hulu. There are just so many network and HBO and Showtime shows that I watch. And I’ve got Netflix, which has so many series on there now you can’t possibly keep up with half of them. So, that’s why I haven’t gotten Hulu yet, but I do want to see that series. Did you read the book?

DP: I didn’t read the book, no.

MM: If you were going to record a song in a foreign language, which language would it be?

DP: Probably Spanish. I have been singing a lot in Spanish.

MM: Have you written many original songs in Spanish?

DP: No. But it’s something I would like to do.

MM: Have you heard one of your songs on the radio yet?

DP: I did hear it once. I heard “Guilty” on KCRW. I was in a store once and one of my songs came on, which was pretty cool.

MM: Who was the first person you told?

DP: I can’t remember. I think I had called my parents or something.

MM: What was the worst day job you ever had?

DP: Oh, God. I’ve worked so many horrible waitressing gigs.

MM: If I was looking at your contract rider, what would I be surprised to find there?

DP: I don’t know if there’s anything so surprising. I do ask for avocado, but that’s about all.

MM: If you could have any instrument on earth, which would you pick?

DP: If I could have any instrument on earth?

MM: From any time period or any type of instrument. What would you pick?

DP: Maybe a harp.

MM: One last question. If someone was giving you a million dollars to give to charity and it all had to go to one charity or cause which would you give it to?

DP: I think I would give it to a charity that’s working on protecting the rainforests and biodiversity in the Amazon. I’ve just been so interested in the work down there.

Extra special thanks to Doe for taking the time to answer all of our many questions!