Any Question You Like

~8 min read

Note on the text 02/26/2026: This originally came from a project I started in late high school. If I remember correctly, the first interview I did was actually at my high school stadium on the chairs setup a few nights before the graduation ceremony itself.

The Premise

The basic premise for this project originated from my love of the Band Pink Floyd. For those unfamiliar, they were (or still are, depending on your affiliations) a psychedelic rock band popular throughout the 70s-90s. They were a significant influence on my tastes throughout highschool. One of their albums, DSTOM, includes frequent interview-like dialogue throughout from a wide array of individuals. Their answers are sometimes meditative, other times abrupt.

And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don’t mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There’s no reason for it. You’ve got to go sometime.

I’ve always been mad, I know I’ve been mad. Like the most of us have. Very hard to explain why you’re mad. Even if you’re not mad.

Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me

And of course, the famous:

There is no dark side to the moon, matter of fact it’s all dark

I discovered later that these were excerpts taken from interviews done in the Abbey Road studio during recording for the album. They interviewed a wide assortment of individuals, and—though it didn’t make the final cut—they even had the chance to interview Paul and Linda Mcartney. The Mcartney’s were deemed to be “trying too hard to be funny”.

Nevertheless I found the idea of asking people such questions interesting. I was always a philisophical person, and I figured if you went around asking people questions designed to reveal personal conflictions and ideals, people were bound to answer meaningfully.

I don’t remember where I found the questions, because it was a few years ago, but this site is a potential contender. They list some of the original questions used on the album as:

“What’s your favourite colour?” (to ease the interviewee in)

“Why do rock and roll bands split up?”

“When was last time you thumped someone?”

“Why did you do it?”

“Did you think you were in the right?”

“Do you still you you were in the right?”

“Are you frightened of dying?”

“Why are you frightened of dying” (the likely prompt to Puddie Watt’s “I never said I was frightened of dying”)

“Do you ever think about the dark side of the moon?”

“Do you think you’re going mad?”

“If so, why?”

“What do you think of The Dark Side Of The Moon?”

You can clearly see the resemblance to my own.

My Questions

I took the questions and modified some of them, pruning and adding as I pleased. I wanted a mixture of questions across subjects, and truthfully the original questions were already quite good. Some considerations:

For the question about being in a fight, I changed that to “altercation”. I didn’t know many people who had been in physical fights—including myself—and I wanted people to answer earnestly, so I opted instead to ask about any sort of conflict.
For the question about spirituality, I wanted to ask people about their beliefs without necessarily showing preference for believing in a God vs something less defined. I ended up on “Higher Power”, with a sub question asking about belief in the “Supernatural”.
In regards to the question about the Dark Side of the Moon, I changed it to “What do you think of the unknown?”, because asking the former would’ve likely diverted attention to the album instead of the metaphor itself.

I also considered the order of the questions. I wanted to begin easily (As the original questionnaire did), and take a tour through various subjects one at a time: Values, Comflict, Fear, Love, Belief, etc. I put a lot of thought into this, and I considered over time changing the order of the questions to see if there was a noticeable change in the type of answers.

As for the question at the bottom, I’ll say that it is a real quote. I won’t say my interpretation of the quote, nor where it comes from, but if you have done your research on the DSOTM album itself you probably already know it’s source. You can also just look it up.

Finally I did the interviews. Somewhere I have recordings from friends during this highschool time and a little bit beyond. If you’re savvy enough, you might even be able to find them somewhere on the internet. Some takeaways:

People’s response times varied a lot. One interview went for an hour and 45 minutes, while the shortest went for I think 15 minutes.
Besides the questions themselves I tried to offer as little as possible in regards to interruption. If someone asked me how to answer a question I would usually say “be thoughtful but not overly contemplative. Just say what comes to mind”.
If I could tell someone would offer more, I would follow up with another question, but for short answers I would naturally go to the next one. I also emphasized that you didn’t have to give maximum consideration to all questions, as some might mean more or less to different individuals.
As a media project, it didn’t bring me any great fame. However, I do think that it provides an interesting snapshot of people’s values at certain points in their lives. I’ll sometimes go back and listen to the answers of my friends and hear what they said, and wonder how they might respond nowadays.

A little further on

Cut to 2025. I had been out of school for awhile and was on a roadtrip in between ending CC and heading off to greener pastures. It was towards the end of the trip, and my trusty 2014 Ford Escape had taken me nearly 4000 miles, from Zion to The Tetons, then up through Yosemite into Montana, then across that small sliver of Idaho into Washington.

For reasons I won’t get into, I was feeling quite demotivated. It was while driving (which I had taken to doing over stopping in certain locations for anytime longer than two days. I think it gave me a feeling of progression, though I definitely could’ve spent a week or more in some of the places I stopped. By that point in the trip I was driving an average of ~200 miles daily) that I had the idea that I ought to give myself some sort of goal, or purpose. I remembered the interview project I had done and thought, “This is it! I’ll interview people as I travel, Like Hunter S. Thompson or Andrew Callahan, I’ll give a voice to the wanders, vagrants, and thinkers of the inner U.S.”

In the next town I stopped at, Spokane, I found a park where I figured people would be receptive to a random interview. I considered coffee shops, resturaunts, because I knew people would only interview if they were willing to sit for upwards of an hour.

Journal Entry

I wrote the questions above and headed out into that park. If you’re ever in Spokane, you should definitely check it out. It’s called Manito Park, and it’s definitely worth the visit. As if ordained by God, I came across a man sitting by himself in green pasture, wearing a cowboy hat and playing guitar. He had long hair and carried the carefree attitude of someone I knew would be perfect for my project.

I stalked him out of sight for awhile, working up the courage to talk to him. It was weird to question a complete stranger like that. Eventually I walked towards him and began talking. I won’t say his name but if you know who you are, you’re a cool dude. We didn’t even get to the questions for awhile, we simply talked for hours right there on the grass, for hours deep into the night. He helped me figure out some things in my life, helped me focus on what was important. His answers to the interview weren’t half bad, too.

From there I went to Seattle, where I refocused my project. If you know anything about Seattle, you probably already know how well I did there. Seattle has a reputation as a “weird” city, and it is well deserved. I walked around for an entire day, going from park to plaza and park again. I got a few interviews, and they were thoughtful and genuine, but most people ignored me. Afaik these interviews don’t exist anywhere on the internet besides my phone, but someday I’ll make an attempt to post them.

In general I found the city to be hostile, almost protective of itself. It was like the whole city was connected throughout the noosphere, and if you weren’t connected it made an active attempt to resist you at each moment. I left feeling somewhat disheartened, but to be fair my project was by its very nature solicitive, and people were well witihn their rights to reject me.

Since then I haven’t made any significant attempts to continue the project, but I thought I’d document some of it here. Maybe in the future I’ll upload the old recordings or make new ones. Who knows. Below you can find the original questions.

Any Question You Like

Original Questions, circa mid 2022:

The only rules to answering the questions below is that they should be answered impartially to the best of the reader’s ability and answered true to one’s self so as best to reflect upon themselves.

What is your favorite color?
Do you dream?
What do you value?
When was the last time you had an altercation? (A fight or an argument)
- Were you in the right?
Can all questions be answered with rationality?
What comes after death?
Are you satisfied right now?
Are you frightened of dying?
- Why or why not?
What do you fear, if anything?
What is love?
- Do you/Have you ever had love?
What’s something you don’t understand?
Is there a higher power?
- Do you believe in the supernatural?
Why are we here?
- Why are you here?
Do you ever think you’re going mad?
- If so, why?
What do you think of the unknown?

Interpret the quote below:

You can pick any color you like, as long as it’s blue.