mini-interview with Elena Passarello
When I think of Elena Passarello, I think of an essayist who embodies curiosity, humor, and intelligence, then alchemizes these qualities into her writing—a combination reflective of my favorite kinds of artists.
Elena Passarello is an actor and writer who lives in Oregon. She is the author of two essay collections: Animals Strike Curious Poses and Let Me Clear My Throat. You can hear her every week on the public radio program Live Wire, which airs on 300 radio stations across North America.
Elena provided all the lovely photos that follow.
As is my mini-interview practice, I asked Elena to respond to three to five questions from a total of eight offered.
Take us on a walk through a place that gives you life.
When I’m at home, I take the same general walk at least weekly, and I’ve been doing so since 2020. That’s what gives me life: just that chance to pay attention and how that marks the passage of time. It’s between a 45-90 minute trek, depending on the path that I take. You walk out my door, through my neighborhood and into another neighborhood, and then through a park with a lot of trails. I do it enough that I’m able to notice lots of changes, big and small, to the landscape. The repetition allows me to notice not just the seasons, but sub-seasons, too. Also: I love catching glimpses of the walk at different hours of the day and as the days lengthen and shorten. Right now it’s late spring and some trails are finally dry enough to walk for the first time since last October. The camas are blooming, and the spring weeds are tall. All the houses are planting their spring bulbs. The other day, it rained just a bit for the first time in a week and the trails were covered in lil’ slugs. I had to keep my head down most of the time. There are also less natural things to notice: I love looking inside the windows of people’s houses and cars, for example. Last night, I walked past a car that had a ceramic plate on the center console with a bunch of crumbs on it—like someone used it to eat a sandwich while driving. I’ve been thinking about that crumby plate all day.
What project(s) are you working on right now that you're most excited about?
I’ve got this mammoth book project going and it’s really hairy. I’m sure it will eventually get sorted out—and you have to let big projects be a mess at certain points of the process—but right now it just feels like a many-headed hydra that’s thrashing and out of control. Part of the whole writing gig, I think, is just being cool with the more overwhelming parts of a major project and to keep pressing forward, especially since the “right now” of any project is usually small enough to feel manageable, or at least exciting. Which leads me to the next question…
Who/what are you most recently obsessed with?
Right now, I’m focusing on the fine are of the pop music cover. For decades in popular music, there weren’t covers of songs; there were either folk tunes or songs written by professionals that other artists—vocal artists--performed. You would never say that Frank Sinatra “covered” Cole Porter or that Leadbelly covered the old murder ballad “Frankie and Johnny,” for example. But as recorded music became an industry and as the concept of both pop stars and singer-songwriters flourished, certain songs became associated with artists in more direct ways. It now means something to cover Bob Dylan, for example.
I’ve been trying to see if I can name my favorite cover. It might be impossible, because covers can do many different things. Sometimes I think it might be Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” because a) I roller skated to it in my driveway when I was in first grade and b) it’s such a match-up of varied cultural genius: Prince wrote it, Melle Mel raps on it, and Chaka sings the hell out of it. It also includes both a harmonica solo from 34-year-old Stevie Wonder and a vocal sample of thirteen-year-old Stevie Wonder, too! It’s like a Wikipedia wormhole of pop music! But there’s also a problem in calling it my favorite cover, because how many people even know the original version of the song? Is it still a cover if the cover version eclipses the original? These are the kinds of obsessive questions I’ve been considering.
What's a type of art-making that you haven't yet done that you'd like to do?
I’d like to be a full-on, completely unironic Elvis Impersonator. I got started a couple years ago when I did a live essay for Pop Up Magazine in which I performed one song of Elvis’s from the early 1960s, but I haven’t had the time, training, or finances to go full jumpsuit, full sideburns. Those kinds of impersonations—which the pros like to call “tributes”—take years to perfect. And it’s an expensive racket as well. But every time I see a world-class Elvis impersonator, I wonder what it must feel like to do that, to be in his body. Emphasis on “he”: all the top-tier guys are cis men, even though they’re all different ages, nationalities, shapes and sizes. I guess there’s still time for me to go full sideburns, but I’m already four years older than Elvis was when he died, so the clock is definitely ticking. Maybe I should just stick to Elvis karaoke.
What's on your to-read and/or to-watch stack, and why?
Next year, I’d like to re-read the same thing every day of 2025. I tried this for a month of 2023, when I read the same Jerriod Avant poem for all 31 mornings of January. It was really fun and I learned a lot. Now I’m trying to figure out how to take it further—not just in duration, but in intensity. I’m wondering if instead of a poem, the thing I read should be a speech from a play or maybe a sermon. There’s something to figure out, perhaps, about the intersection of reading and prayer, or maybe ritual and performance. If anyone can think of a good candidate for that kind of repeated, obsessive reading, please holler!
