"Everyone will automatically assume that I'm a raging egomaniac and that I put you up to it (the inter- view)."

Jeremy Livingston, after sug- gesting that he is only a "modest ego- maniac," continues to peel the label off his plastic juice bottle ("I hear there's more lemons in Pledge than in Country Time lemonade," my associate Brodie MacRae observes).

It is an early, muggy Saturday evening. The three of us are sitting at a table that is situated halfway between the interior of Café Diem and the external patio that extends into Victoria Row. I am happily digging into my mandatory weekly consump- tion of cheesecake (caramel chocolate cheesecake, at the moment) alongside a large black coffee. Jeremy, a fourth- year honours student seeking a "Major-Major" in Philosophy and a "Major-Minor" in English, fiddles with the bottle while Brodie follows my cue and seeks another slice of decadence.

You have probably seen Jeremy around Charlottetown. Last summer, he could often be found sit- ting on a picnic blanket in the Victoria Row-Province House orbit, reading philosophy texts and proudly wearing the now tragically lost "I Belong In The Zoo" button pin. You may have heard him laughing heartily in a Main Building corridor. He is actually renowned for laughing for sixty min- utes straight in high school after Jeff Coll uttered what would become Jeremy's yearbook quote, "Fly, Monkeys, Fly!!!"

After watching a yellow Volkswagon Beetle drive the wrong way down the presumably pedestrian-

only street, Jeremy shows us the book.

he has just bought at the newly opened Indigo bookstore. It is titled The Lucifer Principle, its central argument being that evil is intrinsically ‘ingrained in human biology.

Jeremy is actually a card-car- tying Satanist, although any fears as to what this entails should be wiped from

As Is

By Erin FAGAN

your mind immediately. He explains it all in philosophically clear terms (or is that an oxymoron?):

"I usually make stuff up. . .so that people will stop asking questions. . principles not dogma. . .contrarian. . .secular antinomian," he lists, explain- ing his belief that there is no such thing as normal, aside from statistics. Also: "It's against my religion to prosely- tize."

At first, Livingston finds it hard to describe himself, but then manages to find some

words: "Calm. . .easily amused (It's a virtue), practical idealist. I think I might be a perfectionist, which kind of worries me because perfectionists tend to become cynics," he explains, shud- dering for emphasis.

His favourite things are oat- meal, Christmas lights, philosophy, trees, and the beach on dark, windy nights. Jeremy's "litmus test of cool- ness" is to ask people which they pre- fer: The Munsters or The Addams Family? (The latter being the preferred choice.)

"It's (the original The Addam's Family series) something I've grown to appreciate. . .I think I've got

a little bit of gothic personality deep down inside."

He claims at first that there's not a lot that pisses him off, corrects himself, and then includes "people who don't even try to listen. . .who pre- tend that they already know it all."

On the topic of UPEI itself, Jeremy would love to see the Philosophy department receive a big- ger budget so that the faculty can hire

‘more assistants and spend less time on

time-consuming administrative stuff. When Brodie asks him whether the main function of a university should be to teach or research, Livingston emphatically replies that they go hand in hand.

"(The ideal professor). should have the discipline of a schol- ar and the zeal of a rabbi. . .no not that. . .the zest of a rabbi. . .the moxy."

"Scholarship is leisure,"

Jeremy adds, explaining that it will be good when the scholars are not bogged down with too many other things. He also believes that there are far too many courses cross-listed in the department calendar, and that this adds more responsibility for professors.

Talking about scholarship and careers inevitably drifts to the topic of Prince Edward Island and our future upon it.

"I love it (PEI). At the same time, in the past year I've come to the awareness that I have to move away at a specific time. Every street has a memory. I resent it now. . .I'll have to leave it all. You have to train yourself not to like it anymore." If he could live in any other time period in history, however, he adds that Revolutionary France would be it (as a spectator, reader, writer, and not royalty).

Anybody else smell smoke?

When I ask him, in the end, to rate me on my first non-news related interview, he tells a story from his days doing a radio show for CIMN with the now-Ottawa residing Alex Mann. A standard ending question became, "So, how do you feel about doing this inter- view in the nude?" (It being radio). The best response, he says, came from Bif Naked, who at first said, "It's great. . . because I'm Bif Naked." Out of nowhere, she also added, "And ladies, these guys are hung like horses, and there's nothing like 3 Ibs. of horse cock before a big show." Jaws dropped, I'm told.(Since this interview is A) in a very public place, B) witnessed by my boyfriend, and so C) fully clothed, I cannot comment. . . although, ladies, Jeremy has an untested theory that he's "unseduceable.").

the cadre

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