Speaker 1 00:00:30 You are listening to write on radio on Kfa I 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Annie on tonight's program. Liz Old talks with Nili au about her debut novel, A Disappearance in Fiji. Rao's novel offers an unflinching look at the evils of colonialism, even as a brims with wit vibrant characters and fascinating historical details.
Speaker 2 00:00:52 Then last part of the hour, Annie Harvey. Oh, I'm Josh by the way, if you didn't know, Annie Harvey talks with William Brewer about his latest work. The Red Arrow. The red arrow wades into the shadowy depths of the human psyche only to emerge into a world that is so bright and wondrous. It almost feels completely new, all the some more. So stay tuned to write on radio.
Speaker 3 00:01:21 Hello, Nama.
Speaker 4 00:01:24 Hi. Hi, Liz. How are you? Hi.
Speaker 3 00:01:27 I'm doing pretty good. Welcome to Write on Radio. Thanks for spending part of your day with us.
Speaker 4 00:01:32 Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 00:01:35 We had, uh, talked about possibility you sharing a, uh, piece of the book with us?
Speaker 4 00:01:41 Yep. Yep. Sounds good.
Speaker 3 00:01:44 You can go right ahead.
Speaker 4 00:01:46 Excellent. All right. Um, I will go right ahead. Okay. So chapter one, the Night per Hour was out again last night, this Portent of Doom, first thing in the morning, made Sergeant Al Singh once again, forget to duck as he walked through the door of the central silver police station at a yard he muttered. In the six months he'd been in Fiji, Al had knocked his head on that very door any number of times. It wasn't a particularly low door, but his tur added inches to his already formidable height is my turbine. All right. He asked to him. The Fijian constable was manning the front desk and had been the one to deliver the news about Carl's current nemesis. Um, I think it's all right, sir. I don't know much about turbans. Seems like a lot of work. Al continued to smooth his hands over the sides of his turban, checking everything was in place.
Speaker 4 00:02:37 It's a bloody bugger in this heat. I tell you that the ladies love it. He waited for TTI to scoff at this, given the dearth of women in Al's life. But instead, the Fijian man mirrored al his hands running thoughtfully over his tight wiry curls. You think I should try it? Do you thinks you could handle all the women? Probably not, but my wife could. To Tti shot back as he slapped the counter, resulting in a satisfyingly meaty echo throughout the room, both men roared with laughter until they ran out of breath. Al had never in his life laughed as hard as he did with tti, no matter whether something was actually funny or not. Al found himself convulsing and breathless spasms, TTIs laughter rolling over him while not really knowing why Acal and TTIs fledgling friendship was unique in the super police force. There were other Indians in the police force and plenty of Fijians.
Speaker 4 00:03:28 The language barrier left them all at arms distance, making themselves understood with a garbled mixture of English Hindi and Fijian when they had to, but never really trusting one another even without the language barrier. Aala had not broken through with any of the other Indian officers. None of them were Punjabi seeks, so they did not have the immediate bond of home and religion. Add to that, the rumors about the reasons behind his abrupt departure from Hong Kong, and it was no wonder that they gave a car a wide berth. I cannot believe we've all started calling this bugger the night Prowler bloody Fiji times in their stupid names. Al Grumbled. What would you rather call him? Your PRS are out at no prowls around at night. Seems like a good name to me. To bet responded. Whatever we call him, I need to find him or I'll never get a decent case again.
Speaker 4 00:04:17 What do you mean again? Totti said ging his head at Al. You haven't had a decent case since you got here. The Inspector General hated you on site. So who was our wonderful night prowl bothering this time? Al said, focusing on his shoes to avoid eye contact. He had managed thus far to avoid explaining to TTI the reasons he was in disfavor with the Inspector General. And he hoped to keep it that way, though TTI almost certainly had an inkling of the truth. Everyone in the colony talked to TTI too much to us, that they got a look at him, I suppose. No usual story. It was the wish. Born up on Nolie Street, 11 o'clock Mr. Wish born was at the governor's party. The night prowl was naked at the youngest girl's window. She woke up, saw him, started screaming, and he bolted. By the time the mother arrived, all she saw was his behind bouncing down the hill.
Speaker 4 00:05:08 But she could definitely tell it was a black behind. Could she tell what kind of black? My kind, not your kind. A good round Fijian behind not one of your scrawny Indian asses. TTI flashed his teeth each roughly the size of a small shovel head. I'm off to Nali Street then maybe he'll have left us a clue. This time A car looked up with a grin for tti, then jumped to his feet when he saw the Inspector General glaring at him from the, uh, door to the back rooms of the station. Singh my office, the Inspector General disappeared back down the corridor. His footsteps echoing through the room. A Carl hurried to follow him. What did you do now? Teti asked. I'm still breathing. I think that might be enough. That's, and
Speaker 3 00:05:56 That was a reading from a Disappearance in Fiji. And we're speaking tonight with Nama Rao. Again, welcome to write on radio. Thank you. The book is a historical mystery that takes place, uh, near the beginning of World War I in Fiji. And, um, it, the backdrop is primarily the, uh, indentured servitude, uh, situation in Fiji and other countries, uh, uh, during that time. Uh, why don't you give us first a, a, uh, a bit of the inspiration for the book.
Speaker 4 00:06:35 Um, sure. Yeah. So my family is from Fiji. I was born there, um, and my great grandparents went to Fiji as indentured servants. So I grew up not knowing very much about this whole system. I grew up in Australia. We moved here when I was three, so I was pretty ignorant, ignorant of the whole thing. And I, um, I went to India and, uh, just as a tourist and saw the, the poverty in India and sort of got interested to know how is it that I wasn't born into that poverty? Like how did, how did my family end up in Fiji? How did we end up escaping that cycle? Um, and that's when I started doing the research and yeah, I wanted to write something set in Fiji at that time. And, um, uh, murder mystery made sense to me. I used to read a lot of crime, um, so that's why I went for that genre.
Speaker 3 00:07:32 Tell us about the indentured servitude, uh, situation, uh, in Fiji and other places.
Speaker 4 00:07:38 Yep. So this was, um, so it's the British, uh, British Empire. Um, so the book is actually said in 1914. Um, and, uh, Fiji is a fairly new colony at that time in the British Empire. I think they, they seeded sovereignty in eight, late 18 hundreds. Um, the British Empire had, uh, outlawed slavery, but they still had all of these colonies that were crying out for cheap labor. So they instituted a new policy of indentured servitude or a new program of indentured servitude where people were signing up to actually go to places like Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago. Um, and, you know, the latest colony Fiji, and in Fiji it was to work on the sugarcane plantations. Um, it was a program that within India caused a lot of controversy. Um, there was a, a lot of outcry against it, I think the whole way through the, the program, it got started and re stopped and restarted at various points because of the abuses and, um, and the terrible conditions that people were living under.
Speaker 4 00:08:49 Um, so, uh, basically the, the very basics of the program are you sign up for five years to work on a plantation. Um, at the end of that five years, if you've got enough money to pay for a trip back to India yourself, you can, if you don't have enough money to pay for a trip back to India, then you can stay in the colony for another five years and work however you wanna work and live however you wanna live. And then at the end of 10 years, you would get a trip paid for back to India. Um, and in Fiji, 60,000 Indians went to Fiji over the 30 odd years of the program, and only 30,000 went back. So it was, it did end up being a resettlement program because people found better opportunities if they could get through the hardships of the indenture, they found better opportunities in Fiji.
Speaker 3 00:09:44 What were the conditions like and what were some of the abuses that they faced?
Speaker 4 00:09:50 So the, I mean, the abuses started before you even got to Fiji. So the people who were signing up for these contracts were poor and desperate, and for the most part, illiterate. So they were signing contracts that they couldn't read, and the recruiters who were recruiting them, Indian recruiters who were recruiting them to go onto these, into this program, were not being very honest about what conditions that they would be going under. So they, um, the, one of the classic examples is people were being told that Fiji was just south of Calcutta, um, which is I important because not only because they were going much, much further than they were expecting to, but because there is a concept of losing caste if you go over vast sues of ocean. So people were going onto a ship not realizing that they were going halfway around the world, and that that was a taboo in the, in the culture.
Speaker 4 00:10:48 Um, they were being lied to about the type of work that they would be doing. Kind of, it was being painted as a land of milk and honey, and that you wouldn't have to work very hard. Um, and you know, when they got there, that obviously wasn't the truth. Um, for the first little while when you would get to Fiji, you would be given rations, but then after that you had to, pa, accommodation was included in the contract, but the accommodation itself was not great. Um, but, uh, after a while you'd have to pay for your own food and the food was being charged at exorbitant prices. Um, and yeah, uh, there were, you know, people didn't have freedom of movement. They didn't have freedom to marry, um, and they were being woken up with kicks and shouting at five o'clock in the morning. Uh, you know, there was a lot of corporal punishment going on, so people didn't know that they were signing up. They were basically signing up to be slaves for five years. Um, slaves who got paid a little bit and slaves who knew when it was gonna end, but slaves nonetheless.
Speaker 3 00:11:50 Now you said 60,000 people went to Fiji? Yep. And do you know off the top of your head, how many people in the whole world were, were doing this?
Speaker 4 00:12:01 No, I'm, I'm not aware of that, no. Um, I kind of, I've focused my research very much on Fiji, but I, I am aware that there were plenty of people going to other places. I'm not sure how many though.
Speaker 3 00:12:13 Let's talk about a couple of the characters. Very interesting, very fascinating characters. Uh, now is aka based on a specific person or more the situation of the police force in Fiji?
Speaker 4 00:12:26 Yeah, so Carl, um, the inspiration for Al was that I was reading the old newspapers. So they have all the old Fiji times available in Sova at the National Archives on this ancient microfilm machine that I'm, I swear, has given me back problems. Um, but uh, they, so at that time, the Fiji police force was struggling to get set up. They were struggling to find people, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and the, um, the governor of Hong Kong, who had previously been the governor of Fiji, had said, I've got these guys. They're great. So he sent over from Hong Kong to Fiji 10 seek police officers, um, to help build the Fiji police force. And they did incredibly well. Um, and so I read about these guys in the newspaper and went, right, I'm gonna base a character on that concept. Now, it's not exactly the same cuz a Carla's been sent in disgrace. He's not been sent because, um, for, for, for the same reasons. But that's where I got the idea to have a Sikh police officer coming from Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 00:13:36 And the Sikh police officers did face discrimination, did they not?
Speaker 4 00:13:41 Um, so it, it, they had an interesting experience from what I've, from what I've read, that is not my background. I'm not from the Sikh police officer side, I'm from the intention servitude side. But, um, my understanding is that the challenge faced there was that they were kind of ducks out of water. You know, there were Indians in the colony, but there were not an awful lot of Punjabi Sikhs in the colony. So, um, there wasn't a great understanding of who they were. Like, so there, there was a tendency to lump everybody in as you know, oh, you're an Indian, you must be like the indentured servants. Um, so yeah, they didn't necessarily, the Punjabi Sikhs are warriors like they're expecting, I think, to be treated with certain level of dignity. And I don't think that always happened in Colonial Fiji.
Speaker 3 00:14:36 In your author's note, you talk about the, uh, woman that Ty's character is based on. Uh, would you tell us about her?
Speaker 4 00:14:44 Yeah, so this is, this is a song that I came across in my research, which was called Conti Lament. And it is about, um, a woman who there was the situation for the female indentured servants was, was challenging and interesting. Um, when they started sending the, the ships over from India to Fiji, there were no women on them at all. There was, it was just a whole bunch of men being sent over. And I think in the, in the idea of it also being a resettlement program, there was some realization eventually that this wasn't gonna work. So they came up with this, um, ratio of every ship that was sent for every hundred men. There had to be at least 40 women. Um, so I'm not sure who came up with that ratio and what their understanding of male female relationships were, but that seems very odd to me.
Speaker 4 00:15:36 Um, but, uh, so women were commoditized. Um, there was a scarcity of Indian women. Um, they were sort of given as, as, um, rewards to the men who were doing what their overseers wanted them to do, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, and, and there were reports of abuses by the overseers and the plantation owners against the Indian women as well. So yes, Kund DE's Lament is the story of a woman who was being attacked by her overseer, um, in somewhere a bit isolated on the plantation. So he'd sent her off to work somewhere where she'd be on her own, and then he went and, and attempted to rape her and she jumps into the river to escape. Um, and I'm pretty sure the story goes that a little boy in a, in a dingy kind of thing comes along and rescues her. But that, um, so, so the story, my story, my, the just, uh, the, the plot in within my story doesn't really relate to her, to the, the tis lament, but that is why I used that name just as an, a nod towards that story,
Speaker 3 00:16:47 Kind of a strong woman in the, in the story.
Speaker 4 00:16:52 Yep.
Speaker 3 00:16:52 Um, what kind of, you said the reforms were coming and going. What was it like in the particular timeframe of this book, this story?
Speaker 4 00:17:02 Well, one set of reforms had already gone through, so I, I kind of mishmashed a few things and I do acknowledge it in the office's note. So when, um, the program was first instituted with people going to Fiji, the contract, um, or the regulation stipulated how big the house had to be, the accommodation had to be per person, what the cooking facilities had to be, um, you know, all of that sort of stuff. By the time 1914 rolls around, there has been one round of improvements to say that the housing has to be a little bit more generous, that the cooking, there needs to be external cooking facilities made available within a certain distance from the, the, um, accommodation. So there had already been one round of reforms. I've written it as though those reforms haven't happened yet. Um, but there had been one round of reforms.
Speaker 4 00:17:51 Um, and like I said, they had already instituted that rule about 40 women per every hundred men, which I, I guess was good <laugh>, I, I still can't quite get my head around that one. Um, so things had changed, um, by 1916, the whole program is over. So the last Indians to arrive in Fiji are in 1916, um, which is why my book is said in 1914, cuz I've got a couple more in me, um, <laugh>. So, uh, yes. So th there have been some reforms at this point, but it's still, uh, fundamentally the program is still the same and still has the same, uh, opportunities for abuse as it always did. It's, they just made their houses a bit nicer.
Speaker 3 00:18:39 There are interludes in the book of, uh, newspaper articles, brief articles by someone named Chop Chop. Could you talk about the newspaper articles in Chop Chop?
Speaker 4 00:18:52 Yeah, so this was, um, like I said, when I went to do research, I found I was so thrilled to find all of the old Fiji times and there was a column by this guy named Chop Chop. So Chop Chop was clearly one of the journalists there, but they kept it anonymous because he was quite, he could be quite savage to the, um, to the government. Um, and very kind of tongue in cheek and sarcastic and yeah, so I, I loved the chop chop columns and he seemed quite liberal liberal, so very much. Um, some of the articles are talking about, about the suicides, um, that were occurrence. There were a lot of the suicide rate in Fiji for the indentured servants was quite high. So there's sort of, it's, it's tongue in cheek, but it's also very clearly saying to the government, you, you need to do something about this.
Speaker 4 00:19:44 Um, so most of the little articles at the beginning of them are completely, the only thing I've altered is the date so that I can make it be 1914 cuz I just sort of cherry-picked which ones worked best for that chapter. Um, there's one I think that I made up completely, and there's one where because it's really old, a newspaper that's been scanned onto microfilm it, some of the quality was a bit <laugh> not that great. So I had to make up some words because I had to fill in a little bit. Um, but yeah, so I loved those articles.
Speaker 3 00:20:19 Did the press have a lot to do with the reforms that occurred over time? Was it important in that regard?
Speaker 4 00:20:27 Uh, that's a good question. I'm not a hundred percent sure whether the press in Fiji made a huge difference. There were, um, there was, I know a lot of missionaries, so Catholic missionaries who came over to Fiji and provided their own reports back to their, um, I think it was Catholic and Protestant, um, or Church of England rather providing reports back to their, um, you know, higher ups to say this is, this is not okay than, you know, this is, um, an indictment on our society, basically. Uh, so I know that that made a difference. And I know that in India there was a lot of outcry, um, especially about the treatment of women, but as to whether the press in Fiji, I would guess probably not. I don't think that the reach would've been that far.
Speaker 3 00:21:16 So the invention, the invention servitude program didn't end instantly. It was sort of a, kind of a drawn out situation.
Speaker 4 00:21:24 Yeah. So in 1916, the last people arrived, but when they said, okay, no more, they didn't then immediately end everyone's contracts. They all played out their contracts and I guess somebody was a sucker for punishment and must have signed up for a second contract because what I've read is 1916 is the last contract and it's all ended by 1926, which means somebody did five years and then signed up for another five. So, and and I, I did read that there were some people who signed up for a second contract. So whether they got themselves into a good position and then were comfortable and were able to continue going, um, yeah, but I'm, I, it's actually an interesting thing. I I'm gonna try and find out how many people actually signed up for second contracts because I think that would be quite telling as to how bad this system really was if people were willing to sign up for second contracts.
Speaker 3 00:22:20 Talk a little bit more about your grandparents. Did you, uh, gain new insight into them and and changes in your beliefs and feelings about them?
Speaker 4 00:22:31 Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I, um, so both of my grandfathers passed away before I was old enough to know them. Um, my, my paternal grandfather passed away when I was two, I think. And my maternal grandmother was, uh, grandfather was passed away before I was born. Both of my grandmothers I knew. Um, but we moved to Australia when I was three, so I didn't spend an awful lot of time with them. Um, I think for me, what people talk about intergenerational trauma, and I didn't really know about that, I think or understand its impact until I started, um, until I started doing this research. And so I think it has made me understand a little bit better my, even to my parents, maybe not so much for my grandparents because I didn't know them that well, but even my parents, I can kind of see how this would have formed their growing up, um, because it was my great-grandparents. So it's not actually, you know, that far back, um, of, of family history that, that was in this program. Um, so yes, it has, it has definitely changed my perspective on my own family. And yeah, like I said, uh, it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a hard one to talk about, but yeah, in intergenerational trauma, I think,
Speaker 3 00:23:57 Um, if
Speaker 4 00:23:59 People
Speaker 3 00:24:01 Pardon me, oh yeah. If people are interested in learning more about this period of time and the situation, then uh, are there some websites they can go to or things they can look up to or Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:24:17 Yeah. If you Google Fiji ment, so G i r m I T, so the people who signed the contracts, they called it Mout, they called the agreement mout. And what I've learnt since then is that that was people not knowing how to say agreement. So it got sort of bastardized from agreement to Mout. Um, and the Indians, the Fijian Indians call themselves m um, so if you Google Fijian <inaudible>, there are a lot of websites out there, there are associations out there. Um, who are, I, I think it's having a bit of a resurgence. Um, I think people are starting to want to like, like myself, people are wanting to, to sort of investigate the history and also be able to say these are the sacrifices that our, our forebears made. Um, so there is a lot more. Yeah. So there are resources out there.
Speaker 3 00:25:17 Thank you. We've been speaking with Lina au offer of a disappearance in Fiji. I'm sorry, our time has come to an end. Gee, we could have a discussion about this for hours, I think
Speaker 4 00:25:29 <laugh>. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:25:30 Um, do you have a website?
Speaker 4 00:25:34 Uh, I have a Facebook page. So if you look for Naima Rao writer, I am on Facebook, I am working on my website. <laugh> not there yet.
Speaker 3 00:25:46 Great. Well thank you so much for joining us. Uh, I really appreciate it and I love the book. I hope there's more.
Speaker 4 00:25:53 Thank you so much. I'm working on the second one as we speak.
Speaker 3 00:25:56 Oh great. Great. <laugh>. Okay, take care. Bye-bye. And now this
Speaker 1 00:26:26 Hi. Um, tonight we'll be speaking with William Brewer, author of The Red Arrow. I'm so excited to have him here. Welcome to Write on Radio Will.
Speaker 5 00:26:35 Hi. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 00:26:37 It's so great to have you. Um, so could you tell those who may not have read the book yet a little bit about it?
Speaker 5 00:26:47 Yeah, sure. So, uh, the Red Arrow is a novel, um, about a writer. Uh, and it is a writer who has struggled for many years from depression, but has recently found himself on the other side of that disease. And, uh, he's now at the beginning of the book on a train in Rome, and he's going to look, uh, up in northern Italy for this physicist. He works for as a ghost writer and he desperately needs to find him cuz he is in a great deal of debt and working for this man is how he gets outta that debt. So the book begins as, uh, the train leaves the station and as the train departs, he starts to think about sort of how he got himself in the position that he's in. Uh, and so over the course of the book you learn about a, um, failed art career in New York City, a chemical spill in West Virginia, psychedelic therapy in California, and luxury travel in Italy. I think that covers it.
Speaker 1 00:27:43 Yeah. <laugh>. Well and, and so much more. But, uh, we'll start there. Those are kind of the key building blocks. Um, so I know there's some poetry heads who listen to write on radio. Um, you may know of William Brewer poetry. Um, he's the author of, I Know You're Kind and Ana, I believe. Um, so I'll get the poet with a novel question outta the way cuz I'm genuinely interested to hear about it. <laugh>. Um, and cuz I think that poets, poets write great novels, poets are uniquely suited to put something really immersive on the page. Um, how does your background in poetry writing inform your prose writing?
Speaker 5 00:28:19 Yeah, um, you know, I always wanted to write fiction, but I kind of couldn't do it when I was younger, but I was able to do poems. They made sense and, and one of the reasons for that is I was trained in painting. And poems really are these great visual engines at their core. And so, one thing right away I would say that it's it's taught me over the years is this sort of visual intensity. Um, and then in addition, of course, a certain attention, uh, to music. You know, not just the music of a sentence, but really the mu the music within each word and the power of that and what one can do with it. Um, and, and, you know, poems are these very small objects usually. And so all this, all these ways in which we can compress things and do with less, uh, which were great guides. And when I started to make the move to fiction, because I realized I could, I could actually explore way more than I thought I could. Um, and it doesn't take that much to help someone sort of see a world and, and get lost in it.
Speaker 1 00:29:19 I absolutely felt that reading the book, like it felt like everything that was there was essential and shaping, but without feeling sparse, it still felt very immersive. Um, so to kind of dive right into an instance of that, I wanna talk about the mist and kind of the thread within the book about what depression can look like. Um, so just to go at it a little from personal experience, um, I think there's some cultural imprecision I might say, in discussing depression. There's sort of a Rorschach effect when you bring up depression because that term will mean different things to different people based on kind of segments of society they participate in experiences, other beliefs they have and systems they've been in. And, um, in the Red Arrow, um, you described the depressed condition that the protagonist is living in as the mist, which is both kind of a great visual of the little cloud they live their life within. Um, and it can also, it can tonally shift really nicely. Sometimes it's really crushing, sometimes it's pretty funny. Um, so tell me about how the mist became your, your language of the ailment of the protagonist.
Speaker 5 00:30:25 Yeah. Um, thank you for that question. Uh, I wanted, you know, I I was a very depressed person for much of my life and, um, and it had this sort of physical power over my life and that was something that I felt was missing from a lot of depictions of depression. I would often witness in fiction depression portrayed through sort of a people in a malaise or their behaviors, but as someone experiencing it, I mean, it really had this sort of physical presence in this power to really like interrupt and interfere with experience. Um, and sometimes in my own life, it felt like my brain or my vision was caught in something like a fog. And this isn't really that unique of a metaphor. There's a com, there's a commercial for a bipolar depression medication that airs during a lot of b a games. And, uh, they opening lines of the commercial are my, my bipolar depression makes me feel like I live in a fog.
Speaker 5 00:31:20 Um, so it's a thing I think a lot of people relate to, but what I wanted to do is give it like a real sense of physicality and that it has this kind of almost intelligence. Um, but also as you mentioned, I mean, depression is amorphous. It can be many different things. Um, for some people it's very different, uh, in a, in an experience than it is for others. And even for the same person, it can change over time or over years mm-hmm. <affirmative> and much like a miss, it can sort of become at times denser or more opaque or even funny in a kind of cruel way. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and another idea was in the book, the book deals with, in some regards ways in which we live in different kinds of hallucinations or deal with hallucinations. And, um, in my experience for sure, I would say that, you know, I've, I've had some pretty wild psychedelic experiences and, and and such, but nothing has been as great a hallucination in my life as depression was. It really changes and manipulates your vision and your experience of life. And so the mist was a way to make that like active and felt for the reader, hopefully. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:32:24 Yeah. It definitely really resonated not to go too deep into it, but it really resonated with personal experiences with me and it also just gave such an immediate reading experience with the character. Um, so folks who are listening who might've read media criticism in the last couple years are probably familiar with the term trauma plot, which is sort of a catchall for storytelling where a character's past suffering creates their present suffering and understanding and overcoming their past creates their solution. Um, so when the protagonist of the Red Arrow, um, is trying to write his big bucks book about his childhood trauma and make that into the Great West Virginia novel, beautiful grand intentions, <laugh>, and he eventually comes to realize, um, the, uh, the quote in the book, which I liked so much, was the revelation wasn't enough to make the right income. Um, and this felt to me, unlike many trauma plots in which acknowledgement and pattern breaking of the trauma would just cleanly lead to the sufferings end. But still in this book you see the protagonist really overcoming really major physical and mental roadblocks and living a much better life. So what role or roles do you think that trauma played in the protagonist story, which ultimately takes him to a better place? And do you think it was actually specifically reckoning with the traumas that made him better?
Speaker 5 00:33:43 Mm, yeah. Um, you know, it's, trauma is a word that I must admit I don't think about very often and it doesn't come into my mind, uh, when I'm writing. And it didn't really come into my mind at all when I was writing the book. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, you know, I think it's a word that, uh, is very useful in certain contexts and then in others, I think, you know, has become somewhat overused in the way in which people relate to the stories of their lives. Um, I think in the case of the narrator, he has experienced some very challenging things and seen very strange and complicated things, but the liberation for mental illness that he finds, uh, is not really because he wrestled with those events so much as he can confronts the way his mind works. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And there's a big difference there.
Speaker 5 00:34:35 It's not about going back and sort of untangling these knots in the past, um, in the way that sometimes is necessary if a person's gone through a really traumatic event or changed a relationship to something mm-hmm. <affirmative> instead in this case, or change a relationship to a past event. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in this case, it's much more that he eventually finds liberation by seeing how the bigger problem is, these stories he's been telling himself mm-hmm. <affirmative> about himself. Mm-hmm. And everyone lives with this. I mean, everyone has this voice in their head that's kind of telling and narrating a a story of their life. And these stories are fictional, I mean, for everyone they are, they're a total fabrication of the mind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but mental illness like depression or anxiety is when these stories go haywire, they really, you kind of lose control if you ever had it, of the narrative.
Speaker 5 00:35:28 And it becomes this sort of crushing experience. And so it's much less about what happened and more about how the mind uses whatever is happening in his life at any moment. And that's part of what I hope the book makes clear too, is the depression is so I'm present that it could be just, you know, a weird encounter at a coffee shop could be enough to sort of send the mind into a spiral. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so yeah, not, it's not something that I think is heavy in my mind or as a writer or something. I think about that much. And I, and I do feel like that plot is something, the book is in some ways not, I don't know if it's actually actively resisting it, but maybe providing an alternative to thinking about how people get free from these things. And another part of that too is you don't have to have trauma to be a depressed person, you know, and I think like the pandemic showed that in a great way that a lot of people, their lives were in some ways untouched. They were just asked to stay at home. And yet a kind of great sadness descended across many people's lives. Um, and I think sometimes people feel like, oh, I feel horrible, but maybe I shouldn't be feeling this way cause something horrible didn't happen to me and that's not true. You know?
Speaker 1 00:36:37 And then that becomes that narrative that then cycles down where it's like, oh, why do I feel horrible even though my surroundings are fine? And then you're just, you're just in the mist with the protagonist slogging through the mist through life. Um, <laugh>. Uh, so anyway, the, these stories that the characters, uh, especially the protagonist tells himself, um, it's interesting to see throughout the book kind of the ways he perceives himself be replaced pretty much like he's unburdened from so much, um, intense guilt, intense stress, and he begins to observe cyclical patterns and cyclical natures all around himself in his life. And it, it seems like just he's able to use his headspace so differently when he's in mm-hmm. <affirmative> a better mental health condition. Um, and it's interesting as the book goes on, cuz these, these spirals, these cyclical natures, at least in my reading, it felt like they were kind of coiling tighter towards the end as the protagonist and the physicist he's ghost writing for but has never met before, um, realized they're a lot closer to each other, um, mentally and experientially than they even knew. And it's interesting cuz I say this and you'd picture like a heavy brick, really long, heavy book <laugh>, but in most respects this is like a really, uh, easily read pretty linear story. Um, yeah. As you were writing, like, did you think at all about finding a balance between the cyclical and the linear as you crafted this book? Or did it just kind of come out the way it did? Um, how do you see cycles in this, in this person's?
Speaker 5 00:38:12 Yeah. Uh, when I, when I started the book, the first thing I had was the idea of this individual on a train mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and that was a very, i, I don't know why, but that was a very happy accident mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and so the train gave me this, uh, I consider it sort of like guardrails in a sense that no matter what was gonna happen in the book, the reader always kind of knew actually where they were. Yeah. They were on a train going in a relatively straight line through space and time. So mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the book literally has this like baked in linearity to it. Yes. I mean, an actual physical experience of linearity. Yes. And so that allowed for this, um, it kept things grounded. So even when the, the narrator starts going into memory and noticing certain patterns and putting two and two together across bigger spaces of time, you never lose this sense entirely of where you are and what's happening.
Speaker 5 00:39:11 And like, the tension between those two is a really a true to experience itself. I mean, even if you're reading a novel, you're sitting on a couch, let's say, and you know, it's time is moving between the hour of six to the hour of seven, but while you're reading that novel, you might be walking the streets of Dublin in a totally different year. And like that disjunction is quite fascinating. That's a big part of the mind. Um, and I wanted to like really lean into that, um, because in some ways it feels like that's those that sort of slippage the in between is where life actually happens because linearity is an illusion. And yet at the same time, these patterns we find in life, they're ways that we help make sense of our lives and tell stories about our lives, but they also aren't really true.
Speaker 5 00:39:59 I mean, the, the truth of the universe is that it's all kind of coming apart minute by minute. Um, and so the structure of the book, yeah, it was this, it was this happy accident and it allowed me to explore these sort of headier more complicated things, but also to maybe give the reader the physical experience of them to once be lost in a journey and be ripping through space in a kind of straight line and knowing where they are. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and people will talk about the book as sometimes unlinear, but actually I think when you go back and look, it's like actually relatively linear the whole way through. Even what he does in his mind is for the most part pretty linear.
Speaker 1 00:40:35 Yeah. It, it's like a classic story of how did I get in this weird situation, oh, let's start from the beginning mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and then he goes through and ends, ends up in a better place, frankly. So yeah, it's cool that there are all these coiled and recurring pieces in a book that ultimately was a pretty straight shot
Speaker 5 00:40:55 <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:40:57 So despite the protagonist initial reluctance when his friend first brings it up, uh, this book ultimately gives a very positive depiction, depiction of professionally administered psilocybin therapy. Um mm-hmm. <affirmative> with a lot of detail, including, there's a really interesting part of the book that's just these tables that are full of appointment notes that were really interesting to read and pretty immersive. Um, tell us about how you chose and constructed this depiction of this therapy, um, both on your, your, the research side that kind of went into making this and then characterization finding how your character would, you know, uh, go through this in the novel itself.
Speaker 5 00:41:38 Yeah. Um, yeah, so for, for people who aren't totally aware, psilocybin therapy is, you've maybe heard of magic mushrooms, the psychedelic, and that's what it is. And, and mostly what you do is with a, with a plain therapist or a guide, you take a very large dose of, um, psilocybin mushrooms. And it has, uh, really been proven to be, or is showing to be a kind of groundbreaking therapy, especially for the treatment of, um, treatment resistant depression and also things like it seems anxiety and O c d, um, from a research end, I owe my life to psychedelic therapy. It was this, um, complete game changer in my life. I I was lucky to encounter it out here in the bay area of California where it's sort of been preserved, uh, when, when psychedelics were made illegal. Um, so yeah, I did, I did psilocybin therapy and um, was an experience that I never could have anticipated the scale of it and, and really owe my life to it.
Speaker 5 00:42:39 It, it brought my experience with depression, which was about a 20 year battle to an end. Um, and that was something I wanted to bring into the book. I mean, it's deep, it's most definitely a novel, but this is one part that I did lean on my life to, to bring this in. And, you know, there's a common adage which is like, the only thing more boring than telling someone about your dreams is telling them about your psychedelic trip experience. And, uh, when I was trying to put a psychedelic experience into the book, at first I was struggling with making it just sort of this linear blow by blow in standard paragraphs and I wasn't really feeling right. And, and I showed it to a friend, um, this novelist who's extremely talented named Gabe Hadish, uh, oh yeah. And he was like, yeah, this isn't working, but like the material is right for the novel, but it's not the, the access isn't right.
Speaker 5 00:43:34 So mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So he, he sent me to look at this like chart in another novel. And what I realized was like the, I was making this classic mistake, which was I was taking a very big psychedelic experience where the first thing that happens in a, when you take a lot of mushrooms, for example, is time and space goes out the window. And then usually what happens after that is you lose a sense of self. Mm. Uh, and so instead of trying to make this function in a linear form, I put it in this what the reader will come to discover as a kind of chart mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And what ended up happening is it seems experimental, but in reality, like it looks, sorry, it, it looks very sort of scientific in its arrangement, but it provides actually the most likes psychedelic potential to experience it because the reader can follow this person's journey through all the different senses and over different time periods that he's having this experience. Um, and so yeah, it's a way to see it it without the strictures of linearity or time and space or even the self Totally. Um, and allows them to get a sort of micro grained into it as they'd want or read it on a kind of broad stroke macro scale. And when I figured that out, that was the, that was the great breakthrough and it was really fun and kind of funny when I, when I actually came together cuz I'd been sort of banging my head against the keyboard and then it seemed so obvious.
Speaker 1 00:44:56 Yeah. Oh, that's, that's cool that you were able to have a conversation with another writer who was able to point you in the right direction. Cuz it did feel, it felt right that you like reading the book. I, you know, I experienced him better and then I was kind of, as someone who has not had this form of therapy, I was kind of like, interesting. I wonder what that was. I wonder what that was like. And then you get there a little later in the book and it's like, dang. Well, okay, <laugh>
Speaker 5 00:45:20 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:45:21 That would, that would do it. There, there we go.
Speaker 5 00:45:24 It would do it. Yes. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:45:26 Yeah. And just on a person to person level, I'm so glad that worked for you
Speaker 5 00:45:30 <laugh>. Thank you very much. I'm very grateful. I feel very lucky,
Speaker 1 00:45:35 Um, on that topic, basically, uh, to me, one of the most beautiful effects of the lifting of the mist, the lifting of the protagonist depression following his psilocybin therapy, is that he's then able to see and empathize with the, the mist and the sad, the sadness and the challenges of others. Like he immediately goes out into the world and he goes to like a little cafe or something and he, he sees people who are having a hard time or he'll, he's in some stressful situations or conflicts and he doesn't take it super personally. And that just is such a beautiful way to move through the world. Um, and then this question is a little colored now that I've heard about your personal experience with it, but do you know or have a theory of what changed in the protagonist after his treatment? Was it those stories of the self that you were mentioning earlier? The stories of the self are different.
Speaker 5 00:46:23 Yeah, exactly. I mean, psychedelics, um, and, and the, the great promise of psychedelic therapy is that they really open people up to an awareness of their mind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and thinking and depression, anxiety, o c d uh, our culture tries to pretend that these somehow still believes in a way that these diseases are kind of like marks on your spirit, almost like you were chosen before you were even born. That that was gonna be just your burden in life. And it's really not true. It's, it's just thinking that's gone bad. It's just really gone haywire. And psychedelics can really, by taking you out of the equation, it can show you how your mind works. And once it's demystified in that way, um, it actually loses all its power. It becomes almost comical how easy it was to see mm-hmm. <affirmative> and the same's true. Once you go out in the world, when you encounter someone who's maybe not so pleasant or really like mean or someone who's having a really challenging experience, what you're able to note is how their narrative in their head is functioning in the equation.
Speaker 5 00:47:29 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you can really see that, oh, that's not, that's not an expression of that person's nature or an expression of how they feel about me or themselves or even the world necessarily. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, it's, they themselves are, are caught in this thinking that's gone bad. And when you're able to sort of confront that mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it makes a level of compassion that is quite easeful, readily available, you know, and anyone who's been around like kindergartners or kindergarten teachers, like they do this all the time, you know, they can see that the way a kid is experiencing something isn't really relevant to their, their nature. They're just having a weird moment. But as adults, we really lose sense of that mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and when, you know how the story of the, of oneself is so powerful, but also how it's actually not that important. It can allow for kind of kindness and patience in life. Um, yeah. That at least in my experience, has really been, um, a major change in what it means to, to be a person in the world
Speaker 1 00:48:30 That's so beautiful. When I, when I worked in a bookstore in my early twenties, people would always come in and be like, gimme a happy book. I'd love a happy book. And <laugh>, you know, we're all, we're all booksellers in our twenties. We're like, all the books we like are sad. But like, yeah. It was amazing to read a book where, um, the, the protagonist did ultimately make his way to a better place in a way that, um, doesn't feel artificial and meaningfully informs his other relationships and doesn't just, you know, make all of his previous problems go away. Or isn't just like the closing of a door that was opened by a trauma or a specific event, but is genuinely a transformation. And for that reason, I was really excited to talk about this book and I'm really grateful to have had you on this show.
Speaker 5 00:49:12 Thank you so much. I I am and these words mean the world to me. Um, and I, uh, I thank you for taking the time. It's been so great to talk.
Speaker 1 00:49:22 Yeah. It's, it's been absolutely refreshing. Um, are you, are you writing anything else at the moment or are you in a different phase right now?
Speaker 5 00:49:31 No, I've, I'm working on novel number two. Ooh. Um, and feel very kind of found, found a, found the groove maybe a month or two ago, uh, after a couple years of trying different things. And so I feel very excited about that. Uh, but that's all I can say about it at the moment. So wish me luck.
Speaker 1 00:49:50 Well great. Excited to see what comes of it. Thank you so much for being on
Speaker 5 00:49:53 Kpi. Thank
Speaker 1 00:49:54 You.
Speaker 5 00:49:55 Yeah, thank you so much. Thank
Speaker 1 00:49:56 You for those who joined us partway through this was William Brewer, author of The Red Arrow. Um, thank you so much. Have a great night.
Speaker 5 00:50:05 Yeah, you too.
