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- [00:00]
Host/Advertiser
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- [02:19]
Connor Boyle
hello and welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm Head of Programming Connor Boyle. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with the poet, musician, author and playwright K. Tempest. Tempest is widely regarded as one of Britain's greatest wordsmiths, and he joined us live on stage at St George's in Bristol to discuss the themes of his highly anticipated return to fiction. Having spent life seeking. It's his first novel in a decade and weaves together themes that have shaped Tempest's work to date. Family, unforgiveness, redemption and atonement, desire and abandon, selfhood and community. Tempest is joined on stage by writer and poet Danielle Wilde. Let's join the conversation now at St. George's Bristol.
- [03:02]
Danielle Wilde
Welcome to this Intelligence Squared event. My name is Danielle Wild. I'm absolutely delighted to be joined this evening by Care Tempest, who I will introduce now. Not that he needs an introduction. Kier Tempest is a poet, writer, lyricist, performer and recording artist. He has published plays, poetry collections, nonfiction, a Sunday Times best selling novel, and released six studio albums. In 2013, he won the Ted Hughes Award for poetry, making him the youngest poet ever to receive it. He was named a next generation poet in 2014, a once in a decade honor, and in that same year, he received the first of two Mercury Prize nominations. Is this making you feel uncomfortable? I've got to continue. I'm sorry. It's literally my job. In 2021, he was awarded the Silver lion in Venice for his work as a playwright. And in 2023, he won an Ivor novella for his songwriting. Just hold your horses. There's more. His books have been translated into multiple languages and published to critical acclaim around the world. Friends, join me in welcoming Kier Tempest.
- [04:57]
Kier Tempest
Thank you.
- [04:58]
Danielle Wilde
Oh, here
- [05:00]
Kier Tempest
all them awards are coming to America. State of it. Thank you. Daniel Wilde. This is somebody who inspires me deeply. This is one of the most fantastic poets I've ever encountered. The work of. I'm so honored that Daniel's here to talk to me tonight about the book and also want to just say thank you everyone, for coming out. It's quite a tall order to remember that you've bought tickets to something and made the fucking effort to get across town and all the plans you had to make and all the money you had to spend and everything. Thank you for putting a value on this experience and being here with us. Appreciate it.
- [05:44]
Danielle Wilde
Kier, when you were writing this novel, you had three quotes pinned to the wall of your studio. The first of those quotes was from Ted Hughes and it says, write what you can't bear to admit. Now, as everyone has heard in the biography, your bio is an Embarrassment of riches. And yet you have chosen a novel to contain this character, Rothko, this world, and this journey. My question to you is, what is it about fiction that has allowed you to tell this truth?
- [06:30]
Kier Tempest
That's such an interesting question. Thank you. There's something about the way you have to build a world when you're writing a novel. It's so complete. You have to know everything about everyone. And I was even remembering, like, two days ago, I remembered characters that have gone from this draft that I followed so far into their own lives. I actually wanted to tell you about it because Sean, one of the characters that you meet briefly 20 years ago, actually, when Rothko gets out, they. He went. They met up again in an old version in. Just. In something that I had to write. They went to a boxing. Sean was a boxer. He went to a boxing match, but it was in a community center. It was like a charity boxing match, and all the kids were there. So you have to understand, this didn't happen. But it happened. I did it. I went there. I've hung out with every single one of these characters. I've hung out with them in. In places throughout their lives that you will never know about. Like, I know what Angel's uncle, what motorbike he used to ride. And I've been with him while he was fixing it, when he was looking after angel and she was waiting for him. Like, I have. I've sat with them for all of them for 20, 40 years. I had big posters up. Sorry, don't mean to have my back to you. I had these big posters up on the studio wall of, like, the main family that we follow. Plotted out 30 years of all of their lives and, like, made notes of any years where big things happened to all of them in the same year. Not that any of them knew that the big things had happened for the other ones. Some of these family members were estranged. But I knew that, for example, in 2011, it was a big year for that family because something happened for all of them. What does that do to. Next time they see each other, actually? When are they meeting up? Well, it's been three years since that big year. So how does that affect all of this? Goes in to a scene that is brief and feels fleeting, but hopefully feels real and realized, because I've gone on this mad journey where you have. If you're inviting people into a fictional world, it has to have as many rules this world has in terms of how time passes and what we do to each other and how the presence of one life affects the journey of another. All of that needs to be consistent. And if there is inconsistencies, they need to be intentional. So all of that to say that the reason that this form was the right form for this story is because when I started to spend time with the characters, I realized how much there was to it. As soon as I met Rothko in my imagination or felt them coming close to me, the idea told me, this is going to be. This is what it is. And it's been a long time since my last one. And I know what it's like to have an idea and want it to be that. And actually it isn't that. And that's me forcing it into a place that isn't right. But I've learned that actually, if I spend enough time listening to the idea before I tell the idea what I want it to do, if I listen to what it wants from me, then there comes this moment where you. You're like, oh, okay. It's really clear from the first encounter that's what this is going to be. And, you know, you're years off, you're miles away, but you just. You're like, okay, that. The first encounter, the first little scene, you know, like 250 words of, like, trying to work out what kind of hair they've got or something, and you're like, oh, this is. I. I feel that this is a person who has, you know, like, if you see a reflection on the surface of the water and it goes down as far under as it does above, it's that vibe. It's like, ah, this person wants to be fully formed. So I've got a long way to go.
- [10:17]
Danielle Wilde
I feel that love of your characters, and I feel the intimacy when I read this that you know these people inside out, that these are your people and that you know everything about them. And it's beautiful to hear you talk about all the different multitudes you were unearthing in the studio. And part of me imagines you, you know, those conspiracy theorists with, like, the boards with all the red thread from one thing to another. But actually, I kind of see you as almost like a conductor. I feel like the way that you use time, for example, and the timelines of these people. You're a conductor. It's not just that you're writing. It makes me think of Cate Blanchett, which happens quite a lot,
- [11:04]
Kier Tempest
but it
- [11:05]
Danielle Wilde
makes me think of Lydia Tarr when she's interviewed and she talks about being a conductor, and she says, it's not about music. It's about time. Nothing can start until I start. And I kind of see you as a conductor in that sense because in this novel there's so much going on with time. There are. I mean this action takes place over 20 years. You've got three distinct sections. You've got day one, the old days, today. And in Rothko, who I think is a beautifully fully realized four dimensional character, you have someone who is done time, as in being in prison, had time robbed from them through addiction and whose identity overlaps three different timelines. They, she, he. So if this is an orchestra and you're a conductor, your aria, the place where all of these timelines coalesce is this gorgeous sequence in the middle, which I think is everything that you do. It's your music, it's your poetry, it's that prayer that comes out of you when you perform. And I wondered if you would talk to me and us about how time functions in your novel and how your experience of it has been shaped by a novelist, by a poet and by a musician.
- [12:43]
Kier Tempest
I knew it was going to be a good conversation with you. I knew it. The other night I went to watch it. My childhood friend, one of my oldest friend really. I went to watch him playing a gig. I went to pick him up and drive him to his gig. That's the only way we can hang out at the moment. He's got kids, I'm really busy. So I was like it, I'm at home, I'm going to come and get you, I'll drive you to your gig. And he's a drummer and he's the only. While I was watching him play, it dawned on me. Watching him playing his drums is the closest I've ever come to seeing what it feels like when I'm with my words. The way he plays his drums, constantly pushing time. He's quite a far out drummer. He's quite difficult drummer to stay in time with and sounds brilliant. No, he's fucking amazing. He's like. It's like going to space watching him play. He's really special. He's a special musician and we were children together. We learned together how to be artists. And it was his influence on me really that allowed me to see that maybe I had something worth saying. He used to be the one that would go and get the mic and pass it to me in parties because no one would give it to me without him there. But so he's. We're part of each other's soul. The only reason I bring him up is because I had this Thing of watching him pushing, constantly pushing and pulling time. It was an improvised set. He was playing with these other musicians, and I was thinking, oh, bless them, they hadn't met him before. They didn't know what they're in for. And it was incredible. Like, it was so beautiful to watch. I don't know. I just had this, like, physical body memory of how often I've either stood in front of his drums or had him play in the. Like, the chair, the bus window, just his legs, like. And it just made me really understand, like, the training that I had as a teenager. Like, the training and the foundation of all of this. Everything I've gone on to do since has been musical. I learned all this stuff about words through music. So it's like an instrument, really. I think about myself as somebody that plays words in the way that I relate to other musician friends of mine. I feel so much kinship with the way they play because of what they're thinking about. Phrasing, time, momentum, how to begin, where you go. The fact that on stage, when you play music, you create a time signature. You create time altogether. And then the audience are invited to come into that time, and then the time takes over and suddenly you come out, the end of it, and you don't know where you've been. Like, that stuff happening to me all the time, I think, was a good training for what I then went on to discover about meter, form, poetic time. What happens on the page when you write a poem is that each page is its own time. You're asking that page to be forever and also, like a kind of doorway into a memory or something. You're asking. It's so interesting to me. It was so new when I had to learn what a page did that the stage couldn't, or what the stage did that the page couldn't. I was learning all this stuff all the time. And then in terms of the novel and how you have to hold in your head, like I was saying, these timelines. And you've got to really try and understand how time moves for each of the characters. I kind of understood them all as being like four parts of the same musical piece, this family. So if you. The way that I think about their interaction is that at some moments, it's more dissonant, at some moments, it's more sonorous. At some moments, they lock in and they find their groove. And at some moments, they're all playing completely the wrong notes for each other. But that, like, that visual idea of how music plays and what it sounds like to be part of a dynamic of any sort of. That was all in my mind. And then the thing about the section that you mentioned. So we start in the present day. We meet our character, our main character, and we are situated with them in their reality. Then we go back 20 years, and we meet them 20 years ago, and we get to live with them in this quite crucial time in their becoming, in their life. And then we reach this point where suddenly the time signature changes their life. And so, from within the content of the character and the story, the form changes. We kind of fall into this verse section where suddenly the prose changes, time changes. You kind of fall down this well, and 20 years elapses in what hopefully feels like one breath. And that came out of a conversation I had with my editor, who, in one version of this story, we didn't know what happened in the 20 years between. And I didn't want to dwell on what happens to a person on their worst days. I didn't want the worst things that happen in a person's life to be the thing that we need to see in order to think we understand them. I kind of wanted to just situate the person in the present and just leave the worst days of their life out of it. But then, actually, what happened was that my editor was telling me there was this. This kind of feeling in the reader that you've been cheated out of information or you've missed something, or you don't want to create confusion. And so in the end, I'm like, okay, well, I don't want to linger on all this heavy stuff. I don't think people should be defined by what happens to them in their heaviest moments. I wanted to set Rothko free, actually, from all that. But then I realized that what I've got at my disposal is this way of entering that. Entering that moment. But more as an impressionist, like, we were talking about, like, less. Less like the gritty realism section and more just actually the symphonic, like the musical, like the fully charged, like the terrifying. The way that everything changes. We're dealing with violence and addiction and heavy stuff and despair. But if. If I. If I dealt with it in this musical way, if I pushed myself through rhythm and flow somehow, there was so much beauty in it. And that's the thing that I wanted. That's the thing I wouldn't have been able to handle, because life is beautiful, even when it's really hard. And I think so often when we're talking about hard stuff without the beauty, it. It's not satisfying. And Also, I don't think it's real. I don't think it's true. You asked me about how, why did you use this novel to get to this truth and actually the experience of one day into the next, that's what's so beautiful about life, even when you're having an awful fucking day. And I don't know what any of you have been through today. I don't know. I don't know. I will never know. None of us know what someone else in this room has had to deal with today. Fuck, I wouldn't even try and pretend that I could even imagine. But somehow what is amazing is that sometimes, even after everything that might happen in a day, we still get to notice the light moving over the fucking city when we're walking towards whatever. And something about that is that can only be expressed, I find in musical language, in a poetic register. Because that feeling of heightened gratitude, or at least for myself, I haven't found a way of saying that in prose that doesn't just sound. It doesn't sound real, it doesn't resonate with the work kind of frequency, because the feeling that it gives me is a musical feeling.
- [20:51]
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Kier Tempest
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Kier Tempest
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Kier Tempest
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- [21:17]
Danielle Wilde
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- [22:22]
Danielle Wilde
You are amazing. And that was beautiful. And what really comes across in the way that you always talk about your work is your compassion for the material. And I think this actually really leads into the next thing I wanted to talk to you about. But it made me think that as working class artists, having come from where we've come from and gone through what we've gone through, it's so easy to define people by the most miserable Coronation street aspect. Maybe for you, EastEnders, but for the most, you know, so aspect of a person's life. And that isn't what people are. People aren't their worst mistakes, they're not their hardest circumstances. And it brings us into the second quote that you had pinned to the studio wall, which is your Aristotle quote, which is people. Hang on, where is it you are what you do repeatedly? And I think there's so much dignity in that and so much freedom in that, that no matter where you're from, you get to make a choice, actually through your behavior. And I just wanted to share with everyone this sequence about Rothko at a really pivotal moment. And there are no spoilers in this. Listen to this. He just wanted to be who he hoped he was. But how he had spent a lifetime doing without thinking found out too late. It was what he did that made him who he was. So how could he become a different person? Maybe he just had to try doing different things. And I've read some of the stuff about this novel, and I've heard it described as a novel about forgiveness. And I wonder what you think about that, because my impression is that it's not about forgiveness, it's about atonement, and I think that's different. And I just wanted to highlight how you close this novel. Again, don't get cross with me. It's not a spoiler, but it's a prayer from Yom Kippur that closes the novel and also gives the novel its title. It says, truly, you are their creator and know the nature of your creatures, that they are only flesh and blood. Each person's origin is dust, and each person will return to the earth having spent life seeking sustenance. So if you are what you do repeatedly, what did that mean for Ravka, for his journey, for his seeking and for his peace?
- [25:09]
Kier Tempest
Oh, my God. That was an amazing question. Oh, there's so much I want to say. The difference between forgiveness and atonement is really interesting because forgiveness is something that we get from other people, and atonement is something that we do internally. Is that right?
- [25:35]
Danielle Wilde
Or forgiveness is a release and atonement is a reparation.
- [25:39]
Kier Tempest
Wow. Yeah, I. How beautiful.
- [25:47]
Danielle Wilde
You wrote it.
- [25:48]
Kier Tempest
No, I know, but. I just. Because it just dawned on me as you kind of put the question. I just. I was thinking about, wow, what is the difference between the. But the thing about where it ends and you are what you do repeatedly. I mean, so many people in the novel are struggling with how. How to make their lives feel like they want their lives to feel, or how to make themselves behave like they want themselves to behave. So many of them in different ways. And there's people going through all kinds of different things and from all kinds of different places, and even within the same family, people have chosen very different paths to find a way of coping and bearing life and themselves and their point within it. So this thing about redemption and atonement and behavior being the key to selfhood, this. It's like I was chewing my own brain to pieces, going through whatever I was going through, thinking, how the do I? How the do I? But how the do I? And then I came across Aristotle, you know, two and a half thousand years ago, said, well, you are what you do repeatedly. And I was like, thank you. I've just been like, I wish I'd known that. Because I was like, well. And I just think that hopefully, within the world of the novel, everybody is given enough space to deal with their will to function and their will to dysfunction, and somewhere in all of that is what they received as children, what they received from the world. That also makes me think about what you were saying about these kind of traps we fall into, of defining people by their worst days. These are also narrative traps that. That we receive from culture. It happens to me all the time that my first ideas. And maybe this is useful to say, I'm sure there's loads of people here that are working on writing of some sort. I'm sure of it. The first ideas that I have are always just full of cliche and what I would call unoriginal, received information. So the first time I think of a character, what I'm really seeing in my mind's eye is all the things I've learned about what characters are, are, and do from absorbing everything that I absorb all the time. And so often I just have to let myself, like, almost kind of, like, get it out of my system. Like, just write it that way so that then you can think, well, how interesting. I hadn't even spotted that narrative trap in myself. But that's something that's at play when I think about person A or situation B or whatever it is, you have to just allow yourself to just write it out. And then at some point, as you keep going and keep chipping away at stops being the case that you're telling them what to do and you start to observe them talking to each other. And it's like the most incredible moment when you've spent enough time just basically allowing yourself to make mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake. And suddenly out of all of that effort, they start to live. They start to really live. And usually it will be some accident. It will be like, for example, I didn't want any unintentional repetition. And I realized I had these two sets of characters kind of doing the same thing. So I thought, well, it had been a problem in draft after draft. Why are the audience meant to stick with this complete perspective change and follow this whole other person that they've never met? And I just thought, well, why not? But actually, well, that's not really what. It's quite a tall order. But I thought like, well, you know, James Joyce wrote Ulysses and I love it. So, like, well, why. Why don't I just stay with somebody and then suddenly just bring in a completely different character Anyway, all this to say, when that person finally was on the cutting room floor, there was something in their characteristic that I would never have written in the perspective of the person who then subsumed them. Because this person was of a different generation. She was much older, she'd had lived a different life. But when I put her response to a situation into the character of another character in this novel, suddenly I got a real character. Because people are not what you think of them. Actually. Nobody behaves like you think a person behaves. And actually it was the best thing that happened. 40,000 words lighter. And suddenly this person starts to live. Because rather than me telling that person how to behave because of everything, all my prejudices and preconceptions about a person of this age, of this type, of this journey, then actually when this kind of collision of selfs happened, then you actually got. You got what felt more like a realistic response to a situation. Because that's actually what we are. We're many people. People are many, many people. And we're made of every day of all of our lives and the lives of all of the people that have influenced. You know, and that's an impossible thing, I think, personally, just to put my hands up and say, I couldn't have made that happen intentionally. I had to go all the wrong way for ages and ages and ages. And then suddenly it clicks into place and you think, oh, it was always going to go there, but if I'd intended in getting there, I wouldn't have been able to. So keep going.
- [31:25]
Danielle Wilde
Beautiful. I think you've rendered the complexity of these characters really well. And I just want to say that I really, really love this. I love everything you do. You're so authentic and real and a real polymath and just a wonderful person. Don't start crying. I mean, you can cry, actually. But I just wanted to say about the other note that you've got on your studio. Nobody should be condemned. And that was you who said that. That was you who wrote that. And this is not a novel that offers up easy answers or simple conclusions or, you know, all tied up endings. Just like life doesn't do that. And I wanted to pick out. I mean, there's so many characters in this book that I want to talk about. I love some of them. I would cross the street to avoid others. And I wanted to talk to you about Angel. I feel like angel is a wound that you lick on these pages. And I just wanted to ask you what. Why have you put her in there? Why have you called her Angel? What is she showing us? And what does she mean to you?
- [32:55]
Kier Tempest
That's such a good question. Angel is the wound you lick on these pages. Angel is an interesting character. She's been. This is somebody that I've been on a big journey with. So, for example, she. I know everything about this character. I wrote in a very early draft. She was too brief. And my editor was like, I need to know a bit more. I can't really see her. I can't really feel her. So then I wrote about 100 billion words about angel and delivered the next draft of the novel. My editor was like, she doesn't realize, but I take notes really seriously. I really give it. I really give it my all. And then it was too much. So then I had to start again. I've started again with Angel a lot of times, but the function that she serves is important because she is this. She offers Rothko a possibility of activating a different kind of behavior in a moment that proves to themselves in some way that they're actually worth the air that they breathe. Like, they've got a lot of stuff going on. Rough go. They've been through a lot, and actually they're trying to, as we meet them, take themselves as a human being in the same kind of regard that they would take any other human being. But it's really hard for them to do it. And they've got this second chance at life. They've been inside for ages. They've done this really. It's awful stuff happened. And they've been inside for ages. They've come out and they just really want. They really want to live in the day. They really, really. They just want to be grateful for every second because they've spent so much of their life watching it pass them by. And then suddenly, here they are out in the world and the world's changed. And angel gives them this possibility. I would say, without wanting to say too much, she's like the counterbalance to where they're getting to or where they'd like to get to. She does not want to. She's taken the opposite path, we could say. In fact, that's probably the best way of putting it. Very similar internal mechanisms selecting different options. Do you know what I mean?
- [35:33]
Danielle Wilde
I do know what you mean. And that's what an angel is, isn't. It's a messenger. It's not necessarily a harpist or a naked toddler with wings. I mean, that's a cherub. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot more sense now because I was definitely Team Dion on that one, I have to say. Yeah.
- [35:53]
Kier Tempest
Oh, I love it.
- [35:54]
Danielle Wilde
See, what you think about angel when you read the book, it's so cool.
- [35:58]
Kier Tempest
It's still so new to me to know that anyone's read it. I still can't believe it. These people are so. They're so alive to me. But it's like. It's like all. It's like talking to somebody, but they don't know who. Like, nobody has met these people. And then suddenly, actually. Actually, you've met them. It's like, I've met them. Oh, I love such a good feeling.
- [36:22]
Danielle Wilde
And I. And I love talking to you, but I have to share you now.
- [36:26]
Kier Tempest
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:27]
Danielle Wilde
Because it's time for audience questions. So hopefully everyone feels figured out the QR situation. I've got an iPad here. I don't know if it's going to move automatically or I'm going to have to. Anyway, I'll figure that out. That's my problem, not yours. Okay, first question.
- [36:44]
Kier Tempest
Yeah.
- [36:44]
Danielle Wilde
This is from Tay. Which medium for artistic expression have you found the most creatively satisfying?
- [36:56]
Kier Tempest
It. The thing is, the process is generated by the idea. So it's not like I sit down and think, oh, which medium am I gonna work in? I don't think I've ever had a thought like that. And people often ask me about the different forms. And I think. And people say often, what's left? What are you going to try next? And I think, well, that's not how it. It's not like that. It's not how it feels. It's. It comes from an idea or. Or to be totally honest, it comes from a deadline and. And like a commission. So you've got to. You've got to write a play because there's an opportunity to write a play. So you better learn how to write a play or that's. That's how it. That's literally what happened. And then suddenly I was working in this new form and my brain was electrocuted into the. This new. Like, I could feel new pathways forming. Because this was a long time ago, I got offered the opportunity to write my first play. Wasted. And because the new writing theatre director had seen me doing my poems. I was only doing my poems because I couldn't make any money through my music. And somebody had told me about a thing called a poetry slam where if you go and you win it, you could get £100. And then I. So it's all been an accident of just trying. I just kept on trying and then suddenly I found this thing, playwriting, where I had to learn about dialogue. I had to learn about not telling, but showing. Like all this stuff just totally wrecked my head. I couldn't believe it. It was so fascinating and exciting. I had to learn about how acting, even if they've trained for years and years as actors, don't actually know about rhythm, like lyrical rhythm. This was very interesting to me. So many things that I've learned by just plunging into a new form have then started me thinking and things will be ticking over and I'm trying to understand it. And then by the time I get to the end of that thing that I'm working on, there'll be another idea that is basically where I resolve the issues that have come up for me through one thing. I then turn my focus into somewhere I feel more comfortable or more challenged. And then within all of it, there is something unbelievably satisfying about working beyond your comfort zone. For me, anyway, I've never, not ever, ever, ever, ever felt like I know what I'm doing. Never. And with the novel, I started to think, this is going well. I started to film the years that I've spent working paying off in terms of I could understand a bit more about just myself, my process, how to stay with an idea, how to follow it, how to be less baggy with My. All this stuff, it's like any craft you learn, you get better, but as you learn and develop in the craft, the main thing you learn is how far you've got to go and how little you actually know in the scheme of things. So all that to say every single thing is creatively satisfying and creatively exhausting and creatively, like, completely appalling and a complete failure and hideous to me that I even dare to imagine that I could possibly partake. And all these things. And at the same time, can't stop thinking about it. Like, waking up at night hearing the voices of characters in my head. Can't keep a conversation going with any human being in the real world because all I want to do is write lyrics like, all of this at the same time. And then somehow you hit on these ideas and they're just. It's like. It was like they're all along, and it's just glowing and you just want to. You just want to know more and more and more about it. I feel probably the place where I feel most comfortable or the place where I get lost most easily is in the recording studio making music. Because that's something to me that takes me away from everything. Like when I make music. Oh, how it feels. But it's the thing. The things aren't related. It's like different languages or something. I can't really explain it, as you can tell. You have to. It starts with the idea, which is the first four words that I said in response to that question, and then went off for about fucking 15 minutes. And that's the end of questions, everyone. Not really. I hope that answers your question. I'm sorry I didn't do a better job of it.
- [41:39]
Danielle Wilde
We've got a question from Lisa next. This is a good question. Kind of makes me feel like I should maybe have asked this. Thanks, Lisa. You've talked about time and the influence of that on the book. How about place? To what extent is place important to the world you are building?
- [41:58]
Kier Tempest
Yeah, it's so important. This novel is set in a fictional town. I did one of these events in London recently, and the interviewer, Shon Fay, she said she described Edgecliffe, the town, as being small enough that you bump into the person who bullied you at school, but big enough that you can get lost. And I was like. I was actually so overwhelmed, I didn't even really notice that she said it. But my girlfriend later was like, did you hear what Sean said about Escliffe? And she was right. It was really amazing. This town is. It's an amalgamation of many places that I've known. And it came out of. Well, to be totally honest, I don't know where the idea started. I don't know why this place appeared in my internal landscape the way it did, but it just appeared to me that this is where the characters lived. And it's a combination of many places I've known. Coastal towns, British coastal towns, and a little bit like South London when I was growing up. There's always a little bit of new cross in every. Like, every time I close my eyes and think of place, I kind of do think of that place. But also, we lost a friend recently. She died and I went back to where she was from, which was a coastal town, for the wake. And I remembered something about how those towns feel in that moment. And that was quite present, I think, in the mix. When I was writing also, I went to stay at a friend's house down on the coast. And it was that it was, it was real to me. I've. I've often run away down to the sea. I go, I go there, you know, for joy and for misery, as a lot of us do. And there's something amazing about a British coastal town, which is like the most hardcore stuff can be going on. And at the same time, there is always someone having the time of their life. And it's so beautiful. It is so beautiful. You're watching people have the time of their life. It's the seaside. It's the fucking seaside. It's fish and chips. It's the best. It's so beautiful. It's this endless horizon. It's the movement of the ocean and the stuckness of the place. It's how unbearable life can be in the same place as how beautiful life can be. And for me, like, something about that is, it's an accelerator for my creativity. It's like as soon as I knew that's where we were, then it really came to life, I think.
- [44:38]
Danielle Wilde
Brilliant.
- [44:45]
Connor Boyle
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Mia Sorrenti and edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership and to join us at future events. Head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.