Episode 48: High-Fashion Hijabs, Jill Soloway, and Bluesman Blind Joe Death

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour – Episode 48 (September 16, 2016)

High-Fashion Hijabs, Jill Soloway, and Bluesman Blind Joe Death

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Overview of the Episode

This eclectic episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, hosted by David Remnick, weaves together three rich narratives: a candid conversation with TV creator and feminist Jill Soloway; a vibrant exploration of high-fashion hijabs and the world of modest modeling with designer Nyla Limas; and an in-depth musical journey into the life and legacy of bluesman John Fahey ("Blind Joe Death"), guided by journalist Nick Thompson and Fahey biographer Steve Lowenthal. The episode unpacks themes of gender and representation, cultural boundaries and expression, and the pursuit of authenticity in art.

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1. Jill Soloway: Comedy, Family, and the Politics of Gender

Timestamps: 00:30–17:18

Main Discussion Points

• Personal roots of 'Transparent':
  Inspired by Soloway's own parent coming out as trans in their 70s, leading to self-exploration and the birth of the Amazon series Transparent.
• Media representation of trans people:
  Critical view of pre-existing portrayals: victims, villains, or circus-like talk shows.
• The "male gaze" in feminist thought:
  Soloway reflects on wrestling with expectations of femininity, the desire for power vs. the pressure to appeal for male approval.
• Influences and representation:
  The impact of Laverne Cox in Orange Is the New Black and the importance of Julia Serano’s Whipping Girl (trans misogyny).
• Casting criticism:
  Soloway addresses the controversy of casting Jeffrey Tambor (a cis man) as Maura:

  "I take that criticism full force and absolutely, positively agree with all trans people who say that cis people should not be playing trans people." (06:50)

• Discussing new show I Love Dick:
  Exploring desire, marriage, and heteronormative taboos; the idea of bringing a "new Dick" (Kevin Bacon as a hypermasculine object) into a marriage.
• Storytelling as activism:
  Conversation with Jeff Bezos about narrative’s power to create social change.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On personal discovery:

  "I think of the phone call as a huge turning point in my life, as a light going on..." (03:03, Jill Soloway)

• On gender confusion:

  "I was always...a feminist warrior and worrier..." (04:18, Jill Soloway)

• On representation:

  "There weren't a lot of other sort of regular positive experiences of just trans people living their lives." (05:43, Jill Soloway)

• On the 'female gaze' in leadership:

  "Whether or not it’s the female gaze or feminine style of leadership, meaning that you stand in the back of your troop and you push them forward." (14:04, Jill Soloway)

• On "boxing" on set:

  "We waste like a half an hour every day... standing in a circle talking about how we’re doing." (15:01, Jill Soloway)

• On progress and backlash:

  "When you say, is it getting better or getting worse? It’s both." (13:04, Jill Soloway)

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2. High-Fashion Hijabs: Nyla Limas and Modest Modeling

Timestamps: 17:41–31:17

Main Discussion Points

• Profile of Nyla Limas:
  Designer, model, and founder of Under Wraps—an agency for modest and Muslim models.
• Redefining hijab style:
  Limas’s hijabs feature bright colors, African prints, and unique shapes, challenging "black scarf" stereotypes.
• Intersection of faith, fashion, and modesty:
  Her agency’s requirements for clients — same-sex dressing, privacy, and modesty for models of various faith backgrounds.
• Modeling as empowerment & education:
  Under Wraps brings together Muslim and non-Muslim women, fostering dialogue and breaking down religious barriers.
• Cultural context and controversies:
  Discussion on France’s burkini ban and Western perceptions of "oppression" vs. individual choice.
• Consent and visibility:
  Thurman explores the idea of the hijab as a feminist boundary—self-consent to visibility in public.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On mixing cultures:

  “It becomes like a learning of religions and faith and like a melting pot...” (22:34, Nyla Limas)

• On modest fashion:

  “What’s unique...is how we all interact with each other… we can easily have these dialogues.” (22:34, Nyla Limas)

• On boundaries and empowerment:

  “A hijab is a refusal in some ways to objectify yourself sexually. A refusal to court desire from strange eyes... It’s a boundary between you and the public.” (30:05, Judith Thurman)

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3. Good Meeting – Satirical Office Skit

Timestamps: 31:45–36:37

Main Discussion Points

• A recurring satirical audio sketch depicting modern office absurdity and suppressed anxieties.
• Colleagues in a conference room exchange veiled confessions, neuroses, and absurd non-sequiturs amid mundane business chatter.

Notable Moments

• The sketch explodes into surreal office confessions and fantasy, lampooning corporate rituals and mental health struggles.
• Culminates in a fantastical, chaotic quest — “Quickly, everyone on my horse. There isn’t much time.”

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4. John Fahey / Blind Joe Death: Guitar’s Outsider Legend

Timestamps: 37:21–54:47

Main Discussion Points

• Origins and early influences:
  Fahey’s obsession as a teen with old blues records, road trips to the deep South, and discovering lost musicians.
• Creating "Blind Joe Death":
  Fahey invents a mythical blues persona as a critique of blues mythology.
• Musical innovation:
  Signature fingerstyle, open tunings, blending blues and avant-garde/classical.
• Struggles and eccentricities:
  Stage fright, alcoholism, friction with 1960s folk movement, abrasive authenticity.
• Rediscovery and late cult status:
  Living in squalor, rediscovered in the ‘90s as outsider music becomes fashionable.
• Lasting influence:
  Producer of Leo Kotke’s influential 6 & 12 String Guitar; continued legacy through biography and rare recordings.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On obsession with blues:

  “There wasn’t any music that spoke to him in the way that this old blues music did...The blues... offered him, really, a window into his own dysfunction.” (41:07, Steve Lowenthal)

• On 'Blind Joe Death':

  “He creates this fictional alias…his goof on sort of the legends and the myths that all these writers make of these old blues guys.” (42:08, Steve Lowenthal)

• On rediscovery and outsider culture:

  “All of a sudden, being a mentally unstable, you know, underground icon…was a viable commercial commodity. So John Fahey all of a sudden is the right guy at the right time. And of course he rejects it…” (51:42, Steve Lowenthal)

• On Fahey’s legacy:

  “This last song is called Dry Bones in the Valley. …the level of feeling and ennui and sadness and darkness I feel is unparalleled in American music.” (53:35, Steve Lowenthal)

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5. Memorable and Striking Quotes With Timestamps

• Jill Soloway on the impact of feminist cultural expectations:

  “There are so many things I want. I want power. I want to be brilliant. And then you’re being told constantly, you know, be cute and engage the male gaze.” (04:07)

• Nyla Limas on modesty in fashion:

  “As long as your parts of your body are covered and your clothing is not skin tight...There’s no guidelines on that.” (26:09)

• Steve Lowenthal on John Fahey’s blues passion:

  “The further he moved away from the blues and the more sort of, you know, avant garde and classical elements he would bring into the picture. The music sort of got a little stranger, got elongated.” (43:00)

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Summary Table of Major Segments

| Segment | Start | End | Main Themes | |-----------------------------------------------|---------|---------|-----------------------------------------------| | Jill Soloway Interview | 00:30 | 17:18 | Gender, trans representation, feminism | | High-Fashion Hijabs & Nyla Limas | 17:41 | 31:17 | Modesty, Muslim fashion, cultural boundaries | | Satirical Office Skit ("Good Meeting") | 31:45 | 36:37 | Corporate rituals, workplace anxieties | | John Fahey Profile | 37:21 | 54:47 | Innovation in music, outsider artists, blues |

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Takeaways

• The power of authentic storytelling — whether through TV, fashion, or music — to remake public understanding and break down stereotypes.
• Gender, modesty, and public space — examined through personal, cultural, and artistic lenses.
• Myth, mental health, and artistic legacy — the story of John Fahey subverts ideas of musical genius and celebrates outsiders and misfits.

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For additional detail, anecdotes, and striking visuals, visit newyorker.com for the full-page photo spread on Nyla Limas' hijabs and further commentary on the episode’s music selections.

Transcript

[Jill Soloway]

Floor38. So excited to be having a conversation.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

With someone when they have that revelation.

[Colin Nissen]

I mean, it'd be good if you have a source for it. Yeah.

[Jill Soloway]

The telegraph from One World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Generations of guitarists have been obsessed with the work of the late John Fahey. And later this hour, we'll learn why. And we're going to learn a thing or two about what feminists call the male gaze, too. My colleague Judith Thurman visits the Muslim designer of some beautiful high fashion hijabs to talk about what it means to dress modestly in our culture. And I'm going to talk with Jill Soloway, one of the most influential directors and most committed feminists working in TV right now. Soloway's show Transparent debuted in 2014 starring Jeffrey Tambor as a person transitioning rather late in life to a new identity as a woman. I think it's already joined the small list of TV shows like all in the Family that capture an issue everybody's talking about and make it more real through fiction. Soloway's just released a pilot for a new show on Amazon that debuted last month, and if anything, it's even more provocative. And we'll get to that in a minute. Jill. Transparent is a phenomenon and it's brought something new into our lives, but through an old means, using comedy, family comedy, and poking at the narcissism of families.

[Colin Nissen]

But.

[David Remnick]

But politically, it's bringing something completely new, which is the life of a trans person who's making a transition from male to female. I wish I could start, I wish we could start by talking about the environment into which this show came, the media representation of trans people, how you saw it and what you set out to do.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I didn't really have major political aspirations when I was writing. They were very personal. My parent had come out. I was very nervous. I didn't really quite get it. I was, you know, I knew younger trans people, but I didn't know people my parents age early 70s. And I think I was writing myself into being okay with it.

[David Remnick]

Now, your father, you're calling your parent, but you, you grew up with a dad who you did not get along with particularly well, as I understand it from Mario Levy's profile of you that was in the New Yorker some time back.

[Jill Soloway]

Ye.

[David Remnick]

It was a complicated relationship.

[Jill Soloway]

We had a complicated relationship.

[David Remnick]

Okay. Complicated always covers a huge geography and Then you encounter a phone call that you get.

[Jill Soloway]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

And describe that and then what happened to you internally in the months to come.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah. I think of the phone call as a huge turning point in my life, as a light going on, because I think I had really, really struggled to understand what this missing piece, not only in my family, in your memories of your childhood. And you go, I had a sense there was something else going on, and I didn't really know what it was. I think a lot of people have that. And so as you become an adult, you start to realize, oh, this was the way my mom struggled. This is the way my dad struggled. I had sort of on top of that, this, like, unavoidable, you know, constant obsession with gender my whole life, probably, you know, from the age of 15 up until, you know, when I got this phone call.

[David Remnick]

Beginning with when. What set it off?

[Jill Soloway]

I just hated, you know, a lot of. It's just feminism. Growing up in, you know, patriarchy, you have this real sense as a young woman growing up or a girl. Like, I have so many. There are so many things I want. I want power. I want to be brilliant. And then you're being told constantly, you know, be cute and engage the male gaze. G, a, Z, E, not G, A, Y.

[David Remnick]

Not gazing.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I know, you know, you're nodding, but I just want to make sure the listeners aren't wondering why I'm trying to engage male gays. If I was.

[David Remnick]

We'll get to that.

[Jill Soloway]

So I. As I tried to really kind of become myself, I was always, you know, anything that involved being female or feminine, I did, because I was identified. Identified as straight. But I always felt a lot of confusion, you know, about dressing up or makeup or high heels or sororities or things that tons of women actually feel confusion about. So I just thought, I'm a feminist warrior and worrier. And, yeah, I think when my parent came out, I went, oh, I come from a queer family. I come from a genderqueer family.

[David Remnick]

And you're. And you're how old when you get the phone call from your parent?

[Jill Soloway]

I don't know. It was four years ago. 47, 46.

[David Remnick]

It's got a complete. Your head must have almost come off.

[Jill Soloway]

Yes.

[David Remnick]

Just as it does in the show. Just as it tells me. Just in the show.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, no, it was illuminating. And also, I was obviously emotionally.

[David Remnick]

And it's not as simple as. Aha. Now I know everything. It's gotta be much more complicated.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I think it's. Now I know why I never understood anything And I think I'm still in the process of understanding all of the versions of having a trans parent.

[David Remnick]

Were there writers? Were there presentations of either feminism or trans people in the arts, in film, in books that helped you get to the point where you were able to write Transparent?

[Jill Soloway]

Well, there was Liver and Cox on Orange Is the New Black. And there weren't a lot of other sort of regular positive experiences of just trans people living their lives.

[David Remnick]

It's usually as victims on crime shows.

[Jill Soloway]

Victims or villains and then talk shows and this kind of very sensational kind of circus feeling around transness. There's a book called Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano, which totally changed my life. And my thinking really just kind of zeroing in on trans misogyny. And that really kind of helped me to understand something I knew a lot about, which was misogyny and being able to connect trans women. And in particular, people from my parents generation who might be a little bit older, who might not, quote, unquote, be passing as easily, who might be the brunt of a lot of anger in society or people yelling things on the street. And it just kind of really helped me to understand how everything fit together.

[David Remnick]

You got a little bit of criticism that you have Jeffrey Tambor playing this role instead of a trans actor. How do you react to that criticism?

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I mean, sort of my headline is I take that criticism full force and absolutely, positively agree with all trans people who say that cis people should not be playing trans people. I 100% agree with that statement.

[David Remnick]

Is it understood as a kind of the equivalent of blackface or.

[Jill Soloway]

Yes, it's considered trans face. So there's some controversy going on right now with a movie where Matt Bomer has been cast as a trans woman and all of my trans friends rightfully, really angry. And I do kind of agree that four years after Transparent, or three years after Transparent, in many ways, we as a culture should know better. There have been some amazing defenses of Transparent out there that I really appreciate. One is that Maura was transitioning at a late age. And this is really the best way to show somebody who went all the way up to the age of 70. Presenting male.

[David Remnick]

Jill, I also want to talk to you about your new show, also on Amazon, called I Love Dick, based on a book of the same wonderful title. This is a story about a couple married for what seems like a very long time, maybe erotically bored with each other, and they go from their house in New York City on a creative adventure to Marfa, Texas, which I think may be the second Great stronghold of hipsterism in America today. What drew you to that story?

[Jill Soloway]

Well, I loved the book. I couldn't believe that Kris Krause existed and somehow she had been kept from us. In particular, though, I think this triangle where here's a couple, Chris and Silvere, who haven't had sex in a while and who, you know, have a real intellectual connection, but the physical is no longer really working. And they meet a guy, they're writing instructor. Yes. Aptly named Dick. And suddenly they have a new Dick in their marriage. Love that.

[Colin Nissen]

You just go by Dick because usually someone would, you know, if one is born a richer, they would. Rich, Rick, Richie, Ricky. There's so many. Just Dick. Yes. Is it possible that I saw you on a horse yesterday?

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah, I have a ranch just outside of town.

[Colin Nissen]

Oh, how big? Curious. You want to know how big my ranch is?

[David Remnick]

Dick is played, I should say by Kevin Bacon with the steeliest of blue eyes and even. And every wrinkle exquisite in his neck and face. It's just. It's like Richard Ford come to life on the screen.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah. I mean, he's the sort of ultimate man object. And Dick is performing masculinity hard. And he's doing it to. Yeah, he's doing it because he's worshipped for that masculinity. And I just love watching this marriage attempt to. First they see him and then they try to use him, and then they, you know, they have him in their minds. And to me, I feel like I've never seen this story before. I've never. I've never seen, you know, the story you think is that the woman's gonna have the affair. But in this story, Sylvia goes, let's keep talking about this. I'm in. Let's keep talking about Dick. And that is so transgressive to me. And so un heterosexual American male, but yet so incredibly common. There are so many ways in which heterosexual men allow other men's masculinity into their relationship as a way to keep it up.

[David Remnick]

Yeah.

[Jill Soloway]

Maybe porn, maybe patriarchy. There are ways in which men depend on other men to be a man. And I love the way that this story takes that and makes it really personal.

[David Remnick]

And do you feel that you've said what you're gonna say about. I don't think. I can't imagine it is about feminism with these shows, or is this gonna remain your theme or generalized theme for years to come? And what plans do you have?

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I think the shows are a document of my becoming as cheesy as that sounds. I sound like Tammy. She had like a. I am becoming so cool. Yeah. And it's a document of all of our becoming. You know, everybody in my family and the people in the writer's room and the people on the set. And I was having a conversation with Jeff Bezos at the Golden Globes. He was sitting next to me at the table.

[David Remnick]

Because Transparent is produced by Amazon.

[Jill Soloway]

Yes. And I said, I gotta use this time wisely. I'm gonna ask him some important questions. And I said, you know, he wanted.

[David Remnick]

A discount on books.

[Jill Soloway]

Exactly. I said, sometimes I get really distracted from TV making because I really get excited about the idea of movements and changing the world and feminism. And he said, you know, storytelling is probably one of the most effective levers I could think of that changes the world even more so than politics. And, yeah, that kind of calmed me down and said, okay, I am doing it. I think as a kid I was so like, okay, I have to. My mom was involved in the women's movement, civil rights movement was going on. You know, I was growing up in the 70s in Chicago in an integrated neighborhood in the middle of the city, and it was all about ERA and the Black Panthers. And I really wanted to be part of a movement. And he made me realize that I am part of it and I'm doing so through storytelling.

[David Remnick]

But right now we don't have to pat ourselves in the back and be so self congratulatory. But you have gay marriage going through the Supreme Court, you have a president celebrating Stonewall, you have awareness of gay and lesbian issues that is far greater than it's ever been before, even to some extent, trans issues. Discussion of gender is not only a matter for the academy, but it' swere we are. And at the same time. At the same time, and by the way, a woman most likely to be first president of the United States.

[Jill Soloway]

God willing. God willing.

[David Remnick]

And then on the other hand, you have a reaction to it. When you look at the American scene, when it comes to the issues that you are most passionate about, when it comes to gender issues, where are we and where do you expect to see us in a short period of time down the road? Does it seem like forward progress or is it that dark?

[Jill Soloway]

Well, we're absolutely moving forward. And this feeling of possibility, plus this incredible, fearful, violent fascism are both marks of the end of something. When you say, is it getting better or getting worse? It's both.

[David Remnick]

And the end of time. It's the end of a patriarchal construction is what you're thinking.

[Jill Soloway]

That's the plan. Can you help me with this matriarchal revolution imminent? Yes, that is coming. The question is, will it happen soon?

[David Remnick]

You also use a phrase that has been around for a while. The female gaze, the male gaze and the female gaze.

[Jill Soloway]

G, A, Z, E. G, A, Z.

[Colin Nissen]

E. I got it.

[David Remnick]

And I want to get a sense of the way that works in practical terms, where you work in terms of writers and producers and people doing lighting, how you work. Jill Soloway, as opposed to the way generations of male directors and producers in television and film have worked. What's different?

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I bring sort of whether or not it's the female gaze or feminine style of leadership, meaning that you stand in the back of your troop and you push them forward. I'm definitely not inventing this. This is, you know, when a lot of people are talking about management right now, they talk about, you know, working from underneath or from behind their staff. And I think it's a really common sense way of, you know, being lazy. Actually, I love to come to work and have the attitude of I don't know the answer. Let's ask the production designer. I have no idea. What do you think? You know, to ask people what they think actually allows me to come to work and kind of just be a leader rather than micromanage everybody.

[David Remnick]

So less Napoleonic.

[Jill Soloway]

Yes. And what happens on the set? You know, we just kind of connect over the feeling that we can't believe that we get to do this for a living. We do this thing called box, where we waste a ton of time standing in a circle talking about how we're doing. We waste like a half an hour every day.

[David Remnick]

So describe what that discussion is like.

[Jill Soloway]

So, you know, it's call time. It's 8:30. It's time for the first rehearsal. So if you were on a normal set, it would be time to go to the set and rehearse. But instead, the AD kind of starts clapping a little slowly, and then the clap kind of moves throughout the stage and we all just kind of start to murmur, box, box, box, box, box, box, box, box. And then we all kind of move into a circle. Sounds really culty, right?

[David Remnick]

A little bit.

[Jill Soloway]

But it has a purpose. So we move into a circle and so whoever wants to gets up on the box and they just speak for a minute.

[David Remnick]

And it's non hierarchical.

[Jill Soloway]

Yes. Could be anybody.

[David Remnick]

Okay.

[Jill Soloway]

From craft service to, you know, the executive from Amazon. And they just speak for a minute or two and they say, this is about what, however they're feeling that morning. You know, I Had a really rough weekend because this happened. And, you know, my mom is ill, and I was, you know, I spent all weekend in the hospital. It feels really good to be here.

[David Remnick]

Okay, half the audience is applauding this, and half the audience is rolling their eyes. Why is it effective? What does it bring to that?

[Jill Soloway]

Okay, so it brings the fact that we actually spend the day working faster because we're all emotionally connected. We all kind of heart connect early in the day. So we actually are able to then just jump into this sense of a really quick moving machine.

[David Remnick]

Was anybody not with the program? And so I.

[Jill Soloway]

They probably are. I don't hear about them.

[David Remnick]

But nobody walked.

[Jill Soloway]

No. We do it all the time now and then. What else? It prioritizes emotions. We're making a TV show about feelings. So I think a lot of times when there's a sort of masculine or patriarchal set, a lot of people are spending a lot of energy trying to come back from the ways in which they cut the energy by going, you know, we're in a hurry. We're running out of time. We're running out of light. Prioritize the equipment. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Schedule, schedule, schedule. Yelling, Quiet. And action. And now the camera is rolling, and we're looking at two people who are attempting to portray feeling. So all we do by these. Some of these methods is just protect feeling from the beginning of the day. We don't have to figure out how to bring it back. We're just spending the whole day being. And feeling.

[David Remnick]

That's fascinating. I should do my job differently.

[Jill Soloway]

Okay.

[Colin Nissen]

Yeah, exactly.

[David Remnick]

Thanks so much for coming.

[Jill Soloway]

Thank you so much for having me.

[David Remnick]

Jill Soloway, the creator of Transparent and the movie Afternoon Delight and the new pilot I Love Dick, ahead this hour. Your 2pm meeting looks like it's shaping up to become a little more interesting than usual.

[Colin Nissen]

Yeah. I haven't understood a single thing anyone said to me in three years. Have you guys ever heard me crying in the bathroom? I have. Yes. It's really loud. I wasn't sure how thick the walls are. I don't know what our company does.

[Jill Soloway]

We make software. I knew what you.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and welcome back. There are some beautiful pictures this week in the New Yorker of hijabs, Islamic head coverings in a range of styles and colors and patterns. They're pretty stunning. Definitely not what you'd expect. And you can take a [e-mail] staff writer Judith Thurman went to talk to their designer, Nyla Limas. Limas is also a model and the founder of a modeling agency called Under Wraps. She represents Muslims and other women with a different standard of modesty than the fashion world at large.

[Colin Nissen]

Beautiful.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

On a very hot Saturday in August, I went downtown to lower Manhattan to a photography studio where the temperature was about 42 degrees. And I watched a photo shoot on which the two models, two very beautiful young women, were hijabis. They were modeling hijabs throughout that one of the models, Naila Limas had designed. Normally we associate the hijab with a black headscarf, but it doesn't have to be. And Naila, partly because she's so exuberant herself, and as she says, my taste runs to jazzy. She loves vibrant colors. She loves African fabric. She loves prints, she loves glitter. So her hijabs are very, very fanciful. And they're sort of a cross between an Easter bonnet and, you know, one of the great Easter bonnets you especially see in African American neighborhoods or that you see at the races at Ascot. She loves leopard skin, she loves taffeta, she loves West African prints. She can whip up a hijab out of almost any sort of fabric. It's seems to need some body for the turbans and for the ziggurats. You know, there's some wonderful ziggurat shaped hijabs. You pin them in place. It's not like you go to a hat shop and you buy a hat and you plop it on your head.

[Colin Nissen]

Take a break, two seconds. Right, the eyes.

[Nyla Limas]

Yes.

[Jill Soloway]

Okay.

[Colin Nissen]

All right.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

After the shoot, I sat down with Nyla in a quiet corner to talk about the shoot, to talk about her work as a designer, and to talk about the agency. Were you born into a Muslim family or did you make the decision to convert yourself?

[Nyla Limas]

I was born into a Muslim family, and in all actuality, I was the only born Muslim sibling. My mother, my father, and my sisters converted to the religion as a family. So I was the last born. So I was born into the religion.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Let's talk about the agency. Were you doing something before you started this? Did you have another kind of job? How did you found the agency and when did that happen?

[Nyla Limas]

I was working prior to the agency as a clothing designer, which I still have a clothing line, and as a wardrobe stylist. And in working with that company, I just met a lot of models. And these are all industry high, you know, paid models that had, like, body complexes and really weren't really happy with themselves. And what they were doing. And a lot of it was ones that were married or that were mothers. And they kind of felt a little like they were compromising to be in this industry, but not comfortable with maybe what they were wearing. Like, as a mom, I don't really want to wear like the string bikinis, but my agent says I have to, you know, in order to make my money, because this is what I do as a career. And I just felt like that was unfortunate.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

So three or four years ago, she had the idea of starting an agency for modest and Muslim models. And she called it under wraps because to some degree, but not to an extreme degree, the women are under wraps. Her guidelines for the clients who hire the models are that they have to have same sex dressing room, they have to have a full length robe in the dressing room, and that no male stylists or makeup people or hair people or crew members will intrude on their privacy or touch them. So this was a very daring and for New York, anyway, for the United States, an apparently unique idea. A Muslim modeling agency. You have about eight women, eight models working for you. Tell me about them. They're not all Muslim.

[Nyla Limas]

They're not all Muslim? No. I have five Muslim models and I have three non Muslim models. What's unique about the agency, as far as the mix of the Muslim models and what I call my modest models, which aren't Muslim, but we all have the same concept, just various levels of modesty, is how we all interact with each other. It becomes like a learning of religions and faith and like a melting pot where it's easy conversation, where a lot of times when you're discussing different religions, sometimes it can turn into like a battleground. You're like, what's going on? But because the commonality is that they're all models, we can like easily have these dialogues.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Do you ever work with Orthodox Jewish?

[Nyla Limas]

I actually have a Jewish model. She's. We work. We work on and off. A lot of her scheduling is tight and definitely on Saturdays, you know, she's not working, so. But we're so similar.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

No, I'm saying it's more similar than not more similar.

[Nyla Limas]

Oh, yes, yes, I agree completely. Yeah, exactly. The dress is like so, so similar. I mean, except for, I mean, a little bit of the skin, bottom of the leg, you know, but the skirts have to be really long. The arms are covered.

[Colin Nissen]

Right.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

The hair has to be covered.

[Nyla Limas]

Exactly. Ex. And that's a story in itself because you have a Muslim woman who's representing a Jewish model and that Becomes like, well, how does that work? But it's like we have so many more similarities and differences. It works out just fine.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Do they all experience, or have they all, as models, experienced sort of a sense of conflict with the demands to expose their bodies? Do they have ambivalence about self exposure? Because if you are a model, you are exposing yourself, and you're exposing yourself, your beauty, you're selling your beauty.

[Nyla Limas]

I haven't really heard that from my Muslim models because they joined the agency with that particular mindset, so they never really conflicted in that way. Now, as far as my three non Muslim models, they feel like this is more of a home for them where they don't feel like they're settling to be, you know, to be a model.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

I raised this paradox with Naila herself. I said, modeling is about arousing desire. How do you reconcile the notion of basically positioning yourself as an object of temptation, which is what you are, with the notion of the Islamic notion of guarding its daughters from being objects of temptation? And she said no. She seemed to feel that, on the contrary, this would help to dispel stereotypes that non Muslims have about covering and about who and what Muslim women and girls can be. So she sees this actually as a sort of. As. Not in any way as regressive, but as a very progressive, even radical foray into changing people's attitudes. I'm very interested in the notion of color because I think for many non Muslim people, we associate Islamic dress for women with black or the blue of the burqa. How does it work with color? Where does the other subcultures in which the dress is very bright?

[Nyla Limas]

You know, naturally, culture and tradition kind of plays a role into any religion that you practice. So even though they're Muslim by faith, you know, they're Muslim, but they're Malaysian or Muslim, but Jordanian. So they're going to pick up some of those style stylistic ways of just where they're from and incorporate that into. Okay, well, Islamically, I need to be modest, but I still want to embrace bold, exciting jewels, crystals, you know, and you can do that Islamically. There's no guidelines on that.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

There's no guidelines?

[Nyla Limas]

No, there's no guidelines on that. As long as your parts of your body are covered and your clothing is not skin tight.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Okay, I wanted to ask about that. So explain that to us. Because some of the clothes that. That you've designed, that women have modeled, there's no flesh showing, there's no skin showing.

[Nyla Limas]

Yeah, but they have a fit. They're definitely formed well, my design aesthetic is a little more kind of fit flair. Sometimes it'll be tube or like strapless dresses, which will be more fitted in the bust area and then flow out empire waist down.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

But is strapless okay?

[Nyla Limas]

It's not. Strapless is not okay for a Muslim woman to wear just as a strapless dress. Right now we can wear a strapless dress, but we'll either we might wear, might wear a shirt under it, long sleeve shirt, or you might wear like a blazer over it or a cami or something of that nature that gives you sleeves. So in the Quran, when it speaks to our guidelines of how we dress, it doesn't say black, it doesn't say colors, it just says what we need to cover and how we need to carry ourselves. Now how you interpret that is, you know, that's up to anyone. When you practice your religion, you read and you interpret what's comfortable for you.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Well, there's a stereotype about submission and obedience.

[Nyla Limas]

Well, yeah, that's true. And I think that garment that they show so often to kind of drill it in your mind makes you think that way as well.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Yeah. The weekend that I went to the shoot, it was a torrid weekend. And it was torrid everywhere. It was very torrid in the south of France where in the past month there's been a tremendous controversy about the banning of the burking. Burkini is a garment that was invented fairly recently. It's a sort of neck to ankle covering that allows modest Muslim women to go into the water on the beach, which is a sort of jokey word. It comes from burqa. It's not at all, doesn't look like a burqa, but it's burqa and bikini. So the French were reacting to of course, many things. The recent terrible acts of terrorism and the influxes of refugees anti French sentiment in Muslim neighborhoods. So they passed a bikini ban. You could appear topless, you could appear in a micro string bikini, but not covered. And so while we were in the photo studio, women were being forced to disrobe, forced to take off their bikinis in some pretty horrific images on the beaches of France. So I think though that some of the reaction that people have is that these women are being oppressed by the obligation to wear these clothes. And it's true that in the summer you see somebody in head to toe Black On a 95 degree day, you have to wonder if it isn't depressive. But then you have to remind yourself that they have made this choice and it is a free country.

[Nyla Limas]

From my angle. And what I wanted to accomplish, especially with breaking down the stereotypes and keeping and maintaining your modesty or, like, your feminine hood and your womanness. And I feel like we've kind of. We've lost a sense of that somewhere. I don't know when. Cause in, like, 40s, 50s, 60s, I mean, all women were kind of dressing modestly. I mean, they had their poodle skirts and their fitted shirts, but it was like, not skin out.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

1968.

[Nyla Limas]

Plungey. Was that it?

[Colin Nissen]

Was that.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Actually, you know what it was? It was earlier. It was the year they invented pantyhose.

[Nyla Limas]

Oh.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Because you could then wear short skirts. You couldn't before because women had garters. And unless you were gonna go looking like. But then suddenly they were. That was the lead into the mini skirt. That was one of them. That was one of the technological steps to the wilderness.

[Nyla Limas]

That's one that took us in the route. Now it's party dresses on a Tuesday.

[Colin Nissen]

I'm like, are you going grocery shopping with that on? Oh, gosh.

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Boundaries are a feminist issue. So in that sense, I think you could say a hijab is a refusal in some ways to objectify yourself sexually. A refusal to court desire from strange eyes. It's a boundary between you and the public. When you're uncovered and walking down the street. Let's say you're a young and attractive person. You're sort of a morsel that's out there for to be devoured visually. Right. Covering is a way of saying, no, I don't consent. I don't consent to be devoured visually. I don't consent. Consent to be looked at with lust. I don't consent. It's a question of consensual participation in the public sphere. In that sense, it seems to be in line with many of the sexual guidelines that have been passed in universities about what constitutes appropriate sexual contact. Making sure that everybody is in agreement. These are my boundaries. These are my boundaries for being looked at. These are my boundaries for keeping my body private.

[David Remnick]

Judith Thurman, a staff writer at the New Yorker. She spoke with designer and model Nyla Limus. And you can see some of those jobs that they were talking about@new yorker.com. and now, time for your next meeting.

[Colin Nissen]

So that's the proposed marketing plan for next year. I want to give everyone a chance to chime in with feedback before we move on to next steps. Amy, you want to kick things off? Sure. Tom.

[Jill Soloway]

First of all, thanks for sharing this with us.

[Colin Nissen]

I know how much Work has gone.

[Jill Soloway]

Into this deck, and I found it incredibly helpful.

[Colin Nissen]

Very helpful. It's such a great deck. The diagram toward the end really crystallized the breadth of our strategic opportunities. Oh, yeah. For me, too.

[Nyla Limas]

Agreed.

[Colin Nissen]

Excellent. That's great to hear, everyone. I've made terrible career decisions. What? What?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

What did you just say?

[Colin Nissen]

Just that it's great to hear you guys like the marketing plan.

[Jill Soloway]

Oh, sorry.

[Colin Nissen]

I just thought you said something else. Nope.

[Jill Soloway]

Okay. Well, in terms of feedback, my main.

[Colin Nissen]

Concern would be making sure that all.

[Jill Soloway]

Of our objectives are actionable from a budgetary standpoint.

[Colin Nissen]

I really dread seeing each of you every day. Oh, it's funny, Amy. I was actually going to say the same thing, but also add that we.

[Jill Soloway]

Want to avoid a situation where we're allocating valuable resources to the wrong brand pillars.

[Colin Nissen]

I can't feel my face when I say things like that. Really good points, you guys. I'm going to add those to the deck. Great. Sorry.

[David Remnick]

Isn't it also about aligning with our product team to better define our brand pillars first?

[Colin Nissen]

I've snorted oxycontin twice during this meeting.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, we should absolutely set up a meeting with the product team to lube them into this. That is a great idea.

[Colin Nissen]

I'm so high right now. Yeah, agreed. The brand pillars have been a bit of a moving target. We can't expect consumers to know who we are if we don't even know. I urinate in my fern a lot.

[Jill Soloway]

Yeah, I licked the bagels before I brought them in.

[Nick Thompson]

Right.

[Jill Soloway]

Let's not forget the important role that.

[Colin Nissen]

The competitive landscape plays in that discussion, though, because if we aren't careful, the.

[Jill Soloway]

Marketplace is will define us instead of.

[Colin Nissen]

The other way around.

[Jill Soloway]

My pantsuit is on backwards.

[Nyla Limas]

Oh, and the cream cheese knife.

[Colin Nissen]

I like that, too. Yeah. I haven't understood a single thing anyone said to me in three years.

[Nick Thompson]

Have you guys ever heard me crying in the bathroom?

[Colin Nissen]

I have. Yes. It's really loud. I wasn't sure how thick the walls are. I don't know what our company does.

[Jill Soloway]

We make software.

[Nick Thompson]

I knew what you.

[Colin Nissen]

Oh. When I was a little girl, I.

[Nyla Limas]

Used to ride horses.

[Colin Nissen]

That sounds nice.

[Jill Soloway]

I haven't menstruated since I started working here.

[David Remnick]

Sometimes I think I'm smiling, but actually I'm frowning.

[Nyla Limas]

You're smiling now.

[Colin Nissen]

Am I? No, not really. I have nightmares where I live here. Like, right here in this conference room. My bed's right over there. In my nightmares, it's late, I'm at my desk, and the cleaning lady's coming through with her Vacuum. And when I get a good look at her face, I see that she's actually me. Cool. And then she stabs me with her mop.

[Nyla Limas]

Can you stab someone with a mop?

[Colin Nissen]

Sure can. I keep having this dream where I'm giving birth to our CEO. Fully grown suit, beard, the whole shebang. Then he tries to get up, but his legs buckle like a gooey newborn foal's. Cool. So gooey.

[Jill Soloway]

It takes me two hours to get here every day. And then two hours to get home.

[Colin Nissen]

That's four hours a day. That's a third of my waking life. I flipped over the vending machine last week. Now the Three Musketeers don't get stuck anymore. I spend quite a lot of time in the supply closet making sticky note people. There are hundreds of them now. Soon they will rise and take back what is rightfully theirs. That is so weird. I masturbate in that supply closet. I know. Me too.

[Nyla Limas]

I'm riding a horse right now.

[Colin Nissen]

Whoa. Are you guys awesome Hot. I'm so hot right now. Crazy hot. So hot. I gotta take my clothes off. Y' all should. Let's all do it. I'm gonna put a bagel under each armpit and see if it feels funny. I bet it will. Wow. Yeah, it does. Hey, Eric. You know what? I don't like the way you're looking at me.

[David Remnick]

Me?

[Colin Nissen]

You see another Eric in here? I thought this day would never come. Give me your shirt. I have a lighter. You're out with a short fire. Finish your face. Finish him. Wait. Wait. Stop. Stop. What is he? Do you feel that? The reigns of Alberon are upon us. Just as it was written. As it was destined. Quickly, everyone on my horse. There isn't much time. Where are we going? To the castle. To the castle? To kill the queen? How far will our journey take us? A fortnight, perhaps. But I must warn you. We will pass through the forests of Ranuk. Many have died there. Surely there's another way. I'm leery of speaking of it, but there is one. We may summon Thor and the Dark Prince of the North. But black magic comes with a price. And costly one. These both sound like terrible options. It's too late. I hear the footsteps of the queen's guard approaching. Quickly. Build cover. Yes. Build cover. There's still hope for us. No, it's too late for me. Eric. Yes. No. Hey, sorry, but this room is booked at 3. Are you guys about finished? Why are the sprinklers going off? What happened to the table and the chairs? And your clothes. Did you mean the 3:00pm Salesforce meeting?

[New Yorker Radio Hour Narrator/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Jill Soloway]

Oh, I'm actually in that one.

[Colin Nissen]

Oh, me too. Should be good. I heard the Q4 projections are finally in.

[Jill Soloway]

About time, right?

[Colin Nissen]

Yeah. That'll really help inform a lot of the things that we talked about in here. Absolutely.

[Jill Soloway]

Good meeting, everybody.

[Colin Nissen]

Really good meeting. Really good meeting.

[David Remnick]

Whoa, whoa. How about we take a minute to recover from that one? That was good meeting. Written written by Colin Nissen. It was performed by Scott Adsett, Laura Gray, Ed Herpsman, Tammy Sager and April Mathis and produced for us by the podcast the Truth. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

[Nick Thompson]

And I'm Nicholas Thompson.

[David Remnick]

Nick, you're the editor of newyorker.com and you write a lot about technology. Used to work at Wired magazine. So we think of you as the tech guy, but you also play guitar pretty seriously. And there you're totally low tech. Talk about that.

[Nick Thompson]

That's funny. I hadn't thought about that contrast. You know, when I play guitar, I just play acoustic guitar, not electric. And I use my fingers. I don't use a pick. So it's the. The most organic way you can play guitar. And it's not intentional or it's not deliberate. It's just the way it happened. It turns out that's the form I can play well.

[David Remnick]

So who's in the category of people who are low tech and that you idolize as guitar players?

[Nick Thompson]

You know, it started out as a lot of people who play the kind of music I do with a guy named Leo Kotke and then other players at the time, Michael Hedges, Seth Austin were important influences. I liked William Ackerman a lot, and then I discovered John Fahey along the way, and that was transformative.

[David Remnick]

So I don't want to reveal any secrets here, but you keep a guitar in your office and you keep it sadly tuned to some crazy opening tuning. Open tuning. So I can't play it all that well. Did you just hate rock guitar and immediately went to this?

[Colin Nissen]

No.

[Nick Thompson]

My first. My first music experience was in a Guns N Roses cover band actually in high school. I just wasn't good at it. And then I discovered fingerstyle guitar, and I was much better at playing that kind of music.

[David Remnick]

Explain what that is.

[Nick Thompson]

Fingerstyle guitar, it's not just not using a pick. It's you're. And you're not playing chords, you're not singing. You're just making instrumental music, often with open Tunings. There's often a lot of harmonies in the background. There are often notes droning. And it has a fairly distinctive sound.

[David Remnick]

So you spent this summer poring over a biography of John Fahey?

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah, the book is called Dance of Death, and I really enjoyed it. So this. So after finishing it, I sent the author, Steve Lowenthal, a note, and I went up to his apartment where he has an incredible collection of Fahey Records, all LPs, of course. And we sat down and listened to a few of them and talked about them.

[Colin Nissen]

John Fahey was one of the sort of original record collectors in a lot of ways. He would drive down to the Deep south, and this was during the late 50s. He would literally go knocking on doors, asking people if they had any old records they wanted to get rid of.

[Nick Thompson]

And this is when he's, what, 19 years old?

[Colin Nissen]

He's just a teenager. Absolutely. 17, 18. He did this all through his early 20s.

[Nick Thompson]

And he finds some incredible stuff.

[Colin Nissen]

Right. He found recordings that literally had been uncataloged and no one had ever heard before.

[Nick Thompson]

Who was somebody. He found Skip James. Right. He found Skip James in a hospital.

[Colin Nissen]

Right? Indeed.

[Nick Thompson]

Let's put on Skip James.

[Colin Nissen]

Sure. He found Skip James. Yeah. Literally suffering from testicular cancer in a hospital. And John was so excited because Skip James had this deep, dark guitar tuning that John was just infatuated with. And he really wanted the secret to Skip James guitar sound.

[Nick Thompson]

And Skip James had been sort of forgotten. He hadn't recorded in a long time.

[Colin Nissen]

And he wasn't a popular artist to begin with. I mean, his recordings were obscure at their time. But, you know, Fahey sort of looked for the most obscure and the most esoteric of the blues musicians.

[Nick Thompson]

Why, at 18, 19 years old, is John Fahey from Takoma Park, Maryland? Why does he do this? Is it the adventure? Is it the romanticism? Is it?

[Colin Nissen]

You have to understand, there wasn't any music that spoke to him in the way that this old blues music did. The popular music of his time was, you know, Rosemary Clooney in sort of this genteel, sort of, you know, suburban sort of 1950s pop music. And he was a really unhappy kid growing up. He was dealing with a lot of issues at home. And there wasn't any rebellious music that spoke to sort of the darkness and ennui. That the blues to John offered him, really, a window into his own dysfunction.

[Nick Thompson]

Fahey comes back from the south and he starts to record his own music. Let's listen to a little bit of his first album. It's Called the Legend of Blind Joe Death.

[Colin Nissen]

You know, John wanted to make sort of, you know, his take on the blues record. But he's not from the Deep south and he's never, you know, he didn't have the blues in the classic sense. So he creates this fictional alias, Blind Joe Death, which is sort of his, you know, goof on sort of the legends and the myths that all these writers make of these old blues guys. So his idea was like, I'm gonna make the most extreme blues character I could think of. And Blind Joe Death was sort of his. The further he moved away from the blues and the more sort of, you know, avant garde and classical elements he would bring into the picture. The music sort of got a little stranger, got elongated.

[Nick Thompson]

So tell me one of your favorite strange tracks from this period.

[Colin Nissen]

Oh, sure. This track I'm going to play is from John Fahey, Volume 4. It's called Sail Away Ladies.

[Nick Thompson]

So when did drinking become a serious problem for Fahey?

[Colin Nissen]

Right around when he started performing. He had terrible stage fright and he hated getting in front of audiences. But I think John was insecure about his abilities as a guitar player, you know, next to some of the more flashy, technically precise people in the folk scene. So he would just get obliteratedly drunk in order to deal with it. Once he started doing that, he started getting obliteratedly drunk to deal with all of his problems. So he decides to get his masters in folk music, which was a new program at ucla. He moved to west coast really for his academic studies. And, you know, the folk scene there was really in full swing. And he didn't really have any use for the 60s folk scene. What he was trying to do is sort of this hybridized modern classical, contemporary like Death Chants, which is sort of like the exact opposite of this Peace Love sort of of pre hippie movement. To him, there's a bunch of rich college kids sitting around talking about civil rights who had never gone through any hardships themselves. So he felt that it was inauthentic and it was bs. I mean, he wasn't interested in it.

[Nick Thompson]

At some point here in the mid to late 60s, he decides he's actually going to make some money doing a Christmas record. To tell me about this he did.

[Colin Nissen]

I mean, that was his thing. He was in a record store during Christmas season and he saw this guy opening up a box of Bing Crosby white Christmas records. And he asked the guy about it and the guy's like, yeah, we sell a box of these every year. And he said, that's a great idea. And so he made a Christmas record and there was actually a market for acoustic instrumental versions of Christmas songs and it became his best selling record.

[Nick Thompson]

I've got to admit, I've listened to a lot of John Fahey in my life. I have never listened to his Christmas music. So let's, let's hear something.

[Colin Nissen]

Sure.

[Nick Thompson]

That's actually pretty good. Alright, maybe I'll listen to this record in full when I get home. Alright. So during this period, 1967 and 1969, he's recording an album every 15 minutes.

[Colin Nissen]

Yeah.

[Nick Thompson]

He also starts a label, Tacoma, and he finds a young musician named Leo Cocky. Let's put on leo Cocky's record 6 and 12 string guitar. I just love this record so much. Listen to it a thousand times.

[Colin Nissen]

Leo Cocky was in a lot of ways everything John Fahey was. He was young, personable, an amazing technical guitar player, lightning fast. And in some ways, to John's credit, that he could recognize sort of the potential of someone like Leo Khaki.

[Nick Thompson]

I mean, this is an album that every guitarist has listened to. So how important was Fahey to the recording of this album?

[Colin Nissen]

6Th and 12th string guitar, hugely important. Leo sent in his demos and asked, you know, what he should do and if he should sing and whatnot. And John said no, just do, you know, acoustic guitar, just do an instrumental record. John heard the potential of what Leo had and you know, Leo Cocky delivered a tour de force guitar record that changed the nature of acoustic guitar music. Leo's from the Midwest, this young guy, and John invites him to stay with him in California. And he goes to John's place and John puts him on the couch and says, listen, whatever you do, don't wake me up. So a couple hours later, Leo's just sitting there, just watching tv, minding his own business or something, and John Fahey slams the door open, puts a shotgun in his face and screams at him, I told you not to wake me up. How dare you wake me up. And Leo was terrified and perhaps lacking a certain amount of common sense, he did not flee, but he stuck around. And he said afterwards, Leo said if he survived that first night, then he figured nothing worse would probably happen to him.

[Nick Thompson]

So after this, after Kottke, Fahey's music evolves a little bit more and he puts forward, I think my favorite album is Fairforward Voyager. So I know I'm in a minority opinion on that among John Fahey fans.

[Colin Nissen]

There's a lot of people that think so.

[Nick Thompson]

And he puts out America, which I think a lot of people think is his best. Why don't we listen to America?

[Colin Nissen]

Sure. Both America and Fair Forward Voyagers are that find John at the height of his powers as a guitar player and as a composer. I think it's the furthest away from the blues and it's the most unique in his catalog in terms of just straight guitar playing. And it's the most Fahey esque. So he's a pretty bitter, unhappy guy. You know, he hates the whole New age thing. He hates playing with all those people, and yet that's his livelihood and he absolutely resents it. He moves out of LA in the 80s, he moves up to Oregon. He's kind of out of the music scene and gets increasingly angry and hostile and difficult and sort of devolved so much that he didn't really want to be part of society anymore. And he sort of moved into a cheap weekly motel and just covered himself in pizza boxes and garbage and lived basically like a crazy person.

[Nick Thompson]

All right, so he's living in pizza boxes, in cheap motels, in shelters, and he kind of gets rediscovered in 1994. Tell me that story.

[Colin Nissen]

There's this guy, Byron Coley, who's a music writer. You know, he's got this idea to write this story about John Fahey. So he pitched it to Spin magazine. You know, they flew him out to Oregon to do an interview with John Fahey. And Byron tracked him down at some motel and knocks on the door. And John opens up the door in total squalor with his robe hanging open naked underneath, asking who he was. And Byron told him who he was. And John said, come back some other time. Byron comes back the next day and he goes, you know, what do you want to do? And Byron's like, oh, yesterday I just went around to record stores and John goes, oh, you didn't tell me you were going to record stores. That sounds great. Let's go. And so Byron's like, all right, let's go to every record store in Oregon.

[Nick Thompson]

So this article in Spin comes out and then Fahey's life changes. For the last few years of his life, he's actually. He's kind of back on the scene.

[Colin Nissen]

It's a really interesting time, the mid-90s. So, like, it's 1994. Kurt Cobain's accepting an MTV Music Award wearing a Daniel Johnston T shirt. Daniel Johnson was a schizophrenic who made home recorded cassette tapes of his songs. Daniel Johnson got a deal on Atlantic Records. So all of a sudden, being a mentally unstable, you know, underground icon, for the only time I could recall in American history was a viable commercial commodity. So John Fahey all of a sudden is the right guy at the right time. And of course he rejects it and wants nothing to do with it.

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah.

[Colin Nissen]

And decides to make avant garde industrial sound collage music. He fell in love with a song, this woman named Hitomi, on a late 90s tour of Japan. The woman he met once. And he just became so deeply infatuated with her, he couldn't think of anything else. It got to the point, it got so bad that he tried to go see her in Japan and he was greeted at the airport by the police. He was pretty despondent. He was an unhealthy guy with extreme excesses. And, you know, sadly, John Fahey, he died at the age of 61 due to complications of a sextepal bypass operation.

[Nick Thompson]

Tell me, what drew you to the story? Why did you decide to invest several years writing his biography?

[Colin Nissen]

It's weird. I'm not a superstitious guy. I'm a very practical sort of man. But in the liner notes to 1965's Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death album, John Fahey writes the story of a student who's writing his master's dissertation on a 20th century genius. John Fahey, set in the year 2010. Prior to reading it, I decided to get my master's degree and write my thesis on John Fahey. So John predicted my writing this book many years before I was born. This last song is called Dry Bones in the Valley. And I just think it's a great example of the level of feeling and ennui and sadness and darkness I feel is unparalleled in American music.

[David Remnick]

John Fahey on acoustic guitar. That was his biographer, Steve Lowenthal, in conversation with the New Yorker's Nick Thompson. And that's the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We hope you enjoy the show. Let us know if you did go to newyorkerradio.org to leave a comment or find us on Twitter ewyorkerradio. See you next week.

[Jill Soloway]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield and Steven Valentino, with help from Owen.

[Nyla Limas]

Agnew, Emma Allen, Alex Barron, Becky Cooper.

[Jill Soloway]

Matt Fidler, Jonathan Mitchell, Susan Morrison, and Corey Schreppel. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.

[Colin Nissen]

In part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.