Lightly edited for clarity, this dialogue took place at Hemingway’s Bar in Toronto on November 28th, 2024. Read Part 1 here.
Nina: [Laughing] Everyone wants to kiss the doberman. Anyway. Anyway. So what do I want to know about you?
Kevin: [Laughs] I mean I have a response to what you just said.
Nina: Oh, please. Sorry.
Kevin: I’m thinking about how you’d mentioned emotion as your medium rather than writing and I’m thinking about the relationship between the processing of experience and how did I feel about that and what was that like happens retrospectively and then the writing flows from, Oh, that’s how I felt about.
Yeah. Words are the last thing I have. When I’m emotional or when I’m experiencing something, I’m—I hate to say it because it sounds very [unintelligible]—but I’m quite non-verbal. I don’t communicate well. You’ll see me sputtering, stuttering, re-starting sentences a couple times over. Hyperbole. Sometimes even swearing [unintelligible] like, I don’t fuckin’ know. Blah-blah-blah. This very exuberant expression of somebody who—
—Lisa: Are we doing okay over here?
—On the inside is just flailing.
More water and clam chowder, please.
We could do more water and I could do more of that, too.
Another one of those and you want another chowder? Yeah? For sure.
And then there’s the sobering up. For me, emotion is definitely an intoxicant. Then there’s the cool down, the calming down, the sobering up. And then there’s looking at it in my mind in very fine detail to the point of sand grains and holding everything up, watching light catch it, watching the kind of … I want to say multifaceted but I feel like there’s a better word.
Constellatory?
I’m sorry?
Constellatory?
Yeah. That’s good. Like, from constellation? That’s exactly what I would have—If I had that word I would have taken it. And words are the end. And that’s why I feel like, when I’m meeting you for an interview and we’re going to talk about writing, I feel like we’re going to sit here and talk about words. And I struggle with that part. That’s the part where I’m fumbling and I’m not confident.
Nice.
And confused.
Nice.
So I’m not in my element and yet I find myself—I’m a writer. So it’s kind of strange to say that, but I do think that words and verbal is my weakest point.
Mm.
I actually wish I’d gotten into music—but that’s another story—and when I retire I will but for now I have jobs; I have bills to pay; I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and then when I retire—hopefully I can live until 85 or whatever—and then I’m going to start music. Once I have more time.
Mm.
I think music for me is going to be the purest form of myself.
Mm.
Yeah. Absolutely. Words are such a fuckin’ struggle.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What about you? You do everything so it’s kind of weird to ask. What would you do if you weren’t doing everything that you’re doing? You’re not a musician. Wait, are you?
I played for a decade, yeah. I was serious about it for quite a while.
What did you play?
I played the drums. I played the drumkit and I played different percussion instruments: half a dozen bands and a bunch of different genres through my teens.
That’s what I would have done.
Actually at six o’clock I’m meeting with the lyricist and guitarist of the band that I used to play in. He’s in Toronto now. He just recently got married so we’re going to catch up. We haven’t seen each other for a few years.
Congratulations to him.
What would I be doing if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing?
No, no. Let’s say retirement. Or, you seem like the type of guy who will always just do what you want to do. Maybe not retirement.
I think teaching, eventually. I think that it’s like …
Kids? ‘Cause you realize at some point even a twenty-year-old will feel like a kid to you. You’ll be my age—
—They feel like kids now.
—Or you’ll be fifty and it’ll be like a twenty-two-year-old who thinks they’re an adult and you’ll be like, Oh my god. They’re a kid. Do you want to teach kids?
I think that I would prefer not to be the guy grandstanding at the retirement home among his peers, if that’s what you’re asking.
[Laughs]
There’s more neuroplastic hope for those who, at that time, won’t be of my same demographic. I would say … I hope people younger than me but—
[Laughs]
—I’m open to—Prioritizing considerations of convenience and efficiency are ravaging the world at the moment, but it’s probably more efficient to teach people who will get more longevity out of the lessons that you’re able to impart.
[Laughs]
Or, if not the lessons, at least the questions you’re able to provoke and the responses you’re able to—
[Laughing] I just wondered on a very basic level, Do you get along with younger people? Some people don’t.
Thank you.
Lisa: Need anything else?
Couldn’t imagine anything more.
Enjoy.
Thank you.
I mean, my feeling about young people is I’m not entitled to their time unless I’m willing to provide a consistent relationship. I don’t know about a one-time encounter with a kid. They’re like, How do I frame this in context? What are my responsibilities to you emotionally? So if I felt like I had an opportunity for an enduring, consistent relationship that was one where I could be supportive or nourishing as opposed to it being a one-time thing—I think it has a lot to do with continuity as it relates to relationships with kids. That’s what’s on the top of my mind.
No, I mean as a teacher. ‘Cause you said you wanted to teach.
Yeah, I can see teaching down the road.
You spend a year with those kids, six months, four months, a semester.
Or maybe what I’m trying to negotiate my way into is in anticipation of the possibility of just hosting some kind of cult in which I could impart—
[Laughs and claps]
—What I have to say across generations.
You’re doing great in terms of laying the groundwork for a cult. I think you have a lot behind you.
[Laughs]
I think you do.
I think you’re blurbing my cult right now. And I’m going to shamelessly—
Of everyone I’ve ever met—It’s a really short list of who could maybe start a cult. That is a short list. And I’m like, Wow, you’re at the top, though. There’s a mix. You have the right mix.
Tell me what the ingredients of the mix are.
Oh. Jeez. Originality.
You don’t have to flatter me with this. You can be critical.
Inaccessibility.
[Laughs] It’s a great combo already.
Incoherence [laughs]. Distinct present—No: distinctive charisma. Creates a slight sense of … hm … whose charisma has the effect of creating a slight insecurity in the people around you.
Okay.
Intensity. Intensity.
I’m just a guy eating a bowl of clam chowder.
You cannot have a mild, soft-spoken cult leader. Intensity is at the top.
I’m provoking insecurity.
I think, around most people, if you are given wide berth to just talk and be yourself, I think at some point in time, the people around you, at some point there will be a moment where they’re like—They feel a little bit insecure around you.
One of the people that I summoned with the conch once referred to me as debilitatingly eloquent.
Yeah. That. [laughs] But don’t focus too much on the eloquent. Focus on the debilitating.
[Laughs] I think it’s the preoccupation with the eloquence that makes it debilitating.
It’s also the level it’s at. It’s also the slightly … The consistency which feels slightly less human than the rest of us flailing mortals. You can feel a little … intense, I would say.
Uh-huh.
No, I could see you being a cult leader. I hope you include this. If you include this whole part, I really hope you include the cult leader part. What type of cult though, by the way?
Are you proposing to co-found a cult? What kind of cult with longevity—
[Unintelligible] I just want to be alone.
That’s the thing. It would be like, Who’s that lady living in the woods?
[Laughs]
Is she part of the cult or not? She’s just like in the woods. I’d be like, That’s Nina.
[Laughing]
Okay, but is she part of the cult? I don’t know. She’s just in the woods.
Nobody cares if she’s part of the cult or not and you shouldn’t even ask.
Yeah. Don’t ask her and if you do do not make eye contact when you do.
[Laughter]
Nah. But seriously, you’re a cult.
I’m a cult?
Your cult.
I am a cult, a walking cult.
You have an island. You now have a scripture and you can write ten rules. Or six. Or—
This all sounds eerily familiar. I feel like this has been done before in history.
[Laughs] I thought you were getting at something else but I see what you’re saying. Yeah. No, but seriously, what would be a few things that you would—
Commandments, if you will?
Yeah.
[Laughs] Well, I would say the first and most important commandment is, Do not listen to any of the subsequent commandments because I have no right to command anyone to do anything because the—
Next.
—Assumption of authority is itself—
But we’re making a cult here. Let’s get with the program.
—The assumption of authority is itself discrediting. That’s what I would say. That’s the first commandment.
Commandment two?
Every guru will say, I am not your guru.
Is that true? Do they really do that, though?
I think that that’s a necessary throat-clearing for any guru.
Throat-clearing. I like that.
And so we can say that that’s the minus one commandment. That’s the preface before the text.
Gotcha.
Commandment one. I’m already so exhausted by this exercise I can’t even tell you [laughs].
We don’t have to! You can write them later when you’re in Brazil or something. It’s all good.
Let’s see.
But it’s an interesting exercise to come up with your own rules of life.
I would say the first thing that’s been very important to me this year especially and which I’ve been shameless in reiterating to others is: “should” does not exist. “Should” is an illusion. Some sense of obligation to convention is at least worthy of reconsideration. If you think that you should do something, I would encourage you to think twice about it and why. Why do you feel compelled? By which external authority do you feel obligated to perform that action or have that thought? “Should” is an interesting aperture through which to meditate on one’s sociopolitical contingency. Something like that.
I like that, actually.
Yeah. Beware of should.
I think that’s a good one, if you just thought of that right now in terms of forming a cult. I like that one.
Yeah. I’ve actually so thoroughly rehearsed the ten commandments hoping—
[Laughs]
—That someone would ask me that I’ve rehearsed it to the extent that it seems unpolished in the presentation.
No, that didn’t seem unpolished, even. But I do appreciate the sentiment and what you said.
Yeah.
You wouldn’t enjoy the monotony of a cult, though.
Well, I love Kafka’s Poseidon, who is so encumbered with paperwork that he never had any time to spend in the water.
[Laughs]
He’s just become the Administrator of all … um … of all Fluvial Activities.
[Laughing] Fluvial Activities. Great. No, I just mean, if the end goal of a cult, policing the behaviours and language and—If the end goal is uniformity—
—Mm.
—Then I know that that would kill you.
Yeah.
And the cult only exists as a solace or a respite from the rest of the world and the chaos and once you remove all that you’ve lost meaning. So I feel like you would be a temporary cult leader and you would return to this.
I mean—
—You’d get bored.
—For a moment there I was a temporary commandment issuer.
[Laughs]
I was like, I can’t even get to the first commandment because I’m already bored.
But you had a good comman—I liked your commandment.
The first commandment was a good one.
I liked your first commandment.
Thou Shalt Not Should. Thou Should Not Should?
No, Shalt. Definitely. I like it.
And here’s a roundabout way of addressing the question having to do with writing: I think that it’s an editor’s highest ambition, in the abstract, to avoid self replication, and actually to bring forth the uniqueness of the writer that they encounter as opposed to trying to redesign themselves in another person’s experience.
Right.
So I think something about the enhancement of uniqueness and individuality would be maybe another part of it. That’s as far down that road as I am at this moment—Until the marble comes and I’m able to inscribe this in a way that will endure for centuries rather than—
[Laughs]
—On a feeble phone …
I think you have a good start, anyway. It’s one of those legless dogs.
Just being dragged along the sidewalk.
[Laughs]
The skis are cute though.
[Laughing] You may have noticed I’m a dog person.
I have noticed that.
Yeah. I can’t stop it. I’m sorry. I’m going to keep checking them out.
Please.
Um.
Caninaphilia?
Um, don’t make it—
Don’t Latin—
—Sexual. That’s not right.
No, I didn’t mean to make it sexual. I don’t think ‘philia’ is necessarily—There are lots of different types of love. It doesn’t have to be—
Oh, that’s right. Philia. The Latin. Okay. Okay. You’re right. I was thinking of some of the other words and sexual acts connected with that.
Didn’t intend it. I promise.
[Chuckles] Um.
Do you—
I was just thinking what I want to ask you.
Sure. Take your time.
Okay. So, the first thing you have to think of or answer—and you don’t have to say it out loud; just put it in your head—is, who is your favourite person in the world? But then the second is the part that you do have to answer, which is, What would you want to talk about with them?
Um. I mean, the true answer is that I feel spiritually conflicted in answering the question because I think favouritism invites egoism and I’d prefer to—
You don’t have a favourite person.
…
…
I really like Roxanna Bennett a lot.
Who?
Roxanna Bennett.
Okay.
She’s a very good—She feels like, in some ways—Martin Amis, I remember, said, Christopher Hitchens is my only friend. Everyone else is an acquaintance.
Hm.
And I feel something like that with Roxanna.
What would you talk about with her?
I wouldn’t premeditate anything in conversation because that would be to request of the Boston Symphony Orchestra happy birthday.
[Laughs] Fair. Alright. Your turn. Ask me something.
Um.
…
…
…
Hm.
…
…
…
Sorry. Bear with me a sec because I actually want to make this worthwhile. Not that that wasn’t but I want to not forsake this opportunity.
…
…
It can be cute. It doesn’t have to be meaningful.
…
My question was kind of cute but it still produced a meaningful answer.
That’s true.
…
…
…
If you were …
…
Um …
…
The question I think I want to ask is like—But this presumes—With which story do you feel most identified? I’m thinking of Greek myth, for instance. If you were a character in Greek myth, which would it be? Or is there a character in your mind with whom you most poignantly associated at some point in your life? Or a story that was most impactful? Or an album? Or if you think of yourself in the world, clad in a story, what is it? Or is there one? Has it changed? What is it in this moment?
And obviously the actual details, the actual autobiographical details do not have to match. It’s more like, I feel like this is me. Yeah? Probably the movie Frances Ha.
Mm.
The titular character.
Sure.
Yeah. Um. Yeah. That’d be it. I can’t think of someone in a book.
That’s great.
Strangely.
Meh. Mediums are—
I don’t know why. Yeah.
And so when I think of Frances Ha, I think of, I don’t know how to be an adult, essentially.
Eager, emotional, open, embarrassed, withdrawing, trying again, withdrawing, trying again. Yeah. I like her.
Mm.
I see myself and I have so much I would say endless warmth for those people.
Mm.
When I meet those people, I’m like, They’re my favourite people. So, yeah.
Mm.
It’s like a tight little family right there.
Mm.
But yeah. I’m surprised that—The book thing. I was scanning through books and I’m a little surprised. I honestly have to admit that I can’t think of a book. Although, like I said, maybe six days from now it’ll strike me and I’ll wish I thought of it and told you but it’s just—It’s that movie. Yeah. Can I return the question to you?
What story?
Book, movie, album.
I fell in love earlier this year and very grandly thought of myself as Icarus who then became Prometheus.
Oh, god.
Like falling from the sun with wax wings melting, landing on the rocks and having my liver eaten out every day as a result of having stolen the fire that I was emulsified by.
So what happened?
[Laughs]
It didn’t work out well?
It worked out beautifully, but we’re not meant to be together. Yeah. But it worked out beautifully.
Who said not meant to be?
Um.
You’re breakin’ my heart.
Well, I mean …
Nevermind. That doesn’t matter.
No, no, no. Everything matters. And nothing does. Simultaneously. Destiny—
[Laughing]
—Articulated itself through her, and that’s what I would say.
Was it your first time being in love?
I think, in an all-of-the-majuscules, being with a capital ‘b’ and love with a capital ‘l’, yeah. I think so.
Wow.
I think so. But I’m also not—In some ways I don’t really feel entitled to the intensity of the emotion because we’d only actually known of each other’s existence for a couple of—Like a few months.
It can be like that.
Yeah. It’s happened more than once for you? I assume that it’s happened at least once.
Hm.
That’s pretty personal on the record.
I’m married, so it’s a different—
Sure.
…
…
I’m going to decline that question.
Okay. Love it. Okay. I appreciate that. Fair. Love it.
So, what are you like in love? Are you—
I got—
—Terrified?
—Super commercial.
—Are you alive? You got commercial?
I want—
—What does that mean?
—All of the money now. I want all of the resources and the money.
Why? To marry?
No, to buy a villa in Italy.
[Laughs]
Yeah. And then half of New Zealand. Yeah. That’s how I got. I’m like, Oh! This is why people make all of the money.
Yeah.
I got hungry. Yeah. On behalf of several bodies. Yeah.
[Laughs]
That’s how I was. That was one of the instruments in the symphony of emotions that I experienced at the time. I was gleeful in a sustained kind of untrammelable way. My bearing in the presence of people that we, so to speak, had in common, mutual acquaintances, became much more attentive and sensitive to that community, ensuring the well-being of those relationships, that there was mutual respect conferred. And I also at one point found myself involuntarily determining what toppings I was going to put on the pizza I was going to order for dinner the following evening based on where she was in her menstrual cycle. I was like, Where are her iron levels right now? And then came up with green peppers for one of the toppings.
Green peppers have good iron?
Relative to other vegetables, it’s higher in iron, I believe, yeah. And so that was—And then I also felt like, Oh, I’m not lethal enough. I need to get lethal. I need to learn a martial art to be able to protect this person. Yeah.
Wow. So you activated.
[Makes rocket-ship lift-off sound]
[Laughs] But that was earlier this year and we’re already talking about it past-tense? What are you doing? What’s …
I wrote a screenplay for her, which I wrote in order to make her laugh. It achieved that end and then it was published this fall and I sent her that in print at her encouragement and I haven’t communicated with her since—quite happily.
Unsatisfying response. I mean, not the play, I mean that you haven’t communicated since.
…
…
I don’t know that I would want to.
No?
My last communication was an email that ended something like, I’m not inviting a conversation. I’m not even sure that I would want one. But I would like to send this thing that was published that I feel like you were partially responsible for the creation of—if only because you inspired it. And if I could share that, I’d be grateful. And she sent a very nice warm note in response and that’s where things are.
Can I read your screenplay? Is it online or is it a purchasing—
It’s in an anthology called Human Voices Wake Us published by Rose Garden Press but I can send you a PDF. Yeah. It’s very funny. It’s called How Kevin Is Feeling.
[Laughing, clapping]
Because after a pow-wow with her spiritual sister, she had said that she wanted me to better articulate or to be more clear about how I was feeling. Because I can, as you can tell, get waylaid into the performative linguistic gymnastics to an extent that I’m incapable of communicating from the heart. And she was really influential in that sense and really woke me up to the fact that I do hide in language. Which in some ways almost feels like the opposite of what you do, maybe. I don’t know if that’s true but this idea of language being the considered consequence of emotional reflection as opposed to (for me, sometimes) it’s like a smokescreen. I’ll send you a PDF.
How Kevin Is Feeling.
How Kevin Is Feeling. That’s what it was originally called. It wasn’t published in that way. And then I pseudononymized her instead of using her actual name, which the original contained. I referred to her as Penelope, ironically thinking of myself as some kind of—as you might imagine—grand, Grecian character like Odysseus. So. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of the talking during this interview but I think you’re preferring that rather than—
You’re very interesting. It’s hard for me to say, No, my turn. And grab the mic. And also I’m not a big fan of microphones. You get used to it. But to say that I … I don’t—It’s hard to remember times that I enjoy it. But I’m trying to learn. If I want to keep writing books, I have to get good at it.
Get good at speaking?
…
…
Yeah [laughs].
Okay. I mean, it seems to me, from my perspective, you haven’t had any challenges in a prolific output of language.
I’m pretty relaxed right now but I was apprehensive coming here. I told you that already. And I was like, Ordinarily just seeing a friend downtown would be something I would look forward to all week. But because of the context, I was like, Oh, Kevin! Oh … interview.
Yeah.
I felt like it was work.
Sure.
So when you talk, I’m like, This is what I see friends for. I want to see people; I want to hear people talking.
…
But yeah. Books.
[Laughs, clapping] That’s the best segue I’ve ever heard in the midst of an un-interview.
It’s interesting when you do it later. You have to realize I have thirty-eight solid years of not being a writer, not doing it all. I have a life and a sense of self and identity. I wasn’t 18, 19, 22; I didn’t do the MFA. Do you know what I mean?
Totally.
To get used to it at an older age is weird. In the same way with publishing a book and then having to join social media, I think, if you join it in your mid-to-late thirties, your experience is very different than twenty, let alone eight or nine or whatever kids who begin on social media are today. I feel like the outsider status is hard to shake even when things are going okay.
Mm.
Feeling like I just—As I get older, I’m just picking up obligations. I’m not picking up passions or things that satisfy me or excite me or interest me. Even just interest me would be great.
Mm.
But you’re just picking up these new things that you have to do. Writing books is like—There are moments. You have to admit there’s a lot of obligation. Or maybe you don’t find it to be obligation.
I can’t help but refer here to the first commandment.
[Laughs] The should?
Are you contractually enjoined by Invisible to do all of the shoulds? Is that it? Or is it self-willed shoulds?
Yeah. That. I can’t say many people have actually really bothered me. I am not—I have not been pressured in any way. I’m definitely just thinking that I should.
…
So I’m going to join the cult tomorrow.
[Laughs]
Where do I sign?
I’ll be in the woods.
Where do I sign?
I’ll be in the woods.
Here’s my banking information. Just take all of my money.
That’s hilarious.
Give me the robe. I’ll wear the robe. You can have my shoes and my—
Well, if I whisper clearly enough into my lapel, then—
[Laughs]
—The cottage in the woods will be constructed. And so I’m just wondering, Spruce or pine?
[Laughs]
Birch? You’d like probably maybe birch?
What about one of those stone huts that’s—
—This is really a start-up. This is a start-up for me.
[Laughs] This is a start-up.
Allow me to build the foundation out until we get into—
—Alright.
—Masonry.
Will it be one of those log cabins made of logs with at least a twenty-four-inch diameter? I need like a log.
Unfortunately, contingent on my position of being a cult leader, I whisper into my lapel but there’s no receiver.
[Laughs]
So I actually can’t hear the feedback from the cult as to whether or not there are logs of sufficient diameter.
Alright.
But I can make that suggestion.
I just need good food in the cult. Also good wine. Also music. Also weed would be great. And dogs. And a place to swim.
Check, check, check, check, check, check. Consider it provided.
That would be good. I’d be quite good with that. Have you been swimming recently?
I’m not much of a swimmer, really. What about you? You like to swim?
You don’t like submerging your entire body in this incredible element [laughs]?
Not really.
You. You. You could write—
I feel submerged in an incredible element right now.
You could write an encyclopedia collection about being submerged in water. I feel like that’s you. You’re not a swimmer.
I heard that Proust read a book on human anatomy in relation to buoyancy before he ever set foot in the … I spent some time in the water in Brazil but it was kind of like standing in dialogue with people in the water. And I don’t know if that—
Interesting.
Submerge. I like the idea of our being participant to, and aware of ourselves as agents in, a sea of atoms right now.
[Laughs]
And in this respect—
—I’m just talking about the sensory experience.
I think I might have a difficult time letting go. Is that part of it? You lose the corporeal self and surrender to a larger self?
Absolutely.
Yeah. Is it flow? Is it like flow in that respect? No. These are different things.
I don’t need to swim. I just like being in it. And even when its conditions are unpleasant and chaotic, it’s just … it’s like taking your nervous system and [claps]. So many things that were on get shut off; so many things that were off light up.
Ah.
I think being in water is crazy. I think, later in life—More recently I’ve been going to the pool and going to the lake and dipping in even when it’s cold and realizing that that is—I’m sorry—
—You’re great.
—I’m not talking trendy cold dips and that’s fine—whoever enjoys that, that’s fine—I’m just saying that for some reason it suits me. They’re there!
[Kess Mohammadi and Sydney Hegele walk by blowing kisses]
[Laughs]
Bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you, bless you.
Well they just spent the night here.
Love it. That makes me happy.
That’s cute. Yeah, I would have to say being in the water is a top ten need for me. Like when we talk about the cult and I said I’m going to need the food; I’m going to need to the dogs; I’m going to need wine; I prefer stone over wood but we can haggle over that. But yeah, I would need a place to be with water.
Got it.
And weed. If we can also grow that.
I mean—
You don’t smoke, do you?
No.
Have you ever?
Yeah.
You really don’t need it.
I did. In highschool I smoked often.
You don’t seem like the sort of person who needs or wants weed.
I mean, Emerson says that there are two types of poets—I fuckin’—I annoy myself with having to begin sentences like—
[Laughs]
—“Emerson says there are two types of poets,” by the way.
Just go with it.
Just so that it’s clear. But that’s my impulse. One of them is the Dionysian poet who drinks wine out of a goblet whereas the epic poet—maybe we would think of as the novelist now—drinks water out of the wooden bowl. And so it’s water and a wooden bowl …
That’s what I’m saying.
Season. Season, for me.
You’re cult-perfect. You’re right there. That’s it. I needed ten things; you need like two things.
Water, wooden bowl.
Sunlight.
I had an idea for a comedic short film. It was like, The ten things this monk can’t live without.
[Laughs]
But they actually have—They’re enjoined to only ever have eight things, so they’re like, What’s number nine? And be like, There isn’t one. No, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand. There’s ten things for the list. Dwayne said—He had eleven. Well, there’s no ninth thing. Or tenth.
I could come up with ten. I could come up with ten for real. I already gave you five or six, didn’t I?
You did, although I don’t know that I would include on a list of ten things sentient beings you want the presence of. That seems a little—
You don’t think dogs is a legitimate—
—Sorry, you’re right.
No? Should I just say animals?Like we’re in the woods and just some kind of—
—Without the formalization of the cult, I grant that I’m not capable of determining what is and isn’t legitimate.
[Laughs]
After the formalization, then I’ll be able to make those sorts of decrees.
[Laughing] Okay.
Dogs count. Keep going. Dogs. Water. Woods. Solitude.
No, no, no. I didn’t say water. I said, Good food. I didn’t say food. I said good food. I said good wine.
Yep. Pot.
I said dogs. I said water. I must have said time alone. Weed. I’ve got four to work with. I’ll take some time with that.
Okay.
And you would take water and you like your morning exercise routine.
One of the things that I’ve learned while travelling is how little I need in the way of objects.
Yeah.
You don’t always have access to a gym. I was in Japan for instance this summer working out with two jugs of gasoline …
—Gasoline?
—And a sawhorse. I don’t need much. I don’t know that I’d get to ten things. Apart from the obvious like water—but not to submerge myself in; to consume—
—What about cappuccino?
Well, I want to say it would depend on the circumstance. If these are the things that I have to live with for the rest of my days, I even already feel some spiritual ickiness about the possibility of—I’d be bored by tomorrow with the list I come up with today.
So let’s skip it. I can ask another question.
You know what’s really helpful to me is noise-cancelling headphones.
Oh.
I have two pairs of them on my person at the moment and there are two more back at my apartment.
What do you listen to?
I often don’t listen to anything. I just turn on the immersion mode on these Bose headphones so that I can—I have to offer some kind of product placement for the opportunity for sponsorship to support the cult—so I can tone down ambient sound.
Is it brown noise? White noise?
No, I think the way they function is, essentially, there’s a microphone on both of the headphones which recognizes the frequency of ambience noise and then produces the opposite so that it flattens incoming—
Very smart.
—Vibration. But often I’ll listen to the repetition of daimoku—nam myoho renge kyo—in chorus and more often than anything I’m listening to language, often in conversation. Right now I’m preoccupied by Paolo Freire. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed I’ve been listening to over and over again. Sometimes I return to The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway.
I love that story.
Do you?
Last time I read it—I read it in twenty-four hours—I brought it to work with me and I was hiding in the stock room at my job, sitting among furniture and reading it. I fuckin’ love that book. That was a good—That was, for me, again: hit me at the right time. That was a totemic book for Nina for my development as a writer and a person for sure. I’m glad you like it too.
I love the fact that we’re sitting in Hemingway’s discussing this and that Hemingway would have been unsurprised by the fact that we’re discussing one of his masterpieces in the next century in a place named after him in Toronto, Canada.
He had a brief Toronto stint. I think he was a reporter here for a couple years. Not long.
With the Star.
Yeah. That’s cute. I think that’s probably why they have a bar like this. What you said about ambient headphones—
—Yeah.
—They read all of this and they provide the opposite and it creates a balance. I feel like, as an observer and a writer, I feel like that. I feel like there’s a contrarian streak to me where, if I look at a lot of this, I will make it my personal fascination and obsession to look at that. I’m creating what I feel is a sense of balance.
I’m thinking of photo negatives or relief printing.
Hm.
So the world says red and you say green in reply.
Green is what I’m interested in after I’ve been given a lot of red.
Ah.
Yeah. Like I said, a little bit of a contrarian streak in me. I wouldn’t say it’s dominated my personality and I’m incoherent or anything. But I would say I am more interested in what is elusive and what is less obvious, I would say.
I mean, that sounds to me to be peace- or harmony-seeking rather than contrarian, because it’s the provision of the opposite to whatever you’ve experienced.
To create balance?
Yeah.
That’s—Yeah. But sometimes you feel like a contrarian when you go to strange places where you didn’t expect to go because you were oversaturated in the one thing. You know what I mean? It doesn’t matter. It really—
It really does.
But in terms of harmony- and balance-seeking, I’ve seen that in myself since I was a kid. For sure.
So when you’re an eighty-five-year-old musician, what instrument will you play?
I’m going to be a DJ.
A DJ. Okay.
I let the instrumentalists do what they do and all I have to do is sample what I love and put it together in the order and frequency that I love and just create sets for Nina.
I see.
Yeah. I told my friends at work. I told colleagues about that. I have a part-time job. And they all tease me and it’s very sweet and they’re like, Oh, Nina. But I do want to stress that it’s not an identity thing. It’s not trying to be cool. It’s not trying to perform. It’s literally like—how I had to describe it afterwards—it was a form of cooking. Once you learn your palate and you know what you like, no one else can cook for you the way you can cook for yourself. No restaurant will make the meal that I make for myself at home. With music it was like, once I know the pieces, once I learn it, I don’t have to wait for the next DJ or the next artist to give me what I want. I’m going to do it for myself. I’m basically taking control.
Mm.
So, yeah. But yeah. Who knows where the technology will be by the time I’m 65.
Where or whether.
What?
Where or whether.
There will be the tech—Come on. Get out of here.
Nina Dunic is a two-time winner of the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, has been longlisted by the CBC Short Story Prize four times, and was nominated for The Journey Prize. CBC Books named Dunic in its 2023 Writers to Watch list. Her debut novel The Clarion (Invisible Publishing) won the 2024 Trillium Book Award, was longlisted for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was selected as Best Canadian Debut by Apple Books, and was a Globe and Mail 100 Best Book of 2023. She has a forthcoming collection of short stories with Invisible Publishing in 2025. Nina lives in Scarborough, ON. Find out more at ninadunic.com.
Publisher: Invisible Publishing (September 5, 2023)
Paperback 8″ x 5″ | 208 pages
ISBN: 9781778430282
Kevin Andrew Heslop (b. 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist from Canada.
He made his poetry debut in 2021; curatorial, 2022; directorial, 2023; and screenwriting, 2024.
In 2025, Heslop's third installation, of and(with Leslie Putnam, Centre [3] for Artistic and Social Practice), and a nonfiction debut, The Writing on the Wind’s Wall: Dialogues about ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ (The Porcupine's Quill), are forthcoming alongside new work with The Fiddlehead, Parrot Art, The Seaboard Review, Astoria Pictures, The Miramichi Reader, and The American Haiku Society.
Dialogues he conducted during artist residencies in Serbia, Finland, France, Brazil, Denmark, and Japan will appear in two volumes as Craft, Consciousness: Dialogues about the Artswith Guernica Editions in 2027 and 2028.
- Kevin Andrew Heslophttps://miramichireader.ca/author/kaheslop/
- Kevin Andrew Heslophttps://miramichireader.ca/author/kaheslop/
- Kevin Andrew Heslophttps://miramichireader.ca/author/kaheslop/
- Kevin Andrew Heslophttps://miramichireader.ca/author/kaheslop/
- Kevin Andrew Heslophttps://miramichireader.ca/author/kaheslop/
- Kevin Andrew Heslophttps://miramichireader.ca/author/kaheslop/
