An interview with Nikhil Singh Part 2. On dreams on inspiration.

So about the dreams -

I've been writing for some time now, and originally wanted to refine a method of dream recapitulation - more for exploration of dreams - this somehow evolved into narrative.

I sometimes have dreams that take the form of incredibly long movies or fictive narratives and wanted to be able to capture that - so with Taty, I originally had this dream when I was a teenager of a road I had seen somewhere in Umhlanga area. The road was very evocative and haunting and looked like something from King Kong with all its foliage and dinosaur vibes etc. I was amazed by it, but somehow couldn't situate where it was, because the impression I got of it was removed from my memory of when I actually went down it - I must have traversed it when I was very young or something anyway...I was about maybe 15 when I dreamed of a friend I had, who was actually called Taty - though she was acting as a character in a film in my dream, so although I retained the name to create a link to the past, though the character has no actual basis on her, but in a Burroughs-like way, required the link with her 'acting' as the character in my dream to maintain the dream feeling- anyway - the crux of the dream was that she was hitching on this road and then a car picked her up, driven by this gothic woman.

The dream became very long and labyrinthine, but seemed to describe this world of necropoli and ruined cities (a very post-apocalyptic feeling that I have always associated with Durban and the fact that I used to party there in my teenage goth days).  Anyway when I woke up the dream retained a very haunting quality. A few days later I was asked to do a drama project (this was like Standard 9) and had the idea to find this road and film the opening of this movie - I was filming a lot of stuff in high school - music videos and a documentary on splashy fen and little movies etc, so it made complete sense. I asked Taty if she would play this girl playing this girl who was her in a dream playing someone else (lol) and was trying to think of a name for her character, but couldn't think of one because I was still very amped about getting a scene penned so I just called it Taty went...and I was deliberating which way the road went and was reading Burroughs at the time - The Western Lands, where he talks a lot about the Land of the Dead - which I liked - so as a working title only, I named it Taty Went West. Anyway - I never ended up filming this scene, but some years later adapted this opening scene to a comic. I forgot about the whole thing for many years, actually worked onnumber of books, novellas and short stories along the way (Taty is my first published book, but by no means the first novel I have worked on). After decades, I was going to return to umhlanga after some time in London and was touched by a nostalgia for the mangrove and beaches and wanted to work on something that captured that essence and decided to resuscitate this work from my teenage years. Though after so much time I had refined my dream-capture prose technique and was able to 'excavate' the dream in its entirety - and by that I mean I captured the 'atmosphere of the dream narrative' as it occurred in the dream. So I fleshed out the screenplay in London before I came but set to work on the prose version in Umhlanga. I was working in a disused family holiday house near the beach which no-one was using at the time and weirdly when I was finished - literally the day I completed the first draft, I took a long walk past the lagoon and realised that the holiday flat complex's back was against the highway, which ran along the lagoon toward Tongaat - it was, without my knowing it - the mysterious road that inspired the actual story in the dream! So I had made this massive roundabout trip and the actual landscape had brought me back, so that I could write the story on the very road that it came from.

And to perhaps shed more light on the gender thing for you - when I was a teenager, I resembled a girl quite closely and went out partying mostly AS a girl - all my friends were girls, no one really knew the difference when I was out etc. The result is that a lot of my memories of teenage-hood are literally those of a teenage girl in a teenage girl's world. I had no plans to 'be a girl' or anything - it just sort of naturally happened that way, fun dress-ups whatnot and I slotted into that role and when I was bored slotted elsewhere - I play/have played many roles. So in actual fact it’s far more true to my memory of teenage youth and the narrative itself to have had a teenage female protagonist, because essentially it’s closer to who I was then than anything society would decide I SHOULD HAVE identified with. These were my experiences and this was my creative choice based on said experiences.

Nikhil is originally from Venus but moved to Earth’s greener pastures after centuries of trying to inhabit a human host. Their drawing career began with chiseling hieroglyphs into the walls of pyramids and although their current artistic endeavours are secret it is unlikely that they are very different. Nikhil, a committed vegan, believes in fairies and has an electric blue glitter spacesuit and knows how to use it. They are the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Salem Brownstone - All Along the Watchtowers and engage in alternative filmmaking and music projects, like Hi Spider.

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie

'I encourage a reader to imagine/interpret characters in their own way...' An Interview with Nikhil Singh.

There's no-one else like Nikhil Singh and their intricate illustrated dark visions of the future. Their individuality stains their work in an eerie and pervasive manner making for an incredible multi-layered experience for the reader. Here we speak to them about their most recent work, dreaming and the tension between art and academia. 

It was such a twisted pleasure reading Taty Went West. The stunning illustrations not only added to the story but also gave it a graphic novel-like feel. How did you pair the illustrations with the story? Did one inspire the book? Were they drawn after the story was completed? Or were they composed alongside the tale?

NIKHIL: Ti=hnx! Actually though, the illustrations were a throwback to books I read as a child – these often included woodcuts, prints or pen & ink drawings, often as chapter headings. For me, the drawings have little or no attachment/relevance to the book as pertains to the reader. Often, how my draughtsman brain read a character was at odds to how my writer brain imagined them, but in this way they both agreed to disagree. I encourage a reader to imagine/interpret characters etc in their own way, without recourse to my nostalgic illustrative indulgences. 

A male writer writing a female heroine, while not unheard of, is unusual. In fact, some could call it career suicide and there is data to support this stance. What was it about Taty that made you need to tell it through her eyes rather than, say, Tau's?

NIKHIL: I’m not male, I’m Venusian. Your gender-bias, although not unexpected, is still no better than an assumption. Don’t judge me by your own limitations. Thanks! PS: I could really give a fuck about data.

Ah, my mistake.

Shortly after I finished your book I came upon the article, "The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Women." It made me think of Taty who runs away to the Outzone, which, in its own way mimics the world wide web as a place of ultimate freedom that comes with the price of danger. It’s also drenched in misogyny which, in itself, can become an entrapment. It is in this perilous place, filled with advanced technology, that Taty bridges the gap between adolescence and young womanhood.

Cyberspace or the Outzone – what is it about technology, do you think, that amplifies violence and hatred, especially towards women?

NIKHIL: I think this is a ridiculous question loaded with presupposition and slanted by personal bias. ‘Guns don’t kill people – people kill people.’ Furthermore- I really don't see how the Outzone mimics the internet, lol :P, if anything I was getting all Victorian, by inventing my own personal, tropical Gormenghast or Dune – Whatever liberties the Outzone offers come at a price, that price is lawlessness. These sorts of lawless, anarchic worlds are rarely free of predatory misogynists, visit a prison, you'll see what I mean – I view my book as a species of feminist science-fiction, wherein a relatively normal girl falls into the firing line of the worst kinds of men, yet, despite this, survives and endures solely due to her strength of will and character. I don't see the point of sugarcoating the kind of hell a person might face if they fall into the worlds looming on the edges of polite society. Let's not be all Eloi* about what is essentially a Morlock* problem...

You mentioned in an interview that "We are living in a science fiction" and the key to coping with this new reality is to "learn how to process faster." Could you expand on this?

NIKHIL: Anyone who bothers to keep up with technological advances, news and world events etc, would understand what I mean by the phrase ‘We are now living in Science-Fiction.’ As for processing faster – well, a popular excuse for not dealing with escalated input is that one is quickly overloaded. Yet, in reality, synaptic thresholds are mutable. We can train ourselves to increase processing to cope with a surplus of data – iyou know, that whole evolution thing people keep rambling incoherently about...  

You are involved in numerous creative endeavours that span many art forms. Yet in South Africa's curriculum the importance of the arts is downplayed and the grading and testing of children is heavily dependent on memorization. This limits the amount of thinking children are required to do in their learning process and it hinders exploring ideas creatively. Do have any suggestions on what needs to be done to counteract this?

NIKHIL: Firstly, you should know that I am %100 [sic] opposed to schooling and all academic systems. Myself, I didn’t even bother to finish high school and have remained uncontaminated by institutes of ‘higher burning’. That said: The problem with attempting to define and 'academise' a collection of creative output is that it is an endeavour which inevitably caters to 'the enemy'. And when I say enemy, I refer of course, in an oblique way, to the long-standing forces that seek to homogenise individual expression through devices of conscious thought. I view intelligence as a disability, an external implant at odds with natural development - sublimated to the more ancient and refined systems and syntax of dreaming, psychic communication and intuition. Those who seek to oppose the machinations of the enemy by adopting their tools of intellectualisation are limited in the scope of their rebellion and ultimately enslaved further by the very system which they seek to oppose. So, in this matter I oppose vehemently any academic categorisation of imaginative work - because, at the end of the day, the approach is nothing more than a subverted extension of an invasive enemy campaign. It must be met with unyielding resistance, lest we lose, by degrees, our birthright of dreams, which our more ancient, less patriarchal cultures practiced and maintained harmonious discourse with. 

On Nikhil's Bedside

The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers by Edward Beauclerk Maurice, 

The Dreamer on the Calle De San Salvador  by Roger Osborne  

The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson

Paris Peasant by Aragon 

The Barbie Murders by John Varley

Nikhil is originally from Venus but moved to Earth’s greener pastures after centuries of trying to inhabit a human host. Their drawing career began with chiseling hieroglyphs into the walls of pyramids and although their current artistic endeavours are secret it is unlikely that they are very different. Nikhil, a committed vegan, believes in fairies and has an electric blue glitter spacesuit and knows how to use it. They are the co-creator of the critically acclaimed Salem Brownstone - All Along the Watchtowers and engage in alternative filmmaking and music projects, like Hi Spider.

Editor's Note: *The Eloi and Morlock are two post-human races in H. G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine. 

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie