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deadline is April 18th. This

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is a CBC Podcast. Hey,

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I'm Tom Power. Welcome to Q. So,

0:45

this is pretty cool. Not every day

0:47

you get to start

0:49

the show with a big old announcement. So,

0:51

in order to set up the

0:53

announcement, I need to tell you about something called the Massey

0:56

Electrons. If you're not as

0:59

familiar with the Massey Lectures, it's a really great Canadian

1:01

tradition that's been going on since the early 60s. Every

1:04

year, a great Canadian, or sometimes

1:06

international writer, or

1:08

thinker, or scholar, gives

1:11

a series of five public lectures

1:13

in cities across Canada, and they

1:15

get broadcast on the CBC. And

1:18

you listen to this thing, you go to the

1:21

theatre, you hear a great mind talk about the

1:23

subject of their choosing, and it's usually

1:25

something that Canada needs to hear, right?

1:27

Right now. In the past,

1:30

Massey Lectures have been folks like Margaret

1:32

Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Martin Luther

1:34

King Jr., Jane Jacobs, Tanya

1:36

Talaga. And

1:39

this year's 2024 Massey Lecture

1:42

is none other than the bestselling

1:44

author, Ian Williams. Ian

1:47

Williams is an award-winning writer, poet, and

1:49

professor at the University of Toronto.

1:52

His debut novel, Reproduction, won the 2019 Scotiabank-Gillar

1:55

Prize, which is Canada's richest

1:58

award for fiction. And

2:00

when Ian's talking,

2:02

you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's

2:04

not hanging on his every word. But

2:06

as you're going to hear, when he came in to talk about his plans for

2:08

the lecture, he's not really

2:10

interested in talking by himself these days. He's

2:13

interested in conversations and

2:15

why these days it feels harder and

2:18

more complicated to have them. Here's

2:21

our conversation. Ian, welcome

2:23

to the show. Thanks for telling me. How

2:25

you doing? I'm doing well. Congratulations are

2:28

in order. Yeah. And to be

2:30

a part of that list, it's pretty impressive when

2:32

you read that list. Yeah. What

2:34

went through your mind when I was reading out those names? Yeah.

2:38

Yeah, trying to reconcile myself with these names.

2:41

Are these actual people or are these just kind of like

2:44

the abstractions of people? Like

2:46

at what point does Martin Luther King stop being

2:48

like a human person who needs oatmeal in the

2:50

morning and starts being like the champion of civil

2:52

rights? And so, yeah, maybe

2:55

we lose ourselves at some point. Yeah. I

2:57

think about that all the time. That is the reason

2:59

I do the show. I think about that all the

3:01

time. It's that these people like Charlie Chaplin or Martin

3:03

Luther King or Jane Jacobs, they

3:08

showered and they went

3:10

to a convenience store and bought cigarettes and

3:13

were also geniuses. Yeah.

3:16

What you do though is like you humanize people,

3:18

right? So if we have like Beyonce living up

3:20

on this level, Beyonce talking to you suddenly has

3:23

a wart or a pimple or something. I

3:26

bring the warts out in people even when I'm trying

3:28

to say. Suddenly you make them human, right? In a

3:30

way that we forget that these names that are circulating

3:32

all the time are people who do

3:34

have to buy toothpaste. The worry is for

3:37

me that if we make these people into

3:39

gods, then the average person thinks that they

3:41

can't do that stuff, that they have

3:43

to be like given some sort of gift from God. I

3:46

think life's richer when remarkable people are just

3:48

like you and me. Yeah. I

3:50

like that. That's actually kind of beautiful. That's all we

3:53

have time for. The end. My

3:55

thought. You know

3:57

what? I'll be doing the lecture next

3:59

year. Congratulations. What went through your head when you found out? Was

4:02

it a call you get? Did you do this thing?

4:04

I think it was a bit of a couple of

4:06

soft approaches, I think, at first. Might you be interested

4:09

in or are you thinking about

4:11

anything lately? I think there were a

4:13

few of those kinds of conversations I was having. I was like,

4:15

I'm not sure where this is going, but yeah, I'm thinking about

4:17

things. Writing

4:20

non-fiction next and so forth. Yeah,

4:22

I think they were feeling me

4:24

out and I was baffled and

4:27

just being honest. How did

4:29

you land on conversations as the topic of the lecture?

4:32

Yeah, that's tricky. I

4:35

did my PhD about tone

4:37

and voice. I was interested in how do

4:39

we know what people mean from just the

4:41

words they say. I

4:44

was also fascinated by how could

4:47

we detect who's speaking from a

4:49

page. A page is pretty neutral.

4:51

A doctorate was an English lit. How

4:53

do you know a black man is writing or

4:56

a lesbian woman or whatnot? What clues are there

4:58

in text? That's 20

5:01

years ago. I've written several books in the meantime. All

5:03

of that has been very useful in constructing

5:05

voices and whatnot. The

5:07

natural evolution for me is this idea of, okay,

5:09

we know about voice, we know about tone,

5:11

we put those things together and

5:14

what are our conversations like? That's

5:16

one part of it. That's a theoretical answer

5:19

for you. But also we're living

5:21

in a point now where we can barely talk to each other.

5:24

It seems incredibly urgent these

5:27

days with increasing polarization,

5:29

online forms of talking. It

5:33

seems really timely that we step back and

5:35

say, why can't we talk to

5:38

each other? How can we talk to each other? What

5:40

do we need to talk about right now in 2024

5:42

and create an environment and space to make

5:44

that happen? I think it's

5:47

the fabric to make a number of

5:49

other kinds of important interventions possible. What

5:52

have you been learning about our inability to have conversations?

5:54

I think it's an interesting point because one of the

5:56

things I was going to bring up to you was

5:59

having a conversation about conversations right now is a

6:01

dangerous thing to do. You're

6:04

right, the fracturing of news media, we are not

6:06

consuming the same news media. When

6:08

we're DMing, are we really talking to one another?

6:10

When we're posting Instagram stories at one another, are

6:13

we really talking to one another? What have you

6:15

been cleaning? Right, right. It gets kind of meta,

6:17

right, after a point, but I'm trying to keep

6:19

this as sort of like real as

6:22

possible. Learning

6:24

about a lot of things, right? So for instance,

6:26

I think politeness constrains us and at the same

6:28

time, without that politeness, we see like what chaos

6:30

breaks loose on social media. So

6:33

what is the sort of appropriate amount

6:35

of like social

6:37

policing, right, that we need to be like decent

6:40

and similar to each other? I've

6:42

learned that the topics that we say we shouldn't talk about

6:44

are in fact topics that some segments

6:46

talk about all the time, right? So what do we

6:48

say like we shouldn't talk about race

6:52

or people's sexual lives or whatever, like

6:55

sexual minorities are talking about this all the

6:57

time, right? So there are friends, black folks,

7:00

Indian folks, we're talking about race constantly in

7:02

our circles. Only certain subjects are off limits

7:04

to some people, right? So

7:07

learning like just these little things that

7:09

we've taken for granted and sort of

7:11

assumed and then realize no, in

7:13

fact, this is not the case, right? Yeah.

7:17

It's an interesting thing you get to do here

7:19

to kind of talk to the country about this.

7:21

Yeah, yeah. And hopefully that we find

7:23

ways of talking to each other too about this and

7:26

like both nationally, right? How to have a

7:28

national conversation. Harder to do. Yeah,

7:30

about, I mean, lots of people involved, lots

7:32

of perspectives involved, but

7:35

also like more domestically too, right? So how

7:37

do we sit around a table at Christmas

7:39

time and talk

7:41

about gender neutral bathrooms, right?

7:44

So yeah, both like the

7:46

scale right from the personal and intimate all the way up

7:48

to the national. I

7:50

want to find out a little bit about why this might

7:53

be interesting to you, but I want to do that through

7:55

maybe talking a little bit more about you for people who

7:57

may not know you. The

8:00

last time we talked on the show, I've seen

8:03

social easy if the old Gillers every year and all that

8:05

kind of thing. It was when

8:07

you won the Giller Prize and we were doing a little bit of

8:09

research to get ready for this. Born

8:12

in Trinidad, moved to Canada. How old? That

8:15

was nine. Yeah. What do you remember? But

8:17

Trinidad, I mean, what do you remember about nine? It was

8:19

all it's all pretty clear, right? It's like I

8:22

feel at nine years old. I could have been pretty much an

8:24

adult. Yeah. Yeah, I could have found my way through. Remember

8:27

a lot about it. I remember sort of Yeah.

8:34

It's funny, like I remember the childish details. I remember

8:36

food and playing and my friends and my toys. I

8:38

remember my airplanes and all of that stuff. But

8:41

I also remember like just kind of like

8:43

atmosphere of something just beyond my grasp in

8:46

childhood. It's like when you come to an awareness that oh,

8:48

the world is really big. And

8:50

there are people living in North America

8:53

that I see on TV. But

8:55

they're actually like real people doing things that are

8:57

very different from what we're doing here. And

9:00

I'm in relation to that somehow. I'm

9:02

seeing them, but they're not seeing me. Like little things

9:04

like that that you start to sort of realize and

9:07

come to an awareness with your little child brain. Yeah,

9:10

those kinds of things. I remember sort of being

9:13

formed, right? And when you have a big move, a

9:15

big migration, sort of in

9:17

your childhood, you get split, right? You just

9:19

get divided. You move to where the TV

9:21

show was. You're moving to where

9:23

the you were looking out the window and you're

9:26

moving to the outside. That's right. What do you

9:28

mean by a split? Yeah, it's kind of this

9:30

way like you're in the audience for like a

9:32

sitcom being shot and then suddenly you're plucked and

9:34

sort of put on stage there. But

9:37

you're split in the sense that you know, you've got a private

9:39

life and sort of

9:41

like early history that's formed by one country in

9:43

one system. And then you come here

9:45

and you realize that oh, there's a totally other way

9:47

or a different way at least

9:49

of sort of living and being. And

9:52

I've got to do both of those things, right? Right?

9:54

Because my parents are committed to say this this form

9:57

a of living. But

9:59

if I'm good, I'm good. to live the rest of my life out

10:01

here. I better get used to Form B. What

10:05

do you remember in the practical

10:08

of coming to Canada for the first time?

10:10

Was it the snowing? I remember the

10:12

late night flight. It was in the

10:14

middle of the night. It was as late as we were allowed to stay

10:16

up. In

10:19

those days, I mean this is the late 80s, you

10:23

had to dress up to get on a plane. It

10:25

was actually like something. Yeah, there was no different kind

10:27

of dancing socks. No, no. No, you don't jump like

10:30

that, right? No. Wear like your

10:32

nice clothes on your flight, you know. They were

10:34

waving galleries and stuff to sort of say goodbye

10:36

to folks. And just the occasion of being

10:38

on a plane, there weren't discount airlines and all that. It was

10:41

an occasion, right? Yeah. You know, it was pretty big.

10:43

And so from a kid, like being on a plane

10:45

was a big thing, right? Yeah.

10:47

Toronto, did you land in Toronto? Yeah, landed

10:49

at Pearson. Yeah. And upon landing, you mean

10:51

like... Oh, I don't know. What was it?

10:53

I remember Snow for

10:56

the first time. I'm

10:58

shrugging. I guess you can't see that. Thank

11:01

you for the translation, though. I appreciate that. Yeah.

11:04

Not easily wowed, even as a kid,

11:07

right? One of these kinds of probably

11:09

little Sheldon kids. Were there

11:12

books and reading and

11:14

writing going on around you? Yeah, all the time. My

11:16

mom went back to university and I would read her

11:18

textbooks and stuff like that. What did she go to

11:20

university for? She went to York and she went back

11:22

for English. Yeah. And so

11:24

like good books in the house as a result of

11:26

that. And books with weird covers

11:30

things that you know you shouldn't quite be reading, but

11:32

you're kind of peeking into. Yeah. So the

11:34

path one would think is these books are around your

11:36

house going to university for English. You

11:39

would think, oh, well, he discovers these

11:41

books. He decides to commit his life

11:43

to writing. Not the case. Psychiatry

11:47

I was reading. You were on the

11:49

path of becoming a psychiatrist, psychologist? Right.

11:51

But I don't think these are super

11:53

unrelated things. That's the right you're

11:56

interested in sort of people and language. And I

11:59

mean, that's all. all I really

12:01

wanted, right? So you could go sort of the scientific way of

12:03

sort of getting to know people. Or

12:05

you could just make them up. I

12:08

chose the second, yeah. You are

12:10

aware now that you were interested in language and

12:12

how people spoke to one another? I knew this

12:14

like first year university, right? Like what's important in

12:17

life? People and

12:19

communication, right? How to get to know these people and

12:21

to talk to these people. And

12:23

so my first degree was like in psychology

12:26

and English, right? So all these

12:28

hypothetical people that you could sort of

12:30

figure out and then psychology as a

12:32

backdrop to that. Were you

12:34

having a hard time? The reason I

12:36

asked, and let me offer transference

12:39

so that you don't think I'm

12:41

accusing anything. Sometimes I wonder

12:43

if I do this job because it

12:45

is a controlled way to

12:48

talk to somebody. And

12:50

so I'll just offer that up.

12:53

I wonder why you were interested in

12:55

how we talk to one another and

12:57

converse with one another in early years

13:00

of university. Were you having a hard time with that? Yeah,

13:02

that's really insightful. Really insightful, Tom, for

13:04

your own life and for my degree. Oh, yeah.

13:07

They're going to put a wing in the therapist's

13:09

office for me. I'm not sure about that. They're

13:11

going to memorial wing in my name. I

13:15

guess, I mean, you can

13:17

superficially get along with anybody, right? But the

13:19

kinds of deep connections that you crave somewhere

13:21

in your teenage years require a bit more

13:23

than just kind of casual contact. And

13:27

I perhaps was a bit clinical about this. And

13:29

I was a lonely child, right? I was always

13:31

sort of on the

13:33

fringes of childhood, right? Always never

13:36

quite fitting into that time in life, right?

13:40

And so I wanted to understand why and how

13:42

and when will things get better and all of

13:44

that. Yeah. And so I think that's partly related,

13:47

right? Yeah. I

13:49

still can't see, but I hope you see my

13:51

nod of recognition. Were you on the fringes of

13:54

childhood? Oh, yeah, baby. And it doesn't mean you're

13:56

unpopular, right? No. It just means, like, you know,

13:58

why are we doing this? Can't we

14:00

just sort of move on to the next phase? It's

14:02

like everyone else seems to be, this seems to be

14:04

easy for everybody else. It seems a little bit harder

14:07

for me. Right, right, right. Like how much baseball can

14:09

you play? I'm good. You know, I love it. But,

14:11

you know, can we do something else now? You

14:17

end up not doing psychiatry anymore and you

14:19

end up becoming a writer. I

14:21

was reading you had a fire.

14:24

You had a house fire that

14:26

everything was gone.

14:29

Yeah. Except for the clothes on your back. That's a real

14:31

deep cut. Where'd you find that out? I mean, that's... Wait

14:36

till I read your credit score. By the way, you're

14:38

doing great. That's

14:44

really impressive. But yeah, so I worked in

14:46

the States for a long, for about seven

14:48

years, right after the doctorate. Our

14:51

doctorate in... In English. Yeah.

14:53

At University of Toronto. And

14:56

yeah, part way through my time there, I

14:58

was in my condo, there was a fire,

15:00

an electrical fire that spread across the building and

15:02

down and just kind of destroyed everything,

15:04

right? So I was home at the time. I managed

15:06

to get out, but never quite got

15:08

back in. I didn't

15:10

even have my glasses on me. I remember, but

15:12

yeah, I had my phone, my keys and

15:15

my cell phone. My phone,

15:17

my keys and my wallet I had. And I was

15:19

traveling and I need my passport. I remember that. And

15:23

so my question at that point in my life was, okay,

15:25

Ian, you've lost everything except the stuff in your

15:27

head. And so you need to

15:30

rebuild everything again. And

15:32

I had money in the bank, had a job. But

15:34

where do you want to rebuild? Do you want to stay

15:37

in Massachusetts and sort of rebuild your life as a potential

15:39

American? Or do you want to go back

15:42

to Canada? And so that was one of those

15:44

sort of hinge moments in a life, right?

15:46

Where you decide, okay, if I've been reset,

15:49

where do I want to be? And so move back to

15:51

Canada, rebuild. Yeah, the where wasn't what I was thinking about.

15:53

I was thinking that like you had a job. I mean,

15:55

you're still a professor, but like you had, you had a

15:58

job and you were sort of living in that academic world.

16:00

Yeah, yeah, and you hadn't written a novel

16:02

yet. No and I was wondering whether you

16:04

had your book But you published poetry by

16:06

that point. I had I'd published. Yeah a

16:08

short story collection and some poetry Yeah, I

16:10

wondered whether after the fire because this happened

16:12

to a friend of mine who was an

16:14

actor Yeah, her house burned down and

16:17

she went well, I'm gonna just

16:19

become an actor I just lost everything

16:21

what was she doing before it was her job,

16:23

you know, she was working She was part-timey acting

16:26

but you know kind of doing everything else and

16:28

not fully committing yourself I wondered whether after that

16:30

happened you were like I'm gonna kind of commit

16:32

myself more to being a writer in a yeah

16:34

I can see that story. I like that story.

16:36

But yeah, it's um, you can have it. No,

16:38

I Before

16:41

I was committed before but you sort of double down

16:43

in a different kind of way like you realize Not

16:49

whether I can do this or not right but to

16:51

do it again, it's like getting that second chance to

16:53

do it again What would I do differently? And

16:56

so is the sort of American

16:58

market more important than sort of like

17:00

rediscovering myself as a Canadian and sort

17:02

of returning And entrenching

17:04

myself here like those kinds of questions become

17:06

important. Yeah. Well, I was that I mean

17:09

as a writer You would think

17:11

hey come on staying in the state. Yeah, it's

17:13

a different world though And I think aesthetically I

17:15

think we we think differently right as between like

17:17

Canada and the US and so there's a real

17:19

kind of palpable Like artistic difference

17:21

I think between the two countries and you

17:23

could do it See there's a lot of

17:25

crossover that's possible and whatnot. It's it's not a

17:27

bad thing. I'm not saying I'm not

17:29

discouraging it And your book sold in the US.

17:31

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it's not not an issue

17:35

But where are you at home? I think is the question

17:37

right and so It's here

17:39

in Canada. The first of the first

17:41

time we talked was for your first novel Reproduction

17:44

for people who don't know is a sort of beautiful winding

17:47

love story about family and class and relationships and

17:49

also sort of one of my favorite things about

17:51

it was that it sort of Plays with the

17:53

form of the of the novel.

17:55

What do you remember? What

17:58

was on your mind when you were writing that? mid

18:02

30s. Mid 30s, unmarried had no kids

18:04

and so thinking about all of those

18:06

things and the possibility

18:08

of never doing any of those things too. And so

18:10

if I could do it sort of artistically, I don't

18:12

actually need to do it in person. And this kind

18:15

of mystifies my friends about sort of like the pattern

18:17

of my life. Like don't you actually

18:19

want to do this kind of thing

18:21

or do X or Y? I'm like,

18:23

you know, if I can think about it and if

18:25

I can sort of explore it and figure it out,

18:27

then I'm good. I don't really need to have that

18:29

sort of real life experience. So reproduction kind of felt

18:31

like that for me, right? Do

18:34

you still feel that way? About

18:36

the present novel that I'm working on, yeah. About

18:38

some of the other things. I feel like you

18:40

can lay some things to bed without

18:44

necessarily having the actual lived in the

18:46

world experience, right? Right, yeah. You can

18:48

kind of settle some things. Settle some

18:50

things, yeah. I feel unsettled. Just work

18:52

it out. I understand. I think I've

18:54

read this book about these things. Right.

18:58

And I think peace with the whole issue of

19:00

like, you know, what I should be doing at

19:03

Yeah. I mean, what's

19:06

interesting is that that book ends up giving you another

19:08

path through its success. I mean, I remember

19:10

I was actually looking a little bit right

19:12

after you won and I sort

19:14

of tried to ask this doe-eyed,

19:16

you know, like I just won the Giller Prize

19:19

person, like, hey, what does this mean to you?

19:21

And you're kind of like, being very polite. But

19:24

you're also kind of going, I don't know. I don't know. It

19:26

just happened. It just happened like six hours ago. I don't know.

19:29

I really enjoyed that interview, Tom. I remember it,

19:31

yeah. I enjoyed it as well. How

19:34

did winning the Giller change things for you?

19:36

Your life, your career, whatever. Yeah.

19:38

It's incredibly like liberating, right? Like

19:41

to know that you've

19:43

achieved something that you don't need to achieve again or you

19:45

don't need to prove X or Y. And I'm rolling my

19:49

eyes at this comparison I'm about to make, right? But

19:51

do you need, like, does Beyoncé

19:54

need to sort of win a Grammy

19:56

again, right? You know, I feel like

19:59

there comes a point where, okay, you

20:02

have been sort of granted permission to do whatever you

20:05

want to do with your mind and your life. And

20:08

that is the greatest gift. I mean, to

20:10

symbolize it in the form of an award

20:12

or something, that's one thing. But I wish

20:14

we could like bestow this on people without

20:16

the actual like material award or checks or

20:18

whatever to say like, hey, you

20:21

are free to live your life and to do whatever

20:23

you want with your life. That's sort of

20:25

big, big gift of the giller for me. Help

20:28

me understand that better. If I think you are saying what

20:30

I think you are saying, it's really interesting. So

20:35

what the giller gave

20:37

you, especially for a debut novelist,

20:39

is sort of permission that like, hey, you

20:41

got some value here. You

20:43

should write. You should do this. And

20:45

you are saying, wouldn't it be nice if we all

20:48

had that without it? All had that. Right. Yeah.

20:53

right? To be more deeply myself rather than

20:55

to try

20:58

to please or try to do the right thing

21:00

or all of those other things. I really limit

21:03

our behavior. And it

21:05

would be great if we everybody had permission to

21:07

actually be themselves, like

21:09

truly and fully, right, as if they had

21:11

already won at their lives, right, instead of

21:13

trying to sort of prove that it. Yeah.

21:17

Yeah. Yeah. I

21:19

mean, how lovely would that be? I feel like we all. Some

21:21

people snatch it, right? Some people just take it. They

21:24

refuse. They don't wait for it to be sort of awarded

21:26

on them. And that kind of courage

21:28

I really admire. But

21:30

I guess if nobody's giving it to you, you take it. In

21:32

the latest book of Essie's Disorientation, you opened the book with

21:35

a quote. I wanted to read that live because I thought

21:37

it might have something to do with the theme

21:40

you chose for your

21:42

Massey lecture. It's by Audre

21:44

Lorde. Do you want me to read it?

21:46

Yeah. All right. I

21:48

have come to believe over and over again that what

21:50

is the most important to me must be spoken, made

21:52

verbal and shared, even at

21:54

the risk of having it bruised and misunderstood. Opening

21:58

the book with that, it also feels... like

22:00

your lecture? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

22:02

Oh, great, great isolation there. Good,

22:04

good point. Hey, I've never

22:06

felt myself a scene had you never been higher

22:08

in an interview in my entire life. Whatever the

22:11

producers are behind the scenes. Right out there, Caitlin

22:13

Swan out there, by the way. Yeah, you think

22:15

I wrote that down? I'm an AI and I've

22:17

been trying

22:19

to tell you that from the very beginning. It's

22:21

really excellent. Yeah,

22:24

so Orchard Lord, what she's suggesting here is that

22:26

even if people misunderstand you, even if you're going

22:28

to get cancelled, even if you are saying the

22:30

wrong thing, it's worth taking the

22:32

risk to say it. And

22:35

for me, that's important. That book is about

22:37

sort of race, right in the world. And

22:41

I hadn't really written directly about it. And it's

22:43

a subject that most people sort of avoid. And

22:45

I want to sort of get all of my

22:47

thoughts in one place about race. And

22:49

when people kept asking me, this was during, you

22:51

know, Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, all this

22:53

people kept asking me for thoughts and comments

22:55

and opinion on race. And

22:58

they were all inside, right? Just not

23:00

really organized. Your thoughts were

23:02

inside. Yeah. What else would they be? But

23:05

not really organized. I was with the people. I

23:07

was like, we were all inside also because it

23:09

was a pandemic. We couldn't go outside anyway. But

23:11

not systemically organized and all of that. And

23:15

I decided to take the risk to write

23:17

about race, right? Even if I

23:20

was going to offend people,

23:23

even if I was going to say the wrong thing,

23:25

but my commitment was to be as honest to myself

23:28

at that particular point, right? Who knows? Like my

23:30

thinking on some of those points has actually evolved

23:32

right in the last few years. But

23:35

at that moment, that was true. Yeah.

23:37

And it was a risk. And I

23:39

took it. First

23:44

part of my conversation with the brilliant Ian

23:46

Williams, who is the author of Reproduction, which

23:48

won the Giller Prize in 2019. We just

23:50

announced he'll be the mass electricist this year,

23:53

meaning he'll be traveling across the country, giving

23:55

a talk. His talk will

23:57

be about conversations. He'll be in

23:59

Sydney, Nova. Scotia, Halleweet in

24:01

Nunavut, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Victoria,

24:04

BC, and Toronto, Ontario. More

24:06

of my conversation with Ian coming up. We're

24:08

going to talk about courage, which we often

24:10

think of as saying what no one

24:12

else is going to talk about. I'm

24:14

just going to say, everyone else is thinking, I'm

24:16

going to say that's courageous. Ian will talk about

24:18

how courage can often be listening. Plus,

24:20

Dame Magdalene O'Dundo will talk about why

24:23

she spends more time on the inside

24:25

of her sculptures

24:28

than the outside, even though we can't see

24:30

it. This is cute. Think

24:49

of your favorite one-hit wonder. Or that overpriced

24:51

toy your parents would never let you have.

24:53

Or that TV show that no one else

24:55

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Now what if we could fix it? I'm

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25:03

after 20 years of friendship, we are

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25:32

I'm Tom Power. Welcome back to Q. You're

25:34

in the middle of my conversation with one

25:36

of the great minds in Canada, the author,

25:38

poet, and professor Ian Williams. Ian was the

25:40

winner of the Giller Prize, Canada's richest literary

25:42

prize in 2019. And

25:45

we just announced, and this is pretty cool, that

25:47

Ian is this year's Massey Lecturist, which is a

25:49

role in Canada that's been around since the early

25:51

60s. I love it.

25:54

It's like a great thinker travels

25:56

all across Canada to

25:59

speak in... theaters on

26:01

a topic of their choosing. Ian

26:03

will be going to Sydney, Kailuit,

26:05

Saskatoon, Victoria, and Toronto. And

26:08

for Ian's lecture, he's landed on the topic

26:10

of conversation, which

26:12

is broad. But

26:15

here's how Ian talks about it. He's

26:17

going to get up there and talk about how to

26:20

have hard conversations that we need

26:22

to have with one another. How

26:24

we actually don't talk to each

26:26

other anymore. Is digital communication, texting

26:28

and DMing and all that, is

26:30

that really conversation, the

26:32

ability to disagree? And

26:35

what is courage really? It's fascinating to

26:37

hear his thoughts on it, in particular

26:39

around courage in conversations. And I think

26:41

oftentimes we think about courage, or courage

26:43

gets talked about in sort of the

26:45

modern discourse in conversations as, I'm going

26:47

to say the thing that everyone's thinking.

26:50

I'm going to say the thing that everyone's thinking. I got the courage to

26:52

do it. What about the courage

26:54

to be silent? What

26:56

about the courage to actually listen? That's

26:59

where our conversation picks up. Typically

27:01

we think about courage as the act to

27:03

sort of say something, especially if that's something

27:06

unpopular and to power. But

27:10

I think, in fact, a number of the

27:12

positions that we hold right now are not

27:14

courageous positions. They're sort of popular liberal positions.

27:19

And we have a whole army of supporters

27:21

ready to sort of at our back. They're

27:23

positions that we can just step into without

27:25

forming. We can just occupy them without sort

27:27

of developing them. And I wish

27:29

that more of us would actually come to a point

27:32

where we develop our opinions instead of just kind of

27:34

like receive and then sort of parrot them. So

27:37

courage normally is for the thing that's

27:39

sort of spoken. But

27:42

I think there's something to courageous

27:44

listening and courageous silence. And

27:47

I think we ought to realize that one half of

27:49

our conversations is in fact listening. You do this all

27:51

the time. You spend a lot of your time listening.

27:54

And to sort of flip the script

27:56

from the person in power or

27:58

the most important person in a conversation. conversation is

28:00

not the person speaking, but sometimes

28:03

the person listening. Some

28:05

groups have been listening for hundreds of years, right?

28:07

Now they're speaking and people are getting antsy because

28:09

they're not used to listening. So

28:13

I mean there's a kind of paradigm shift that we need

28:15

to sort of think about what the balance

28:17

is in a conversation. Is

28:20

it courageous to speak

28:22

or is it courageous to sort of hold your peace

28:24

until someone else has said something contradictory to

28:26

you and like not rush in to sort

28:29

of like contradict them and to sort of

28:31

prove your point, but to just

28:33

kind of like listen graciously to let it settle, to

28:35

offer no comment or whatever and just let it be.

28:39

It's a hard thing to learn. Yeah. I

28:41

found it hard. Yeah, it's fairly. It's, yeah,

28:43

but it's possible. And when you can

28:45

get there, it's... It's

28:48

revolutionary. Yeah. It's revolutionary

28:50

in a conversation because all the defenses, all the armor

28:52

sort of comes down and we're just kind

28:55

of like in this free flowing exploratory space. Have

28:57

you seen that movie? That

28:59

trilogy of like Ethan Hawke walking around

29:01

Paris with Julie Delpy? Awaking the... Yeah,

29:04

Before Sunrise. Before Sunrise. All of that

29:06

stuff. I haven't seen it. Go

29:09

see. I mean it's old. Every 10 years

29:11

they redo it, right? But that kind of conversation we could have

29:13

more of, right? Conversations without agenda, conversations

29:15

without like the intent to persuade

29:18

and to convert just conversations for

29:20

the sake of just relating one human

29:23

being to another. Yeah. Conversations

29:25

where, and I don't know if you struggle

29:27

with this the way I do, conversations while

29:29

the other person's talking, I'm not thinking about

29:31

the thing I'm going to say. Yeah. Yeah.

29:34

Yeah. Are

29:36

you listening to me or are you just waiting for your turn to speak? Yeah.

29:39

And too often is that it's the second one,

29:41

right? I'm excited to hear you have these Massey

29:43

Luckdell. Well, thank you, Tom. I'm looking forward to

29:46

it. You're going all across

29:48

the country. Sydney? Yeah.

29:51

Staring in hell. Sydney? Keep

29:53

reading. Yeah. In Halloween?

29:56

Yeah. Have you been before? Never

29:58

been. Beautiful. I

30:00

mean just the kindest most wonderful people and we had a grand

30:02

old time. What time of year were you there? So

30:05

geez Louise April and May

30:08

yeah, it was still dark. It was still

30:10

dark all year all day And

30:12

I mean I got a real kick out of that. When

30:15

are you going? October.

30:18

October? It'll be late. That's okay.

30:20

Saskatoon? Yeah. That's

30:22

the one province I've not been to actually

30:24

yeah, so flown over Saskatchewan

30:26

looking forward to that Caitlin looks one out

30:29

there from Jesus, Saskatchewan Great

30:32

Victoria Victoria. I guess that's the only

30:34

major Canadian city. I've never been to

30:36

why not. I mean You

30:41

asked me as if you asked me as if I made

30:43

the call as if I was like I'm never going out

30:45

there obvious place to be you've been to the island though

30:47

No, never been to the island. Oh, I

30:49

never had a never had a occasion to go out there. I would have

30:51

you know, I Should

30:54

That's your summer plan. I would love to tell you

30:56

what I want to go out to the like the islands

30:59

I want to go to like Salt Spring. Oh, yeah,

31:01

you don't know you that yeah Yeah, I used to live

31:03

in in BC, right? So did a lot of traveling

31:05

around there, but I am curious about like the minutia

31:07

of going on the road in Canada Oh,

31:09

whether you have like a famous favorite restaurant, you know, I know

31:11

that's kind of neat, right? Sort

31:14

of make a whole thing out of it. Oh,

31:16

I don't know man. I asked Caitlin. She said

31:18

the Broadway cafe in Saskatoon What

31:21

for like diner diner kind of stuff? I

31:23

love diners. Yeah diner you Seem

31:25

like a good time. Are you yeah enough and spread

31:27

it and you just kind of like yeah Just eat

31:30

away right a white china cup of coffee, but you

31:32

need the right person to be in a diner with

31:34

yeah I need good company In

31:36

lovely to talk to you as always I

31:43

love those diners by myself Ian Williams is

31:45

I don't know what that says about me.

31:47

Ian Williams is an author and

31:50

professor at the University of Toronto He

31:52

has been chosen as this year's

31:54

Massey Lecturist which means he'll be

31:57

traveling across Canada speaking about how

31:59

to have conversations with one

32:01

another. He'll be in Sydney, Nova

32:04

Scotia, Ekaluit, Nunavut, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Victoria,

32:06

B.C., Toronto, Ontario. These

32:08

lectures will be broadcast as

32:11

part of CBC's ideas.

32:25

So when you walk into a museum, and

32:28

it could be any kind of museum, modern

32:30

art, historic art, natural history, the

32:32

one thing you see, and I

32:34

only realized that in this interview in all of

32:36

these different types of museums, is ceramics or pottery.

32:39

Think about it. When was the last time you

32:41

went to a museum and you didn't see ceramics

32:43

or pottery in some way? And

32:45

it makes sense because since the beginning of civilization, they've been

32:47

a big part of our lives, whether eating

32:49

out of them, storing food in them, or making

32:51

part out of them. And that last part, making

32:53

art out of them, well,

32:56

ceramics has not necessarily always been taken

32:58

seriously as an art form. And that's

33:00

been changing thanks to the works of

33:02

artists like Dame Magdalene O'Dundo, who has

33:04

been called one of the greatest living

33:06

ceramicists and her work's been shown in

33:08

some of the biggest collections in

33:10

the world. Now listen, it's hard to describe

33:12

Dame Magdalene's pottery and do justice on the

33:14

radio. So we put some of the photos

33:16

up of her pottery at CBC Q on

33:18

Instagram. If you want to follow along

33:21

and have a look at them while you're listening

33:23

to this conversation. But yeah, we talk a little

33:25

bit about pottery. We talk a little bit

33:27

about why the insides of her pieces, even

33:29

though you can't see them, are maybe more

33:31

important than the outside. But I

33:33

wanted to start with when she fell in love with

33:35

clay. Hi, how are you? Welcome to the show.

33:38

Thank you very much. I want to start

33:40

by talking a little bit about

33:42

clay. You say that the first

33:45

time you encountered clay,

33:47

you fell in love with it. What

33:50

happened? Where were you? What did

33:52

you fall in love with? Gosh,

33:57

that's 45, 45. years

34:00

off? Not

34:02

yesterday, what you're saying. Not

34:04

yesterday, a good question. I

34:07

think the sensation

34:10

of the material just moving into

34:12

one's hand and just the

34:18

recognition of being able to

34:21

manipulate the clay was really

34:23

a life changer

34:25

really because up to

34:27

then I had never worked in a

34:30

plastic material. I had only

34:32

worked as a graphic

34:35

designer and worked in advertising.

34:38

And I just think I probably had

34:40

started in the wrong business.

34:42

And so when I

34:46

touched clay, I think there

34:50

was a feeling of finding

34:52

myself. How do you end

34:54

up doing it in the first place?

34:56

Like if you were studying more graphic things,

35:00

how do you end up putting your hands in a bunch of clay to

35:02

begin with? I just ended up, I

35:05

worked and trained

35:07

in commercial art and

35:09

advertising in Nairobi in

35:12

Kenya. And

35:14

then I had this opportunity to come to

35:16

England and to go on and

35:18

do a foundation course. And

35:21

I happened to go into the

35:23

ceramics department and

35:26

met this wonderful woman who

35:28

was quietly

35:31

sat in a corner and

35:33

showing students

35:35

how to build work

35:38

using coils and also

35:41

throwing on the wheel.

35:43

And I just

35:45

thought I stared

35:48

at her and all the other

35:50

students who are much

35:52

more competent in the work. And

35:54

I just thought how magical to

35:56

be able to form

35:59

a piece of work. from the beginning to

36:01

the end. And,

36:03

and it did have it kind of,

36:06

you know, sort of had this natural

36:11

human quality to it.

36:15

And I remember

36:17

the sensation, the feeling of

36:20

elation, and

36:22

the joy that I

36:25

kind of received the material. But

36:28

I'm not really sure, I can't

36:30

describe the

36:34

physical experience of remembering,

36:38

as it were. Help me understand

36:41

this better too. There's a couple of times so

36:44

far in our conversation, and

36:46

in the reading I

36:49

did, I get ready for

36:51

this conversation, where you talked a little

36:53

bit about the connections between clay,

36:57

ceramics, and humans,

36:59

like the human form.

37:02

Can you help me understand that? Like, what do you

37:04

mean by that? What are the parallels there? Otters

37:08

have, you know, hopeful

37:11

centuries referred to what

37:13

they made in

37:16

terms of the

37:18

human body. Because a

37:22

vessel, to a

37:24

potter, a vessel or a

37:27

figurine, has a body,

37:29

has feet, has

37:32

a waist, has a neck, a

37:35

lid, which can act as

37:37

the head. And

37:39

quite often you'll hear potters refer

37:41

to a lip, because

37:46

they're forming a jug. And

37:49

the terminology used

37:52

by potters reference

37:56

the body. Now, you know, I'm

38:01

not sure philosophically whether I can

38:03

actually explain that, but you

38:07

know, whether those terminology

38:11

are as long as man

38:13

has lived or whether they're biblical

38:15

and you know, sort of the

38:17

terms I used in a lot of

38:19

literature as well. But

38:21

it is just a natural thing to

38:24

say you are throwing a mug,

38:27

for argument's sake, and

38:29

the mug has a body because

38:32

it is a vessel and a human

38:34

being is a vessel that

38:36

contains what

38:39

it is we make as human. And

38:42

a mug will contain liquid that

38:45

nourishes and you need that nourishment

38:47

to nourish your body. And

38:50

therefore you have a handle that

38:53

you handle the mug with and

38:56

you have a lip, you have to pay attention to

38:58

the lip on the mug because

39:00

it's going to come into contact with

39:03

your lips. So I think

39:06

the terminologies have

39:08

always referenced the

39:10

body. Now I am

39:12

not as a philosopher, I wouldn't

39:14

be able to tell you why. But

39:17

every, every, everything I've read,

39:20

whether it's been in, in

39:22

beliefs, religious beliefs, or

39:25

philosophical thinking has always

39:28

ended up with associating, say,

39:31

with the body. And the body

39:34

is the

39:37

greatest muse for a

39:39

potter anywhere. How

39:41

about you? Is

39:43

the body the muse for you

39:45

in your work? Yes.

39:48

And for me, I think one

39:50

of the, you know,

39:53

having talked about the beginning of my

39:56

falling in love with clay, I think

39:59

my main... greatest

40:01

moment of realizing how

40:04

important the

40:06

body, the human body was

40:09

to my making

40:12

my whole future

40:15

of being a ceramicist

40:17

was just standing

40:20

around watching people moving up

40:22

and down a staircase at

40:25

a railway station. I was waiting

40:27

for my train. And just

40:29

looking at the

40:32

interaction between human

40:35

beings, the spaces that

40:38

are left in between that create

40:41

the body, the

40:43

solid bodies around

40:46

us are just fascinating and

40:48

movement. Everybody has

40:51

a movement that says something that

40:54

leads them to somewhere that

40:57

spells out what they are feeling,

40:59

the emotions they are feeling. It's

41:02

very, very interesting. And I just

41:04

remember watching this amazing

41:08

young woman, about

41:10

five foot six or something like that,

41:12

walking up. She'd

41:15

just come off a train walking up

41:17

the staircase. She was very pregnant, carrying

41:20

the stuff that she was going

41:22

to need, perhaps, you know, 24

41:26

hours later. And

41:29

in the highest high heel

41:31

shoes I'd ever seen, with

41:33

her hair tied at the back, you

41:35

know, in a ponytail. And I just

41:37

thought, how beautiful. She was a vessel,

41:39

she was carrying some life

41:43

within that body. She

41:46

was already caring for

41:48

it, because she was already shopping

41:50

for this creature.

41:54

But everything that was

41:58

about her was about containment

42:02

and happiness and

42:05

everything that is the

42:08

best of us as human beings.

42:12

We have other sides as well which I'm not

42:14

going to... No, but I understand what

42:16

you mean now. I mean, that's beautiful. I

42:20

want to close off by playing something for you

42:22

from this video you made for the exhibition in

42:24

Canada. And you said something in it

42:26

that struck us here and I wanted to ask you about

42:28

it. So let me just play it for you right now so

42:31

people can hear it. My

42:33

thinking process, my being and who

42:36

I am is defined by the

42:38

inside of those pieces. The

42:41

outside is the show that

42:43

I present to the public

42:45

and to the owner of the world. So

42:49

talk to me a little bit about that. What

42:52

do you mean by that? Did I really say

42:54

that? What

42:57

I mean by that is, you

43:00

know, when you're making something or when you're

43:03

painting or doing whatever it is, you're

43:05

manifesting a lot of thoughts within

43:09

yourself into this piece of work.

43:13

The thing with my pieces with,

43:16

as opposed to say a painting or

43:19

a ceramic that has a

43:21

lot of glazing and narrative

43:23

on it, is

43:26

that you can't really see what is

43:28

important in my

43:31

work, which is the interior side,

43:34

the inside of the work. The

43:37

literal inside of the work is

43:39

important. The literal inside of the

43:41

work. Which I can't really

43:44

see. I mean, I tried to peer in, but I can't really

43:46

see. No, and you're

43:48

not allowed to in the museum, unfortunately. Try

43:52

and stop me. That's

43:55

the meaningful part to you, the inside of this work? I

43:58

think the inside of the work is very important. And

44:00

the inside of me and you as a

44:02

person is really what

44:05

is important, isn't it? Yeah,

44:07

what you what, what kind of

44:09

fashion you dress up

44:12

in that outer

44:14

bit of yours is just show. It's

44:18

what we carry. That's why that,

44:20

that a

44:22

young pregnant woman for me remains

44:25

by muse

44:27

forever, because what

44:30

was contained in

44:33

that wonderful body was

44:36

going to kind of be let out

44:38

and be let loose, but it was

44:40

really precious. And the inside

44:42

of the pieces, for me, have to be

44:44

as carefully and

44:47

tenderly made as the

44:50

outside. And I

44:52

think without the inside, the

44:55

outside has no

44:57

meaning. The beauty of

44:59

clay is that it has this

45:01

capacity to to breathe,

45:03

especially because I don't fire

45:06

my work very high. So

45:08

they still breathe in

45:11

and out. There's

45:13

a process of osmosis going

45:15

in and they

45:17

both are important to each

45:20

other. But it is important that

45:22

the inside informs the

45:24

outside. Dame

45:29

Magdalene O'Dundo, the renowned ceramicist, you

45:32

can see your exhibition, A Dialogue

45:34

with Objects at Toronto's Gardiner Museum,

45:37

until April 21st. If you want to

45:39

see the images of Magdalene's pottery that she

45:41

was just talking about, go to our Instagram

45:43

page at CBC. If

46:01

the only thing Mike Post did was compose

46:04

this, the Rock-R-Files theme, legacy

46:06

cemented, right? But

46:08

instead, he played guitar on

46:10

I Got You, Babe by

46:13

Cher. He produced classical gas.

46:15

He discovered Kenny Rogers, and

46:17

he composed the Dun-Dun for Law &

46:19

Order, a conversation with one of the

46:21

most important figures in music history that

46:23

you may have never heard of. Mike

46:26

Post, tomorrow on the show. And

46:30

that is it for us today. Edna Burek, to

46:32

all those celebrating the end of Ramadan. We'll see

46:34

you tomorrow on the show. Later on. For

46:40

more CBC podcasts,

46:42

go to cbc.ca/podcasts.