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Episode image is a detail from the cover of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, published in 2019 by Fitzcarraldo Editions; design by Ray O’Meara.
Joining Charles Adrian for the 128th Second Hand Book Factory is Lithuanian performer, teacher and, recently, yoga practitioner Judita Vivas. They talk trees, language and identity, and a desire for non-Anglo writing.
Adventures In Black And White is a performance created by Judita Vivas and Miriam Gould on the subject of displacement and its aftermath. You can find out more about it here and you can watch the video trailer on YouTube here.
Miriam Gould is featured in Page One 123.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 22nd June, 2019.
Episode released: 10th March, 2020.
Book listing:
The Overstory by Richard Powers
In Other Words (In Altre Parole) by Jhumpa Lahiri (trans. Ann Goldstein)
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Jennifer Croft)
Links:
Adventures In Black And White trailer on YouTube
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 154th Page One. This is the 128th Second Hand Book Factory. My name is Charles Adrian and my guest this week, again in my flat in West London, is Judita Vivas.
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Judita Vivas
Hello.
Charles Adrian
Hi. Thank you very much for coming over. I'd forgotten that you've actually stayed here.
Judita Vivas
I did.
Charles Adrian
I don't know how I forgot that...
Judita Vivas
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... but it's lovely to have you back again.
Judita Vivas
Lovely to be back.
Charles Adrian
How do you describe yourself, Judi?
Judita Vivas
Oh gosh. It is a really difficult question. I think I'm not a fan of this question because...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Judita Vivas
... I'm one of those people who prefer asking questions about people rather than...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Ah. Okay.
Judita Vivas
... rather than really, kind of, talking about myself. It's just something I've noticed. But okay, if I had to describe myself, I would say that I am... I can't help it, I always go to the professional. That's some... something about me that is just there. I am a performer. I am also a teacher. I teach quite a lot. I am originally from Lithuania. I am quite into yoga recently. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I don't think I knew that.
Judita Vivas
That's a random one.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Judita Vivas
I'm trying to be very genuine and in the moment.
Judi and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Judita Vivas
You asked me to do this. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] It's very yogic. Yes, I did. I did ask you to spontaneously... Yeah, just for listeners, Judi was getting ready to prepare an answer and I said: “Stop. Don't do that. Just answer the question when it comes.” I was quite... I was quite mean, wasn't I?
Judita Vivas
No, it's fine. So I'm trying to be, like, a good person.
Judi and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
What's the book that you've brought that you like?
Judith Vivas
So the book is called The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Charles Adrian
Oh! I love that title. The Overstory.
Judita Vivas
Have you read it?
Charles Adrian
No, I haven't...
Judita Vivas
No.
Charles Adrian
... but it makes me think of the over-soul, which is a concept by Ralph Waldo Emerson that a very... like, one of the very early guests...
Judita Vivas
Aha.
Charles Adrian
... on the podcast introduced me to.
Judita Vivas
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
I don't know if there's any rela... relationship between the two concepts.
Judita Vivas
We shall see. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Tell me about it.
Judita Vivas
Shall I tell you about the book?
Charles Adrian
Yes. Either t... or, if you want to read, you can read. What would you like to do first?
Judita Vivas
Maybe read first.
Charles Adrian
[agreeing] Mmm hmm.
Judita Vivas
I think... Yeah. I think read first. So, a little thing about it. There's quite a few... sometimes a bit exotic plant and tree names...
Charles Adrian
Ooo wonderful! I love that.
Judita Vivas
[speaking over] ... in the first title. So I apologise if I pronounce them wrong.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Judita Vivas
I tried to prepare but it's some... it's just... Yeah. But I'll just go for it.
FIRST THERE WAS nothing. Then there was everything.
Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages.
A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.
It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.
It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.
It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.
The woman does exactly that. Signals rain down around her like seeds.
Talk runs far afield tonight. The bends in the alders speak of long-ago disasters. Spikes of pale chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen; soon they will turn into spiny fruits. Poplars repeat the wind's gossip. Persimmons and walnuts set out their bribes and rowans their blood-red clusters. Ancient oaks have [sic] prophecies of future weather. The several hundred kinds of hawthorn laugh at the single name they're forced to share. Laurels insists that even death is nothing to lose sleep over.
Something in the air's scent commands the woman: Close your eyes and think of willow. The weeping you see will be wrong. Picture an acacia thorn. Nothing in your thought will be sharp enough. What hovers right above you? What floats over your head right now - now?
Trees even further [sic] away join in: All the ways you imagine us - bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmeg's inverted spade, narled baja elephant trunks, the straight-up missile of a sal - are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There's always as much belowground as above.
Charles Adrian
Wow. There are all kinds of beautiful images in there.
Judita Vivas
Yes.
Charles Adrian
And associations.
Judita Vivas
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
I really like that. What happens...? I mean, what's the... what is the... I have no sense of what this book is going to be.
Judita Vivas
[laughs] It's incredible.
Charles Adrian
[laughing] Yeah!
Judita Vivas
I found it recommended online in one of those, like, you know, list of...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Judita Vivas
... contemporary writers and what to read, da da da. But also, I was... for one of my performance projects, which hopefully will continue in September, we are looking into trees.
Charles Adrian
Ah.
Judita Vivas
And we're looking into the myth of Daphne and how she transforms into a tree when she's chased by Apollo. And, again, something just clicked, you know... when you see a title and, like, a quick blurb about the book and you go: “Ah! Okay! Maybe that... that would be useful for... for the project.” But also, I was looking for a contemporary writer who I haven't read yet and who would, kind of, surprise me. I was looking to be surprised. Does that make sense?
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Judita Vivas
[laughing] Yes.
Charles Adrian
Yes it does.
Judita Vivas
So the book is really super... I mean, it's quite complex. It is definitely all about trees. It has trees in all shapes and... and... and formations throughout. The contents... I'm just showing it to you now... it's, kind of, also tree-like. So you've got roots, you've got trunk, you've got crown, you've got seeds...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm. Okay.
Judita Vivas
[speaking over] ... and some things in between as well.
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Judita Vivas
So... so the whole structure of the book is... is like a tree. And then it's... it's made of a series of different storylines, which... Some of them, kind of, interact with each other, some of them are just there on their own. And I don't want to give too much away but I think the most fascinating thing for me was that each story has one particular tree intertwined into it in a different way. So there's a tree... yeah, kind of, included in the story. Each time differently. And, you know, honestly, I'll never look at trees the same way...
Judi and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Judita Vivas
... ever again. It has the whole latest research of how trees communicate with each other...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh right. Yeah. Fascinating stuff.
Judita Vivas
[speaking over] ... how the whole underground root systems... how they help each other. So it has all of that but also different ways, different interpretations of, like, you know, a person's life and a tree's life and how they... how they communicate with each other.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Wow! That sounds amazing.
Judita Vivas
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Well, thank you very much.
Judita Vivas
No worries.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
The book that I've brought for you, that I think you should have is... I don't remember if we've talked about this. Were we talking about Jhumpa Lahiri once? We might not have been.
Judita Vivas
Give me more context. I don't remember.
Charles Adrian
So this is a book called In Other Words. No, I don't think it can have been with you that I was talking about this.
Judita Vivas
Maybe not.
Charles Adrian
I... Somebody, a while ago, told me that I should read some Jhumpa Lahiri and I haven't read anything else by her but I just happened to come across this in a bookshop.
Judita Vivas
Yes.
Charles Adrian
And it has on the cover a picture of her sitting in a beautiful library with wooden shelves. It's an old library with wooden shelves and old chairs with leather cushions, kind of, stapled on somehow with rivets. It's wonderful. And the story is about... I mean, it's not... it's not a novel but the story of the book is about her learning Italian.
Judita Vivas
[interested] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
And she writes it in Italian. It's been translated by somebody else... Ann Goldstein. And she talks... In one of the chapters, she talks about why she hasn't translated it into English herself. It was the first thing that she's published... I think the fir... well, the first book that she published that was writt... that she's written in Italian. And it's about language and identity. Her mother tongue is Bengali.
Judita Vivas
[interested] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Her parents speak Bengali but they moved to America either when she was very small or before she was born so she grew up speaking English and the language that she'd written in up ’til this point was English. And Italian is, in a sense, her chosen language. And the book is the story of her finding... finding a way to navigate this new language, which is hers and also not hers because she doesn't master it. But yet it cor... it means that there's... she has a new freedom in it because it hasn't had any other associations for her. It's just something that she wants to... it's a language that she wants to express herself in. I als... I love it because I, also, have learned Italian.
Judita Vivas
[interested] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
I don't have her same... Obviously, I don't have her same story but the account... her account of finding herself in a new language resonates with me very, very strongly. And the idea of of choosing this language and the first steps, which are so awkward and embarrassing and difficult and frustrating. And then the time when you can start to really move around by yourself in this language. And the knowledge that you will never be Italian and that you will... it will always be awkward. She talks... At one point, she talks about the number of people that she gets to read her work and... and give her suggestions. And there are a huge number of corrections.
Judita Vivas
Yes.
Charles Adrian
And I find that interesting because she's asking Italian speakers to correct her work but, at the same time, it's still very much her prose. And I think, even in the English translation, you hear the quality of her Italian prose, which is very spare and very precise but it's a very beautiful... She's constructed a very beautiful style, I think. And this first image I also very much like, in this first page. She's talking about swimming across a lake. And I like it because I feel like it's a really good metaphor for striking out into... in a new language but I have also found myself swimming across... literally swimming across a lake as she describes and I feel like, yeah, there's a... there's a, kind of... there's a fear to it and an excitement to it which she captures really nicely. I think it's a perfect metaphor for what she's talking about. So:
THE CROSSING
I want to cross a small lake. It really is small, and yet the other shore seems too far away, beyond my abilities. I'm aware that the lake is very deep in the middle, and even though I know how to swim I'm afraid of being alone in the water, without any support.
The lake I'm talking about is in a secluded, isolated place. To get there you have to walk a short distance, through a silent wood. On the other side you can see a cottage, the only house on the shore. The lake was formed just after the last ice age, millennia ago. The water is clear but dark, heavier than salt water, with no current. Once you're in, a few yards from the shore, you can no longer see the bottom.
In the morning I observe people coming to the lake, as I do. I watched them cross it in a confident, relaxed manner, stop for some minutes in front of the cottage, then return. I count their arm strokes. I envy them.
For a month I swim around the lake, never going too far out. This is a more significant distance - the circumference compared to the diameter. It takes me more than half an hour to make this circle. Yet I'm always close to...
There you go.
Judita Vivas
That's beautiful. Wow. Thank you so much, Adrian.
[page turning]
Charles Adrian
What's the book that you think I should have?
Judita Vivas
So, the book that I picked for you... This happened quite randomly. So, you invited me to do this podcast a while ago and then the last time we met was a few weeks back...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Judita Vivas
... I think. And just before we met, I stopped over at the bookshop and I was craving for a book that is... Talking about language! Ooo!
Charles Adrian
Mmm!
Judita Vivas
Things beginning to connect! [laughs] I was craving for a book that is not written by someone British or American.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Judita Vivas
I was craving for non-anglo writing. For some reason. I was, like: “Okay, I want... I need some... like, a different flavour, you know...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Right.
Judita Vivas
I've been really immersed in this culture. I want a bit of something else.” And... Yeah, and I spotted this and I really hope I'll pronounce her name in the correct way. So she's Polish. Apparently... I've never heard of her before... Apparently really quite well known in Poland now... the writer. Her name is Olga Tokarczuk. I think that's how you say her name.
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Judita Vivas
And the book is called Flights. It's... Okay, it's... it took me a little while to get into it, I'm not going to lie. Stylistically, it's snippets of very short... almost like taking a capture of something, interspersed with longer stories. There's no... Well, there's different through lines, maybe, conceptually, in terms of different ideas but there isn't, like, a proper through line as a narrative... a story. But through it runs these lines of... of moving forward, of traveling, of migrating, as well as all things body.
Charles Adrian
Okay.
Judita Vivas
But two... two things came to me. So, one: I found it fascinating because it really connects to... I did a PhD and my PhD was all about the physical body. And I... One of those sections was about anatomy so the actual flesh and bone and everything in between. And, from that perspective, it was really nice to revisit, almost, my old my old ideas and old research. And then I was thinking about you and, when we were working together on Adventures In Black And White...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Mmm hmm.
Judita Vivas
... on the... on the performance.
Charles Adrian
So that was the performance that you made with Miriam Gould, who's also been a guest on the podcast.
Judita Vivas
Yes. Amazing! [laughs] I remember a very brief... and I'm not sure, was it a conversation? Or was it just a kind of fleeting, fleeting remark or something? When you said... You were so incredibly helpful as a dramaturg on that production... on that piece. But you said: “But I myself don't really have the experience of migration or...
Charles Adrian
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Judita Vivas
... or deportation, or, you know... or...” What's the other word I'm looking for? “Displacement.”
Charles Adrian
Displacement. Right. Yeah. Mmm hmm.
Judita Vivas
So... And a lot of that is... is in the book in different ways.
Charles Adrian
[interested] Mmm.
Judita Vivas
And I was like...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Interesting.
Judita Vivas
”Mmm. Actually, yeah, maybe that's going to be something... not to help you understand it better but just to give you a slightly different...
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Judita Vivas
... perspectives about the same thing, maybe.”
Charles Adrian
Beautiful.
Judita Vivas
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Oh, thank you.
Judita Vivas
HERE I AM
I'm a few years old. I'm sitting on the window sill, surrounded by strewn toys and toppled-over block towers and dolls with bulging eyes. It's dark in the house, and the air in the room slowly cools, dims. There's no one else here: they've left, they're gone, though you can still hear their voices dying down, that shuffling, the echoes of their footsteps, some distant laughter. Out the window the courtyard is empty. Darkness spreads softly from the sky, settling on everything like black dew.
The worst part is the stillness, visible, dense - a chilly dusk and the sodium-vapour lamps' frail light already mired in darkness just a few feet from its source.
Nothing happens - the march of darkness halts at the door to the house, and all the clamour of fading falls silent, makes a thick skin like on hot milk cooling. The contours of the buildings against the backdrop of the sky stretch out into infinity, slowly lose their sharp angles, corners, edges. The dimming light takes the air with it - there's nothing left to breathe. Now the dark soaks into my skin. Sounds have curled up inside themselves, withdrawn their snail's eyes; the orchestra of the world has departed, vanishing into the park.
That evening is the limit of the world, and I've just happened upon it, by accident. while playing, not in search of anything. I've discovered it because I was left unsupervised for a bit. I've clearly found myself in a trap now, and I can't get out. I'm a few years old, I'm sitting on the windowsill, and I'm looking out onto the chilled courtyard. The lights in the school's kitchen are extinguished; everyone has left. All the doors are closed, hatches down, blinds lowered. I'd like to leave, but there's nowhere to go. My own presence is the only thing...
Charles Adrian
Wow. Thank you so much.
Judita Vivas
You're welcome.
Charles Adrian
I'm going to look forward to reading that. Oh, thank you so much for doing this.
Judita Vivas
Thank you.
Charles Adrian
This has been lovely. Thank you, Judi.
Judita Vivas
Thank you.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]