Daniel Davis Wood interviews Jeremy Fernando.
Questions of literary form are difficult to resolve, and probably moot anyway, when it comes to Jeremy Fernando’s The Adventures of Brandy & Bach. Recently published by Delere Press, Brandy & Bach looks somewhat like a collection of short stories—discrete episodes in the lives of its characters, and not just the two of its title—and Fernando himself refers to its narrative entries as “tales.” But it’s also a kind of hybrid text, shot through with interstitial and paratextual materials, not to mention illustrations; and yet, even as it breaks down into fragments, it might aspire to being read as a very slim novel. Certainly, by the end, it feels like a holistic piece of work, as its final pages supply a resolution to an almost invisible narrative arc that extends back to its opening scenes.
In an early response to the collection/hybrid text/novel, 3:AM’s Fiction Editor, Daniel Davis Wood, described it as “very delicate in its handling of tone, flirting with whimsy but never quite allowing it to tip over into anything twee — tempering its own sense of innocence and playfulness with a streak of sobriety — and the turning-over of philosophical ideas is done with uncommon charm. Uncommon, that is, in the sense that philosophy and charm don’t usually (or naturally) pair up, and still less when there are cats in the mix.” The cats in question are the eponymous adventurers, denizens of a Singaporean apartment block, whose comings and goings are observed and recorded by an acerbic (and similarly non-human) narrator. Shortly after the release of Brandy & Bach, Jeremy Fernando spoke to Daniel about the origins and the light-hearted outlook of this book of multiple forms.
3:AM: I’d like to kick off with a couple of things that readers of The Adventures of Brandy & Bach will notice at the outset. The first is that the book opens with a few epigraphs from an eclectic array of literary figures — Lispector, Montaigne, et al — but it’s Jacques Derrida who gets pride of place. You begin with a quote from ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am,’ his famous and funny analysis of what happens inside his own head when he steps out of the shower naked and finds his cat watching him. The second thing is that this book is about two cats, Brandy and Bach, whose conversations with one another are overheard, understood, and partially written down by a gecko named Cicak.
Fundamentally, then, as a book about talking animals, Brandy & Bach starts with something of a whimsical premise. And yet, as I wrote to you in my initial response, “it’s very delicate in its handling of tone, flirting with whimsy but never quite allowing itself to tip over into anything twee — tempering its own sense of innocence and playfulness with a streak of sobriety.” Another way of saying this is that it’s a very humble book, partly because it’s driven more by observations rather than by dramatic stakes, but mostly because of the lightness of the language.
What route did you follow towards this sort of writing? Are the book’s gentle cadences a result of your default mode — an outgrowth of your natural approach — or the products of intense forethought, deliberation, revision?
JF: Without meaning to sound flippant, I truly believe that this book — or, more accurately, this series of tales involving Brandy, Bach, and Cicak — came to me.
Firstly, it came over the course of many conversations with my dear friends Maya Marchand and Sorelle Henricus, where after many teas, okay gins, one of us, probably Maya, quipped how much fun it would be to know what cats might be saying about us, about others, about the world; in particular the two cats we had seen lounging at the void deck we had passed umpteen times. “It’ll be somewhere between seeing the world through their eyes and simultaneously watching them from above,” mused Sorelle, astutely reminding us about the impossibility of knowing another, despite this being the very basis of all relationship, not to mention responsibility. No surprise, really, seeing as she is a great reader of Derrida. So, also no surprise that JD was one of the (among many) spirits twirling with us in the room.
And these spirits followed me as I started to try to write; not so much to create but to write-alongside these two cats and our gecko friend, who slowly slowly whispered their names to me, what they think of their worlds: and I can only hope I managed to do them a modicum of justice. Cicak would almost certainly insist on hoping: she still maintains herself as the writer of these tales (and who knows, she might well be right! … “of cos I am!”) despite my process of waiting, listening, and then dashing like mad to a keyboard (“how can anyone who doesn’t use a quill call themselves a writer, snort”) whenever I managed to hear their voices.
3:AM: So you were caught up in something like a patchwork process, putting together pieces of real conversation, observations, reading materials? But then there’s a playfully self-reflexive aspect to it as well. Cicak, for example, poses questions about authorship — “wait, are you narrating me?” she asks at one point near the end — and, as in this Q&A, she’s also very vocal on the subject of who has “authority” over what gets written…
JF: I think Kathy Acker calls what I’m trying to do “writing with other texts.” I would also call it getting out of the way so the text can write. And this is by no means a disavowal of what is written, what I have signed-off on, have underwritten as it were: after all, we can never know if something is an idea we have thought up, if a thought has come to us, or if it were merely voices in our heads—not that the three can truly be distinguished, let alone delineated. And I’d like to imagine I managed to float out of the way enough for Brandy, Bach, Cicak, and their mötley crüe of friends to speak. Then again, maybe Michel Foucault was right when he quipped, “perhaps the one who wrote the book is the one who misunderstood it.” He probably had a wry grin on his face when saying that, at least I’d like to think so, but I do certainly agree that there is always more than one text within a book (“mine’s better … And I reckon MF’s being coy cos deep down he knows Insanity wrote them!”).
All I can really say is about my writing, my approach to writing, and the writing I try to make is: writing is my primary mode of not just expressing thought, but of thinking itself. And, whenever attempting to write, I try to maintain the possibility of conceiving writing as scribere, scratching — onto, into, out of — tearing, opening; as an attempt at maintaining questions, perhaps even quests, in what is inscribed. And this relationship — between what is posited and the question that remains — is something that I attempt to explore intensely, to intensely explore. Or, perhaps, it explores me — and I writhe (“as you deserve to, thief of my text!”) — as being open to possibilities means I have concede I am never in control of my thoughts, my writing. Sometimes whatever is written is strange, unfamiliar, other, to me (“of course it is, it’s me!”), and I can never quite control how it will be read: I can only write, read, and leave it to be read.
That is the risk of writing. And, as one of my favourite writers, Virginie Despentes, puts it in her inimitable way: “there is a genuine connection between writing and prostitution. Emancipating yourself, doing that which isn’t done, opening your private self, laying yourself open to the judgment of others, accepting the exclusion of the group.” And I suppose the only way I know how to try to remain light in light of these risks, these responsibilities — particularly the one of potentially speaking-over even when trying to be as faithful as possible to the voices I am trying to channel, be a medium to — is to attend to the craft of writing while remaining distracted. This mostly takes the form of having multiple conversations: in the form of other books, tunes, with other people, virtually or otherwise. Oftentimes, I find that these conversations open new textual possibilities I was blind to.
3:AM: Blindness: we’re circling back to Derrida; we’re returning to his territory.
JF: The spectre of JD is indeed very close again. The blindness in writing — of the reader, of meaning, of writing itself — is rather similar to that of love. Not divine love (which is always beyond us), nor erotic love (which seizes one completely), but philia, which comes from elsewhere, affects one, but also gives one the space to respond.
Hence, friendships are crucial to my writing. Friends have their effects on you, can sometimes open a question in you, might well unveil a new register, perhaps inseminate a thought, might even infect you — my writing is syphilitic. A boy can only dream.
3:AM: So then, with Derrida hovering over our shoulders, can we look again at that opening epigraph? It’s a wonderful counterweight to the lightness of the book’s own language. In ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am,’ Derrida is concerned with the radical otherness of the animal. He realises that although he may project his own anxieties onto his cat, the cat, as a sentient being in its own right, is absolutely unknowable to him; its consciousness is inaccessible. The idea of a gulf between the human and the animal deeply informs Brandy & Bach, as the cats gaze judgmentally at the “bipeds” whose lives intersect with their own. But as the one who was writing over this gulf — even bridging it, via your prose — how great a gulf do you think it really is?
JF: I suspect, insofar as that is ever possible to be on the same page as another, I would be with JD on this, particularly on the impossibility of knowing another. At the same time, we would have to do so as if we can, otherwise there is also no possibility of connection, of being-with. Which suggest imagination is always involved. Or perhaps, as my dear teacher and JD’s lifelong student and friend Avital Ronell might say, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading,” all while bearing in mind the constitutive blindness entailed in reading. So perhaps, when it comes to being-with another, along with attempts at responding and responsibility, we are always stumbling around in the dark. Add to that Jean-Luc Nancy’s beautiful observation that “space is first needed to touch” and we might well have an image of us being “lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year.” Yes, how I wish, how I wish you were here.
As if — is perhaps all we can do. Certainly when it comes to our relationship with the animals around us, with flora and fauna, with the world in which we are living, almost certainly with other people too. I’ll leave it to the psychoanalysts among us to speak of what this might imply about our relationships with ourselves: mirror mirror on the wall … Although it would be completely remiss of me not to give Cicak the last word (“finally, some sense!”) on reading: “… wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
3:AM: Well, but Cicak’s voice isn’t the only one that competes for attention in Brandy & Bach. There are lots of others. Scattered throughout the tales are brief extracts from many other texts — from diaries, letters, observational notes by a roll call of revered writers — Camus, Sartre, Breton, Kafka, and more — and each one relates to the writer’s impressions of, or relationships with, cats. And there are yet other texts, which look like handwritten notes, that offer commentary on how yet other writers regarded cats, sometimes even their own cats, and indeed it’s one of these that tells us that Foucault named his cat Insanity! What role do these extracts play in your project? How do you see these writers’ words sitting alongside the words of Brandy, Bach, and Cicak?
JF: A large part of my work, and how I make works, involves bringing words — so worlds — together. This is something my dear friend, Adibah Mustafa, pointed out once in response to one of my works. She herself writes some of the most gorgeous prose ever, infinitely better than mine, so I will let her speak on this point:
At the heart of Fernando’s approach is the exaltation of citation and annotation: each one constitutes in itself a longing to remember and to relate, manifesting as an act of translation, for it gathers something from ‘there’ and carries it over ‘here,’ where it quickens, as much as it’s quickened by, a new fit and form. What he takes from other texts in order to gift to, and through, this text Fernando sees as a waltz between two integrities, charging, electrically, one with the other — between what can be known and what still resists being known, what has been expressed and what continues to elude expression. And while both share a certain riveted centre of common ground, of contexts touching and tangling, complete communication (as in reach) or comprehension (as in grasp), with its companion air of finality, is an undesirable impossibility. Where a citation might lead, and nothing but unnecessary might follow, or vice versa, cannot fully be clear simply because it should not be — and Fernando performs this Janusian dance with confidence and compassion.
Although perhaps in this specific instance, bringing in the extracts was really just due to Cicak’s insistence we learn more about cats (“finally, some credit … wait, I meant you learn more about cats, I already know everything there is, even wrote a book about it”) and, as often happens, one thing led to another.
3:AM: You dropped the phrase “void deck” a little earlier, though I’m not sure how many readers will know what a void deck is. So, by way of explanation, I’ll just say this: they’re common architectural features in Singapore — where the book is set, and where you live — and they form a ground-floor space at the base of apartment blocks. Brandy & Bach opens with Cicak clinging to a wall in the void space, while the cats lounge about on the ground below.
It’s such a particular place, such an unusual site for a narrative situation, and it gives the book an unusual sense of space. And this sense of space has an undercurrent of irony, as Cicak remarks, since many peoples’ everyday lives unfold on top of the so-called “void.” I’m assuming that something about the liminality of the void deck appealed to you, but I’d like to hear your take on it. How does this architectural environment shape (or contain?) the book’s philosophy?
JF: The void deck is such a Singaporean thing, not just architecturally — although that is very much true, considering that close to 80% of us live in public housing, in high-rise buildings — but also psychically.
On the one hand, it is a wonderful idea, particularly in its conception as a gathering space which not been pre-designated for anything in particular. Anyone who lives in the area can make an application to hold an event in their void deck, be it a wedding, a wake, a birthday party, et cetera. Selected non-profit organisations who are deemed to be providing social benefits can also rent space there: childcare centres, kindergartens, community homes for the aged, kidney dialysis centres, family service centres, and so on. And, as importantly, or even more so for daily life, it’s a space for informal gatherings where people come together to chat, hang out, play.
Singapore, being Singapore (we really can’t seem to help ourselves when it comes to interdictions), there are an increasing number of prohibitions placed on the space; all under the auspices of public nuisances. For instance, ball games, gatherings deemed too noisy, and — the most Singaporean of complaints — anything real or imagined that would lower the resale value of long-term leases. One might even say that over time we’ve managed to void much of the joyful potential of the void deck (“if you were more like me, that is eloquent, you would have said we’ve managed to avoid all that is joy in the void”); a potential that has been present (but increasingly unfulfilled, even increasingly ignored) ever since 1973, when the then-Minister of National Development, E. W. Barker, made the decision to keep the ground floor of flats as open spaces for children to play.
Perhaps we’re all just afraid of it staring back at us, perhaps even more so of what we might see.
3:AM: Right, because it holds both a positive and a negative valence. It’s a site of potential for daily expressions of freedom and autonomy, but also a sort of bureaucratic imprisonment. And this dovetails with something that the Siamese cat Misty says, in ‘Brandy & Bach meet a house cat’: “the ones who believe in free will, they be always the easiest to enslave.” That’s quite a jaundiced view of human nature, much as we might expect it from a member of a species that looks down on us, figuratively, while literally looking up. Initially, I read it somewhat ironically — I don’t think that Misty is as free as she thinks she is — but now, when I reconsider the void space and its containment of human activity, I’m not so sure. Does Misty give a voice to the outlook of the book as a whole? In other words, does the book share the cats’ view that we bipeds are more tame, domesticated, and subservient to greater authorities than we might wish ourselves to be?
JF: In many ways, Misty is a bit of an amalgamation of the protagonists from the Nine Inch Nails song ‘Happiness in Slavery’ — I can well imagine her humming “I have found you can find happiness in slavery” as she waltzes around — and Paulene Réage’s wonderful Histoire d’O; her demeanour is probably closer to the elegance of O combined with the rage that sometimes accompanies realisation, as exemplified in the screams of Trent Reznor.
And no, Misty is certainly not as free as she thinks, but — unlike a lot of bipeds — (and without meaning to speak for her) I suspect she’s much more aware of her enslavements than we are (“your lot are really good at denial”). I reckon that, at some point, she must have had a chat with Insanity, as her worldview seems to be very close to Foucault’s astute observation that it is not so much the laws and prohibitions and the disciplinary mechanisms which get you; it’s the rewards. When you desire the carrot being dangled, you are well and truly screwed.
(“Misty Foucault does have a certain ring to it … pity I didn’t think of that earlier … merci Daniel”).
3:AM: Finally, I want to ask you about art. The Adventures of Brandy & Bach is illustrated, shot through with recurring pictures of quills, a games table, a fish, and an authorial gecko scribbling away. There’s as much lightness to the lines of these images as there is to the language around them. Can you say something about your creative collaborator? Who is PAYNK?
JF: I’ve had the pleasure of knowing PAYNK for almost twenty years; and it’s been a real honour watching her and her work transform through her various incarnations of illustrator, fine-artist, tattoo artist, and now all of them and — as importantly — everything in-between. She is one of the finest mark-makers I know, and one of her earlier works, ‘Study of Contortion,’ has pride of place in my living room.
Instead of trying to speak-for her, though, lemme get out of the way for her to describe her practise and approach to making worlds: “Nature, mythology, modern-day living, and the female form are my main sources of inspiration. I am heavily influenced by a mash-up of vintage Chinese cartoons, Japanese anime, and strange folklores passed down by different cultures. I love good story-telling and visual metaphors. No matter what the subject matter is, I endeavour to portray it with balance and beauty.”
3:AM: So how did the process of collaboration work for you and PAYNK? How did the text influence the illustrations and vice-versa?
JF: From the moment I started trying to imagine Brandy and Bach and their worlds, PAYNK and her work came to mind. So I trotted down to her studio to ask if she might be open to joining me on this madcap adventure. At this point I had written the first three or four tales in the collection. After about seven ciggies, four beers, and countless giggles, we nodded at each other and knew something would happen. A few days later, Cicak appeared on the page, and the rest, as they say (“who, who, who says that!!”) is history (“…’cuse me, I much prefer her-story”).
Being able to see Cicak really helped me get a fuller sense of her (“only cos you were blind and couldn’t see what was right in front of you”) even though her voice was already long in my head. The same could be said of Brandy and Bach, too, but PANYK and I both decided to deliberately not present drawings of them in the book: somethings are better left to the mind’s eye of our readers.
A book like this, though, only truly comes together when writing and drawing — writing as a form of drawing; drawing as a form of writing — are brought-together in conversation, in a twirl alongside each other; ah, there should always be dancing. So Brandy & Bach would have been impossible without the genius of our graphic designer, Alison Schooling. And Cicak and I (“oh finally, public acknowledgment of my primacy!”) — and Brandy, Bach, Misty, Gaby, and everyone involved in the book; yes, even the crazy orange cat — would like to take this moment to send both PAYNK and Alison our deepest gratitude, appreciation, and love. And to you too, dear Daniel, for taking this time to chat about, think-alongside, their worlds.
Jeremy Fernando reads, writes, and makes things. He works in the intersections of literature, philosophy, and art; has written more than thirty books; and been translated into eleven languages. Exploring other media has led him to film, music, performance-readings, and the visual arts; and his work has been exhibited in Seoul, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Vienna, Hong Kong, Lisbon, and Singapore. He is the general editor of Delere Press; curates the thematic magazine One Imperative; is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at The European Graduate School; co-creator of the private dining experience, People Table Tales; and the writer-in-residence at Appetite, the sensorial laboratory exploring the crossroads of food, music, and art.
