Clara Sherley-Appel (CSA): This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is Rémy Ngamije. Rémy is a Rwandan-born Namibian writer and photographer. His short stories have appeared in Litro Magazine, AFREADA, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Amistad, and many other journals and reviews. He is the founder, chairperson, and “artministrator” of Doek (an independent arts organization in Namibia that supports the literary arts) and editor-in-chief of Doek! Literary Magazine. His work has garnered a wide range of awards, including the Africa Regional Prize of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, which he won in in 2021; the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, which he was shortlisted for in both 2020 and 2021; the Afritondo Short Story Prize, which he was shortlisted for in 2021 and longlisted for in 2020; and Best Original Fiction by Stack Magazines, which he was shortlisted for in 2019.


Today, we’re talking about his debut novel, The Eternal Audience of One, which was originally published in South Africa in June 2019 by Blackbird Books, and was republished in the US by Scout Press last month.


Rémy Ngamije, welcome to Story Behind the Story!


Rémy Ngamije (RN): Hello! Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be here with you. 


(CSA): It's great to have you. 
 
(RN): I just have to start off first by telling you that “Story Behind the Story” is the coolest name or title I've heard —


(CSA): Ha! Thank you!
 
(RN): — and I'm a little bit miffed, because I was working on — which I think you might call them ‘craft essays,’ in which you explain the story behind the story; And the subtitle for one of these things was “Story behind the Story”... I was like, ‘Aw, it's already been used! Oh, damn!” No, it's all good. (He laughs)


(CSA): Well it's not trademarked — you're welcome to it! (She laughs)
 
(RN): No, it's a wonderful idea to talk about the story behind the story, and I'm just so glad to be here with you Clara! Thank you.


(CSA): Aw, I'm glad to have you! So I thought I would start today by asking you to describe the main character of The Eternal Audience of One, Séraphin. How do you see him, and how does he see himself?


(RN): So how I see him, as the creator of a character, is: he's this early 20s young man who is Rwandan born, but he's living in Namibia; And he's on this journey to finding some sort of belonging. He's been raised (I guess maybe?) on the margins, but in immigration in which he's never been able to find a home, a place that gives him a stable identity. And so he's basically made up of all of these bits and pieces that have been pulled from his life. Either things that he’s read or things that he’s watched, music that he enjoys, dreams and aspirations that he has, and obviously the challenges of the places in which he has lived or been forced to live in or moved from. He's on this journey in his last year of law school, this time in your life when you must Know with a Capital K who you are, and what you want to be, and what you want to do. He still doesn't, but this year is coming to an end. During the course of this novel, we get to see him and how he sees himself through other people. But it's really… that's who I think he is: very confused. Very ambitious, but also very (in a lot of ways) — a very scared, anxious, young man who's supposed to make his way in a world that he doesn't fully understand, with an unknown undiscovered past that he's not fully aware of and very uncertain times in his life as well. Not only his family, but also in his life. He's like… you know when you have a frozen lake, and then (in the movies) and then it cracks, and then you have a character trying to wobble on that ice floe. Whatever. That's what I think he is. He's wobbling.


(CSA): He's on that ice floe.


(RN): Yeah, and he's wobbling. And at any moment it could tip over and tip him into the frozen lake, but he could also just manage to balance and rescue himself. But that's what I think he is.
How HE sees himself?? My gosh! I think he, in his conception of himself, he is the center of his universe. I think like everybody who is aware of themselves in some way, knows their own intrinsic power, their charm, their wit, their... I don't know… Who they are amongst friends. I think he's a very… He knows himself to some degree in that way that he really does think he is THEIR Séraphin. Not our Séraphin, THEIR Séraphin. But in that conception of yourself, you always have these fighting dynamics about: Who are you really Clara? Like, are you YOU, or are you YOU-ing the way that you see yourself because your parents (at some point) said you were this; Or your community said you are this; or your University said you must be THIS, because you came here to us and so those are the…


(CSA): How much of who we are is our perceptions from other people?


(RN): Yeah, yeah! And it's always a weird... Not a weird question, but a weird thing that I think about: Like, how much of you is you, and what is you? So Séraphin, even though he is convinced he is THE Séraphin (Clara laughs), the way the novel plays out, you always have like these weird interludes where you're like… ‘hmmm. This is interesting.’ Another character, if you can say [UNINTELLIGIBLE 5:16] pops out.


(CSA): And he uses humor, both to fit in and charm, and also I think to deflect a lot of the anxieties that he has that he doesn't want to acknowledge. 


(RN): I feel like humor is the best force…some of…one of the best force fields that humans have developed to face their harsh environments. Behind humor, you can hide so much, a lot of hardship. You can use it to cover up a lot of hurt, and inflict hurt as well. That's something that needs to be said. I mean part of romance requires a little bit of humor, doesn't it? I mean that first date, someone's funny. It just makes the romance a little bit easier behind humor. I always find there’s always a lot of hidden and unaddressed issues, and in Séraphin's case — witty as Heck! — yeah, sure. Mmmm but this brother got some issues! (Clara laughs.) 


(CSA): Well, and when you're writing humor… that was one of the things that sort of drew me to this novel; In all of the blurbs is talking about how it's “laugh out loud, funny,” or “wildly hilarious,” or something like that. So how did you think about the humor that you were encoding into Séraphin and his personality as you were writing it? And were there particular techniques that you used to show the humor, both as it's sort of funny side, but also as that defense mechanism. 


(RN): I think my understanding of humor really comes from the books that I've read. My sense of humor is really developed by writers like Roald Dahl. We grew up reading this children's story, and you know he's got a sense of humor that children can understand easily. Immediately after Roald Dahl ooooh! I was introduced to Terry Pratchett — 


(CSA): Oh, wow!


(RN): — who is just —


(CSA): — the master!


(RN): Ohhhh! Once you have that in your background in your context, you can't not avoid laughing at some of the absurd situations that life throws at you. And then obviously you have other wonderful writers who have humor in their work, but it's veiled and it's sly, but it's always there. Writers like Zadie Smith I've always enjoyed. Marlon James I've always enjoyed. Juno Diaz, some of his works I've enjoyed. 
And then you're growing up watching things like “Quite Interesting” with Stephen Fry. You know, a lot of the British humor. So you develop all of those things, they seep into you someway. I don't know how and I don't know when, but I can tell you that when you write, somehow, when you're the writer, you reach to all of these other things that you've read and it comes out in your work (or hopefully it does). For me the technique was, it wasn't really hard because the place in which the story is set and the situations the characters find themselves in lend themselves to humor, because even in real life those situations are absurd. A night out at the club going horribly wrong is not a… you don't have to inject too much into it because that happens already. But, in using that humor to show a deeper underlying and disturbing issue, that is where I really had to sit and reflect, and say it's cool to “Hahaha” here, but why are we “hahaha-ing” and when? When you think about the dialogue that just happened between two characters, when you sit back and you look at it you’re like, ‘Whoa. This is deep. It's funny, yes, but if you poke beneath the surface, there's a lot of hurt here.’ And to deal with that for me was the more challenging issue: to not only laugh at characters or laugh with them, but to show the humane challenges that they face in an approachable way. That was challenging, and I cannot lie to you Clara and say that I didn't know everything, and a lot of it was trial and error. And afterwards once you've written the situation, because when you're writing it you're just like, ‘hahaha I am so awesome! This is funny!’ (They both laugh) Because you DO know —


(CSA): It keeps you going right?


(RN): Yeah! You do know when you're writing. You know what you're doing on the sentence, but I think it is on that read through, that second/third/fourth read through when you're approaching, you’re like, ‘Huh. This is deeper than I thought,’ and then you go and you enrich the narrative. Then it's not just about humor or gags or whatever. It's about laugh, but once you finish laughing, let's talk about what just went down. 


(CSA): I like that a lot. I feel like we’re going to talk a lot about technique in this one, because one of the others things —


(RN): Yeah! Let's, let's, let's!


(CSA): — you're talking… This novel is so good down to the sentence level, and throughout it you introduce seemingly innocuous words or phrases that, through repetition, come to carry a lot more meaning. Two examples (I thought of a third just as we were starting this interview): Two of them are the shortened form of the main character's name, Séra, and the words that his father says to his mother: “I agree.” And then the third one I thought of was, “hmmm.” (Both hesitate then chuckle) But they function in the book almost like trail markers, and so I wanted to ask you… I feel like this has to be a conscious technique that you're using, but is it something that you're consciously deploying at different places? Or is it something that sort of develops where you see, ‘Oh this thing has more meaning,’ as you're going through the novel?


(RN): Ooooh that is a wonderful question Clara! Like, yo, you're going in! I feel like I'm about to graduate from this interview with an MFA. Thank you, thank you! I got my MFA from The Story Behind the Story. (They both laugh) 


(CSA): I try to take writing seriously.


(RN): No, thank you. So, for example, with naming a character, this is something that I've seen in our own Rwandan culture. Yeah? When you name a child, it's almost prophetic in some way. Our language is heavily contextual. It's imbued with, like, at the language level — at the purely WORD level, a word can be aspirational, spiritual, metaphysical, and fatalistic which is, like, scary! So you have parents who name their kids weird things, and then you're not surprised when the kids do those weird things. If you're named after a situation, like, for example, we know some kids who are named after a particular struggle, or time in their parents lives or whatever, and then, later on, you look at these people and they're grown up, and you know their temperament and their mood and your like, ‘Wow! You really came to embody this concept that was in your parents life, or the context in which you were born.’ That stuff is interesting. So when you have a character and you name them Séraphin, the Seraphimic Angels, what they represent in Christian religion is they're the highest order of angels, for example. There's only six of them. And so that, for example, when you name this character Séraphin, you're also tapping into those things. But as a writer, you can't just rely on themes or things that have already gone. You have to try and do something with it. So with Séraphin, it's interesting because you can always play with that name and break it down to interesting things, like Séra. So, on the one hand, Séraphin in [UNINTELLIGIBLE @12:47] is not particularly a masculine name, but if you shorten that down to Séra, it's a little bit ambiguous. Cuz if it depending on how you pronounce it, it could be sare-ah, and it could be ser-AH, or Sara, but it gives you options to play with language. Then the ending, -phin; You can play with that in also interesting ways, like fin, fine, or in the French end sera-PHAN, like fin: like, the end. And when you decide to write a story about beginnings and endings, when you have a name that can be chopped and screwed up in interesting ways, you're almost like, ‘How far can I stretch this? Can I use this in this way?’ And you're at liberty to have fun with it. So that's for example, where the Séra thing comes from.
Then you have other things like you mentioned, “Hmmm.” Isn't that just the most wonderful series of words?


(CSA): Oh, yeah!


(RN): H - triple ‘m.’ Just: hmmm. The way you can hide so many things behind that word. Both uncertainty, displeasure, agreement. There's so many things you can hide behind that. It wasn’t intentional, but what I've seen is, I remember the way my parents used to use “hmmm,” and as a kid you're like… what? What does that mean? I don't understand. What's that? What’s behind that?
And in the story, it's wonderful because then the reader doesn't know what's hiding behind that ‘hmmm,’ or what's going to come next, or what came before? You can use and hide entire histories behind that nice simple phrase.


(CSA): And it forces people to pay attention, too.


(RN): Yeah, yeah. Yeah! And what was the other thing that you mentioned? 


(CSA): “I agree.” 


(RN): “I agree!” Man. Isn't that the hardest thing to find in the world right now? Consensus?


(CSA): Hmmm.


(RN): Just, I agree. (He begins to laugh) And you just used, ‘hmmm!’


(CSA): I know! I just realized as I said it.  (They both chuckle) It is, though! 


(RN): Yeah! And to listen to someone else and say, ‘I agree, from top to bottom,’ not, ‘However, but.’ Just to say, ‘I agree,’ it's a big thing in the world right now because we can't seem to reach consensus. But in the story, given that people are searching for very, very big things like home belonging, personality, decency, dignity, agreeing with someone is just acknowledging that simple humanity: ‘I have heard you, I have listened to you. I understand the struggle, and I agree.’ And its constant occurrence in the narrative is a wonderful way to drive the plot along in subtle ways, until you reach a point where you’re like, so this is where the wisdom behind ‘I agree’ comes from because when you’ve read the story, you realize the history of why the way one character uses it, and where it comes from, and why it's so important. It has a backstory to the present. And those were things I was just interested in getting into. Was it all conscious? I do not know, Clara; But I do know that when I was writing, I didn't write, ‘I agree,’ or ‘Hmmm,’ or use Séra in flippant ways. It was: It MUST be here, and it felt right when I put it there on paper. Obviously, now, LATER, as you know now that it’s in print I can be like, ‘OF COURSE I totally intended to do that,’ and I love it when readers like you have new interpretations, cuz I can totally take credit for them and say of course! I totally intended that. (Clara laughs) But honestly, I don't know whether it was conscious, but I know when it was made and when it was written, it made sense. 


(CSA): I was thinking as you were talking about ‘I agree’ specifically; I have a friend who was telling me recently that she feels like people don't say, ‘you're right’ anymore; They say, ‘You're not wrong.’


(RN): Yeahhhhhhhhhhh.


(CSA): I think there's something similar, something analogous to that. There’s something simple about saying, ‘you’re right,’ or about saying, ‘I agree,’ or these other things. Something that is just straight up validating, that you're hearing the other person and understanding their perspective. And all these flips on it are clever, but they don't accomplish that same thing.


(RN): It's the same thing with the hardest words: I'm sorry. 


(CSA): Oh, yeah.


(RN): People find so many ways to get around saying this word: I'm sorry. They'll say, ‘my bad. My bad.’ I'm like, that's… yeah. We know ‘your bad,’ but, ‘I'm sorry,’ because those words carry consequences. It implies that you know what you're sorry for, you're aware of the hurt that has been perpetrated, and most importantly that you're committed through future action to correcting that thing. That's why ‘I'm so sorry’ is such a big thing. It's not a present-tense thing; It's a future tense thing. ‘I'm sorry this happened, and I'm going to, from this point forward....’


(CSA): It’s habitual.


(RN): Yeah, yeah! ‘From this point forward, I will do actions that not only correct that past hurt, but make sure that it doesn't happen again.’ Whereas, ‘my bad.’ It's just… it's just … here and now. ‘My bad.’ (Both giggle). 
Whereas ‘I agree,’ also takes into part the past of the thing that you're agreeing with, and then it sets a finite moment in time that consensus has been reached, and then forward: ‘What are we going to do? Cuz we agreed.’ And that's just so hard, it seems, to reach in today's world. 


***AD BREAK***


(CSA): If you’re just joining me, my guest today is writer and photographer Rémy Ngamije, whose debut book, The Eternal Audience of One, follows a young man whose life is defined by movement, as he searches for his place in the world.


It's interesting that you mentioned ‘I'm sorry,’ because that is also a marker of Séraphin's growth throughout the book.


(RN): Yeah, yeah because this guy, this brother is not the ‘sorry’ type, yo. He's convinced of his own rightness —


(CSA): And righteousness


(RN): — and he's very — and righteousness — and he’s very convinced and very aware. Perhaps maybe that's one of his... You know, he's not a bad guy. He's very intelligent, but he responds to things in ways that are intelligent, but maybe not emotionally correct.


(CSA): He Intellectualizes them.


(RN): Yeah yeah, sometimes he can't understand the other person and where they're coming from, and so the idea of apology is just, would take into consideration all of those things that we spoke about. This brother just moves through his timeline like… not consequence free, but he can see things happening, but sometimes I feel like he sees himself like it's a movie. Like he breaks the fourth wall and is like, ‘Dear reader, I do not apologize.’ And it's just like, oh Lord, this brother! But you are correct, ‘I'm sorry’ is a very big thing in the novel. And in some ways, on top of looking for homes and places of belonging, people are just looking for some affirmation that the things that have happened to them, or the people that have happened to them, weren't their fault. It's not your fault that you have to leave home because of a war. It's not your fault that a relationship ends because you were not mature enough to take that on. It's not your fault that you're in diaspora. It's not your fault. But people are looking for that ‘sorry’ from somewhere, from the universe, from time, from space! And it would just let them know that it's fine. You don't have to apologize for these things.


(CSA): I think that's a good segue into Séraphins complicated relationship with the word refugee. Can you talk about that a little?


(RN): The meaning of a refugee is someone who has left home because of some trouble; That trouble can be a natural disaster. It can be man-made, like it's a war,  and you have legally left your country, or rather, left your country under duress to go to another country to seek refuge. That's where refugee comes from. ‘I am here, Clara, to look for refuge at your house because my house is flooded. Can you take me in for a couple of days?’ Technically, that's a refugee. But also, in the same vein, a friend crashing on your couch because their University accommodation hasn't opened yet, that's also technically because you've taken them in; And in taking them in, you've taken them… like, if Remy crashes on your couch, and Remy has got smelly feet, those smelly feet are going to be part of your life now.


(CSA): They're your smelly feet, too. (They laugh)


(RN): You take all of that in. But! The status of a refugee in today's world comes with very big legal consequences and social status. They have a lower social status for things that they had no control over. If an earthquake comes and destroys your country and you have to move abroad, how is that earthquake… How could you have stopped that? Somehow you are made to feel less, like the earthquake was your fault. Like, ‘why are you here? Why can't you just go back home?’ Because HOME doesn't exist anymore. And his relation with refugee, it is an inherited, learned characteristic that his parents have observed: that to be a refugee, in any country, lowers your status. Whereas if you have been fortunate enough to leave your country with a passport that can be stamped at customs or at the airport, whatever, that allows you legal entry — Even though you are physically a refugee, like: you're in this country because your country can no longer house you or provide you security and stability; That paper, it saves you from that status. Even though, on paper, you're both the same. And it's something that I've witnessed. For example, in Cape Town. There's a difference between being an immigrant and being a refugee. In my opinion, both of them are looking for the same thing: a better, decent, and dignified life. And those two statuses are very, very important because refugees are never allowed to forget that they are refugees, whereas in some cases immigrants sometimes have a smoother transition into a society. Obviously, their hardships are still very, very hard, but both of them are searching for the same thing and they're coming, in many instances, from the same situations. Which is where, for example, Séraphin’s situation comes in. In Rwanda in that time, there were two classes of people living in Rwanda: immigrants and refugees, and were you one determined where you could be in the world, where you could land in the world. Back then, it seemed like if you were a refugee, yes, you could flee to places like Belgium because they were taking them in, and that could allow you to land in a country that was substantially more well-off than yours, perhaps. Whereas if you're an immigrant, you might have been able to move to a country like Kenya or Uganda or whatever, and probably root or ground yourself quicker, because it’s closer to home. Those two statuses defined where, ultimately, you’re going to wind up. Because you don’t want to be a refugee because you might wind up in a refugee camp, and be treated and have a lesser status and be allowed to do less. 
So Séraphin's understanding of that word, I think, it's inherited from his parents' struggle to never be seen as these things, even though they know deep down, ‘We're here because we can't go home.’ But it's important, you never want to pass that on to your kid so you always tell them: ‘No, you're not a refugee! You're here with a passport, and you're allowed to do these things because you don't want them to learn that.


(CSA): And that's so interesting though because that approach is, not to say “this is the wrong interpretation,” but to distance yourself from something, and to encourage your family to distance themselves from something that other people perceive in this way. I found it really interesting as you were talking about this, there's a transactional assumption in both the  definition you gave for refugee and for immigrant, and they're sort of opposite transactions. In the case of the refugee, as you're talking about it, it's like there's this assumption that the new host country is doing a favor to the refugee, and so the refugee owes it to the host country to just be grateful for whatever they get; Whereas on the immigrant side, even as there are also a lot of baggage with that as well and a lot of difficulties, there is this assumption encoded in that that they're giving something back.


(RN): That is true.


(CSA): So that owing is different.


(RN): You hit it smack bang on the head. Even though both parties are still in the pursuit of the same thing and capable of doing the same thing. I cannot emphasize to you how important those things are, and when you grow up in migration the way, for example, your parents take on that burden of saying we're going to internalize our refugee-hood, but we are not going to pass that on to our kids. So we're going to raise them in a way that makes them feel empowered, and you must take part in greater society. You're an equal. Because the passing on of that thing also leads… There's so many sad consequences that come from learning that always —


(CSA): That internalized —


(RN): Yeah! It leads to a lot of very, very sad narratives and stories.


(CSA): Well, we're, believe it or not, about halfway in, so I think now is a good time to have you read an excerpt from the book. So I'm going to ask you to just tell us a little bit about what we're going to hear first and then dive right in. 


(RN): I am going to read from the prologue of The Eternal Audience of One, because it is saucy and scandalous, but it will provide you with a context for where the story is set, which is Windhoek: Namibia's Capital City.


(he reads)
— PROLOGUE —
A long forgotten essay:
“The Last Ticket Out of Town” —by Séraphin Turihamwe
Windhoek has three temperatures: hot, mosquito, and f-ing cold. The city is allowed two or three days of mild spring weather in early September before the unrelenting heat crowds them out until May. The summers are long and sweaty, so much so that job offers can be sweetened by throwing in the promise of air-conditioning (and an overseeing committee to adjudicate on room temperature disputes because white people do not know how to share). Summer nights are stifling. Cooling breezes heed their curfews and leave the night air still and warm from the day’s lingering heat. The departing sun brings out the mosquitoes. They are organized, they are driven. If they could be employed they would be the city’s most reliable workforce. Alas, people do not have my vision. From sunset to sunrise they make enjoying a quiet evening drink on a balcony a buzzing and bloody affair. June, July, and August are bitter and cold. An ill wind clears out the gyms. Running noses are the only exercise anyone gets in the winter.
The city is called a city because the country needs one but, really, city is a big word for such a small place. But it would probably be offensive to have a capital town or a capital village so someone called it a city. The title stuck.
Life is not hard in Windhoek, but it is not easy either. The poor are either falling behind or falling pregnant. The rich refuse to send the elevator back down when they reach the top. And since cities require a sturdy foundation of tolerated inequalities, Windhoek is like many other big places in the world. It is a haven for more, but a place of less. If you are not politically connected or from old white money, then the best thing to be is a tourist. The city and the country fawn over tourists. The country’s economy does too. That is when it is not digging itself poor.
That is Windhoek. The best thing to do in the city is arrive and leave.
The mistake you want to avoid making is trying to ‘make the most of it’. My parents did that. I have not forgiven them for their sense of optimism. You will notice it in many people. There is a strange national pride I cannot explain, a patriotic denial of reality.
Beware of that optimism. It will creep up on you. It will make you notice how, in the early morning, the streets are hushed and the city’s pulse is slowed down to a rhythmic, nearly non-existent thump-thump. The only people to be seen on the streets are drowsy night shift security guards, the garbage collectors hanging from the back of dumpster trucks as they do their rounds, and a few stray cats. That is when it is at its best. Windhoek has not yet prostituted itself to neon and skyscrapers, so a horizon is always a short hill climb away and nature still squats on its outer extremities. The views are spectacular.
The same optimism might lead an early riser to be up before the sun to see how the approaching light gently shakes the city awake. Alarm bells ring as children and parents prepare for school; the blue collars make their way to a bus or truck stop and wait to be carried towards places of cheap labor; and the white collars take their time getting to desks and offices. As the day brightens, the cracked tarmac which lines the city’s main arteries sighs and stretches, preparing for the new day when the increasing traffic will become a viscous mess of commuters and taxis.
When it is going at a full tilt, Windhoek does so at a slow hum. It pays respects to the Gregorian calendar and then some. Mondays and Tuesdays are busy. Wednesdays and Thursdays are reserved for concluding auxiliary matters. On Fridays everything shuts down with the firm understanding that the weekend is in session and nothing and nobody should upset the established order of things. The city has strict boredom and business hours and it keeps them.
The autumn days after the high summer are the best. The sky is afire with an intense passion; it burns with bright orange and red hues which tug at unprepared heartstrings before blushing into cooler pinks that tickle the clouds. The day’s fervor cools down into violent violets as evening approaches.
Windhoek has good days and it has bad days. But, ideally, you should not be here long enough to know that. If you have made the mistake of tarrying too long in the city, and forgotten to purchase the last ticket out of town, you might have to do something more challenging: actually live here.
(He finishes reading)
Thank you.


(CSA): Thank you, thank you for reading that. So I wanted to first ask you, what is the prologue doing in The Eternal Audience of One? What's its role in the novel? 


(RN): My — as an amateur writer, as a first time writer, with this thing being the first long narrative that I've written or worked on — for me as a writer, it is setting the background context of the novel, where the place takes on. It's like a finite grounding of place. It gives me, as the writer, a place from which to work, but a place to actively try and steer the narrative from. But I think, and I hope, for the reader what it is: It paints this background thing that you always have to be aware of, and you realize, “Oh, this thing is happening because it's a Tuesday in Namibia, and this is the only day when you can get things done.’ And, whereas, if something happens on a Wednesday and disappointment happens, you're like, ‘Oh yeah, offices are closed now. I forgot about that.’ My hope is that the prologue sets this background geography — social and economic — climate, that explains other things that are not explained, because it is hoped that once you understand the context this narrative comes from, then I as the writer don't have to spend so much time explaining this is why this happened because of this thing. That's the hope, as the writer. But as the reader, it's really just to paint this background canvas; Never forget that this is what's happening in the background. Even as you enjoy, or laugh, or cry at this thing that happens in the foreground, don't forget the background! As a writer, it’s really provided me with a safe place to start, because, as you know, this interrogation of where stories start is some of what goes on throughout the novel, but as a writer you need a place to put that first capital letter. And this prologue, specifically for me, is like a landing place where you can push off. It's like gravity. You can't just twirl head over feet endlessly forever. It’s like gravity says: boom! Feet here. Now we can push off, we can run, we can do all of these other things.


(CSA): It’s interesting because you start at a “long forgotten” essay, and then go into this essay that presumably was written by Séraphin, and so it's one of the few times, and the only one early on, where we're getting his view. I mean, we're always sort of getting his view, but we're directly getting a picture of Windhoek as he sees it, and in some ways it's him marking a start as well.


(RN): Definitely. As you correctly said, it is one of the few times where you see his direct and clear viewpoint of the world as he lives in it, as he participates in it. And when writing it, it was hoped that once you see how Séraphin sees the world, then a lot of the other things that he does makes sense. It makes sense that he would behave in a particular way, but once you see how he sees the world, you can also clearly see his blind spots, as a reader. So when things happen to him, or around him, and he's not aware of them, you can be like, ‘Yeah, but that's because you see these things.’ You can really nail this issue on the head, but from your initial voice, we can definitely tell that some of these things are going to fly under your radar. It's hoped that this back and forth between the writer and the reader with Séraphin in the middle, like: watch what happens to him here. And then if the reader understands, ‘oh, this brother is about to get himself in a whole heap of trouble,’ because there's this thing that you see is like, ‘Nah, I can see this brother doesn't see.’ You know, it's like when you tell someone, ‘She’s color blind.’ And then they, you can see in the movie they’re pulling up to a red light, and you're like, ‘They can't see the red light because they're color blind!’ So when they drive through that intersection, and you have that background information, it still doesn't help you; that crazy moment, like, ‘I hope nothing bad happens!’ Even though you've been told they're color blind.


(CSA): Yeah, yeah.


(RN): It doesn't protect the reader or Séraphin from the things that are going to happen or do happen to him, but the reader hopefully is given a wider platform which to interact with and question, interrogate. Cuz you're like, this is why this brother acts in this way! Cuz this is his viewpoint on life!


***AD BREAK***


(CSA): If you’re just joining me, my guest today is writer and photographer Rémy Ngamije, whose debut book, The Eternal Audience of One, follows a young man whose life is defined by movement, as he searches for his place in the world.


So why do you think Séraphin finds Windhoek so stifling?


(RN): Because it is. (They both laugh) So let me tell you, honest, two hands on the bible: Windhoek is a small place. In terms of geography, in terms of population, in terms of things that are here. So when you think about a city, that word: it conjures up images of a metropolitan cosmopolitan place where, on a random Tuesday you can leave your house and go have a grand time, because it's Tuesday in the big city. You know? Whereas Windhoek is not the embodiment of those things. It is a city, but it is a different kind of city. And that's why, for example, Windhoek feels small. It feels small because we are always comparing it to the bigger places in the world that carry that title as well. If New York is a city, how on Earth is Windhoek also a city? Both of them have the same title, but then also Hong Kong also has a city, and then Shanghai is also a city, but we're like the smallest. Rather, the smallness comes from knowing what these other big places are, and having some form of insecurity about what we are. Yeah, we could be a city, but we've never developed our own identity and said, ‘This is what being a city means to us.’ And so our version of Windhoek is always defined by what we don't have instead of what we do have. We do not have Broadway, and because we don't have Broadway Windhoek feels small, because you don't have Broadway. What we do have is this one street with theater on it, and maybe it will be nice if we just supported theater a little more, and accept that this is what we have, so you understand? The smallness comes from all the things we do not have.


(CSA): From that comparison.


(RN): Yeah yeah, we will not have Times Square, but maybe we have something else that is our own and if we like it for what it is, then we wouldn't feel so left out of this bigger context all the time. But above and beyond that, it is stifling because life here is very harsh: small economy, very few opportunities to uplift yourself or your family or your community, so it's aggressively competitive, and for an outsider like Séraphin, it's very hard to get a toe-hold in society. Because everything is expected to follow a particular narrative: Namibians first, and even if you're in Namibia, if you are Namibian, there are hierarchies within the various groups that exist in the country. To find a foothold can be very, very challenging.


(CSA): And that aggressive competitiveness that you're describing, that sort of enforces that comparing yourself to others, right? 


(RN): Definitely, definitely.


(CSA): If that's part of the stifling, being in a place that is hyper competitive is going to sort of orient you toward doing that comparison that you find.


(RN): Definitely! Especially when you find that hyper competitiveness or scarcity is amplified with messages coming from elsewhere that things are either easier or better. If you are being told all the time, for example, from the things that you're ingesting, ‘Oh wow, your city doesn't even have a Broadway?’ You'll be like, ‘Well, let me try and go where Broadway is, because clearly it seems like that's where things happen.’ And so that also adds to the stifling nature of Windhoek. 
The society is actually quite conservative. Whoa, the missioners did a number on us here. Hey. So it's quite stifling. It's very hard to leave, to live a decent and dignified life if you're from a sexual minority. If you are a woman, it's very, very hard. Yeah, religion plays a very, very big thing here — even though we're supposed to be secular, it's very, very conservative. And when you're coming of age and you're exploring yourself and you're trying to find out who you are and your place in the world, it is a lot harder in a place that says, well, THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE. ‘This is the type, and this is what you are.’ And you're looking at the type and you’re like, ‘But I'm not the type.’ So it adds to that feeling of, ‘I must go somewhere else to find out who and what I am’ or, and worse: if you do know, when you realize this place can never support you. You know you will never be welcome if you're a particular kind of person. That drives a lot of migration as well. So that's an understanding of Windhoek, and now presently in 2021, Windhoek is stifling obviously because of the pandemic, but worse: because the pandemic has taken away a lot of the things that have taken 20 years to build, like the art scene, like the music scene. Cuz it's a desert, and because it's a small community, and because we don't have a big population, these things take such a long time to build; That critical mass. And in just 2 years, this pandemic can just arrive and take that away. That feels, for me, at 33, like I'm back to that space in 1997 when you just like… why this place? Why here? Like how are we back here? I’m playing Dixie Chicks — No! SorSorry, they are not the Dixie Chicks anymore, they are the Chicks now. Sorry. I'm playing “Wide Open Spaces” as much as I walk back then. I am trying to leave small town life as much as I was back then, and that's purely because of the pandemic. It sucks, but, yeah: “Wide Open Spaces,” I recently wrote about that, and I was like, ‘Why am I playing the song so much?’ And I realized, this is the stuff I was feeling when I was 13 and 14 when the song came out! Anyone who's listened to “Wide Open Spaces” knows the small town life people are trying to escape; Looking for better, looking for different. That's a feeling we all have right now because we're desperately trying to escape this pandemic. Yeah.


(CSA): Well that's actually a good transition for a question I was trying to figure out how to work back in: Séraphin is a big fan of playlists, and uses them to narrativize his life. He even says something at one point where he's talking to [UNINTELLIGIBLE @ 44:30] and saying that playlists have to tell a story, that they can't just be songs. Talk to me about that. About what he's doing with that; How aware is he that he's using this to narrativize his life? And why is it something that he needs?


(RN): Well, music is, I think, a secondary language in The Eternal Audience of One because it really does play a prominent role. Whether it is this playlist that is making, or the places that they go to and the music that is played, that they encounter. But in playlisting, music always tells a story. Good music, in some ways, tells a story. Now as a listener of music, I always wonder (like a reader of a book), I always wonder about the intention of the writer. What is it that they were trying to…What story are they trying to tell when they wrote, when they composed this song? And when I listen — cuz I have a different I might have a different feeling or mood or interpretation. And then in playlisting, what Séraphin is doing is he is rearranging other people's story to try and tell his in a way. So, with other characters, when it's a romantic situation, he's perhaps using other people's music to arrange it in a way that tells somebody ‘I like you,’ without having to say that embarrassing word: (He whispers) ‘I like you.’ (Regular voice) So you say it through music because the music will communicate the sensation or this feeling  or this intention. But it also, in a way, helps to pin that particular moment to the things that your listeners… like this is where this dude is in his oral development. This is what he is listening to. This is how he’s communicating with people. But playlisting is such, as an act of art curation, it can be very powerful, and I don't know whether you did this —


(CSA): Oh all the time


(RN): In bygone days


(CSA): As a teenager. (She laughs)


(RN): I mean, wasn't that so cool? Hearing someone else's arrangement of music, and then talking about ‘I like the song because of this,’ and the way they arrange it?


(CSA): It's the care and the effort.


(RN): Yeah yeah. The way you can take this Alanis Morissette song, and pair it or put it before this David Gray song, and then you have these two songs from across the Atlantic (or wherever) talking to each other. But the narrative is dope, and it takes you into a mood, and then out of a mood. Or like, when: did you ever make a breakup playlist?


(CSA): Oh, who didn't?! (They both chortle)
(RN): But I'm like, how wonderful was it to listen to that composition, and after it was done, you felt a little better. Even though you're sour, you're shouting out things and yadda yadda, but you felt a little bit better. That's what I think music does as a secondary language; You can use other artists' compositions, layer them in such a way that they provide you with this oral experience in which you're able to experience catharsis, but you're also able to free yourself from a particular thing in your life. 
So what Séraphin does in arranging playlists is he's finding a new way to communicate with other people. So remember we spoke about, like, yeah this brother's intelligent, sure. Witty, maybe smart or whatever it was you want to compare him. But maybe these playlists are a way for him to make up for that thing that he lacks. And that's not something I'm saying that he's consciously doing, but it's an interpretation that could be valid. Some people do it through writing letters or something. I know Darcy in Jane Austen's novel did that, but maybe this is his way of trying to win Elizabeth back. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I secretly liked you since the beginning!’ I don't know. (They laugh)


(CSA): Well, we're closing in on the end. I want to ask you one more question about this book and then we'll ask some questions about what you're working on now. So why don't you tell me about Séraphin's relationship with his family? Who does he think his parents are, and how does that fit or not with reality?


(RN): Oh man! Who knows their parents? A lot of us — especially I could say, maybe, African kids — Our parents are… their past lives, their internal lives are mysteries to us. Because they are… They're just your parents. They are forced to play this finite role of provider, of caretaker, of correctional officer, of the enemies of fun, of progress.


(CSA): You see them in relationship to your life.


(RN): Yeah, and they are often always posited as barriers to who you want to be. Without being aware that they have internal histories, that they’re people all on their own, and they come with a past. I don't think Séraphin in any way shape or form is able to understand that about his parents, because they've been in this thing... So, again, migration forces people into roles that they would not otherwise be in. If you're in an ideal situation when you're in home, you have your mom, your dad, your kids (whatever), and then an extended family, and that house would dilute the various roles in family. You can have the crazy cousin, you can have the cool uncle, you can have the aunt that always buys you nice presents, and you can have grandparents and yadda yadda. But when you're in migration, some of those familiar relations and roles get taken away, and they get forced on parents specifically to be the provider. They must be mom, dad, and great-grandfather and grandmother, because that's all you have in migration in your immediate community. That's very hard for kids, because kids only have this point…Literally, parents become the only point of authority, and that can be sometimes very harsh when you're caught in migration. And I think Séraphin has that relationship with his parents. They’re like these things in his life that are there by the law of biology. If you're going to be a son, there must be a father and a mother, and so I think his relation was, like: well, you know, you're here because I must have you as parents. But only later on in the novel does his relationship change after particular encounters when he's made aware that everyone has an internality to them that you're not even aware of. They have a past that you cannot comprehend, so it's interesting that in the novel, that Séraphin… the writing is able to bring out alternative versions of him that show a better-rounded character, but he's not able to realize that about other people. And I'm hoping that in the pages, the reader is able to understand them better. But Séraphin's relationship to his parents is complicated in the sense that it shows that he's not aware, and then when he is supposed to confront that his parents are people; People in the sense that they have a past, they had a life before you, they had ambitions, they had dreams. That, again, that apologetic nature of migration like, we’re not this way because we chose to be this way. We're this way because of life.


(CSA): Right, he thinks very provincial, and he thinks that that's what they want to be.


(RN): Yeah! And isn't that hurtful? Like when a kid thinks that about your parents… he's not able to reach across to their struggles. And hopefully along his journey (at least on paper), Séraphin comes to some sort of understanding. At least there's the spark of curiosity, like, ‘Whoa! These are people.’ When you understand that your parents also want things out of life that are beyond you, sometimes even bigger than you! It leads to a wonderful moment of introspection and hopefully growth.


(CSA): So we're almost out of time, but I wanted to make sure I got a chance to ask you what you're working on now.


(RN): Oh! Surviving the pandemic. No, I'm joking. That too. But I am putting together a collection of short stories. So let me explain: I've been fortunate enough to have some stories picked up and read and listed for awards and what not, but all of the short stories were written when my novel was published in South Africa, when I needed to create… or rather, I was encouraged to try and get work out, to try and build a name for yourself, or get something behind you. Because publishing is very risky, and to have an unknown writer in the universe… It's very hard to promote that book. So I wrote the collection of short stories, and I wrote one, and then I wrote another… and then I realized they were all part of the same timeline or universe. But then I wrote each of them separately, and then they're all interesting, they all started getting picked up at various points in time. And so now what I'm trying to do is put them together to see if our reader can pick out the narrative flow between them, because they're all interrelated. So imagine if I sent you a puzzle piece, and I sent your friend another puzzle piece, and then another puzzle piece is scattered to somebody else, then you look at this puzzle piece and then just one day at dinner, you and your friend, you're like, ‘Whoa! They match.’ And then you see the semblance of an image, and you're like, ‘Gasp! Where are the other puzzle pieces???’ So I'm going to… (he laughs) I’m trying to put a collection together that sort of  explains… well, not explains…


(CSA): You're making a playlist!


(RN): (He bursts out laughing) That's a good one, because the byline is… I'm calling it, “a literary mixtape.


(CSA): I like it!


(RN): So instead of music, you have short stories, and so there's an A-side, and there's a B-side, and depending on how you read them, you get one experience; and then if you jump across, you get another experience. So it’s like trying to curate this literary experience where you have three different things: If you read the A-side only, you have one narrative, if you read the B side you have another — But then if you jump across A and B then you have a — (He gasps dramatically) Nice! That's… I don't know, I don't know, It's ambitious, but we'll see whether it manages to work. 
And then obviously, now that I've got the taste of novel writing, I have another long-term idea that I need to get myself in shape for — mentally, physically… make the time for it, to sit down and think, because I can see it. It is ambitious. It is big. It is, as a writer, scary, but I'm looking forward to that work, and it's really all about just creating the time and space for it. 


(CSA): Well, I look forward to all of it. Remy Ngamije, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been delightful. 


(RN): I do appreciate! Thanks for getting up early in the morning to do this thing! It’s like, 7:23 over here in the evening, but I realize, like, California is on the other side of the world from me.


(CSA): It is a bit, but it's worth it


(RN): Thank you so much
(CSA): You can learn more about Rémy at his website, remythequill.com, and you can purchase a copy of The Eternal Audience of One wherever books are sold.


Catch Story Behind the Story the first Friday of every month from 5 to 6 p.m. on KSQD 90.7 FM, or on KSQD.org. To share your thoughts on this or other shows, drop me a line at Clara@KSQD.org. 


The Story Behind the Story is produced for KSQD 90.7 FM by me, Clara Sherley-Appel. Our sound engineer is Lanier Sammons; He also wrote our theme.