The Weekend Magazine Interview
The following is an excerpt from Alistair A. Vogan's By Degrees The Gentlest Asinine Expression
Miss Tilda B. Knightley and I met in the Russian Tea Room of
the Waldorf Astoria, Jumeirah Beach, Dubai, in the spring of 2014. She was
younger than I’d expected, much younger,
as you’ll see. Yet, somehow, she did not seem out of place as she ordered a cup
of tea. The waiter nodded and she spotted me. I had just entered and my eyes
were adjusting. She was the first thing I laid my eyes on when I entered.
“Mr. Vogan!” she chimed, waving.
She stood up and I walked around a few tables with a loose
gait to where she waited in the middle of the room, the sun floating in gently
through the silken curtains. We shook hands – her grip was firm - and I sat,
pretending to massage my digits. Tilda B. Knightley is the winner of the Shaikha Abdullah Millennium Scholarship 2014. She is eleven years old,
an exceptional student at GEMS Academy in Dubai, UAE, and a self-proclaimed
‘high achiever’. At one point, during the interview she told me she intended to
enroll at Harvard and announced with confidence that she would be the youngest
MBA graduate at any Ivy League university. In the spring of 2014, P. Chancy
Sing of the United Talent Agency contacted my agent, Mr. Arthur Grover Lau of
The Ivan Von Noshrilgram Foundation in Jordan, and a date was requested to
interview me for Weekend Magazine. (Ms. Tilda B. Knightley had read my first
novel How To Lose Your Voice Without Screaming and wanted to meet me,
I was told.) At first I demurred but when I learned of Ms. Knightley’s
achievements – including a producer-director credit for the second season of Dubai
One’s highly praised arts and entertainment television program It’s Now – my curiosity was strongly
piqued. Ultimately, a date was set and I did my own research for the interview.
In almost every way, she lived up to my expectations. Although a junior high
school student, her manner was exceptionally mature. She was uncannily
articulate. In fact, it was easy to forget that she was just a kid.
Ms. Knightley put her finger on the
red record button of a large, ancient tape recorder. Ultimately, I watched her
use both hands to activate the record
feature of the tape deck. It made me smile.
“Your name?”
I took a sip of my black tea and
laughed. “You just called me across the restaurant a minute ago as I entered!”
I admit. I was, for reasons I wasn’t certain, a little nervous. My flippant
response was meant to lighten the mood, perhaps even disarm her somewhat.
She stared at me blankly.
I found myself watching her from the
corner of my eye. “My name is Alistair A. Vogan.”
“What does the middle ‘A’ stand
for?”
“Avery.”
“Where is your hometown?” she asked,
almost overlapping, and I realized she was using the time-honored technique of
clipping the ends of the interviewee’s answers, so that each response would not
be too thought out, therefore, fresh. I winked. Smart kid.
I watched a cloud fall over her
face.
“Ottawa. Canada,” I said and cleared
my throat.
“It’s cold there, right?” she said
in a fast monotone voice.
“Yes. I used to ride my bicycle
across a lake to get to university,” I said rapid-fire.
“Are there other writers in your
family?” she shot out.
“Yes. My grandfather, Kingsley Vogan,
was a writer. He had a number of books published throughout the sixties,
seventies and eighties. ‘A Box of Time’,
‘September in Algonquin,’ winner of
the…”
“When did you begin writing?” she
continued without a beat.
“Um.”
“Let’s go!”
“I began writing when I was in the ninth
grade at...”
“I really loved your book How
To Lose Your Voice Without Screaming.”
I was starting to feel dizzy. “Thank
you… I’m so happy you felt that...”
“Where did the idea come from to
write this story?” she said without pauses between words, and definitely
overlapping.
“Well, I think,” I began,
consciously trying to slow down the pace, “as I developed the story, I mined a
lot of my own experience and observations.” I took a deep breath and saw her
mouth open. I held up my finger and glanced at her tensely. “None of the events
actually happened, or maybe a couple did, but they are very minor
elements. On the other hand, it does
feel autobiographical in some sense. Let me give you an example,” I said.
She smiled, not blinking.
“When I was seven my brother and I
went to Florida to visit our grandparents. While visiting we took a trip to Walt
Disney World in Orlando, Florida.”
“Uh-huh…”
“After parking the car we took the
monorail, I think. On the way, my grandparents told us to always stay close to them, to never
leave their side. My brother and I agreed that we would stay close. But we were
already distracted. We’d watched The
Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday evening of our lives.”
I saw her look at her watch, then
tap its glass face. She actually raised the watch to listen as I spoke.
“We knew all the characters,” I said, trying to appear lighthearted. “We
were unbelievably excited!”
Tilda scowled.
“So, when the train stopped and the
door opened up to a large glass enclosure I’d already forgotten everything
about my life up to that point. On the other side of this space I saw, I think,
the Disney character Goofy. Without
thinking I broke from my grandparents, slipped through the people in front of
us and began to run the expanse that separated us as fast as I could. I could
hear the cries of my grandparents fading as the distance grew.”
I watched Ms. Tilda B. Knightley
pretending to scratch as she yawned behind her hand.
“When I reached Goofy, Miss Knightley, I
felt as though I’d crossed into another dimension: a television character and I were breathing in the same air. In front of me, Goofy was gazing
out the window. He was huge, and soft and furry. Without a thought I threw my arms around him. And, then, everything changed...”
“Could you be specific? ‘Everything’ covers a lot. Were the
governments of developing countries overturned? Could you not feel your left
side? Were you suddenly on a desert island and you were forced to eat your
sibling?”
“Well, Tilda... Sure. I felt Goofy stiffen in my arms. Or rather, I could feel
the body, the person, inside the
costume stiffen. At first, Goofy didn’t respond. Then, his body leaned a little
in my direction. On the neck of the tall plush character, I saw the mesh, and
beyond that a pair of eyes. Human eyes, Tilda. I’m sure I must have
swallowed hard. I didn’t know what was happening, but it wasn’t adding up the
way I would have imagined. And, I heard his
voice... A man’s voice. He leaned, hovered over
me, really. I heard his voice say, ‘Go… away… kid. I’m on my break...’ It was the kind of voice you’d
expect to hear through gritted teeth.”
I looked at Ms. Knightley to see
what kind of effect this had on her.
She was looking at her tape recorder and tapped it. She shook her head, her
cheeks flushing.
“What?” I asked.
“Batteries are dead.”
I watched as she took the small batteries out of the back of
her tape recorder and placed them on the tablecloth perpendicular to the edge
of the table. I sat back and watched with the tea saucer on my knee. She
removed a new set of batteries from her school blazer and began an attempt to
dislodge these from the packaging. She was clearly angry.
I watched for a moment and smiled. “Why don’t you simply use
your smartphone to record the interview?” It seemed obvious.
“Because I prefer to use a tape recorder, thank you.”
“Well, I like it. It makes you look like a real journalist.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It belonged to my dad…”
I found myself shifting my weight in my seat and imaging how
he might have died in an untimely fashion, something heroic. I reached for the
menu.
“I had a long
interview with Bruce Willis on Wednesday,” she said, not looking up, then
added, “I should have changed the batteries.”
I leaned in, “Wow.
What’s Bruce Willis like?!”
“Like Bruce Willis,” she said, not looking up.
I sat back in my seat, slowly inhaling, then exhaled through
my nostrils. Three nose hairs flew drifted over the table and burst into
flames, then descended onto the table.
“Imagine that,” I said.
She managed to place the last battery in the recorder and
snap the lid on the back.
“He’s just Bruce Willis. He doesn’t really play
anyone else. Some people are just really
cool.”
“You’re interviewing everyone,” I said, honored suddenly to
be included in this group.
“I interview all kinds,”
she smiled pointedly. “I interviewed a parrot at the animal shelter once, so
don’t get too inflated.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this.
She sat there for a moment and stared at me. I turned my cup
in the saucer, as if I was fundamentally busy, and watched her. Her left arm
extended to the table, her index finger frozen on the red button of the tape
recorder.
“Excuse me, Tilda. It wasn’t I who forgot to change the batteries after I interviewed Mr. Bruce
Willis...” I could act like a celebrity as well.
She pressed down.
“Okay. Tell me about your childhood.”
“Well, I was born at a young age.”
“It said in your bio,” she continued over me, “that you had
a somewhat ‘unconventional education’.”
“Yes. At an early age formal education and I began to butt
heads. I didn’t learn, or think, or behave like other kids. This caused some
consternation among the teachers and administration of Briargreen Public
School, in Ottawa, Canada. As early as grade two people in lab coats began to
appear. They took me away and interviewed me in a small room that had no
windows. They gave me toys to play with and then took notes. Naturally, I made
an effort to “play” in as odd and unconventional manner as possible. I was
bored. Sometimes they’d show me inkblots and ask me what I saw. At first I
engaged, but then I realized there was nothing in it for me, therefore I got
creative… It was all written down.”
I took a sip of my tea and looked up. She seemed to be
waiting for me to say something. In any case, there was a pause and neither of
us said anything. It seemed she had decided to change tactics.
“By the middle of the third grade” I continued, “they’d
removed me from the school. I was sent to another school in a distant
neighborhood...”
“That’s it...”
“I was put into a Special
Education program.”
“Yes…”
“I was in what was called, among those who really mattered,
that is, my peers, the ‘retarded
class’. It was awkward. I took a small bus to school each day. Every day I
traveled to and from this program with a six-foot-tall fourteen year old. He
sat beside me the entire way and yelled at the traffic like a Great Dane, or
just drooled down his winter jacket. Sometimes, he did both.”
“We don’t have a retarded class at GEMS Academy.”
“I’m sure.”
“So you both sat there and just drooled? What year was
this?”
“No. Because I was
not mentally challenged. It was a
tough time, actually, Tilda. It made things difficult. People looked at you
differently when you were in that class…”
“Oh,” she said, thinking. “Because of the label?”
I thought about it. “Right, and let’s be clear, I didn’t
drool Tilda.”
We both sat there and stared at each other.
“How old are you,
anyway?” I asked her.
“Eleven.”
“…Years?”
“No. Months.”
“You certainly are precocious for an eleven-year old girl.”
“You’re wrinkly.”
I sat back. I glanced around the room. I could see a Muslim
family eating behind a screen on the other side of the restaurant.
She watched me coolly.
“Is that yoga?”
“No. I’m breathing deeply, kid. Yoga, or what people
conventionally refer to as yoga is a series of postures...”
“Anyway, back to the interview.”
“Okay.”
“Got anything for me.”
“One of my earliest memories of my grandfather, Kingsley
Vogan, is him typing on his manual typewriter at the kitchen table. In the
1930’s he began to build our very own Walden Pond, a two room cottage on Smoke
Lake in Algonquin Park in central Ontario. There was no electricity. Just
kerosene lamps at night, a small gas burner and two wooden stoves. Away from my
experiences in public school, it was heavenly. Everyday we swam, fished,
chopped wood… When it rained we’d sit inside by the fire and watch it fall.
Dripping off the maple leaves just on the other side of the glass. That’s where
I learned to read. And every once in a while my grandfather would get a look in
his eyes and pull out that typewriter.”
“Wow. That’s beautiful…” she said. “So, are you still
retarded?”
“I’m not retarded.
That’s not what...?”
“But it must have been tough? …That period? It was hardly
perfect.”
I smiled, perhaps a little too warmly,
and said, “‘Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...’”
She nodded.
“That’s William Butler Yeats,” I said,
with an eyebrow raised slightly, “the romantic
poet.”
“Thank you. I thought you meant the janitor at my school.”
I signaled the waiter and made the
international sign for ‘the bill’.
“Anyway, yeah, I know,” she added, “We
studied him in poetry class.”
I nodded impressed. It almost felt like
we were peers.
“Also,” she said, “I saw Three Weddings and a Funeral.”
“You know, when this gets published,” I
said to her, “I will have an element of control over the way I, and,
particularly, you are presented?”
“I don’t think so…”
“Trust me,” I smiled. “A lot of people
don’t know it but Weekend Magazine is
an Ivan Von Noshrilgram Foundation Excelsior Publication.”
“Is that
the publisher’s name?”
“Well, no. I just added in the ‘excelsior’ for effect. The rest is
true.”
“Give me an example of how you can
influence how we are portrayed in this article.”
“Nope,” I said.
“See. You’re lying.” Tilda said, but I
sensed she was uncertain. Also, I watched her scratch her hind leg with her
moss-covered antler.
“Let’s get back to the interview, Mr.
Author.”
“Yes! Let’s!” I said, then corrected
myself, “Oh, I mean the opposite
of that, Tilda. I think we are done.”
“How retarded you are…”
“Out of ten? Zero.”
“And what is the primary principle of
biology?”
“I’m bigger. I get more food?”
“Close. ‘Ontogony recapitulates
phylogony’...”
“Well. That is interesting, Tidla,” I
said, knowing the difference between memorization and understanding, and also
watching the waiter approach.
“What’s it like being a retard?” she asked.
“I’m not. You are.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“Also, you’re short,” I said, then added, ominously, “Really short, Tilda. I’d be concerned,
actually. You’ll probably never break five foot four, which is practically a
midget, so as an adult you’ll only be able to drive golf carts. I should know. I’m a medical doctor, as
I’m sure you know since you did all your own research.”
She tried to recall this detail. Suddenly she looked
uncertain. The waiter placed the little book on the table. I opened it like a
millionaire and saw how much her lunch, which she’d consumed before I arrived,
came to.
“Also, I lied,” she said, “your book wasn’t that good.”
“And your arms are too long for your torso. When you grow up
you’ll probably look like an orangutan.”
And then her eyes welled up.
I turned away disgusted and saw, to my
surprise, a respectable western couple, presumably her parents, standing next
to the table, a concerned look on their faces.
“Why hello!”
“You just hurt my
feelings, Mr. Vogan!”
I looked at them and
smiled, sheepishly. “Well, she did call me retarded…”
“I’m eleven years
old!!”
I closed the little
book the bill was in and sighed. It was awkward. “Wow,” I said standing up, and
handing the father the little book, “She’s a big eater.”
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