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(This episode is marked as explicit because of strong language.)
Episode image is a detail from the cover of Unless by Carol Shields, published in 2003 by Fourth Estate; cover design: Julian Humphries © Fourth Estate 2003; cover photograph: © Photonica.
Joining Charles Adrian for the 79th Second Hand Book Factory is poet, performer and promoter – or artistic explorer to her friends – Tina Sederholm. With the sound of George sighing in the background, they discuss art outside the box, bad dancing, living in a cold world and goodness as a woman’s lot.
The episode which follows this one, Page One 106, was recorded on the same day and features Tina’s husband Neil.
You can find a video of Nessuno by Mina on YouTube here.
You can watch Drake dancing in his video to Hotline Bling on YouTube here.
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg is also discussed in Page One 63.
Unless by Carol Shields is also discussed in Page One 184. Another book by Carol Shields, Larry’s Party, is discussed in Page One 7 and Page One 157.
You can find information about Charles Adrian’s alter-ego Ms Samantha Mann here.
You can find music by Faeries on Bandcamp here.
This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.
This episode features a jingle written for the podcast by the band Friends Of Friends.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode released: 3rd November, 2015.
Book listing:
Notes from An Exhibition by Patrick Gale
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg (trans. F. David)
Unless by Carol Shields
Links:
Hotline Bling by Drake on YouTube
Episode transcript:
Charles Adrian
George is waking up.
Tina Sederholm
Oh. [We'll] let him have a drink, shall we?
sound
[George lapping up water]
Tina Sederholm
Lots of drinking.
Charles Adrian
We're hearing...
Tina Sederholm
It's the...
Charles Adrian
... lapping in the background. So, yeah, just for... for listeners: George is a slightly arthritic dog...
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... [laughing] who's come with Tina.
Tina Sederholm
[to George] Good boy. [to Charles Adrian] Right. Sorry about that.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Hello and welcome to the 106th Page One. This is the 80th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today is Tina... No, I've done this wrong...
sound
[paper rustling]
Charles Adrian
I've got the wrong side of my piece of paper. Hello and welcome to the [laughing] 105th Page One. This is the 79th Second Hand Book Factory. I'm Charles Adrian and my guest today is Tina Sederholm.
Tina Sederholm
Hello!
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the Book Podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello Tina. [laughs]
Tina Sederholm
Hello! [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Thank you so much for coming all the way here.
Tina Sederholm
Oh, it's a pleasure—and not that far. I'm used to driving a lot, so...
Charles Adrian
Good.
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
How do you describe yourself?
Tina Sederholm
Oh, well, this is a deep and philosophical question...
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tina Sederholm
... and I...
Tina and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Tina Sederholm
... as I can turn most things...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Correct.
Tina Sederholm
... into a deep and philosophical question but... I, sort of, have two definitions. One for public because people need something to, sort of, hang on to—
Charles Adrian
Yes.
Tina Sederholm
... not because... that makes me sound as if I'm quite patronising towards ‘people’ but I mean just as a quick definition—and then I would call myself poet, performer, and promoter. And for myself I have a, sort, of slightly wanky definition which I like—and that's why I keep it to myself rather than telling people but... I like to think of myself as an artistic explorer.
Charles Adrian
Oh, I like that.
Tina Sederholm
[affirmative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
[appreciative] Mmm.
Tina Sederholm
Because I've, sort of, dipped my toe in lots of different art forms and I like to take a piece of one to something else. And so I find when people say, ‘What do you do?’ I mean, [floundering noise] is usually the first noise I make because it really does depend on the day of the week how I'm feeling toward... you know, towards [laughing] art and creativity in general sometimes. Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] But all that said, what is the book that you've brought?
Tina Sederholm
Oh.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Books are relatively straightforward, aren't they?
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] Yes. I have bought a book called Notes from An Exhibition by Patrick Gale.
Charles Adrian
[interested] Uh huh.
Tina Sederholm
I love this book because we're talking about breaking outside of a box and it's got a very particular way that it's structured, which really tickled me when I wrote it—quite apart from it's a wonderful story—but the way the story was told.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] When you read it.
Tina Sederholm
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Sorry, you said you wrote it, and I was... [laughs]
Tina Sederholm
Did I say I wrote it? [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Part of your dream life is that you...
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] That was definitely part of my dream life. Sorry, Patrick.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tina Sederholm
You may be a famous novelist but in fact I can reveal to you now... Yes, when I read it. I've read it several times. And the way it's structured you can tell from the title. Because it's about a female artist who's a manic depressive and she dies in the first chapter and each of the chapter headings is, sort of, prefixed [/prefɪkst/] by—prefixed [/priːfikst/] or prefixed [/prefɪkst/]?
Charles Adrian
Er...
Tina Sederholm
Who knows?
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yeah, good question.
Tina Sederholm
One of them.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Whichever you like, I think.
Tina Sederholm
Whichever—by a note as you would get for a piece of art in an exhibition. So this is like... this book is a retrospective of her life. And one of the many things I love about it is that she's a very contrary character and each chapter is... not only do you have this note but it's told from the perspective of either one of her children or her husband or—later on—her sister. And that's peculiar because what they realise is—once she's dead—is that nobody knows anything about Rachel before she's 18 years old and they can't really find anything out about her. And because she's had this... her family have protected her in various ways because she is a manic depressive, nobody really asked those questions. And so the whole thing is a bit of a mystery of, ‘Can we find out who this woman really was through her artwork, through the bits of information everybody knows?’ But nobody's actually trying to find out. It's just the reader gets to find out. So, yes, I [find] that [indistinct].
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [appreciative] Mmm. Oh, it sounds wonderful.
Tina Sederholm
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Read the first page.
Tina Sederholm
I will. So the... As I said, you've got the note right at the beginning.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Tina Sederholm
[clears throat] So the first part that I'm going to read is the note that would be by this piece of art in an imaginary exhibition of her life.
FISHERMAN'S SMOCK (date unknown). Cotton. [sic]
Throughout her working life in Penzance, Rachel Kelly bought smocks like these from the chandlery at Newlyn to wear, as other painters might wear overalls, to protect her clothes (not that Kelly ever greatly minded paint splashes or working in the midst of fertile chaos, as the large photographs of her two chief working environments behind you attest.) Neither of her studios were [sic] ever heated so the smocks may have afforded warmth as well as protection. She made much use of the pockets, once joking with Wilhelmina Barns-Graham that they were the one place she could tuck chocolate biscuits to keep them free of paint. (See postcard with cartoon below.) It was characteristic of her contrary attitudes that she despised the vogue for producing false fishermen's smocks in softer cotton, and colours other than navy blue, yet never set foot on a yacht in her life. She was wearing an even more torn and spattered [sic] example the day she died, and was buried in it.
Rachel was woken by a painting or, rather, by the idea of one. Her first response on waking was anguish such as one felt when torn from any dreaming rapture and she shut her eyes again, breathing deeply in an effort to return to sleep at once and recapture the dream where she had left off. But she was awake and her brain was fizzing in a way that would have had Jack Trescothick testing her blood and reviewing her prescription had he known.
The painting was there still, scorched on to her retinas like the after-image of something seen in a dazzle of sun. If she blinked she saw it again for a second. She saw the...
Charles Adrian
Oh nice! That's... It's... Yeah, it's interesting to have the... the... Because I like the note in its... that absolute certainty of the note.
Tina Sederholm
Yes
Charles Adrian
And then you come into the narrative, which is—it suddenly struck me—it's this... We have this fascination for ‘How does an artist get her ideas?’
Tina Sederholm
Yes.
Charles Adrian
That's a question so many people have, isn't it?
Tina Sederholm
Yes. And this one looks a lot at... because she suffers from mental illness and how she has great creative spurts but then when she's on the medication she slows right down. And at this point—I'm not... it happens in the first chapter so I'm not giving a lot away—but she's actually managed to be pretending to take her medication and not taking it. And so—because she's felt this, kind of, dulling of her senses—and she so wants to be in that creative mode again. So she's been painting madly. She doesn't... And ironically she doesn't die from something that is related to her mental illness. It's something completely different. So the thing that she's been protected from all her life doesn't actually happen.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Tina Sederholm
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
Oh, that sounds really nice. Oh, thank you very much. That's lovely.
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] Mmm. You're welcome.
Charles Adrian
We're going to play... I'm going to play the first track that I've picked from your list and this is... So I'd never heard of Mina before but I looked her up.
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
It sounds like she was quite famous.
Tina Sederholm
Yes. Yes. And this [laughs]... this is really corny but this was Neil—my husband—and I's first dance at our wedding.
Charles Adrian
No! Oh, that's so lovely!
Tina Sederholm
I know. And we chose it before we knew what the words meant.
Charles Adrian
[interested] Uh huh.
Tina Sederholm
And it actually... it doesn't sound like a love song but it really is a love song.
Charles Adrian
Oh! I haven't really listened to the words properly. I was just... I was actually taken by the video...
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... which is just bizarre. I mean..
Tina Sederholm
It will be. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
I know... So: two things. [laughing] Because...
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
One is that just recently I've been seeing on social media a lot of people have been making fun of Drake for a video that he's just brought out in which he dances.
Tina Sederholm
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
People have been making fun of his dancing. And I saw it and I thought it's beautiful. I mean, not even in a, kind of... You know, a lot of people have been saying, ‘Oh, I like it even though it's terrible’. I genuinely think he dances [laughing] beautifully in that video. I think Mina dances terrifyingly...
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... [laughing] in the video for this song. She has her arms, kind of, completely outstretched. It's a bizarre, kind of, ‘Get away from me!’ [laughing] dance that she's doing.
Tina Sederholm
I've got to look this up. I've never seen it.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] You have to watch it because the second thing is that suddenly there's Chet Baker in a bath with his trumpet. He doesn't play, as far as I can work out. He's just there in the [laughing] video.
Tina Sederholm
Okay, that's really strange but very typical because she was a star in Italy for many years and if you listen to her stuff from... I think this one is from the late 50s or early 60s. The stuff from the 80s is so horrible.
Charles Adrian
I can imagine.
Tina Sederholm
It's just... [laughing] yeah.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I can imagine.
Tina Sederholm
It's the worst of the 80s with a dollop of Italy on the top. And... yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] [speaking over] Yeah. Because this period was a good time for an Italian music, wasn't it?
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] This was... Yeah.
Charles Adrian
And this is lovely. I mean, I do like it. But I should listen to the words a little more carefully.
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
So this is Nessuno...
Tina Sederholm
That's right..
Charles Adrian
... by Mina.
Music
[Nessuno by Mina]
Charles Adrian
So that was Mina with Nessuno. That was lovely. Thank you for introducing me to that. I think I'm going to be listening to that lots now.
Tina Sederholm
[laughs] Maybe that track. I'm not sure how many of her other tracks [laughing] you're going to want to listen to but we'll see.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I might... Yeah, but that one... that one... I'll stick with that perhaps for the time being.
Tina Sederholm
Yeah.
Charles Adrian
[laughs] Right. My book for you, Tina. Now, as I explained to you when I arrived....when you arrived, sorry—I was already here because [laughing] it's my flat...
Tina Sederholm
[laughs]
Charles Adrian
... I live here—there's a certain amount of building work going on so all of my books came out of the back room...
Tina Sederholm
[gasps]
Charles Adrian
... into a pile... I mean, I took them. They didn't just... It would have been lovely if they'd just done that by themselves. And once I'd piled them all up I realised that I hadn't picked a book for you. So I will admit that this is a book off the top of one of those...
Tina and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
... piles. But I... um... I'm... And the reason I say that is because it is a book that's actually appeared on the podcast before but I saw it and... I... So I did an episode called Murder Mystery and I read a few first pages of murder mysteries. But I think it's a beautiful book and if you haven't read it I think you should because I think you'll like it.
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] [appreciative] Mmm. What's it called?
Charles Adrian
It's called Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.
Tina Sederholm
Oh! Okay.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Have you read it?
Tina Sederholm
No, I haven't read it. No.
Charles Adrian
It's by Peter Høeg. It's a Danish book originally. Is that right?
sound
[pages turning]
Charles Adrian
It's... Yes. So it was written in Danish. The main character—Smilla—is from Greenland. So it's about... I mean, I didn't... I don't know... I still don't know very much about it but Greenland—I think—is part of Denmark. So some of the characters are Greenlanders living in Denmark and so she talks a little bit about what it's like to be a Greenlander living in Denmark. And it starts with... It starts with... This boy has died. I think he's a Greenlandic boy but, I mean, it's a while since I've read this so I don't remember all of the details. But I love the words. I love the names of places and the names of people. And then he really does talk a lot about snow—and not just snow but the different ways in which water freezes and the different effects that you get from that and the different ways it feels and the different ways it looks. And I think he talks about this amazing... this... this optical illusion that you sometimes get when you get ice hanging in the air and I just... It's so beautiful. It's such a cold book. It's about coldness and it's about—I guess—feeling at home inside a cold world. And I find it very exciting. I mean, I don't like the cold all that much but I love... I, kind of, love this glimpse into it.
Tina Sederholm
Oh wow!
Charles Adrian
So.
Tina Sederholm
Okay.
Charles Adrian
And it has a map at the front, which I think is the sign of a very good book.
Tina and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
I love books that have maps in. So:
1
IT IS FREEZING, an extraordinary – 18 ºC, and it's snowing, and in the language which is no longer mine, the snow is qanik – big, almost weightless crystals falling in stacks and covering the ground with a layer of pulverised white frost.
December darkness rises up from the grave, seeming as limitless as the sky above us. In this darkness our faces are merely pale, shining discs, but even so I can sense the disapproval of the pastor and the verger directed at my black net stockings and at Juliane's whimpering, made worse by the fact that she took disulfiram this morning and is now confronting her grief almost sober. They think that she and I have no respect for either the weather or the tragic circumstances. The truth is that both the stockings and the pills, each in their own way, are a tribute to the cold and to Isaiah.
The women surrounding Juliane and the pastor and the verger are all [sic] Greenlanders, and when we sing “Guutiga, illimi”, “Thou, my Lord”, and as Juliane's legs buckle under her and she begins weeping, the volume slowly increasing, and when the pastor speaks in West Greenlandic, taking his point of departure in the Moravians' favourite passage from Saint Paul about redemption through the blood, then with only a tiny lapse of concentration one might feel oneself transported to Upernarvik or Holsteinborg or Qaanaaq.
But out in the darkness, like the bow of a ship, loom the walls of Vestre Prison; we are in Copenhagen.
The Greenlanders' cemetery is part of Vestre Cemetery. With Isaiah in his coffin has come a procession consisting of those of Juliane's friends who are now holding her upright, the pastor and the verger, the mechanic, and a small group of Danes, among whom I recognize only the probation officer and the guardian.
Tina Sederholm
[appreciative] Mmm.
Charles Adrian
There you go.
Tina Sederholm
Wow, she's packed... he's packed so much in—
Charles Adrian
Yeah.
Tina Sederholm
... thank you—to that first page.
Charles Adrian
Yes. Isn't that lovely?
Tina Sederholm
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Because you get the place and then you get the other place and you get the weather and you get feelings.
Tina Sederholm
Yes, that's fantastic. I mean, I... Being half Scandinavian myself…
Charles Adrian
Oh! Which I'd forgotten actually. Weirdly. How did I forget that?
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] Yeah. I know. I don't know. I don't know.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Oh, so that's quite an appropriate choice in its way.
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] So... Yeah. So I...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] I know you're not from that part of Scandinavia.
Tina Sederholm
No. I mean, I'd heard of this book. And, of course, there was a film—wasn't there—with Julia Roberts.
Charles Adrian
Oh, was there?
Tina Sederholm
[affirmative] Mmm hmm.
Charles Adrian
Oh, I didn't know about that.
Tina Sederholm
Yes. So I remember picking this up—I don't know—ten or fifteen years ago and I can't decide—or remember—why I decided not to read it. But now, having heard that... Because I love that Scandinavian rhythm of writing. I mean, it's really popular now.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes.
Tina Sederholm
That, sort of, you know, Scandi Noir. [And I've been thinking, ‘Oh!’]
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Absolutely, yes.
Tina Sederholm
I had that mixed feeling thing of loving that something I found beautiful and wonderful for many years is now being appreciated by other people but then there's also that slight cheapening, you know.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Yes. Yeah. [laughs] Of course!
Tina Sederholm
And is that my snobbery or is that a genuine grief? I can't tell.
Tina and Charles Adrian
[laughter]
Tina Sederholm
But. Any... Yes, and when you were talking about the different types of cold before, it was like, ‘Well, I remember that from my childhood’—not living over there but spending protracted times—and it's a very different cold to the cold we experience here. Not just because it's a lower temperature but the dryness that can happen sometimes and that stillness. And how people accept seasons much more readily: ‘We're just not going to do anything useful in November, December, January. Probably February.’ That's just part of it and it's... I find it a, sort of, healthier way to live rather than expecting to be at full pelt or full productivity all year round. I have to keep telling myself that that's okay. That at this time of year—you know, coming into November—that I am just going to slow down and I'm not going to be as, you know, bright and brilliant as I wish I was. [laughs]
Charles Adrian
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really good to remind ourselves of that, I think.
Tina Sederholm
Mmm.
Charles Adrian
Oh, good. Oh, I'm pleased I gave you that then.
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] Yes. I'm really looking forward to that.
Charles Adrian
Wonderful. Now, what did you bring for me?
Tina Sederholm
Well, I have bought a book called Unless by Carol Shields. Now, I don't know if you've ever heard of Carol Shields.
Charles Adrian
I have heard of her. I've never read anything, I don't think.
Tina Sederholm
No. Well, she won the Pulitzer and she won the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize—I forget—for a lot of her books. This was her last book and the first one I discovered. I've probably read this book ten or eleven times and as soon as you asked me to do this podcast I knew I was going to give you this book. But my confession would be that I think—because I was trying to remember today, ‘Why was I so firm in that decision?’—and I have to admit, I think I selected it for Samantha—your alter ego—
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] Uh huh! Mmm. Interesting. Yes.
Tina Sederholm
... because...
Charles Adrian
I'll pass it on. Don't you worry. [laughs]
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] Yes. Yes. Or read it on her behalf.
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tina Sederholm
But the subject matter is: We've got a middle-aged writer—who's called Rita Winters—whose world has fallen apart because her oldest daughter... She's had a very comfortable life and she translates a feminist writer and she writes her own light fiction and she has a wonderful marriage and all these things but her oldest daughter—for no accountable reason—has dropped out of university and is sitting on the corner of two streets with a sign with ‘Goodness’ writt... yeah, a cardboard sign with ‘Goodness’. And she just sits there completely blankly all day and then goes back to a hostel at night. And whatever the family try to do or try to understand they—her daughter's called Nora—Nora doesn't... won't communicate. And so they can only, sort of, sit with her and be a witness to ‘What is it she's trying to find?’ And of course everybody is trying to work out, ‘Why has Nora done this? What does Nora need?’ Because there's been no sign of... that she would have this, sort of, breakdown beforehand.
Charles Adrian
Read the... Read the first page.
Tina Sederholm
[speaking over] I will. I will. I could talk about this book for hours...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tina Sederholm
... because it, sort of, influenced the last show I took to Edinburgh very strongly because of this idea of goodness and how that's, sort of, almost the woman's lot.
IT HAPPENS THAT I am going through a period of great unhappiness and loss just now. All my life I've heard people speak of finding themselves in acute pain, bankrupt in spirit and body, but I've never understood what they meant. To lose. To have lost. I believed these visitations of darkness lasted only a few minutes or hours and that these saddened people, in between bouts, were occupied, as we all were, with the useful monotony of happiness. But happiness is not what I thought. Happiness is the lucky pane of glass you carry in your head. It takes all your cunning just to hang on to it, and once it's smashed you have to move into a different sort of life.
In my new life—the summer of the year 2000—I am attempting to “count my blessings.” Everyone I know advises me to take up this repellent strategy, as though they really believe a dramatic loss can be replaced by the renewed appreciation of all one has been given. I have a husband, Tom, who loves me and is faithful to me and is very decent looking as well, tallish, thin, and losing his hair nicely. We live in a house...
Charles Adrian
[laughs]
Tina Sederholm
So there you go.
Charles Adrian
Oh wow! I love that. That's... I think I'm going to really enjoy that. I mean, I'm fascinated by people's experience of happiness as well—and contentment, I suppose. I think that's going to be wonderful.
Tina Sederholm
Yes. Yes. And... I think it's one of the [laughs] first books that really introduced me to feminism in a way I could... [laughing] I could tolerate because I was carrying around that, sort of, myth of man-hating...
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] The perfect... The perfect feminist.
Tina Sederholm
Yes. Exactly.
Charles Adrian
[speaking over] [laughing] Yes.
Tina Sederholm
And it's just not.
Charles Adrian
Right.
Tina Sederholm
Yes. A very clever, very thoughtful, and... and poignant. a very poignant book. And it's also the structure—again. It seems to be a big thing at the moment of, sort of, blasting... Or I, sort of, have a love-hate relationship with the hero's journey because that idea that we all worship that myth... [deprecating] We all! You know, it's so prevalent in writing and film and it celebrates the young masculine part of the psyche so much. And this book made me ask, ‘What's the heroine's journey? What's the feminine journey that must be equal in importance and yet somehow has slipped out of our psyche?’ Or not... You know, it's just not given the same weight. And the interesting thing in this is that not a lot happens but a huge amount happens. But in almost totally the opposite way that it will in the hero's journey because the antagonist—Nora—does nothing except sit on a pavement. And yet that causes so many ruptions within the family and among friends. And ‘How will they sort it out?’ and... Yeah. So I love it out of that point of view because it gave me an alternative way to look at writing a story, which I really loved.
Charles Adrian
Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tina.
Tina Sederholm
Oh, you're welcome.
Charles Adrian
So we're going to finish with the second track that I've picked from your list. So these are friends of yours, is that right?
Tina Sederholm
Yes.
Charles Adrian
Faeries?
Tina Sederholm
Faeries, they're called.
Charles Adrian
And this is... So this is Smile in your Eyes we've chosen. It was quite difficult to pick a track but we've picked Smile in your Eyes.
Tina Sederholm
[laughter]
Charles Adrian
So thank you so much, Tina. This has been wonderful.
Tina Sederholm
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Music
[Smile in your Eyes by Faeries]
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]