YouSaid · the spoken record

Helen Oyeyemi

lines on the record: 30
first: 2024-02-14
most recent: 2024-02-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Think it's what we do. I actually think that that is honestly. How we live, like to some extent. Encouraged to switch off the understanding of ourselves, but we're doing it all the time like we're fictionalizing and romanticizing everything and everyone all the time. We just kind of, it's all to do with our interpretation of what happens to us and how we see other people. So just allowing that free association. Guess that would turn everywhere into Prague.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guess Different picture of Resistance means like of what resistance to circumstances means because a big thing about proud and part of what I love and admire so much about Prague is that so many people have tried to define the city and control the city and just haven't been able to because it's just too weird for them. And I think that. Know, for anybody out there who maybe feels like just that they're too weird to live in some way, it's just a way of saying, no, like this is, this too is a way of being in the world and a successful way of being like it means that you get to by like existing within these spaces that like nobody has names for or words for. Possible to thrive actually. Yeah, that's why I feel like Pug is the home of all those concepts and all those people and beings.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On walls, and Took that as a sign that Prague was calling me. I was like, yes, Frog misses me too. Sometimes you feel your affection return, sometimes there's an aloofness, sometimes there's a kind of. This is definitely like a desire to mislead, which is Past places that I want to visit again, like I passed this park. Name translates to the house of the hairy ghost. And I made a note to myself that, oh, I want to go to that pub at some point, and I could never find it again. And just there was just things like that where it's kind of like, what's going on here? Where sometimes frog seemed very straightforward and certain and sometimes like”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dream and in my dream, I would have woken up in Prague and I'd just be like going about my day, like just normally shouldn't go be handing my tea. And it was only when something completely impossible happened that I was like, oh, I'm not awake. And then I would really wake up and I'd be in Kentucky and I'd be like, I had a great time in Kentucky, but I was also like so homesick. So I was like, why am I not in Prague? So there was that. And then around that time, a friend of mine who's here wrote to me saying, Is there any reason why your name would be appearing like on bus stops and that bus stops and tram stops? And I was like, what? And he sent me a photo and there was someone. And I still don't know what was going on. Someone was writing Helen like huge. I can't tell whether the graffiti artist's name is Helen or whether it's just somebody, a graffiti artist who was like in love with a Helen, but just the main heaven kept appearing in my neighborhood.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's aloofness. Like sometimes it depends on the weather, sometimes it depends on the season, but I've definitely experienced an illusionistness and I feel a lot of the time. I just love this sitting. I have no idea how it feels about me, where it's kind of like, okay, that's fine if you love me. That's your issue. But then I had this writing residency in Kentucky for six months. And I think that this was when I first understood that my thing with Prague was really serious because I would wake up.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fakes were so happy. I think that. Definitely a place that shouldn't just be visited once. There's just so much to it and so many layers. And it also depends on the mood that you catch brag in and so on and so forth.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and City that I see. I mean, in a way, I would be fine if the city that I see only exists in my imagination, but it's nice that it also has an objective reality in some sense.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He served as a soldier in the First World War, and then he came to Fargo, and he was completely dazzled by it, and he wrote Book of Poems called Prague with Fingers of Brain. And this was in the 1930s. And when I read it, it felt like it had been written now. It felt like, oh, somebody else has been just sees it. And that was when I knew that it wasn't just me. And then you read other works and you're like, I don't know whether people feel like this. So I'd like being part of this chain of. Unlikely Prague is.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do think that there has to be some. Risk, like some element of risk involved in. The art that you make to make it, I don't know, it's like the finishing touch in some way. And it's something that I just want to be there for. The next person who comes to Brag and like, What? And this, like, why do I randomly feel such a draw to this place when there's absolutely no reason for me to feel this? And then it will touch on, because the book that I read that made me think, oh, somebody else sees what I see is this book of poems by Nezpel, this poet Nesbel, who moved to Prague from the countryside, I guess, after.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm So I'm so nervous about it, we're sure. Like, I just feel like what we've done, but I didn't. I think I feel vulnerable in a way that I haven't with other books just because. And I can't tell if this is a situation with my generation or if it's just personal, but I think I have like a kind of issue with sincerity where I just kind of like I prefer to be ironic or just to like be distanced and not talk really passionately about the things I love because if someone else doesn't also love it, then I'll be really upset. So I think that with this, it's kind of like, oh no, now my feelings about now my feelings about Prago out in the open. But it had to happen sometime.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Honestly, I don't know what happened. And it was so irrational that that was when I decided to try other cities. Like, well, a friend invited me to date other cities because. Was like, she was like, I do think it is irrational, but you should try other cities, and if you really miss Parlin, you should come back, and that's what I ended up doing. I tried Budapest for a year. I tried Berlin for six months, and ended up coming back to Prague because it just felt like... Place where I can dream most freely. And I think that that's always just why. Wanted in life. So, yeah”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yeah, for about a year, I was kind of like, I really don't like park. I think that we just came, the weather was bad, like we didn't like the food. People were mean to us. Everything was just like. And then a year later, somehow it was almost like a romantic comedy where people hate each other so much that it means something. It's like, it means that they love each other because then I ended up moving to probably just like based on just sort of brooding over it because I don't usually have that reaction. Think I'm quite an appreciative traveler, like I usually find something to like about most places that I pass through, but with progress, like I don't like anything about this city. And then I ended up moving there. And when I moved. Nothing had changed, but I just loved everything, so I don't know what”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that I have in the. My responses to Prague are contained in it, and that the first time I came here was just a few days with a really close friend. And we went to, she was doing a residency in Leipzig. So we were in Leipzig. And then we came to Berlin and we came to Prague and Prague was our least favorite. We were like, oh, Berlin's so great. Now it's really weird to me to think that I ever preferred Berlin to Prague. I can clearly remember.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strange and lasting influence on other people. And then other times you just kind of like brush past people, like strangers in the night, like that kind of thing. So the way that cities can do that, the way that people can do that to each other. Then somehow in this story, Pug gets into that friendship and reacts differently to the different friends. So there's a sort of alchemy there.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just in my life, but I observe in literature, that I observe. Non fiction, where the thing that actually becomes most permanent in your life, it's the thing that you think is temporary, always just kind of like, oh, this will just be for a while. You know, we get on. And this has always been the case, even just speaking personally, and the things that I think are going to be deep and a big deal are never deep in a big deal. The things that I think are just kind of like, ah, I turn out to be like a permanent presence. And that's kind of interesting as well. So it's kind of like a way of talking about the influence that PAG can have on some people because I also know some people who've been to Prague and they're like, oh, it was a nice city. I had some beers. And then I left. And then there are others who were kind of like this city. So the way, just the ways that parts of us can show up and have like this really.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Transformation into fiction of the way that I feel about my attachment to Prague. Like, it's still very, still, people ask me, like, what are you doing here? Why did you move here? And I'm just like, I don't know, but I just love it. Like, it's one of those, it's one of those things that just happened. And it's one of those like almost irrational connections that I'm really grateful for because it allowed me to like begin living what I think of as my real life. I feel like I was just like waiting and waiting for a really long time for my real life to begin. And then I was like looking around and, you know, I moved from Berlin to Philip to Paris and like all of these places and I was like, where is moving on life? And then I came to Prague and I was like, oh, I don't like this place. And just left and then ended up moving back. And, you know, all of these back and forth. And I think that there are parallels between that and a lot of the friendships.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a really, really good question. That we've not anticipated I'm trying to think through it. Guess intrigued by this. Dynamic of Your life being connected to another person's Not in a way that Almost like invisible threads that are also. Inexplicable. Like, there's no reason why these people have such strong feelings towards, and against each other. And I guess maybe that was a sort of”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Little map inside my head, or a kind of dimensional sense of like where all of this was happening, and now I see it. It's as if I see it in 4D now. And I guess that's what I love about just books in general, the way that they wait for you to like know more and to have seen more and to feel more and come back to them and sort of open new doorways and enter into these passageways that before you just barely noticed.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You don't know so many passages that I didn't remember or that, again, I'm just like, was this really sheer that actually connect to, I suppose, my deep into knowledge? Because I think the first time that I read it about 10 years ago, a lot of the place names that didn't really mean anything to me, there are a lot of scenes that take place in Prague that because I didn't know Prague that well, you know, I didn't have that kind of.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Almost all of them. So we rereading this absolute classic, which I decided was going to be one of my desert island books called The Good Soldier Sheikh, so you know, sort of set in the first World War, a soldier. And it's a sort of a thousand page book and maybe the first 300 pages of it are Sheikh malingering and just trying not to get sent to the front. And there are so many. She's an absolute mad lad. I'm just reading it. I'm just like, what, Rape?”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More of a literary device in some way, or just like explaining, no, explaining, portraying what goes on in the mind, when we read, when we visit a place, when we try to conceive of a place.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's also, I think Way of talking about what happened psychologically, like as we read the actual process of reading, because I reread a lot and I noticed that when I go back to books that I've read, like even as much as a year ago, I'm just kind of, there are passages that I might, I don't think that passage was in the book when I first read it. There's a sort of reorganization that happens every time you return to a text. And in a way, like cities like Prague can take advantage of that because I think So much of Prague's history still remains unknown and gets shuffled around depending on who talks about it and so on and so forth. So it was kind of.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't see those things as I don't see those things as magical unexplainable. I think that what happens a lot in the way that I write, in the way that I conceive of fiction, is that while I'm making things up, it's like while I'm here making things up, I might as well just make everything up. That's my whole conception of fiction.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, even just walking around Park or engaging with like. The films and the literature See glimpses of all of the influence of these times. So, yeah, it was kind of a way of like. Touching on that patchwork. Without getting drowned in these different eras, yeah.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that they kind of come from that open question of what a Prague book or a Prague story really is. It's kind of like when you talk about Prague and all of the things that Prague has been through, you could talk about the communist regime, you could talk about the Nazi regime, you could talk about the time of the alchemists. You could talk about, like, there are just so many eras that Prague has lived through and none of them define Prague. In fact, there are like future Prague that are probably unimaginable to those of us who are living here right now. Will be covered in times to come. And that's kind of exciting. And so it's It's what was part of the challenge for me and what was so daunting about writing a Prague book or is kind of like, it's not possible to address it all.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think I have been able to present my corner of the mystery of this. Because it often feels when, especially when I'm reading other books about Prague, as if everybody has their angle that they sort of collide with and just say, okay, I don't know. And I think I went as far as I could with this and then just hit my angle where I had to sort of step back and say, I don't know and just enjoy the mystery of Prague.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Takes such care to impress upon you that it was the center of this great empire, and even places like Paris have a kind of almost museum feel to them. And then when you come to Prague, it's just like so beautiful but so, it's not, and I think it's not unaware of its beauty. It just doesn't really care about it. It cares. It feels like Prague has other things that it cares about and is interested in and pursues. So that sense of like trying to fictionalize a city that already does a lot of fictionalizing itself was really tricky and I kind of liked running around with a sort of net trying to like capture some visions that Prague had to spare. So yeah, it felt very much felt like trying to have a dialogue with and with another living being.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a living being And as a sort of Wiley, almost wily, maybe almost a trickster character. Think when you compare it to a lot of the other great European cities, especially it's so close to Vienna, which is so monumental and like so.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess wanting to add my voice to this chorus of voices that are sort of singing, what is Prague? Was the main aim? Of writing parasol.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hi, which here, first of all. Thank you for having me. To be talking to you. How would I describe the book? I think it's, as you said, a love letter to Prague. It's part of a body and work that gets called Pragensia, which is basically people who have come to Prague and have just been sort of stunned and dazzled and have tried to figure out what this place is because it just doesn't feel like sometimes it feels like a city and sometimes it feels like a state of mind almost or a zone of communication or a zone of I guess transformation. I feel like people use the word transformation too much, maybe, but in this case. Often feel like Prague is a place where fiction comes. Become non fiction and vice versa, like non things that you just don't imagine are possible suddenly cross this bridge into the possible and vice versa.”
2024-02-14 · Intelligence Squared · Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT