Splash No. 114 - Interview with Me

Interview with Me

Although I often like to paint the picture that I’m a hardened intellectual, the truth couldn’t be further from the fact. I love to listen to interviews with celebrities, from small authors to famous movie actors and everything in between. These days, the interview formats vary wildly, from Sean Evans’s Hot Ones, where guests eat increasingly hot chicken or tofu wings while answering “even hotter questions,” to old mainstays like Desert Island Discs, a decades-old BBC program where celebrities explain which eight recordings they would take to a desert island. And in listening to each of these interviews, I’ve always pictured myself in each of those formats, waxing poetic about how some Instagram post represented my growth as an artist, or how Slime Season 3 by Young Thug fundamentally altered my worldview (showcases a nihilistic approach to life in a really raw and clear way). 

To fulfill my fantasies, I decided to answer some questions from an even older interview format: the Proust Questionnaire, which was a series of questions that esteemed French writer Marcel Proust answered in a confession album (a kind of stylized autograph book with questions) in the 1880s. The questions are sometimes used today by modern interviews. You can check out the full list of questions on the Wikipedia page. 

Your idea of happiness
Being at home, surrounded by love. I’m a textbook homebody who loves his family, so this is what matters.

Your idea of misery.
Being alone, cut off from everyone that matters to me.

Where would you like to live?
I would love to live in London. I have a romanticized view of the city. I imagine getting used to the small coziness of the city’s flats, relying on the Tube, and gaining a slight lilt to my intonation as my American accent fades. I think about how much weight I’d gain from all the wonderful food, and how I’d be able to get good tea at any time in the day at any cafe. I still get emails from the Tate Museum about upcoming galleries, thinking that maybe one of them will be relevant someday.

If not yourself, who would you be?
Cooper, the two-year-old Golden Doodle, that belongs to my aunt and uncle.

Your favorite color and flower.
Yellow, tulips.

Your favorite prose authors.
Jhumpa Lahiri for beautiful fiction that reflects my own identity, John Steinbeck for humorous novels, Hanif Adburraqib for the most wonderful essays I’ve ever read.

Your favorite poets.
I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I enjoy the work of Jim Moore.

Your favorite painters and composers.
Keith Haring, Kazimir Malevich, JMW Turner, and Helen Frankenthaler. I don’t know many composers, but I love Franz Lizst.

Your favorite virtue
Compassion! I can be really negative in terms of how I think about human nature. It sometimes feels like everyone is only looking to benefit themselves. However, compassion acts as a remedy to this viewpoint. Compassion is the virtue that shows the beauty of being human, by demonstrating that each being isn’t an isolated individual, but someone who has the ability to care for another.

Your main fault
Fear. Each day, I push against a seemingly endless stream of fears that come my way. I’m afraid of uncertainty and of boredom. I’m afraid of not being good enough at my job and being judged for what I share and I’m afraid of being wrong. I’m afraid of disappointing people and I’m afraid that I’ll never find peace. Fear rears its head whenever I face uncertainty and in the moments where I decide to procrastinate. Fear lays at the root of all of my other faults. Laziness is a fear of action. Flakiness is a fear of embarrassment. 

Yet, with each passing day, I grow better at conquering my fears. Fear has controlled my life in the past, but it doesn’t now. Fear is a fault that I may never escape. One by one, I accept my fears, and they don’t seem as scary. 

—
 

Proust filled out the questionnaire multiple times, with some variation in his answers. Similarly, Billie Eilish conducted the same interview three times, each time evaluating her old responses while providing new ones. I’d like to follow a similar path, returning to my responses to roast my 2020 self as I grow more or less pretentious and find better answers to each question.

Also, if it tickles your fancy, I’d love to hear your answers to some of these questions!

The fight against systemic racism continues. With each day, we move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
 

Ways you can help  

Anti-racism resources

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Famously,
Nikhil