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Phillip John, the subject of our interview, is the creator of Labyrinths, a highly popular story blog on Facebook. He co-runs a creative boutique in Bangalore, India. He is also a freelance writer and creative consultant.
Labyrinths has over 9000 followers and is described by The Hindu—one of India’s mainstream dailies —as “full of interesting narratives that take the every day and make them significant.” Philip’s short stories have been published in online literary magazines such as Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Out of Print and Helter Skelter. Trained at the Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad (MICA), Philip lives and works in Bangalore.
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• Any woman in your life who inspired or guided you in your creative journey?
I can think of two.
My mom, a sensitive, perceptive and generous person, she always encouraged my love of books and reading. She once secretly bought me a copy of The English Patient without telling anyone because I badly wanted to read it. It was expensive, around 300 rupees—a lot for a book at the time.
The other woman is my wife. My best friend and most incisive critic, she was a pillar of support when I was too afraid of making a creative journey, at the expense of my work. She helped me find direction and stability at a time when my mind was lost.
Without them both, I may not have begun my creative journey at all, and brought it this far.
There are other women who inspire me. I tend to have more women friends than men. I prefer them because they are very sensitive, collaborative, patient and go deeper into an issue. This helps me because my work, after all, involves observing things and going deep into them. Throughout my life, women have been sounding boards, a source of inspiration, and comfort.
• Has there been a dark and empty period in your life filled with angst and frustration. Did that come from a sense of loss?
We all have our share of dark, empty times. I’ve certainly had mine. There was a time when I was struggling with many questions and battling depression. I think the two were related—a vicious cycle of sorts. Who was I? What space did I want to operate in for the rest of my life? I felt I was psychologically static and just going around in circles. It didn’t come from any specific sense of loss, but just a difficult time I went through as a result of a fractured mind and some bad choices. It’s behind me and I’m a clearer, stronger person now.
• Does such a period of emptiness dampen your creativity?
It used to earlier. But now, I’m able to observe my emotional state objectively, and channel it into my writing. I think emptiness or despair can fuel good writing. It helps clarify these states and streamline the mind. There are also days when something just gets your mood killed. But you learn to absorb these, stand still and although its hard, keep trying. That’s the only way to get better.
• Do you show rough drafts of your work to others, and how would you deal with a critique that ensued?
I usually don’t.
Sometimes, I get a second opinion from my wife. She has a knack for spotting inconsistencies and false notes. If her feedback makes sense, I use it or I listen and continue with what I think is right. I like feedback and it helps me understand how the reader is processing the piece and if they’re feeling and seeing it the way I want them to.
• You write every day as a commitment to your self-imposed schedule. But aren’t you afraid your creativity may tire of the discipline? What would you do if what you wrote appeared a bit mediocre in hindsight?
Well, so far it hasn’t happened. I’ve never put up a piece that I thought was mediocre. I care about every sentence and rewrite every story until I’m satisfied. I care about creating the right kind of effect and spend time choosing the right pictures. Its my passion, and I don’t want to ever give my readers a mediocre or half-hearted experience. Most of all, I don’t want to do that to myself.
Sure, there are bad days, when I feel stuck. But then I realize, that sometimes in writing, you don’t have to say something tremendously insightful or do something very clever. You can just state the simple truth directly, and it works. You put down in writing those elusive, simple things that the rest are thinking but don’t have the insight or guts to talk about. Sometimes that’s all you need to tell: truth in an unvarnished way. A kind of anti-writing, if you like – the real language of the mind, and of life.
• Would you be guarded about expressing your feelings more than your calling to be a writer—are there packets of prose/ poetry within you that you would safeguard and not share?
They say a writer should be able to say what others cannot. I think that is fearlessness, an asset for a writer; even a precondition for good writing I think. But a writer is also a person who needs privacy. I do write things that I wouldn’t want to share because I feel the emotion is too raw, or hasn’t yet sublimated into the more acceptable product of ‘art’. But sometimes I feel the raw emotion of a piece and want people to see it. Then I make a bold decision and just publish it.
• What do you think is the reason your writing appeals more to women than men, or is it that the men don’t comment as much?
I know men and women both read my work. I’ve interacted with quite a few men who appreciate Labyrinths but don’t comment because they’re a little overwhelmed by the predominantly female voices on the thread. It’s an understandable response.
But yes, it’s hard not to notice that a lot of women engage with Labyrinths. I think it’s because some of my themes—the psychology of relationships, the creation of identity, the glory and pain of everyday urban life—have a lot of emotions and perceptions packed into them, that women tend to respond to. I am just happy that Labyrinths gets good, sustained attention —whether it’s from men or women. I never expected it.
• Do you draw inspiration for your writings from real life, or literature?
The process of inspiration is very complex. It works in different ways for different stories. Sometimes it’s a feeling I experience myself. Sometimes it’s a feeling I experience passively through a character in a book I’m reading or a movie I’ve watched. Sometimes I get inspired by the lives of others. Sometimes it’s a pure figment of my imagination. And sometimes, it can be a hybrid of all these things.
Then there are also those odd days when something tumbles into my mind out of the blue and it is so resonant and beautiful that I know it can’t be just me; this has got to be something larger than me, spilling into me from some other place. Perhaps Jung’s ideas about the collective unconscious are very real. We pick up latent thoughts, feelings and energies from around us. Maybe we all draw from the same wells. Sometimes I write a piece that feels very distinctive or idiosyncratic. But then I publish it and so many people connect with it. They say things like “That’s exactly how I feel!” or “Now there’s a language for my condition.” When I hear that, I am always surprised. I realize, time and again, that we are all so different and yet, we’re so much more similar and connected than we know.
• Any other artistic pursuits in your life? That you have an artistic eye, is evident from the pictures you use.
I have developed a good eye for visual arts over time. For my work to be any good it needs an eye for aesthetics – visually and conceptually. Other than that, I love music, and am always humming or composing a melody in my head. It may not appear that way on the surface but many of my pieces begin with an emotion borrowed from or a mood created by music that I’m listening to. I think Burgess stated a profound truth when he said that the true destination of any work of art is to reach the sublimity of music. I grind music into my pieces, but I don’t know if people can hear it.
• Have you felt an all-consuming love ever in your life, or is that something you are still waiting for?
I find the words “all-consuming love” a little dramatic. No one person or no single relationship can offer us that. I don’t even think we should look for it. That kind of stuff works well in literature, in my stories, not in real life. I have a great relationship with my wife. She is the love of my life. But “All-consuming love” is for Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.
I am in love with life, with the glory and pain of the everyday, with words, trees, with the way some women sit in bars and stare into space, smoking a cigarette. With these things around me, I am always consumed by love.
• Who in your opinion makes for a strong, and self-sufficient man, and is sensitivity a trade-off?
I think the traits that make a man strong and self-sufficient are the same that make a woman strong and self-sufficient: clarity about who you are and what you want, the ability to express that and the willingness to apply reason and compassion to life’s events. Education, reading and a considered, intelligent point of view is important. Strength is the courage to stick to your idea, even when people disagree with you or laugh at you while being sensitive to other’s needs and feelings.
I don’t think sensitivity is a trade-off for strength. Sometimes sensitivity itself is a kind of strength.
Working hard is important. It’s not about making a lot of money. It’s about contributing to the economy in some way, and realizing your potential. Untapped potential destroys people, turns them into monsters. That I think is the path to strength and self-sufficiency for men and women.
• As a corollary, what would a weak man look like?
Again, weakness is gender neutral for me. People who don’t stand up for themselves are weak. People who don’t speak against injustice when it happens before their eyes, are weak. People who allow other people’s weaknesses to stall their own life or have something in them but are scared to act it out are weak. We are all weak sometimes. We are weak because we are scared. I like Roosevelt’s quote: “the only thing we need to fear is fear itself”.
• You strike me as a very feminist man. Is there anything you would stop your partner from doing?
I believe in equal opportunities and access for both men and women. A world where women can be strong without being called bitchy and men can be sensitive without being called effeminate.
As for my partner, we don’t control, but respect, trust and understand each other as individuals first and spouses later. I would stop her only from harming herself in some way. Otherwise, I believe all experiences are for the better.
• The most important question for the end: —tell us without embellishment or artifice, about the most devastating heartbreak in your life.
There have been many. I think the toughest was the time when I was battling depression. I still live with it but it’s far better now. Some forms of depression are like diabetes—a condition that never really goes away. When you’re depressed for a long time, you lose sight of who you are. You lose sight of the future. You even lose respect for yourself. That is the worst form of heartbreak, isn’t it? To break your own heart? To not be there for yourself?
I’ve come a long way from there. There are many others like me, young and old, who don’t have the awareness or access to help. I hope our society can make it easier for them to have a conversation about depression. It’s an important conversation to have.
As for heartbreaks, I think the older I get, more immune I become to heartbreaks. I expect less and embrace more. My heart breaks, but I can watch it break without feeling despair. I think writing has created this yoga-like ability in me to distance myself a little from my emotions, without getting cold or inhuman. I think it’s safe to say writing saved my life in a way.
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