Dayanita Singh

to have the audacity to do it. I think that's what being an artist is. I thought if I'm going to put something out, what is the word I want to put out? And the word is audacity to actually go and do something. I'm Jordan White, it's been a year listening to Magic Hour. I could speak about two parts of dining to sing that interests me a lot, but it's really the combination of the two that makes her so compelling. The first, and this is, of course, the prerequisite, is the work, the way in which he's carved out a nation photography, which has a focus on bookmaking, but then also plays with exhibiting. She's always teetering on the edge of both, blurring the lines between the two. Whether it's books on the wall or photos housed in the handcrafted wooden box as she makes, form is always being played around with. Photos are just raw material, she says, which she uses in service of something she's making. The other part is her personality, her being and energy which drives all the work. An artist, photographer, bookmaker, ambassador of her work, a promoter, Dynita Singh, the celebrated, collected internationally by the world's finest museums, published by Stidal, and shown at top galleries, still as a kind of DIY attitude to her practice. If she doesn't do it and make it happen, who will? We had this conversation remotely. I in Montreal and she from her apartment in Delhi. So if we had spoken an hour ago, it would be very noisy because there's a colony of about a hundred parrots in the tree in front of my house. No way. Yes, and the parrots on the tree across have gone to bed now. In the distance you'll see a big tree that is lit up. And between the parrots tree and the 20-year-old bonsai tree are my banana trees. Your banana trees? Yes, meaning I try very hard to make it feel like it's tropical and go out over here. How long have you been there for in your place? In this apartment more than it's twenty-one years now. Twenty-one years. And my studio is upstairs. So I feel very fortunate that my own home can be my oasis. I don't know how many people there are who fall in love with their houses and stay in love. But I'm completely in love with my house. And this COVID year has really helped that because it's the first time I've spent an entire year in any one place as an adult, no? I mean I feel the same way. If you were in my house I would have brought my book cart in and asked you if you owned that book and you would say no and I would say very good you can you can buy it right now right here. And that was made especially for you know large groups of museum trustees that would come during the art fair. I just thought if you don't have my book then what can we talk about? And there were a few museums that refused because they said we've never had to pay a ticket to go into someone's studio. That's pretty funny but you're right if a curator is coming to look they should have them. Some of them I would love to have but they have got I guess they've just become so expensive that it becomes harder but I'm not a museum. But that's why I'm showing this book to you and you should buy it now. So when I make something like when I made Center Letter I had to force people to buy it and now you know the prices but I had already done it 10 years ago. Nobody noticed. As you know I always say making images is like gathering raw material and I have to allow it the time to determine its form and then it's in the making of the form that other forms will reveal themselves. Everything is wheels within wheels within wheels. So how you will make sense of this conversation for your viewers or listeners I don't know. Nothing is simple. That concept of using photos as language in the context of a book is somewhat of a sophisticated one. I think I knew right at the start it's a little bit also to do with my mother and with economics. My mother made a lot of photographs but the photographs were made to be put into albums or to be put on tables with glass covering them you know. So you could have this endless collage that you could keep adding to. You didn't just make prints and similarly when I started to photograph at design school I never made prints. You were lucky enough you were like Queen Bee if you could have a contact sheet but prints were only made if you had to do something with it. So it was only much later I think when I went to New York I got a shock that people just made prints because they wanted to see what an image looked like. That just seemed like such a luxury to me. The idea of an exhibition of photographs didn't exist for me. So the Zakir Hussein work still doesn't exist as an exhibition. You would have to buy the book and that's the other promotional part of it. If you Jordan said that you wanted to show the Zakir Hussein work in New York and you were the director of the Met I would have to say to you I'm really sorry Jordan but I don't have any prints of this work. You could however buy 44 books from Stydro, I'll clip them onto the wall and you have an exhibition and at the end of it you could sell the exhibition copies for even a little more than what you paid Stydro because now they would have the provenance of having been shown at the Met and therefore you recover your money as well as make a profit. So it's a win-win situation no? Blurring that line between the gallery wall and the book. Exactly. I want to ask you about your archive. How do you organize it? What does it look like? My life? No not your life, your archive. Your photo is yeah. I have all my negatives from the very first roller film I shot so I have all those negatives in boxes and I have all the contact sheets. So the main thing for me in my archive is actually not my negatives and at some point I'll burn them. It's my contact sheets and we always give all this value to the negative and that's fine but since I think of photography as raw material that part is not important that's not what I want to leave behind. What I want to leave behind is this archive of contact sheets. The contact sheet is really what has informed my bookmaking as well as the museums. You know I'm not used to this seeing one print that was a very alien idea for me that you would exhibit a few prints on the wall. For me I see 36 images at one time left to right top to bottom diagonally and so when I make the museums and people say oh my god that's too many images well I'm afraid that's your problem. Right. So even though I shoot digital now I still make books of contact sheets 12 images on each page. So you make books of them? Yes spiral bound books. A spiral bound books. And are they organized? Are they by month by year chronologically? It's my way of seeing when people would acquire a single image. It would really disturb me. Right. Well I think that's probably one of the inherent qualities that photography has over other medium. For the meaning of a picture to be shifted when it's in concert or in sequence with something else. In the art world they wanted to have one size and one meaning. I used to look, look and look and look saying there have to be other forms. And by the time I got to New York I was so excited to go to MoMA because you know that was the center of photography and I thought they're going to have found other forms. And I looked everywhere everywhere I could go and it was print on the wall, print on the wall. And I thought it can't be like a minor. So what is going on here? And then I realized by the early 2000s, especially after I made a center letter, that I have to find my own form. It doesn't, what I want from photography doesn't exist. Photography is vast and we've sort of, what is the words? Time eat it? Like dwarfed it because we wanted to fit what we think the art world needs. But who decided that? I keep on looking back at that, at the mechettes of, of museum of chance. And I'm curious if you could talk about how you develop that form, the physicality of it, the quality, the wood structures, the [BLANK_AUDIO] I knew from when I came to photography that there are multiple forms here waiting to be explored but I didn't find the forms and centre letter perhaps was the first time I came up with a form of my own and when I saw my centre letter in the vitrines of Sathram Daschula in 2008 on Park Street with about 10,000 people walking past every day and it was there for 10 years you know that's what I realised that I can make my own museum show and then in that same spirit I made a book cart with the carpenters it was actually first I was trying to make a cart with the same carpenters for my saris because I thought why should all the saris be in my cupboard and if I could roll them up and they can be in a cart then they can be in my living room and I can turn them around depending on which colours I want to see and you know Saris are beautiful objects and they carry so much history in them so I made this cart and then then I thought actually if I could put my books in it then I could take it to the gallery and sell my books myself and that's exactly what I did I think in 2010 maybe with the House of Love book where I built this cart and I wore a jacket with many pockets so that I could fill it with money and it was cash only and I'm sure I dropped a lot of it but I was selling it myself so I was rolling the cart bending down taking out books signing them for people handing them as though I was giving them a gift meanwhile collecting money from them and putting it in my pockets and then with all that money I went and I bought myself a gold bangle and so the idea was that at the end of my life my arm should be full of gold bangles with money that I've collected from selling these books all my books that somehow that you know in the art world my work is you know fairly valuable and it sells for a fair amount of money but the money that I earn myself from the book is sacred to me I put it into making a gold bangle and someday if there's nobody wanting to publish my work I can always sell those gold bangles because I'll be dying to make the book I'm so interested in that and just in that idea just first of all the symbolism of having a sleeve of gold bangles and how just how you derive so much pleasure from that act of selling books yourself how that's like the ultimate thing for you it's I see it as part of my work yeah I'm not at all embarrassed by it so for the museum have a book I made myself a beautiful jacket I asked a designer friend to design me something really special it had nine pockets in it so I could put my nine books in it and I actually stood outside my friend's gallery in Venice and showed my exhibition to anyone who wanted to see it and this was just a few years ago so it's not like I was a kid you know I had the same white hair done and yeah I feel that it's part of my work to to share what I love about my work with you because you may not get it you may not think you can have a jacket with all these pockets so in my new book the book of books I'm making a DIY section where I'm going to tell you Jordan how you can make exhibitions of my book and how you can stitch a jacket so you can wear my museums and make your own exhibition out of them is the the selling part of it and the the showing it like the showmanship of it is that totally linked to the photography itself or were you always like that like were you like that as a kid did you have a lemonade stands no and no you weren't entrepreneurial as a kid or have that desire no it's somehow I don't know how to answer it but it's somehow connected to the book I'm not at all like that with my exhibitions you know if you came to French Street gallery in London I would be just standing on the side and you know not not saying very much but when it's my book object I sort of I'm on fire and I want everyone to share in that excitement with me and and they do and they buy the books and I think sometimes I'm very naughty because I sort of hypnotize them to buy the book with my excitement you know it's like they can be no doubt in your mind that you would want this I remember as a child going to the saree shops with my mother and a saree is something you would never buy online this you have to touch it feel it and someone has to show it to you and often it would be men who would drape these sarees onto themselves to show you how it'll look worn and the longer time you spent there the more beautiful sarees would come out so if you said no no I'm in a hurry and I just have 10 minutes they'll show you what there is but if you sat around for an hour drinking endless cups of tea some real gems would come out and I think I learned from the saree shops how to build desire you know I'm Jordan Whitesman and you're listening to my conversation Dianita Singh to find out more about the show follow us on Instagram at Magic Hour Podcast when I made the Mona book it's the one book that I didn't work on myself Walter Keller worked with a great designer in Germany Hans Werner and they made this book and I was really disappointed because it was so small and the images were small and Walter told me you know I don't know what you're complaining about this book is going to be a classic and I thought okay so then I had this exhibition in London in 2001 and in those days I used to smoke and I was standing outside and smoking because at my exhibitions I don't get all performative you know it that feels like that's something else and then this man walks up to me and he says hello I'm Gerhard Steigel I printed the last book you made next time you want to make a book you better be there on press if your publisher is too poor to pay for your ticket I will pay but you do not make a book without being on press if I hadn't changed the paper you would have had a lousy book hmm have a nice day and he went off and that was it he didn't even come in and see my exhibition but you know when in 2003 when Scala was bankrupt and the museum the Hamburger-Bahnhoff curator said well what are we going to how are we going to publish your catalog and I said oh just call Steigel and she said that I think you're a little too young for Steigel and I said you just call him and he said she called him and he said yes I do it and be here on such and such day so we went in the train from Berlin to go to England and he said hello made us sit down and he looked at her and he said who are you and she said I'm the curator he said thank you very much you may leave now I prefer to work directly with the artist and that was it so that was where our love story started yeah that's a good one I love that I love the the brashness of that first meeting yes very funny that stories often stop like that no these odd ways something that I'm curious about so Walter Keller was the he his imprint was Scalo in the 90s which was I think largely considered to be the premier photo imprint of the decade it's funny how every decade has a kind of premier imprint you know Delpier in the 70s and says that yeah Steigel today and 70s or 80s Scalo in the 90s and then Steigel in the early 2000s so he told me let's make all the books you want to make because next decade there'll be someone else but guess what the next decade came and Steigel still going strong still going strong I believe I read a story where you were in Zurich and you decided to drop off some prints at Walter Keller Walter Keller's office or studio there's a precautionessness in that it's sort of similar to the the kind of selling or the disseminating the work that I'm just so curious about you drop off some prints at Walter Keller's office and what happened so I didn't drop off the prints that would have been too precocious of me okay friend Michael Richter took me on his best part to see this great bookstore in Zurich. And it was an amazing bookstore because all the books were on tables. There was nothing on the wall. And I went to the reception and I said, "I have to meet the man." And they said, "You know, the man is very busy and you can't just show up and say you want to meet him." And I said, "I have to meet this man." And she said, "Impossible." And I said, "Look, I'll never come to Zurich again. We don't get to travel out of the country. I have to meet him. Can you not just tell him I have to meet him?" And she said, "I'm really sorry. I just can't. You have to make an appointment. He's a very busy man." And then Michael said, "Let's go make some photo copies." So I had some prints in Michael's house. We rushed over and made some photo copies. And they were of my very early family portraits. I don't even remember what they were. And I left them and I said, "Your stubborn secretary doesn't allow me to meet you." However, I think you would like to see my work. I'm on my way to New York and my number is so-and-so. What a pity because it would have been great if we had met. And when I reached New York, there was a facts waiting from him. Admire your eye. Come back to Zurich, WK. I didn't have the money to stop again in Zurich on the way back. So I'm so grateful to all my friends from my CP who bought all my Zurich or whatever price I told them so that I could collect the money to go back to Zurich and meet Walter Ketter. No way. And is that what you did? Yeah, of course. Because it's expensive to change your tickets. No, and we're talking of like this was you don't get to travel abroad in the way that I do now. It's a big deal. And anyway, when you travel, you only got $500 for the entire trip. So I made it back to Zurich. I showed Walter my work and he said, "I have no doubt you're going to be a great photographer. But you listen to me. Do not make any books or exhibitions. They will drain your energy and they will fix you. Just keep working." Because there's no doubt here. But you have to work. Don't allow anyone to make a book or an exhibition. And I took him seriously. And in 1997, Michael Hoffman of aperture had come to make his book on 50 years of independence of India. And he saw my work and he said, "This is fantastic. And now you're doing these family portraits. I want to make a monograph of your work." So I was so excited. You know, aperture was the publisher then. Right. So I wanted to be published by them and I wrote to Walter and I said, "I know you told me not to do any books or exhibitions. But this is Michael Hoffman himself who wants to make a monograph." And he said, "That's the last thing you need right now. Please say no. And meet Liz Jovi in London." So I said, "Okay." So I said no to Michael Hoffman. And you can imagine. Nobody says no to Michael Hoffman. So he didn't like that very much. But somehow I trusted Walter. And then that was 97. And then in 2001, we made the monabot. Right. And that was so between Zakir and 86 and 2001 Mona. There were no books. And there was just two exhibitions. One first one at Scalo. That's fascinating. I didn't realize how much of a mentor he was and how much of an influence. I mean, that's pretty, I mean, to have aperture come knock at your door and want to do a book. And you turn that down. That's pretty, there's something, the procosis keeps on coming back. But there's a procosisness even in that. I often say to younger photographers, artists, you know, I am where I am today because of all the things I said no to. You can't just, especially when you're young because everyone wants to fix you. You know, they want to make a little box for you. And you're the great new photographer, you're a woman, you're Indian, you're epileptic, you're short. I mean, all kinds of things. Once I was so annoyed with all these categories that I was, I have a tape somewhere, having a formal discussion with an Italian friend saying, dear sir, I would like to make a exhibition based on the penile length of photographers. And I would only want to show photographers that we're able to get past the six inch minimum. Because it was, it was so upsetting to me and it still is. You know, this kind of box that people want to put you in all the time. And therefore books became even more important for me. Style became even more important for me, which title he didn't care about, you know, where I came from, what my gender was, none of that. It was just the work that I did. And so through the books, I think I was able to subvert a lot of the things that I may not have been able to do in the art world. So I had to get out of the photo world because that was too constricting. Art world freed me, but I still needed the book for me to really come into my own with where I wanted to take photography. You are so prolific. You've done so much in the past little while in terms of objects and books and shows and just the overall dissemination of your work. But I think that it's so important for all artists and photographers to hear about those early years and that story you just told with Walter Keller and not doing certain things and just working and growing as either an image maker or an artist and finding your voice. Because people don't realize that today, it's like, you know, people go to grad school, graduate, you know, you're 21, 22 years old and all and, you know, there's this climate of star artists out there who are doing all kinds of things and everybody just wants to do that. But it takes time, you know, being a good image maker and artists, it's not an easy thing. It really takes time to develop. Absolutely. And you have to give it the time. And if you try to rush it, then you get stuck there, you know, maybe it's great to be famous when you're 25, but then you're just stuck there because the world wants you to just keep doing the same thing. So I feel the smartest artists are the ones who can somehow keep that recognition at bay because recognition is a very complicated thing. Recognition sort of demands that you stay there. We've declared that you are good and we declare that we like the form that you made. And no, I want to make suit cases and I want to make jackets, you know, I must do what I need to do. So it's almost like you have to always keep a little away, keep a distance from recognition. And I'm lucky Walter told me what he did, but I could only listen to Walter because I was primed to listen to him from Zachary Rosem. He's my role model and I saw him push the tabla from being an accompanist role to being the main player. It was a huge thing to do in classical Indian music. I fortunate to have witnessed that, but also to have him as a mentor was like it was never good enough. Whatever I did was never good enough. And in 2011 he was in a jury in Venice and so he happened to go to the Arsenaali and he saw my work in the Venice Biennale. And he sent a message saying, so proud of you and, you know, how are you, etc. And I said, thank you. Well, as you can see, I am also a star now, exclamation mark. And he sent a message back. He said, sweetheart, I hope you never, ever believe that because the day you will believe that will be the day it'll be over. So you know to have someone like that in your life that regardless of what happens, where you're shown, what books you make, whatever success, perceived success, there might be, it's just not enough. There's always more things to do, like with the Zaccarus and Macchietch, title said enough now that Anita. We cannot introduce one more element. So I made that case for the books that I got in India. You know, he can't stop me from that. And it's just, it's this continuous rigor, continuously thinking about, it is your ears. And like I said, it has to become like your breath. And that's the pleasure. The pleasure is in the work. Absolutely. That is my biggest pleasure. There is nothing else in my life that comes close to that. I mean, I'm surprised that I've even had the recognition that I've had so far. I wasn't banking on this. For me, my dream was that if three hundred homes in India at my family portraits hanging in them. Then that would be great because that was longer than any museum show. This was in 99 when I had my exhibition in Salligarh in Goa where I sometimes now live. At that exhibition I made portraits, prints laminated them onto the wall, invited the people I had photographed to peel their prints off the wall and to take them into their homes and paste them onto their walls and that I knew was my exhibition. So somehow, even before any of this started, I already had my parallel roots planned out because I never imagined that any museum would be interested in my work. And you were just doing it, you were just making it. I was doing it and it was all based on the premise that no one's going to be interested. I have to make them interested. I have to take my work to them. I have to sort of figure out where do I, you know, Jordan, if I gave you a print of a chair, you might have it on your wall for a while, but after a while you might say, okay, now I'll put it in auction, I might earn some money or you might toss it out or gift it to someone. But if I made a portrait of you sitting with your mother and something special happened in that portrait, you're never going to give that to anybody, you know, that'll be one of the last things that leaves your house. So I knew that that's where my true archive is going to be in people's archives, in the family's archive. So everything else that happened was a wonderful bonus, but I had my own trajectory set out and that is in part also because I have this amazing mother. If you follow my Instagram, you'll see she's really quite a character. When I was making these family portraits in the 90s, she said, and you know, nobody was interested in this work. Nobody. She said to me, you must keep doing this work, A, because you love doing it and you're doing something beautiful for the families, how nice for them to have this record, but more importantly, she said, one day some historian will be sitting in an archive and studying your photographs for the flooring, for the way flaws were laid in those days. And somehow that's all I needed. That yes, there's another reason to photograph and that reason could be the stranger in the future sitting in an archive and saying, what were these watches everybody used to wear? You know, why did they need to think about time? We don't know, no, that's the exciting thing about an archive. Absolutely. And my mother, my mother just nailed it. She looks pretty amazing. She looks and sounds pretty amazing. And it's, it's so nice. I mean, it seems like you guys are super close with each other. I want to ask you about Centaletter because this, this set of books I'm so interested in. They are, so you used to travel and when you would travel with someone, you would make them a little gift, which consisted of accordion fold books made up of cut up contact prints. See, we're back to the contact prints again. We're back to the contact prints, yeah. So I had started making these accordion fold books and I had started to make them for friends I either traveled with or friends. Well, not friends. One big love of my life who I made some of them thinking of, you know, like with him in my mind, I made those images. I made the images for him or when I went to Calcutta with Gerhard and Guntagras, then I made these images because we were traveling together, walking together. So we saw these things together. And so when Chital came to my exhibition at Friedstreet Gallery in London, what I was doing in my apartment upstairs was very naughty because I had all these accordion fold books with me and I had displayed them in the apartment. So when the right candidate came, I said this show is okay, but come upstairs. I'll show you something else. And that's what I did to Chital. I said, you know, yeah, that's fine. You'll make a book, but I have to show you something. So I took him to my apartment and he saw this exhibition of all these books and he just loved it and he said, I want to publish all 32. Hmm. The idea that they were made, they were addressed to certain people. So you almost get this, this, you sort of led into this intimacy that you have with other people and part of the fun is trying to figure out what that intimacy is with those certain people. What, you know, what's the meaning of these books in relation to those people? Was there any ambivalence in making that book about making something that was intended to be private? The ambivalence was only that I thought people won't get it. And Chital was very good. He said, okay, so if you don't want to make 32 because you can't make all those prints, we'll just do seven, but do not do not try and edit them. I want them exactly like this. So it's like when Walter Keller says, don't have a book or an exhibition or when Chital says, do not make any change. Do not try and make a book about Calcutta. And somehow I trusted him in that. And then he said to me, would you like to make the box in India? And so we made 3,000 boxes in India out of the same clock that we used to wrap parcels in when you post them. And then while I was at Chital, somebody said, but you know, this idea that you have addressed this to somebody doesn't come across if you call it seven books. And that's when I started to think, yeah, it's a letter. There's an adressy. And I want you to know that you are you are sort of peeping into something that is quite private. And some of those are like my love letters, even though friends now tell me that they have lost written all over them. But you know, I made them out of all my love. And so that's when this childhood poem came back to me. Sent a letter to my friend on the way he dropped it. Someone came and picked it up and put it in his pocket. So you know, you've got something that wasn't meant for you. I didn't think that's yeah, that's that's part of the the beauty of that work. The reason people don't value books in the same way that they value prints is that they say a book is mass-produced, right? Right. It's 500 copies, 5,000 copies, 10,000 copies. And so I said to style I want to make a box again in India and I want 3,000 different boxes. And he said, you're crazy. And I thought that I would come back to India and I would find a way to make find 3,000 different pieces of Kadi, you know, different cloth. The box could be unique and the inside would be the same. So it would be mass-produced and unique at the same time. At my friend's paper factory, the same friend who made center letter boxes, we found this fabric called Achara fabric, which is the underside of block printing. It's where all the residue of the ink collects. So no two parts can be the same. It's really beautiful. So we made 3,000 of these boxes. And because style is selling them, they were sold for I think 60 or 70 euros. I told him we could sell them for much more, but he doesn't like to overpriced books. If it was in an art gallery, it would be a unique thing, no? Yeah, absolutely. And so I'm curious, everyone right now, the museums, have put them into their libraries. After a long time, they'll realize they have a unique object in the library. I'm not saying too much about this because I also enjoy, I enjoy the subversion of it, you know? You put it in the library, but the moment you realize it's a unique object, you're going to say, oh my god, what's it doing in the library? We need to put it in a vitrine. It needs special acquisition. It needs gloves and all that. So that was very important for me to to make this idea of a book that which can be mass produced and unique, just as with the Zakir book or the Museum of Chance book object, it was important to make a book that can also be the exhibition. There's this interest, this this pervasive interest of like of wanting, wanting it all, wanting the book and wanting the show, wanting the handmade and wanting the mass produced. It's like wanting to have both of those and straddling like the the edge of what we're talking about. both of those mean. - When people say, you know, if you're going to do an exhibition in Kyoto, do you really think I'm gonna fly to Kyoto to buy a box? And I say, yeah, why not? Sure, if that's what you would like. And because the boxes have these 30 images in them. I am now at my fifth box. And there's two people, three people now in the world who've got all five boxes. So I don't make it easy for you. But if you really want it, it will come your way somehow. - Yeah. - Don't you want this box now? - I do actually, I would love one. You know which one I would, I mean, which one really appealed to me? The box 507. - And that's very nice of you to say because it's the one that everybody doesn't get as yet because it's not like my other photographs. But this is one that I'm super excited about because it's another kind of offset printing. You know, I was at the press and I would have made another box like the one I was showing you of Jeffrey Bavars work and it would have been beautifully printed and tried to. And I mean, not as beautiful as Styl, but beautifully enough. And the press stopped, something went wrong. And so the sheet came out in a stage where you would never see it otherwise. - Oh. - And I said, stop, this is it, I want this. They said, it's not printed fully. You know, it hasn't got all the layers on. And I said, no, this is what I want. Then they had to figure out how do we stop it at that exact point? Because when my museums came to live in my house as they were intended to, my whole apartment was going to be museum, haven't. I couldn't bear the energy from all the photos. So I had these thin white slip covers made for them like pajamas. And so I got used to seeing photographs in this sort of half closed eyes, half closed kind of way. And then when I accidentally painted over my photographs, I thought they were doing the same thing, the painted photos. And that's why when the press stopped at Fiverr, when I was printing Fiverr 7, I recognized it because it's the same pairing down of the image that I was after with the slip covers, with the painting over with Fiverr 7. Somehow, I was feeling a certain vulgarity in how much photography presented. And I wanted to pay that down that somehow could I get to the essence of it. So Fiverr 7, for me, is, you know, is, I think one of my most important works, but like Walter Kelly always said to me, I moved just things so quickly. And by then, something else was happening. I have so many ideas and just this one lifetime. And every time I make something, I get 10 more ideas. So I didn't get a chance to explain all of this to someone. - I just want to thank you for doing this. I mean, the Zoom thing is always a hassle in my mind, but this turned out to be terrific, I think. - So how many books have I sold you in this conversation? - Are you ready to make me a deal? - Can I make a deal? - No. - Because I can just inform you that if you go to California, you might be able to get this. I can sort of point you in the directions. (upbeat music) - That was my conversation with Dynita Singh that we recorded remotely. I was at my place in Montreal and she at a department in Delhi. This episode was produced by me, Jordan Weitzman, and was edited by Ellen Payne Smith. Original music for the show was by Adam Feingold. To find out more about the show, visit us at magicarapodcast.org and follow us on Instagram at magicarapodcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and see you next time. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]