“Every writer comes into this world with one great question they need to, they, they want to ask and they ask that question in different forms in all the books they write and all the poems. And mine is, what is the nature of reality?”
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Hello everyone, hi, um, welcome everyone and those, uh, joining us on line and also in the room. Thank you very much for joining. Um, you’re joining a Mishcon Academy Session, which is a part of a series of online events that we host here of videos and podcasts and talks, um, looking at the biggest issues faced by society today, so I am really glad that you could join us this afternoon. Just to introduce myself, I am Amanda Gray, a partner at Mishcon within Art Law and I will be hosting today’s event which will be forty five minutes’ long with an opportunity for everyone, both in the room, um, and online to ask questions after that. Without further ado, um, it is a huge honour and a pleasure to welcome Sir Ben, um, to Mishcon’s today. Thank you very much for joining us.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Real pleasure to be here.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Ben is a Nigerian born poet, cultural activitist, an author of thirty novels including the Booker Prize winning, The Famished Road, the first in a trilogy and, Astonishing the Gods which was selected as one of the BBC’s One Hundred Novels that shaped our world. As well as collections of poetry, short stories, plays and essays. His work has been translated into more than twenty eight languages, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won numerous international prizes and been awarded many honorary doctorates. His poem following the Grenfell Tower tragedy was widely viewed on TV and on social media. He was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and he was awarded an OBE in 2001, and a Knighthood in 2023. Thanks’ so much for taking the time to join us today. I know you are incredibly busy, you’re about to go jet setting off and also you are contributing and writing to many things as well. So thank you for joining us today, it’s a pleasure and we’re talking today about your latest book, Madam Sosostris & The Festival, um, for the Broken Hearted.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
For the Broken Hearted.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Which followed on from Tiger Work, is that right? In terms of the genesis of this book, how did it start in terms of your writing? Were, were the seeds of the book something that were already there many years ago and then just germinating or, were you thinking about it in parallel when you were writing Tiger Work, or was it a clear, just a very interesting sort of creative process of how you came to both the form and the subject?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Well first of all I just want to say what a pleasure it is to be here, um, and to be talking to you, Amanda. I’ve been looking forward to this a long time. Um, genesis of, um, the project. I, I, um, I tend to, I think maybe there are three kinds of writers, um, in terms of what I am going to talk about. There are those who plan, determine beforehand what they are going to write about, they plan meticulously and then they do it. And they can do it tomorrow morning if they have to. Um, then there are those who have to wait for inspiration for want of a better word. Then there’s a third lot, my lot, um, and I like to just take a long time. I like to have an idea gear knocking around in my being for a while. Because I, I kind of trust time, I favour time, I favour things that time has cooked. Um, and also the longer that it’s been cooking around in me, wandering around, the more, um, nutrients, um, it draws to itself. So when I write a, when I write a book that’s been cooking in me a long time, it’s never one theme. It’s usually, it ends up being about three or four or five things I’ve gathered together into this one strand of a story and that’s how I kind of like. So I always, I always resist writing a book, I have a great idea for a book and I put it off. Um, and sometimes I resist for about ten years, sometimes twenty years until the day is write. A day turns up, I don’t know what that day is, I never plan it. I wake up and I am like, this, this is, this is, it’s today. I start writing without even thinking about it and there it is. And it’s always, I’m always comfortable that way because it’s not a new thing and I just that it’s already, it’s got lots of roots, deep roots in my, in my life and in my, the things that fascinate me and that I am obsessed with. Usually themes of justice.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And are you in this development period, the sort of nur, nurturing or were they sort of, there with you or the ideas within you and you park it and you’re thinking about it. Are the characters there already? So in this book for, for those who haven’t read it yet and I urge you to get a copy today, um, Alan, Viv, Beatrice and Steven are the four principle characters around this, this swirling world is and they, they are at the core and they go through their own journey. Were they already with you or were they with you in a different incarnation?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
They were sort of, I knew it was going to be, um, I knew it was going to be four people, I knew it was going to be two couples, I knew that. Um, because of the perimeters of the novel which also had to in some way conform to the perimeters of a play. Um, it’s the first time I have allowed myself that ambiguity between theatre and novel. Um, because there’s a way in which stories are told on stage and I wish they were told more like that in a novel which is to say, there’s more immediacy, uh, most novels you know, take twenty, thirty pages to get you going.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, take too long to cook and build things and you know, I, I’m striving for my economy, um, so I was fascinated by seeing if I could bridge these two forms.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, the immediacy of theatre, you go into the theatre, curtain goes down and ‘snap fingers’ you are there.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
No preamble.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, within ten minutes you know what the fate, you know what the problem is that they are going to be dragged through for the rest of the evening. Within ten, fifteen minutes. Um, and I wanted that, very much. I wanted that, I wanted that live feeling, um, and that’s, it’s taken me this long to be able to achieve that, um, so I knew there was going to be four people, I knew that. Um, I knew that they were going to be very different kinds of couples. I knew they were different how, they’d have different problems in relation to love, in relation to identity, in relation to power.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
I knew it was going to be a dialogue of four, and four for me was a magical number for all sorts of reasons. We all know what four is, the four seasons, the four directions, the four, um, we know that four is a very important number in, in, in the dialogue of theatre, we, we know that so.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And they are very London people. How, how important was the London to you that, you know, we’ve got one who’s a finance self- made man, we’ve got somebody else, Viv, who, um, she’s a Member of the House of Lords. They, they’ve become, or they have evolved into figures of the establishment. Was the fact that they are London folk and London, of the establishment within London, critical?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, had to be. Um, because I wanted, I wanted it, I wanted it to be all of a place, all of a piece. So it starts in London, they are London people and then they all get equally dislocated. Um, I didn’t want an unequal dislocation, I wanted everybody to be dislocated.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Because this is a story about how people become themselves by being knocked out of their normal, um, realms, their normal territory, their normal tewar 8.21 as it were. Um, how, how we reveal ourselves more, we come more to ourselves, out of our group, out of our habits, out of the universe that we’ve got control over.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Maybe even out of the language.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Because, there’s, there’s a lovely thing with, um, Alan who is sitting in, I think he is sitting in the asaneyum, um, but he always, there’s a really great passage where you are talking about, um, Alan and he always likes to arrive early but he likes to arrive early to put the person who he is meeting off guard because he will set up the scene. There’s another construct that he’ll sit there and make sure he is there with a drink, he’s reading the paper, just so that the, the person he’s meeting is always on the back foot.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, you’ve already, you’ve already lost by the time you meet Alan, yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, that’s it. You’re always, you’re one down.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
You’re one down. It’s not, it’s not two.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes exactly, exactly.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And he, he commands a space. I know a lot of people like that, quite a few people like that. It’s very disconcerting.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes it is (laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, there was one, there was one I tried to upstage, I turned up an hour.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Before he was expected to arrive. And he was already there.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
No way (laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
What’s, what’s wrong with you?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes, yeah. And…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
But it’s a path, and it’s how you use time and space, um.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. Yes and it, it, with, um, without, uh, any spoiler alerts for, for people who, um, haven’t read it, um, you have the four main characters and Viv’s idea is to host or hold a party, a festival for the broken hearted, for those that have been properly dumped. Um, and what she can’t, um, re… she devises this on, basically on the twentieth anniversary of her first husband dumping her. But she doesn’t actually recall that so that’s going, it’s already been filtered out of her brain but it happens on this particular date and it’s their journey, the, the part… the festival takes place in a chateau in a forest in the South of France.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
In the South of France.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Um, and it’s sort, you get the sense of puppetry in the sense and there’s Akoder that I’ll read out if I may at some point, um, the sense of puppetry you’ve got Madam Sosostris at the core but also not at the core, um, who has suggested this as a destination as well. When you are talking about plays and um, the immediacy, um, one thing that comes to mind is there’s, there’s a lot of literary references and they, for me, they act as very useful, um, hooks or signifiers of where I could go in terms of thought, um, or where it might be taking me or you might be having a joke at my expense as a reader. Because there are a few of those, I think, have I got that right? No, I haven’t got, that’s completely wrong and it’s a joke. So you, you talk about Beatrice and one of the characters, so yeah I was, I played Beatrice, um, in, um, As You Like It and I thought, oh, I can’t remember Beatrice in As You Like It, because she wasn’t, she was in Much A Do but you, you put little things that are wrong, so you never quite know where you are.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Well it is also the characters themselves get it wrong.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, and, and often the people that they are talking to don’t know they’ve got it wrong so it just, it just carries on.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes and there are so many layers because you have the idea of the façade, so we talked about the Asaneyum and the facades of buildings and the pretence that people have in terms of their public and private life.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
The necessary pretence.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Exactly.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I was thinking how it is, how it relates to being a professional as well and operating, um, particularly those in the audience that operate in a, a law firm. So there are certain requirements that you always have your, your work persona, your other persona, which is the right pers… which is you? Which is you? That seems to be the question. Who are you?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
I think, I think the world, the world has got to be, has increasingly become structured around, um, um, the, the culture of personas. So it depends on whichever space that you operate in. You have to have the uniform, you have to have the outward accoutrement of that space or you simply would not be recognised to it. There’s a story that I was told of a, of a, of a young man who turned up at his office, he turned up in tennis shorts, he’d just, he’d just dropped by, um, and, and the, and the security guard said, excuse me, you, you can’t come in here and you certainly can’t sit on that desk. That’s a judge’s desk, you are not a judge and, um, of course he was a judge but he’d just come from playing tennis. So he was in tennis attire and he was nearly, he was nearly put in prison for saying, yeah, so he was nearly put in prison for impersonating a judge. Serious offence.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
So, um, society has to partially operate on a, on a principle of recognition, codes, costumes, um, external apparel just to place you within, within, um, every, every meilleur in which you operate. It’s, um, I don’t know how, I don’t know when society evolved this but it’s evolved it for a long time now, um, in the Roman times you recognised soldiers by their, by their outfits.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Even senators had specific attire, you separated, you know, the hierarchy’s of, of soldiers by who’s wearing what kind of helmet. It’s, you know, even in society is not structured in the same way as western societies. They have their rigid codes, um, the number of feathers in a hat, um, the kind of walking stick, the wood of the walking stick you’re wearing, you know, it seems as if society needs these, these codes, um, and yet behind these codes are, us.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
You and I.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Real people without problems difficulties, neurosis, um, and, and we’re storytelling, a book like this comes in, is, is because stories tend to operate between these two spheres, the personal hiding behind these codes, behind this apparatus.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And the psychology of the apparatus itself, because apparatus has its own psychology, it really does. When you are in uniform you think differently from the person who is going to the pub.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, you, you’re thinking, your perception, the, the way you conduct yourself, even the way you carry yourself. Very different from the guy who hops to the pub um.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
It is…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Or the lady who hops to the pub.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes and thinking about the, um, sense of putting on, like putting on a front. So putting on a front in terms of the building but when, when they go to, um, the festival, um, they put on their costumes, so one comes as Joan of Arc, one becomes Toulouse-Lautrec, um, and then you’ve got as a double layering, you know, one then becomes Madam Sosostris and they are taking on another layer, um, and it’s, it’s, they become the different selves. I think it is so pertinent now because thinking about all the things that are going on, um, now but also in what’s happening in terms of, um, visual. They are thinking about things like severance what have you, thinking about the idea of, um, identity as well and who actually are, is it everyone, are both become the whole or is it just one, one is right, one is wrong?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, so that’s a very difficult one, um, because it come, it comes down to the problem the first novel from the beginning. Um I think the novel existed, I think the novel as a form was borne very differently from, from, from poetry, um, which is there to celebrate and to ritualise existence. Um, I think the novel was born to interrogate the external and almost impossible question of what is the true self.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm. And…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Who, who is, who is the true person inside us. It’s then, it’s then all of Jane Austin. There’s a constant interrogation of who, who, who is, who is Emma.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, who is the real Emma. Is it the one who is always meddling, is Emma essentially deep inside her, the meddler or just a young lady trying to find herself. Um, I think the novel, the novel was given to us, evolved to ask us who we are in society. Not so much who we are in our rooms when the doors are locked but who we are in society, what happens when we interact with one another with our codes and our masks, um, and what is the implication of that for, for the world.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And do you think the, the, in terms of going to the forest as well and, you know, the echoes obviously of Shakespeare for us, the garden etcetera, the idea of a journey, these four, they, they get lost on the way, they’re late really to their own party, um, and then, then they are in the forest and you can’t really see people. From the beginning you’ve got this idea of a party that is shadowy, shadowy figures, you can’t really see people. Is it, are they there, aren’t they etcetera but they’re on a journey. Do you think it’s necessary to have them sort of moving through that because they’re going through a process, they come out at, come out one way or the other on the other side, transformed. It’s a transformative experience.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah it’s a transformative story, um, the, again it’s the fate of the novel to interrogate who we are, um, by subjecting characters to a process. Um, it’s either a process of initiation, it’s only about three or four processes finally. It’s either initiation, um, dissolution. So people go through a process where they are broken down and in breaking down we, we see what they are. Um, uh, a process of direct, direct discovery, um, there’s, there’s a, there’s a fourth or a fifth one. Uh, one is dissolution, the other is initiation, uh, discovery, crisis, um, and that’s, that’s the journey, that’s the story of the journey of all of us through life.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s, It’s one or the other. Where, where they come into collision with experience that strips us, come into collision with experience that dissolves us, um, and it’s, it’s important. The novel really just merely mimics, it’s a kind of mimesis of the process by which we become real human beings. By which we begin to discover who we are and discover our place in the world and our possibilities, um, in the world. I’ve chosen the path of initiation, dissolution and crisis with this novel. I thought I’d have three out of the five, um, and you’re right, the forest is crucial from, from, from ancient times, uh, all the way back to Dante.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
The forest was always the metaphor of the place where we go to be separated from civilisation. Separated from our, from our familiar selves and we, we are compelled to a self-confrontation, um, where we, we meet ourselves as a stranger.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Because there’s, there’s a sense about those, they’ve got multiple layering of the costumes etcetera, they’re dressed as someone else. No one can recognise them. They are also stripped back to a degree as well, I think Steven says, I just want to be wild, I want to be free, um, and lose all the trappings and then there’s this moment of, I find it optimistic in, in many ways because it’s almost like a second chance, he’s gone through this, this whole process and he’s faced himself and he’s come out the other side and whatever happens with their relationship – you need to read the book – what happens with their relationships happens, uh, but they are transformed.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, the, the, I think the trouble with modern life is that we, we live in such a way as to prevent a transformation taking place in us.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And that’s…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
We, we, everything is designed to not bring that about.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes, exam… yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, we, we keep things as safe as possible. We monitor our friendships, we, we, you know, control our spaces, we, we do everything possible to prevent the very thing that the, the fulfilment of life depends on which is our transformation which cannot happen without, without our crisis. Which cannot happen without this awkward confrontation with ourselves as we don’t like to see ourselves. It’s a, nobody wants to be stripped.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
No.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Down to the bone.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
No.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s too painful. Nobody even wants to really turn around and confront themselves with all of our flaws and, we don’t really want to do that. We’re very careful about, and I think it is one of the reasons why we have the novel, the novel performs that for us, um.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm. And, but from what you were saying earlier, the, the idea, the, of you wanting to have a novel that also takes on elements of being a play as well. Was that freeing for you in terms of… or do you find it constraint? Because I thought elements of the form also reflect what’s happening here as well in terms of, um, it works together both in terms of substantive content as well as, um, being a vessel to hold things. Because I was thinking, is this a, is the form actually a bit like one of the buildings, but it’s not because it allows flexibility within it.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah there’s a formless form, um, that’s why the form of the theatre was very helpful for me.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
But the thing about the novel is that the novel is one of the, I think the novel may be the freest, um, literary form that we have, um, it’s freer than the play, freer than the psalm because the psalm, you know, most of the time has astrophes 22.22 and the, the, um, the beats that you conform to and rhyme and, um, sometimes even the tierney of rhythm, um, the, the novel allows leakages, that’s the thing I like about a novel so much, I love leakages. It allows, um, uh, the breaking down of the form that you’ve set off and the opening out into a new form if that no longer works. The novel is a very elastic, very democratic, very forgiving, very generous form in that sense, um, so it can be like a Greek vase but if, if the content it’s holding is a bit toxic, it allows itself to squish off into, into something else, while still keeping it’s Greekness. Um, and I, I like that, to have the, the constraints of the play inside the freedom of the novel was really fascinating.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
But I also, I also, I was also interested in, um, a form whereby the, what’s happened to the characters, um, as they make this journey from pride and self-sufficiency, self, complete self, uh, self-awareness, a sense of who they are to their breaking down and dissolution, um, confrontation, um, crisis and them having to face themselves again. I also wanted the journey to mirror the, the history of theatre.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, from the Ancient Greek tradition where you’d have two or three or four people.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
To multiple, to the Elizabethan age, to the modern age, the age of Pinta, where the language gets more stripped down.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Becomes more abstract, um, and then to the modern times when crisis happens, broken through, everyone now finds themselves in a new place, um, and, and you have a new, a new kind of drama. So I wanted that form as well, I wanted a growth, I wanted the form to mirror the growth of, of the characters and their fall and their rise again.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And with, with Akoder as well which.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s your favourite bit of the book.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Well it’s an interesting bit because I, I mentioned it when we had a, a brief chat before, um, I wanted to ask you about it because for me it became Greek again. It felt very Greek.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Shall I just read this out?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, please.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Oh right, I’ll just this out.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Absolutely.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Um, Two women were in a room where the light was low and the mood charged. They sat in silence in the dimness of the room. Then the more radiant of the two women spoke; ‘Did it work? Better than we expected, they are all facing different directions. None unchanged. They are all as far from what they thought they were as it is possible to be. That’s what we wanted. That’s what they wanted. Nothing’s happened that is not what we want or what we need or what we deserve. There’s no such thing as chance. They felt to me that there were a number of points of, I don’t know if this is a wrong reading or a right reading but it felt very much as if I was hearing like Greek Gods above with everyone else below in terms of puppetry. Or I was thinking of, uh, Macbeth’s Witches.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah somewhere between the two is quite right.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, because the two women are, they, they’re in the book, they are always there.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And always above.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And always amongst. Um, I kind of thought of them as the, as the fates, the civils, um, I thought of them as the ancient, ancient African, old ancient African wise women. There are, in many traditions you have these people who saw how thing were going to turn out, um, and this is just them commenting at the end, yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Um, Madam Sosostris as well, who I find fascinating and I, it triggered a lot of digging around about her as well, um.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
How deep did you dig?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Tippett’s Opera.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Ah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
So yeah so it’s…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
As, as far back as Tippett?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah. So it was, um…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
You didn’t get to Ancient Egypt?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
No I didn’t. Tell me about, no…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Well yeah it goes far back.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah. So is, is, she’s an interesting one because she’s been taken on by lots of people and she’s come in and out of different forms of art forms.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Literature and art forms. Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. In different ways and she’s either, she’s, well with Elliot she’s got a head cold, she hasn’t, she’s got a wrong…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
She’s a tarot card reading.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes, she, tarot card reader, she’s…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
In The Waste Land.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. And she hasn’t got, um, the right, she loses a deck of cards doesn’t she and then I think he didn’t quite know or hadn’t seen tarot cards or something similar and the names he uses for the tarot cards are not correct, it’s not like the…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
He makes, he makes them up.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, which is a, a good… I made some up too.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yes you did, because I was thinking…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
I thought I would continue the tradition.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Exactly. So…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And then I had a friend make up these, make up these new deck of cards.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah. Oh really, actually physically?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, Rosemary.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Oh did she? Rosemary....
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I haven’t seen, that’s amazing. So one thing that Ben collaborates is an amazing artist, um, is she crossing the Alps at the moment?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
She’s crossing the Alps at the moment. Not, not on foot.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Oh (laughs) I had visions of her…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
On a donkey.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs) She’s an amazing artist and you collaborate with her, don’t you on works, um…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
We make paintings together.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes exactly. She’s amazing, so I am sorry she’s not here today. So she’s made, she’s made a deck of…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
She made, she made a deck of yeah, an extended deck of tarot cards. Is anybody here familiar with tarot cards?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
A bit yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Do you use them at home? Every day?
Audience
Not every day.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
But for important things?
Audience
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Right. Have you, did you use one today?
Audience
No.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Right. I was going to ask if you had a forecast for today.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs)
Audience
I’m sorry.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
There has been a resurgence in terms of…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
…which is another interesting thing that if you look on social media and there’s nothing 28.29 a resurgence of interest.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
There are tarot cards, crystals.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. The tarot, the tarot cards particularly, there was an exhibition at the, um, at The Courtauld.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, of tarot cards going back to the, to the twelfth century, um, it’s a big part of European culture.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, it’s been operating there for a long time in different disguises. It’s not what, it’s not what we think it is at all. It’s, it’s not just a gypsy thing for reading fortunes, it’s very deep.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, very deep part of the, um, of the enlightenment impulse of the western tradition.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And do you think, um, the fact that with Elliot’s, Madam Sosostris tarot reader and I think also with the one, it was Aldous Huxley.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Aldous Huxley from Pollyanna.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah and Crome Yellow. Again, that was used as a disguise, it was, I can’t remember his name, is it Mr Gogan or something, somebody he disguises himself as, as…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
…as tarot reader, um, again to…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Element of disguise coming in.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah. Um, there’s this whole element that she’s, she may not turn up. She doesn’t appear. She sort of sets a, sets the things running, the hares running, is she going to turn up at the festival or not. What’s going to happen etcetera. Um, is there a sense that, um, of, within that it’s, is she real or isn’t she real, um, the fact that she’s half, she’s re… she’s predicted things correctly in the House of Lords when she meets Viv, she makes the right prediction basically saying, this is what’s going to happen, you just can’t see it. Um, but at the same time she herself is a tarot reader, predicting fortunes. With your referencing back, is it to do with, um, I felt it was, it was the destination of The Waste Land, hollow. There’s a hollow centre.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, it’s, it’s very complex, um, Madam Sosostris is a very complex character. The name goes back to Ancient Egypt. There was, there was a Pharaoh called Sosostris um, and he was very, very much linked to Egyptian magic. So inside Madam Sosostris there’s this thing of magic, um, you can’t get away from it, um. In The Waste Land she predicts everything that happens. She practically names all the different sections.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And in this book the same, the same thing except that the person who does the prediction is not actually Madam Sosostris, it’s someone who fakes being Madam Sosostris which therefore suggests that the energy of Madam Sosostris is one that’s accessible.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
As an archetype. Um, just like in some ways the energy of being a judge is accessible.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
As an archetype. Children play those roles. Why? They like being doctors and nurses and judges. Why? It’s because they are deep archetypes, archetypes in our spirit. Um, they are the, if you like, they are pillars of an unconsciousness by which we understand um, the corners, the edges of the functioning of human beings in society. These are the things without which, uh, society does not quite have, um, doesn’t quite stand properly. Justice has to be there.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And healing has to be there. Um, and Madam Sosostris represents another, um, archetype. You can call it the divinatory archetype, that throughout the ages, people have been perplexed by the future. It’s, it’s one of the things that bugs us the most. What is going to happen to my children?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm, mm, mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
You know, what’s going to happen to my parents? What’s going to happen to me? Just like this business. Is it going to work out? So many elements unknown in life and we’re constantly wanting to find a way of piercing the veil of unknowing.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s been there and it will always be with us, you know, and the twenty thousandth century when we’re floating around with, by thought, we will still need this principle of divination. Um, so I, it’s, it was one of the tools by which I could get the characters and therefore they were able to ask kind of critical questions about who we are and how do we cope with this blind business of destiny.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And I felt that it was such a thing that though she, she doesn’t exist as a person, she’s been adopted in the various forms and this is her latest.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Incarnation?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. The unreal becomes real in the sense that she’ carrying on journeys throughout.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. I also like the idea of stealing from T S Elliot.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, because he himself was a very good thief.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
He certainly is.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
He was a great thief. And no one’s, no one’s had the nerve to steal from one of the greatest thieves in, in modern literature, um, and coming from a different tradition, coming from Africa, I thought, you know, I could get away with it.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah (laughs). At the beginning of the book you obviously reference Howards End as well.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes. Yes, I love it, I love Foster.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And that book is another Bloomsbury Waste Landish benchmark.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Exactly.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Because he has it there, it’s sort of a signifier, it sets the tone that you’ve got, um, uh, Helen.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Who is out there, the great rescuer as it were and it all goes terribly wrong with Leonard.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes. They went bust.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes. Exactly. In terms of, and it sets a tone or a, a shade colouring over the four principles or how you feel about them. I am never sure, did I like them, did I not like them. Do I have, what were my thoughts about them, um, and there were certain signifiers as well when he used terms about sort of the kitchen, um, island etcetera. You know exactly, in terms of shorthand, talking about going back to the play, you know exactly what kind of people they were like, how they operated, what the signifiers of wealth and success, um, the goal posts as you progress and go along. It was interesting.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. Thank you.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
You’ve been, you’ve been described, um, as a magic realist. Is that a helpful label? Do, do you like that label?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
No, it’s not helpful at all. It’s about as helpful as, um, it’s about as helpful as calling an elephant and bean with a trunk, um, or calling a lion a, an animal with sharp teeth. It’s not helpful.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Because there are many more aspects of what I am doing.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes, exactly.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, I, I am fascinated by maybe two or three really great questions. They, they say that every writer comes into this world with one great question they need to, they, they want to ask. And they ask that question in different forms in all the books they write and all the poems. It saturates everything and there’s, there’s a point, there’s a, I cannot believe that. We come with one big question, um, and mine is, what is the nature of reality. Um, what is this thing we call reality, what is it? Is it what we perceive it to be? Is it beyond our perception? Is it a construct, like society, like culture, um.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm. Why, why do you think people feel the need to apply, it’s very much like the buildings, that they like want to contain, they want to box.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. Well I think they apply, I, I said, I say generously, I say it’s a kind of laziness.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It, it stops people having to and also, I am always changing from book to book, um.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Like, you know, I kind of re… I reform myself with each new book and it must be exhausting for people.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
What the hell is he doing now?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs) Are you working…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Well it’s very refreshing for me.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, to, to start all over again, ask a deeper question but all over again. Co, completely different form. Different style, different tone, um, because how else can you, how can, you know, Bruce Lee talks about, you know, his former fighting being like trying to hold pass the water, um, and that’s what reality is like, you can’t catch it.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
So how can you use one form to, to think that you can catch it with one form, you can’t.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
The more mature we are, the more I think we stand a chance of catching a little glimpse of it here.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
A little glimpse of it there.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Which is the sense I have throughout this book as well, because I find it quite dizzying on aspects because you’re in this, on this journey with the four characters with the sense you’re going into the forest with them, you can’t really see their glimmers of things there that are, is that real? Is that not real? You’re playing with us in terms of the reader, the reader writer relationship as well and there’s a, the nature of it, so it’s fascinating.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, evanescent nature of it.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes, exactly.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s, it’s a quicksilver thing.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
It is, as in mercury is exactly the right thing.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Mercury, yeah.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah, yeah, it’s that whole experience. I am conscious of time in terms of questions and the ability for people to ask questions. Um, is there anyone in the audience who would like to raise a question? Molly, someone’s got there hand up, there’s a, there’s a roving mike coming towards you.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Go for it. There’s an interesting coloured mike coming towards you.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
I know, very Mishcon, Mishcon orange.
Audience
Thank you so much Sir Ben for coming to speak to us today. Um, I loved hearing about how you talked about breaking down society subverting constructs and your references to authors who have also done that in, not in their works but to what extent do you think that society can build itself back up again and how can, how can they do that once they’ve achieved that breaking down stage, that crisis stage and the characters in your novel as well?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s a very, very good question, um, society’s a very nervous thing, um, and you understand why there’s a lot at stake, millions of people, got to get them through and the thoroughfares of life, you’ve got to get them to work, get them back, you have to have everything working, electricity, the sewage system, there’s a lot, there’s a lot. We saw that during the, um, pandemic, really saw society stripped for the first time, it was like someone sort of peeled the, some peeled the, the top of the sardine, sardine can of, of the world and for all, for the first time you peered in, when you’ve pulled it back, not sure I want to see that. Because it’s true, it was, the world became very naked, um, so society is, the more, the richer it gets, the more complex it gets, the more people that are involved, the more it has to I think, be pre, pre-determined, um, in what it does. It’s simpler that way. You watch those people have these consults and they are watching traffic in London, that’s, that’s what it’s like. You want people just keeping to the main roads, you want, you want traffic moving. You’re, you know, that’s, that’s how, that’s how society operates. So if, when things break down the first thing society does is it goes back to how it remembers that it was that worked.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
And it goes back to that, swings back to that automatically, as you saw, with the pandemic.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
There was a moment in the pandemic when I thought, wow we could change our, we could just change everything.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
We could, we could just alter the way in which we operate, the way in which we think, the way in which we are as human beings with one another, with work, you know, um, and just for a brief second, many people just had this feeling, then it’s, you saw, it’s just, okay there’s some stragglers, you know, who decided not to work from home and, they’re fighting a slightly losing battle.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Because they are going to yank them back, um, eventually.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, even when there’s a revolution, societies aren’t really changed, they just improve very slowly, um, but the, the dream of change has to be kept alive because otherwise we’ll continue exactly as we are into the future and we can’t. It’s not sustainable, it’s not sustainable. We, we’re already at the, at a kind of a breaking point.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
The world as we know it is profoundly threatened, profoundly, um, and cannot carry on like this for another hundred years. It just can’t. So people who can help to reinvent it and re-think it, whether that’s in legal terms or in social terms, we need, we need that right now, we need very brave thinkers. Thank you.
Mishcon de Reya Online
I’m going to go with one of the questions from online, so, um, you blend poetry, essays, fiction and magic realism. When you chose these different forms, how much do you think about accessibility and inclusion in terms of how diverse audiences might receive and engage with your stories?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Uh, that’s a difficult question. Um, because if you think of your audiences before you begin to write, you’re kind of asking for trouble.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
I think. I think, um, I think inclusion should be built into the imagination already. I think you should already be thinking, um, that what you write is for everybody. And there, there’s some books I read and I, when you start to read it you feel, this person was not writing for me.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, and there are culture perimeters that shape, even an innocent sentence of a book.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, and I think the very nature of the word, of my life, I, I, I, I imagine I am going to be read by everybody, all kinds of people. I have to, I have to, um.
Mishcon de Reya Online
And then just one more question.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah.
Mishcon de Reya Online
From online from Rosie Mogal, she wants to know, what has been your experience in drawing on traditional knowledge, rituals or stories, especially those tied to the natural world in your writing, how do you balance respect for tradition with the urgency of modern climate crisis?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Also not here asking all these really…
Mishcon de Reya Online
I think so.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
…really abstract questions.
Mishcon de Reya Online
That was about six questions in one (laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yes, that’s a good question too. How do you balance the traditional with, um, I am not sure how one answers that because, um, all, all the stories I write are always asking questions about the world in which we find ourselves. Um, and, and right now I think there are about five or six things that really, really occupy us, power is one of them. Um, the use and misuse of power in the big scale. Uh, humanity is another one of them. How, how are humanities tested. We are being profoundly tested by stuff happening in the world that we can either be indifferent about or express ourselves about but expressing it right now is problematic from, from a legal point of view where protest has been madly criminalised.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, it’s a very, very strange time in terms of the freedom of the individual to express their, their deepest disagreement with what’s going on in the world. That, that’s bothered me that we’ve got to this place, um, and I, I don’t know how we got here. I don’t even understand how we’ve not challenged just that principle, um, itself and pushed it back. Um, so that’s, that’s where I am, I’m, I’m fascinated by the mis, misuse, the big misuse of power. The most powerful people can do things, kill people, get away with it. Not pay their taxes, so on and so forth, um, climate is ought to be something that obsesses, should interest every one of us because we’re going to be affected by it. We are being affected by it. If it’s going to affect everything, you know, figures like Nigel Farage talking about refugees and migrants but without dealing with some of the causes of that, one of which is climate.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, so all of these things interest me, um, conscience, uh, the value of the individual voice. We live in a time when the individual, the individual is made to feel powerless and they can’t really do anything, um, that their voice won’t be heard, um, we have to change that somehow. We have to re-empower the individual voice otherwise we’re doomed, um, people opt out of the, the governmental process of voting and those who vote will be, people will be voting for things that we don’t agree with, we wouldn’t have done anything to be part of that dialogue. So we need to re-engage individual voice and make people feel like they are an important centre of the world.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Big, big responsibilities.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
All of them interest me. But how do you tell stories with all these big things, you know, that’s, that’s the thing. Tell a story so it just slips, slips by like a, like a fish in a familiar sea.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm. Is there anyone else in the room has another question?
Audience
Hi Ben.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Hello.
Audience
Um, can I just ask what you are going to be working, if you’re allowed to tell us, um, what you are going to be working on in the future or what your plans are going forward?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Well I am going to be doing more or less the same things. Writing, writing seductive but awkward books.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs).
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s got to have the two things, yeah. Um, I have a new novel coming out next year which is, you know, more directly about power. Could get me into a bit of trouble, um.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
We like that.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, well I’m in the best place for it no?
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
When, when’s it published? Have you got a date of publication?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, June, July next year.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Oh exciting.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Um, I’m working on plays. I have a film coming out, a film of one of my novels called The Age of Magic. I co-wrote it with a director, um, that’s coming out next year.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And my final question on that, if there was going to be a film about you, based on your life. Who would play you?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Oh dear. Um, some, a bright, young, seductive and dangerous, dangerous, uh, person who, um, um, manages to not look as dangerous as they are.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Oh. With um, your latest novel, the one that’s coming out next year, is the, does the form vary from what we’ve read here?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Completely, completely different.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
So again, another transformation?
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. Complete, completely different.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah, yeah. Can’t tell you much more but it’s, yeah, it’s, this one is more genre but Ben Okri genre-rised.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And with the process with the film as well, um, you say you co-wrote it. Was that another, because that’s another shift from the vis, into the visual arts because you work a lot with…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s a big shift.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
It’s a big shift. The, the book is a, is a gift, it’s a complete gift to you. To your imagination.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Mm.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Your life, your spirit, your time.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
And you have your own, as a reader, have your own…
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. You make them up how you want to make them up.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Yes, yeah.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Yeah. You can read the book anyhow you want. I’ve got a friend who reads the books from the end, backwards. He’s an id, he’s an absolute idiot. He gets a book and he starts from the end. I said, why do you always do that? He says, I’m not going to be determined by how you wrote the book.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
(laughs). I like that, it’s a new approach, a construct. Thank you, it’s a real pleasure to talk to you and good luck with your next project.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Absolutely. Thank you very much, it’s a real pleasure being here.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Thank you.
Sir Ben Okri, OBE FRSL
Thank you.
Amanda Gray
Partner, Mishcon de Reya
Thank you. Thanks Ben, a pleasure to see you.
[applause]