David Mitchell

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the author David Mitchell. All writers like to imagine they defy categorisation. He really does. From sci-fi epic Cloud Atlas to the magical Bone Clocks via the semi-autobiographical Black Swan Green, his intricately structured stories traverse time and genre with equal ease. He's known for marrying literary daring with unput-downable storytelling and, perhaps the most difficult creative circle to square, he's as critically lauded as he is popular. Equally at home on the Booker Prize and bestseller lists. You'll be surprised to hear he's also modest. Growing up in suburban Worcestershire, he was, he says, a bog standard comprehensive kid, though an important part of him was elsewhere. His imagination had been captured by sci-fi, fantasy, and prog rock. He made it his mission to map out a realm of his own, and he's been writing ever since. He says, When writing is great, your mind is nowhere else but in this world that started off in the mind of another human being. There are two miracles at work here: one, that someone thought of that world and the people in the first place, and the second, that there's this means of transmitting it, just little ink marks on squashed wood fibre. Amazing. David Mitchell, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

David Mitchell1:58

Oh Lauren, it's great to be here. Thank you. I've always wondered what the departure lounge to the Desert Island looks like and I must admit I really like what you've done with the place.

Presenter2:07

Well, thank you very much. Welcome. Take a seat. Of course, you're sharing your music choices with us today. I know you've spent a lot of time with music lately. Your recent novel, Utopia Avenue, is about a four piece band in the late sixties. How enjoyable was that research?

David Mitchell2:18

Enjoy.

David Mitchell2:20

Oh, enormously.

David Mitchell2:22

In some ways, it's a bit cheeky calling it research. It was really my diversion activities for the last two or three books. When I wanted a break from them, I'd go onto YouTube and see if there was a new interview with David Bowie or Brian Jones or anyone. I almost wrote Utopia Avenue so I could l legitimise it all.

David Mitchell2:42

make an honest man of myself as a researcher and call that research.

Presenter2:46

And I think you learned to play the piano, too.

David Mitchell2:48

That's right. Well, um, I needed to know what my characters know about music, and I didn't, and the only way to really get inside them was to

David Mitchell2:58

I have at least a few guitar lessons and the piano as well, which I've continued with a very long-suffering piano teacher called Tonya, and uh I'm up to basic bark.

Presenter3:09

You're a great one for structure as well. So today we've got one story to tell and eight discs to do it. How did you approach the task?

David Mitchell3:17

I've noticed that castaways choose songs for three broad reasons. One is to remind them of people that they're going to miss. Another is to remind them of particular times and places that were important to them. And the third reason is for some kind of

David Mitchell3:33

Sustenance might be spiritual or intellectual or artistic or maybe just humor. So I've chosen.

David Mitchell3:42

A kind of a meta-list. I've got different items from these three categories and that was my modus operandus when I was choosing the songs.

Presenter3:50

So let's get started. Disc number one, David, what are we going to hear and why have you chosen this?

David Mitchell3:55

Are we gonna hear Sunset by Kate Bush? I don't really wanna live on my island without a little bit of

David Mitchell4:02

Kate Bush. I find her music.

David Mitchell4:04

and sort blows away the fog of the humdrum.

David Mitchell4:07

And it's got a way of revealing the beauty that's hiding there in everyday life.

David Mitchell4:13

Hiding in plain sight. I even wrote down the first lines. This will sound like a quote. It is.

David Mitchell4:19

Who knows who wrote that song of summer that blackbirds sing at dusk? This is a song of colour where sands sing in crimson red and rust.

David Mitchell4:29

then climb into bed and turn to dust.

David Mitchell4:32

You've got Venus, Apollo and Hades there all in five lines and if I'd written that I'd be pretty damn pleased with myself.

David Mitchell4:38

This song will also remind me of my daughter because we went to see the Kate Bush concert at Hammersmith where she performed this and many of the great songs a few years ago.

Presenter4:50

Who knows who wrote that summer summer The blackbirds sing just

Presenter4:58

This is a song of colourland.

Presenter5:05

We're sensing in crimson, red and rough.

Presenter5:13

Climb into bed and turn to duck

Presenter5:20

Kate Bush and Sunset. So David Mitchell, I have to ask you then about the Uber book. Now readers who stay with you will notice how characters and their histories recur in your novels. The literature students who study your work call this metalepsis, but I think you call it having your cake and eating it.

David Mitchell5:36

The Uber novel allows me to do two things. It allows me to fulfil the ambition as a Tolkien geek kid who wanted to write something enormous, something as big as Middle Earth, or as big as Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire, or as big as Ursula Le Gwyn's Earthsea.

David Mitchell5:54

As an adult, I'm also interested in very, very specific locales in history, in the past, the present or the future. And I don't want to write something that huge. I want to write something that

David Mitchell6:07

fully understands the mechanics and

David Mitchell6:11

electrical circuitry of a much smaller localized world.

David Mitchell6:15

But by also having some characters recur throughout this sort of cluster of localized worlds, I simultaneously

David Mitchell6:25

Create something as large as Middle-earth or the Galactic Empire. So that's the having a cake and eating it reason.

Speaker 16:30

So

David Mitchell6:32

It's also just fun to do. You get that I know you. That throb of.

David Mitchell6:37

recognition. And also I note that reoccurring characters don't arrive in the book empty-handed. They bring luggage with them, if you knew them from a previous book. Now the prime directive is that if you've never read anything else I've written before and never read anything again, the books each do and must work independently. Uh I don't want them to be instalments in some

David Mitchell6:59

Epic cycle. However, As it happens, if you have read Maya books, then it might work a little bit like an epic cycle. So that's my having my cake and eating it as well, I guess.

Presenter7:11

It sounds like characters follow you round wherever you go. I think you've described your mind as a parliament of voices. Who might you find on the benches there?

David Mitchell7:20

My nervous, introverted, bookish, stammering, younger self.

David Mitchell7:26

My

David Mitchell7:28

reasonably comfortable in his own skin, middle-aged publish-author self, all the selves that are in between.

David Mitchell7:35

All the other selves I could have been.

David Mitchell7:37

We're all a parliament of ourselves. No one self is always in charge. This is why we can.

David Mitchell7:44

so frequently appall ourselves with what we do and think, God, was that me doing that? And yes, it was. But even the self that is saying, was that me doing that? is also a self. So

Presenter7:55

And the writer you then? What's what's their job in all of this?

Presenter7:59

Hubble

David Mitchell7:59

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:00

Hello.

David Mitchell8:01

Maybe the right of me is like the speaker. Uh the speaker at Westminster. Uh it's the one that has to

David Mitchell8:07

see the bigger picture and use them all and mobilize them and heard them, heard those complaining, whinging cats with headaches. Maybe that's what the writer self does.

Presenter8:18

Mm.

Presenter8:19

It's time to hear your second disc today. Tell us what we're going to hear and why you've chosen it.

David Mitchell8:24

They'd like to choose Vequium by the Icelandic composer Jon Leifs.

David Mitchell8:28

As it is a choral piece, he wrote it for his daughter, who sadly drowned.

David Mitchell8:34

So in my the categories of why people choose songs for desert island discs, uh this one comes under sustenance. I experience this as a kind of a lullaby sung by a parent who's in one world to a child who's in another world. It's a beautiful oceanic and

David Mitchell8:52

Bathibic piece of music. Would you know the word bathibic loan?

Presenter8:56

No, I don't. Tell me what it means.

David Mitchell8:57

It's a cool word.

David Mitchell9:00

pertaining to the deepest parts of the ocean.

David Mitchell9:03

Isn't that a killer word?

Presenter9:05

Word to sink into.

David Mitchell9:06

Here we go then.

Speaker 29:20

Oh spirit.

Presenter10:05

The Bathibic Requiem by Jon Leifs, performed by the Halgreams Church Motet Choir. David Mitchell, you are a teenage poet with, I understand, a nom de plume. Tell me about your secret life as James Bolivar.

David Mitchell10:17

That your secret

Speaker 210:18

Uh

Speaker 210:18

Uh

David Mitchell10:18

James Bolivar. Oh no! Radio 4! No, no, everybody knows.

David Mitchell10:25

So, as James Bolivar, I would write poems and

David Mitchell10:30

Slip them through the letter box of the vicar who printed the village magazine. It sounds like something from Enid Blyton or something, doesn't it?

Presenter10:38

Was it on literally under Veil of Night?

Presenter10:42

Two months.

David Mitchell10:43

If you're a young teenager going to a comprehensive school, it wasn't that my school's particularly rough or anything, but it is deeply unwise to get a reputation as someone who likes either classical music or who who enjoys

David Mitchell10:55

poetry, you simply can't. Hopefully it's not so bad these days. Now the poems weren't any good, but it was still a good day's work and you have to sort of get through that stage to then one day write something that is

David Mitchell11:07

any good. But what I did then and what I do now, what they have in common is this trance like state you go in.

David Mitchell11:15

And it's really nice to be there.

Presenter11:18

You were obviously creative. Where had you inherited that from? Your parents, perhaps?

David Mitchell11:22

I think that's likely.

David Mitchell11:25

They were both artists. They're still with us, so they are both artists.

David Mitchell11:29

Sometimes when I say that, people imagine a kind of Bloomsbury-esque, swinging, bohemian childhood. It really wasn't that. Dad worked in the design department at Royal Worcester, and mum was a freelance floral artist.

David Mitchell11:43

But it was a milieu where mum and dad would sit down at the weekends in front of a drawing board, just a sheet of white paper and there'd be a vase of flowers, something from the garden, in front of them, and they'd

David Mitchell11:56

Enter, I suppose, that trance state of their own for hours and hours, usually with Ray J4 on in the background.

David Mitchell12:02

which I'm sure is where I first heard the integrated iron discs music.

David Mitchell12:06

And

David Mitchell12:07

Then I'd come back from whatever I was doing a few hours later and that piece of white paper had been transformed and there was this thing on there, this just this thing of beauty.

David Mitchell12:17

Watercolour representation of what was in front of them, and maybe without even.

David Mitchell12:23

thinking for a moment that that's what they were doing. They were actually teaching me that

David Mitchell12:27

They teach me a few things. Art is about the concentration. It's not about suddenly being kissed by the muse. It's work. It requires.

David Mitchell12:37

Discipline and thoughtfulness. I think they're also teaching me that, believe it or not, you can earn a living from this.

David Mitchell12:43

And

David Mitchell12:44

Finally, I suppose

David Mitchell12:46

They were very peaceful, they were tranquil, they were grounded, they were calm after an afternoon in front of the drawing board. They're that kind of person anyway, I think, so that helps. But uh I could see what art did to them, and it was a good thing.

Presenter13:00

We've got to take a break for some music. This is desk number three. David, tell me about it.

David Mitchell13:05

Well, this is Mercury by Sufyan Stevens. This is one of those time and place songs. If you're lucky, you have a few golden seasons in your life. And summer three years ago I spent in

David Mitchell13:17

Chicago working on a screen project with a couple of friends, and this song came out at that time, and so.

David Mitchell13:25

Sasha Lana, if you're listening to this, this one's for us.

Speaker 213:29

And I am restless, and all that I've known to be of love, and I am gentle.

Speaker 213:37

Ran off with a ball.

Speaker 213:41

And I am desperate, and oh that I just believe The wedding of whether you are too

Speaker 213:53

And I am evidence and all that I trust

Speaker 114:01

The way

Presenter14:03

Mercury, composed and performed by Sufyan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Mewley, and James McAllister. David Mitchell, one of your novels, Black Swan Green, is semi autobiographical, and, like you, its narrator, Jason Taylor, develops a stammer. When did yours appear?

David Mitchell14:20

I think you always have it. It's a recessive gene that kind of can be triggered by environmental factors, but it's still pretty murky and we're a couple of Einsteinian linguists away, I think, from really understanding.

David Mitchell14:33

What a stammer is. It kind of got activated probably around age six or seven.

David Mitchell14:39

Teacher asked a question, I remember this quite clearly at primary school, and the answer was Napoleon, and I knew the answer, and I put my hand up.

David Mitchell14:47

And I couldn't say it. And it was the first time in my life I couldn't say it. I was a very late speaker. I didn't start speaking until I was about five. And so I was going to.

David Mitchell14:55

speech therapists initially, not for disfluency, but for nonfluency. But yeah, I remember that day I I couldn't say Napoleon and I remember kids' faces looking at me as as I blocked.

David Mitchell15:08

And it's still here to this day. You...

David Mitchell15:11

live with them and you can come to better or worse working accommodations with them. But certainly from six through to about eleven, twelve, thirteen, it was pretty pronounced. I really couldn't say what I wanted to. I didn't I had not yet grafted on the coping mechanisms that I've grafted on now that allow me to do a radio for interview, for example.

Presenter15:32

You've written very movingly about your experience with about managing and eventually making peace with your stammer. What helped you find that working accommodation?

David Mitchell15:39

G

David Mitchell15:43

Well, writing Black Swan Green really got me thinking about it. It was really good for me. I guess I was about 30, 31 at the time, maybe a little later. It was something I didn't really want to think about because I was.

David Mitchell15:55

I brought into this idea that

David Mitchell15:57

It's pretty prevalent. If you try hard enough, you won't stammer. It's a question of willpower. And I hadn't yet.

David Mitchell16:05

internalize the bleedingly obvious observation that no one has willpower like a stammerer, even to pick the phone up and answer it. It requires ten times, twenty times the willpower that a fluent person needs. We already

David Mitchell16:19

people whose willpower is a superpower.

David Mitchell16:22

Yet there's still this idea that if only we tried harder, we wouldn't stammer. That's a pernicious myth. That's simply wrong. And so just stopping thinking that really helped. And then thinking about my stammer not as this enemy that was out to get me, but

David Mitchell16:40

as almost a

David Mitchell16:41

Fellow symbiont that I was sharing a mind with, sharing a body with. This is going to sound a bit weird and spooky and novelistic, but once I started thinking of

David Mitchell16:51

my stammer not as an enemy within, but as a fellow.

David Mitchell16:55

passenger in my mind who needed a bit of time to stammer and if he it was a he for heaven knows what reason, maybe'cause I'm a he if I gave him space and if I let him stammer and didn't hate him for it or didn't um

David Mitchell17:10

Phil

David Mitchell17:11

mortified by him then, he would give me space in return. Uh but it kind of worked, and it works now. And occasionally I'll stammer at uh at an event and I'll just say, Hello, I seem to be stammering.

David Mitchell17:23

To date a little bit, and the audience usually laughs, they're on my side, and I relax, and then the and then I can move on from the block.

Presenter17:31

Mm. It's time to hear your next piece of music. What are you taking to the island next and why?

David Mitchell17:36

So we're going to hear Un Dia di Noviemvre by Shofia Bolosch, composed by Leo Brauer, a Cuban composer, especially for guitar.

David Mitchell17:46

This fits into the sustenance category. It is ultimately mysterious. I love this piece of music in part because I can't describe why or how I love it.

David Mitchell17:58

It makes me feel things I can't quite name and gives me memories that I don't think I've had.

David Mitchell18:05

which is utterly mysterious. It's all wrapped up in music.

David Mitchell18:08

Listen to it and I think you'll know what I mean.

Presenter18:47

Una Dia de Nobiembre, performed by Jofia Boroche, composed by Leo Brouwer.

Presenter18:53

David Mitchell, you studied English and American Literature at Kent University. Sounds like a very useful course for a writer to take. How did you get on?

David Mitchell19:03

I enjoyed my time very much. Um I wasn't a particularly diligent student. It was actually the things around the edges that I think

David Mitchell19:11

I benefited from most, say the afternoons in the library where you just go down a rabbit hole and find things or or

David Mitchell19:18

clubs I was a part of at the bell ringing club.

David Mitchell19:22

All things that appear in in future books I've noticed.

Presenter19:25

You started teaching English as a foreign language in Sicily and then in London. How serious were you about writing during this period?

David Mitchell19:34

I can never really remember a time when I didn't want to be a writer, yet it wasn't until a little bit later in my mid-twenties when I realised that you're not young forever.

David Mitchell19:44

It's not enough to be talented and it's not enough to aspire. You actually have to be disciplined as well and get rid of whatever social life you might have.

David Mitchell19:55

Sell the T V in those days. Uh this was all pre-internet, luckily for me. Get something done and get something finished. That is easily the most useful advice you can give to an aspiring writer. Just finish something. It doesn't matter if it's any good. Just finish it.

David Mitchell20:10

then you can worry about making it good. I hadn't yet reached that stage, so I was writing I was writing on index cards'cause I read that that's how Nabokoff wrote his novels and I thought, well, if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

David Mitchell20:22

But I didn't really

David Mitchell20:24

get organized until a year or so into living in Japan when I was 25 or 26.

Presenter20:29

Yeah, so you moved to Hiroshima to teach English in 1994. What appealed to you about going there?

David Mitchell20:36

It was just a roll of the dice. I was seeing a young Japanese lady in London and uh when she went back

David Mitchell20:43

I had another friend who was uh teaching at a school in Hiroshima and she was uh able to get me a job there.

David Mitchell20:49

And it was the last time of my life where everything I owned I could just put in a backpack and fly out there. So so that's what I did.

David Mitchell20:55

When you're young sometimes life is a bit of a board game and you

David Mitchell21:00

roll the dice and you move your count and you land on a square which sends you to another square without that much thought. But of course where you land can then have a much greater effect on

David Mitchell21:11

where you are and how things turn out further down the line.

Presenter21:14

It's time for your next disc. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen this today?

David Mitchell21:18

This is a person song, so Anima by Milton Nashimento. This is a hymn to one's own soul. For me, the rhythm of the song it's the pulse of blood in your veins.

David Mitchell21:31

It's not narcissistic, but it's about

David Mitchell21:33

Gratitude for Being Here. It's sung in Portuguese-Brazilian, which as you will know, Lauren as a singer, is possibly the most romantic.

David Mitchell21:42

Language on Earth

David Mitchell21:43

And it was there swirling in the background when I met the young lady who I am still married to. So it's kind of a song for my wife and of my wife and of the soul.

Speaker 221:59

Uh Yeah.

Speaker 122:01

Yeah.

Speaker 222:01

Don't

Presenter22:07

Yeah.

Speaker 122:07

Uh Uh Yeah.

Speaker 122:08

Uh

Presenter22:12

Ecria Tada

Speaker 222:14

Come there.

Presenter22:14

Uh

Presenter22:27

Anima by Milton Nassimento

Presenter22:31

So David Mitchell, that song For Your Wife, Of Your Wife, Keiko, you met while living in Japan, and it was a definitive time because you also wrote your first novel there. Who did you send it to?

David Mitchell22:43

Yeah, I wrote my first two novels in Japan, plus a little bit of Cloud Atlas, in fact. First novel, I thought 20 was a magic number, so if I send it to.

David Mitchell22:51

Thirteen publishers and seven agents. I got my mum to send me out the Writers and Artists Yearbook. Again this still being just about pre-internet.

David Mitchell22:59

And I think I got about four replies back.

David Mitchell23:03

But immediately I was already thinking about the next one, so that didn't matter.

Presenter23:07

So the replies weren't weren't bothering.

David Mitchell23:09

Positive.

Presenter23:09

Uh

David Mitchell23:09

Uh

David Mitchell23:10

No, they weren't. Uh what I did get back was a friendly reply from an agent at Curtis Brown. He was called Mike Shaw, and he said, The next time you're in London, just

David Mitchell23:20

drop in and we'll have a chat and I did that and he was really nice and I started talking about the

David Mitchell23:28

that became my first novel, Ghost to It

David Mitchell23:32

I was about halfway through it at that point and he sounded interested and said, Let me see the whole thing. So

David Mitchell23:39

So I did, and he became my first agent, and I'm still with the agency to this day.

Presenter23:44

It's time for your sixth disc, David. Some more music. What are we going to hear next and why?

David Mitchell23:46

Uh

David Mitchell23:49

This is another person song. This is Stylo by Gorillas. My son has played this more often than Damon Olborn, who actually wrote the thing, has heard it, I'm quite sure. He's played it hundreds and hundreds of times. Usually in the car when we're going somewhere as a family, we take it in turns to put a song on the phone. And my son's first or second choice is always stylo by gorillas. I think when you play something that often, then a little bit of your soul transfers itself into the song. So when I'm on my island...

David Mitchell24:22

I'll play this and my son will magically temporarily appear in holographic form for the duration of the song.

Presenter24:51

Da love.

Presenter24:55

Blossom in your soul

Presenter25:02

Gorillas and Stylo, featuring Bobby Womack and Mostef. So David Mitchell, that track for your son, who you want to take to the island with you if you possibly could, at least in song form. How has being his dad changed you?

David Mitchell25:18

Well, my son's autistic and as anyone in these shoes can attest, I think, autism parenting is neurotypical parenting on steroids times 20. It can get pretty intense. I hope, however, ultimately it's made me a better person than I otherwise would have been. It forces you to learn things just to get through to Friday and then when you get through to Friday to get through to Monday. You've got to be more patient. You have to not care about the weird glances, the weird looks you'll be getting from people if your kid has a meltdown in public.

Presenter25:48

So David, there is a growing movement calling for better understanding of neurodiversity. What would you like to see change?

David Mitchell25:55

I would like to see special needs assistance in schools being provided as a matter of course rather than something you have to campaign for. That should be there for kids who need that help as a right.

David Mitchell26:07

If we do that, then our chances of turning these kids into

David Mitchell26:12

fully functioning, fully contributing members of society in the future is massively increased. I suppose I'm asking for utopia here, but

David Mitchell26:21

If we don't have some idea of where Utopia is, we have no idea of which way to head, so I'll go ahead and ask for Utopia.

David Mitchell26:28

Could we please just have a society that is

David Mitchell26:31

kinder and more tolerant.

David Mitchell26:34

and more understanding that we're not all the same.

David Mitchell26:36

Yet we still have value and worth even if we don't

David Mitchell26:40

Conform to the majority's idea of what is normal and what is ordinary. I think if we do that, then actually our capacity to

David Mitchell26:50

Wrestle that utopia closer to where we are gets strengthened because.

David Mitchell26:55

People who think differently, people who think idiosyncratically, have so much to offer.

David Mitchell27:00

But that potential at the moment just isn't being tapped as it should be. It would benefit us all, neurotypical people included, if we could start doing these things.

Presenter27:10

It's time to go to the music. Disc number seven. What is it and why have you chosen it today?

David Mitchell27:14

Disc number seven is In a Sentimental Mood by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

David Mitchell27:20

I love this. This is in the sustenance category, I think.

David Mitchell27:24

Its composition's a bit like the TARDIS. It's simple, short and sweet on the outside, but inside it's got rooms and these rooms lead to more rooms, and it's really magical.

David Mitchell27:34

It sounds a bit like a two-man show, Ellington and Coltrane, but I'd ask you to listen out for Elvin Jones's drums as well, because they are equally virtuosic.

Speaker 128:05

Uh

Presenter28:46

Duke Ellington's in a Sentimental Mood performed by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

Presenter28:52

David Mitchell, you still have a long career ahead of you, at least ninety four years to be exact. Tell me about the book that you wrote that's due to be published in twenty one fourteen.

David Mitchell29:02

This is all part of a long term artwork by a Scottish artist called Katie Patterson. The idea is to plant a small forest of trees in the outskirts of

David Mitchell29:13

Oslo, that's part one.

David Mitchell29:15

Part two for the next hundred years from twenty fourteen to twenty one

David Mitchell29:22

thirteen or fourteen. One author.

David Mitchell29:25

will be approached and asked to contribute one piece of writing.

David Mitchell29:30

This will be stored in the National Library of Norway in Oslo in a purpose-built room.

David Mitchell29:37

Part three. In twenty one twelve, twenty one thirteen, the trees which will be fully grown spruces by then will be turned into paper and a hundred years' worth of books.

David Mitchell29:54

will be printed on them. That's the Future Library project in a not very small nutshell. When I was approached with the idea, I wasn't quite sure how for real it was, but then I learnt that Margaret Atwood had gone first, so if it's good enough for Margaret Atward, it's good enough for me. For me it was a great affirmation in

David Mitchell30:12

the future to hand over a manuscript that no one else will ever read that there isn't another copy of anywhere.

David Mitchell30:19

is to believe there will still be readers and still civilization and still culture and still Norway and still trees and still libraries a hundred years from now. And a part of me likes to think that uh

David Mitchell30:31

By saying yes, by voting for that future, I make it ever so slightly, fractionally more likely to come about.

Presenter30:39

It's almost time to cast you away, of course. Are there any aspects of being marooned that you're looking forward to?

David Mitchell30:45

First few months, a bit of peace and quiet, few projects I'd like to do. After a while though, I would start to miss people and I'd want to get back.

Presenter30:54

Time for one more disc before we send you there then. What's it gonna be?

David Mitchell30:58

Well this is a sonata by Domenico Scarlatti, K466 to be precise. I've been fascinated by Domenico Scarlatti for years. In his day he was an unknown, pretty much front-of-the-mill harpsichord tutor for the Queen of Spain, and his dad Alessandro was much more famous. But...

David Mitchell31:19

For reasons no one really knows, five years before he died Domenico Scarlatti started writing these sonatas for harpsichord.

David Mitchell31:27

At this unbelievable prodigious rate he wrote about five hundred and fifty five in about five years one every three days or so.

David Mitchell31:36

Even the most ordinary of them is, to my ears at least, really good, and the best ones sound

David Mitchell31:42

Just transcendental. I'd love to write about him one day and uh having this disc on the island would

David Mitchell31:49

keep me putting wood on the rescue fire and keep the SOS shell pattern well maintained because I want to live long enough to get off the island and write my Domenico Scarlatti novel.

Presenter33:06

Scarlatti sonata in F minor K four six six played by Yevgeny Sudbin.

Presenter33:13

So, David Mitchell, I'm going to send you away to the island and I'll be giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. And you can take one other book. What will it be?

David Mitchell33:24

I'd like to take a book of Chinese kanji, as they call them in Japanese.

David Mitchell33:31

characters that you need about three or four thousand of

David Mitchell33:35

to be fully literate in Japanese.

David Mitchell33:39

I've got a few hundred, so I can read relatively basic stuff, but I would like to use my time on the island to.

David Mitchell33:46

Fully master the Chinese characters so that when I'm rescued.

David Mitchell33:51

I will be able to read the Japanese classics and impress my wife with my beautiful, flowing, beautifully

David Mitchell34:00

Calligraphed renditions of the Chinese characters. So that is the book I'd like to take, please.

Presenter34:06

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like to make your stay more pleasurable?

David Mitchell34:11

Okay, well I thought about this for almost as long as I thought about the songs.

David Mitchell34:15

What I'm going to miss are the serendipitous encounters with strangers and people and their language. It'll be a bit like lockdown, but worse.

David Mitchell34:25

Lockdown without zoom.

David Mitchell34:27

And in the

David Mitchell34:30

many years of its history, Desert Island Discs has become this

David Mitchell34:34

Library of Babel of human stories, experience, and language. So, what I'd like to take are the archives of all.

David Mitchell34:42

episodes of Desert Island Discs so that this this hunger for company and for voices that aren't my own will be assuaged.

Presenter34:50

Well, David, it is a very cheeky request on your part, but on the basis that we have in the past had castaways who've taken archive recordings of Testmatch Special and the Archers and programmes like that to the island in our time very recently as well.

Presenter35:08

I'm going to allow it. I'm going to allow it.

David Mitchell35:12

Thank you, fist pump, mic drop, and I will moonwalk out of the room.

Presenter35:18

And finally, which track would you save from the waves if you had to rescue just one of the eight disks that you've shared with us today?

David Mitchell35:25

I would like to keep Anima by Milton Nashimento please.

Presenter35:29

David Mitchell, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

David Mitchell35:33

Thank you, I can die happy, I've been on Desert Island discs.

Presenter35:50

I really hope you enjoyed that interview with the writer David Mitchell. We have of course cast many authors away over the years. They include Anne Enwright, Ali Smith, Kingsley Amis and Iain Banks. You can hear their programmes and many more from our audio library if you search through BBC Sounds.

Speaker 136:18

Uh

Speaker 136:20

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Speaker 236:24

The Piper

Speaker 236:25

A new thriller from B B C Sounds.

Speaker 136:28

Yeah.

Presenter36:28

80,000 children go missing every year, Sanjay, and most return within 24 hours. We'll find out. You don't know that.

Presenter36:36

Uh

David Mitchell36:36

Seven days.

David Mitchell36:38

Shut down.

Presenter36:44

He's here.

Speaker 236:46

The Piper, a new thriller starring Tamzin Althway, with music from Batfor Lashes Natasha Khan. Subscribe to The Piper on BBC Sounds.