Stuart Murdoch is a Scottish musician, composer, writer, and filmmaker, and the lead singer and songwriter for the iconic Glasgow-based band Belle and Sebastian. Since forming in the mid-1990s, the band has released twelve acclaimed studio albums, including Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister. Stuart’s online diaries were collected into his first book, The Celestial Café, and his work is featured in Belle and Sebastian: Illustrated Lyrics, featuring specially commissioned illustrations from Scottish artist Pamela Tait. Murdoch also scripted, composed, and directed the movie God Help the Girl, a musical coming-of-age drama. An outspoken advocate for sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), Murdoch is also an Ambassador for the Open Medicine Foundation working to promote awareness of ME/CFS and the efforts to find a cure. His debut novel is Nobody’s Empire, and he recently talked about it with Tina Lernø for the LAPL Blog.
Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for us here at the Los Angeles Public Library!
What inspired you to write Nobody’s Empire?
A feeling that I wanted to elevate and illuminate my darkest hours. I wanted to remember people that I love and spend time with them. I wanted to remember and experience the love again.
Stuart, you’re already such an accomplished musician, singer/songwriter, and lead singer of the group Belle and Sebastian (which I fully admit is one of my all-time favorite bands). Was the process of novel writing very different from songwriting and bandleading?
It didn’t seem that far removed. In essence, I have been telling the story of Nobody’s Empire over and over in song form for years; it just became the time for me to write it in a book. I’d like to do it again sometime, but I’m not sure what story would have the same heft for me.
I think I know who Stephen is based on, but are Richard, Carrie, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals?
Yes, especially Richard and Carrie are based on real people. But then again they are not the people, how could they be, they were the impression left in my mind. In the process of writing, you fix upon a character and let them speak. Even though they are based on real people, that is the jumping off point, your characters become different. Fiction is a convenience, but if you get it right, I think you can distill certainties that nonfiction would leave knotted and vague.
Still, I’m not that clever; I owe the real people that I portray in the book a lot!
Were the Nabisco Cats real? I love that name for a band, even if it wasn’t out in the world!
Take it, use it! It was the name that I used for a bit while I was traveling in Southern Cal back in 93. There was meant to be a gig, and there was a flyer made, but like in the book, the gig never happened. I don’t think that anyone but me was enamoured with the name, the other people would appear in The Nabisco Cats under duress!
What went into the decision-making to write fiction rather than a straight autobiography?
I think I answered that in question 3, but just to point out, the decision for it to be fiction was taken when the book was largely finished. It was a decision taken by myself with my agent and the editors. I didn’t really know what it was when I was writing, I wrote in the most natural and convenient way I could to tell the story. Turns out that was autobiographical fiction, but still fiction.
Your meditation practice is mentioned in the novel, and I was hoping you could talk a little bit more about it. Your Stu’s Meds sessions during the pandemic were such a balm to me, and they seemed to pop up when I needed them the most.
One day, maybe I’d like to write a book, or at least a pamphlet or a tract, about what meditation means to me and the ways I go about it. In the time of the book, I only meditated occasionally, and I didn’t know anything of Buddhist teaching. I sneaked that into the book, though, made Stephen smarter than I was back then because I wanted to present a story of two different spiritual paths converging.
Thanks for coming to the sessions; they meant a lot to me; it was important to feel people close during the lockdown.
In Nobody’s Empire, Stephen travels from Scotland to San Francisco and San Diego. Did your travels at that time take you to Los Angeles as well?
They didn’t; we purposefully avoided LA, we were biased against it, we heard it was huge and smoggy and plastic with nowhere to walk. It wasn’t till much later, when the band went to record there in 2005 that I realized what a rad place LA was. The more I travel, the less importance I place on pre-existing ideas of a city.
I understand you were diagnosed with (ME/CFS) or chronic fatigue syndrome, which is also what happens to the character of Stephen. You write about the difficulties in people understanding the disease at the time. Have things improved since then? Do you have any book recommendations for folks to learn more?
I think there are some in the community that are starting to really get to grips with it. Chronic fatigue can be many things, but in the case of my ME, I am thinking of it more and more as a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. This leads to very real feelings of sickness and fatigue, but there may be an opportunity to follow a pathway back toward better health. It’s a live issue. You think that after 35 years with this thing, I would have figured it out, but the hive mind is working, and in the absence of big medicine moving in with big answers, people are having to advocate for themselves. It’s a real detective story.
With this in mind I’d recommend CFS Unravelled by Dan Neuffer. I’m only just reading it now myself.
I would add that I think it is more important than ever that ME people are believed and helped as best they can be. Because there are uncertainties involved, why must that mean that patients are treated like freaks and pariahs? That is so disappointing, especially this far along.
Here are some Library/Book questions we like to ask all our authors:
What books are on your TBR pile? Music in your shuffle?
The first one is called Normally Weird by Robin Ince. It’s still a work in progress by Robin, who’s a well-known comedian, actor, and writer in the UK. He sent it to me and said, ‘It’s about Depression.' He knew how to hook me in!
My sister recommended a book called The Immune Mind by Dr. Monty Lyman. I started listening to it, and I will go back to it. He makes a suggestion early on that in the future, we won’t have mental health and physical health practitioners; they will be merged, as the systems they serve are understood to be intertwined. I like that.
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors? Let's throw in Songwriters and Bands as well.
Off the top of my head–Authors
Buddha (and the folks that wrote his teachings down)
The folk that wrote the bible
C S Lewis
J D Salinger
Claire Weekes
Songwriters
Carole King / Gerry Goffin
Morrissey / Marr
Bacharach / David
Joni Mitchell
Holland/ Dozier/ Holland
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe.
Is there a book you've faked reading?
The Bhagavad Gita. It’s not that long, I don’t know why I don’t just read it, it’s right up my street!
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
Well, covers plural, really. The Cover Art Of Blue Note Records.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
How To Solve Our Human Problems by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
What is the last piece of art (music, movies, TV, more traditional art forms) that you've experienced or that has impacted you?
Christmas music–carols and hymns. I experience them every year, but the impact is as strong every year. A different song or piece of music will rise up each year to take its shot at you, surprising and delighting and moving you; then it will go back to slumber for another year with the rest of its pals.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
I think in my perfect day, I would have good energy, so it’s a bit of a fantasy for me. I think I would have a very large cohort of people that I have known throughout my life come together in a warm and beautiful park somewhere. I would lead them in a guided meditation, we would sing something wonderful together, then we would enjoy the day, feasting and mingling and catching up. No one would drift away, everyone would just be there, people would make new acquaintances for life. And the best wine would be saved for last.
What are you working on now?
Hymns, ancient and modern.
