#michael kiwanuka

Michael Kiwanuka makes for such great brainstorming music. 

In 2021-22, I’d like to write about a social climbing, sociopathic Chinese gatsby at the turn of mid 2000s Shanghai. Glittering, glamorous, and insidiously dark and satiric.

I’d also like to write a short novella about an Indian father and son who lives deep in the Appalachian mountains who struggles with alcoholism. A self-contained Desi world/existence cut against the isolation and wild nature of the region. It’ll also be about a brand, a mixture of self-imposed “all-American” and Sikh stoic masculinity, almost like a Clint Eastwood movie.

I’d like to return to the very first novel I basically finished when I was 16, about a Chinese girl and her tenuous friendship with a Japanese-American high school all star who fell between the cracks of appearing whitewashed and the self-identification with rap and hip hop in the 90s. Set in Tucson, Arizona, there is also a strong Hispanic/voodoo/Catholic influence (I was obsessed with Brandon Flowers and Calexico that year). 

I’d like to start and finish a psychological horror/thriller novella about a sugar baby who works night shifts as a nurse, in a self-deceiving relationship with an abusive, emotionally unavailable man (”Red”). She receives a patient, a teenage boy who has been muted in a knife fight one day, and begins to confuse the two people together in a blur, as her past begins to catch up to her … Set in modern day Vancouver. 

I’d like to finish the project I have right now. I’d really like to finish it – expand it out as far as it can go – then trim the fat. I’d like to see it to its closing credits, a cinematic sweep of an old Jeep cutting a needle thin line through arid land, the old growth forests on Vancouver Island, the silent statues on a rainy day in the MoA, the shade of a symmetrical garden in paradise, a blue heritage Georgian house with twin cherry trees … 

Making a record with Michael Kiwanuka in the desert via @yardmanflo

Michael Kiwanuka posted what appears to be a behind the scenes look at his new album, with a familiar face (feat. Kennie Takahashi on back-of-the-head portrait duties)