A closer read: Nicole Tay, filmmaker

Here’s the thing about Nicole – she is an artist through and through. She is constantly inspiring and looking to be inspired. Once she is interested in a project or a person, she is more than invested, she becomes passionate. And her passion is undeniable, it’s loud, it’s potent, and it is apparent in everything she takes on. This kind of loyalty to her creativity never wavers, which makes it impossible for anyone to not form an equally amorous relationship with her work. And to her, obviously.

Amazingly enough, this precise conviction makes the vulnerability in her work even more raw, more rare, more relatable. And this is truly how she inspires. Nicole also never shies away from asking for more, asking because she wants to know more, and simply asking because she is curious. And this is how she looks to be inspired.

We met when she approached me after liking something I said in an email, and I was immediately drawn to her. We shared similar backgrounds, interests, and sense of humor. But that’s easy. It was how open she was, how she seems to embrace you with her whole presence, and how it was obvious that kindness and genuine curiosity is a driving factor for her – that’s hard.

You mentioned that you often pare down your collection. Which books survive the purge every time?
The paring is unintentional! We lose a lot of books during moves or when we’re traveling. The one book that have survived every move, every travel, is the Folger’s edition of Hamlet. I’ve had this very copy since high school, and it has all of my notes from every time I read it. I write in all of my books, which I think might horrify some people, but what I love about that is I am able to track what I think about books, especially pieces that have so much richness that every time you read it, you get something different out of it. Hamlet is my Bible, my divine text.

Are there any other books that even come close to Hamlet for you?
I did this same practice of record keeping in Frankenstein. I wrote a lot of notes in there, especially since I really adored the class I was in – I was taking a Romantic Literature class. It started with my obsession of Romantic Poetry, which is where I realized how much of an empath I am, and how much I am very expressionist, especially when it comes down to just me as a human being and what makes me feel like a human being. From there, I enrolled in a Romantic Literature class, and when I first read Frankenstein, I was like, “Wow, this is an incredible long-form piece of art!” Because just the way that the creature speaks was honestly in some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever heard. My original copy of Frankenstein was borrowed and not returned, but this copy that I have right now was taken from the medical lounge at Columbia, and I love that someone else had written in it. It reveals a whole other chapter, a whole other version written by someone else.

Can you expand on what makes Frankenstein feel like art for you?
What I really love about Frankenstein is just how many metaphors you get out of it, and I just mean purely Dr. Frankenstein and the creature. We know from Mary Shelley’s biography that her mother died at childbirth, and that Mary Shelley herself also had miscarriages so childbirth for her, creation for her, has always been traumatic – something that’s very painful. So when you look at Dr. Frankenstein and the creature through those lens, and you think about what personal history Mary Shelley could have been drawing from to create that, and how she might then attribute that to the metaphor of her creating Frankenstein as a creative baby, or even how anyone creates a creative baby, the list goes on for the number of ways you can interpret the doctor and the creature. And I think it’s from that original richness that we have so many derivations of Frankenstein as we know now.

What’s the best book recommendation you’ve ever gotten?
Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. Besides it being short stories, I have not read another author who so expertly interwove traditional Chinese folklore and future technology, but all while doing so in a way that keeps the characters grounded, realistic, and relatable. His stories haunt me, and I mean it in a way where my soul is haunted. It stays with me.

What is the book you recommend the most to people?
I recommend Kindred by Octavia Butler because it is just so well done. I also feel like it’s one of those books where you have to hand it to the writer for the pacing. The way that she’s able to craft drama and action and really grip you from the beginning all the way to the end is so artful. It’s also really fascinating how there’s the aspect of the time leap that’s never explained, and how when you read it you don’t care. To me, the time jump is merely a device that enables this thought experiment to take place. And really the story is about this thought experiment – what if you’re an educated black woman in the 70s, and you were suddenly transported to deep south slave era? What would that be like? For an unexplained reason, the jumps in time start to become more frequent, so she starts to have less and less time in the present world before jumping back again, which accelerates the plot even more. It always keeps you on the edge of your seat that way.

How do books inspire and influence the projects you work on as a filmmaker?
Because Ken Liu is able to accomplish so much through short story form, sometimes his stories are literally a four or five minute read, I take note of the amount of content he is able to pack into something so short. It really inspires me and opens my eyes to what I can create using short film. It reminds me that I can have that level of depth in my visual storytelling and my scripts. If he’s able to do it in just a few pages, there is a way that I can do it in a 10 page script. I also really like taking note of how he structures his stories, and I try my best to learn from that. I do think of myself as a technologist and a creative, and I combine those two in filmmaking. And seeing that Ken Liu has done that in a short story form, he shows me that I can do it, too.

Describe your relationship with books in one word?
Transcendental – because when I get in, I get in deep.