First of all, I’m fortunate enough to have librarian colleagues and friends who are creative types. I feel if I went the lawyer route like a lot of English majors that dynamic would not be the same. I’d be over worked and focused on that. Libraries encourage life long learning and creativity. So I’m going to do this with multiple friends who are part of the New Wei collective and see how it goes. Who better to start with then Vijay, who always has a creative project going on and back up projects on the burners.
He has self-published a few poem collections and Breakdown Dancer was published by Poets of Queens. As we state in the interview his work has a unique blend of buddhism, celebrities, humor, and psychology. In the fall of 2023 he did his first one man show to an audience of forty people. There he honed his personal stories into a connected four parts. In late March he’s going to do his second one man show. I got my ticket and I hope people in the NYC area will consider going. There should be more of this, people on their own taking a risk to make something out of their story telling.
Vijay also hosted The Truth to Power show on Radio Free Brooklyn for five years and now it’s back. I was lucky enough to cohost 10 episodes under the name Colt Mallison. It was a lot of fun, and I saw Vijay’s network expand so much because of that show. It’s at 7 am on Sunday’s but get’s archived quickly.
In late summer Vijay and I even agreed to collaborate with each other with screenplays. I took a virtual screenplay class in Fall, and realized it was not for me. But what I learned from that class has been invaluable on my novel rewrite. Now Vijay is taking a class and is working on a screenplay as well.
Maybe someday I’ll interview Vijay for a longer time, we have a lot of stories of travels, and a connection we didn’t go into. I value his friendship, and I wish him success.
The New Wei is a collection started by Tejas Desai. They meet monthly to discuss, socialize, and promote each others work. If you are in the NYC area contact him to join. They are fun meetings.
