Iona was recently introduced to me by a friend who insisted she’d be a great addition to the blog. Not quite knowing what to expect, I sent my questions and requested some background information for an introduction. What came back was fascinating and it was immediately obvious that no summary I could write would do her justice…
… So here is Iona Italia introducing Iona Italia:
“Conceived amid the dancing dust motes of a Karachi bedroom and born in an industrial Scottish town with a dystopian vista of oil refineries in the background, a member by birth (courtesy of my Indian father) of one of the world’s smallest ethnic minorities – the Parsis, a group of transplanted Zoroastrians who crossed the Indian Ocean from Persia to Gujarat in the eighth century -- I’ve been a misfit and a globetrotter since I was in my mother’s womb. Transplanted permanently to the UK after my parents fled General Zia’s militant Islamist dictatorship while I was a young child, I’ve since lived in six countries on four continents and speak four languages fluently. I studied English Literature at Cambridge and wrote a doctoral dissertation on the eighteenth-century periodical essayists who were the pioneering forerunners of our current op ed writers and opinion journalists. I later expanded my thesis into a book called Anxious Employment (a title that has since become uncomfortably autobiographical). After a decade in academe, I fell passionately in love with Argentine tango and left for Buenos Aires, where I spent eleven years studying, teaching and performing the dance and writing about it in my book ‘Our Tango World’. In 2017–18, I spent two years in India, living in the heart of the Parsi community in Bombay and exploring my Zoroastrian roots. During that time, I also began writing for and copyediting the online publication Areo Magazine, a political commentary publication with an anti-woke leftist stance. I took over as editor in chief of Areo in May of this year and am now fully dedicated to keeping that feisty little publication vibrant and flourishing and hosting the associated podcast, Two for Tea. I live at the edge of London, on the skirts of Epping Forest, with four old friends. I am an oversharer, a chatterbox, a giver of long and sustained hugs, an Indian food supremacist, a Babylon 5 and Star Trek nerd, a voracious reader of both fiction and popular science, an abominable chess player, a reluctant runner and a universal liberal humanist. I have a fastidious horror of the skin on hot milk but will let any dog lick my face.”
Iona is a human mammal. Here are her thoughts:
What brings you the most joy in life?
Joy comes in a wide variety of forms, but I’d divide it chiefly into pleasures of doing and pleasures of having done. Of the former, the thing that has provided the most intense experience of a blissful flow state is Argentine tango: the perfect blend of sensual pleasure, enjoyment of another person’s proximity, immersion in music, self-expression and sheer joy in movement. Of the latter, I think the most thrilling is when I discover that I have reached or moved someone through my writing.
What does success mean to you?
Feeling that you have made a positive contribution and changed the world for the better in some way, however small, and that that has been noticed, acknowledged and valued.
What do you see as your greatest achievement?
I don’t think I’d see them as achievements - I don’t think of myself as an achiever - but the two things I managed that were most difficult were writing my academic book - that was a very hard slog - and my trip to India. I was supposed to be living with a Parsi mother and son, but instead of taking me to their home from the airport as I stumbled bleary-eyed off a fourteen-hour flight, they dropped me at an extremely spartan hostel in a hectic, noisy, crowded part of town. I knew no one. One year on, I was living in a lovely neighbourhood and had established one of the warmest, most fulfilling circles of friends I’ve ever had in my life.
What are you most grateful for?
My health, my intellect, my friends. Just being alive is an extraordinary stroke of good fortune. Against astronomical odds, for a brief period between two vast stretches of inexistence, you and I are here, now.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
That my name has nothing to do with Italy but is a corruption of ita-walla (lit. “brick man,” i.e. mason) and a common Parsi surname.
Who or what has had the biggest influence on your life?
I’m continually inspired by the humour and compassion of the eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson, who is severely undervalued. Forget his dictionary and Boswell’s biography and read his periodical essays.
What do you regret?
Having wasted so much of my precious life feeling sorry for myself and frittered away my time in empty activities, such as reading magazines, watching YouTube and, lately, on Twitter.
Has there been a defining moment in your life? Can you tell us about it?
There were three defining moments: one good, one ambiguous and one bad. In 2006, I left my job in academe to study and later teach Argentine tango. I was utterly enthralled by the dance and I’ve always been drawn to things that offer adventure and joy, and have neglected the kinds of things you need to do in order to create security for yourself. But at the same time I am a very anxious person and was absolutely unsuited to the financially precarious life of a dancer. Also, I was rather old to begin a new phase of life and not as talented as I believed I was. Then, in 2009, I left my marriage. I was deeply and desperately unhappy in that relationship but afterwards I felt for years that I had wantonly condemned myself to poverty and loneliness by leaving the security of a partnership and I was consumed by regret, one of the most pointless of emotions. That finally changed when I went to India. It felt like taking a loose, dangling thread that I had barely noticed, weaving it into the tapestry of myself and becoming whole again. It was an intense experience and one I would almost certainly not have had, had I not made those unwise previous choices. That’s the paradox. If I hadn’t been unhappy, I wouldn’t have searched for a cure for my unhappiness – and I wouldn’t have found one. India healed me.
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
First, an astronaut. Then, the first female prime minister (that was in the pre-Margaret Thatcher days). And then, from age 13, a bluestocking living in my ivy-covered Oxbridge rooms surrounded by books.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Establish some financial security for yourself first and only then seek adventure. And find out who your father was – don’t neglect that half of your identity.
What is the most important thing we can teach kids in school?
How to be emotionally and financially independent.
If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
Samuel Johnson: one of the wittiest and most eloquent people to have ever lived and yet deeply compassionate and humane.
What do you doubt most?
Whether I have made the right decisions.
When did you last have a significant change of mind?
I’m extremely susceptible to influence and change my mind about things all the time. It usually takes me a while to admit it, though.
What is the role of luck in our lives?
It’s all luck, all the way down: our personalities, circumstances, inclinations. I am a radical non-believer in free will, though, of course, as Christopher Hitchens so aptly put it, I behave and think as if I had free will – I have no choice.
Do you have a favourite quote? What is it? Why do you like it?
“The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.” Also, “Men oftener require to be reminded than informed.” Both from Samuel Johnson.
What would you do with your life if you had unlimited financial resources?
Travel the world, but not to see new places, but to visit my friends, scattered across several continents. Write another book, without time pressure. Take dance classes every day.
If you could have the definitive answer to a single question, what would you ask?
How can I find peace?
What concept/fact/idea should every human on the planet understand?
Evolution.
Do human beings have free will?
No. See above.
Do you believe in God?
No, though I appreciate religion for the ritual, symbolism and the feeling of connection to the past.
Could we be living in a simulated universe?
It seems vanishingly unlikely.
Will the continual development of technology have a net positive or negative influence on humanity?
Net positive. The state of nature is overrated and the noble savage is a myth. Let’s invent the warp drive and reach for the stars.
What is the single greatest achievement of humanity?
Our willingness to trust and cooperate with strangers, even to show them love and compassion.
What do you see as the biggest existential threat to humanity?
Environmental degradation.
What does it mean to live a good life?
George Eliot puts it best in Middlemarch: “What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?”
What is a good death?
One in which you are grateful for the time you have had and content to go.
Thanks for your time, Iona!
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Dr Italia’s interview blew my mind. I would love to meet this fascinating woman. Thank you Dan.xx