Gabriela Bhaskar
The book jacket for My Life in the Sunshine and a photo of author Nabil Ayers.
In 1971, a white, Jewish former ballerina chose to have a child with the famous Black jazz musician Roy Ayers, fully expecting and agreeing to his absenteeism. That child — writer, musician and music industry entrepreneur Nabil Ayers — beautifully and vulnerably chronicles living in the aftermath of that fateful decision in My Life in the Sunshine: Searching for My Father and Discovering My Family (Viking Books, June 2022). The title pays homage to the opening lyric from his father’s 1976 song, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.” Ayers will read Friday, Oct. 20, at Central Library in Community Room 302 at 6 p.m.
Isthmus: When was the moment you realized you needed to write My Life In the Sunshine? And how did you make yourself vulnerable during the writing process?
Nabil Ayers: In 2016, I started writing fun stories about the bands I used to play in and the record store I used to own. When my wife insisted that I write about the more serious topics — my father and my race — I knew she was right, but I wasn’t sure how to begin. I’d only met my father once as an adult, and I’d had a few brief encounters with him when I was a child. After I wrote about those experiences, I felt like I was out of material. Then I realized that I could write about my father without him being in the story, so [I] started to write about the many times I’ve heard his music in a bar or in a film, and how jarring and intrusive that sometimes felt. Then I recorded some conversations with my mother, and I wrote about the new details I’d learned about my father and myself. Eventually, I’d written a lot, and it covered four decades. That was the moment that I said to myself, Hmm, I wonder if I’ve actually been writing a book. By that point, I’d already put in so much hard work that I knew I had to see it through.
That was the most vulnerable period of my life. Nobody other than my wife knew that I was writing and I didn’t feel any pressure. I leaned into the secret freedom I’d given myself, and I wrote things that I’ve never told anyone, and more importantly, I wrote about how those events and details made me feel. I did so knowing that I was in complete control — nobody would ever see a word unless I wanted them to — so I really took down some walls. In the end, very little of that material was removed. I don’t think I would have been nearly as vulnerable if someone had asked me to write a book. It had to happen naturally and in reverse.
Music has played a big role in your life, and the book reflects that; I love that you named chapters after song and album titles. Can you draw comparisons between playing music and writing memoir?
There are so many comparisons! Not just to playing music, but also to releasing music, which I do in my real job as a record company [Beggars Group USA] president. After I published a few short essays in 2017 and 2018 — and when I realized that I was subconsciously working on a book — I started to think of the short pieces as songs, and of my book as an album. I was really excited about the introduction to the book, which I wrote early on, and which always felt to me like the first song on an album. Eventually I’d written a lot and I started to trim the fat, allowing the best parts of a few chapters to pare down into one—I wanted the chapters to feel concise and to the point, not meandering, extended jams (although I do love those, too!).
Near the end of the book-editing process, I received a shocker phone call that forced me to write the final chapter. I remember thinking of that as a hugely positive thing — like my band had been in the recording studio and, at the last minute, a great song had appeared.
What have you learned from writing this book about the way fathers influence sons — even in their absence?
I’ve learned that it’s possible to feel significant influence with limited or no contact. My situation is unique in that my father was never supposed to be in my life — my mother deliberately got pregnant, with his consent, planning to be a single mother. So there was no divorce; my father never left me because he was never there in the first place. As a child, if my father ever came up in conversation, my mother and uncle placed him exclusively in a positive light. All of this led to me seeing my father’s picture on records and in newspapers, noticing how much I look like him, and thinking that as a result, even though I didn’t know him, I could do what he did. So while he never taught me how to play a song or explained one of his to me, beyond his DNA, he influenced me with the confidence and belief that I had at least some of what he had.
