Young Voices won't be silenced

Taryn Hill asks Alan Finaly about "hotfooting"

To read Alan Finaly's Young Voices contribution, "hotfooting", click here.

1. Your piece reads just as fast as you are "hotfooting" it ... as though it's a train of thought that rushed through your mind. How long did it take you to write?

   I'm not sure. "hotfooting" is actually part of a longer piece of writing - something that looks like a book but may or may not end up as one. It holds the currents of a story - or maybe just a series of expressions - that I've carried around in me for a long time. But it took a while before I could capture it in a way that took me past the first page. So the style is important. It gives me a way in. What was written was already there for a long time. The actual writing took as long or as quickly as I can type. Which is pretty quickly!

2. The scramble of order and events creates a feeling in the reader of daydreaming of the past. Was that your intention?

   For me it's less about daydreaming or reverie than trying to fetch the experience through the present. It's an active thing. It's a re-negotiation of memory. Things change afterwards. Maybe for the better. Maybe something gets lost in the process. But there's a difference.

3. Your style of writing is refreshing. Is there a particular writer that inspired it?

   Thanks! That's a nice compliment. I felt uncertain about whether or not the piece would work for a reader, so I am glad it seems to. I think there are many writers who have informed the style. Particularly the poets - they teach you how to bring many levels of yourself into a focused moment - and how to leap from one to the other so you can get to the next. It's an active level of engagement which poetry allows, or encourages, or wants. Of course, this isn't really poetry, but I think it has some elements of poetry in it. Beyond that, something like Michael Ondaatje's Coming through Slaughter or, I am embarrassed to say, Jack Kerouac. (Why embarrassed? OK, scratch that. Jack Kerouac.) I like his theory of spontaneous prose. Who said he was a typer not a writer? Norman Mailer, I think. But I like it when he says (quoting William Carlos Williams): "time and how to note it down". It's encouraging. And it fits with music. Kerouac knew the typewriter was a kind of instrument. And it meant something new could happen in writing. Which is another thing that interests me. How can you make music with words, as if you're playing a wind instrument - brassing out, as Khulile Nxumalo puts it? Just brassing out. Of course, that's the complete opposite end of the spectrum compared with just hanging out. Or just doodling. You really have to play. I don't think I could have written the piece by hand.

   Here's another extract:

   Billy and I played in a band, although you never would have believed it. That's when I got to see his music work - so relaxed it was almost vanishing. I pissed the bongo drummer off by joining - and the clarinet player, Glen. Glen was the artist who took up the clarinet with the confidence of an artist. With that kind of belief that once you'd got to the center of it, once you'd found it, almost everything was possible. So he squirted air into the room, round and round, whirling his brass paintbrush, eddying on the sounds we made. C. called me in to do some drumming. I was no drummer, but I went along with the charade. The bongo drummer who potted plants for a hobby, and lived in the caravan park, by the deep trees that swelled up and over the dam, was friendly but not impressed. He ripped at those drums. And I kept promising I'd get together after practice to learn a few things. I drummed from my knees, I took the first influence, and brushed my brushes over the pots. It was like washing dishes. Simple as all that. "Have you practised with Barry?" Bill asked. Not yet, not yet, I will, I promised. So we went on, the painter and the botanist almost walking out.

   Or
   

   & it began with him and C. and Dave making music through the bright burst of the saxophone - buh buh ... buh buh booooooah. Remember Dave? And remember Richard saying you're playing pretty - and I could have hit him then, his wide face, and his stubble parade. So full of his own sunshine. And remember the trumpet and the snare and Johnny drunk and bruised and couldn't hit - and April, the mexican hat-thriller Nikki liked. And Council - the bass and blues and always his house I dug with its art and telescope analysing the stars.

   The whole piece is about memory too. About memory and music and incompleteness and loss. About things only beginning before they get cut off. And being haunted by this loss and wanting to move on. And the style fits it.

4. How, in your opinion, does the future look for upcoming young South African writers in this country?

   Someone said to me reading the list of participants in this conference: "Jus, it's a lot of people! Why do they all want to be writers when there's no one to publish them?" So, that's sad. I really think there is some interesting and very good writing going on. I mean that in the (most important) sense that they are taking writing seriously and thinking about writing, and it shows in what they're writing. But only some of it is going to be published.

   The biggest problem in South Africa today is the readers, not the writers. Writers need readers, and they need readers who can understand the risks they are taking, and appreciate them, even if they fail. But some people seem to spend a lot of energy denying people's ability to write.

   So the future looks good and bad. There's a lot of censorship going on. People are being told to shut up left right and centre, in all sorts of insidious ways. On the other hand there are some safer places for writers to go to. There are little groups that have formed, and they seem to be releasing new kinds of energy. Take Chimurenga. But that's not the only place. We need more people who are able to listen. The internet has helped - probably more than we realise.

5. Why did you choose to take part in the Young Voices Online Writers' Conference and how do you feel being a part of this project?

   Well it's still going on - so there're many more contributions to read. I wasn't really sure about the concept at first. What's a young writer? I'm not sure that writing works along those timelines. Some writers are very old in their 20s and dead before they're 30. Others only begin writing in their 70s. But I suppose it is about capturing a spirit. A whole lot of different people are participating - from different disciplines - many I have never heard of before. I think it's fun to take part - for young writers it's an important part of recognition, which is crucial. There aren't many opportunities to engage, so this is a good one.

6. Have you noticed any changes, positive or negative, in the writing trends of young South African writers?

   I think there are new writers trying out new things. Just considering the writers who write in English there's Nadine Botha and Bernat Kruger amongst the poets. And then someone like Nxumalo's been going at it for some time. In prose, writers like Stacy Hardy. Besides Bernat, they've all got something to say at this conference. So has Richard Fox. So has Vonani Bila. There are others. That last diary extract in Arja Salafranca's piece was beautiful! So as long as the commitment stays, writing will be in a healthy state.

   At the same time, I also can't help feeling that there's an isolation, really, that's happening. Maybe writers have never really been a group. But it's all become quite vertical, narrow now. Which isn't the best thing. I think writers are having to go it alone.

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