 I have been very excited to talk to you for, for a while now, just some of the things that I've been on my mind and I think you'd be such a great person to have a conversation with. And I was thinking, you know, that we could have, you know, instead of sort of interview us thing that we could just have like a conversation between two writers. I just think a lot more, more exciting and interesting. Okay. So this, the idea for this talk started when there were fires at UCT at the UCT library and of course, it was a dating fire. And so much was lost in that fire. So I was having a conversation with a friend about things lost in the fire and of course they said there was something like 700 books. You know, that that burnt. And, but I was thinking a lot about how we've come to value the written word as, as means of documenting knowledge and history. You and I are writers so of course we're part of that system. But of course, we know as indigenous people that, you know, there have been other ways traditionally of recording and transmitting knowledge. And, and so I was going back to thinking about our relationship with oral oral history and oral oral storytelling. And I was thinking so much about how much of what goes into my books comes from things I was told in person or comes from, you know, growing up around elders who told stories and instead of writing them down right. I have a very intimate relationship with with oral storytelling. So I wanted you to talk a little bit about your relationship with oral storytelling and how it has shaped you as a storyteller and as a writer and as an artist. Oh, my goodness. In fact, Indeed, and you will find that many of us who grew up in a storytelling environment. You know, have had that intimate relationship with with oral storytelling, you know, the oral tradition, and so on. In my case. In fact, I believe that I've been shaped by that literature. The oral literature or HR as they sometimes call it. I believe that I've been shaped by or HR, even more than other forms of literature and written or otherwise. For instance, I grew up in Johannesburg I grew up in in Orlando East and then later in Dobson with. But every time. When is December. Would go to the Eastern Cape, you know, yeah, which was the tradition those days. You find that during the December holidays for Christmas, people leave Johannesburg and go. Those who still have a connection with some rural area somewhere. They go there, you know to celebrate with extended family, their relatives and so on. So it was the same case with us. And indeed, when we got there then you'll find that you know all the kids from, you know, different, because you see we go to my grandmother's and grandfather's homestead. Yeah. And all their grandchildren would be there as well. So I'm coming from Cape Town from Johannesburg, others from locally there. And in the evenings it would happen that almost every evening in fact, as she is cooking there or other women are cooking. We are sitting around the fire and stories are told. Now these were traditional stories that these were classical stories stories that were passed from one generation to the next. And as they way. In other words, you didn't mess up with those stories, because they must come down from your great great great grandmothers, the way they are. Yeah. So we would listen to the stories, and then we would also tell those that we know. And then there will be an occasion during the process of storytelling, where then somebody would say, now is the time for improvising a story. This is the time for it to improvise your own stories now. When you find that many of us would try to invent our stories. In many instances, they are based on the form of the classical stories, but the content would be different because it would be the kind of content that was about our lives, our present lives. We would display our skills then, you know, on improvising a story, which will be funny, make people laugh or and so on. Little did we know that that was part of the process of training us to be storytellers. It's not just tell us of repeaters of the ancient stories, but composers of our own stories. And I found that when I was writing a literary now fiction fiction or plays and so on. I do a lot from those stories that that were told then. And in many instances, even my earliest play, which are saying for the fatherland. I found that I was writing it exactly in the form that my grandmother used to tell the stories. I was not aware, but, you know, for me that's how stories were told, generally. And then when critics read it, they said, oh, this is magic realism. Now, I never set out to write magic realism. I was just telling a story. Yeah. And the only way of telling the story that I knew it was the way of my grandma. You see. Yeah. So that's how then for me. Stories in the oral tradition. We were important. They shaped me. They shaped, you know, because you see, in in Johannesburg here. I will be reading comic books and so on. So they contributed also in my story telling. When you get to the Eastern Cape is, you know, or it's a, you know, stories in the oral tragedy. So a combination of the two, the literary kind of storytelling that I was familiar with in Johannesburg, and then the oral tradition that I got to know very in the Eastern Cape, the two coming together and helped a lot in in making me into the writer that I am. Right. I like that you say you, you know, you didn't realize at the time that you were being trained as storytellers. I think it's interesting that you say that because we think of training as today, you know, we tend to think of training as something more, you know, within the confines of the Academy, right. Yes. Think of ourselves as being trained as children. So this is a very interesting point that you make I really like it. Yes, because of course, you know those days. Even today actually if you go to the rural areas you'll find that a lot of what children land is through socialization. There's never any formal, you know, okay, now sit down, let us teach you something. Yes, people live their lives and we learn from that. When they tell stories, they tell stories, and you tell stories too because that's the normal thing to do. You don't think twice about it. You don't see it as a special skill. You just see it as the ordinary thing that human beings do they tell stories. Yes, yes. And then when we come to that improvisation, we used a lot of our lives there, you know, some of those we came from Johannesburg and others from Cape Town, you felt in their stories, their environment and their concerns and how they lived their lives there. And then that's when we realized that, oh, we are all characters in our own narratives, you see, we are all actors in our own, you know, theater that is unfolding every day in our real lives, you see. Yeah. And so in terms of the elders and the stories that they were passing down to you, would you say would you classify that as a form of knowledge transmission like would you say that there was the history of the people that was coming down through those stories and those beliefs and people's spiritual practices, was that also part of what was going on within those stories that would be giving to the children. Yes, but to a much lesser degree. In many instances, these stories are in fact a morality tales morality stories, which were much more concerned with behavior. And, you know, the norms, the moral and ethical norms of the community. You know, as practiced by the characters in the stories, which was in most cases would be animals, but they would be human beings to the learn a little demo, and so on and so forth. You'll see, they were those stories, of course, the stories I'm talking about. You'll find that the reservoir of these stories would be women, you know, mothers, but most importantly, grandmothers. There are stories that were quite different. And, for instance, genealogies, which then would contain history, those came from the man. Stories of what in my language they call envelope. In other words, where we come from. In the distance, I could recite my genealogy for many, many generations up to 20, you know, from the time my people left the Great Lakes. So you can imagine that that must be more than 800 years ago. From that time, from OCDC day, who's the elder, who led his people from the Great Lakes down to Southern Africa. And I recite now, CDC day gave birth to so and so, so and so, you know, there was a lot of the so and so be got so and so, so and so sometimes this will just be names. But in other instances, you would find that when that particular person had something interesting that he did or was done to him. That will be mentioned so and so who did ABC and D. And then we pass on to the next name to the next name. So you find that you have your whole genealogy for generations and generations and generations, and the keepers of that then would be the man. So obviously that happens when you are a bit older. When you are no longer sitting there and listening to this, the stories that come from, from the grandmother. Right. Yeah. So why was there this division then where the stories that men told were so different from the ones that the women told because they are their lives were all different. Because ours were patriarchal societies, even then, although it was a different kind of patriarchy from the one that was introduced by the British. But the British, you know, came with their very pointed kind of patriarchy. Even before they came, our environment, and was quite patriarchal in that the man still saw themselves as the head, you know, yeah, of the household, you know, of the extended family. It would be the elder, the matriarch would still be respected. She had her own department in many different things. That is why even the stories, you see, the stories of genealogies. The keepers of those stories would be the elderly men who then teach the younger men. There were even other stories, which were even much more religious, that you would learn when you go for initiation and siddhamsa. So those were narratives that were much, much more religious in nature. Yeah, so I mean there were those compartments where you find that. And then there would be, of course, praise poetry. Which also contain the history. Yeah. But in that case, more than just the history of the individual, it would contain the history of the, of the nation of the community of the society. You see, but told through the ruling elites through the chiefs of the time, and the generals and the wars that they fought and so on and so forth. So you got this history from those who told you genealogies, but you also got it from those who told you all the rulers and the wars, you know, exactly like the, the creative tradition of, of West Africa. And then of course, there were those stories about behavior and morality that came in many instances from the women. And that is, was so important that they were exported from Africa to what was called then the New World, which was South America and North America. Because at one stage, I met Gabriel Garcia-McCaz, you know, in one of these writers conferences, this one was in Spain. Yeah. And he was telling us that, you know, people. People, you know, talk of my, my magic realism. But my magic actually is different from Gunther Grasse's to Gunther Grasse, the German magic. Gunther Grasse magic, you know, is, is created by the author. He invents all these strange things. So my case was saying, his magic actually comes from the society, the community itself. In that the traditions and the, the legends and, and all those things, the, the, the, the spirituality and so on of, of the people. When they, these authors use it, they, they write of it. And you know, all those things are very magical, you know, those two, they write off the beliefs of the people as if they were objective reality. Which means that the magic itself is created, you know, by, by the beliefs of those communities. And of course, in, in, in, in Colombia, where he lived and wrote. You, you, you, you have a very strong community that descended from, from the African slaves. So my case was telling us that his magic comes from his grandmother. And then he's asking, now do you guys know where my grandmother got her magic. And he answers himself says, my grandmother got her magic from the old African women, the African slaves, who were brought to Colombia, you know, centuries ago. So that's what fascinated me to say that his magic and mine have the same source, the African grandmother. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that is so fascinating. I'm, you know, I have this with the relatively little knowledge that I have of my lived experience and being an apartheid survivor and all of that that I know and things that I've learned from my elders. I feel this sense of urgency about storytelling that there's so much that I want to have written down. You know, before, you know, I'm unable to write anymore, whatever, you know, before I'm told, I don't know. But so I wonder with all this knowledge that you have from your elders, from your experiences storytelling in the Eastern Cape, I wonder if you sometimes have that sense of urgency. You know, as an artist, not just as a writer but as a storyteller in all different forms because you, you're, you know, you're, you're an artist in many ways, you're not just a writer but your storytelling takes different forms right you're, you know, you paint. So do you have this feeling of, of, of kind of panic, because I mean part of what I was thinking is people are panicking so much about the stories that are written that are lost in books. And I wonder if you have, if you have this sense of urgency about the stories that you know all the knowledge that you carry from all of that, all of that oral storytelling. Yes, but with me, you know, I write the stories. Yeah. Already, for instance, in my novel, little sons, the whole historical background of that, of that novel is the story of my family. The great, great grandfather, who was accused of assassinating a magistrate in song. And then there was a war there, you know, where the British wanted to capture him. His people fought against the British, but they were defeated. And then he had to escape with his people with us to the suit. That was in 1880, which is where he got. He got a refuge. That's how we went to listen to in the first instance. And up to to this day, there are all those does that in Southrend is so to, who, you know, they call them by tape with that, you know, even though they're not related to the tables at all. So my fiction then is based on that. Yes, but I also write it in other forms as well. And during COVID. Among the books that I completed because there was this lockdown that was happening then, and was a libretto for an opera. About my great, great. Well, I don't know how many grades there, but it was in the 1700s. When we calculate generations, remember I told you that we know our genealogy. Yes. So when we calculate that roughly, you know, a generation is so many years. Very roughly so many years. This was around the 1730 long, long before colonialism. My great great grandmother, whose name was my money. Our people are called among condoms. She was a princess of the among condom is a people. And, and then of course, when her father died, she insisted that she was taking over even though that was against the tradition. And I say our, our cultures were patriarchal even those days, because only the male air will be made king. Yeah, but mama insisted that she's going to be king. And this is history. And, and she was so powerful that she had a lot of the military class supporting her. Because they believed, you know, in her magic, they said this person has some aura, you know, about her. And indeed she did become king, not queen but king. And then she demanded that she wanted to marry, but marry another woman. She had she had rejected many suitors have made who came, you know, who wanted to marry her then. And they, they've even wondering what was wrong with mama and her younger sisters, both of them have been married their children and so on. She, she's, she's rejecting everybody. When she was king then she instructed that they must go and fetch a specific woman from the almond point of people. A daughter of Niausa, who then was brought they paid low water for her. And she got married to mama. That was the first known, you know, sanctioned by the nation, same sex marriage. So I wrote this libretto for for opera. And I'm, I'm working with two composers now. One here in Johannesburg, Florence, my service daughter, who's a concert pianist but a very good composer, another one who's a descendant of this very same people. I'm talking about who's a lecturer in in New York, the Manhattan School of Music teaching. And this will be done by the Cape Town opera. Jointly with the Baxter Theater and the UCT School of Music. You see, in preparation for a festival in June, in July next year. Wow. So that story, that lesbian woman was my great, great, great grandmother. It's not an interesting and complex story because now when she was supposed to have an air. She insisted that her brother should make love to her wife. Wow. Then the wife got pregnant. And that's how then the air came into being the air to the throne. Wow, so it was still, the air was still blood related to her but not from her. She didn't give birth to the air, but it was still, but it was still her blood. Yes, it was her brother, the father was her brother, the father of the air. Wow. And in passing that story down, was there some kind of moral judgment around? Oh yes, so yes. There's moral judgment now as we speak. Because you see, fortunately, you see these stories are kept by our storytellers, our inbongis and so on and so forth. Who then passed it. There's a white man in Grampstown there. Let's forget his name, Schwab. Who wrote a lot of these stories from our poets? Which means that now this one is what was written already in the early century, in the early last century. By this person was collecting these histories. But our poets still tell that story. Evening with the elders of Ammanpondomise, who are my people, they are very angry with me. Because they say to me, now remember, these are people who have been Christianized. Now the British came with Christianity and so on, which was very homophobic and all that. So they are as homophobic as the British who taught them homophobia. So they are ashamed of my mind. That is why even when they recite the genealogies, they will come with genealogy so and so, because so and so. So then they skip my money. And then they then talk of his son to talk, you know, who became the king next. They skip my money and they say so. To me, they say, now you are coming with these new fangled ideas of yours. Why do you think that we no longer recite Mamani's name in our genealogies? Is because Mamani shamed us. You are embarrassing us when you bring these old stories that we would rather forget. But of course history does not forget. So I tell them that, you know, for me, I see Mamani as a hero. And you should not be ashamed of your history because that's where you come from, the good, the bad and the ugly. And of course, for me, Mamani falls under the good rather than the bad or the ugly. So of course they can't stop me because they are just village people there. I'm doing the play in Cape Town, the opera. So one of the connections that you and I have always had or that I thought about, but I don't think we've ever discussed it so much in person is the ways in which story comes to you. And, you know, we briefly I remember you saying I remember me being very haunted by a story that I was not writing and I asked you, and you, how you deal with that and you said, you know, I, if I, if I want to write it, I write it, you know, you don't, you didn't seem to have the sort of control issues that I was having with characters. Yeah, no, yeah. You see, I mean, I put it down in any case. Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, I put it down in my notebook. Well, it used to be a notebook, but now it's a file. It's a folder on on the hard drive. Of my lead. It may come as a few notes and so on. Why because I know that one day it will come in handy. You know, as as facts and other elements of it accumulate, I write them down and so on. One day it is going to shape itself into a story. Okay. You know, it won't happen just at once. When I put it down there, I think I forgot it about it, but some other idea will come one day, and then I put it down, and so on. It happens like that quite often. But sometimes, like in this book, in little signs, the one I was telling about. Yeah. The first two, or maybe even three pages, exactly as they are in the book that came as a dream. Oh, wow. And in many instances, you know that dreams are very incoherent and haphazard and confused and all that. But this one, that dream was so coherent, exactly as I've written those first two or three pages. Exactly. Wow. That was a dream. So I put it down then as the first three pages of my future novel. I didn't even know what it was going to be about. You see, it was when I was reading those first three pages and I said, ah, does it know well that I must write about the exile of my people after the after they assassinated the British magistrate. Wow. Yes, sir. So I asked about this at this point in in our talk because I'm curious about how you came to write the story of your ma money and if you feel a sort of connection to her if you feel like she she you know speaking this she's speaking her story through you. Is that how you see it. Well, you know, the story of my manager's happened by accident really because in this very same book that I'm talking about, which is about my family and so on. Yeah, I do mention it just briefly one or two lines when one of the chiefs is reciting his genealogy. And then he skips mama and then another questions. Why do you skip mama and then he says no we no longer talk about my money my child. He, I mean she disgrace us. And then he continues with genealogy and then it just ends there. You know, because that novel is about something different. It was not about that. So this was just a by the way. So one day, I'm in Cape Town with a friend of mine. A cold cook. Puma is a machikis. Puma is a machikis is a lesbian. And then we are sitting there. I tell her about this story. I think we were discussing Canada. No, no, not Canada. We were discussing South Africa. So I'm saying Canada now because I'm talking with you. Yeah, you are you are in Canada. Yeah, she's based in in Europe herself that that's where she sings. She's a soprano. She's one of the famous sopranos there. She's based in Germany in fact, although she sings all over there. You know, something which had to do with with same sex marriage and so on and so forth. Then I said, do you know many people don't know that as early as the 1700s. There was a same sex marriage that was recognized by by the, the political order of the time in the Eastern Cape. So I tell her the story of mama. Then she got fascinated by this. She says, why don't you write it as a libretto. And we'll get a composer and so that was many years ago. I kept on promising her. Oh yeah, I'll write it. I'll write it. She said, she said, does a role I could play of mama. Make her a soprano when you write that that libretto. Oh, many years passed without my writing. It was only during COVID. I said to myself, oh, I've written a novel during this COVID and I painted many paintings. I've written another book, you know, a ruler, a Jenny into 10 ancient African civilizations. What else should I be writing now then I oh yeah, maybe I could write poems as an opera about my great great great grandmother. Then that's when I said, yeah, now is the time I've been promising him. I think she has given up on it anyway but that's fine. But once we do it, we'll do it elsewhere with other people. Because it won't rot, it won't decay. I can write it and put it there. One day somebody will do it. That's when then I sat down to write this during the COVID, to write this libretto. After I'd finished it, then they thought, yeah, we have a libretto. I sent it, she was the first person I sent it to. Now she had her own stuff going, you know, because that's the time also she was having the spirits and when I twice, that's where it's used in our language. I don't know how to write it. I use the same word, okay. Yeah, because I think it's the same word. Because she ultimately became a traditional healer. But still, you know, singing her opera and all that. She never responded about that, even though she had been chasing me for it. That's when then I put my team together. I put my team together here in New York, and then in Cape Town, Baxter Theater, Cape Town Opera Company. Yeah. Wow. They must still get her, I mean, if she's still interested. Yeah, where they cast it. Right. So one thing I've, this really leads into my next question is one thing I really love talking about and I don't think everybody does, but I'm curious about your thoughts on this. So I once spoke to a sangoma, a traditional healer in South Africa who said, you know, we were talking about healing. In general, in all different forms of healing in the world. And she said, you know, artists and healers are two sides of the same coin. Artists are healers, but it's just a different kind of healers. You know, sangomas are one kind and artists are a different kind. And so I think, as you're telling me the story, yeah, I'm thinking about how the work that you're doing. Putting her, her story back into the family story is actually to me seems like healing work, because she's been erased. And to me, it seems like this is sort of generational healing work that that is being done by you at this point. Do you think of it this way at all? Well, you know, I never really thought of it that way. Although I've been told so. What you are saying. You see, I think another thing which, which made me never to actually think about that, that seriously, the fact that since high school, I've been, you know, fluctuating between being an agnostic and being an atheist. You see, so I never really entertained any supernatural other world elsewhere. You know, because for me, my world begins and ends within this world we are in now. Yeah. But having said that, a lot of members of my extended family are traditional healers, my uncles and my dad and so forth. And only a few days ago. I was visiting the same floor as myself. I'm talking about here was one of our leading actresses. And amongst her guests was a traditional healer called Aubrey Machete. And whilst people were cooking, that's all I remained with Aubrey there. He began to tell me that he has read my books. And whether I know it or not, whether I like it or not, I am a healer. But instead of healing the way he does with his traditional healing skills and so on, I hear through my writing. And then he says that not all writers are healers. There are some who are, there are some who are not. And he's able to find that when he reads somebody's work and there are those strong elements of healing. Yes. I know that in my work there are strong elements of the magical. But then that just comes from my grandmother. Yeah. And but then also I know that even in Western in the Western sciences. I know that the so-called father of psychotherapy, Freud, once wrote that all artists are neurotic. Of course, we no longer use that word neurotic. We have different words now names. Yeah. Because the neurosis was a general term they use for many different things. Here we use, you know, clinical depression, we use GAD or this anxiety, we use bipolar. During Freud's days, all those were just neurosis. So he says that all artists are neurotic. But instead of manifesting their neurosis in antisocial ways, they create art. Yes. So you see that even then in the in in in in in in in in the in the Western sense. And they came to that conclusion, you know, yes, they came to the to the conclusion that had that help. Because you see, there's some moments and all those people, they are part of that neurosis in quotes, of course, because that's not how they see themselves. They are part of their psychologists. These healers encompass different disciplines in there. They are religious priests and shamans. They are psychologists, but they are also medical people in the physiological sense. It's all in that Sangoma or that that he lines. Right. Right. So they do a lot of Freud's work themselves. Yeah. You know, in the African tradition, rather than in the Western tradition. Yes, yes. Yeah. So you know, some of these things, of course, I mean, therefore, you know, there are things I've never really put my thoughts into them. But they are there. Yes. Yes, I mean, I see that that's the way I interpreting your journey with with my money and that that you are now healing. You know, this, this thing that has been done, which is that she's been erased and you are now putting her her name and you know, one of the things. One of the things that there's a Canadian writer of Ghanaian descent and she. Okay. She has recently written a series of lectures, mainly, you know, doing what one might call sort of resurrecting ghost or something like that, like just really speaking of the forgotten. I mean, in, you know, black history, I mean, the history of Canada, black people in the history of Canada, who have been who have been erased from the story of countries and I believe that that's healing work and I think you know, there are many kinds of understanding. And I believe that, you know, saying your ancestors were saying she was here she existed and she met her is healing, healing that that line. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I we don't have much time left but I'm, I could talk to you for about five more hours. Maybe I'll just ask you. So I want to say, just in terms of writing and in terms of being a storyteller for having having been one, been one for so long. You know, we can find ourselves in a world where publishers have very specific specific expectations of indigenous writers, but you stayed very true to your and very loyal to to your people and your voice and how have you managed to do that and how have you managed to stay true to yourself and true to your own kind of storytelling. Do you think also do you think that a bit of distance from South Africa has helped you do that or do you think that's just who you are and how you write and you could never be swayed by the expectations of publishers. Well, I think for me, it really doesn't matter where I am. Yeah. A lot of the books I've written elsewhere, you know, in Europe or in in America, ways of dying. I was in America Madonna of Excelsior. I was in France. It really doesn't make any difference because I carry my South Africa with me. Yes. Yes. It's a baggage that I carry everywhere. So I don't have to be physically in here. Well, I happen to be here now. Yeah. And strangely ever since coming here. I don't have the edge to write anything. Yeah, you see. Because I'm, yeah, in this milieu, you know, when I'm sitting there, I'm, you know, I'm able to then to, and you mentioned distance that also does help in my case, you know, yeah, but yeah. So yeah, it, it happens like that really. And there was a second part of your question, which I forget. Oh, and then with the publishers and so on and so forth. Well, you know, with publishers, fortunately, there's never been any problem with that because I write exactly what I want to write. Yeah. The work is only edited for what is known as a copy editing, you know, typos, what, what, what, or you have used this word wrongly. It means this or that, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, it's never edited for the story or the structure. Why don't we take this chapter and put it here and that one that no, no, no, no. It's published exact and it's always been like that from day one of my writing is published exactly as I, I, I wrote it. Yeah. In many instances, there will be some, you know, this won't sell because it's not written in a popular manner. Yeah, then I said it's fine if it was, you know, if it doesn't sell, well, I don't say that to publishers because they do want to sell. Yeah, yeah. But I know that is very likely it, it won't be a best sell. But I know already that I'm not a best seller kind of writer. I am a critically acclaimed writer, but not a best selling writer. So the two have, you know. Okay. Yeah, you'll see. Yeah. For me, that, that is enough. You know, to be critically acclaimed, even if I'm not a best seller. Yeah. Then of course I'll remain poor, but I'll be rich in other ways. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. That's very helpful for me as somebody as somebody who also considers herself critically acclaimed but not a best seller writer. Yes, yes, yes. There was a time when I thought, oh, I'm going to be such a best seller and then I'll be a multimillionaire and all that. I'll buy my own jet. That never happened. I knew that immediately. Recently I was published in America, and I was selling mostly, you know, to elite readers and then to universities and things like that. My work is prescribed and all that. Yeah, no, no, bye bye. Well, I'll never be, I'll never be rich. But I just have to live with that. Why? Because I would rather write the books that I'm writing. They live, you know, for much more generations than the popular stuff. Yes. Yeah, so I feel like I'm that kind of writer too. So I think maybe you and I will take comfort in each other's company then. Yes. I'm never going to buy a yacht. Exactly. But my work will have hopefully is having, I hope, the impact that I wanted to have and certainly I can say I am writing the kinds of books that I want to write, that the kind of story that I want to remain loyal to or the kind of storytelling that I want to remain loyal to. Yeah, here you say this, especially somebody like you who has written so many more books and has had a much longer career than I have. Comforting. Yes. I won't be poor alone. Exactly. You know, it is very like, very much like in music. This analogy is very, very much like in music. For instance, in South Africa here, you have music who play jazz, and so on. Yeah. And then you have, you know, the popular music. People the quiet or my piano and so on, you know, very, very popular. When they drop a CD or whatever, you know, these popular ones. Yeah, it sells in thousands and they make millions. Yeah, within a very short space of time. Six months. It's out. Yeah, a new one has come in again. The jazz guy. That piece he has recorded will sell very few, but it will last for the next hundred years, selling a few each year a few each year for it. In other words, that music has longevity. Yes, yes. It is the same thing then with with the books that that we write. There are those that are popular and will sell in thousands and will make millions within that one year. There are those that are, you know, literary kind of fiction that will sell a couple of thousands, but, you know, will be in print forever, because it ends up being canonized. And then it leaves in the academy and in all other places. And that's how it gets to live forever. Right. That's the kind then that we in, if it is lucky enough, those important awards and so on. Right. Yeah. Well, this leads me perfectly into my very final question before we close off. So there's a Native American indigenous American writer called Daniel heat justice. writes about the importance of indigenous literature and indigenous ways of transmitting stories. Yes. One of the things that he says is we need to learn to become good ancestors. And I wonder me hearing me say this to you. I wonder what would what it would mean for you to be considered a good ancestor. What would that mean? What would that look like? Well, I mean, I don't care about being a good ancestor. All the dead. All the dead anyway. But then my work will speak for for me. That question is very similar to the question that interviewers like to ask here in South Africa, for instance, they like the question. What do you want to be remembered as when you are gone? What do you want people to remember you as or and all that. I always say that I don't care what people remember me. Well, why should they remember me anyway? I don't care about being remembered. They must remember my work though. And I think for me, for me when I ask it, it's not about being remembered, it's more about what kind of impact do you hope your work has had, because, however, I don't have I don't have control over how I remember I don't care either. Even the impact my darling, the impact you do not know you are you have no control over that. You see, you completely have no control. You know what your work does things that you never even thought it would do. I've had people come to me and say hey you know this book ways of dying changed my life. I never wrote ways of dying to change anybody's life or just telling a story. But then it has an impact, which actually scared me that oh my goodness, do you know what it means to change somebody's life. That's very big. You know, you don't even know this person, then they you go, you change his life. So I had no intentions of that. Then I said that that's where I concluded that whatever I've done and left behind will do what it does. I will have no control of any of that, you know, let it go out and do what it does. I'm gone. I've said goodbye, I'm gone. You see. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's I haven't thought of it that way because I, I have always I always tell myself that I'm not trying to have any control of over how my work is received. That way I'm thinking well maybe I still am trying to have some control about how it's received so it's a very different. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, wanting to have control how it is received. Then you'll be responding to critics when they you feel like oh they are misinterpreting me and let me correct this. So I go, you get tired of that. That's not what we want to be doing. Because you'll be misinterpreting it anyway, whether you like it or not. There will be those who love your work. Sometimes they love it because they are misinterpreting it. You didn't even say the things they think you are saying, which they love and so on. And sometimes you know they hate it because they are misinterpreting it again. But all that doesn't matter because you have no control over it. How a person interprets that work. You are no longer there now. It is now their story. It is no longer yours. It is theirs. Because even the act of reading itself is an act of storytelling. When you write that novel, you have left many gaps there. Some of them you have left them purposely because you can't tell everything. We know that character at some stage went to the bathroom. But if that has nothing to do with your plot or whatever, you leave that out. I as a reader will complete the gaps that you left. And what do I use to complete those gaps? My own biography. My own life experience. That's what I use. Which means that I take control of your story and fill the gaps with my own experience, my own story. And then I become a whole storyteller with you. That is why my interpretation of your story will be different from somebody else's and another person's and so on. We each bring our own biographies into that reading. And then we make it our own story. That is why in many instances, we make you say things you even never thought you were saying in that story. It's because we're brought in our own life history, our own biographies into your story and we've made it ours. That's what a reader does. That is why a story that tells everything that has no restraint. The reader finds it boring, even if it could have been an interesting story. Why is it boring? It's precisely because that writer has deprived the reader of the joy of filling in those gaps. Completing the gaps in order to be a co-creator of that story. Yeah, I really love that. I don't think that we think of ourselves as co-creators of the story when we're reading. But I think it's very true. I think of course we bring our own selves and our own experiences into our own reading experience. Wow. Well, affectionately known as Brazix. Yes. As we all call you, it has been a pleasure talking to you. I'm so happy that we could find the time to do this. Right. You know, next time, I hope we meet in person and continue the conversation or have a different kind of conversation. Yes, yes, indeed. So thank you so much for joining us from South Africa, from Johannesburg. And it's a pleasure as always. And I look forward to seeing you in person hopefully soon. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Bye. Bye. Yes.