Interview between “Brand” and the “sage”

MONDAY, 13 JANUARY 2003

(BRAND realises shortly after high school that he no longer wants to live in the same room where he spent his last years at school. He doesn’t have a penny to his name, but he believes “everything will work out”. The first part of the interview dates from this period.)

BRAND: I’m finished with school now. I think it’s time I left my parents’ house – to see if I can make something of myself. What are my options?

SAGE: Well, you can either sleep against the wall at the post office at night, or you can get a “place” with a door you can close when you’re inside, and that you can lock when you go outside. A place also has the advantage that you can keep some of your “stuff” there, like boxes full of junk you don’t want to throw away, and old clothes, old love letters, cups to drink coffee from and so on. The problem is that you have to pay, every month, to live in such a place.

BRAND: What should I do to get money?

SAGE: You can steal money, but you can end up in prison if you get caught. Plus, it’s wrong to steal. The alternative is that you work for it.

BRAND: I delivered newspapers a few years ago … What else can I do?

SAGE: You can wash dishes in a restaurant, or cars at traffic lights. Or you can sell makeup. Or hot dogs.

BRAND: That doesn’t sound like enjoyable work.

SAGE: You can of course do work that might be a little more interesting, but for that you’d have to be trained. Seeing that this interview takes place in the early nineties, it means you have to go to university.

BRAND: Which university? Can I go to Stellenbosch?

SAGE: Considering that your parents are living in Pretoria at this time, I would say the University of Pretoria is probably the more reasonable option.

BRAND: But I really want to go to the Cape …

SAGE: Then you go to the Cape. I’m sure you’ll be able to survive years of being broke, and landlords who’ll get hostile when you can’t pay your rent.

BRAND: What do you think I should study? What should I train for?

SAGE: Well, what are you interested in?

BRAND: I love history, and religion … stuff like that.

SAGE: Well, you can’t become a reverend because you don’t have money to study theology. It seems education is your only real option. You can try to get a scholarship that will cover tuition fees.

BRAND: Great! But … but doesn’t that mean I should become a teacher later on?

SAGE: In theory … hey, what happened to the last slice of pizza?!

(A few years later …)

BRAND: I don’t want to be a teacher anymore. I want to study Psychology or Philosophy, or do my master’s degree in Religious Studies, or History. I want to go overseas for a few months. Europe is such an interesting place …

SAGE: You can’t afford to go to Europe. It costs a lot of money, you know?

BRAND: Well, I’ve got a student loan from the bank. I could …

SAGE: A loan? From the bank? I thought you said you’d never go into debt – especially not at a bank!

BRAND: I know. It’s a long story …

(A few months later. BRAND is back from his European trip.)

BRAND: Wow, now I have no money left. And I really want to go back to Europe. To tell you the truth, I’d go anywhere, as long as it’s overseas. But how will I get my hands on more money?

SAGE: Here’s an ad in the Cape Times for teachers in Korea. They say they’ll even pay for your plane ticket …

BRAND: Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to go to Korea, then.

(After 22 months in Korea BRAND is back in South Africa.)

BRAND: I want to belong, and I want to commit myself to something or someone. I don’t want to wander around aimlessly anymore. I want to be a writer, and a scholar. Power is everything. In every relationship you can see who’s in control, although in ideal relationships this will vary according to the situation. But if you don’t have power, you have nothing – no freedom, no choice. I need more power. And I don’t have to be concerned anymore that the socio-economic middle class would suck me in while I sleep. You’ve actually got to work very hard to get in there. So I can relax. Now I just need more money because my savings from 22 months in Korea is rapidly getting depleted. Maybe I should go overseas again …

(BRAND survived eight months in the country of his birth. For six months he worked in an office, and gained first-hand evidence for his suspicions about money, power, and relationships. Amongst other places he stayed in a servant’s quarter with pink walls, where he slept on a “mattress” which consisted of two pieces of sponge he had joined together with adhesive tape.

At the end of this experiment in Belonging & Commitment he packed his clothes and audio tapes in a bag, and with money a friend in Taiwan had loaned him, he was on his way again – back to the Far East.

A few weeks later, he had a job, an apartment, and a scooter. After a few years he had acquired a dog, an electric guitar, and a computer. And two Chinese dictionaries.

The last part of this interview takes place shortly after he decided to provisionally stay on for a fifth year on the subtropical island.)

BRAND: I want to go home, but where will I live? How will I make money? I simply have to stay here a little longer. But what if I want to get married some day? What if I want to have children one day? Where will I meet the right woman? How would I earn money for myself and for a wife and children? Where will we live … because actually I like living abroad, but I also miss out on all the cultural festivals and the Afrikaans music concerts. I would also like to eat proper potato salad again. And I want to improve my Chinese and learn to speak Russian. I want to work from home because I don’t like offices. I hate having to comply with other people’s rules – with which I almost never agree. And I want to go back to Europe for a while. It’s such a beautiful and interesting place …

SAGE: Oh, my goodness.

______________________

The proverbial average

[First two paragraphs from the Purple Notebook, APRIL 2002]

To rise above the (proverbial) average life in which I grew up was one of the primary motivations behind most of my major decisions over the past twelve years.

What is “wrong” with a “normal” life? One, it’s boring. Two, materialistic hoarding is synonymous with the average life in a middle-class suburb, and first-hand experiences between my twelfth and eighteenth birthdays drove the impression home that if you didn’t watch your step, you could lose everything you have patiently built up and collected – your furniture, your curtains, your car, your microwave oven … but also your self-respect and the respect of others in the community.

———————

[This thing of “rising above the average” needs some explaining.

If 99 out of 100 people want to do the same or similar things, it is a choice they make of their own free will, with their own motivations for it.

My problem is that I don’t want to look back at my footsteps on the Beach of Life (so to speak) after X number of years, just to find my own line of tracks unrecognisable from those of others who walked the Beach at the same time as I did. I want to look back and say: “Look! There are my tracks! I did live. I, too, walked over that sand – although I made different turns, and followed my own pace.”

Do I want to leave a new footpath? Not necessarily. I also don’t have an obsession with avoiding other people’s footsteps just because I’m afraid my own tracks will disappear inside theirs.

It is of course also true that some tracks need to be refreshed from time to time. Why? For one, as a marker for future generations – so that they can be reminded that, if they look carefully, there is more than one path that can be taken.]

______________________

31 December 2001

It’s Monday, 31 December 2001 at 23:40. In the remaining twenty minutes I’m going to try to make a summary of what I did this year, to articulate a short opinion, and also to specify some things that for now is important for the year that will commence in twenty minutes. (It is of course appropriate that I exit this year in the same way that I have spent so many thousands of hours over the past twelve months – behind my Toshiba Satellite 2180 CDT.)

I continued building this year on what I started last year – by not talking anymore about what I was going to do, but to talk about what I’m currently doing. Or better yet, to not actually talk about it, but rather to show what I have done. I earned less money this year than what I thought would be the case. On the other hand, I wrote a lot more, and tackled more projects and finished more than I thought I would.

I worked hard this year – on my own projects. I sat or stood around until five o’clock, six o’clock in the morning in my “office” or in the living room or on the porch giving birth to more ideas. Sometimes I would buy breakfast at McDonald’s, and by the time most people were already in their offices, I would go to bed. I spent hours, days, and weeks working on things that ended up in brown envelopes, excluded from the projects for which they were intended. I learned a lot about myself and about things I want to do.

I also (once again) realised that I have a real interest in language studies. I spent a lot of time putting together material that I used to study Chinese, and I actually ended up with a few additional words and expressions in my head.

In short, I’m proud of myself. I had a good year – and I worked hard to make it a good year! (Funny that I almost feel like thanking someone.)

There’s still six minutes left. Ideas for 2002? Pay off my student loans, buy a house in South Africa, become a millionaire, master Chinese, fly around the world in my own Boeing with a dozen mistresses to keep me company, do a master’s degree in History, buy my parents a house, get married and have children, see the hair grow back on my head …

Time is up. I have to go pour myself a Muscadel and roll my first cigarette of the new year.

* * *

Okay, the new year is already fourteen minutes in progress. Let the work begin!

Brand Smit in his office behind a computer that cost him way too much

______________________

No regular reports on my life

MONDAY, 10 DECEMBER 2001

“It’s strange, but sometimes I don’t feel like talking about my life. And it’s not because it’s not going well, because at the moment I’m actually doing better than at many times in the past. I’ve met a lot of people from South Africa recently – both new arrivals and people who’ve been here for a while. But writing about it or telling people about it makes me feel like I’m giving regular reports about my life. Like it’s unusual that I would do things that might be enjoyable, or that it’s necessary to report that I had met new people.

This reluctance doesn’t only apply to good friends; I do the same thing with my family. They would ask me for news, and I’d see the images in my head of me having a good time with people, and going places and doing things, but then I’d reply a second later that I don’t really have any news, and that everything is going as usual. Strange, isn’t it?

I’m also quite busy again on the teaching front. A lot of those cheap contract teachers have left, so schools are suddenly in need of replacements. I’m going home for two weeks at the end of March, and I’m planning to return for another year or so …”

~ From an email to a friend

______________________

A responsible piece: Exile essay # 10

MONDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 2001

There comes a time in your life when you have to stare some truths in the face. One of these nasty truths is that you may live forever – or at least until you’re so old and senile you can’t even remember you’ve ever lived. The inevitable question that one would ask yourself if you can’t shake this unpleasantness out of your head, is what on earth you’re going to do if you are indeed going to live for another forty or fifty years.

You currently find yourself in a position where you’re still relatively young. You’re still caught up in a struggle to get rid of hang-ups you’ve been dragging along since you were a teenager; you’re still trying to claim a small plot of land for yourself in the big, wide world, and you’re still arguing with yourself (and with your family) about exactly what it is you want to do with your life …

———————

[Another blunt ending. Not a good sign considering that this was supposed to be the long-awaited responsible piece, but there you are. It would be another fifteen months before the idea for this literary project (the original project, Personal Agenda: Book One) emerged. There was clearly no urgency to complete any pieces of writing in November 2001.]

______________________