Alysha Herrmann

Alysha Herrmann writes about Riza Manalo in Neoterica 2024.

We repeat ourselves. There is no cure.

We are different, Riza and I. Obvious ways: our skin colours, our ages, our practices, our lived histories. Riza has made a life in cities. In places of much and many. Riza is practical and makes things with her hands. She grew up with artist parents. With art always all around her. Riza knows her cultural ancestry (Filipino and French descent). She went to a progressive school and was born in an artist commune. She recently moved to South Australia. 

Unknown

adjective

1. Not known or familiar.

noun

2. Something that requires discovery, identification, or clarification. 

We meet in a café in the regional town of Mannum. The two of us unknown to each other. Riza finds herself here in Mannum post-COVID lockdowns in Melbourne. A different world now around her and inside her. We meet and she explains to me some of the last few years. I ask questions and she answers. I scribble down half-formed sentences.

water carries away

leaving peacocks behind

with this I don’t know

loud but not loud

I will not remember what these fragments meant when I read them back later.

Riza waits patiently while I listen to audio of a Turkish asylum seeker divining her fortune in a coffee cup. I am wearing Riza’s headphones, I am watching Riza’s screen. I watch and I listen as the water rises and the horizon disappears. I watch and listen. Watch and listen. Watch and listen.

Riza tells me that her name means acceptance in Turkish. Riza tells me that she is not the subject. Riza tells me about a boat. The boat, this boat. Built by a man who died and then sold to Riza over the internet. Riza goes to collect the boat and sees the remnants of this dead man’s life sitting outside of someone else’s shed. I see it too, as she describes it to me.

The unknown is a lesson that hangs between us. The unknown is the left behind question mark. The unknown is the curve of a river that hangs behind my collarbone.

What is the medium? Unknown/s. 

131 kilometres south-west of my Riverland birthplace is Riza’s present home of Mannum. 153 kilometres south-east (ish) is the Coorong. The Murray River flows out to the sea through the Coorong, connecting Riza and I, and this unnamed boatbuilder. His dream was to take the finished boat out onto the Coorong. He never made it.

Homage

noun

1. Special honour or respect shown publicly.

We  are not so different, Riza and I. We are good at saying no. We finish the unfinished (and unfinish the finished). We cast questions in the studios of our minds. We are loud but not loud. Still but not still. We grieve. We wait. We make. We love. We hope (still).  We sit in the unknowing. We honour the mundane. We rewrite the fine print. We chase the horizon. We see the boat.

‘Art and life is a mutual affair, you can’t separate it’ – Riza Manalo.

Alysha Herrmann lives, loves, and creates from regional South Australia. She is an independent creative producer, writer, performance-maker, and community organiser, and is the co-founder of Part of Things. Alysha writes about vulnerability, community, hope, grief, forgiveness and belonging. Her work spans creative non-fiction (memoir, essays etc), experimental digital writing, script writing (screen and theatre), other performance texts, short stories, long-form fiction, and poetry (written and spoken). Her work in the arts and community has won multiple awards including the 2022 Arts South Australia Ruby Award for Outstanding Regional Event or Project (for No Limits at Writers SA), the 2017 Arts South Australia Geoff Crowhurst Memorial Award and 2015 Australia Council Kirk Robson Award. Her written work has been published by Currency Press, Griffith Review, Rochford Street Press, Routledge, Ginniderra Press, The Dirty Thirty, ABC Open and others.