Softly and Suddenly

by Sean M Whelan and the Interim Lovers

Softly and Suddenly sees Melbourne poet and performer Sean M Whelan reunited with long-time collaborator Andrew Watson and band – The Interim Lovers – to produce an album that settles somewhere between post-rock record and spoken word CD. In a series of six Fits we are presented the story of Ballard and Betsy, two inner urban Melburnians in the throes of a surreal affair, whose tale unfolds against the Lovers’ backdrop of sparse guitar, percussion and keening violin. Together Whelan’s words and Watson’s music carry the listener along in undulating waves towards the album’s haunting close.

The title comes from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense verse The Hunting of the Snark, in which the suite of poems has its beginning. Elements are freely and playfully borrowed, pressed into service either literally (Betsy gives Ballard a blank map) or metaphorically (Ballard at one point feels like he’s “wearing three pairs of boots”). Softly and Suddenly is not a retelling, and doesn’t require knowledge of the original (as Whelan himself discusses in interview), but will reward a (re)reading of Carroll’s work, which provides the key to much of the imagery (such as Ballard’s vision of “a Butcher and a Beaver… playing chess”).

Opening track The Landing is an instrumental, and sets the musical and emotional tone for what follows. A simple seven-note guitar figure loops over the squeaks and bleats of Watson’s violin and the lazy throb of bass guitar. Over several minutes these build in intensity to a triumphal peak, driven by snare and cymbal, before ebbing away again. The music shares a good deal with the unhurried, expansive instrumentals of bands such as Dirty Three and Explosions In the Sky, and is eminently listenable in its own right. From the second track (I Love The Things That Haven’t Happened Yet) these atmospheric arrangements make way for Whelan’s delivery. His voice sits a long way forward in the mix, in front of but not overpowering the accompanying tracks, clear and comprehensible. This clarity is testament both to Whelan’s skill as a performance poet and to the quality of production on the album.

Over the course of five tracks and twenty-five minutes Whelan narrates the exploits of the whimsical (or perhaps disturbed?) Betsy and her rather more prosaic suitor Ballard. The poems work as a continuous narrative, events and images recurring as the story progresses. Following his lover’s disappearance, a disconsolate Ballard (having spent the week “putting all the food in his cupboard into alphabetical order / because he didn’t know what else to do with himself”) struggles to make sense of their meeting and subsequent, sudden parting. Both characters seem more archetypes or embodiments than individuals (the mysterious, sensual feminine and the analytical, technological masculine), and Whelan leaves physical description to the imagination (save for Betsy being “all smiles and Fifties floral dress”). This doesn’t detract from the work – rather, it allows the focus to fall on what the couple do and how they feel, not who they are.

By contrast, the setting is unequivocally specific, taking in a swathe of Melbourne’s inner east (from Preston to Alphington) before winding up outside of Daylesford. Unreal things happen in these real places – this might be the Melbourne of a Marquez or Murakami, where birds and cars spell out secret messages, and women are mysterious creatures capable of disappearing at will. Then again, it could just be love, elevating the everyday into the extraordinary.

With his relaxed delivery and ability to slip in and out of rhyme with ease, it is hard not to be carried along by Whelan’s storytelling. Softly and Suddenly is a charming tale, a bedtime story of sorts for the lovelorn and poetic. The sentiment which lingers after the last bars have died away is one of hopefulness, if not happiness – a sense that there may yet be a little wonder left in the world.

Softly and Suddenly is available from Collector’s Corner, or by contacting Sean and the Lovers through their Myspace page. You can read Sean’s thoughts on the album in interview at the Overland blog.

By Tully Hansen.

page seventeen is taking a break over the Christmas and New Year period, so this will be our last post for a while. We hope you have a wonderful Christmas with lots of excellent reading and listening material and look forward to catching up in 2011.

I’ve just come off the back of being fiction editor for Issue 8 of page seventeen, having read a whole bunch of short stories. ‘You must be tired,’ people have said to me. ‘Here, have a pillow for you must be oh so exhausted.’

Well, yes and no.

I’m tired because of all the other jobs I do in addition to my role at page seventeen. Reading through submissions, however, was an absolute joy. Frustrating, yes. At times disheartening. But for the most part, there was a simple bliss in reading others’ words, visions, and stories as they searched for a wider audience.

 And what a range: I came across old ladies dying while hiking, time-obsessed mothers, writers who literally saved the world and a dog whisperer… and that was just in the first week. As time marched on, I read of masturbating mothers, pre-wedding jitters, a girl’s first period and some futuristic visions that would frighten George Orwell. All of these (excepting perhaps the sci-fi, which isn’t exactly page seventeen’s strong suit) had the potential to feature in the journal. What stopped them from making the shortlist, however, was an ailment more common than you might think.

I liked many of the stories I mentioned above, but they all needed a fleshing out of the themes, voices and characters within the story.

In Amanda Lohrey’s recent post on writing a short story (available here),  she suggests leaving a story for another month, or three, or six, before coming back to it, so as to ‘let it cook in the oven of your subconscious.’ While six months is a long time to let a story mature, I’d certainly advise at least a month, particularly between the first and second drafts. By doing this, you gain perspective on what is and isn’t working in the story. You sharpen the saw, and with said saw, slash away any characters that aren’t directly aiding the story. You change point-of-view if necessary, and you eliminate ‘that’, ‘however’, ‘to me’, ‘at me’, ‘inside of me’, and any other redundant phrases.

Some writers have told me they write perfect first drafts, so they don’t need to revise. These writers, quite frankly, are on crack. And they’re probably not getting published often.

Writing a great story is not easy. It will make you question your sanity. It will distract you when you’re trying to make love to a beautiful man or woman. But, it’s worth it, because you can always work on the story and then go make love to said beautiful man or woman.

I would have loved to have given feedback to each and every submission this year, but instead I’ll leave these three fragments as lessons learned on the short fiction highway:

1)      Never, ever, send your first draft to an editor. They can spot when a story hasn’t been developed.

2)      Join a writing group with writers that are at the same stage or slightly advanced from you. Sometimes you’re too close to the story to spot its most important flaws.

3)      Your story is done when you cannot do anything else to make it better. Challenge yourself before that point. Strive for excellence: change characters, add and delete scenes. Get an assessment from the VWC if you’re entering it for a big competition, and if not, then still get an assessment, or group feedback at the very least.

Editors don’t owe you the right to publication. You need to prove to them that you’re worth it. How much effort you put in is up to you, but if you don’t go the extra mile, then someone else will… and they’ll be the one getting published.

Thanks to all those who submitted their stories and congratulations to those writers selected. Thanks also to Peter Farrar and Vicki Thornton, my editorial committee for Issue 8. And finally, a special thanks to Tiggy Johnson, who does this every year while still working on her writing and raising three kids

Tiggy has helped foster the careers of any number of writers and poets over the years including myself, Ryan O’Neill, Vicki Thornton, Natasha Lester, Bronwyn Mehan, Nathan Curnow, Sean M Whelan, and Maxine Clarke. Their past contributor list reads like a who’s who of contemporary Australian writing, but at some point they were (and indeed, still are) just writers and poets, searching somewhere for an audience, a place to be published and respected.  And Tiggy has given us that, time and time again.

See you at the launch.