It’s been some 9 months since I left France and moved to Bath to do my MA. Ironically since the move, I’ve sent no group emails, published no posts, and have never felt perhaps less creative in my life. The texture of my life has completely changed. France feels like some foreign dream, yet I dare not admit that I’m relieved to live in my native tongue once again; to feel in full control of all my faculties – yet I miss it, Southern France.

I miss it and I’m relieved.

I find myself wondering, as NZ playwright, Tom Sainsbury so well put it: ‘…what has led me to this point, what sacrifices have I made to be here, all to be “living the dream”’. Sometimes in this room, my room, that overlooks the Sydney Mews and narrow strip of imposing church I see from my broken window propped up with a cricket bat, I can’t remember what I’m doing here. I momentarily lose the urgency, the pressingness of this dream; but each time I go to rest, it’s there waiting for me, a projected image playing on the inside vinyl screen of my eyelids, melting together with everything else: France, New Zealand, my family, people that I’ve met and then been told are gone, the wings of Boeings, the look of everywhere that I’ve yet to see, yet to go… And I feel a suffocating sense of terror that soon, this city with its canals and perfect buildings and fairy-tale spires will too be gone.

The last hurdle, summer, stretches out like a marathon track in front of me: 40,000 words left to write (or more aptly, begin). Gone is the cockiness of my previous posts, shunning various writers who dare to admit to procrastination and I can hardly bear to begin to tell you how much I too suffer from an inaction most acute. Living the dream, and feeling like I’m getting nowhere, going nowhere, the eyes of time gloating in some dark corner at me. Like Tom, there is so much that I want to do before my digits flip over to 3-0, but still scrambling in the sand ‘living the dream’.

Some beautiful pictures by Chelsea Jade to inspire. (For in my mind, this is how the dream should look. Long legged and blonde and grainy). Until next time.

]]> http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/2010/05/writing/in-a-bit/feed 0 http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/2009/08/books/titles-in-translation http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/2009/08/books/titles-in-translation#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:53:02 +0000 Amy Baker http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/?p=90

A good book title is like a seductive glance from a stranger. That moment where you lock eyes in a public space and both feel the pull of attraction. For me, an outstanding book title is just about as good.

Well, okay.

Not quite. But it’s certainly up there in the list of top literary experiences one can have.

Although I’ve lived in France for three years now, I still find reading a novel in French a challenge; something to be borne, rather than enjoyed. Sadly, the story in my second language never seems quite as ‘real’ as in English, my mother tongue.

Which doesn’t explain why in my free time, I wander the bookstores here, touching the covers, spines of books I can’t fully access; fascinated by these stories and the way the words fall onto the page. The music of the French sentences.

And of course, their titles.

For some unknown reason, book titles in French seem effortlessly graceful.

Here are just a few of many I’ve encountered, that just sing out…

J’étais derrière toi (I was behind you)

Dans le café du jeunesse perdu (In the café of lost youth)

La vie devant soi (The life before them)

La méchanique du cœur (The mechanics of the heart)

Le voyage en hiver (The Winter trip)

Le chagrin d’école (The grief of school)

Zazie dans le métro (Zazie in the metro)

We might even take, for example, Evelyn Waugh’s famous Oxford novel, Brideshead Revisited. As titles go, it’s reasonably plain; self explanatory even. In French: Retour à Brideshead (Return to Brideshead).

The translation feels clumsy and basic – yet in French, the simplicity works. It  feels just that touch more musical and perhaps I dare say, more profound, than its English counterpart.

Even: La chaussure sur le toit (The shoe on the roof) seems an acceptable title for a piece of adult fiction in French. In the English world, it only makes me think of Spot’s first Christmas.

It made me wonder about popular titles in English fiction. Are there (if any) any noticeable differences between the two lit traditions?

The online Abbeville Manual of Style provided a starting point with a list of their English faves, including:

Atlas Shrugged

Flow my Tears the policeman said

What we talk about when we talk about love

and Complete nonsense.

On first glance, all that English just seems more involved somehow, if you get what I mean.

But then remember that Anglophones have also unleashed: The Firm, The Road, The Stand etc, on the literary world…

It feels like it should be simple. But why, god help us, does The Shoe on the Roof work so beautifully in French, yet fail so miserably en Anglais? How is it possible that L’ignorance wins heads and shoulders over plain, Ignorance?

Is it just that je ne sais quoi most Francophiles obsess over – or something more?

While I’d like to dedicate another post to this topic of titles, I’d been keen to hear your thoughts on the issue of translation. Does there indeed exist a true difference between the nature of French and English titles, and if so, is it representative of a larger difference in literary tradition between the two countries?

In the meantime, however, Marvin Cloud throws out some general tips in his post entitled A strategy for coming up with a great book title.

As for me, I’m no closer to finding the answer. I do love the English language, but I just can’t help it…

La Route by Cormac McCarthy is just always going to sound better than: The Road.

Sure you have connection, virtual writing buddies to discuss all your writing woes, a sense of community perhaps (confirmation of other weirdos who also live in their own imaginary worlds)… but apart from that, I can’t help thinking that it is just another moyen to waste time. Another way to NOT write because the blog needs to get done, that supportive email needs to be written on a writing forum, that essential piece of writerly self help must be found somewhere in the labyrinth of literary tips…

My worry isn’t a new one, but was much reinforced when I read Tania Herhman’s (The White Road) interview with Branta on her writing day. Not to toot my own horn – the eternal procrastinator & non-writing writer – but I was somewhat shocked to find that before she even gets down to doing the dirty deed, apparently all this must come first:

• email
• The Amazon UK ranking of my book
• The Amazon US ranking of my book
• The sitemeter stats page for my book, my personal website and my blog
• My book’s page on Gardners, the UK book distributors, to see if the number has gone down
• Facebook Inbox
• My Facebook Wordscraper;  Lexulous and Scrabble games (more on that later)
• My Zoetrope online writing groups
• The WriteWords calls for submissions and jobs page
• email (again, it’s been a while)
• The Bookarazzi “bloggers with book deals” forum
• My blog, to look at the Blog Roll of blogs I follow and see if anyone’s posted a new blog post
• Duotrope’s What’s New page, just to check that the submissions I have sent out are still in the “haven’t been rejected yet even though they are sending out rejections” state.

Source: Branta, My Daily Writing Routine 2

Scrabble games, Amazon rating pages?

Ahem.

Even if this was my working routine, I’d frankly be too ashamed to admit it. [Correction: it's not far off and I'm frankly too ashamed to admit it...]

(Incidentally, I was also struck by the most horrible image of all my favourite authors logging on to book sites each morning, just to check their ‘rating’ & sales… Such a far cry from the humble pencil, paper & wooden desk… nevertheless, I digress… But can you just imagine JK sitting down with her morning coffee to peruse Harry’s success figures?? Sickening. Just sickening).

I’ve never been published, so I don’t perhaps understand the obligations (and thrill) of having a literary ‘child’ in the world to keep track of, but correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems like an awful lot to have to wade through before you sit down to lunch (or probably dinner, by the time you’ve pissed away enough time on email, book sales blah blah) with your muse…

And, I ask, how helpful can it possibly be to review your current book sales (apart from inflating your alter ego a notch) & to be constantly monitoring every long moment of your own progress? Surely there must exist some form of self protection against overly narcissistic tendencies – especially in a profession such as this… (then again, perhaps it’s an essential part of the process, otherwise we’d never write anything. This more than anything, made me afraid. What sort of person might I become if a published book befalls me?)

For people that supposedly love writing, we spend an awful lot of time avoiding it.

I ask, what is the solution here? Get rid of blogs, book sites and amazon? We are perhaps the first generation of writers to be afflicted with such a problem – for never before in society has technology been so rampant or invasive. As if we need more reasons not to write.

Perhaps the best answer I’ve found so far, is that of Iain Banks, who cleverly installed not one, but two computers in his office: one for email & the other strictly for word processing.

‘…so I don’t get distracted when I’m actually writing a book,’ he explains.

Then again, perhaps the solution could be saving ourselves some dosh and writing a list just like Ms Hershman’s – in the hope that pure shame and guilt will make us see the ugly bullet point error of our ways…

For all my brave words however, I’m quite sure that in a month’s time, when I start my CW Masters, I’ll be exactly the same: hopelessly addicted to the many traps of the internet (although luckily not a published book on amazon to have to contend with. Small mercies, small mercies).

Speaking of which. My facebook, email & blog stats haven’t been checked for at least 30 minutes – the time that it’s taken to write this.

Excuse me – gotta tend to my priorities.

]]> http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/2009/08/writing/the-delicate-issue-of-distraction/feed 3 http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/2009/06/writing/new-yorker-on-writing http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/2009/06/writing/new-yorker-on-writing#comments Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:04:53 +0000 Amy Baker http://amybaker.rambleschmack.net/?p=30 Trawling the net when I stumbled across some interesting Saturday listening: the New Yorker magazine on why we ’study’ creative writing; the differences between workshops and working with an editor.

New Yorker Outloud: podcast, Creative Writing

For more on the ‘traps’ of the Creative Writing ’system’ (ie. MAs etc), podcaster, Louis Menand also gives us some more food for thought on the worth of teaching such a practice in a US context.

Critic at Large: Show or Tell?

I’m a sucker for trivia.

Movie trivia, book trivia: any quirky detail that tells me more about the ‘behind the scenes’ part of the creation process.

One of my favourite trivias concerning writers (and probably one of the most commonly asked questions) is of course: where do you write?

Disappointingly for me, most authors work sitting at an ordinary old desk (which is such a bore, if you are still attempting to hang on to the romantic notion of novelist life). So I’m always interested when I discover writers that break away from the norm and succeed in getting down their daily word count in unusual places – choices perhaps dictated by life circumstances/financial means more than anything else.

Out of curiosity, I started compiling this list of places writers work – by no means exhaustive – that I hope to add to over the coming weeks. Contributions welcome…

-         Cafés (JK Rowling & Hemingway have singlehandedly made famous the cafés that they used to frequent… Both were both stony broke at the time)

-          In bed (Marian Keyes is the only one that I know of that writes from her boudoir – her book ‘Under the Duvet’ a testament to this. I have to admit, I’m also a guilty culprit… there’s just something about the bed…)

-          Basements (Matt Drudge, John Cheever)

-          Motels/Hotels (JK Rowling, Truman Capote)

-          Garden Sheds (Roald Dahl, Louis de Bernières)

Sadly, while I love the idea of working somewhere unique, I’m the kind of writer that can’t get down to work proper unless I am alone and free of distraction.

Having spent a long time thinking about why this is, I have come to the conclusion, it’s because writing is such an intensely personal activity. I can’t truly give myself over to my imaginary worlds (without embarrassment) in a public place. So I usually end up holed in my room, at my desk or on my bed, with the door firmly shut.

Something Stephen King recommends in his book, On Writing:

“The space can be humble (probably should be, as I think I have already suggested), and it really needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business; you have made a serious commitment to write and intend to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.”

So much for scrawling in tatty notebooks à côté de la Seine…

That said, writer’s offices can still be pretty cool – as I recently discovered in The Guardian’s ongoing look at Writer’s Rooms.

All of course, gorgeous treasure troves, crammed with books, writing paraphernalia, lots of anonymous junk… The ultimate treat!

Another trivia gem is The Book Show’s slot, The Write Place: personal office tours, given by authors themselves.

One of my favourite all time writing spaces is one belonging to children’s author, Anthony Horowitz – seen in the clip below – a light loft in central London complete with spiders, skulls and all kinds!

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However, not getting too hung up on always working in a particular spot might just get you out of a rut, suggests author, Nicola Morgan.

“People ask writers things like “Where do you write?” or “When do you write?” and we have answers. We shouldn’t have answers. Whatever your answer is now, why not change it?”

In these last few days, I have been catching up on much neglected dose of popular culture, and one that I’m surprised to find is much more fulfilling than I would have previously thought.

British novelist, Nick Hornby, is nothing new – in the sense that he’s been around for awhile – but as I am discovering, his site and blog (included in the links), is also a good source of amusement. Especially for a writer.

It’s interesting to see how he ‘features’ in each one of his novels – and is yet isn’t the characters he writes. Having just finished High Fidelity, I really was under the impression that he was Rob Gordon, just writing himself… apparently not. Or not all of, anyway. But then you probably already knew that, having read the book years ago…

Sifting through various interview this afternoon, I was surprised to learn that Hornby keeps an office. A real office – like, not just some backroom in his house, or even a flash backroom in his house; but a real-you-have-to-rent-it-office (actually, he probably owns the thing), around the corner from where he lives proper. Nice. Class. And definitely reassuring news for someone who fears being locked at home for the rest of their life – the only option for cheap, wannabe writers! I also like his candid take on the writing process: pissing around on the internet, smoking, reading newspapers etc and then finally getting some stuff down, just before he has to go and pick up  his son from school.

After this Hornby spree, I know that I’ll certainly be interested in having a crack at his most recent published work, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, (2006! Yikes, I am so behind the times…); a collection of his various colomns on favourite books.

And before I forget, my long lost copy of The Paris Review Interviews III finally arrived. Great resource and I will also be seeking out parts I and II.

Wishing everyone happy reading, this strange April week…

Children who raise children. Do you find this normal? runs the tagline of Madonna’s latest philanthropic effort: I am because we are; a documentary on the African state of Malawi, that hit French cinemas a week ago for its short two week run…

And a dry run at that. From what I can tell, the project has been little publicized outside of regular cinema advertising. One would hope that the diva’s done a better job in the Anglophone States of America, for even my regular film buff friends in the UK haven’t even heard of it.

Which won’t do much for her aid fund, Raising Malawi, unless of course, the producers are counting on socially responsible audiences. However, even having donated some €3,75 to the alleged second poorest country on earth; I can’t say that I’ve come away feeling any better. If anything, I feel more confused and hopeless than ever about the state of Malawian affairs and the condition in general Africa.

As highlighted so many times in the history of humanity, social problems are never simple. Nor are they easily solvable, as is all too evident in the dozens of sorry, sorry stories that are paraded across the screen in this documentary. The general theme of the film is stated at the outset as being AIDS and the effect on the parentless children left behind, yet the spread of issues discussed seems to cover any multitude of social problems in present day Malawi.

Therefore, one is left wondering, what is the actual purpose of the documentary? For as one tragic story topples the next – desolate, lonely children; skeletal figures wasting and dying from AIDS; dirty orphanages – we simply cannot continue to care about each and every one of these miserable human beings. Compassion fatigue sets in – we are exhausted and spent as we are subjected to pair after pair of dead, sad brown eyes that penetrate ours, entrenched with a misery so deep, that our first-world word depression, can’t even begin to describe it.

Madonna, in fairness, does attempt to help the children whose stories she films. Paid education for an orphan boy; reconstructive surgery for a boy who has had his genitals severed in a guerrilla attack; her own adoption of sad, diseased baby, David (although we are not enlightened further as to his outcome).

But the others… what of the others? Our joy can only be short-lived at seeing this small number of children get what they so clearly need and deserve, as we cannot help but feel overwhelmed at the literally million or so others that don’t fall under the camera’s spotlight or benefit from the star’s financial help. Those that won’t have – now or ever – a better situation, thanks to the dire circumstances they were born in to.

While I’m all for publicising appalling conditions in the world; frustratingly, in this case, the documentary is not particularly constructive and makes little or no attempt to offer any kind of permanent solution – short of bombarding audiences from first world nations with a horrific newstrip of unfortunate people, in the hope that it will guilt them into caring.

More worryingly, the solutions the film does give, seem so minute, so based on providing immediate aid, it’s difficult to see how audiences will be inspired or motivated to reach into their pockets to throw money at, what just seems an ever-growing landfill of collective despair. Like the Chinese proverb explains, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.

Go, if you can handle a good depressing dose of reality. However you might just want to skip it and read something more encouraging. Here’s a recent article I stumbled across on Arts & Letters, featuring super-smart, African ambassador, Dambisa Moyo’s new take on the situation.

After all, one thing is for sure: Madonna’s pity-party doco might raise some money, but it ain’t going anywhere to solving anything.

The song, which I’m sure you’ll have heard at some point – if not, do! – recalls all the various relationships of the artist at different periods in his life. It  begins at 17, before moving on to 21, and finally to 35, before concluding that the romance is over, his amorous adventures now a ‘vintage wine’ to be remembered.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but to my mind, 35 isn’t old. Having recently turned a number that hedges closer to the big three-oh than I am comfortable with (i.e. traversing that half-a-century safety net), I’m beginning to realise just how not-old it is. With this in mind, I listened to the song with perhaps a more attentive ear than usual, as I tried to glean from the lyrics some kind of comforting message.

A message that never came, obviously, as his rich voice proclaimed, full of melancholy, that his life was finished at 35. (Could be to avoid sensitivity in discussing the love life of a man over forty, but I digress….)

35. Jesus. According to that figure I have less than a decade left to screw everything in sight. Because after that, apparently I’m as good as dead. Romance wise at least. Well, I’ve got some good news. It’s not your last chance. Or says Joel Hopkins with his latest film, Last Chance for Love.

I’d not planned to go and see it seriously, since everyone my age flatly refused to go with me. But in the end, curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see the good news for myself, evidently now that Sinatra wasn’t going to budge. So that was how I found myself, alone, in a cinema with an all female audience, all of whom were over the age of forty (I’m bending the truth slightly here, for there was actually a man – also in his forties – and the other a seventy-something, who’d obviously been dragged along by his wife).

While I waited uncomfortably for the lights to dim, feeling more and more out of place, I was struck with a terrible thought. Would I too, one day, be like all of these women (and token man) who sat alone in their seats late on a Saturday afternoon, with nothing better to do than to go see a film to reassure themselves that there is still hope left in the world?

If that wasn’t enough to make me run, then Ms Fifty installed herself next to me – also alone, I noted – and proceeded to pull a pastry out of her bag. I remembered with horror that I too had bought a pastry to eat during the movie. Here I was, Miss Twenty-Six Tender, sitting beside the replica of myself, twenty years on. Still alone. Eating my pastry for one. I almost put my arms around my body, just to check that I was still in one, slightly more youthful, piece; feeling like I so often do, a mere pawn in a high chess world of Kings and Queens. That looming sense of powerlessness that reminds me that so much of what happens here on earth is outside of our control. Including getting old.

So I was somewhat relieved when the lights finally went down (and I could scarf down my own pastry and relieve some of the waiting stress). Despite all this, I’m not someone who often lets ageism get the better of me. For my own  part, I’ve sat through numerous films on the subject, I felt somewhat obligated to see – as not to ignore a part of life that made me uncomfortable. Forcing myself to acknowledge a reality I will one day have to face.

Has it gotten easier? I’m not sure. There’s been a few films over the years worth noting, I’m not sure sit easily with most, irrespective of age. For example, The Mother (2003) with the phenomenal, Anne Reid and James Bond’s own, Daniel Craig; a  very realistic portrayal of one mother’s affair with a younger man. A hard, intriguing watch but not forcibly un-watchable. In contrast, I completely squirmed my way through the truly hideous, Innocence (2000) , as I believe did half the audience. In the end, I actually took to blocking my eyes – so cringeworthingly awful were the geriatric love scenes; while the friends I dragged along almost walked out. So much for my foray into indie cinema… So I was, in a sense, prepared for what this film might be like. Albeit however, hoping that they might do it tastefully – that is, if doing it was required.

Which thankfully, it wasn’t.

But I noticed, rather interestingly, how tense I was; wondering if they were going to broach the subject at all. How anxious I got when there were those scenes where they were alone together – for if they were twenty years younger, they’d have got their clothes well off by now – not still contemplating or skirting around a mere kiss on the lips. I noticed too, how much more I cringed at their awkward behaviour around the other; the flirting, the tears, the confessions. And it got me to thinking about age, of course, but moreover the reasons we find youth so appealing on screen – and obviously, older age markedly less appealing.

For, for all the things that I cringed over, I remarked that I probably wouldn’t have, had the actors been in their late twenties or thirties. It almost would have been a disappointment not to see their smooth, bare, golden bodies pumping their way across the vinyl. A betrayal. And to be brutally honest, isn’t that half the reason that most of us go to see a film starring an actor or actress we like or have a crush on? To see them up close and intimate – the hallmark of modern day cinema. And, dare I go so far as to say, catch a glimpse of their bodies sans costume? Their muscular upper arms? Their washboard stomach?

Surprisingly, there’s also the question of emotion. For most women at least, tears are classically seen as romantic when they are falling from the eyes of a younger man (a young, irresistibly good looking man at that). I might even wager that a younger woman behaving shyly seems, well, cute, and even attractive to most men. And yet, a crying older man, and an insecure older woman just seem kind of pathetic. The romantic appeal snuffed out.

Hence, how to go about a middle-aged romance? To win over the audience, to get them to root for the main characters and leave them wanting them to end up together? It’s a hard ask.

Last chance does it admirably and certainly stands up to par with another great romantic comedy of this genre: Something’s got to give – Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson’s hilarious stab at life en couple. Last chance is decidedly more melancholy, but this aspect is carried off effortlessly. Both principal actors, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson are at the top of their game and it shows. You really get the sense watching them, of all that they have lived through – pain, triumphs – without the wallowing. Hoffman is impressive with his clever ‘eye’ language. One feels that he literally could do this whole film just with this eyes and he’d still get his point across. Thompson puts us at ease somewhat, with her flippant humour and deliberate refusal of sentiment. Hence the pity side is gone – perhaps to be replaced by empathy – for we can’t help but feel that her experiences are all universal ones in the world of love.

When the film ended, even I was surprised by the feeling of rapport in the cinema. A floaty kind of hope drifting in the air – the lovely anything is possible kind of sentiment that is always pleasant as long for as long as it lasts.

So just when you thought it was over…

There was this film. And there ain’t no vintage wine about it.

I’m not sure why, but even after living in France for close to three years, I can’t help but lust after Paris: the word, the city and all encapsulated paraphernalia (I have actually stooped to Eiffel Tower pasta… yes, believe it). On one hand, it’s strange to see a proper noun so famous – so much so its perhaps even clichéd – bandied about like something as common as chewing gum; yet on another, it can’t help but seduce you, like a chocolate egg in an Easter window. Even the French, who are known for their ambivalence towards one of the most well known tourist attractions in the world, admit to feeling something about their capital city – hate or otherwise.

Hence the first time I stumbled upon website for The Paris Review , I was immediately intrigued, although dismissed it as pretentious way to get attention. Like any product that uses the name of a large, international city as a brand – just think Paris, New York or London – make no mistake, it’s the name and the name alone that is half the product. In using such an obvious marketing ploy, you can probably count on a certain level of quality (or at least one would hope) but, importantly for consumers, the guaranteed snob appeal. Comme on dit en français: Bon chic, bon genre – BGBC. TPR simply reeked of that kind of bourgeois upperclass nonsense I wasn’t sure I wanted to endorse, much less support.

Luckily, I have since revised my opinion. After spending a very agreeable half an hour browsing the stacks of articles in The London Review online, I’ve become more open to it’s sister concept, Paris. So when I got a phone call recommending their latest output, turn up my nose I did not, but instead immediately rushed to my computer to order a copy.

Hence the waiting period begins for The Paris Review Interviews III from Amazon UK.

In the meantime, I’ll just have to make-do with a a coffee from my compulsory Paris souvenir mug, that actually did come from the top of the Eiffel Tower. And you can’t get any more BCBG than that…

Music, like jewelry, is about personal taste. You should never buy it without the consent of the party in question. With one exception. Free Tickets.

This is how I ended up spending my Friday night in an almost abandoned Montpellier back lot studio (now I really understanding of back lot) listening to this elfin, blond Swede prance around the stage with his fine array of guitars.

It was difficult at first, not to be puzzled by this veritable unknown – to know whether he’s just a teenager puffing back too much weed – or actually a pretty intelligent, if intense, young man; despite the hair-in-his-eyes, he brushes away so many times to tuck behind his ears, you want to buy him a headband (or maybe a dress).

For all the hair shaking, the inability to mold his body to a rhythm without looking like a gangly 15-year old at a high school dance party; surprisingly Von Poehl can actually sing and play a guitar. He also has the impeccable gift (purposeful or no) of comic timing; never finishing his sentences (one wonders if he speaks in the same way in his mother tongue) and seeming perfectly at ease in front standing in front of the mic in blank silence while he thinks about what to say next. He may have the look of poor teen that’s forgotten his lines at a high school speech competition, but there’s no ‘poor’ about it. Von Poehl is not in any hurry and nor should his audience be. One gets the feeling that he knows just the effect that he’s having; and as he stands there and smiles so beguilingly, one cannot help but be drawn in by his kind of wishful innocence. Plus the feeling that he’s just generally a nice guy.

It’s then kind of a shock when he opens his mouth and spills out, ‘I’m so lonely, I could die.’ You actually want to get up on the stage and wrap him in your arms. His lyrics traverse a mix of different themes; a mélange of young Simon & Garfunkel (hopscotch on the sidewalk/silent as gold), childhood memories and  pondering on the many questions in life that seem to occupy this overwrought, gifted singer.

Even if he did look a bit like an over-excited Labrador bouncing on a podium – aka. child pretending to be a rock star – you couldn’t deny the obvious joy in his performance. Almost as if his the guitar was like a portal to his heart, just the means of letting all in the dam out. I have to admit, it made me slightly jealous just to watch this display of passion; what most of us wouldn’t give for an outlet so tangible, and apparently therapeutic.

Von Poehl may be starting out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll see him sometime soon on the charts in a few years. At least in his home country, Sweden.

His new album, May Day is due to be released in France this week.

I’m almost tempted to go for a second night to see him play in Arles, just to get that hug in… could be a story worth telling five years down the track if things go his way. But I’ll hold off.

This guy is just too nice. And surely that’s a good enough reason to buy anyone’s album.