Death To Your Dreams: in pictures and words.

pics by Em and M.


Where do I start in trying to describe the evening which was the debut of the show Death to Your Dreams?
I am still stunned by how incredibly well the show went and I'd like to send out a warm and sincere THANK YOU to everybody that came along on the night and witnessed the collaboration between myself and the amazing band that is the mime set comprising of Sam Wareing, Andrew Watson, Chris Chapple and Justin Avery. I'd also like to thank Ai Yamamoto for her amazing work with visuals on the night, some of which you can see in these pictures.
We all put a lot of work into the show but none of us really knew if it would work or not in front of a live audience. Somehow though all the planets aligned on this magical evening and I felt this incredible atmosphere in the room even before we started. It was a late start due to various factors beyond our control, to anybody who had to leave before the show commenced I do apologise, there was nothing we could do but rest assured you will get another chance.
That's right, due to the overwhelming success of its debut, Death to Your Dreams will be returning shortly! Dates and venues are yet to be confirmed but it will definitely be announced right here as soon as we know.
The other good news is that the show was digitally and multi-track recorded.
We have big plans for the show which myself and the mime set will be discussing and formulating soon.
Keep an eye on this space for more details.

Death to Your Dreams - in pictures.

pics by Chris Amor.
Above: Justin Avery, Sean M Whelan.
Middle: Justin Avery, Sean M Whelan, Andrew Watson and Chris Chapple.
Below: Justin Avery, Sean M Whelan and Sam Wareing.

Death to Your Dreams - a spoken word & musical collaboration

This year as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival I will be performing in a show called Death To Your Dreams, written by myself and a fantastic Melbourne band by the name of The Mime Set. Below is the press release for the show, this will give some idea of what to expect.

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Sean M. Whelan & the mime set
Presents
Death To Your Dreams

Hear the waking dream of love in conversation with spoken word, music and visuals. This collaboration, between poet Sean M. Whelan and Lynch-ian musicians The Mime Set melds lush soundscapes, lyrics and imagery to the words of one of Melbourne's finest poets. After creating a Mutual Admiration Society, Sean M. Whelan and the mime set performed together in April 2005 and decided to use Fringe as an opportunity to further explore the correspondences between Sean’s surreal romantic poetry and the mime set’s textured, emotional music. Death To Your Dreams, named after a mime set song, is an unabashedly romantic collaboration, capturing the reverberations between words spoken and sung, poetic metre and musical rhythm, performance and the melodic promise of poetry.

"Whelan dances back and forth in multiple perspectives, switching fluidly from experiencing to observing, from self to other, from ordinary to absurd, magically traversing all barriers in between.” Cordite Poetry Review.


“the mime set craft their songs carefully, and it shows… [with] a spirit that will find its way quietly into your hearts and minds.” Losing Today (UK)

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For those in Melbourne it will be great to see you at the show. It's on Sunday Oct 9th at Bar Open on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9:30pm and it's free entry.
For those not in Melbourne, plans are in motion to record a CD of this collaboration. Watch this space for more details.

my train station

Dennis, in graff form.

Dream catching house. Westgarth Station.

A tale of regret

Everytime he did something he regretted he would write it down on the back of a playing card and stick this card to the front of the television set.
Once he had enough regrets to cover over 70% of the screen he would take his collected regrets off the television set and he would spread them out over the kitchen table.
Then he would take an empty cardboard box and one by one he would shout his regrets into the cardboard box.
The regrets shouted into the box included various haircuts, lovers and bad clothing decisions.
He found he could shout about twenty regrets into the box before it became overburdened. Once the box was full he would take it out to the backyard and bury the box full of regrets beneath the fig tree.
Over time the roots of the fig tree became so soaked with a sense of loss and longing for someone or something that had once happened but it wished hadn’t that the fig tree regretted ever having becoming a tree in the first place.
In a matter of weeks the fig tree de-evolved into a small noxious weed especially toxic to cats.
So he shouted this regret into the box with all the others.
Now he’s eyeing off the lemon tree in the other corner of the yard.

Totoro sunset

A still from the movie Tonari no Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki.
For Cat.

In the Places Where We Stood

In the places where we stood,

buildings fell down and grew again.

Cars collided and buses were occasionally late.

Flowers stood up to say something, some changed their minds and became trees instead.

In the places where we stood intersections intersected with organized religion.

Nuns peppered the pedestarian crossings like devout ducklings.

Traffic lights stood quietly, and witnessed our failings on a daily basis, turning red with shame only occasionally.

How could I not notice you that day? Wearing your choose death t-shirt and glitter purple nail polish, fingers and toes.

The beach emptied its thoughts upon us because the ocean was seeing a counsellor.

Afterwards I combed the neuroses out of your hair, while you licked the salt of my shoulder.

We didn’t know what shape we were, when all our boundaries left.

So we filled our pockets with sitcoms until even the lint had to laugh.

In the gully between the back fence and the football oval, you showed me your Alan Alda and funny grew a thick skin of sarcasm.

Your parents chose beta, mine chose VHS. Clearly fate was against us from the start.

The potential for true love lay at the bottom of every empty Cinzano Bottle.

Oh my sweet jitterbug, this was not what George Michael had in mind.

Our heroes never made sense together.

The Human League vs the Victorian Football League.

Boy George vs Bernie Quinlan.

When Martin Scorsese directed a Michael Jackson video you proclaimed cinema is dead.

A relationship seemed impossible but so did Steve Guttenberg being famous.

One kiss under Echo & the Bunnymen’s killing moon and pop music became prophecy.

Your eyes were as blue as the smurfs we stole from BP petrol stations.

We caught trains to city nightclubs, I pretended to fall asleep on your shoulder on the long rides home.

I love you was whispered only once, under the cover of dry ice, eyeliner and a dodgy Dire Straits DJ . We pretended it never happened.

In the places where we once stood are velvet ropes now.

Our DNA is a tourist attraction.

Archeologists want to date us.

Scientists want to take us out for dinner.

Anthropologists pose as pizza delivery drivers, just to get a quick glimpse through the door.

In a luck filled future, loss is highly collectible and a valuable jewel in any trophy cabinet.

And in the places where once we stood,

nobody knew how to lose,

like we did.

My True Teen Confessions

I have a gig this Sunday, Aug 14th as part of The Age Melbourne Writer's festival Umbrella events program. True Teen Confessions is the name of the gig and is the theme for the event. Each of the writers have been asked to supply a teenage photo of themselves to be displayed on the evening. So if you'd like to see a pretty daggy photo of myself as a teenager then please come along. Joining me will be the great talents of Adam Ford, Richard Watts, Amy Rhodes and more! See flyer for more details. Hope to see you there. 5-7pm. 303 High St, Northcote.

Trophy Wives Defeated!

Well, sad to say but The Trophy Wives went down at the Word Wrestling Victorian Heat by a heartbreaking margin of just 0.2 of a point! The winners of the evening were the Legends of the Overfiends (Steve Smart, Meg Dunn, Paul and Lish Skec.) It was a tight competition and fear not, I don't think this is the last you'll hear of The Trophy Wives. Here's a pic of me and my beloved team mates in action on the night. Left to right: Paul Mitchell, Sean Whelan, alicia sometimes and Emilie Zoey Baker.

My life as a Trophy Wife

I have a few gigs coming up and this first one is a biggie.
I'm in a slam team of poets called The Trophy Wives with alicia sometimes, Emilie Zoey Baker and Paul Mitchell.
On Wed 27th July we'll be competing for the right to represent Victoria in the inaugural Word Wrestling Federation National Team Poetry Slam! Whew! That's a mouthful.
Slams are very crowd driven, so I would greatly appreciate anybody who'd like to come along on the night and give me and my fellow Trophy Wives plenty of vocal support.
I promise a very entertaining evening.

blush

when you blush
firefighters flee the scene
yelling 'save yourself!'
not knowing
that for me
it's already too late.

She Has a Problem with Bill Murray

To justify the chips in her nailpolish,

the mouldy cups of coffee in her room,

the dusty easel and her inability to even look at a photo of Bill Murray let alone one of his movies,

she told me

our heads are nothing but TV sets and our dreams are old sitcoms that never learnt to fly.

Like that explained everything.

But after she said it,

I saw tins of canned laughter trapped behind the glass screens of her eyes.

I asked her out for breakfast but she told me she wanted to go to the gallery again to watch a video installation of two hands slowly reassembling the shattered pieces of a broken china plate.

The next day I drove to the dump,

reverse parked into the hard rubbish section

and loaded in the first old television I could find.

At her place I took her by the hand and led her out to the front lawn,

the TV sat on its side exactly as it had fallen from the trunk,

in the glass I could see our feet reflected side by side.

I placed the hammer into her questioning palm and with a large black texta I drew a squeaky X on the dusty screen.

Before she took a swing I told her to cover her eyes for protection (sometimes dreams hurt) and I also told her to think of Bill Murray.

She swung long and hard.

When the TV face cracked I thought I saw some kind of gas released that curled skyward between us before dissipating into the atmosphere.

This could have been a symbol of her repressed feelings being released or it could have been a toxic cloud of radioactive material.

Or maybe even a combination of the two, since I spent the next morning throwing up, while she dusted off the easel and started painting again.

I think she’s painting broken china plates, but fuck, hey, it’s a start isn’t it?

When things are broken, try smashing something.

I'm back

I moved house (again).
I went to Darwin.
I came back with the second worst virus I've ever had.
The drugs (prescription) are starting to do what they're supposed to do.
The fog is lifting.

midnight swim in Darwin

I took you to the beach
where I hoped things made more sense
too much sense it seems
before the moon had a chance to spit some gin in my eye
and provide some real inspiration
you said
get me out of this postcard
it's too beautiful here
I want crazy tonight
bury me so deep in crazy
that I don't know my arse from my multi-coloured propeller driven hat
you see those lights out on the point
yes, I said
well, each of those lights represent another good reason why we shouldn't be alone together
in a place like this
can you count the lights?
no, I said, there's too many of them
that's why we gotta go baby
you grabbed my hand
and we figure skated through the car park
to the phosphorescent lake on the other side
you ran to the shore
kicked and splashed until you were covered in sparkles
can you count these lights? you asked while backing into the midnight calm like a midnight cowgirl
no, I said, they keep disappearing
these lights, you said, are all the bad reasons we shouldn't be alone together
in a place like this
come here
I followed you in and seconds later discovered my mobile phone still in my pocket
that really fucks me off, I said
I held it up like a dead fish
half expecting it to gasp back to life and flip off my palm
while you cupped phosphorescent lake water into your hands and drained it over my head
to cover me in reasons
both good
and bad
until I couldn't tell the difference
anymore

I'm your puppet

the wall

sometimes she just watches them go by

tram like a star
Originally uploaded by Sean M Whelan.

sometimes she just watches them go by

tram like a star gone
Originally uploaded by Sean M Whelan.

A Lion in the Hairdressing Salon.

One-thirty five am.
A lion in the hairdressing salon.
I'm walking home, but stop! There's a lion in the window of a hairdressing salon on Brunswick St, Fitzroy.
He looks like he's been there a long time.
But no less ferocious. No less proud.
At the bar, that dress looked like nice.
I should have told her.
I should have told her that hairdressers will do anything to attract a passing potential client, including placing a life sized concrete lion in the window.
But I didn't know that then. Like I know things now.
Little things like lions.
Big things like lions.
Love likes lions.
What are you doing here in the window?
How are you related to hairdressing?
I'll take your picture.
So at least you feel some purpose tonight.
You look like you've been waiting for your picture to be taken for hundreds of years.
Do the clients even notice you?
You look like you've been through some battles.
Yeah, that means you look great.
She looked great in that dress tonight.
No, she's not here now.
I know a couple who kiss every time they see a lion.
Yeah, every time!
No, they're not here tonight. They're a long way from here.
But it seems kind of cute. To do that. To do that anywhere.
No, I don't know if they've seen the Lion King.
I think they would have to watch it alone.
I know a girl who is obsessed by the Lion King though.
She knows all the songs by heart. And sings them in shower.
And she would melt your concrete heart my friend.
Like she melted my mine.
But she's a long way from here too.