'Story' is a word that implies an endless array of possibilities, from the profound, to the tragic, to the transformative.
The world moves and weaves through eight billion stories daily, each sunrise a new chapter, each sunset a closing line. Novelist and journalist Trent Dalton’s story began upside down, the climax usually saved for the end was his beginning. Traversing a childhood under the hand of drug dealers, he attempted to make sense of the world he knew by digging into the stories of those around him, a passion he still holds as strongly as ever.
“I think it comes from my childhood, when I was trying to work out why the people raising me were doing both beautiful things and silly things like dealing drugs,” Dalton confirms. “I was always trying to work out motivations. I wrote ‘Boy Swallows Universe’, and the kid in that book is exactly me, working out why are some people good and some people bad? And also, where is this insane love coming from that my mum and dad have for me amid all their demons?”
“Their capacity to love my three older brothers and I always moved me greatly. At 18, I was like, ‘I'm gonna find out about some other people’, and got a job in journalism. I’m 45 now and I’ve still got this wonderful disease, my love of people's stories. In London, recently, my girls are like, ‘Dad, can you stop asking the life story of every taxi driver?’ I really believe in the power of it. Sharing stories is how we get to know one another, and leads to forgiveness, growth, and all the good things in the world.”
‘Boy Swallows Universe’ became the fastest-selling debut novel in Australian history, selling more than a million copies worldwide, and plunging Dalton’s words straight to the lips of every book club member across the country, Dalton’s vulnerability and passion for perspective proving uniquely attractive.
“If you think you hate someone, step closer,” he incites. “Learn about them and that will lead to understanding. I started doing heaps of stories as a journo on criminals. I was surrounded by criminals as a kid, and found myself gravitating to stories of redemption. That's the same reason I got a typewriter and sat on a corner in Brisbane and asked people to tell me their love stories. Because if you get someone to talk about love, they start remembering that there's more to themselves than just their mistakes or regrets.”
Image © Craig Wilkinson
“It sounds so cheesy, tell me a love story. But when someone tells you a love story, they’re telling you their whole life story. Where was I not loved, or where did I love, how did love help me or ruin me. It’s complex, and so not black and white. We’re all heroes and we’re all villains.”
The result of Dalton’s perch on that Brisbane street corner, typewriter in hand, was ‘Love Stories’, another hugely successful book, and a defining time in Dalton’s life. He recounts his first story collected.
“This man named Graham, he’d been blind all his life. I said, ‘do you mind if I ask what you would do if you had five minutes of vision? Would you look at the sea or spend five minutes looking at stars?’ He said, ‘I've thought about this all my life. I'd spend five minutes staring at my wife's face’. His wife had this warmth all across her face. And I said, ‘Graham, she's really beautiful’. And he goes, ‘Of course she’s beautiful, I don't need to see to know that’.”
“The next one was this actress who proceeded to tell me how she was going to shower and her boyfriend said, ‘can we talk?’ She had to listen to this guy breaking up with her in her underpants. It was so raw. Life is messy and complicated and also powerful. She's sitting on this corner in Brisbane, and I'm typing notes on my best mates’ late mum's 1970s Olivetti typewriter thinking, ‘life is incredible’.”
“If you approach life with an absurd thing, like tell me a love story, you get the most amazing things out of it, because it's so rare that people get a chance to stop and reflect. When you stop and go, let me tell you about people I love on that little corner, it became this lovely space where people could do that. And that built into a play, which is just wild.”
As ‘Love Stories’ slowly transformed into a play, Dalton and his wife Fiona realised that more had to be sacrificed than the hours Dalton had already spent on the sidewalk. They graciously allowed their own story to take centre stage.
“The truth that led to the play is, why does someone go every day onto the street looking for stories of love? Then I'd come home, and it was overwhelming. My wife would be in the kitchen telling me something really significant about my own life with my wife and my two girls, and I’m thinking about these heavy stories that I've heard that day. And then my wife's like, ‘you're thinking about those stories’. That became the central truth of this play, it's just as much about us. The truth of it was, what if I was trying to fix things in my own love story?”
“I learned so much on that street with people slapping me over the face metaphorically. There was this amazing woman Rosemary who works this incredibly stressful job in DV. Every day she comes home from hearing about the worst things, and her husband runs her bath at six o’clock like clockwork. Then, he turns to her in bed the other night and goes, ‘hey darl, can you let me know if there are any ways in which I can be a better husband?’ I’ve been with my wife 24 years, and I've never said something so thoughtful. I went home and, trying to keep it as natural as possible, asked Fiona that question. She just started laughing and said, ‘the list is 200 dot points long!’ That became good fodder for the play.”
Image © Craig Wilkinson
Opening night revealed just how much the couple had allowed to be opened for the public, and the results were unexpected.
“The play is very raw, embarrassingly raw for Fiona and I. I believe in candour, it's the journo in me. I made a pact, if it was ever me doing the storytelling, I would be as truthful as those people were to me as a journo, it would have to be really raw. So you’ve got Michala Banas playing my wife and Jason Klarwein playing me. And they’re ripping into it, there's a full on argument happening on stage, and my wife and I are sinking into our chairs. But then afterwards, all these women came up and grabbed Fiona and said, ‘thank you for telling my story’. It was really powerful.”
“Fi was really reluctant, it was a big step for her to do that. I got so proud that so many people were really grateful, and coming up and going, ‘that’s my marriage’. It's so great when people can connect to something like that. The play has this suburban, late 40s love story of my wife and I, but there’s also others – a dominatrix love story, and a 100-year-old man's love story. And they're all incredibly valid and powerful love stories.”
The play sold out numerous shows in its Brisbane run, playing to over 20,000 story lovers. Now, it’s Adelaide’s turn to get misty eyed, as part of Adelaide Festival. After so many stories and the unexpected exposé of his own love story, Dalton reflects on what love truly means.
“There are eight billion versions of love because all eight billion of us see it differently. But I have learned what an equal opportunity phenomenon it is. The lollipop lady who’s loved by 300 people can be just as happy as the gazillionaire. And love is absolutely the reason why we’re here. I’m really impressed by people who dedicate their lives to giving more than they receive, active participants in love. My wife says it in the play, it’s the beginning and end of everything. And it’s true.”
His typewriter may be resting for now, but Dalton shares his best tip for writers, two things he carries with him wherever he goes, in everything he does.
“Enthusiasm is king. Be enthusiastic about the bird in the sky, the Beatles song on the radio, and the word that you're about to write on the page. Because enthusiasm is what's going to get you the sheer luck and joy and privilege of doing the thing in the first place.”
“And write with the heart. Write the draft with the heart muscle and not the brain. Leave that saboteur called the brain, that betrayer, that freaking terrible thing that will just criticise you and the words on the page, don't even bring that thing into it. Do that first draft with the muscle that matters, and then bring the brain in over the edit. But you’re done after your first draft, and that's where the joy comes from.”
Dalton's words, whether on page or stage, are sure to make anyone's heart muscle that little bit stronger.
'Trent Dalton's Love Stories' is playing Illawarra Performing Arts Centre (presented by Merrigong Theatre Company) until 8 March. It then plays Adelaide Festival Centre 12-16 March.
