About Helena Olufsen
Helena Olufsen is a Danish/Indian writer, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her writing has appeared in Southern Humanities Review and The Fiddlehead and is forthcoming in Fourteen Hills. Read more at helenaolufsen.com or connect on Instagram @hele.asdfgh.
Her website is helenaolufsen.com
A Profile of the Author
Notes on “Balance the Sky on Your Head”
I started out with just the character. The dad narrator who didn’t want to go to his kid’s football game. The parent-child relationship can get so messy, so full of hurt and grudges and this unchecked, explosive kind of love coming from both sides. I feel like it’s a relationship that lends itself very easily to stories about second chances—mistakes and forgiveness. A soft redemption. As the story developed, it became clear to me that this was the heart of the story.
The caesuras/blank spaces were a surprise. Whenever the narrative veered into emotional territory, I struggled to write the dad’s introspection because he struck me as someone who would have a hard time processing and conveying these thoughts.
To me, writing thoughts is always tricky, because what even are thoughts? They’re not exactly language, not exactly images, or sounds, or split-second awarenesses. Different people think in different mediums. So how do you translate this intricate, elusive not-exactly-thing into words? Especially in the case of a character like this dad, who can’t even bear to process his own thoughts, let alone express them. The caesuras and the occasional brokenness of the sentences surrounding them—this disintegration of his language—felt like the most authentic rendition of his thoughts into words.
Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.
Water can be many things—passion, chaos, adventure—but in the warm summer, the water in the harbour baths of Copenhagen is mostly peace. Beneath the surface, the world is greenish and thick with sunlight. There’s a slow, smooth charm in the way the light shifts with the waves, the way it scatters and fades with each metre of depth, so that, at just three to four metres, you’re looking down at a soft, quiet blackness.
It’s a place that bends time, slows the pulse, and wipes the mind. It turns me into a creature of immediate sensations and no memory. For years, I’ve wanted an underwater camera to capture a bit of that peace, bring it out of the water with me. This year, I finally got one!
