What it is that makes your heart sing? Maybe you know or maybe you don’t.
I always knew I loved sport from a young age, but for some reason my passion for writing remained hidden until a few years ago. I was a secondary school teacher trying to work out exactly why I felt so lost and disillusioned. I was teaching in the same school I had been a pupil, working in the apparent safety of a world I had tiptoed carefully through as a teenager. The thoughts of it squeezed my scattered eggshell mind until it eventually shattered. I had all the things teachers rightly treasure: long holidays, a permanent pensionable job, but for some reason it felt more like a life sentence. I did it for nineteen years, before the dam burst. I took a career break, and resigned a year later when the recession took hold and the school forced me to make a decision I had been putting off for close to over a decade.
With no idea what to do next, I signed up for a creative writing course in Kilkenny, run by a wonderful teacher called Suzanne. The room was full of familiar characters. We surrounded ourselves with each other’s dreams and began searching for something different to what life had become. Suzanne provided the support I needed to believe in myself, again. The voices that had been raging inside were only getting louder. It took me time to trust, but slowly, I learned to listen to what they were saying and write it down. I soon realised, that no matter what was happening or how I felt, writing brought me to a safer place. When I sat down and let the words go,it seemed like the hours passed by in minutes. I was slowly learning to get out of my own way. Any writer will tell you that sitting down is the hardest part. It still mystifies me why I sometimes step back from something that brings me so much joy. Part of it is to do with the way education and society dumbs us down. Maybe it’s the fear that Marianne Williamson spoke about so eloquently. Who am I to feel great? Imagine if we all went around writing and singing and dancing and doing whatever the hell we really liked? It’d blow our minds.
The year after I jumped, I tutored a young actor on a film set and worked with teenagers who were unable to attend school. The experience of teaching outside of the conventional education system taught me that education could be fun. I was excited by the idea of teaching and learning again. I found people who shared my views, like Ken Robinson and Sully Breaks, and realised that I wasn’t alone in thinking that things could be done differently, if we just had the energy and the will to make it happen.
The search for work and a fear of going back into the same old system took me to Saudi Arabia. In Riyadh I worked in a school trying to change its ancient ways. The idea was to get the students’ thinking for themselves. Whereas in Ireland, I was restricted to secondary (high) school teaching because of my earlier struggles with the native Gaelic tongue, over in the Middle East I was allowed to work with primary (elementary) school kids. Right from the off I loved their give it a go attitude. They were noisy, infectious, kind, crazy, polite and full of bright ideas. I tried new things and found out that noise in a classroom can be a good thing. I also got to work with wonderful colleagues from all parts of the world.
In the afternoons when I got back to the apartment I started to write. I had already written a book called ‘Singing the Blues’ describing my experiences as a Dublin football fan. Now I dipped a tentative toe into novel writing. To my surprise the trickle of ideas soon became a flood. My heart was learning to sing more and more every day that passed. The thing about passion is it begs and begs until you have to give in. In contrast the head likes to keep its distance, creating doubt and screaming out, “Go back to what you know!” You have to be willing to fight to hold on to your dreams no matter what, to tell only the people you would trust with your life. When you step outside what’s expected of you, it can challenge others. Like lobsters in a restaurant tank, they’ll do everything to drag you back into their world, which is a good thing if you’re a lobster, but not much fun if you want to follow your dreams.
I always wonder why we place so much importance on what we do. More often than not, it’s the second thing a person asks about you after your name. I have watched the spirit draining from so many people who keep on doing what they do because they think they have to keep doing it. I was one of them. Often we find out, only when it’s too late, that it never really mattered anyway. We chase safety and respect through the prism of what school and society rewards, which is more often than not decided by those who have done well out of that very system, which means very little changes over time. I believe the suppression of passion can result in a physical and mental decay tied to disillusionment, addiction, depression, melancholy, loss of direction and motivation, illness and in its extreme, death and suicide. If we choose to ignore what comes naturally, we pay the consequences. The problem with the creative arts is that it often struggles to pay the bills, but finding a way to make it work it doesn’t have to mean giving up your day job. There is another way. Freedom can be accessed through a subtle adjustment that allows for the necessary time needed to express yourself fully. It doesn’t have to earn money. It can be just for fun.
We irish are melancholy by nature. We dig deep for meaning, some might say too deep, fuelled by a wild and restless streak that yearns for the freedom denied us by our past. We may run, but we can never hide and boy can we tell a good story that no amount of alcohol, drugs, or mind fuck civil war thinking will ever be able to block out. It seems that the pain, and the drink we use to drown it, often helps. The sorrow and the suffering have to find a way out. It’s in our literature, our music, poetry, art, films, theatre and also in the way we play sport. We carry it with us everywhere we go, this need to hunt ourselves down, but it’s not in all of us. If it doesn’t possess you, you’re one of the lucky ones. I envy you the odd time, not having to think about all that stuff, but I’m not you, I’m me, so if you don’t mind, I’ll move on.
Thankfully my father and mother fed my curiosity. They loved characters like George Best, Bob Geldof and Boy George who brought a splash of colour to life and that was all the permission I needed. I remember staying up late with my mother in 1982 to cheer on Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins, another rogue, to his second World Snooker title. I have always been more attracted to sports stars, rock stars, writers, poets, artists, fashion designers and actors. They live on the edge. These individuals with the ability to create something fresh. I love the stories they tell. I love their quirky ways. The funky clothes they wear. The songs they sing. The smiles they smile to hide what lies buried deep inside. The demons that drive them on. I love it when they break the rules. The characters they become. I love the things they do. I love the things they don’t. I love it when their joy fills our lives. I love who they are and who they are not. I love their earrings and their tattoos. I love the things they say. I love the silence that they hold onto when the end comes and fame steps away.
I’m glad to say I’m back home in Ireland teaching and writing now. I am scribbling these thoughts down sitting beside three crazy old guys, with silver hair and old fashioned clothes, talking about music in Simon’s coffee shop in Dublin, a place that attracts the kind of people with hearts that sing. I feel the buzz of energy whenever I step through the door. People come here to be with someone, even when they’re all alone. They come here to drink coffee and tea and to eat the best sandwiches in town. They come here to think and feel what it is to be different. These guys, who have lived and loved and forgotten what it’s like to be young, talk about Jimi Hendrix as if he’s still alive. They take the piss out of each other. The freedom of their experience tied to the wisdom running through the river that connects them. They know the lyrics they speak of off by heart.
In here, you can be yourself, anything goes as they like to say. In here, passion is the only real currency, even if you still have to pay for the coffee. There’s nothing sacred. Nothings out of bounds. The lads have moved onto Neil Young, the needle and the damage done. They talk about Dublin as if it exists somewhere back in the mists of the rare auld times. The conversation is as beautiful as a mad winding road leading back to the past. They fill my mind with the seeds of possibility. It’s why I come here to write.
So if you get the chance, take a quiet moment to listen to your heart, and you never know, it might just start to sing.
