The Fine Art of Standing Still
I've been thinking lately that maybe this might just be it. Maybe I am exactly where I am meant to be. Everything is in its place. And if this really is it, I’m perfectly okay with that. It doesn’t mean it won’t change later. In fact, the acceptance that comes with such awareness probably makes change all the more possible. Often good things happen when you are least expecting them. Someone new comes into your life and makes it a whole lot better. You discover a new author on a bookshop shelf and end up reading everything they have ever written, or an unexpected opportunity opens itself up…
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Making Sense of Autumn in Simon’s Place
Autumn is a funny time of the year. We should be sad about the end of another summer and yet there’s something cozy, familiar, and uncomfortable about what’s to come. The falling leaves, the autumnal colors taking place, the intake of breath before the clocks go back and winter waits for spring. It reminds me of slipping under the duvet to the sound of heavy rain falling outside. The soft leaves flutter onto the concrete carpet of the housing estate before they turn into slippery sludge. The early tentative steps of the back-to-schoolers soon become a routine as the freedom of the summer months retreat…
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A Declaration of Independence
“The streets are meltin’, the sky is swelling, even the trees are rebelling,” Patti Smith greets the crowd at a Summer Stage Literary event in Central Park, New York City (July 1993).
What is it that sustains you in times of real doubt? The kind we find ourselves in right now. For me, it’s a certain sense of self, based on an inner strength that lies deep way beneath the surface. It’s something I’ve worked extremely hard to build up over the years, sometimes without even knowing I’m even doing it. It’s happened despite the scars inflicted by the Irish education system. Hence, I’ve developed a fierce determination to come out on top despite feeling adrift when I left school. I’m still fighting the sense of desolation that filled those years up to the Leaving Certificate. Any place, system, or person that makes you feel is never worth it. I’ve learned that when that’s the case, it’s best to get the hell out…
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Going Home
“The pavements were full of people going about their messages, and nobody paid any attention to others. They moved independently, in oblivious, anonymous, take-it-for-granted freedom. The people didn’t even nod hello to each other, and Shuggie could bet their wasn’t even a single cousin amongst them.”
An excerpt from ‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart describes Shuggie’s return to Glasgow from the outskirts.
There were lots of things I loved about living in the countryside. The feeling of the earth under my feet, the idea that I didn’t belong here, the empty space, and the absolute beauty of the night sky. But for some reason, it was also suffocating. I like to dip in and out of life, to be alone in a quiet place where I can hear myself think. Strangely it’s something I’ve always found easier to do in a city. Maybe that’s because it’s where I grew up…
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On Being Irish - Part One - The Dark Side
For me being Irish is a topsy-turvy merry-go-round of good times walking hand-in-hand with a certain feeling of loneliness that comes wrapped up in our past. Maybe that’s why we spend so much of our time drinking and talking shite in noisy pubs, on overcrowded trains and empty buses, on the sharp hushed corners of rush hour streets, and in random coffee shops. The conversation is where we go to search for the answers to the questions that define us…
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Hot in the City
I love the hum of the city as it slowly shakes itself awake to whatever lies in store. It’s another morning. The night before swept away with a rattle of broken glass and the scuff marks left by the street cleaners’ shoes as the main streets filled with the anxiety-ridden worker bees. People worry about just anything these days. I love everything about the city. It could be Dublin. London. New York. Berlin or Riyadh. It doesn’t matter where. All of these people are thrown together with different clothes, ideas, opinions, ethnicities, genders, and religions, the non-believers blending in with the faithful, the converted, and the luckiest of all, the damned…
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Into the Great Wide Open
I step forward into a different place and time. It always feels like it’s for the first time, but I know I’ve been here before. I can see it, smell it, touch it, hear it and taste it all in one brief heartbeat. I breathe it in. I’ve learned to trust its pace, its nuanced way of doing things, and the little peculiarities that make it such a wonderful neighbourhood. It used to frighten me but not anymore. I know now that the beauty present here lies in the danger it brings. Here my vulnerability stares right through me. Here I have learned to embrace what it brings as I step into its loving arms…
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Writing
I sit in the early morning and wait for inspiration. Any moment now it’ll shake itself from its slumber and wonder, at first, cautiously into the folds of my imagination. It too needs a clue that I am ready for its wisdom. The traffic light turns red to green. It is here in this quiet place that inspiration collides gently with possibility, before it explodes, like a shooting firework into a festival sky. It is in this crazy fusion of remembered experience and not knowing that originality finds its voice. Here, in this precious space, I trust what’s coming as if my life depends on it. Feeling like a pedestrian who's been down this road before I step out of the way and let the pen take hold. I appreciate the stillness in dawn’s pregnant pause more than ever as the darkness waits for the light, unmoved by the electrical current flowing through and beyond me. It too will find its place as it reaches out for someone else. Maybe the readers who take the book off the bookshop shelf before they bring it home where it starts to become a part of them as well.
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Ten Albums That Rocked My World
I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t Debbie Harry’s good looks that captured my attention when I saw Blondie performing Denis on Top of the Pops for the very first time. But after a minute or two, it was clear that there was more to Blondie than just Debbie’s obvious and alluring beauty. More importantly, the song sounded great, and behind it lay a gritty punky New York attitude. The band was tight and punchy, the words and the melodies easy.
Eat to the Beat was released in 1979 and contained the hit singles Dreaming, Union City Blue, and Atomic with the immortal Your hair is beautiful, one of the many lines to die for, delivered with the attitude of a smoking gun. But it was the darkness contained in Die Young Stay Pretty that stood out for me. A striking ballad alluding to the possibilities to be gained of living life in the fast lane, like a shooting star destined to fall to earth too soon. The desperation of our infinite mortality demands that we live fast because it won’t last….
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Who Are You?
I am the book I have just read, and all the films I have seen in dark movie theatres in Dublin’s city centre on grey November afternoons when I was supposed to be at lectures instead. Mona Lisa, Betty Blue, In the Name of the Rose, and My Beautiful Launderette to name but a few, each one a masterpiece in its own right. Memories I will never forget. I am the melody of the music I’ve come to love: U2, Springsteen, An Emotional Fish and The Golden Horde, again too many to mention and too many to forget. They take me back to the places I have been when I hear them again. Sweet melodies caught up in the days gone by. Suddenly I’m running back down Talbot Street from Golden Discs to the hostel where I once worked, sliding The Joshua Tree tape into the slot and pressing play, the first time, the last time I will ever hear it for the first time. The opening beat of Where the Streets Have No Name flooded my brain. I want to run, I want to hide, I want to break down the walls that hold me inside…
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Melting Pot
Most days my head is a melting pot bubbling with thoughts, ideas, places, people, hopes and fears. Gradually, over the years I’ve gotten a little better at handling the fears, even the real ones. Money, bills, relationships, the usual suspects. Somehow I’ve learned to tell myself that everything will be okay, that it’ll all work out in the end, even if my gut is telling me the exact opposite, and for whatever reason it’s working. It really is a case of mind over matter.
The hopes, which thankfully can be even more powerful, are built on a determination to be me. The inside part that fidgets, pokes, stares out the window, dreams, and screams for attention. The entangled voice of the writer, the artist, the hipster with a desperate need to be heard. To be different. To succeed. The creative trapped within, submerged by the everyday din. I have to admit that I find relentless routine difficult to comprehend, it makes me uneasy, unnerves me and it seems that the older I get the more restless I am to escape its crushing clutches. I should be learning to relax, but if anything it feels like I’m doing the opposite. Maybe it’s connected to the gradual dying of the light. It seems that getting older tends to focus the mind on what really matters. And yet it feels to me like I’ve always been doing this, searching for the answers, that lie deep inside, to what I’ve always known to be important. That desperation for understanding and expression that awakened when I left school. It has never gone away.
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It's The Little Things That Get Us Through
I flick the switch on the kettle and drop the teabag into my happy mug. A couple of minutes later the hot water makes contact, brown at first soon turns to a rich gold as it reaches my lips. If the world was ending I swear the Irish would stick the kettle on, after all, what’s the rush, there’s always time for a cup of tea and it’ll give God a chance to reconsider. That’s if there is a God I hear some of you say, but if there is I’m sure He or She is to be found in the little things. A slow sunset at the end of a perfect summer’s day or the innocent wonder of a winter’s morning as the mist climbs towards the higher ground.
As I’ve grown older I have come to accept it really is the little things in life that get us through. The simple pleasures to be had like the cup of tea mentioned above. The calming comfort to be found in the pages of a good book. A black and white film on a lazy Sunday afternoon as the winter rain falls outside. A leisurely walk with my son Samuel through the Phoenix Park talking about his favourite books and writers. Hardback or paperback, the pressing questions of the day.
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Easy On A Sunday Morning
It’s early on a Sunday morning in December. The shortest day of the year is less than two weeks away meaning we’re over the hill on the trek towards longer evenings and the first welcoming chutes of spring. The world is unhurried outside, except for the odd dog walker and others on their way to the shops, desperate for the news or a coffee. Monday is temporarily forgotten as I climb out of bed and make my way downstairs. I punch the digits into the alarm panel and wait for the beep. I pull the curtains in the front room and take in the view, before I wander into the kitchen, fill the kettle and flick the switch. The only purpose I have today is to have none. But that’s easier said than done in a world that only seems to reward being busy. The kettle whistles and crackles at the thought of having to boil itself. I unscrew the lid of the coffee jar and drop a heaped spoonful into one of my favourite mugs. The light blue one I bought in Dunnes for a euro, a bargain if ever there was one. It really is the little things that often bring the most joy. Two spoons of brown sugar are followed by a drop of milk. Always the milk ahead of the boiling water. It tastes better that way. The habits that make us who we are and hold us in our own space…
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The Road to Wembley - My Coming of Age as an Arsenal Fan
By 1977 Liam Brady was blossoming into the special player he was always destined to become. He showed this by leading Arsenal on a twin-pronged assault on Wembley. It helped to take my mind off the difficult transition to secondary school. After all, when you’re on the road to Wembley, nothing much else matters. The possible realisation of a dream was becoming a preoccupation. My parents watched on as Arsenal took over my life. Indeed my mother must have feared the worst when she ironed a pair of Arsenal shorts we had bought on a trip to London. They shrivelled and promptly melted. I remember returning home from school to be informed of the great disaster that had unfolded. My mother looked as if she had done something terrible. Mum enjoyed ironing, but the terrible events of ‘Black Thursday’, as it became known, cast a dark shadow that wouldn’t be easily forgotten. I was heartbroken. But all was not lost. That’s the thing about parents, they always have a plan B and a replacement pair was duly despatched by my cousins from London.
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Who Are We?
Who are we?
Are we the real self or the false self or a cunning mixture of the two? Are we the mask we wear to fit in, to conform, to hide away so that we can survive the rough and tumble of everyday life or the spirit deep inside that is forever restless, seeking out who we really are? The part of us that is eternally connected to everything we do or don’t do depending on how we feel about ourselves and everyone else?
So who are we really?
Are we the person we’ve always wanted to be or are we the little child that continues to live inside, still filled with wonder and possibility, the little one that used to do things without a thought for the consequences because there was none back them? The little one that was never afraid to visit the mistake factory if it meant learning something new? We’re ever-changing depending on environment, experience, and circumstance. We are blown by the fates that toss us from wave to wave on an uncertain sea. We are calm too, in the times when we know that everything is going to be alright. We are the doubt and the comfort that often comes with not knowing. The shifting sands of time exposing us to the challenges that erode us of certainty.
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The Edge of Madness
Often the edge of madness is where creativity is at its most potent. Here vulnerability coupled with fearlessness stalks the ever-changing landscape. Being on the edge means diving straight into the fire. There is no time for contemplation, only the type of spontaneity that lets you know what you have to do if you are to exist fully. Beyond there is purpose and meaning. It’s why we’re here. Indeed the immediacy of such moments captures the fundamental difference between art and science. The scientist will want to know how hot the flames are before saying yes or no, whereas the artist feels the risk and does it anyway. The artist has the confidence to step beyond the fear into the hope that lies on the other side. It’s where flow happens. Beyond the uncertainty is a greater certainty than you’ve ever felt, and if you’ve ever been there you already know it’s one of the safest places you’ll ever be…
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Only Blue Sky Above
I look up at the blue sky and breathe. Up here there is nothing below, except the emptiness of the fullness that comes with wisdom. Up here life is simple. People are kind to each other. Up here there is hope. There is no bad news, only good news. Up here even the bad news is good news because it tells us something about ourselves. Awakens us to the things we need to change. Up here we learn from our mistakes. We don’t just forget them and hope that they don’t happen again. Up here people smile at each other and say hello when they pass by. Up here you can be yourself, warts and all. No need for any excuses or the word ‘sorry’ that seems to be hard-wired into our consciousness from a young age. We say it so much. Sorry for the things we haven’t done. Sorry for the things we’ve yet to do. Sorry for the things we did. Sorry for your mistakes. Sorry for the things that weren’t our fault. Up here we take responsibility for ourselves and let others do the same. Up here we do things our own way…
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The West is the Best
Based on the song 'The End' by The Doors
This is the end, beautiful friend; this is the end, my only friend, the end, of our elaborate plans, the end, of everything that stands; the end…
Jim Morrison’s voice holds the silence as we make the homeward journey from Doolin towards the hostel where we are staying in Lisdoonvarna. As our driver and trip organiser Prosser pushes his old style red Ford Escort to the limit Mister Mojo Rising barks out ‘The west is the best’. He’s right there and we’re right here. I can feel my spirit at one with its surroundings. There’s a purity to the air down here, and the people.
Dusk is finally settling on another beautiful summer’s day. Life doesn’t get much better than this. We are looking forward to a few pints in The Roadside Tavern. I just hope that there isn’t a killer on the road, but judging by the way Prosser is driving we’re already in his midst…
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Out of the Blue
It was during the bleakness of the early 1970’s that I fell in love with the Dublin football team. Back then we lived in one of the new middle class suburbs springing up in Lucan in west Dublin. My father was instrumental in introducing me to Gaelic football, although as he entered his late sixties he no longer went to matches. My family loved sport. We’d gather around the telly to watch gaelic football, hurling, soccer, racing, showjumping, tennis, boxing and cricket. We didn’t discriminate; there was no such thing as a foreign game in our house…
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Out of this World - A Short Story
I have only been away for a short while and yet it already feels like a lifetime. This is meant to be a sad day, funerals nearly always are, but for some reason, it feels more like a beginning than an end. The last few weeks haven’t been easy. Watching the person you love slowly fade away saps the energy. But now that he’s gone, family and friends can finally get back to living their lives again.
I grew up in these fields. It’s where I spent the school holidays trying to be a man. I loved watching my grandfather and father doing what farmers do year in year out. Plough, sow, grow and harvest. When I was a small boy a field of corn felt like it was the whole world. Getting lost was the easy part, finding a way back out was always more difficult…
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