His blue look was on the ground, as though it held the reason for the last five minutes. She took him all in. The hair was wavy on top and cropped tight at the sides, sprinkled grey. He looked down at her on the step. Are you ok?
My hero? she ventured.
From her seat on the steps in the archway, she watched the rain come fast and heavy on the lane.
He laughed, lowered his head and folded his arms, looked at his shoes then at the rain, searching for the next thing to say.
We should bring you to the hospital.
No, she said. No hospital.
The steps led up to what looked like two apartments with dark, imperious doors. Across the lane, the open back door of a commercial kitchen, wheezing steam, chattering work and a churning smell of Italian food mingled with the food bins parked by the door. The rain was the type that felt like God tipped over the sky and the blue was washing away. She loved it. She wanted to ride down a newborn river crashing through the buildings, forests, mountains, meat till she reached the ocean and swallowed it. But she had just been hit by a car so instead, she wanted her seat.
Do you live near here? he said, biting his lip.
He sure wore that black suit.
Sorry I slapped you, she said.
Ah, he waved his hand. You were in shock.
Ask me the next thing.
Are you drunk? he said, smirking.
No. I just want to go home.
It’s just I saw you in the restaurant –
I want to go home.
I’ll take you.
No, she said, trying to rise.
She stopped because she lacked the strength, so she concealed it by instead shifting to fish out her purse from underneath her.
Were you drinking? he pursued, worrying his lip again.
Ignoring him, she lit a cigarette, and blew a drag at him, careless, spent. With something like tiredness, her long lashes closed slow and long on him. She felt languorous, suspended for an unknown interval, free and anonymous on a step behind the rain. Her head rested on the wall.
A pack of girls in hotpants skittered trilling and swearing through the alley like a fuckle of turkeys, their jackets held high over their heads as umbrellas. Celine could taste blood on her tongue.
Gimme one a’those, will ya? he said, dabbing his face dry with the cuff of his jacket.
His finger grazed hers when he took the packet – a shock of intimacy worse than his manhandling when he cowboyed her clear of the road, away from the traffic and chaotic onlookers. Snatching her lighter from the air between them where she threw it, he moved closer. Her palm massaged the hip that caught the bumper. The car that hit her threw bawls of abuse out the window, taking her for drunk as well. It struck her how much taller than her her rescuer was when he was close, the way trees get taller when you walk toward them.
So what are you fallin’ all over the place for? he said, squinting down at her.
Fuck off, she said, quietly.
He laughed. Is it your birthday or something?
She looked at him.
Well, you’re all decked out in leopard print and silk and eating alone in a restaurant. And falling all over the place drunk.
I’m not drunk, she said, emphatically flat.
Really? he smirked.
And I’m not engaging your asshole-ishness either because if I do collapse and start spitting up blood you’ll know I’m not drunk and that yes, you tool, I have a condition. Tachycardia.
I don’t care.
Jesus.
Because you’re just so fucking beautiful I can’t think of anything else.
She laughed, a great blart of a belly laugh.
Fuh – I haven’t laughed like that in a while, she said.
Well at last, he beamed, A fuckin’ smile outta ya.
You think this is funny?
I do, a bit, yeah.
She spiked him an awful look.
He retreated and exhaled, letting the air flupper his lips like a horse.
The rain was thunderous on the cobblestones and rooftops.
And I’m not a l-lady, she stammered, I’m a strong woman. I’ll take it from here.
I’m Bob by the way.
Ya. Call me a taxi, will ya?
I can drive you.
No.
Bob followed Celine’s taxi in his car without her knowledge. It brought her through Shantalla and dropped her at the University Hospital. The night was dirty green and umber with trees and street light. He parked outside Mr. Waffle and watched her in the mirror walking away from him toward the building where she was born.
He shadowed her to the ICU. In an open plan of a dozen beds, she rounded a corner and was gone. Staying hidden, he spied out from the corner and saw her. Four beds down, stopped at the one near the window. The bed contained a small figure, a child.
As she faced the bed with slumped shoulders, Celine’s expression was sombre. Her heart separated through water. She stood still at the foot of the bed and raised a hand to her mouth.
You won’t let me leave, wee one, she whispered to her fingers.
The child’s small, closed eyes, with the tubes up her nose and down her mouth. Her daughter hooked up to the Matrix, and not the Ribbon, where it was easier to spend time with her. Celine softly traced a curl on the sleeping forehead. With soundless poise, she placed herself on the plastic grey seat next to the head of the bed, and lightly rested her hand on the bedspread. The night drank the place down. Beyond the window, it painted with hate.
You can’t out-G me, she said to it. I’ll hate you dead.
She wished she knew what she thought. In that moment she was blessed with the truth that it was not possible to know anything, not even that you didn’t know, because you often did and had no excuse. And what did knowing and not knowing at the same time do to each other? Give birth to something, anything you wanted. She wanted freedom. In that moment, she had it. But the guilt of having it swept in to rob her of it. Nothing after nothing, and she was herself again, for the first time that day, without self, nobody, happily, with all the answers and no way or wish to convey them. She was without her body, left with a voice that would not speak, wiser than her and uncontrollable until the time called for it, and it just came to cut through the ugly and vulgar. She almost worshipped it. She hesitated to call it truth, in case it taught her a lesson in manners about labelling and chose never to speak to her again.
Christ, anything but that, she prayed.
No, it wasn’t gone. It would hold its peace. It would hold all the pieces.
Maybe it will be today, she thought. On your birthday, Polly, pet. I’ll be there to welcome you. Here or there, in the next place. Don’t be scared. Ever. When it comes time to go.
Polly hadn’t moved. Not a twitch or a sniff, in her deep sleep. Did she sense her mother? Celine did not aspire to that level of vanity. She loved her daughter, she wasn’t in love with her, and didn’t expect the same in return, she didn’t expect any love.
It will cleanse you, she said silently, covering her mouth with her fingertips again, afraid that the world might see the words.
Your death, love.
Something selfish made her acknowledge death; where it was in the room, where it came near and pulled up a chair. It carried the details, and the world’s ‘reality’: the floating world, a weaponised litany of details masquerading as facts, aiming her memory at her with diagnoses, prognoses, projections, reflections, incompetence, fallacies, failure, contingencies, hope for the best, prepare for the worst, deny God, deny faith, accept death, a reality that did not accept the agency of free will, but stole it and sold it back in the form of vanity branded as truth. Untraceably, one’s own truth. Good or bad.
Details. She didn’t want charts, names of medicines, names of doctors, nurses. Let death slobber over those. But she had them. Like a disease, she couldn’t get rid of. If she had them, Polly didn’t have to have them and if Celine tossed them, they’d be far from Polly. Either way, Polly was free. Either way. She would be free.
And with that endorsement, Death reached a hand out toward her child. Celine caught the wrist. It was like catching solid air. It struggled. She put its fingers in her mouth, and bit down. They slithered down her throat and fizzed in her oesophagus. Peristalsis saw them to her stomach where they were corralled in a dance of digestion. She swallowed all the death in the room. And felt better.
The pain of envy struck Celine’s breast. Polly was closer to birth, and therefore death, and was the only guide Celine had to her own point of origin, the point in space and time where she was born. Yes, Celine was caught in vain self-preservation and all its grey shades. With a shock, she realised that it had been here in this very building, thirty years ago in two days time. Celine was born into this on September 17th 1988, perhaps on this very spot. It was violent genius, divine.
Polly or Celine. One or the other would go. The old way. Barter. No. Not that way. It was what Celine would mean it to be. For one to live, the other did not have to die. No deal of Celine for Polly. Or the threat of what no intervention would bring – Polly for Celine – with nature favouring the robust. She appealed neither to the god of nature or the one who was supposed to control it. She blessed herself and thanked whatever was the most honourable aspect of God, the one who protected the meek, for her life and for Polly’s. She had always accepted Polly’s immortality. For the first time she was able to accept her mortality, two years into her small but powerful life. If Polly lived, her mother would live. If Polly died, her mother would die, she promised God. But she swore neither of them would die and she put her foot down.
If she dies, she said to God, I’m coming for you.
Bob, watching her from the corner, saw a small curly brown head on the pillow above a face of rosebud features. A potted plant sat on the bed stand. He was struck by its dark green leaves and bright red flowers, a liminal vigil above its small human ward. What he saw – mother and daughter – he couldn’t process at that moment, and slipstreamed into an oblique thought.
Bob considered the watering of a potted plant, why it could never be a good thing to pour water from a jug down on top of the soil. It would only wash the nutrients away after the manner of a flood. For another thing, if plants were sentient, and he had some doubt as to whether they were not, it would become distressed, and he couldn’t abide the thought of that. For the overall health of the thing, at least, it was better to be gentle with watering, like rain, as gentle as nature is when it waters. Even heavy rain distributes water evenly, hitting the ground lighter than a jug’s spout aimed at a stem.
The roots took in water from below, he acknowledged, watching Celine’s face. The leaves took in light from above.
I’m the youngest of five, and I grew up in a home surrounded by musicians and artists. My parents and siblings all participated in art or music in some form and shared circles with those of similar interests, with our home setting the stage as the hangout spot to what were in my eyes some of the most creative and talented characters that the early 2000s had to offer. It was this upbringing that would contribute to my eclectic taste and deep appreciation for art and the work that goes into creating it.
At home, there was vast a collection of music in every medium from every decade, paintings and ornaments were placed on every available wall and surface all while musicians were jamming in the sitting room on what seemed like a daily basis. Naturally, being the youngest of such a big family and their groups of friends, I always wanted to get involved with whatever was happening!
Creativity and its exploration were always appreciated, and my enthusiasm to participate was seen and rewarded by those around me with everyone imparting hints of wisdom and technique of their respective craft to the young and eager student that I was. These early experiences would later ignite a passion within me to explore the vibrant cultural landscape of Ireland, where I discovered a wealth of talent but also a myriad of challenges facing artists.
In 2017, my journey into the Irish art scene began in earnest with a simple introduction of just sharing some of my own artwork on Instagram. It started as a “sure we’ll see what happens”, but over a short time I began to really enjoy the process of creating and publishing, and the thought of pursuing art as a career looked like an intriguing endeavour. But upon looking at the established and more experienced artists around me, I quickly discovered the struggles many faced due to the lack of resources available to them.
First Painting.
Limited studio availability and often prohibitively expensive. Seemingly exclusive gallery spaces and minimal stage time opportunities. Few to promote them and those who did seldom had the artists’ best interests at heart. And importantly, nowhere left in Dublin to socialise while also being able to explore art through play. It seemed despite undeniable talent and passion, an artist in Ireland often found themselves struggling with financial instability, limited exposure, and a lack of support networks and opportunities to develop their craft.
Becoming a professional artist appeared an impossible task, and I was frustrated by the fact that I was put off before I could really begin. Moreover, I thought about everyone else who might have experienced that same feeling of “why bother”. The number of tortured artists plagued with that “what if”, and the number of great concepts and ideas that would never make it to print just because they had nowhere to go to even begin. Myself, I didn’t always have dreams of being an artist, I just had an interest and wanted to explore the possibility. But I do feel that someone who really has that desire to pursue a career around creativity absolutely should have every opportunity to do so.
So, at nineteen years of age, I turned my art page, “Newmanations”, into my first attempt to go into business with the aim to provide all these resources to artists and the wider community. I would spend the next two years on research – volunteering at conventions, speaking with artists and musicians wherever I could find them, property viewings, attending city council redevelopment proposals and whatever else I could do to soak up information about the art and business landscape around me. It was then time to put some of this self-education into practice, and on the 17th of August 2019 I hosted my first ever music and fundraiser event. “Newmanations Presents: Raise The Bar!”
A small but respectable beginning to my endeavours, the event proved successful on all accounts, and the wave of positive responses from the community made the possibility of the long-term success of my venture very real. However, the pressure of continuing to operate a business and the extended social media use that went with it proved too much for my health. At twenty-one and with burn out in full swing, I silently bowed out of operations, but always with my mind fixated on the possibility of what I was trying to achieve. It would take another three years, several jobs, and a global pandemic before I would get back to my mission, all the while fine tuning my business model and preparing for a return.
On the 19th of August 2022, 3 years and 2 days from my first ever event for which this current project gets its name, “Raise The Bar Events” was born! Founded on the principle of putting artists first, Raise The Bar Events is the continuation of my dedication to provide a platform where artists’ voices can be heard, their talents celebrated and their careers supported. Its purpose is to strengthen and develop the communities around me, all while elevating the Irish arts scene by empowering its most vital contributors – the artists themselves. It has quickly gathered momentum, having since organised 30+ showcase style events, headlines and an Ireland tour for an international act, with lots more to come!
Central to my business ethos is a commitment to fostering a safe and inclusive environment for artists and audiences alike. That’s why I’m proud to be partnered with “Safe Gigs Ireland”, an initiative dedicated to promoting safety and awareness at live events and keeping them free from any kind of abuse. By partnering with Safe Gigs Ireland, I work to ensure that every event or showcase I host prioritizes the safety of everyone in attendance including the performers, creating spaces where everyone can enjoy the transformative power of music without fear or hesitation.
Looking ahead, I’m excited to embark on new initiatives and partnerships that will further my mission of empowering artists and enriching our cultural landscape. There is immense talent and potential within the creative arts in Ireland, and we need something like Raise The Bar Events to provide a comprehensive platform that supports artists across all disciplines, amplifying their voices and fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration. It will push the boundaries and challenge the status quo of business and art.
Lastly, as a business owner, I firmly believe in using my platform to affect positive change beyond the realm of art. That’s why I’m proud to participate in “Hell and Back, June 2024” to raise money for “Feed Our Homeless”, a Dublin based charity providing vital support and services to those in need. By leveraging my resources and influence, I hope to make a tangible difference in the lives of others, embodying the spirit of solidarity and compassion that defines my business ethos.
In summary, Raise The Bar Events is more than just an event management company – it’s a labour of love, driven by a deep-seated passion for art, community, and social responsibility. As it continues to grow, my commitment to supporting artists, promoting safety and wellbeing and giving back to my community will remain unwavering. This is a legacy project for a positive infrastructure to remain long after I do. Together, with my family, friends, collaborators, the artists I work with and the project’s growing community of supporters, we are shaping a brighter, more hopeful future for the arts in Ireland and beyond.
Raise The Bar Events – The cornerstone of artistic and community development for generations to come.
My dream takes me to the White House
where Kelly green fountain streams
spit red globules, ricochet on the pristine lawns.
Dirty skies sit low, a brazen breeze propels
smell of sizzling flesh to the oval office
stage where emerald men show cause
bear not the crystal bowl of shamrock, Mr President
but a clay jar of sinews stewed in the tears of Gaza.
I wake to the daymare of a festival episode
stars of our sod line out to stroke your cloak, Mr President
detonate the oval space with leprechaun lyric.
Like a gaping silence of Connemara stone
what remains unsaid
scars my heart.
Feature Image: President Joe Biden participates in a bilateral meeting with Taoiseach of Ireland Leo Varadkar, Friday, March 17, 2023, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
Jim Sheridan is a significant figure in the international film industry because of his creativity and talent. He has made an influential documentary, ‘Murder at the Cottage’, about the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case.
In the recent Cassandra Voices Podcast, he explained why he believed Ian Bailey is innocent and much maligned.
In a recent blog, I explained why I believe that the thought processes making Jim Sheridan such a gifted filmmaker may be unhelpful when seeking to find Sophie’s murderer. Here are two issues I raised in my blog: Hitchens’s Razor and the Myth of Bailey the Victim.
Christopher Hitchens’s Razor
The brutal murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier is a fact, not a literary exercise nor a dinner party game where people share their theories of the crime. In the Cassandra Voices interview Sheridan spoke about his relationship with Bailey, explaining why Bailey was ‘tortured’ for twenty-seven years, and why he insists Bailey did not murder Sophie. The content was bizarre and told us much about the workings of Sheridan’s thinking, but little about the murder of Sophie.
Topics included a child floating in amniotic fluid, the guilt felt by Jim’s mother over his grandmother’s death, the famine, a landlord during the famine being called Bailey, a tired old concept called tribal memory, scoring 180 in darts, the mis-attribution of a Life of Brian sketch, Michael Collins, and the killing of Irish people in Clonakilty.
I am no legal expert, but am still certain none of this would be evidence introduced by either side in a murder trial for Sophie. It is irrelevant and a complete distraction from the seriousness of the case. One could have as easily brought up astrology, tarot cards, and reading the runes for consideration.
When we apply Christopher Hitchens’s razor to Sheridan’s comments: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” – we see that all those interesting concepts contain no evidence concerning the murder. They can be dismissed. The stream-of-consciousness outpourings of Mr Sheridan are fascinating. We see how different personal and cultural themes may be woven into a beguiling and entertaining narrative. However, finding the murderer of Sophie is about evidence. There can be no room for the evidence-free assertions highlighted by Christopher Hitchens. This will not be the last time Hitchens’s razor will be applied.
Ian Bailey’s many confessions
Sheridan has dismissed each of Bailey’s 10-plus confessions. In the podcast, he focuses on one described by a senior journalist, Helen Callanan. Both she and Bailey have given several statements about a confession to AGS. Mr Sheridan was not present at that meeting. Mr Sheridan’s narrative is that Bailey learned he was being sacked, and he responded by using heavy irony: as he was a master of irony. Sheridan claims that the confession was ironic. He goes on to say when Callanan told her boss, Matt Cooper, about the confession he did not believe her.
First, we are told Mr Bailey had been informed that he was being sacked. The implication is that the sacking was a trigger that provoked Bailey’s comments. This is not supported by evidence. Bailey was a freelancer, working from article to article or project to project. He may not be given further work but he could not be sacked. Furthermore, there is not a single reference to him being sacked in his statements nor those of Helen Callanan. Is the sacking an assertion without evidence or is their evidence that Mr Sheridan could share with us?
Second, Sheridan insisted, “Bailey was English perfection in sarcasm and irony.” That is Jim’s opinion. It is an opinion that fits his Bailey never-confessed narrative. For a teller of tales that will suffice, but we need more than assertions. Is it true? What is noticeable about what Bailey has presented on social media, in written articles, and said in countless interviews, is that he is a man bereft of irony. There is no perfection here. Indeed, with Bailey, there is evidence to the contrary. There is no evidence supporting this assertion. He is dull, crude and infantile. The signed statements by Helen Callanan could not be clearer. She saw no irony in what was said. We know she was present, that Bailey was a liar, and Jim was not there … so who to believe?
Finally, Jim Sheridan tells the podcast listeners that he doubted very much that Matt Cooper, Callanan’s editor, thought that Bailey had admitted his guilt to Callanan. I have never seen a statement from Cooper to that effect. We are not given any information about the alleged discussion between Callanan and Cooper. When Mr Sheridan says he “doubted very much” is that an assertion without evidence, or is there something more substantial?
In The Murder of Sophie: How I Hunted and Haunted the West Cork Killer(2020), Michael Sheridan’s brilliantly detailed book on the case, there is no mention of any sacking nor of Matt Cooper. One can only hope that the source of these later iterations was not the pathological liar, Ian Bailey.
As a story, Jim Sheridan’s narrative is engaging. It is both coherent and plausible. For a consumer of fiction, it works. However, a good story is not grounds to dismiss the observations of a capable journalist. If there is hard evidence to back his narrative, I hope Mr Sheridan will share it; if there is none he ought to declare it.
Elsewhere Sheridan dismisses all the other confessions. The evidence shows there have been more than ten confessions made. From a teenager through to older adults, male and female, people with a range of occupations. The confessions were made with Bailey sometimes drunk, sometimes sober, and in a variety of emotional states. They are made in different ways. They are not all attributable to Bailey’s non-existent irony skills. There is nothing to indicate any of the statements about Bailey confessing were made by dishonest people with a vested interest in Bailey being convicted. However, the tired and emotional Bailey was repeatedly a dishonest man in the statements he made to vindicate himself.
The myth of Bailey the victim
27 years of torture unable to move unable to leave, branded a murderer without charge. Jim Sheridan
We know Bailey was charged and found guilty (in absentia) in France. Jim Sheridan asserts Bailey was tortured for twenty-seven years; that he was an innocent man, badly let down. We are told his life was miserable. All the time it is implied that he was a victim. Poor Ian.
I do not believe for a moment Sheridan would give this foul-mouthed thug a free pass. It is more likely he did not take a close look at the way the man behaved when he was not on ‘best behaviour’ with Jim. I took a look at Bailey in my forthcoming book The Pervert in the Hills. The man was odious. A torturer, not the tortured. He inflicted pain for an exceptionally long time and kvetched when he started to get a little back.
Is anyone feeling Ian’s pain? When you gather evidence on the man the notion of him being a victim is unsustainable. When Bailey is judged on actual long-term actions rather than short-term impressions it is difficult to feel sympathy for him.
Jim Sheridan is in good faith seeking to understand what happened to Sophie. I do not think old historical events, a mix of disparate notions, evidence-free assumptions, or unjustified sympathy for Bailey holds the key to discovering the murderer. Thankfully a well-put-together circumstantial case has already shown us Ian Bailey did it. He was a despicable man. He was a foul, malignant narcissist who, I believe, murdered Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
The Pervert in the Hills: How Ian Bailey, the monster at the heart of the Netflix documentary Murder in West Cork grew to hate me by J P Holzer on sale from April, 2024.
There is a poem by Mary Ruefle called „Provenance“. It ends with with the following words:
„So I have gone up to the little room in my face, I am making something out of a jar of freckles and a jar of glue
I hated childhood I hate adulthood And I love being alive.
This is also what my artist statement closes with, the one I occasionally have to send out to residencies or other art institutions to prove that I am always ready to be my entire weird self and produce something out of nothing (or a jar of freckles and a jar of glue) for a humble chunk of money, or simply a room to live, sing, sketch, write, sew, paint, film, and make noise in.
I don’t like the categorisation of creative work, those restrictive boxes for organic, wild, un-boxable growths. „I make things“, I often say. „You’re a storyteller“, my partner says. „You point at what has always been there, and make me see it for the first time“, my cousin says. „Ha ha“, my brother says.
There isn’t one thing that was here first. I was not making music before I was painting, or painting before I made sculptures. The documentation available to me from my childhood in provincial Austria shows that I made drawings as a baby, and at one point I glued three pieces of paper together and called it „Staubsauger (Vacuum cleaner)“. There is also a cassette tape that features me at kindergarten age, passionately singing a song I had just made up called „Wenn ich alleine bin, bin ich verloren (When I am alone, I am lost)“ about feeling mistreated and very, very sad and I can happily report that nothing has changed. I still do all those things, partly because I must, but mostly because nobody was silly enough to tell me to stop. I am also, of course, still very, very sad.
Creating music and visual art, similar to dancing, aren’t primarily fancy, romantic, dramatic jobs. It is mostly basic human behaviour. I am glad I get to do all of it to this extent.
I don’t think the ways in which I came to make music are particularly interesting. It was just a way of saying something when things needed to be said; a way to prove to my teenage self that I, too, could say those things in that particular way. I can’t play any instrument „properly“, but I put many to good use. My music reading skills are still that of a seven-year-old learning to play the recorder. I don’t know which notes or chords I am playing most of the time, but music has been a solo endeavour for the majority of my life, so I don’t need to communicate my unorthodox ways of producing it to anybody.
I made my first record back in 2005-ish, using a very slow laptop, the free software Audacity, a peanut-sized clip-on microphone, and the audacity to think that this is how you could make an album. I learned how to be my own recording engineer, learned how to mix my songs by knowing no theory but knowing my ears, learned how to turn field recordings into rhythms, learned how to make beats by trial and error, copy and paste, and I obsessively wrote lyrics because that was always the easiest part. I wrote in English because it was fun, it was a game of discovery and growth, and it was the right tool to reach beyond the confinements of home. When I was twelve, in the early days of the internet, I would stay up all night to talk to American teenagers in music-themed chatrooms. It made me feel connected to the world in a way that seemed vital and endlessly exciting at the time. Connecting to my international audience through poetry brings back very similar emotions.
The narrators and characters in my work have a tendency to seem lost, searching, observing, often barely tethered to the earth. I myself have trouble figuring out the boundaries between the self and its surroundings, often losing track of who I am and what I do. My work is strongly influenced by recurring dreams and folklore, images of the subconscious that are found again and again throughout the history of humans explaining themselves. That is how i put myself in context, this is how I find my footing.
Every morning, I wake up raw and shapeless, barely remembering who I am, as if it was all lost in sleep. Creating music and images means re-making myself, establishing my contours, every day anew. The work is what tethers me to the earth; this is gravity.
Between 2006 and 2022, I made six solo albums, three or four EPs, an album with my band Twin Tooth, a few short film soundtracks, a bunch of singles, a hard drive full of unreleased material, and various songs in collaboration with friends, most of them long-distance because I love to make things difficult and expansive for myself.
As I am writing this, I am sitting on a couch at an artist residency inside a former stove factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A fellow resident is frying something in the adjacent kitchen, and a pickup truck down in the parking lot has the bass turned up so high that the walls are shaking. At night, the freight trains blow their horns. I have an old guitar at my disposal, a stack of watercolour paper, and a lot of empty wall space to fill.
Songs will happen here, and if not here, then somewhere else, after. There are four music-related projects I would like to finish and five I would like to start. An album’s worth of lyrics for the next Twin Tooth record need to be written. A solo EP demands polishing. A scrap of found fabric wants to be shaped into a person. Paper is patiently waiting to be sent through a Letterpress. What must be said will be said, if not in sound, then in color, light, paint, fabric.
Jar of freckles and jar of glue, both in my back pocket.
To celebrate International Women’s Week, The New Theatre is presenting ‘Feathers for Rosa’ by Noël O’Callaghan and Douglas Henderson—an unusual tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. Centring on the poem ‘Du liegst | You lie’ by German-Jewish poet Paul Celan, it consists of a thirty-minute performance interspersed by three original songs. There is also an exhibition of paintings, an installation of a basket of white feathers from the Berlin canal swans, and a nine-minute experimental film and music video.
The following dialogue is based on the film script: Speakers are Noël (N) and Douglas (D).
N: I was once chased by an angry swan twice my size…
Years and years of painting swans… this flock lives on the banks of the Berlin canal—the same waterway where the body of Rosa Luxemburg was thrown on January 15th, 1919 and lay for four months undiscovered…or was it?
Did the swans floating above, perhaps the ancestors of this flock, discover it under the ice?
Did the moorhens and ducks spread the news up and down the banks… there’s something in the weeds… something in the weeds… something’s caught.
One day, he brought a poem into the studio…to set to music. It was called ‘Du liegst – You lie’ a poem by Paul Celan… about the murder… and about the body in the canal.
The Flock.
D: I found this poem in an email from my friend Alex. Its vividness and incantational drive seemed to drag me along in its wake. I was a bit surprised, since I associated this German-Jewish poet with poetry of the Holocaust and thought of him as somewhat impenetrable. Had complexity and interpretation veiled an evidently deep political commitment? Could it make a song?
Du liegst im großen gelausche, umbuscht, umflockt
You lie in the great listening, ambushed, flaked round
N. A strange and powerful song emerged and, as we played it night after night, a vision projected itself onto the dark, studio walls… a drowned Luxemburg, disembodied, upside-down, surrounded, Ophelia-like by bushes and waterbirds (umbuscht, umflockt), manifested itself as a sort of stained-glass window… and I made the painting ‘Du liegst’. Was I thinking of Harry Clarke? Yes, I think Rosa should have a stain-glass window. Was I also thinking of Millais’s Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia or of Georg Basiliz’s upside-down portraits?
D: The poem is a retelling of the brutal murder of Rosa Luxemburg and her political ally Karl Liebknecht… at times mimicking the sadistic language of her killers…Rosa’s body thrown into the Landwehr Canal… her political ally, Karl Liebknecht, riddled with bullets in the Tiergarten…
der man ward zum Sieb, die Frau müßte schwimmen, die Sau
the man became a sieve, the woman had to swim, the pig
Sieve – screen grab from film.
N: The poem is also an account of Celan’s last trip to Berlin just before Christmas 1967…the city in a state of political turmoil following the murder by police of the student Benno Ohnesorg during protests against the visit of the Shah of Iran. During his visit, Celan walked the banks of the Spree and Havel rivers and along the Landwehr Canal past the site of Luxemburg’s death. Further along the canal from here you reach the Hercules Bridge, and in a park nearby, there’s a statue of Hercules fighting a boar… a pig.
geh zu den Fleischerhaken, zu den roten Äppelstaken
go to the meat hooks,
to the red apple candlesticks from Sweden
… the Nazi meat-hooks of Plötzensee prison, the Fleischerhaken… the apple candlesticks from Sweden seen by Celan at a Christmas market in Berlin, the Äppelstaken.
Es kommt der Tisch mit den Gaben er biegt um ein Eden
Here comes the gift-laden table, it turns around an Eden
…Hotel Eden, where Luxemburg was held and tortured before her murder.
D: Candles were important for the Roman Saturnalia, the feast of Saturn, the precursor of Christmas. Hercules offered candles to Saturn in place of human sacrifices…honouring Saturn’s altar not by slaughtering a man, but by kindling lights… Sweden – the refuge of Willy Brandt, the architect of détente in Europe, who once said peace isn’t everything, but nothing is possible without it.
N: Weisestraße in the Neukölln district of Berlin is a ten-minute walk from where we’ve both lived for many years. It’s a typical street for this area… many apartment buildings dating from the end of the 1800s… really nothing to distinguish it from other similar streets in the area… nothing that alerts you to the weight of history. It was here at house number 8 that Rosa Luxemburg, together with her political ally Karl Liebknecht, spent some of their last days before their brutal murder… hiding from fascist militias in the apartment of supporters. Here they held political meetings to discuss the failed January uprising, even read bedtime-stories to their hosts’ children, until, fearing discovery, they had to leave…
D: We did some filming there one day in late December. There was a police raid on a nearby café because of an Instagram post supporting left-wing Palestinian resistance. We met some activists from the feminist anti-capitalist Zora collective who had been targeted there. They asked about our project and were delighted to hear that their name would be travelling to Ireland.
N: Banks of feathers like snow (umflockt)… I started collecting them… apropos of nothing, really, other than their beauty… then thoughts of Emmeline Pankhurst intruded. Her hateful White Feather campaign to send men to their deaths in World War 1. To turn a thing of such beauty into shame… it’s evil. Luxemburg was so different. She urged soldiers to lay down their weapons, to desert… and to know their real enemy. She paid for this with her life…
für sich, für keinen, für jeden
for herself, for no one, for everyone
The time has come to reclaim the White feather, to honour the Deserter…
‘I see them walking,
walking back,
back from the front,
The walking wounded,
The walking dead.’
(from Woman of the Rubble’s speech – ‘Feathers for Rosa’ performance).
Der Landwehrkanal wird nicht rauschen Nichts stockt.
The Landwehr Canal won’t rush. Nothing stops.
‘Feathers for Rosa’ is funded by donations through our gofundme campaign. Donors receive original watercolour sketches of swans made on the banks of the Landwehr Canal.
Noah Artowski, by now a six-year veteran of the Israeli Defence Forces, looked out towards the azure, glimmering sea. He imagined it melting like water colour into the blueness of the sky. He stood on the balcony of his aunt Sarah’s apartment in Tel Aviv, where she lived alone with her two dogs. His hands rested on the warm metallic bar as he became trapped in the sea’s embrace. How beautiful the sea, alive in the sunshine, beyond the human ways of things. He knew that it would live on, unaware of death, even to the end.
“Would you like tea or coffee? Or perhaps something stronger?” It was his day off.
“Coffee please.” He said with a smile, and when it arrived he lit a cigarette and took a drink, savouring both flavours simultaneously, stoking the warmth of the morning like bellows on a midnight fire.
“A beautiful day’ he said sitting down on the balcony chair, and his eye caught the sea again.
“Yes.”
“I’ve got something to show you” said Sarah. Her dogs followed her inside and back out onto the balcony where she placed a shoe box on the table.
“I found this box of photographs when we were cleaning out Grandma’s house. Take a look, there are some interesting ones.’ Noah took the lid off the box and gathered the photographs in his hands. The first one was taken in the 1980’s judging by the fashion of the clothes, and was in colour. It showed his mother and father smiling on their honeymoon in Portugal. They looked happy. The next one showed his mother in military fatigues. He went on slowly flicking through the pile with his index finger. He came to an old photograph, black and white and faded. There was an old crease mark where it had once been folded away. He turned it over and saw ‘August 1939’ had been written on the back. He turned it around and stared at it for a while. It was a family portrait. The smartly dressed mother and father sat in chairs and in front of them their three daughters sat on the floor, all of them looking directly into the camera. As was the custom of those days, no one smiled.
“Who are they?”
“They are your Grandmother’s cousins. From Lodz.”
“Where is Lodz?”
“Poland.”
“Did……………………..” He paused. The sea had caught his eye again. Or perhaps it was the blue.
“They are all dead. They were sent to Dachau.”
“Yes, I remember. She told me. I haven’t seen them before. In a photograph I mean.” She thought about saying how sad it was, but the silence did the job for her. He looked intently at the photograph. Without any sense of urgency he studied each one of their faces, one by one. There was a kind of stoicism in their expressions. They had no idea what was coming. Looking at the photograph he didn’t feel the benefit of hindsight, but knowing what became of them, he was able at least to attempt to touch the lives within the picture frame. To connect somehow. He noticed that one of the little girls, the youngest one, was holding a bracelet made of pearls. She was the central point of the portrait. That she was holding the pearls in her hand seemed strange, in such an austere setting. Maybe she had began to play with it and neither the photographer or her parents had noticed. He looked closer and detected a twinkle in the little girls face as if she was indeed about to burst into laughter. He carried on looking at the photograph, particularly at the young girls face and the pearl bracelet that she held, captivated by the image. Then he thought about what became of her and her family. He looked back out to sea. The sun was beginning to set.
KHAN YOUNIS – GAZA – SEPTEMBER 2023
Heba, which means gift, stood up with her doll in her arms and followed her mother into the kitchen. It was the birthday of her older brother and members of her extended family, including her grandmother and her aunt had been invited over that evening to share a meal. When her uncle Meerab arrived he picked Heba up and took her out on to the balcony with her doll still firmly clasped between her arms. The sun was setting in the west and they looked out at the fire dance sea. There was suddenly no need for words.
“It’s like we’re in jail” said Meerab.
“How?” Said Heba.
“There is the sea and we’re not allowed to sail away on it. Can you think of another people who live by the sea and can’t sail?” Her silence was her answer.
“No. That’s alright. There is a lot your generation must learn about. About our people, our history.” Heba looked up at her uncle and then back out to sea. The sun had almost passed over the horizon.
Heba’s mother came out on the balcony to call them in for dinner. There were large bowls of maqlubeh and a plate stacked high with taboon, bottles of soft drinks and jugs of water. The family sat around the table and began to talk happily and freely. When they were together around the table as a family, eating and drinking and talking, they were free.
By the end of the meal however the conversation had taken a serious turn. That almost always happened at their dinner table when politics became involved. Meerab said the politics had been imposed and where politics is imposed, suffering always follows. Meerab had never left Gaza. He was now twenty-three years old. Every day he looked at the sea and wondered what lay beyond and as each year passed into another, Heba wondered the same. She was becoming the same as her uncle because she asked the same questions.
When the quarrel abated Heba’s Grandmother, who had been listening quietly to the whole conversation, began to speak.
“When I was a little girl, I lived in the mountains. We never saw the sea then. It was like it never existed. I was near Heba’s age when I first saw the sea. I remember when the soldiers came and told us to leave.” Suddenly, a distant expression, woven in sorrow, came over her face. Some memory too painful to linger on, entered her inner vision. She carried on speaking to sooth the memory away. “We travelled here to Gaza, my family, your grand-fathers family and many others. Almost our whole village came. I remember seeing the sea for the first time. It was beautiful.” She looked at Heba and remembered being her age. They smiled at each other, but Heba didn’t really know what they were smiling about. She thought it was the sea.
When the meal was done and the plates were being washed Heba’s grandmother called her over and sat her on her lap.
“I have something to give you.” Heba looked up at her grand-mother and smiled. She loved presents but she loved surprises more. She wondered what it could be. The old lady reached into the large side pocket of her dress and produced something in her open palm, showing it straight away to Heba. Heba looked down at the object and then looked up at her grand-mother.
“Here. It’s for you. I had it when I was a little girl and now it is yours. I want you to keep it. Maybe someday when you have a grandchild you can pass it on to them.” Heba looked down. There in her hands was a beautiful white bracelet made of pearls. It glowed and shined with equal beauty. She put it on her wrist and looked at it in admiration.
“Thank-you.” Said Heba. And they held each other for a while.
“There is an answer to all our problems in this part of the world. Sometimes I think no one has thought of it.”
“What is it?” Asked Heba.
“Love.”
OCTOBER 7th 2023 – TEL AVIV
Noah lay on the sofa in his apartment looking through the photographs that his aunt had entrusted to him. He was an early riser but had laid in bed for an extra hour that morning. He enjoyed coming in and out of dreams. They would usually evaporate like morning mist with the dawn alarm. That morning he had written the dream down immediately after he had woken up, slightly disorientated by its vividness. He had walked out of the gates at Dachau with the little girl in the photograph who held the pearled bracelet and as they passed out of the camp he woke up. They were holding hands as they left. Once he had written what he remembered of the dream down, he tried to fall asleep again and re-enter the dream. It didn’t work. He just lay there, staring at the wall.
He placed the photograph of his family, and the girl holding the pearl bracelet, on the floor. He sat up on the sofa and drank from his coffee cup. Then he took the television remote and turned on the television. It was the news. Bewilderment and fear. ‘Israel invaded by Hamas.’ ‘Many killed and captured.’ Noah sat there in his apartment with his mind in many places at once. His mobile phone buzzed and he picked it up off the coffee table. The message was from an old friend and simply read ‘Sons of Satan.’ Each lineament of thought continued on its path to the same conclusion. War.
The more information that filtered through on the news the more tense he became. With the kidnappings the anger turned to fury. Just after noon that day his mobile phone buzzed and he picked it up once again. It was the army. He was to report to duty the following morning.
OCTOBER 7th – KHAN YOUNIS.
Heba was woken by the sound of a barking dog below on the street. It was just after dawn. She got out of bed with her doll in her hand and walked out on to the balcony. There before her lay the great shining sea with all its mystery and secrets, and all its possibility. The sun was rising up over the land, warming the balcony by quick inches. Heba sat there with her doll, listening to the silence.
The morning warmed. Somebody in the kitchen turned the radio on. At first it was just a noise but as the newsreaders voice rasped, the words began to solidify, creating their own gravity, somehow filling the air with weight. The report was clear. Hamas had penetrated the fence border between Gaza and Israel. The death toll was unknown. Heba’s family gathered in the kitchen to listen to the radio reports coming through. A new dread fed them all. It didn’t even need to be spoken. Something terrible was about to be unleashed.
Heba’s mother took her by the hand and led her into her bedroom.
“Pack up your things. We may have to leave soon. She looked up and saw her father at the doorway with a look of worry on his face. She had never seen him scared before. His expression frightened her.
“What’s happening? Are we leaving?” Asked Heba.
“We may have to.” Said her mother.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be alright God willing.” Said her father and he smiled at her. The worry on his face had gone, even if only for a few moments. She smiled back at him. She took out the suitcase from under her bed and began to pack her things as her parents had asked. She left the pearl bracelet on her wrist.
DECEMBER 7th 2023 – KHAN YOUNIS
Noah opened his eyes and then shut them again, wondering where the edge of dreams lay. Then there was shouting. He rubbed his face and stood up. All notion of dreaming vanished as he saw his army fatigues hanging neatly at the end of his bed. He rubbed his face and stood up. He knew exactly where he was and what he was doing. This was the day his platoon was going to enter the city of Khan Younis in the south of Gaza. The north had already been laid waste.
The fear of death was on him. If there is a nature to war it must be that, death, fear and suffering. Except for those in charge. He knew that he was too young to die so well that he had stopped thinking about it. To think about death was to give into it. He sat down on the toilet and released his bowels and then had a quick cold shower. He looked into the mirror and felt ready for the mission. It was time to go.
His platoon moved slowly down the empty Gazan street. It was a waste land. As he looked around, images of Hiroshima came to Noah’s mind. The buildings skeletons, the people gone. It seemed the place was haunted. They walked on, ten feet apart, and came to a small square. This is what they had been trained for all those years. This was when they were told their soldiering would count. They were told it would be of value. Noah’s keen eyes scanned the square, up and down, south, east, north and west. There was no one there after the heavy bombing. The civilians had either left or were dead. The intelligence they had was that there may by some Hamas fighters left, likely in tunnels underground. That was the mission of his platoon, to flush them out and kill them.
Noah’s OC ordered him and three other soldiers to head west along the street that led out of the square for one block and to enter the building on the left side to see what they could find. Once it was secure they were to reconvene immediately at their present position. The soldiers took the order and left in single file moving cautiously along the street ready to fire in an instant. Slowly they went with guns raised, still ten feet apart, alert to the possibility of an ambush at any given moment. They entered the building by forcing a door. When they were inside Noah took the corridor which led to a courtyard at the back. Filled with trepidation he went along, now feeling the sweat on his face. He had to overcome the fear of being killed and of killing. He remembered why he was there. He took off his dark glasses and used the back of his shirt sleeve to dry himself. He couldn’t hear a sound on the bottom floor so he went on down the long passage way until finally he came to the end.
He put out his hand and opened the door. He suspected they were lying in wait for him outside. Vigilance was critical. He stepped out of the open doorway and stood still. The place had been virtually destroyed. His eyes tracked along the courtyard to the other side where a broken wall was still standing. His eyes carried upward where he saw a dead girl hanging from the wire at the top. The force of an exploding bomb had left her there. He stood motionless, his eyes and soul at odds. His eyes and his soul in conflict. His eyes and his soul falling. Tangling in the wire her hair fell backwards to the ground, almost parallel with her right arm. Her doll lay below her. Heba’s eyes were closed. He stood there looking. The colours on her dress becoming more vivid. Becoming brighter. His eyes followed down and there he saw the pearl bracelet on her wrist, undeniable. He remembered his relative, the little Polish girl. He swayed in sickness. The unfading beauty of the pearl bracelet seemed through his eyes to be pulsing with the life of us all. It passed through time, across generations, beyond the fathomless sea. He felt himself falling, falling slowly through the air, falling to the place where there is no light, and the end is only dreamt.
David Langwallner is a barrister working in the U.K.. He has written numerous articles for Cassandra Voices, and was a natural choice to speak to about the Julian Assange case, which shows every sign of drawing towards a dénouement in a London courtroom.
Between Tuesday, February 20 and Wednesday, February 21, a strange scene played out before the High Court. As the judges listened to Assange’s lawyers and to American envoys advance contrasting arguments about the case, outside the chamber protestors demanded freedom and clemency for the Australian journalist. Facing a 175-year custodial sentence in the U.S. in what could be a CMU (a Communications Management Unit), Assange must struggle with the possibility of a future that could mean death – or even worse.
The CMU, as we discuss in conversation with David, represents a carceral system many degrees more cruel than the Belmarsh Prison where he has languished for half a decade.
In places like the Terre Haute, Indiana facility or Colorado’s Supermax, inmates typically enjoy nine hours of visiting time per month, and CMU prisoners are barred ‘from any physical contact with visiting friends and family, including babies, infants, and minor children.’
However, Assange’s lawyers may have a compelling argument to work with in this respect, as Britain, despite Brexit, still adheres to the European Convention on Human Rights. A U.K. Court must still follow judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Assange’s lawyers based their arguments on his current condition, and the probability of torture and death resulting from the extradition.
Over the two days – with their client unable to attend due to physical weakness – Assange’s lawyers pushed back against the U.S. argument that Assange and Wikileaks committed harmful acts of espionage when they published huge tracts of confidential material, as America’s post-9/11 wars were raging across the Middle East.
The Court’s decision on whether to grant a final appeal hearing in this case is expected in the coming weeks. For David Langwallner, while he did entertain a number of options – including one whereby Assange might be publicly condemned but eventually released after informal, behind the scenes diplomacy – Assange’s fate, and the state of the world more broadly, looks increasingly dark.
He argues that a ‘New Dark Age’ may be upon us, whereby authoritarian dictatorships and Western democracies alike are emboldened to fling their truth-telling critics into the oubliette with impunity.
Citing the proposed ‘Hate Speech’ bill in Ireland as an example of creeping authoritarianism in the digital age, he condemned the clear hypocrisy:
We’ve reached a world where a subversive is what you designate to be a subversive… Under the Hate Speech bill in Ireland, which is totally ludicrous in my view, we are going to have the criminalization of offense. As long as you offend them. They can offend you by locking you up, but if you offend the establishment they’ll prosecute you… Also, with the notion of taking rigorous actions against hackers who may not have done anything criminal, it is the slippery slope to ‘pre-crime,’ and guilt by accusation.
The interview began with a question about the prison where Assange is being held – His Majesty’s facilities at Belmarsh, a place with which David Langwallner has an interesting history. It was apt to start by discussing complex questions of fundamental rights and justice systems in democracies, and our ability to trust the behaviour of technocratic leaders in this digital age.
The brutal treatment of an increasingly frail Julian Assange is diminishing any trust in the rule of law, natural justice and freedom of speech.
In a seminal scene at the end of the film Joker (2019) the eponymous character, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is being interviewed by Robert de Niro’s character, the TV talk show host Murray Franklin. The Joker asks: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fucking deserve!” before he shoots Murray Franklin in the head.
My question is this: ‘What do you get when you belittle someone’s work ethic, demean their professionalism, turn it into a tick-box exercise, and laugh at their idealism. “You get a whistleblower.”
After it ended, in May 2023, I received one or two messages from former colleagues who referred to me as “brave” or indeed “very brave”. Honestly, I do not consider myself brave. Pig-headed, stubborn and naively idealistic would be a more accurate assessment; and it’s the ideals that sank me.
Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker.
Origins
This story begins back in 2015 when I accepted a challenge from the daa’s (the commercial semi-state airport company that operates Dublin Airport formerly known as Aer Rianta) then CEO. As an employee of the daa I had been very critical of the behaviour of senior managers, especially the lack of value being accorded to employees. It was during one of these conversations that he challenged me to be part of the solution, rather than continuously carping. He asked me to help reform the organisation’s values.
Having accepted the challenge, I worked with the newly formed values team/committee. A lot of engagement was undertaken to identify what staff valued and were looking for as values in the organisation.
I now suspect it was all done for optics. This is because values only seem important for the daa as long as they do not impact on the bottom line. It is an organisation that seems to be run by accountants, who tend to be fixated on the budget statement at the end of each month. If they did consider values important they would surely have published their last substantive staff survey, conducted with Tower Watson in 2021/2022. That has been buried like it never happened.
I felt that values in the workplace would improve with a more joined-up approach, where people understood how each department worked and that each was reliant on the other.
The daa is a large organisation, reflecting the developing and existing culture of the wider Irish society. What the idealist in me failed to understand was that many people appear content this culture.
There were other impact factors, including the Irish Airlines Superannuation Scheme, long monopolised by Aer Lingus retirees, employees, and executives. I ran for election for one of four places on the Superannuation Committee in October 2008, receiving 1211 votes, 370 short of the last candidate elected, an Aer Lingus Representative.
By this stage the issue of not paying enough into a defined Benefit Scheme had come to a head. This meant that we, as daa employees, like Aer Lingus employees, would become deferred members and enter into separate, defined contribution schemes. A pension product, unlike a defined benefit pension scheme, provides no guarantees.
New entrants into this scheme received (or in some cases had not received) a financial contribution made by the company based on age and role. One such role was being a member of the Airport Fire Service. A medical waiver was required for firemen to benefit from the company’s individual contribution into the new defined contribution scheme.
Having to sign this waiver did not sit well with some of the firemen. A handful refused to sign, and were very poorly treated by daa HR over their principled stance.
Coincidentally, it was around this time that the introduction of the company’s new values initiative was to take place. Two of the values ambassadors were asked to present a short snippet to the fire crew, with the CEO and CFO in attendance. One worked in the daa internal communications team, and I was the other person asked to present.
Sadly, to complicate matters, a senior fire officer rang across on the morning of the presentation to say that the crew were deeply hostile to this presentation and advised that the values ambassadors should not attend.
I was then told that the communications team member would not attend due to this hostility, and was asked, would I? By this stage I had been an Airport Police Fire Officer for about sixteen years and had only recently taken up a full-time role in police training. I understood their anger, but to my mind that pension deal was done, and I was looking towards the future of an organisation aiming to become an aviation security and safety leader. That, at least, was the organisation I envisioned.
So, I went ahead and gave my five-minute presentation. Before I spoke, however, one of the firemen muttered to me that “I would get lackery for this.” I never did, at least to my face anyway.
I bumped into that individual recently, a few months before I was dismissed by the daa, in a coffee shop near Dublin Airport. He had just retired, and not in the manner he had wanted. He looked and sounded broken by the way it had ended. Worst of all, after so many years of spending time with his colleagues, he now had so very few people to talk to.
As part of my values’ journey, I had been asked to attend a company seminar in the Radisson Hotel at Dublin Airport. The then head of airport security and I were interviewed on a stage in front of at least eighty staff, many of them management. I spoke about being ill and conducting a review of myself. I described it as like holding a mirror up to my face and being unhappy with what I saw.
I compared this to the introduction of the organisation’s values assessment – holding up a mirror to the face of the organisation. None of us, I said, could be proud of how the daa had previously behaved, and this was an opportunity to move forward more positively.
Sometime after this I was stopped by a HR manager who told me they loved my speech and analogy about the mirror. They said they had acquired a small mirror and placed at the edge of their desk so that people could see their reflections whenever they were in her office: “to make them look at themselves”, when she was dealing with them.
Image: Daniele Idini.
COVID-19
2020 arrived bringing us COVID-19. Mentally, I was very stretched, having been separated for about a year, back living with my parents, and halfway through my first year studying for a Diploma in Legal Studies in the King’s Inns, which required attendance four evenings per week.
As the country and aviation industry effectively closed down for the first lockdown at the end of March, 2020, I had just managed to get myself through a twenty-four-day course with four other police instructors in Tai Jitsu, conflict management, coaching/teaching, control and restraint and handcuffing techniques.
I had had to book a room in the local airport sports complex – as the daa still has no dedicated facility for many of their aviation training requirements – in order to deliver the course and host the instructor from the UK. On another occasion our room had been double booked and we had to conduct this physical course on half of the usual floor space, as the rest had been set up for a wedding!
When the lockdown led, inevitably, to a voluntary severance scheme, the atmosphere at work darkened. Only months before, staff had voted to reject a management proposal called ‘New Ways of Working’. Many of these conditions were now being foisted on us.
It annoys me that people who want to benefit from a severance scheme get to vote on the terms and conditions of those who wish to remain at work. It was not, however, my fight. I was trying to look beyond COVID-19, having assessed it would take longer than six months.
With that in mind, I asked my brother, a budding artist, to offer an artist’s impression based on what I had told him in a rough sketch. I wrote a one-page business idea, or hook as we call it in training, and argued that now was the time to build for the future of aviation.
I sent these watercolours and the idea to the Chief People Officer in May 2020. The daa head office was based in the Old Central Terminal Building. I left the art work and letter with reception and waited. By this stage, many of the office-based staff had begun to work from home. Understandably, it took him two weeks to get back to me.
He got back to me by email regarding my Aviation Training Centre proposal. I recall he said I had put a lot of thought into the idea and said he had asked one of his team to contact me to discuss it further.
Marqette Food Hall and Bar, Terminal 1, Dublin Airport.
“Oh that”
I never heard back from that team member. A couple of months later, however, I bumped into her while she was queuing for a coffee in Marqette Café in Arrivals in Terminal 1. I said hello and she just about managed to say “Hi” in return. I brought up the idea for a training centre and asked whether she had been asked to speak to me regarding the proposal.
“Oh that” was the response. With that she collected her coffee and walked away. “Oh that”. After all my effort.
By this time I had decided I had had enough, and made a complaint of bullying against the Airport Security Manager. It was based on a number of incidents, which I regarded as an attempt to isolate me as the Police Training Manager.
This complaint was brought to the attention of the daa’s Equality Officer, as my own HR business support felt unable to deal with it. She and the Chief People Officer pushed for an informal meeting to address my complaint after the Chief People Officer had first met with the Airport Security Manager. I agreed. No room was booked, instead a meeting was arranged over a cup of coffee at the AMT Coffee Dock on February 17, 2021. No coffee was bought.
The Airport Security Manager attempted to dissuade me – in what I felt was an intimidating manner – from making the complaint. He stated that he would respond with compliance findings against me. In response, I said I would be continuing to pursue the formal complaint.
I left the table and as I walked away he caught up with me. I felt something pushing into my side, which turned out to be his left elbow. I came to a stop and told him to “get his fucking elbow out of my side”.
I let him pass across to my left and started to walk away. I heard him calling after me “bye Matt, see ya Matt”.
I reported the incident to An Garda Siochana and a file was sent to the DPP. Sadly, I had no witness, and it was not caught on CCTV.
I kept pushing the formal complaint, however, and the company hired an external HR consultant. We agreed terms of reference, one being that the investigator would circulate the completed report back to the Equality Officer, and that a full copy would be circulated to the respondents.
The report confirmed there had been an affront to my dignity at work, although the allegation of bullying was not upheld. It also made three recommendations. However, the first recommendation was redacted by the daa in violation of the terms of reference.
On March 15, 2023, while I was still an employee of the daa, the Chief People Officer sent three daa HR managers into the Workplace Relations Commission to have my referral over the complaint of bullying thrown out on a technicality. The adjudicator did not accept their argument and asked all three what was in the partly redacted report. All three claimed they did not know. The adjudicator requested a two week adjournment, and for the Chief People Officer, the Equality Officer and the Airport Security Manager to appear at the next hearing. That hearing has still not taken place. It has been included in my claim for unfair dismissal and penalisation in the workplace over my Protected Disclosures.
A new date had not been agreed before daa HR seized on my email to the board on April 14 2023, expressing frustration at daa HR’s behaviour, claiming incorrectly that it was a letter of resignation.
My frustration was based on the fact that a potential new employer had sought a reference from the Chief People Officer, which was not forthcoming. What did occur, however, was an attempt to file a disciplinary charge against me.
Protected Disclosure
On June 18, 2022, I wrote a letter which constituted a Protected Disclosure to the Minister for Transport Minister, Eamon Ryan. The primary issue was the security culture fostered by the Airport Security Manager and another senior security manager, which, I contended, was leading to a decline in security training standards.
For twenty years, if a newly hired ASU (Officer with the Airport Search Unit) failed any of the screening exams twice they would not be allowed a third re-sit. Now, however, because of staff shortages, ASU trainees were being put forward – with the Airport Security Manager’s approval – for resits after two fails.
This Protected Disclosure was handed to the Minister in the Dáil Chamber by Deputy Duncan Smith of Labour on the June 29, 2022.
For a long time, I had observed the attitude within the daa deteriorate towards aviation security and safety. In my view, it had become a tick-box exercise, and led to a very toxic workplace.
By this stage, in 2022, I had been with the organisation for twenty-four years, having joined the Airport Police in 1998. To remain working any longer in that environment would have killed me, as I had got nowhere with reforming the values of the organisation.
I was to be left to rot, having been unjustly stripped of the rank of Inspector by another senior security manager. This happened, I was told by someone in the organisation because “I did not manage the people above me”. In other words, I did not tell them what they wanted to hear.
For months I heard nothing from the Minister’s office. Then, on October 6, 2022, I emailed the office directly and received a reply from an official saying that although they did have my name, they had no way of contacting me and had decided the Protected Disclosure did not warrant further investigation.
I challenged this and asked to see the initial review and to be provided with further evidence. I still have not seen that review.
Department of Transport officials informed me on October 19, 2022 that the company secretary of the IAA was the prescribed person under SI 367/2020 who I should be dealing with regarding my Protected Disclosure.
Dublin Airport.
Landside Patrolling Risk
Finally, on January 10, 2023, the Aviation Security Manager with the IAA emailed and we spoke. She and a colleague had been tasked with conducting the initial assessment into my Protected Disclosure. After agreeing terms, I met with them on January 30, 2023, and was interviewed for just over an hour.
At this meeting I also provided and highlighted my concerns regarding the daa’s management of the Airport Security Programme, and how I felt that the failure to risk assess landside areas was a mistake. The landside area of an airport is where non-travelling members of the public have unrestricted access, i.e. before security screening. I provided the IAA with a landside risk assessment that I had provided to police management on November 22, 2022. Although acknowledged, it was ignored by the daa security team.
On Friday, March 24, 2023, the head of policy and compliance for the Airport Police circulated an email to police management and sergeants stating that the IAA had issued an update to the National Risk Assessment for Dublin Airport and Airport Police patrolling, which specifically referred to the landside areas.
I now know, thanks to Senator Tom Clonan, that the IAA commenced their investigation in response to my Protected Disclosure into daa security on March 23, 2023, the day before this email was sent.
Image: Daniele Idini
New Role
As I have said, I planned to move on and had been under consideration for a job in a different organisation since January 2023. This role required an enhanced background security check, which in this State can take over fourteen weeks. And so the wait began.
Senior management seemed to think that COVID-19 would give them the flexibility they were always arguing for when it came to regulation. I recall meeting a senior manager during that period in the Arrival’s Hall of Terminal 1. We were both looking at a very empty Arrivals’ screen, and I brought up the CAR (Commission for Aviation Regulation) thirty-minute queue requirement. I said now would be a good time to look at this – prior to re-opening.
“That’s all gone Matt” was the reply. I asked him did he really think so, and he was adamant that it was gone. It hadn’t gone away, aviation safety and security regulatory requirements remained consistent, but the daa had simply stuck its head in the sand.
I should add that I posted a number of thought-provoking pieces on the daa’s company social network, Yammer. One, on May 1, 2022, about leadership, elicited a query from the then CEO. I posted in exasperation at how I had been asked to step up to the mark on values, but had received no support; and another about how, in my view, the organisation had become so very fake, with employees viewed as the problem by an elitist management team.
My last post was in response to the publication of an official report into the culture of the Irish Army. I posted it on Yammer on March 29: ‘Truly dreadful report published today regarding the degrading behaviour of Irish army officers. Thankfully we don’t have that culture or any of those traits in the daa.’ It included a hand on chin emoji, confused or pensive emoji, depending on how you interpret it.
At around 9:30am, on April 12, I received a phone call from my former chief. He requested that I meet him in his office at 10:15am, and strongly advised I bring a work colleague or union official along with me.
I asked what it was about, and he said my Yammer post of March 29. This was the morning that US President Joe Biden was arriving at Dublin Airport. I thought he would have better things to do and responded that it was very short notice; he replied: “I just need to get this done today.”
As a friend put it: “someone else was blowing up his tyres.” I ended the conversation and emailed back, saying that it was too short notice as I could get no one suitable to attend with me. He rang back at 10:30 and apologised for any confusion, saying that it was not necessary for me to bring someone along, and that he only needed to speak with me for a minute. I asked then whether it was an informal chat. He would not admit that but insisted it would only take a minute.
I felt I had done nothing wrong and called to his office. When I arrived he informed me that he was referring to my Yammer post of March 29 to HR. I asked why. He informed me that “it was offensive.” I asked, “to whom?” He informed me after a pause that he found it offensive. I said “you’re the manager, why don’t you deal with it.’
He refused, saying it was going to HR. I replied, “well that is disappointing,” to which he relied “well people can be disappointed.”
About twenty minutes later my prospective new employer emailed to say I had just cleared the enhanced background security check, and requested permission to contact the daa for a reference. Happy about this, I replied I would do so, giving them the Chief Police Officer’s contact details. I thought I was days away from securing the new position.
The next day, the Head of Security HR, emailed to inform me that I was being brought before an investigative disciplinary meeting regarding my Yammer post. The post about the culture in the Army report must have really hit a nerve with daa senior management. Perhaps it was because the Airport Security Manager was a former Irish Army Officer?
The following day, Friday, April 14, I hit back. I emailed the board of the daa, stating that after twenty-four years I intended to move on, but could not do so without a reference, which HR had not provided.
I also stated that I was the one who had made the Protected Disclosure to the Minister, and that I had also been assaulted in the workplace by the Airport Security Manager. I further stated that in my view the daa HR team were untrustworthy and had acted maliciously. I also offered an exit interview as I wished to offer further insights into the daa.
Before emailing the board, I read the company’s exit policy. It states very clearly that an employee resigns to his or her line manager, or HR business support, and is given a notice period based on their employment contract. I had specifically excluded HR or any local management from my email to the board on April 14.
On Monday morning, April 17, 2023 my line manager arrived at my Office. “I hear you’re leaving,” he said. I asked him where he had heard that. “HR told me,” he replied. I asked him who told them. He replied that he did not know. I then held up a copy of the exit policy that I had printed off and said, “someone has jumped the gun here because I have not resigned, my emails to the board specifically excluded you and HR.”
By then, HR had still not provided a reference. From April 12, until May 12 when I received an email from the Chief People Officer instructing me not to report for duty the following Monday, I, along with the SIPTU Sectorial Organiser, had repeatedly emailed to say I had not formally resigned.
It was the company secretary who had taken my email from the daa board and provided it directly to HR. She informed me herself in an email.
It is important to note that in or around October 2022, the company secretary had been handed a copy of the Protected Disclosure, my anonymity removed, by a worker-director and was directly involved with me on another internal Protected Disclosure which she was overseeing.
Since 2019 I have been a student of law at the Honourable Society of Kings Inns. I am in my final year as a candidate for the barrister-at-law degree. It is both an education and a professional qualification. The majority of tutorials take place in the Philpott-Curran Room located at the top of their building on Henrietta Street. John Philpott Curran (1750-1817) was a lawyer, orator and stateman who defended Irish liberties. He also defended United Irishmen, including Wolf Tone.
As I sit and write, a portrait of Wolf Tone, painted by my mother back in 1991 taken from a secondary school history book hangs on the wall behind me. Life is a long and winding road and if you follow your heart you find steppingstones that put you on the right path. There are many famous sayings attributed to John Philpot Curran, one being: ‘The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.’
I wonder whether it falls to whistleblowers in modern Irish society to maintain that eternal vigilance – crucial to preserving liberty and democracy.
Fact-checking is also surely part of that role. On July 27, 2023, the Irish Times published an article quoting daa sources to the effect that they had been found innocent of any wrongdoing by the IAA, and its subsequent investigation in response to the Protected Disclosure.
This is inaccurate as the IAA amended the National Risk Assessment, in response to issues I raised in my Protected Disclosure, provided to the IAA on January 30, 2023 the day after they commenced their investigation. That issue is now the subject of another Protected Disclosure, one involving the Dáil Transport Committee and the IAA themselves.
The second, partial at least, inaccuracy in that article is the claim that the whistleblower was unhappy over a pay claim. It does not provide context to this. I made the Protected Disclosure on June 22, 2022, and was in receipt of my first negative pay review in twenty-four years on July 26, 2022.
Sadly, most Irish media outlets seem to have no interest in whistleblowers’ accounts. Perhaps they are the victims of bullying by vested interests themselves?
My formative years were spent growing up on a pretty amazing cul-de-sac called Verbena Grove in the north Dublin suburb of Bayside, a 1960s/1970s sprawl of low-rise semis that borders the coast road between the city centre and Howth Head. My Dad, Mick O’Brien was a schoolteacher and is one of Ireland’s leading uilleann pipers. My Mam, Fidelma is a music teacher who comes from a large family of Irish dancers and musicians. Both grandfathers were musicians, My grandad Dinny O’ Brien had a huge influence on us growing up. All of my aunties, uncles and cousins play. Music was water and air to my family. I had it on both sides, there was no escape.
So it started right there in Bayside. Once the parents on the road realised that Mam was a music teacher they came knocking on the door for music lessons. My first memories bring me back to the front room of our house with the children of Verbena Grove sitting around the table with tin whistles, I was often sitting on the table as a baby, watching, listening. Those children were the ones I looked up to, particularly the Peat family across the road who treated me like family from day one. So when Joanne Peat started playing the violin – so did I. I was two years old when I started violin lessons. The rest as they say was history.
Growing up in Dublin, I was very fortunate with the teachers that were available to my siblings and I. We all started on the violin in the Young European School of Music with Maria Keleman and Ronald Masin, to whom I owe my early years of practice and dedication to the violin. Then I was fortunate to study with Maeve Broderick in RIAM, Dublin before finding myself in Nantes, France under the watchful eyes and ears of Constantin Serban and eventually to Leipzig, Germany where I had my forever teacher, Mariana Sirbu. An incredible person, musician and friend. She took care of every student as a person as well as the music. But she was also very tough. She’d make me sweat. I really respected that. I’m not sure anyone had ever understood me as well as she did and I was so fortunate to have her in my life.
Throughout those years of study and practice I was working constantly, a musical gun for hire if you will. There are few gigs I did not do. From the West End to classical recitals and concerti, Bach to Tommie Potts, contemporary music with Crash Ensemble to performances with Baroque ensembles on period instruments, jazz improvisation and jamming in studios with singers and actors. Looking back it has shaped who I am in many ways, but I often wonder what life would have been like if I had chosen one path and dedicated my life to one musical genre.
When I think of those years I have a feeling of imposter syndrome. To exist in both and classical and traditional world musically was difficult to get my head around. Not only from a playing point of view but from a personal point of view. Who was I? And what was I trying to say with my music? Luckily I kept myself so busy I never had time to really dwell on those questions or answers! Then two things happened. A cervical cancer diagnosis put a stop to my worldwide gallivanting. Life got put on hold. Not a month after the final surgery this virus shut down theatres and concert venues all around the world. Now I had time on my hands. Lots of time and nowhere to go.
Fast forward to 2021. Lockdown was still in effect but Other Voices Cardigan were having their festival online and I got asked to play. It was a solo gig at first until the wonderful Philip King called me up and asked would it be possible to collaborate with the Welsh harpist Catrin Finch. “Catrin who?’ I asked. “Google her” said Philip “and call me back”. It was a very quick Google search and an even speedier reply when I called Philip back and said “absolutely 100 percent yes”.
Catrin and I met up to rehearse in Cardiff – no mean feat in lockdown. Test, letters and permission from the BBC just to play a few tunes. It was a hit. Having grown up playing music with my immediate family I knew what the feeling was to have an instant rapport with someone. It’s very rare and something I cherish anywhere that I find it. It all started with Bach, a composer close to both of our hearts. From there we just let the music take us where we wanted it to go and started composing together. We heard things similarly. We speak the same language, but we’re also not afraid to push each other. And I’ve never met anybody I’ve had that instant connection with who was not related to me or a musical friend from childhood. It was really extraordinary. From there the project has turned into our debut album “Double You”. A record I am very proud of as it combines all the elements of our musical lives and meanderings. The different musical accents we have developed over the years.
That is something that I feel explains what I do in music. Accents. My Dublin accent my Irish, my French accent, my German accent. All part of my musical DNA and all unique. In music I knew I could never play one style over the other. I never felt I really had the opportunity to dedicate myself solely to the classical thing because there was always the responsibility to continue with the traditional music, I knew I could never turn my back on what my family gave me as a gift. And that brings us to the here and now. A real melting pot of music and ideas.
The future for me is as winding a road as ever. The next projects include a book on the fiddle player Tommie Potts who was a shining light for me growing up and someone whose recordings taught me a lot and allowed me a freedom I would not otherwise have known existed. A new album with the Goodman Trio (that being Dad and Emer Mayock) as we continue our excavation of the incredible manuscripts. There is an album to be released in the near future with my avant garde string quintet Wooden Elephant and the incredible spoken work artist Moor Mother, a new duo with viola da gamba virtuoso Liam Byrne; a new recording with my childhood friends Eoghan Ó Ceannabháín and Caoimhín Ó Fearghail; as well as a few solo recordings featuring Enescu, Locatelli, Ysaye and some Potts inspired traditional tunes.
It is definitely not an easy task being so in love with classical and traditional music and trying to respect them in their truest form also blending them in live performance to bring the music, regardless of genre to a new audience. I was fortunate enough to perform Shostakovich’s first Violin Concerto in Germany recently and my encore was Enescu into the Maids of Mitchelstown. A few years ago, I would never have had the courage to step up and be so musically blasphemous, but music is music, people are people and if you can convince the audience that what you are playing is informed, authentic and true to who you are as an artist, a musician and as a human – they don’t throw tomatoes, they applaud.
I think the future is bright for music, collaboration and open-mindedness, but, if anything, it takes twice the amount of work and practice, so on that note – I can hear my metronome calling!
