Cassandra Voices

Category: Culture

  • Poetry: Kevin Higgins

    Memorial to Myself

    I have been away toasting tables lined
    with the pricier variety of imbecile;
    humouring old buzzards in Aran sweaters
    and cranky caps
    until their sweaters collapsed
    threadbare off their bastard backs.
    I have cut ribbons for guys
    floating balloons across the town square
    and calling it dance.
    I have eaten with people of enormous importance
    and forgotten most of their names.

    I did not shrivel like the rest of them.
    Though they thought they had me
    I was not bought and sold at the market stall
    where you can get (third hand)
    Fianna Fail senators cheaper
    than Mayo flags two weeks after
    an All Ireland defeat.

    I am again what I was before
    and secretly always was
    though I sometimes had to hide it.
    I did not kill the dream I dreamt with those others
    not all of whom made it this far.
    Tonight I consult their ghosts.

    Feature Image: Higgins and Ivana Bacik campaigning during the 2011 presidential race.

  • Musician of the Month: Niamh McKinney

    For a lot of my life I felt a fervent need to be doing something creative but I didn’t know what. Eventually I started to feel the unsated creative urge turn to intense frustration within me; a physical tension through my body, like important growth held back or suspended indefinitely. I pictured bunched vines in my arms, straining to be freed and climb. I knew I needed a creative outlet, but I didn’t know what it should be. I quashed these intense feelings, over and over, trying to reason them out of existence.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNcw0ZkADKY

    A music-lover since I was tiny (as a small child I heard a lot of traditional Irish music; as a teen I loved The Cranberries, Alanis Morrissette, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Metallica, Sinead O’Connor, Leonard Cohen, Nirvana, a little Placebo, Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chilli Peppers to name a few
 then Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention, Richard and Linda Thompson, Jefferson Airplane in my late teens/early twenties), I actually went through a long period in my early twenties of denying myself the pleasure of listening to my favourite songwriters.

    It had actually become painful for me: Listening to my favourite songs was never enough – I felt I should be writing songs. It was a nagging, constant voice chanting in my ear. However, for years I stifled that urge, I told myself people who don’t play an instrument can’t write songs. I kept telling myself I didn’t need to have a creative outlet, it wasn’t as though anyone else needed it to happen from me: there are plenty of songwriters out there! But it was a need, not merely a desire.

    A ferocious hunger was building in me and I felt utterly helpless in the face of it. I convinced myself I was unable to write a song. Isn’t it strange how boxed-in our ideas can be? How stifled and thwarted we can become because of them. I gave up on listening to music, it was too painful, and I was busy in life anyway, so there were a million distractions…

    https://soundcloud.com/niamhmckinney/the-price-new-mix?si=4cdfd3f26bef4171803e71ea2e647cf8&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

    One day, however, my husband (a singer and guitarist) and I decided to record “Ain’t Misbehavin’” for a laugh on his Mac: He would put down the guitar and main vocal and I’d add harmonies. After we recorded the song – amazed by the possibilities that recording with the Mac offered – I asked my husband to show me how to layer tracks and then he left me alone for a while to play around with it.

    I grabbed a notebook of poetry (I’ve written since I was a small child) and started singing words into the mic. Entire songs came out of me, already fully formed. I was astounded and elated: I put my voice to the air as though freeing a bird long-trapped and the lines of words came out as songs, as though they’d been stored inside me just waiting to be sung. No thought or effort was needed. The question as to whether they were “good” or not didn’t actually occur to me at all. The creative frustration I had been feeling for years was finally being released.

    I was euphoric. I hardly left the bedroom for three days. I wrote at least twelve songs within those three days, each one a fully-formed melody and full set of lyrics: verses, choruses, bridges – everything flowing out effortlessly.

    I felt like I was wholly myself – truly – for the first time in my life. I didn’t need anything else to come from it. Having the songs written was enough. My soul had the avenue of expression it had been hankering for – making me absolutely desperate – for years. A month after my first bout of songwriting, the third song I wrote – “Down Near the Sea” – won a thousand euros in the Allingham Festival Songwriting competition. It was a very welcome validation.

     

    Despite the fact that my husband is a musician, it took a couple of years before he began writing accompaniments for my songs, all of which I wrote and recorded a capella – often recording them as I wrote them – with layered harmonies. He brought the songs to completion. He is highly intuitive and stays utterly true to the meanings and feelings of the songs. He also has an unbelievable ability to surprise me and craft unexpected accompaniments for certain of my songs. It is endlessly satisfying, having this creative relationship as well as our marriage now.

    The two of us derive enormous pleasure from it. He has said he loves being pushed creatively by certain of my songs to challenge himself and get the accompaniment to where he wants it.  I know next to nothing about music – keys, chords, etc – so the work of creating accompaniment is down to Steve. However, I sometimes write a line of melody for the guitar to play here and there, or request a certain sound or feel here, a certain atmosphere there, and we have developed an intuitive creative rapport between us.

    Niamh and Stephen McKinney.

    I write alone and in dribs and drabs: a little ribbon of melody floating to me while I unpack the dishwasher; a snippet of a lyric coming to me while I’m out running. When I feel I have the song finished or near it, I sing it for Steve and he begins to write an accompaniment for it.

    Songwriting is a gift: A gift to a soul that endlessly craves to express itself, to express the way it experiences itself, and to channel pain and sorrow – as well as joy – in a way that no other art form allows.  I am blessed to be married to a gifted musician who creates the accompaniments, the structures for my songs to be held in and elevated upon.

    There is something ethereal and mysterious about how a melody visits you, or descends to you, and entices your voice to sing it. So deliciously mysterious; the compulsion to join voice to melody, lyric to line, in order to allow the soul a kind of freedom it can access in no other way. I have been singing since I was a baby.

    Melody comes to me at odd moments, or mundane moments. I might be thinking about something else entirely and suddenly notice I am humming a tune I quite enjoy and I’ll record it into my phone. A particular lyric will ‘ask’ for a particular series of notes; the notes come and lend themselves to the words, and suddenly the marriage of words to melody have completed the expression of the feeling; they encapsulate that extremely personal experience or reflection. When it happens I experience a unique high. I consider myself lucky, to have stumbled upon relief, release: A gift.

    Niamh and Stephen McKinney Bandcamp

  • Poetry: Peter O’Neill

    Irish Rail

    Dublin, that old whore, with her piss -stained pavements
    Abruptly transforms into a woman of a certain station.
    Such are the, at once, brutal and subtle shifts where
    In an instant, Hell aligns in an altogether strict

    Congruence
 Like when you climb aboard
    The final commuter train of the week on a Friday
    Evening on Platform One at Pearse Station.
    And, as the train finally pulls out, leaving

    Behind her the contents of a working week,
    Passing images are reflected back to you
    Through the compartment windows, revealing

    Dune and marram at Portmarnock, to a passing
    Lagoon at Malahide, and then the panoply of imagery
    Miraculously washes away all of the whoredom from your mind.

     

    The Great Burnishment

    Your Pirelli calendar moment must last, at least, twenty score years;
    Nobody makes this very important point entirely clear.
    So, try to remember, while cavorting in the Sun,
    That the memories must endure, and for everyone!

    Call it, if you will, the great Burnishment.
    When like two figures from a fabled myth or play,
    You roam the most remote shores and the very
    Earth appears made for you both alone.

    It is the clichĂ© – you look on her then and on those mythic shores –
    With the aroma of wild rosemary, myrtle and Goat;
    Desire bears you both ever onward with its emblazoned sail.

    Fast forward two decades now and she stands before you in your kitchen,
    And the initial violence of the sun from that first day,
    Tell me, do you still feel its impact burning your skin?

     

    The Flies 

    The two house- flies, Beckett and Joyce, buzz about you
    And the TV screen. There they land, buzz again
    Before flying off to Memphis copulating
    And multiplying on the wing. As a sign of virility,

    The Egyptians displayed them on their amulets.
    That great race, unlike our own, had a great respect for insects!
    Even the Greeks showed a similar respect,
    When having a BBQ they offered a sacrifice to Shoo Fly Zeus.

    The crabby meat men, in this way, could eat their own
    Undisturbed by patrolling swarms and Oxen that had fallen
    Were replaced by Lotus Eater, and burning eucalyptus in the Sun.

    Now, you look at the books of both these modern sages
    That you have been reading for an eternity,
    And still you hear the flies buzzing across the pages!

     

    The Vico Road

    From the vantage point of Strawberry Hill,
    A Victorian Villa recently selling for a cool 5 million,
    A place more evocative of Raymond Chandler
    Than anything remotely Irish. I am reminded,

    Again, of the Neapolitan philosopher who
    Peopled his New Science with giants. In fact,
    While lunching there on one of the picnic tables,
    I had a slightly hallucinatory vision of Gulliver

    Striding in 18th century breeches, and croppy hair
    Over the Sugar- Loaf Mountain, while
    The Lilliputians below discussed the ongoing

    Business in the property sector: vulture funds
    And NAMA; hedge funds in Texas,
    Where the multi-headed Cereberus roars.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poetry: Haley Hodges

    Faking It

    When Cleopatra rolled
    Out of the rug, she thought:

    Don’t worry! Even if
    I do not enjoy your performance,
    You will enjoy mine—a lot.

    I’d like to credit myself
    As an actress, but the truth
    About men is: I’ve yet
    To meet one unwilling
    To believe he is a singularly
    Exceptional lover—yeah, baby.

    I am your captain aboard the Beguile,
    Cruising down that long denial
    With no wish to make things
    Worse by undeceiving
    You—mm, hail Caesar—
    I offer half-lidded eyes and
    All the right sounds at all
    The right times and rely
    On the fact that truly
    What you pay close attention to
    (Unduly) is yourself. You’re watching
    Me, but it’s astounding—genuinely—
    What you won’t see, though you should—
    There, right there, that’s good.

    Charming, cunning queen, lay the tracks,
    Set the stage and land the scene. He’ll believe
    Because he wants to—oh, I want you—
    And yet you’ll wish that you’d stayed home—
    It wasn’t worth the trip to Rome.

  • Musician of the Month: John Buckley McQuaid

    THIS IS WHERE I KEEP MY DREAMS

    I was born and raised in Dublin, in a house with a piano and a garden. At the bottom of the garden, there were two beautiful chestnut trees, one taller than the other. It was here that I went when I needed to be alone. I always observed the same ritual. I would first climb the smaller of the trees and then the taller. The taller was enormously high. I didn’t dare climb the whole way to the top because the branches didn’t look strong enough to bear my weight.

    One day, my curiosity got the better of me and I gathered my courage and climbed to where I’d never climbed before. Sneakers green with chestnut bark and young heart thudding in my elated chest, I clung to the thin, uppermost branches and looked out over the world. A neighbour’s dog danced along the top of the wall between our gardens. I could see the church where I attended Sunday Mass, the school where I lived in daily fear of not being good enough and the shop where I bought acid drops, broken biscuits and, as a teenager, illegal Black Russian cigarettes.

    Years later, my father complained about the millions of leaves that the trees shed every autumn, which took him days and days to clear away.

    If you promise not to tell anybody, I’ll let you in on a secret. There is a garden at the bottom of which, two chestnut trees stand, magnificently tall and green with leaves. There is a place at the top of the larger tree where the branches look too thin to bear the weight of a curious child; from where the eye can see a church, a school, a shop and a dog that dances along the top of a wall. A place where a child went when he needed to be alone and where one day, his curiosity got the better of his fear and he climbed to where he’d never climbed before.

    This is where I keep my dreams.

    All children are born creative. This creativity can either be encouraged or suppressed. I was not allowed to paint as a child so I learned to paint with words.

    There are basically two kinds of people in the world. Those who are up to their ears in emotional issues, and do their best to get out of them. And those who are up to their ears in emotional issues, and do their best to stay in them.

    We are all here to learn.

    HUMOUR AND ART

    Humour is a wonderful way to communicate – it disarms and enables us to say many things that are otherwise unsayable or unacceptable to the listener.

    Isn’t life wonderful, ain’t it a thrill?
    Drinks on the table, chops on the grill
    And if you’re not able, we’ll give you a pill
    If life doesn’t get you, then happiness will.

    We, as a nation, have grown up in the shadow of the Confessional, where all our sins have been forgiven on a regular basis, which inspired the following lines:

    CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC KID

    I used to be a Catholic
    Magnificently guilty
    The sex was good from Hollywood
    To fabulously filthy

    Forgive me Lord for I have sinned
    I promise not to sin again
    Unless of course I get the chance
    I beg forgiveness in advance

    Mea culpa, mea culpa
    Mea maxima culpa

    The main lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Art is not a luxury but a necessity. The artist is the alchemist of our times, who turns the garbage of emotional issues into the gold of creation, reflecting the world’s absurdities. Crises are gifts that tell us who we are.

    Once I showed someone a place where I wrote every day. They remarked that the view was not very exciting, to which I replied: “I’m not looking out, I’m looking in.”

    “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ― Cesar A. Cruz

    Convenience is the byword and the curse of modern society.

    MAKING AN IRISH ALBUM

    Last year I released an album of original songs about Ireland, “This Is Where I Keep My Dreams”  https://johnbuckleymcquaid.lnk.to/ThisIsWhereIKeepMyDreams

    The songs were written over a period of 34 years. Not wishing to be pigeon-holed as a certain kind of performer, I waited until last year to record and release the album. The title song, the text of which opens this article, references growing up in the south Dublin suburb of Stillorgan.  The song “Prodigal Kiss” imagines Oisín Mac Cumhaill returning to the Ireland of today and taking the Luas. What might he have made of the state of Ireland today? The chorus poses the question: How did we get from the passion and ideals of 1916 to the prevalent malaise of 2022?

    And you can be sure that we’ll never forget
    The culture of vultures and dealers in debt
    The struggles and Troubles, the gold, white and green
    So much for our beautiful Nineteen-sixteen.

    The album is compassionately critical of society – especially in ‘Girls Who Lived In Hell’, a song  inspired by and dedicated to the girls who endured the Hell of the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes. The last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996.

    Our country has been delivered into the hands of rogues and scoundrels, Vulture Funds, Rotating Taoiseachs and Landlord TDs, who choose to serve themselves, rather than those they are chosen by and paid to serve. Let there be a separation of Church and State. Let the Church and State pay full redress to all victims and survivors of clerical and governmental abuse. Let the churches pay property tax. Let us pass a law prohibiting TDs from being landlords and/or property speculators. Let us build a society based on compassion, justice and accountability. Let us rise up and take back what is rightfully ours at the next election. Let us stand firm in hope.

    We have so much compassion for the downtrodden of other nations, but very little when it comes to ourselves.

    HOMELESS HOTELS

    I’ll tell you a tale of the Homeless Hotels
    Those chosen to serve, have us under their spells
    We live on the streets and we scrounge for a crust
    And curse the hyenas betraying our trust

    They say that there isn’t, we know that there is
    We’re hungry and fearful and God help the kids
    They’re lost and they’re lonely and strung out on drugs
    They turn into monsters that nobody hugs

    Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
    Some get cake and some get crumb
    Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
    What on earth have we become?

    The merciless clergy abused and denied
    For ages the blameless that they crucified
    They buried them namelessly under the sod
    And offered novenas in praise of their God

    They’re burning down churches on faraway land
    We may not agree but we do understand
    We’re drinking and thinking and feeling the shame
    We don’t have the strength to be doing the same

    Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
    Some get cake and some get crumb
    Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
    What on earth have we become?

    Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
    Trotters trotting to the trough
    Ireland, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
    Can’t you see? We’ve had enough!

    All lyrics by John Buckley McQuaid

    LINKS:

    VALENTINE’S DAYS – An e-book in four parts, consisting of 29 songs and 29 videos. A love story, based on actual events, which takes place in Paris, Madrid, Berlin and Aarhus):

    E-books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/valentines-days-part-1-paris/id1191539417

    THIS IS WHERE I KEEP MY DREAMS:

    GIRLS WHO LIVED IN HELL:

    PRODIGAL KISS:

    HOMELESS HOTELS:

  • Poetry: Edward Clarke

    At Rudy’s Bar, Alassio
    (After Thomas Hardy)

    –                       O how could I order that tuna and chips,
    –                       And sip my beer and gaze at yachts and cruise ships
    Beyond the tops of changing booths and beach umbrella tips;

    –                       And glimpse and catch the sea’s soughing of old truths
    –                       Through exhaled smoke of bronze Italian youths
    And cries of a fat child a made-up plastic granny soothes;

    –                       And not think of a Romantic poet’s pyre,
    –                       Or Claude’s Seaport, which Turner set on fire,
    Or brine-drenched heroes Neptune saved from Aeolus and Juno’s ire.

    –                       But I confess it took an old tourist’s poem,
    –                       And my desire to make his tercets my own,
    For me to see this sea transcending our own and Aeneas’ Rome.

    –                       When we were on our way down here through Nice
    –                       We saw b-boys do flares, headspins, then freeze.
    On Friday nights the promenade is checked by Finance Police.

    –                       But all the while, at the sandy edge of sight,
    –                       On feathery legs of old, gods roll from the night,
    And we would sense them could we still perform the proper rite.

    Feature Image created by Daniele Idini.

  • The Barrington Disconnect

    Winifred Barrington, only daughter of Sir Charles Barrington, led a charmed life – far removed from the political and economic struggles of the general population in the 1920s.

    The Barrington family, who lived in what was then known as Glenstal Castle, were landed gentry and enjoyed the associated trappings. However, they were well respected as decent landlords, good employers and were not blind to the needs of the community.  

    For example, they founded Barrington’s Hospital in Limerick City – with the proviso that it be situated in the working area of the community.

    The inscription on the foundation plaque reads: This hospital was founded and erected by Joseph Barrington and his sons, Matthew, Daniel, Croker and Samuel, for the relief of the poor of their native city A.D. 1829.

    They funded many other community projects, Church of Ireland and Catholic, and in a noble gesture, supplied the site and the building stone for the erection of a new Catholic Church in the nearby village of Murroe.

    On a May afternoon in 1921, Winifred, or Winnie as she was known locally, saddled her favourite white pony and rode across the Limerick border to Newport in Co. Tipperary – accompanied, on bicycle, by Miss Coverdale – who was a house guest at Glenstal.

    On arrival in Newport, Winnie and Miss Coverdale parked their respective modes of transport and climbed aboard a military vehicle for the final leg of their fishing trip to the Mulcair River at Cimalta House, near Killascully – a few miles from Newport. They were joined in the vehicle by Major Gabbett, who was a friend of the Barrington family, Lieutenant Trengrouse and District Inspector Harry Biggs.

    Winifred (Winnie) Barrington.

    D.I. Biggs, who was stationed in Newport, was ruthless in the pursuit of his duties and employed some bizarre tactics in hunting down the Volunteers. On one occasion, after morning Mass in the village of Silvermines, he rounded up the congregation and insisted they sing ‘God Save the King’ while shots were fired over their heads. As a result of all this, he was a marked man and a prime target for the Volunteers.

    Following the fishing, and after some tea and pleasantries, the party decided to make their way back to Newport. However, their journey came to a sudden and sad finale when their vehicle was ambushed at Coolboreen. When the dust settled and the firing ceased, D.I. Biggs lay dead on the road and Winnie Barrington, who had been a front seat passenger, lay fatally wounded in the ditch.

    There were few tears shed for D.I. Biggs, but there was an enormous outpouring of grief for Winnie. Her warmth and friendliness had endeared her to the local community, and she was not averse to dancing at the crossroads in Abington.

    Her body was laid out in the castle, surrounded by flowers of the fairest and she was buried in the Church of Ireland Cemetery, Abington on Wednesday, May 16, 1921. The inscription on her headstone reads:  “Here lies all that could die of Winifred Frances Barrington, loved and only daughter of Sir Charles Barrington.”

    The tragedy cast an air of sadness over the village of Murroe. Every door remained closed with the blinds firmly shut. The bells of the Catholic Church tolled mournfully until the funeral procession passed out of sight.

    My maternal grandmother would probably have tolled the bells for Winnie’s funeral as she was clerk of the Catholic Church in Murroe – a task that would later pass to my mother. My paternal grandfather and granduncles were members of the North Tipperary IRA unit. To date, I’ve been unable to ascertain if any of them were involved in the ambush.

    The IRA Volunteers in North Tipperary regretted the tragic event, and the condolences of the ambush party were accepted, with quiet dignity, by Winnie’s parents.

    After the truce, the parish priest of Murroe refused to re-inter the bodies of two volunteers who had been killed in action and had been interred elsewhere. On hearing of the impasse, Sir Charles Barrington offered his own grave for the burial, at which point, the priest relented, and the request was granted. When the graves were opened in the church grounds they were decorated with mosses and flowers provided by the gardeners of Glenstal – on the instructions of Sir Charles.

    In 1925, he offered Glenstal Castle to the Irish Free State as an official residence for any future head of state. He was finally saying good-bye to Ireland and his splendid castle. The proposal was given serious consideration, but the Viceregal lodge at Phoenix Park was chosen instead. The Benedictine order of monks later acquired the castle – where it still remains in their good care and is now known as Glenstal Abbey.

  • Girl Without Mercy

    My father was a French lumberjack. That’s just a joke. People don’t always know I’m joking. Especially men. They laugh when I’m being serious, then nod or look blank when, well… guess I’m not too good at telling jokes. Now, I know how to act funny. On camera, I mean. In character. From the inside out. If that’s funny, then okay. Wish I could be funny in real life. Witty! I want to be thought witty, but most men look more like they’re waiting for me to get my tits out.

    There I go again, sorry. I’ll be good. Doris Day good. Promise we’ll stick to words you’re allowed to print. What was it you asked me?

    Right
 Dad. My father could’ve been anyone, anybody in the whole wide world. When I found out Sylvie is French for of the forest, I figured Mom must’ve shacked up with a French guy, like maybe French Canadian, you know? Because she lived up in Washington State for a while. Before I was born.  She’s not from there. She’s kind of from everywhere. Or nowhere.  But since she did live there, I figured she got mixed up with some forest ranger. Or something. Something to do with trees. Et voila! Sylvie. That was a joke too, by the way. I’ll warn you about the jokes. Maybe, if you wouldn’t mind, you could laugh a little bit?  I mean if you want to. Et voila!

    Once a reporter, not a journalist like yourself, some sleazy newshound, snuck into the hospital to ask Mom who my father was. They say she said, with perfect serenity, that it was her left bedroom slipper. Those were nice soft slippers. Powder blue. I make sure she has nice things.

    Now where was I? Oh yeah
 my dad. It’s a fact that all girls are attracted to their fathers, isn’t it? Where that leaves me, I don’t know. Wait, you wanted to ask me about Johnny.

    Johnny was
 wow! Valiant. How come that word’s gone out of style? I’m not the only girl who likes valiant, am I? Like, someone who’d come to your rescue? He was no bedroom slipper, I’ll tell you. Had those old-fashioned English manners that make a girl swoon. Of course, the first time I saw him, Johnny was wearing a suit of armour. That was his role in the picture we made together. There he was. A knight in shining armour among the dress racks. I didn’t stand a chance.

    In the movie, I’m this mythical creature, like a fairy-elf, who meets the knight in a summer meadow. And she seduces him!  I did loads to prepare for the role.  Read everything I could find on elves before I had lunch with Hiram, the director. Over the shrimp cocktails, I explained to him how I was going to need special makeup, because elves have oversized eyes and small, pointed ears. I had made a couple sketches. He pushed those sketches right back across the table and gave me a look over his glasses.

    “Syl, Cookie,” Hiram said, “your adoring public are not paying their seventy cents to see you prancing around in a pair of pointy ears.  They’re paying to see Sylvie Davenport. America’s wet dream.” Seeing me droop down, arms crossed over my chest, he said, “It’s a compliment, Cookie.”

    So, they made me up to look the way I always look. Only with longer hair. I wore a sort of gypsy costume. Johnny had to string garlands of flowers in my hair. Around my neck, my waist. The warm summer meadow we were supposed to be in was really Sound Stage Four. Johnny’s breath smelled like sardines. And the garlands were plastic flowers with wire. They snagged my skin.

    But there’s this thing I do, once the camera is on. A place I go inside myself. Where the flowers are real. The sky is a true sky and everything is marvellous. So marvellous I almost can’t stand it. My eyes become like broken windows, with all the light and wind rushing through. People love me. I just have to look at you. You’ll love me. Like he did.

    Johnny followed me into my dressing room after. Pressed himself up against me. He said, “Sorry about the kippers.” No kidding, that’s what he said.

    I stared up into his blue eyes. His noble face. “That’s alright. I like sardines.” Which I don’t, but I didn’t want to break the spell. “Kippers aren’t sardines, they’re herrings,” he said softly. Then he kissed me. He, Johnny, kissed me, Syl. Which was different from the knight kissing the fairy. Mainly in that there was more tongue.

    That was the start. We were together for seven months. Oh, here, take one of mine. There’s an ashtray there, right by your elbow. You want a drink or anything? I make a mean martini. Sure? Have to butter you up, don’t I? Otherwise, you might write nasty things about me.  Aww, that’s sweet of you. You’re nice, too.

    When he spoke, his mouth hardly moved.  I used to kid him it was because he was trying not to spit out all those marbles. He said shag instead of fuck
 of course that cracked me up. Johnny liked to quote Shakespeare
and the Greeks. Which was all Greek to me! Oh good, you got that one? See? I can be funny!

    He was a wonderful lover. Passionate. With lots of stamina for a guy his age. That first time, he crushed those stupid plastic flowers. It was heaven.

    “God, you’re amazing,” Johnny said to me once
 in bed. “It’s like you have no bones.  Those breasts, that belly, the great big thighs – “

    “Hey!  My thighs aren’t fat!”

    “No, not fat, they’re perfect. All that soft flesh.  It’s like riding a cloud.” He took a drag off his cigarette, slipped it between my lips. I sucked in some smoke, while he twisted a handful of my hair around his knuckles. “All these golden locks
”

    “It’s not natural. The golden…”

    “Well, yes I noticed, but oh Sylvie.”  Eyes on the ceiling, he said, “You’re like America itself. Completely uncomplicated. Open. Welcoming. Saying, Come on in
.”

    Okay, Johnny talked a lot of shit. Sorry. He talked a load of baloney, but his accent made it sound less silly.

    Was I in love? I’m always in love. All the time. I wake up, first person I see, I want to paint sunrises. Just for them. My heart comes cheap, you know. But Johnny, he was like an answer to a prayer I hadn’t even got round to praying yet. I felt safe with him. Until I didn’t.

    Know what was funny? He always wanted to go to Chasen’s. I had my own booth there. We went at least twice a week. Johnny didn’t even like American food. But he was always dying to go. So, I’d get all dolled up, and we’d go. The minute our car pulled up, bang! Photographers. Every time. You’ve seen the pictures. Me and Johnny, under the awning at Chasen’s. Me smiling. Showing a little leg. I could pose like that in my sleep. Johnny glaring at the cameras. Clutching my arm. That wasn’t play-acting, by the way. I’d have bruises the next day from him holding on so tight. He hated that whole scene. So, I could never understand why he wanted to go in the first place.

    Life Magazine sent a photographer to my house to take pictures of me in my kitchen. Me stirring a pot. Me staring into the oven. Me chopping carrots. You know the kind of thing.  About how I’m really an ordinary person. How I cook for my man like any normal girl does. Fact is, I am a pretty good cook. Betty, one of my foster moms, taught me. Betty was great to me, but her husband Jim, he…he paid a little too much attention to me. So, I had to leave. But I remember everything she taught me. Dan
 the Life photographer
 he was surprised I even knew how to turn on my oven. This is another thing: I’m not supposed to be witty, and I’m not supposed to know how to make a pot roast. I don’t know who made these rules. So, I said to Dan, “Actually, you’d be lucky if I made you dinner.”

    “I sure as heck would be,” he said with a grin. He had a sweet, Mickey Rooney sort of face, so he could get away with being flirty.

    “I mean it!” I tapped his arm. “I’m an excellent cook. I’d adore to have someone to make dinner for, but Johnny likes to go out. Well, you know.” Dan had snapped us outside Chasen’s so many times.

    “Poor little movie star,” he chuckled, tucking his camera back inside its case. “But you know, if you were my girl, I’d wanna show you off too.”

    “Oh, he hates all that stuff.  Posing for you guys drives Johnny crazy.”

    “Syl?  How do you think we all know to be there when you get outta your car?”

    My stomach sort of dropped. “Beats me.”

    “He tips us off. His assistant phones up every magazine, every newspaper. She tells us where you’re going. That’s how.”

    “But that doesn’t make any
 If Johnny wants his picture taken, why does he get so mad?”

    “Maybe because he’s not the main attraction?  If you weren’t there, we wouldn’t bother.” Slinging his camera bag over a shoulder he says to me, “I’ll be going. Listen, Syl
  uh, Miss Davenport. Thanks a lot. We got some great shots today.”

    “Well, that’s down to you.”

    “Nah, it’s all you.” And Dan was out the door.

    In our movie, Johnny strips his armour off to lie in the grass with his head in my lap. This is the seduction bit. I feed him berries I’ve gathered myself that stain his lips. Bread with wild honey dribbling down, glistening on his knightly chin. My line is, “I love thee true.” I tried different ways of saying it, to make it sound more natural. In the end what worked best was to almost throw the line away. To say it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I love you; I was made to love you. She’s a fairy, and I think in her mind she has been sent to him. To love him. Help him. She has magic that makes plants grow, makes summer out of winter, and all she wants is to do the same for her knight. To bring back the summertime of his life.

    So, while he’s eating her food and feeling the sun on his skin
 while all that’s going on, she sings to him. This little fairy song about love, the blue sky and tra-la-la. They were thinking they’d dub it, but I practiced a lot and, in the end, they used my voice. The song is a spell. As she sings, all the lines disappear from the knight’s face. His hair goes from grey to a warm brown that Gordon, the hairdresser, mixed just for Johnny. And then the knight gets all virile and sexy. It’s my favourite part of the picture. Not for the sexy bit, but the way she’s able to make him feel young again. Like his best self. Shouldn’t love be able to do that?

    The reviews were awful.

    I’ve gotten bad notices before, but these were really stink-a-roo. Thou Hast Made a Flop, is one headline that hurt. They weren’t gonna buy my talking all thee and thy. I feel like if someone could’ve coached me on that, I would’ve got the hang of it. Hiram always said there wasn’t time. Hey
 At least they didn’t pan my singing!

    But poor Johnny. Nymph and Gnome in Garden Frolic was the tag line that stuck. Variety said he looked more like my father than a lover. That he should trade in his sword for a walking stick. That it’d take a team of fairies, weaving spells night and day, to make John Sampson Law leading man material again.

    Johnny said it didn’t matter. But it was right around this time he started bruising my arm outside Chasen’s. Then if the photos appeared with the caption, Nymph and Gnome, he’d break things. A glass ashtray. Souvenir plate from San Francisco. A framed photo of my mom. Once he punched a hole in the wall. Right there, by the patio door. Plaster dust drifted down like snow. And so all of a sudden, he started laughing. Worst sound I ever heard. The breaking and punching were easier to bear than that. That laugh.

    I’d hide. Well, not hide exactly. I’d go into the bedroom. Sit on the floor and smoke. I’ve sat on a lot of floors in a lot of bedrooms. Listening for the breaking to stop, or the car to drive away. Guess what I keep wishing for is that there might be a someone somewhere who will want to sit on the floor with me. Someone who can stand me when I’m scared, or crying, or smoking too many…no, wait. Don’t write that down. That’s not
 I don’t mean to make too much of it. Everyone has their blue days, right?  Even here, in sunny Los Angeles. Sometimes I wish it’d rain so I could mix a pitcher of martinis and have a good cry. This weather is a lot to live up to.

    Still, we had our good days, Johnny and me. Had some laughs. Sometimes he’d use one of his funny expressions, like don’t get your knickers in a twist and I’d giggle. He’d beam like he won an Oscar. And I’d think, okay. I can do this.

    The last time we were out in public together was that premiere last Christmas. What was the name of that movie?  The Brave Men of… Something or Other. For publicity, the studio had invited some soldiers to watch the picture. The armistice thingy had happened that summer.  So, these were the first boys back home from Korea. They were under the marquee, in their uniforms, posing for photos when we got there. So fresh. So bright and alive. Cheeks like apples. You couldn’t look away from them. Then they saw me, and started chanting. “Syl! Syl! Syl!” Oh, they were boys! But boys with big men’s voices. Shouting my name as I walked right into the middle of them. It was like they each had their own separate engine running inside. The heat. The purr. And all talking at once. Flashbulbs popping all over the place.  I’m smiling. Touching one on the elbow. Another on the shoulder. Cradling one’s face like he was my son, another like my kid brother. “You glad the war is over? Glad to be back home?” Yes, they said, and it was lovely. So sweet, to see how happy they were. It was all so…vivid. I’ll never, ever forget it.

    The crowd started moving, what with everyone going into the theatre. Thinking Johnny had gone in ahead, I was surprised to see him still behind me. Still at the curb, where the car had dropped us off. Just standing there, on his own. Heading over to him, I saw something in his face.  He was white. Eyes blazing. I held out my hand but he wrinkled his nose at it. As if it was rotting meat on a stick. Then he leaned in and hissed into my ear, “Why don’t you just shag them all?” My face went hot. Like I’d been slapped. He smiled that vicious smile of his. Turned and walked away. I watched him go, hands jammed in his tuxedo jacket pockets.  Johnny walked right down the street. No one recognised him. No one noticed him at all.

    When I got home that night, he was here. Sitting here, in the living room. In the dark. Except for the Christmas tree lights blinking on and off, like they do. They’d blink on, and in this reddish light, I saw his face, and his knuckles gripping the arms of his chair. Then they’d blink off and I couldn’t see him at all. I remember thinking it seemed like the scene of an accident. You know, when you pass one on the road? Squad cars, an ambulance. Red and blue lights flashing. I sat down on the sofa. Didn’t even take off my coat.

    “I’ve been having this dream.”  He started as if he was in the middle of a story. “And in this dream
 well. I don’t want to upset you, Syl.”

    “I won’t be upset.” My legs were pressed together. Hands on knees, I could feel the cool sheen of my stockings.

    “That’s right.You’re really very strong, aren’t you? Stout Yankee stock. Whereas I…”  He stopped talking and the lights flashed off.

    “Are you sick, Johnny?”

    Again, the laugh. Like a donkey with a chest cold. “Not at all! Kind of you to be concerned. I only meant that I’m old. Very. Very. Old.”

    Then silence, woolly thick. I had a thousand different answers at the ready
  No, you’re not. Don’t be silly. Come here and I’ll make you feel young again. I’d used all of these on him before, and they had mostly worked. This time though, I just couldn’t manage it. I was hurt.  But it wasn’t only that. I was waiting to see how bad this was going to get.

    “So, in this dream,” he said, “you come home from some gay, glittering Hollywood gig. You float in, just as you have tonight. You’re perfect. All hair. Teeth. And tits. That sexy little wiggle when you walk. Wearing some champagne coloured, tighter-than-fuck frock leaving little to the imagination. Because why should it?  Nothing about you, My Darling, is engineered to appeal to Man’s mind. Your aim is…somewhat lower.”

    Johnny was pale. His forehead sweating. And I was holding onto my knee so hard I could feel my nails making half-moons in the flesh.

    “Everything on display. What are shop windows for? Let’s get those punters in!  This is, after all, America.” Arms open as Jolson singing Mammy, the ruddy light made Johnny’s features grotesque.

    “Why weren’t you at the party with me?”

    “Because I’m not wanted.  I’ve got grey pubes and I quote King Lear.  I don’t fit. But you!  You fit right in, and every man fits right in you. And I do mean every man, Syl. I could smell them off you. You came to me. In your frock. You kissed me. And I smelled their spunk on your pretty neck. Tasted it. In your pretty mouth.”

    “I’m going to bed.”

    “Oh no you’re not.”  He stood up, throwing the shadow of a giant on the wall. He was leaning over me, his hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t stop looking at his face. His long, noble face. So haggard now. The last thing he’d broken in my house was himself. Into a hundred un-mendable pieces.

    Then Johnny said, “They warned me about you.”

    In our movie, there are ghosts. Two kings, in jewel encrusted crowns and velvet robes. Two knights in full armour but for their helmets, which they carry under their arms. Two who I think are supposed to be princes
 tights and swords and shining hair. They appear to Johnny. That is, to his character, when he wakes up in the morning to find I’m gone. He stumbles down to the edge of this pond, rubbing his eyes. Looking around the whole time like he’s wondering where I am. He kneels in the mud to splash cold water on his face. In the close-up, we see droplets beading on his majestic brow as his blue eyes widen in surprise.

    The ghosts are on the far side of the pond. You know right away they’re ghosts because they’re very pale, with dark staring eyes and black, toothless holes where their mouths should be. They appear out of nowhere. This is why Johnny’s character looks so surprised. They start calling out to Johnny, something like, “Beware!  Beware!  She’s got you under her spell!”

    Basically, the ghosts are my ex-boyfriends doing a spooky version of you’re better off without her, Pal. You’d be surprised how many of my movies end like that.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.  I’m bad news, right?

    So, I asked him, “Who, Johnny? Who warned you? About what? What did they say about me?”

    His fingers were drilling down into my shoulders and his breath was hot and stank of booze.  And just when I thought I’d scream, he started saying one word, over and over, in this weird stage whisper.  Just one word, while Johnny’s face turned redder and redder.

    Beware.

    Beware.

    Beware.

    Then he stood, opened his arms again and bellowed, “Beware the girl without mercy!”

    “For God’s sake, Johnny, it was only a movie.”

    He stood right there, in the middle of the room, and he laughed.  Laughed his horrible laugh at me and said, “And I am merely a ghost.” I stood up. Still tall in my heels, and turned to go upstairs. Locked my bedroom door, and cried myself to sleep.

     

    That was it for us. In the morning Johnny was gone, and we never spoke again. Yeah, just about a year ago now. I haven’t got around to putting up a tree this year. It’s a hassle, isn’t it, all that ‘deck the halls’ stuff? I’m not really in the spirit this year.

    When I heard about his heart attack, I remembered the way his face went all red that night.  And I wondered
 I mean, if he was already sick, that might sort of explain? I don’t know.  Maybe not. What else can I tell you? We were happy. For a while.

    No, really, thanks so much for coming. Hope it was okay. Hope I gave you what you need. I’m always nervous until the article comes out! I’m sure it’ll be fine.

    I’m actually going away in January. To Korea. Some of our fellas are still over there, and they’ve asked me to go do a few shows for the troops. Not sure what I’ll do. Thinking I might sing a few songs? I mean I’m no Rosemary Clooney, but I can carry a tune. Well, enough that they won’t throw stuff at me.

    I just think it might be good, you know? How can you be lonely with all those beautiful boys around you?  How can you be sad? With all that youth? All that life?

    Feature Image from the 1928 move Dry Martini.

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  • Theatre: The Battle of Kildare Place

    There is no fiercer battle than that between sisters. The sibling tension is ever-present in ‘The Battle of Kildare Place’.

    This comedic play is a two-hander between two sisters: a corporate older one married with two children, and a ditzy, free-spirited younger one eking out a living as a proprietor of a small flower shop and architectural tour guide.

    ‘The Battle of Kildare Place’

    Cast

    Darina Gallagher

    Sinead Murphy               

     

    Director

    Costume Design

    Photography

    Graphic Design

    Creative Producer

    Written by

    		  

     

    Meadhbh

    GrĂĄinne

     

    Michael James Ford

    Bairbre NĂ­ Chaoimh

    Keith Jordan

    Gavin Doyle

    Colm Maher

    Emma Gilleece & Michael James Ford

     

    The personalities of the women are informed by their namesakes, two formidable Connaught Queens of lore; the real life pirate Queen GrĂĄinne Mhaol, and the warrior Queen Meadhbh from the TĂĄin BĂł CĂșailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley).

    The play is set in present day Dublin with GrĂĄinne, the elder sister, played by Sinead Murphy, flying in from London for this rendezvous after an absence of three decades to discuss the potential erection of a plaque in honour of their late father.

    As he died at the height of Covid-restrictions, Meadhbh, played by Darina Gallagher, feels her father has been cruelly robbed of the send-off he deserved, with only twenty-five mourners allowed at the funeral.

    She believes his renown merits the erection a plaque for a lifetime of activism attempting to save Georgian Dublin, including the Battle of Hume Street, which the play pays tribute to in its title. Meadhbh is frozen in a state of unresolved grief with a thirst for justice for her father’s legacy, as witnessed in ‘Electra’ or ‘King Lear’.

    Gráinne implores her sister to separate the legend of the activist from the realities of the absentee father, while pointing out that bad fathering isn’t synonymous with being a bad person.

    The play is written by architectural historian Emma Gilleece and actor Michael James Ford, who is also director. Now based in Dublin, Emma grew up in Limerick city and completed a BA in English & History and an MA in History of Art & Architecture, followed by an MSc in Urban & Building Conservation.

    Michael was closely involved in the genesis of Walkabout Theatre last year in association with Colm Maher, the creative producer for Bewley’s CafĂ© Theatre.

    It came about in response to Covid-19 restrictions and the first season featured four new plays presented in historic Dublin locations.

    The team of actors, writers and directors relished the challenge of outdoor performance – competing with inclement weather, traffic noise, wildlife, buskers and rogue cyclists. Walkabout enjoyed capacity audiences and popular and critical acclaim and was subsequently nominated for an Irish Times Judges’ Special Award for “returning audiences to live performances outdoors in 2021.”

    As another example of how limited circumstances can actually foster creativity, it was Emma’s brainwave to use Kildare Place as the setting on the back of a tour she gave.

    “I was invited by the Irish Architecture Foundation to do an twentieth century architectural bus tour, as part of Open House Dublin last October, and my tour had to be along the bus company’s established tour routes with one of these being Kildare Street”, Emma explained.

    “My Open House Dublin tour touched on the vulnerability of our twentieth century building stock, and ironically there is currently planning permission sought to demolished Stephen Court on Stephen’s Green by architect Andy Devane which was part of the tour”.

    Running parallel to this battle of two sisters exploring unhealed childhood wounds is a debate regarding Georgian Dublin accommodating twentieth century insertions. Was this progress or destruction?

    Meadhbh follows in her father’s footsteps taking up the baton for preserving eighteenth and ninetheenth century Dublin, while Gráinne is more forward-looking, arguing that demolition and rebuilding is just part of the life-cycle of a city, asserting the merits of iconic buildings such as Liberty Hall, the former Central Bank and Phibsborough Shopping Centre, amongst a list of familiar divisive buildings.

    The nineteenth and twentieth century buildings of Kildare Street provide a four-sided stage. The architectural gems the audience are directed to include the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (completed in 1942), the National Museum of Ireland (1890) and Agriculture House (1974).

    Being outside makes the audience feel like they are eavesdropping on two sisters meeting on a summer’s afternoon in the city. There are laughs, but also poignant moments where you can feel the actors dive down into a well of decades’ old pain and disappointment. Can these sisters find common ground?

    The Battle of Kildare Place runs from 6 -16 July, Wednesday to Saturday at 1pm and 3pm. Tickets cost €15 and booking is at www.bewleyscafetheatre.com/events/the-battle-of-kildare-place.

    For enquiries call 086 878 4001.

    Feature Image of Darina Gallagher and Sinead Murphy by photographer Keith Jordan.
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  • Musician of the Month: Dan Trueman

    In my studio here, I have a clavichord, built by my parents in 1971, with a somewhat rococo and amusing backdrop painted by my mother (who otherwise has left us with a stunning body of mostly modernist artwork).

    I grew up with this painfully quiet clavichord, along with a gorgeous harpsichord (also built by my parents, and which I learned to tune by ear, a sign of things to come), countless recorders of various shapes and sizes (both parents were avid and accomplished players), lutes, oboes, guitars, baritone horns, and of course a piano (my older sister, annoyingly, plays pretty much all of these instruments with ease, though piano is her main instrument, so I grew up hearing that repertoire through her practice).

    Clavichord

    The basement of my childhood home on Long Island was filled with various tools, wood scraps, and other evidence of my parent’s instrument building habits (both were amateurs, by the way: during business hours, my father was a theoretical physicist, my mother a painter), and our evenings and weekends were filled with making music together with these instruments (ok, maybe that is a bit of revisionist history there, but we did make a lot of music together with these instruments as a family).

    I didn’t realize at the time that this wasn’t particularly normal. And one of the things that it marked me with is a love of musical instruments for their own sake, and a love of making music in an exploratory way with instruments at the heart of the process, performance relegated to a secondary concern. I performed, for sure, but it wasn’t the driving force behind the music making in my house, and we never performed together as a family.

    It also left me with a clear sense that the instruments themselves were things we made—not immutable, given objects—and thus were potential sites for exploration and revision.

    I loved my own instrument at the time—a somewhat tetchy violin made by the engineer Norman Pickering, himself a researcher of instrument design—though it took me a while to discover that the music I was learning with it—European Classical music—wasn’t, for the most part, what I really wanted to play (the Bach Unaccompanied Sonatas aside, really). Indeed, trying to discover the music that I do really want to play (and hear) has been the driving force behind my work ever since and has led to a number of explorations in musical instrument design itself.

    In my early 20’s, I flailed about trying to find ways to escape the confines of the Classical violin—its repertoire and technical training that leaves such a profound, embodied mark on anyone who goes deep with it—which led to predictable explorations of jazz improvisation and rock music, both of which also felt not quite right, though I learned a lot, and in particular ended up spending time with, of all things, the Flying-V 6-string fretted electric violin by Mark Wood, and an unfretted version made by my father.

    Hardanger fiddle

    Ultimately, I found the sound of the instrument unsatisfying—in spite of my best efforts, including exploring multiple other electric violins, pick-up systems, amplifiers, equalization and signal processing units, and so on—as well as the feel of the instrument—the solid-body electric violin is perversely rigid, and doesn’t seem to actually absorb any of our physical efforts.

    In the midst of these experiences, a composer friend of mine (Gavin Borchert) wrote a piece for me, for the electric violin, and he was inspired by the traditional music of Norway, in particular the Hardanger fiddle; my experience listening to the cassette tape he gave me—a recording of Anund Roheim playing music from Telemark in the 1950s—was one of those I will never forget; I remember where I was sitting, the time of day, the color of the sky, and so on, when I first heard the sounds of this magical, beguiling instrument and its mesmerizing music.

    There is so much I could say about the Hardanger fiddle, but I will focus on the sound and feel of it. Its sympathetic strings (extra strings that run underneath the fingerboard and ring along as you play) create a magical, personal, reverberant space around the player and, in contrast to the solid-body electric violin, it is so clearly responsive to our efforts, absorbing and extending them into this private space; it feels wonderful—physically—to play.

    Adapting my Classically-based technique to the instrument was far more challenging than I expected. The strings are slightly shorter, requiring ever so slightly different finger spacing, something that took months of slow practice to adapt to, especially given my own penchant for playing without vibrato, and for having the intervals ring as purely as possible.

    But even more than that, adapting my bowing technique to the instrument was particularly challenging. The Classical violin is designed to be as loud as possible, to project over an orchestra to the back of a concert hall, and it requires intense arm weight and energy to drive appropriately.

    In contrast, the Hardanger fiddle is designed to ring continuously, and it has a relatively flat bridge, so playing individual strings is difficult, and the strings are under noticeably less tension, so applying intense arm weight is counterproductive, suffocating the instrument rather than activating it. The instrument induces a more empathetic, gentle approach to playing, and I feel like I literally became a different person in transforming my physical technique to play it.

    Musical instruments have a way of bringing people together; indeed, in Norway one of the most common experiences with other fiddlers is simply sitting around, trying each others fiddles, visiting with a maker (many of whom are fiddlers themselves), and so on.

    Collaboration with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh

    The instrument itself is at the heart of the matter. The Hardanger fiddle brought me together with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh back in 2000; Caoimhín was working in my father’s physics lab, and I’m forever grateful to my father for recognizing that Caoimhín and I might like to meet!

    Another experience I’ll never forget: sitting with Caoimhín that summer (next to the harpsichord my parents built, by the way), playing tunes for each other, trying each other’s instruments, and so on. Subsequent similar sessions with Caoimhín in Dublin led to the discovery that I was using the wrong bow, one that itself was suffocating the Hardanger, and we now both use beautiful bows made by Michel Jamonneau; teaching my body to work with this new bow (actually, more of an old bow, based on Baroque designs) was a whole other transformative experience, far more challenging than I anticipated.

    Before I continue on with where my explorations of the Hardanger fiddle led over the subsequent decades, I will mention that during this time I was also exploring a whole range of other musical instrument design projects: my frustration with electric violin speakers led to collaborations with Perry Cook on the design of spherical speakers, which roughly emulate the way acoustic instruments fill rooms with sound; this itself led to the design of a radical new instrument, BoSSA (the Bowed Sensor Speaker Array), that is a spherical speaker outfitted with digital sensors of various sorts, so you actually bow the speaker itself, the sensors then mapping your physical actions to sound through the spherical speaker (sitting in the lap!) via a computer.

    BoSSA (the Bowed Sensor Speaker Array).

    This led to the establishment of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk), a kind of digital musical instrument design laboratory that remains in force today; which in turn led me to the development of bitKlavier, a kind of prepared digital piano that remains one of my primary projects today.

    The Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk).

    All that to say that musical instrument design has been at the heart of my artistic practice from the beginning.

    A New Instrument

    Back to the Hardanger fiddle… Some 15 years after my deep dive into the Hardanger fiddle began, I had the pleasure of collaborating with the Old Time fiddler Brittany Haas. Britt plays the 5-string fiddle; the extra string is lower, and she regularly tunes the instrument up in unusual, non-standard ways, which is also common with the Hardanger fiddle—all the open strings invite a drone-based approach to playing, with lots of double-stops (two notes at a time).

    One challenge though: the Hardanger fiddle, with its shorter strings, is usually tuned up quite a bit higher than the conventional fiddle, so when Britt and I would play, all of our open strings would be different from one another! In some cases, this was fodder for creative explorations, but other times was just frustrating and awkward. We did make an album together that I’m tremendously proud of—CrissCross—but the friction between the instrument designs led me to wonder whether there might be a new instrument out there, some kind of cross between the Hardanger fiddle and the 5-string fiddle.

    A pair of Hardanger d’Amores.

    And this is how the Hardanger d’Amore was born. In early 2010, I asked the Norwegian maker Salve HĂ„kedal if he could imagine an instrument that has the ring and feel of the Hardanger fiddle, but is tuned down to where fiddles from the rest of the world are tuned, and also has an extra low string.

    Salve immediately started sending me sketches and ideas, and several months later I traveled to his workshop in southern Norway to pick up the very first Hardanger d’Amore (initially we called it a 5+5, because of its 5 strings on top, and the 5 sympathetic strings, but later Caoimhín dubbed it the Hardanger d’Amore, given its echoes of the Viola d’Amore).

    At the time, I was living in Dublin, and when I returned with the instrument, Caoimhín came by and gave it a try; he ordered #2 the very next day. Earlier this year, Caoimhín and I both got our second d’Amores, #35 and #36, a clear indication of how excited we both are about the instrument, not to mention the other 30+ fiddlers out there who now play one as well.

    Solo Album

    Last year, in the midst of quarantine, I made a solo album of original music for Hardanger d’Amore in my home studio. I generally prefer playing with other people, and am not so interested in playing solo concerts, but the lockdown made both impossible, so I was free to lay down some tracks that I certainly would not have had we not been so isolated by the pandemic.

    The album—Fifty Five—is something of a surprise to me, and it celebrates where I grew up, amongst the instruments that my parents built and played. It also celebrates the instrument itself, trying to reveal and discover some of the nooks and crannies of the soundworld the instrument embodies.

    I recorded these tunes up close, so the listener can hear something close to what I hear, right under my ear; I find it intense and personal but also, I confess, quite beautiful.  I’m also excited about my latest project with Caoimhín, our album The Fate of Bones, which he’s written about here so I will leave it at that.

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