Cassandra Voices

Category: Culture

  • Head Shop

    Tedium was tip tapping on the pane of Gibbo’s day, the hours slouching into another shite night alone, like the slow but certain, annihilating course of ink on blotting paper. A visit to Tosh in the Head Shop “Happy Daze” on George’s St might just resurrect the dregs, if not by consuming a selection of the products for sale there, then at least by listening to Tosh describe them and the effects they’d produce, the feelings and sensations they’d induce once ingested.

    The shop was dimly lit like one of those places that sell lizards as pets to stoners; it smelled of stale joss sticks and half eaten Govinda take away trays. Dub reggae oozed like liquid hemp from two battered vintage speakers that stood at either end of the glass cabinet containing all the pills, powders and shrooms, which looked like the moist, fecund sex organs of alien amphibians. And then there was, Tosh.

    Some people become caricatures of themselves but Tosh took it to another level entirely, becoming a parody of the caricature itself. He was pencil thin and tall enough for half of his body to be in an entirely different, Himalayan weather system, to the rest of him. He didn’t wear clothes; they hung from him like sheets of washing out to dry. The brown, round neck Aran sweater that he wore like a second knitted skin, billowed at the slightest twitch of his body.

    He had that wizened pirate look that comes from years on the high seas of late nights, rolling spliffs in other people’s kitchens, at parties that always ended with dawn breaking on crushed green cans that spread like metallic spawn from butt soaked sinks.

    Of course he had a benign, pointed satanic beard too! And he wore an earring that was given to him by a German girl he’d spent the night with after seeing Marley in Dalymount Park, years back. Everything was “Years Back” with Tosh except for his eye brows which were fierce as fresh printed font. He wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of “Mojo” magazine talking about his comeback album but he had little to come back from, other than his greatest hits played in the kitchens of Dublin where he’d roll the best numbers while talking about Syd Barret,  arcane sub clauses in the Brehon laws and mumbling something about the Tuatha De Danann being connected to the Mayans.

    “Ah Gibbo, my man! How are we today? Are ye in for a buzz or a chat or a bit of both? I’ve got some crackin’ new stock in from a warehouse in Budapest. I’ll talk ye through it in a minute but c’mere, how did ye get on with them ones I sold ye last week?

    Did you do as I told ye?

    The cheeky half, chased by a full one just as the half is settlin’ in nicely, then when you’re tilting full gear on the whole one, drop the last half, see, that’s how ye play a two pill game!

    D’ye remember I wrote it down for ye? Like how to take them properly, in the right order, there’s no point in double droppin’ these, that’d just be bein’greedy and ye wouldn’t be lettin’ them tell their story, it’s a three act thing, ye got yer intro, yer crescendo and yer beautiful sunrise fade. Apart from the obvious whack off them, did ye get any of those subliminals, I’was tellin’ ye about? There’s a nuance to them, like they’re not in yer face, but they’re all over ye at the same time.

    So Gibbo, I have another fella like yerself who comes in most Fridays, now, he loves his food, he’s all culinary, mad into his ingredients, would know his way around all them African spices on Moore St, so, when I’m talkin’ him through the pills I go all Master Chef with me metaphors but you’re a man like meself who’s into his tunes  so I’ll keep it musical for ye, so ye get me drift, I love doin’ the R+D on this shit, I take it seriously, I want me good customers like yerself to know what they’re getting’ into and always remember Gibbo, when ye feel yer bowel howl, ye’ll know they’re kickin’ in, c’mon, are ye ready?

    These ones here I call Kittsers, after yer man David Kitt, half an hour or so after takin’ the first half, ye’ll feel a warm acoustic vibe comin’ over ye, a half full but well in to it crowd in Whelan’s buzz, but ye’ll feel a slight stitching of electronics studded around the hinterland of things, I don’t wanna say “a glow” but ye get what I mean, the Kittsers aren’t too strong though, when ye drop the full one, it’s more of a Boutique festival vibe, like Whelan’s morphin’ into a Body and Soul stage and it goes on like that a while, a more genteel “Gloaming” vibe than yer urban “Lankum” trad, they’re smooth, the muchies with these pills are organic, d’ye get me, I found them a bit shite in the end to be honest, like being at some gig in the Iveagh Gardens and ye wonderin’ how ye ended out there?

    Nah, I like a bit of grit in me pills.

    These ones here are more like it, though may I say, they are strictly for well-seasoned travellers like yer self. I call them, “The Gaffs”.

    About twenty minutes after taking the first half, remember yer maths Gibbo, half + full + half, the only way to do it, the narrative, the flow, that’s what yer after,

    It’ll start to feel like there’s a house party in yer head, a good one with all yer mates there, you’ll feel them coming in, a mad rush at the front door, swingin’ bags of cans, it’s not Whelan’s anymore man, it’s a stairwell full of people ye hardly know, that you’ve never seen in yer house before, one of them nights that’s goin’ to swell, it has its rough edges too though when ye start comin’ up proper, a Garda siren lickin the walls blue and white, ye might feel a tremor, a panic but it’ll pass with a rattle of worry farts, when ye drop the full one it’ll be like the house has been dipped in spirits and torched with new beats you’ve never heard before, some Brazilian dude is DJ-in in yer front room, Favela-Fuckin’-Chic, wadin through a block party, a carnival and a  sudden flash of asphalt wasteland in the room, there’s no lettin’ up with these ones, pure ritual,

    ye’ll be all alone but surrounded by people, nice bit of hallucinatin’ on these too, the party will become external, people will leave yer head and pour into the kitchen, ye’ll meet people there ye haven’t seen in years, ye’ll feel the erotic rush of a whole house heavin’ with the dance, like a greedy snort of Pentecostal Poppers,

    the colour range on these is like a serious fuckin’ festival rig, ye’ll end out focusin’ on the colour of the kitchen door for way longer than’s natural, ye might even feel a Oneness with shit that’ll make ye oblivious to all the other shit around you,

    ye know like when all of life’s asteroids are comin’ at ye, thick n fast and ye do a Han Solo on it and go straight into Spiritual Hyper Space, bypassin’ all the mundane crap that brings ye down, it went like that way for me anyway,

    these really are quality pills, all the colours get like a Biblical Dulux paint catalogue, ye’ll start makin’ connections between things that’ll fade as soon as ye try thinkin’ of them again, ye’ll remember nothin’ later, yer mind’ll be like The Shining maze, bein’chased by half formed feral sentences, ye’ll wish ye had a brain stenographer with ye to record yer thoughts, ye’ll think they are important but they might just be shite but who’s to know,

    they’re roarin’ “Tune” in the front room, ye’ll have strobe light black outs on the dance floor, not knowin’ how ye arrived into the glare of the kitchen light, ye’ll feel epic and loved, all the walls of the house throbbing like a heart pumpin’ speed, the kitchen and the front room will seem like they’re different hoods in some huge smudged metropolis that yer racin’ through now, high as some released captive thing, a vertigo in your stride, fearless, ye’ll have flashes of being all alone because you are all alone, reality sneaks in the fuckin’ cat flap the odd time with these pills, like morning light torn from a drawn curtain, a prison break on the dance floor,

    there’ll be a blonde PR bird at yer living room door with a clipper board, askin’ ye what guest list yer on, ye’ll have to choose carefully or ye’ll be fucked out high as a kite cut loose, tremblin’ alone on the quays, freezin’, neon taxi slur in the puddles, ye’ll look back at the entrance to The Liquor Rooms and ye’ll realise it’s yer own gaff, the door into yer own livin’ room and everyone there is bein’ sliced by strobe, tribal Batucada Beats, and the bird who had the clipper board has lassoed you with her eyes, ye’ll get a lust rush but it’ll be a brain boner, yer lad will be limp as a droopin’ glove, ye’ll think of Lou Reed, “between thought and expression there lies a lifetime”, the music will go all,

    ah- whacka-whacka-whacka, ah-whacka-whacka-whacka,

    ye’ll get down on yer hands and knees and try crawlin’ away from the echo but soon enough ye’ll surrender to it sweatin’, relieved that it’s yer new Master.

    these pills can have quite a rough come down, the worst kind of psychic turbulence but they’re worth it for their plasma screen clarity and the integrity of their buzz, when ye come down proper, all the people who weren’t there will have gone but ye’ll be glad ye met them anyway.

    Are ye with me Gibbo? Am I givin’ ye a few ideas for later? C’mon, I got a couple more to show ye.

    I call these pills “The launches”, they’re cunnin’ little bastards, the first half comes on all warm like yer at some art openin’ in a warehouse, somewhere in the Batter, NCAD heads wearin’ vintage gear, some lad in a knit wear bobble hat, stooped over a lap top playin’ Ricardo Villa Lobos minimal techno, craft beards and shite lager but it’s free, so ye dive in and talk crap about the installations, ye’ll get these comin’ up jitters, feelin’ that what yer sayin’ about the installations isn’t the right thing to be sayin’ about them, like yer out of yer depth at a party full of those Irish Times “ 50 People To Watch in 2009”, ye know the fuckers, video sculptors ‘n vegan choreographers.

    Ye won’t feel like yer one of them, me and you Gibbo never make it on to them lists, but once ye drop yer first full “Launch” ye’ll feel better than all them cunts collaged together

    You’ll feel like you’re the artist, that it’s your launch, you’ll have interviews about your work runnin’ through yer head, ye’ll feel like ye own the room, on top of yer mad out of it game, ye’ll see yer self on the box talkin’ about yer difficult second album even though you’ve never played a note in yer life, it’ll be like ye become whatever music yer listen’ to, it’s so real, ye’ll feel ye’ve got the fingerin’ all sorted on the tenor sax yer mimin’ the fuck out of in the mirror, ye’ll see posters for “An Evenin’ With Gibbo” flappin’ on the lampposts in yer twisted, head fucked streets, you’ll believe you’ve really gone and learnt an instrument, then the most fucked up, loved up shit kicks in,

    Yer playin’ stadium concerts now, yer the lead singer or the guitarist, ye can be whoever the fuck ye want to be, snortin’ lines of adulation, ye grab yer crotch and gurn, “I am Live Aid. I am Freddie Mercury”, a Nuremberg crowd rush of pure fuckin’ love, the best gig ye ever gave to yer reflection in the mirror, yer all alone and shittin’ yerself, a stab of the fear, but ye mange to pull yerself back into a pub sized gig, yer listenin’’ to Howlin’ Wolf, built for comfort, “300 Pounds of Joy”, it’s Walters in Dún Laoghaire and ye command the room, ye’ll see everyone ye knew there when ye were young and they’ll love ye, ye’ll feel Savoy 1 screen stretched, everythin’ about ye will feel epic, it’s the maddest rush.

    I, like, became Marley in Dalymount an’ I seen meself singin’ as Marley to me younger self and the German bird that gave me the earring, fuckin’ multiple identity trippin’

    The come down from these is smoother than you’d than ye’d think, like a class of farewell tour, a “for one night only” vibe, ye’ll see posters for yerself again but they’re smaller, ye’ll be back to playin’ Whelans, but it’ll be a good crowd, when ye come round ye’ll have forgetten all the interviews ye gave but ye’ll know ye did give them,

    ye won’t even have a ticket stub to one of yer own gigs.

    The rest of the gear I got is natural, herbs and shrooms, Inca gear, it’s not really party gear, it’s all about foliage and mad ancestral voices,

    These first two herbs work in seconds, they both wreck yer sense of time, one makes nine hours seem like it’s just two minutes that’s passed and the other stretches two minutes into what seems like nine fuckin’ hours, so, you choose dependin’ on how yer fixed for time, both have the same immediate effect of ye seein’ foliage growin’ on yer walls, it’s Amazonian, the green is so deep ye could swim in it.

    The Shrooms are ancestral though, I got an intense Ogham Stone vibe off them, like I was rubbin’ my hand up one of them and understandin’ this 8th century braille that was chipped into them by some mad mason monk years back before, like when ye know some of the Brehon Laws were still standing, I felt like a kind of gutter with all this mythology streamin’ through me, playin’ me Bothy Band and me Ó Riada sa Gaiety albums backwards and hearin’ messages from The Tuatha, ancient secrets that would make Fatima blush, d’ye get me, I had some experience of knowledge, somethin’ unbroken, like I was totally plugged in to the whole meaning of shit, like, I saw through it all, connected it all up, wrote a new fuckin’ alphabet and found a story way out of it all, I was it all, I had Prophet deliriums, I sweated two languages and learned a third, I tied myself to a post and crawled through centuries to tell people what I’d learned , the further I went the less I remembered until I had no idea where I was or what I was doin’ and I’d forgottin’ what I was supposed to tell them and they didn’t like me for that.

    Ye just don’t know what portals the shrooms are goin’ to open up for ye Gibbo.

    Are ye with me Gibbo?

    So, what’s it goin’ to be? A bit of herb and nine hours of Kittser?

    A mad one or a quiet one?

    You tell me.

  • Poetry: Chay Bowes

    Three Miles South of Carlow Town

    Walk with me. Don’t speak.
    Come to the place where the walls and stones
    Yield their shameful secrets.
    Listen. Listen.

    Stand and hear the black earth shifting,
    As she did then, to deny him his succour,
    And as she did when he slipped into her inky embrace.

    Three miles south of Carlow town.
    In the Lea of the silver stones,
    Latched together when we had the strength,
    That small hollow where we submit.
    Where a whispering call gave way,
    To a silent deafening tide,
    And where we fade into the geography,
    Of this holy ancient place.

    This inky earth,
    Thick with the toils of a thousand years,
    Will now gladly hold this pale handed child,
    In its dark embrace.
    Only the hunger of the earth
    Surpasses that of her children.

    Three miles south of Carlow town,
    A Holocaust reflected in the silent slate grey sky,
    The amputation of all kindness screamed,
    In a lone mother’s last breathless farewell;
    “Golden haired child,
    Son of the earth and wind itself.
    The black turf is no cradle,
    The rush and reed no shawl”

    Come walk with me.
    Don’t speak.
    Come to the place where the walls and stones yield their secrets.

    There is buried treasure three miles south of Carlow Town.
    Listen. Listen.

    Feature Image: Dublin Street, Carlow c. 1900.

  • L’Homme et … la Merde!

    For the purpose of perspective, I should like to carry out a short comparative study of two poems treating the subject of the sea. The first poem I should like to focus on is the great sonnet by Charles Baudelaire L’Homme et la Mer, whose composition dates back to 1852. The second poem is a poem I wrote sometime last year, L’Homme et la Merde, in which I use the poem by Baudelaire, as an obvious starting point, in order to attempt to underline the epic social and ecological shifts which have occurred in the time frame of the composition of both poems.

    So, to be absolutely clear, the period of time that separates both poems is one-hundred-sixty-three years. Without further ado, here is the poem by Buadelaire, followed by my transversion into English of his great poem; ….[1]

    XIV. – L’HOMME ET LA MER

    Homme libre toujours tu chériras la mer !
    La me rest ton mirroir; tu contemples ton âme
    Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
    Et ton esprit n’est pas un gouffre moins amer.

    Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
    Tu l’embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton cœur
    Se distrait quelque fois des sa propre rumeur
    Au bruit de cette plainte indomitable et sauvage.

    Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discretes;
    Homme, nul n’a sonde le fond de tes abîmes ;
    O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
    Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!

    Et cependent voila des siècles innombrables
    Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
    Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
    O lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!

    XIV. –  Man and the Sea

    Man, free, you will always cherish the sea!
    The sea is your mirror; when you stand before it
    And contemplate your fate, before its infinite movement,
    Your poor mind, brine wracked, couldn’t be more bitter.

    Yet, you enjoy plunging into the heart of yourself;
    Distracted by the immensity before you, and which
    Makes you forget, momentarily mesmerised by such
    Sheer force, your own apocalypse riding before you, wave bound.

    You are both just as dark and fathomless;
    Man, like the sea, nobody has reached your depths, yet;
    Both of you guard jealously your great secrets,
    Which you both refuse to give up, without some savage consequence.

    For innumerable millennia you have both now been struggling
    With one another for survival, both just as pitiless,
    Both of you loving, as you do, carnage and violence.
    O you two blood brothers, eternally vying…

    Baudelaire’s poem has all of the hallmarks of late nineteenth century romanticism, written as it was just one year after the publication of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), and just forty-eight years after Beethoven’s composition of the Pastoral (1804) , his symphony number six. All three works are primarily concerned with man and his extremely precarious place in nature.

    Ahab’s apocalyptic fate in Melville’s epic account of the hunt for the great white whale has become emblematic of humanity itself, in our own relentless pursuit to harness nature for our own ends, without thinking about the consequences. Beethoven’s storm in the sixth taking on a very ominous nature when listened to today, as our own climate continually shifts into  extremes as a consequence of the impact of our society on the planet, and particularly so within the time frame of the last fifty or so years.

    Image: Daniele Idini.

    Indeed, today we are aware of the extremely negative impact our collective behaviour is having on the planet; be it as a direct or indirect consequence of global deforestation, industrial waste (atomic or other) or the continuing emissions from fossil fuels. We are now all collectively responsible for the state of both the immediate world in which we find ourselves living in today, in other words our own particular microcosm, as well as the greater macro-environment which we communally share, for as long as we humanly can. And, of course, this is the huge question looming over us all today:

    If we continue living as we are without each of us making dramatic changes to our lifestyles in terms of how we eat, spend etc. these so – choices we make every second of each day – how much longer will the Earth be able to support us before we are all completely annihilated?

    In order to frame the question better, I should like to introduce the second poem now L’Homme et la Merde, which I wrote shortly after having been diagnosed with chronic ulcerative colitis early last year.

    For the purpose of clarity, the medical condition known as colitis is a terrible affliction caused to the intestine and the bowels, in which the sufferer loses all control of their system, causing unimaginable horror and distress. It is classified as a disease and it is on the increase in countries all around the Western hemisphere; interestingly in Asia, where people have a radically different type of diet, and lifestyle, people suffer from it far less. In my own case, the elimination of gluten is what stopped, eventually, the horrendous impact that this sickness was causing to me and my family.

    I wrote a lot of poems of a very scatological nature, while suffering from colitis, although the poem L’Homme et la Merde is, without doubt, the most troubling of them. This poem reflects an apocalyptic vision of the future of our seas, if we do not do something now to change the way in which we are living.

    This can be indicated quite simply. For example, one June weekend, here in Skerries, north county Dublin, the front beach had to be closed to swimmers due to a possible leakage of effluents into the sea. It was a terrible thing to experience, as the sun was out that June weekend, and people had come from all parts of Dublin, and possibly beyond, to enjoy a day by the sea. Instead, they had to be informed by the lifeguards that if they wished to swim in the sea, they would be putting themselves at risk of getting very sick due to the effluent which was now polluting our once beautiful coast.

    In fact, in Skerries it is a well- known thing – the risk of contamination – as for a couple of years now the town has lost its blue flag due to such incidents related above. But this is just one story, and on a local level. Now add to it every coastal town in the inhabited world, as you can be sure that we are not alone. Imagine the collective damage that is being done?

    Why, during the twenty first century, are we still allowing sewage, and other toxic matter, to be pumped into our seas? This is just a basic question, yet which needs an immediate response. Particularly when one considers how the harnessing of bacteria, found in faeces, can create biofuels potentially saving billions; plans are already afoot in Washington D.C. in an attempt to create alternative ways of making energy in order to generate electricity in the city, using faecal matter![2]

    And that is besides poisoning ourselves: our bodies are not designed to tolerate enormous quantities of gluten. What hope do we possibly have of saving the planet around us if we cannot preserve our own health?

    Ignorance, it would appear, is our greatest enemy. And, here is the hope, as this is something we can all start changing, immediately. All we need is the desire.

    L’Homme et la Mer-de 

    Sheep, a ghastly consommé, to the swirling form of cupcakes.
    These vertiginous constellations, floating like malignant nebula
    In the solid throne at the end of your hall… Shit, excrement, stools,
    Call them what you will. Yet, these grotesque floaters

    Will be the very last trace of you. How apt, being a member
    Of a species which would appear to be shit-infected.
    Le mot de Cambrone; MERDE
    Le merde qui est partout.

    The shitty structures which we maintain and perpetuate.
    Up to our necks in it. Won’t be happy till we’re literally
    Drowning in it.

    “Now man,” through these sweetened dumplings
    Nature seems to be whispering to you, “Embrace
    The imperium of your turbulent, khaki -coloured oceans.”

     

    [1] O’ Neill, Peter: The Enemy, Transversions from Charles Baudelaire, Lapwing, Belfast, 2015.

    [2] Shaver, Katherine ( 2015-10-07 ). “ D.C. Water begins harnessing electricity from every flush”. The Washington Post.

  • Winter When Thy Face is Hid

    I was so tired, Tuesday night. Don’t sleep well when I get that tired. I have obsessive dreams and wake up later than usual. And sleeping in always makes my head hurt. I was clumsy tired, where you bump into things; and getting into bed, I whacked it. The big clunky picture frame hanging over my headboard.

    I like the picture a lot. That’s why I put it there. Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, it looks so cold and ancient, a somber blackish sky, intrepid hunters with their intrepid dogs, and the polder lakes below dotted by tiny skaters. On hot August nights I switch on the lamp, look at it, and feel cold enough to sleep.

    But Tuesday night, hanging there, that painting wasn’t a positive presence. I hit my head on it. Which hurt until I fell asleep. And in my sleep, how aware I was of this thing dangling! Over me. Waiting to drop, and in the process, dash my brains out. Quite a long time ago, while I was away from home, a wooden bracket, bearing a ceramic vase, tumbled on to my sleeping head, and that incident is probably what made me so preoccupied by the painting. Much later, in a dopey semi-consciousness, I began groping at the wall above my head, trying to protect myself from the picture’s pointy frame.

    Of course, I only managed to whack it again, so hard it swung wildly on the nail, and suddenly I was wide awake. Something cold had fallen on my neck.

    I pawed the wet substance off: crystalline, frigid, and unmistakable. Put some in my mouth. Snow. In a sealed bedroom. In May. Wallowing upright, I clutched the side of my neck where the last tiny flakes were with every instant turning to water, and reached for the lamp. In its gift of sight, I looked left, right, up, and down, finding no possible source for the little flurry, until I became aware of an icy draught behind my shoulders.

    Twisting round, I discovered, with a glee I only hope to feel again at Resurrection, that the draught was puffing out of the Brueghel picture.

    The inner edges of the frame were furred with hoarfrost, and on the carved outer face of the lower frame, slush fused into bright drops from the room’s warmth, remnants of the snow-flinging disturbance that had awakened me. I was now aware of a curious low, broken whistling that I mistook at first for wind. Then a sharp little bark undeceived me. It was in miniature, the far-off baying of those hunting dogs. The three dark figures of hunters, against white snow, moved with hampered steps, leaving profound footprints, to the brow of a steep foreground hill, and in their descent slowly disappeared, followed by their entire pack of restless dogs, whose howls and deep barks diminished. The party left only churned, dirty snow. My gaze sought other figures, distant peasants around a bonfire in the left mid-ground; they moved rhythmically, poking at the blaze, sometimes pausing to hold hands toward it. I could just hear their minute voices in sporadic, unintelligible exchanges, by leaning very near the frame. On the far-removed polder lakes, skaters rotated, flailed, traversed the slate-grey ice in total silence.

    My first wild yearning was to climb into it. This proved undoable: the cold breathing from the frame was so intense, it had me goose-fleshed in my underwear; and its frame was too small to admit me, unless I broke it. Somehow, I feared losing the whole scene if I did that. My second instinct was to tell some other human what was happening, make someone else believe it, so that I could. There was no second thought as to whom I would tell: my high-school art instructor, Dick Carey.

    Enthusiastic, but an astute reasoner, good-natured enough to answer the phone in the middle of the night, he was batty about the Flemish Masters, and also the man who had introduced me to Bruegel. I still had his number. Feeling for it in my jeans, I pulled my cell phone from a pocket.

    “Hello?” He didn’t sound sleepy at all. Probably up reading art criticism at this unearthly hour.

    “Hi, Mr. Carey?” (I’ll never have the gall to call him Dick.) “I’m sorry to disturb you so late. Something weird has happened. With a Bruegel painting.” There, now I had him. He didn’t interrupt me once as I described the phenomenon.

    “Mr. Carey, did this… I’m not pulling your leg. Have I ever pulled your leg before? Is this happening? Is this real?”

    I heard that little rumble in his chest. Anyone who’s ever been in his classes knows that that rumble means an avalanche is coming, an avalanche of rock-like reasoning and information. I held the phone tight to my head, feeling glad. And warmer.

    “You wonder if that can be happening. You’re not the only one of us who’s wondered! You’re questioning empirically what I’ve questioned in the abstract for decades. But you’re the only one still wondering. Listen. Bruegel was a realist, a representationalist. I’ve always respected them most, always will. Shakespeare said the purpose of art is to show reality to itself, “Hold up the very mirror,” of reality. He did it so well, his work is still blurring the line between representation and reality, people are still literally living his work in order to touch and understand life itself! Now, Bruegel… he’s a kind of Shakespeare, I’ve always maintained that. Not just because they were contemporaries. The work of a realist, listen, is to reproduce life, more accurately, and more accurately, and always more accurately. The mistake of art criticism is to suppose the process endless, with infinite space for improvement. But, technically, it has to be finite. That’s what I figured out. There is an end to that quest, anyone can see, the goal is reality itself. Now, if such huge strides can be made toward that goal, like the stride between say, late Medieval manuscript illuminations, and Bruegel, think about that contrast! Do you realize that the stride between Bruegel and reality itself, is smaller?”

    I felt quivery and shaky, the more so because this thing behind my back was still exhaling below-zero air at me. “Why… Why is it happening to me?”

    “Ha! Because… If you were a Polynesian who’d never seen either snow or people in full clothes, would you believe Hunters in the Snow depicts something real? Probably not. Recognizing realism in art has a huge component of belief. Now you, you’ve lived with that painting for years, you say, and it’s become internalized with you, love is the first part of belief… and now, in a state of impaired consciousness, you encounter it again, and wham, your defenses are down, you believe, and Bruegel, the last person to believe it, finally has a successor, an understander, and his vision is seen.”

    “Th-thanks,” I breathed. “Mr. Carey… if you’ll excuse me, I want to be alone with it.”

    “I understand. Wish I was you. It’s alright. I’ll see Bruegel one day.”

    But when I was alone, I was afraid to turn around and face it again.

    Every waft of cold on my back was joy. How could this be! How marvelous!

    … But why was I so happy? What did this mean, for me, or anyone? A great barrier had been crossed. But what barrier? And was its crossing a good thing?

    What barrier, but that mankind had never been able to create before, only manipulate the already-created. Now a man with a marten-hair brush had removed a thought from his head, and look, the thought was real; not an imagined form transferred to preexisting objects, but the imagined objects, themselves, stood in the round.

    Previously, only God could do that.

    ‘Well, they used to say angels were the only rational creatures that fly, and now people can fly,’ I said to myself. ‘That was a good thing. And this is a good thing.’

    But this was a different thing.

    ‘A barrier is broken. The realists, in every form of art, have been trying to break it since time began. Now it’s broken, and… what does it mean? Are we any nearer to the fulfillment of every wish?’

    But wishes could be divided, I thought, into two types—wishes that were part of maintaining life in the body, and wishes for the thing that made life worthwhile. Wishes to live, and when alive, wishes for love. And no earthly love could ever meet all those wishes, that was why people became religious. And this thing behind me, spewing cold air, was not a direct path to the end of all wishes, but a round path going nowhere: because it did not go to the God they say is love, but bypassed him. Man could create.

    I pulled the blanket over my head, to protect myself from that kind of cold.

    I woke up late, and my head hurt from sleeping in. Behind me on the wall was a somber, dingy old print of a flat painting, with flyspecks on the snow. I grabbed the cell phone and looked through Recent Calls.

    No outgoing call to Dick Carey last night. Of course not. Carey had been dead five years.

    Te Deum Laudamus.

    Featured Image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Hunters in the Snow

  • La Petite Mort

    Hannah sat deep in thought waiting for the reception room’s red light to turn green indicating she could open the door to Dr. Dysart’s interior space. She was trying to decide what to talk about – the love bombing or green. Green was her favorite color and had been ever since she had learned the word verdant was a variety of green. As in lush. She was feeling lush and new and full of herself this sunny spring day.

    She had built her vocabulary by acquiring a new word or term every day, employing them with anyone she wanted to impress, and was determined to make an impression on her psychiatrist. Because she was in love. When the light turned green, Hannah inhaled, and turning the door handle, entered his office on the exhale.

    Smoking a Dunhill, Dr. Dysart sat behind the desk he had bought from a New Orleans antique dealer. He smiled and then pursed his lips releasing a ring of smoke that rose and settled above his head like a nimbus. And why not. He was her god. Hadn’t he performed miracles much like Jesus had done for Mary Magdalene, his most beloved disciple?

    “Why you look like a specter today, Dr. Dysart.”

    “I see we’ve learned another word, Hannah. Where did you find this one?”

    Sauntering over to her designated place on the couch directly across from him, she replied, “In some research for my Victorian lit class.”

    “What were you reading?”

    Hannah stood up from her seat and after an exaggerated curtsey, launched into a short recitation of a poem she had located in a nineteenth-century Ladies Home Journal called The Difference:

    Cried the grim spectre Death:
    “Time is a thief,
    Who, with each passing breath,
    Lightening grief,
    Takes from men all their fears.”
    Love merrily
    Laughed, “In a thousand years
    Time robs not me.”

    Imagining herself one of the literati, Hannah reversed her steps toward the couch with an unceasing stare. She might not be rich, but like any woman in her family, she was a reader. So, when she felt his sofa’s dark green damask caress the back of her calves, she asked, “What do you think about that, Doctor?“

    The psychiatrist took a long look at his precocious patient and snuffed out the cigarette in a crystal ashtray. Without leaving her gaze, he walked from behind the desk to take his place on a wingback chair adjacent to the couch. This was one of his strategies for disarming an ego defense.

    He examined Hannah at close range. She was blonde and brilliant. Dangerous only to herself. He knew she was in love. This too was part of his strategy with histrionic patients. Especially a female one.

    Except this time, she did not giggle as she had done before. She stared back at him. And while the doctor settled in for their prescribed fifty-minute rendezvous, Hannah began to fidget with her shoulder bag, which he noticed she placed not beside her, but in her lap.

    “What’s going on, Hannah?”

    “Nothing special.”

    “What’s the fidgeting about, then.”

    Startled, Hannah willed her hands to stop, slipping the right one into the bag on her lap. Her eyes dropped down to fix on the various shades of green spirals in the damask upholstery. Verdant she thought, now letting her eyelids flutter closed.

    “Hannah…,” he whispered into her left ear. On the couch next to her now, Dysart had been waiting for this moment. She was calm enough and would permit him to say,

    “Come back to your body, Hannah.” As he spoke Dysart placed his hand on her thigh. “Come back to the present, Hannah.” She opened her eyes. Looking straight ahead and not at him, Hannah’s hidden hand tightened around the handle of a box cutter. A gift from her brother.

    Dysart’s hand moved up her thigh. Hannah closed her eyes and began counting her breaths as he had coached her to do when anxious. Inhale . . . one . . .two . . .three. . .four.  Exhale . . .one . . .two . . . three . . .four . . .five.  When his fingers reached the sweet spot, he felt her involuntary shudder. Dysart’s warm breath was on her throat before his lips landed there. He kissed the neck, making his way up to the cheek, and she turned toward him, her hand exiting from the bag to embrace him.

    His final kiss landed in full on her mouth. A vital force energy traveled up from Hannah’s second chakra to the third flying right by the fourth. Filling her throat, it formed and then released two words, petite mort.

    This experience of tantric love bombing startled both doctor and patient. Now drowning in Hannah’s wide open green eyes, Dysart did not move a muscle. A nanosecond into it, he could feel the cold sharpness of a box cutter’s blade penetrating flesh just above his carotid artery. “Hannah,” he whispered. “You don’t want to do this.”

    Deep in thought about where she might have heard petite mort, Hannah put the box cutter back into its hiding place without reply. Dysart’s apparent astonishment left her feeling like a mature woman. Casting one last look at the damask’s green spirals, she rose from the couch and strode for the door.

    Heading out of his office, Hannah reminded herself that she must go look up petite mort, and its meaning, in her French dictionary. She also wondered, Should I tell Mama about Dr. Dysart? About the love bomb and how much I love him. Or wait… to bring up in our next session? In the end, Hannah waited.

  • Poetry: Kevin Higgins

    ‘Liberals’ & ‘Death’

    Two words that strut confident of
    their own historical inevitability.
    Everyone in time meets them,
    though hopefully not both
    ringing your door bell
    the same day,
    unless your name is
    Nagasaki or Vietnam;

    or you’re the first village
    no-one’s ever heard of
    successfully abolished
    from thirty thousand feet
    by a transgender person
    pressing a button;

    or you’re the first Somali in history
    proudly turned into a pile of burning mince
    by a drone designed by a woman of colour;

    or you’re the wrong type of Australian
    whose computer told us the names
    of the obliterated
    and so can only leave prison
    in a fair-trade white cardboard box;

    or you’re me, delighted
    to expire unvaccinated rather
    than spark a diplomatic kerfuffle
    by sticking in my bicep
    something as sinister sounding as Sputnik
    without written permission from Brussels

    who’ll surely deliver
    a keynote speaker to my grave
    to thank my corpse for its contribution,
    and find a plausible way of saying:
    I’m down here, getting acquainted with the snails
    so they can be up there, polishing their idea of themselves.

    Feature Image: Original #banksy ‘Civilian Drone Strike’ in East London ahead of London arms fair opening.

     

  • COVID-19: Virtual Work a Bridge Too Far?

    For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
    Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics

    “That’s how you learn. But after you make the same mistake one, or two, or five times, you’ll eventually get it. And then you’ll make new mistakes.”
    Louis Sachar, The Card Turner (2010)

    Managing and Nurturing the New Workplace Culture

    A recent report from the International Labour Organization provides evidence that employees are more productive when they work outside a conventional office.[i] They are, however, more vulnerable to longer working hours, a more intense pace of work, work-home interference, and elevated stress.

    Mark Twain

    Other research indicates that common problem for remote workers[ii] include: ‘unplugging after work’ (38%); as well as loneliness (19%); lack of collaboration (17%); distractions at home (10%); managing and coping with time zones (8%); and last but not the least, Staying motivated (8%).

    Mark Twain once said: ‘If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is probably the worse things that is going to happen to you all day long. Your ‘frog’ is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.’

    So, I list two recommendations for managing expectations while we survive the #workfromhome phase.

    1. Focus on a few things, and do them well. The ‘Eisenhower matrix’ is often used to avoid unnecessary time-wasting tasks and know which tasks to do next. Ideally plan to do just one big thing, three medium things, and five small things per day,[iii] the 1-3-5 rule.
    2. Managing energy is more important than managing time: Keep track of how much you’ll be able to focus at different points of the day. You improve by pushing your practice, not yourself during periods of low energy.

    ‘Given the lack of face-to-face interaction and heavy reliance on technology, the intent of what someone wants to communicate might be misconstrued.’

    Communication (a lack of it or too much of it) generally improves when a collaborative work management platform is used to centralise all communication and collaboration. Suggestions would include using Trello or Asana to Basecamp or Wrike – they are inclusive in keeping managers in the loop and on top of what is happening.[iv]

    An MIT Sloan study shows that employees were twice as likely to discuss the quality of communication by top leaders in positive terms during the months of the pandemic than they were a year earlier. In fact, they were 88% more likely to write positively about leaders’ honesty and transparency (46%). Employees also expressed more positive sentiment about transparency (42%) and communication (35%) in general.[v]

    One of the most important themes that stand out in the months of the pandemic is the degree and quality of communication by leaders. A recent study shows that employees of Culture 500 companies gave their corporate leaders much higher marks in terms of honest communication and transparency, during the first six months of the pandemic compared to the preceding year.[vi]

    On the other side of the coin, when you work from home, you no longer have a clear geographic division between workspace and personal space. It is for this very same reason, once again, difficult to switch off when both personal and professional worlds operate under the same roof. With constant remote work in action, the boundaries between working and not-working start to fade rapidly.

    Home-based workers do not tend to receive signals about when to switch off. Therefore, leaders need to communicate clearly on the ‘time for work’ and ‘time for play’ model, which would help smooth everybody’s work model and conduct.

    No Place Like Home

    Fundamentally, one’s home is a place of relaxation, safety, and security. It’s a place where you subconsciously slip into a calm, easy-going state of mind, putting the stresses of the workday behind. However, working from home punches a hole right through that neat division. Many telecommuters complain they feel like they’re never off the job. They always feel a compulsion to check email or get “just one last thing done.”

    So how to set the rules of engagement and boundaries?

    Remote work becomes more efficient and satisfying once managers set expectations for the frequency, means, and ideal timing of communication for their teams. For example using videoconferencing for daily check-in meetings, but using IM when something is urgent.

    Also, if leaders can allow employees to specify their hours to be contacted and equally importantly, when not to be. Finally, it is important for leaders to keep an eye on communication among team members to ensure that they are sharing information as needed.

    Additionally, leaders need to do more frequent check-ins to see how they can support their people in moving forward. Since, above all, leaders need to build trust. During this period managers in certain industries have enjoyed a bit more autonomy within companies to take ownership of projects and complete these how they see fit. A responsible degree of empowerment and delegation is what came out of the process when done with purpose.

    Consequently, there’s also been a huge shift in flexibility in this period, with firms having to acknowledge – often for the first time – that their employees have complex lives, which sometimes incorporate children, ageing parents, health concerns, and poor housing, to name but a few of the challenges the pandemic has brought to the fore.

    The Art of Learning (by doing)

    According to Erin Driver-Linn of Harvard University: ‘Experiential learning is participative—for example, either making or doing … What do we need to understand, as a learner, which is conceptual? And what do we need to understand by experiencing things in a different way?’[vii]

    Managing talents and the right selection followed by allocation of relevant resources are attributes that a good institution requires. The core skills any individuals who wants to thrive in an innovative business environment or organisation come down to the following: creativity, problem-solving and continuous improvement skills, developing attitudes and behaviours that are needed to frame and solve problems, and generate new ideas on a continual basis.

    Additionally there is risk-assessment and risk-taking skills; the mindset to manage these has to be solidified over time. Upgrading these skills depends heavily on effective planning and implementation.

    Managing the ‘New Normal’ Workplace Culture

    ‘People find meaning in their daily rituals of getting ready to leave home, commuting, grabbing their cup of coffee, and filling their water bottle before sitting at their desk.’[viii]

    Broadly, organisational culture is defined by the collective norms of behaviour exhibited by the individuals within an organisation. Since the first, almost global, lockdown of early 2020, there was a shared buzz, online and otherwise, that #wfh would be a recipe for disaster when it comes to maintaining stable company culture.

    Among the questions that leaders and managers pondered were:

    Will the company culture take a hit because people can’t meet in person, making it harder to solidify their shared beliefs?

    Will they be less able to use the company culture as a roadmap for making sensible decisions during tumultuous times?

    How can companies continue to build and leverage their culture while all operations are functioning remotely?

    At least we seem to be wasting less time now. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research claims that even though we’re attending more meetings in the Zoom era, the average meeting length is shorter and we’re collectively spending less time in them.[ix] Most firms claim to have increased communication, meaning that employees might be feeling more connected.

    Besides communication and trust exercise, leaders also need to establish and maintain discipline and boundaries. People working alone tend to become less productive over time, even if they work longer hours than they did in the office. This has less to do with productivity than losing their frame of reference and task orientation. As is often the case, it comes down to mindset. While some of this is innate, other aspects are derived from situational and environmental conditions.

    Social media giant Twitter was one of the first companies that decided that their workers could work from home when COVID-19 cases began rising in March 2020.[x] With foresight, Jack Dorsey (CEO of Twitter and Square) also stated that employees will potentially have the option to work remotely indefinitely.

    In addition to being ahead of the game, Twitter also provided employees with day-care reimbursements, continued to pay contract workers[xi] whether they’re able to work or not, and banned all in-person events for the rest of 2020. This is the situation to this day.

    American graphic artist Harvey Ball.

    Put a Human Face on your Organisation

    Especially in the context of an abrupt shift to remote work, it is important for leaders to acknowledge stress, listen to employees’ anxieties and concerns, and empathize with their struggles. If a newly remote employee is clearly struggling, but failing to communicate stress or anxiety, ask them how they’re doing.

    Even a general question such as: “How is this remote work situation working out for you so far?” can elicit important information that you might not otherwise hear.

    Once you ask the question, be sure to listen carefully to the response, and briefly restate it back to the employee to ensure that you understood their answer correctly. Let the employee’s stress or concerns (rather than your own) be the focus of this conversation.

    Cut to Credits!

    Successful organizations need effective leaders. With the aging of the workforce and imminent retirement of the Baby Boomers, U.S. organizations are experiencing a shortage of skilled leaders and a significant need for leadership training. Skilled leadership affects the entire workforce; numerous studies indicate that one of the key reasons for employees leaving their jobs is because they are uncomfortable with the working environment created by a direct supervisor. Successful organizations need effective, parental, and democratic leaders at this juncture.

    Leadership training could reduce turnover at all levels in an organization, the focus remains on learning and managing adaptability, interpersonal people skills, self-awareness, developing and maintaining a sense of purpose, timely and effective decisiveness, as well as collaborative skills. The basic aim of training and development programmes is to help the organization to achieve its mission and goals by improving individual and, ultimately, organizational performance.

    In light of the initiatives of prominent global businesses as well as small businesses at a domestic and local level, the concept of a virtual workplace has been redefined in the past twelve months. This is a useful time to document the process as at a later stage we will need to look back and take lessons from this period.

    Virtual bonding is helping many to come emotionally closer to their colleagues. Some have seen a marked reduction in the communication gap between themselves and their senior. This insight may not seem like rocket science, but a key lesson for companies is to work out ways of avoiding toxicity and recognise the supreme importance of fairness and kindness.

    Research into emotional intelligence and emotional contagion tells us that employees look to their leaders for cues about how to react to sudden changes or crisis situations. If a manager communicates stress and helplessness, this will have what Daniel Goleman calls a ‘trickle-down’ effect on employees.

    Effective leaders[xii] generally take a two-pronged approach, both acknowledging the stress and anxiety that employees may be feeling in difficult circumstances, but also providing affirmation of confidence in their teams. We are all in this together, and we will get through it – perhaps we should see it as a time to get to know ourselves a bit better.

    [i] ‘Working anytime, anywhere: The effects on the world of work’, Eurofound, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_544138.pdf

    [ii] Business Coach: Vanessa Moore, May 30th, 2019 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/eat-frog-vanessa-moore-1c/

    [iii] Deen Dayal Yadav, ‘How to cope up with the challenges of remote working?’ Thrive Global, May 6th, 2020, https://thriveglobal.com/stories/how-to-cope-up-with-the-challenges-of-remote-working/

    [iv]  Trello vs Asana vs Basecamp, Grasshopper Resources, https://grasshopper.com/resources/tools/project-management-tools-trello-asana-basecamp/

    [v] ‘STUDY: Organizations Rising to the Challenge of COVID-19 Communications, but Needs Persist; Leaders Must Address Concerns and Demonstrate Transparency, Clarity and Openness’ BusinessWire, April 3rd, 2020. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200403005278/en/STUDY-Organizations-Rising-to-the-Challenge-of-COVID-19-Communications-but-Needs-Persist-Leaders-Must-Address-Concerns-and-Demonstrate-Transparency-Clarity-and-Openness

    [vi] Donald Sull and Charles Sull, ‘How Companies Are Winning on Culture During COVID-19’ October 28th, 2020, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-companies-are-winning-on-culture-during-covid-19/

    [vii] ‘Innovation & discovery skills for ‘innovention’ managers’ The Sentinel, February 14th, 2021, https://www.sentinelassam.com/editorial/innovation-discovery-skills-for-innovention-managers-524593

    [viii] James Thomas, ‘How the pandemic can change workplace culture for the better’ Strategy&, https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/m1/en/articles/2020/how-the-pandemic-can-change-workplace-culture-for-the-better.html

    [ix] Daniel Kost, ‘You’re Right! You Are Working Longer and Attending More Meetings,’ Harvard Business School, September 14th, 2020, https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/you-re-right-you-are-working-longer-and-attending-more-meetings

    [x] Untitled, ‘Coronavirus: Twitter tells staff to work from home,’ BBC, March 3rd, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51700937

    [xi] Jack Kelly, ‘Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Tells Employees They Can Work From Home ‘Forever’—Before You Celebrate, There’s A Catch’, May 13th, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/13/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-tells-employees-they-can-work-from-home-forever-before-you-celebrate-theres-a-catch/?sh=32caf77a2e91

    [xii] ‘Daniel Goleman, ‘An EI-Based Theory of Performance’ Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organisations, 2000, http://www.eiconsortium.org/reprints/ei_theory_performance.html

  • Poetry – Elliot Moriarty

    Nicholas of Bari

    Another night fifth in a row
    unsettled but unfrozen
    thinking I get it I get it
    (I don’t, but I have skin and nerves):

    Whatever sustains someone doing what you do,
    I mean never mind the privations! that unseen hand,
    Shoulder cupped, steering towards the leper colony –
    the Big Bewk saints, the Seenitalls, Tell-you-what-I’d
    do-if-I-were-yous…
    (enthusiasts who sleep one to a room
    and who if we just roll up that sleeve
    for a couple hundred spare months)
    yes that too. If we just….

    And you break away and plod on
    As they foretell your grit will kill you.

    Well this too, a mile away: Perpetual Motion!
    Wind or tide or compressed chipboard or wherever they’re
    frisbeeing the tax breaks this current? cycle?
    into laps of pals slash creditors ABCing
    a redesigned polity, where battery tech –
    Sorry – Nology – excuseme, will…
    (impilmentated across the economy)
    Will save…

    The child in the lithium mine, fingers
    deformed, the first knuckle gone.
    Overheads, always overheads.
    But we’ll outsource to Europa
    when the talent pool is Exhausted.

    Which will take a while yet.

    Half a mile away:

    Our Vegan Monday grinners,
    Off setting off in the fake jeep,
    Eerie silence til the gas kicks in
    Over Charlemont bridge, arc of
    Our hero stolidly crossing,
    Dashboard screams, driver jolts,
    keels, (rest of car buried in phones)
    “Watch where YOU’RE going!” he starts
    To shout
    As the eyes turn
    the whole corpus twists
    toward him and through him –
    an air-conditioner chill then gone,
    no trace in the rear-view.
    He tells himself he dodged, but…
    This has been happening
    More often lately. Overtired, that’s all.
    Newstalk. And an early night tonight.

    They sleep eight hours.
    Belatedly, worry entered their guts
    once they had genetic skin in the game, but
    Ours will be fine: Business Cantonese, crypto,
    Young Scientist, fun size beers (better
    they’re in the house than eff-knows-where) and
    The Talk About…
    They sleep nine hours.
    A theatrical yawn.
    Back to the salt mine, conference call.

    I get it in the sense that I wouldn’t either,
    I think you’re right, and if I had your honed instincts
    and scalpel humour—
    But on days such as this, fifth and counting
    Surely a den of thieving fuckers is better
    than another wet gutter screaming match
    with a fifteen hour night?
    Husband your fuel and your wits. Arm yourself
    with a rock or a crunched up can
    in your goto pocket. Breathe out, finish anything you’ve left,
    stride towards the LED light.

    Don’t be late, they’ll lock you out to die.

    “you’ve made your point
    you holy few
    you’ve made your point!”

    Jesus Christ, like.

    I mean Jesus Christ, they’d fling you in
    the Liffey stamp “buried at sea” on the docket—
    Quickly – pick three: Psychiatric History, Known to Gardaí,
    Mintil Hilth™, Engagement Izzyous – which is why –
    Refusal, Reluctance, the cracks –  and again this is
    Again why – yet another – yet
    Another No Fixed Address – sponge, waste, nosh Abel
    for…For?
    Well, whether the brown liar was once his thing,
    He wasn’t using: he wins. He haunts at his pleasure.

    Remember that as ever decimating rootless scum
    was an inexpensive way to impress upon sit-in
    students down a year of Law, sneering at
    the empty Jay One cancellation threat: –
    “Australia America Canada New Zealand,
    we will see them all while you’re here minding
    Your handicapped kids, you inbred bogscum” but
    but what if – surely a contingent?:

    Cracks invisible under carpeted floors,
    The weight of Relying On You, son,
    And such a long way down.
    “We know you’ll get your act together.
    Perhaps you’re just overthinking, your—”
    Fogged vocation? or, The base fear:
    marooned and slowly draining amid the dying
    amongst the dying in between the bonesunk husks,
    our holy dying knackers dying at midday without a fuss,
    town on a weekday, going peaceful after years howling
    into their mobiles their streets those trams,
    dying for no reason, dying without ever even
    presuming to arrogate a version of what same
    Artsblock Stephen Heroes claim’s birthright
    to lose, yet perhaps too they’re just
    dying for a lungful of a dreamt cracked Rome:

    nicotine and subway vents and rumour.
    Harlem, The Bowery, The Hands That.

    Twenty years later the bootlace daredevils’
    Conspicuous Return: Lo! It Can Be Done Son, says
    the cute one, a quiet deal on a struggling licence
    (add strip lighting, carvery, Guinness mid-strentt’)
    While the others…

    Vanished Camden or Rockaway or Justfuckedoff,
    never left the tower no matter how far they fled
    from the ripped places those ripped up were next sent,
    those banished home staring at the wall of unsaid,
    sleepless over decisions unmade, failed
    stabs at intercession with mute smiling friends
    that went early on,

    back when the junk suddenly dropped from the sky
    like manna – sufficient for each day

    turns out most people don’t want to die,
    so explain it to me again.

    *Concurrent to the events depicted in noted docu-drama Rambo III, western cities were flooded with cheap Afghan heroin. Dublin – largely unfamiliar with opiates –came out of it badly.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

     

     

  • Featured Artist Annelie Carlström

    I have always been a creative person. When I was a child I loved to draw and cut paper, my kindergarten teacher was ever so impressed by my straight cutting lines!

    My grandfather painted in oil and made sculptures out of wood he found in nature. He told me that there is no tree in the world that looks like another tree. That sentence has stuck with me over the years, and I can still see his drawings of trees in my head. That sprawling line in black carbon. The drawn line is very important to me, so is the craftsmanship. I really want to feel the person behind the drawing/illustration, and when it is all digital I can’t sense the person behind it any longer, and lose interest.

    Career Options

    When I was growing up I knew I wanted to work creatively in some way, but I was not sure how.

    I started out with ballet, but after being rejected by the Swedish ballet school I began to dream about becoming an architect, living in a self-drawn house with two big dogs.

    Then, when I was about twelve I realized that I was quite good at drawing. We had a class in school where we drew onions with soft pastel crayons and that was the first time I understood that I had a true talent for drawing. I captured the onion’s expression and the wink on the surface.

    Grandfather

    My grandfather, who was such an important person to me, always said that there was no future in being an artist. He himself was from a working class background and quit school at the age of twelve, with no further possibility to study. Since I had the option to study whatever I chose, he thought I should become a doctor, or some other serious occupation where you made a lot of money and earned respect.

    So with that in mind I have tried to come up with more commercial ways of working creatively. Becoming an artist and being successful felt impossible and something that only rich people with great confident could aspire to.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Interior Designs

    When I turned nineteen and applied for art school I had a plan to become an interior designer.

    I envisaged myself strolling around in fancy suits with a leather portfolio full of brilliant ideas. It was not so much the design work I was interested in but rather the lifestyle.

    Being a successful business woman became a big goal, but it had to be in the creative industry. After a year of painting still life in oil and drawing croquis we had a class in illustration and from that point on that was all I wanted to do.

    It was the perfect mix of artistic work, while remaining in the commercial world. To become an illustrator I had to apply to the most competitive college in Sweden, so I have attended a lot of art and design schools, seven years in total. It took me a while to develop my own way of drawing, and it did not evolve fully until my last term of Design College.

    I graduated from Beckmans College of Design in 2007. Then I felt quite scared and alone in the world. I had my portfolio of pencil drawings and a well-respected qualification, but I had not done any illustration work, and settled for a part-time job at a grocery store to pay my way.

    As that summer went by I felt more and more frustrated. I suppose I am a very emotional person with little patience. Then in the beginning of autumn something amazing happened. The best illustration agency in Sweden got in touch and said they wanted to represent me!

    I could not believe my luck. From then on my career received a real push and I worked with all sorts of clients from all over the world. One of my first jobs was from a bank with offices all over the world. I got paid so much I really could not believe it!

    Some people said that I had sold out, but I think they were just jealous. My first objective was to make a living as an illustrator, but after doing so for over a decade I’m more interested in the artistic expression of telling my own story, rather than clients’.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Magic and Poetry

    In my drawings I want to create magic and poetry. I want you to sense the vibrations from the pen. I want to take you to other places, other dimensions. Where words are unnecessary.

    My favourite subject is girls and nature. Perhaps I’m just drawing myself in different versions over and over again. I don’t want to do what is expected of me. If I do so I feel I have failed.

    I don’t want to draw the happy life, the smiling girls and the cosy gardens, which can make things tricky when working commercially. Indeed, clients always ask if my characters could smile a bit more… It’s as if there is no place for seriousness in the sales department. Perhaps that’s why I’m doing more and more personal art these days.

    Like many others, I draw inspiration from many different things. I often find it in novels. At the moment my favourite author is Agneta Pleijel, I want to draw like she writes. I am also inspired by great artists like Jockum Nordström, Klara Kristalova and Lucian Freud.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Instagram

    Even though I have a hate/love relation with Instagram, I must admit that it is a big source of inspiration, even though it can be quite fast paced and homogeneous. You see so much in such a small amount of time. A true piece of art get swiped away in a matter of seconds.

    It’s such a different experience to sitting at a bench in a museum, experiencing an artwork in real life, where it is in its natural environment with appropriate lighting.

    I love going to museums. They are like churches for me, where I can find pieces and feel the love in the world. In Stockholm we have the Nationalmuseet, a place I love to visit, where there is art from all times across history.

    ©Annelie Carlström
    Detail of the above ©Annelie Carlström

    Since I was a child I have loved naturalistic portrait painting, particularly the fabric that often folds and the way the dresses fall in old paintings.

    I’m also very interested in the face, specially the eyes with their gaze and the wink in the eye. Overall I love to work with details, drawing the hair shaft, and trying to understand how a certain surface can be translated into a drawing – like a knitted sweater or a shiny plastic jacket.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    I just love to take my time, and not work under pressure, allowing the line to go on the paper; filling up the spaces moment after moment. But of course when working with illustration you have a timeline to adapt to, which can make the drawing stressful and without soul. I try hard to avoid that. It gives me a feeling of being without a purpose, where everything is meaningless.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Piece by Piece

    When I illustrate I draw everything in pieces. I draw the head on one piece of paper, the hair on another, the shoes on another etc. Then I scan the drawings and put it all together in the computer. I often say that I cheat a bit, because when you draw big and then make it smaller in the computer it looks more detailed than it really is.

    When I started out I used the mouse to work with the illustrations on the computer, but now I use a Wacom board and that makes the process so much easier, and I guess I also work more on the computer than before because it is so easy to adjust the picture digitally. But lately I’ve got more into making drawings as originals, big ones. I have not managed to finish anything yet but I hope I will find the time soon.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Collaborations

    I’m originally a lone wolf, but lately I have managed a few interesting collaborations. One is with the excellent artist Petra Börner. We had an exhibition together at The Museum of Drawings called ”Drawn to the Line” here in Sweden, and it was the most creative fun I have had in a long time.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Petra works in a completely different style that goes really well with mine. To see two artistic expression meet and create a new one was a true awakening for me.

    We are now trying to find a new location for the exhibition and I’m also working on new drawings and sculptures in ceramic that can be part of the original exhibition.

    I’ve also collaborated with jewellery artist Sanna Svedestedt Carboo. I draw her leather jewellery and invented a woman wearing them. We both love braids and pine trees so that was a natural theme for collaboration.

    The exhibition Braid.Stone.Needle that includes my drawings and Sannas art jewelry is currently being showed at MUSA, a fashion store and Gallery in Gothenburg, Sweden.

    I have also just started a artist collective together with artist Mia Nilsson called Fina Linjen. Some of Sweden’s most excellent illustrators is part of the group. I hope it will have a bright future.”

  • Musician of the Month: Ellie O’Neill

    I’ve never needed a reason to write a song. There have never been any conscious considerations of failure or success during the process. If anything, I can say that what I discover through writing is that there are endless landscapes of discovery. This feeling has not changed in the eleven years I’ve been writing and playing music, but it has definitely been challenged many times by different circumstances, by frustration and impatience.

    The first few months of the pandemic were some of the most challenging of times of my life in so many respects, but in particular, to overcome creative blocks of all kinds. I’ve read and heard similar sentiments from artists in all disciplines, from all over the world. Out of necessity I had to find new pathways through the distraction and despair that were surrounding the drive to write.

    https://soundcloud.com/ellieoneillmusic/half-immune

    During the second lockdown, around September, I read Carmen Maria Machado’s book In The Dream House for the first time. It was a graduation gift from my friend Molly. It’s so rare to happen upon a book, or any somewhat mainstream art really, about which you have no preconceived notions.

    I’d somehow never seen it talked about online or even heard about it from friends. It turned out to be a life changing experience for me for many reasons, one of which was Machado’s capacity for searingly honest storytelling.

    She quotes Dorothy Allison at the beginning of chapter five: ‘Two or three things I know for sure and one of them is that telling the story all the way through is an act of love.’

    Molly giving me the book was an act of love; my reading of it through to the end was an act of self-love. Beginning to think about telling your story in this way opened avenues for me in my own writing that had been heavily blocked, long before the lockdowns.

    But in terms of attempting to write in pandemic times, it allowed me to exhale into the situation, rather than instinctively turn a blind eye and try to write as if it had never happened; like it wasn’t happening right now.

    I suppose I struggled with the situation of wanting and needing to write but being unable to do so truthfully, without noticeable inflections of isolation or disease or separation permeating the language and the music.

    Viewing acceptance of the current situation as an act of love allowed me to begin writing again, a couple of months into the pandemic, and to allow these inflections to come, marking my ideas and words and notes, and accepting them as realities in the moment of writing. So, a form of acceptance came and settled in, and I slowly started to come out of shock and into writing mode.

    In an online workshop I took with guitarist and songwriter Buck Meek last month, he referred to his own periods of inspiration or prolifigacy as ‘seasons’ of writing. This resonated deeply with me as a metaphor for those couple of weeks at a time where creativity is flowing: working when there’s no mining to be done, because it’s all there on the surface, ready. These seasons come in cycles, and they bring with them their own unique collection of senses, words and thought processes.

    For me, this most recent season has been rife with images of birds, pyramids, wild animals and the cold sea. These are related to finding comfort, it would seem, in thoughts of flight and weightlessness, of ancient beauty, and again, of natural cycles twinned with wild unpredictability. This is what I’ve been observing, I think, most consciously in the past year: a stillness or stuckness; the prospect of infinite lockdowns and days seeming to repeat themselves; coupled with the unstoppable force of everything around me changing in both minute and massive ways, all the time.

    https://soundcloud.com/ellieoneillmusic/anna

    The pandemic afforded me the privilege to slow down enough to actively watch the physical seasons of the year changing. I had the chance to feel the day it became too cold to swim for more than five minutes, and the day it finally warmed up again. Leaning into the fact that the seasons will return, renewed each time, has been deeply comforting; where I used to deny myself the right to repeat ideas or phrases or even chord progressions I instead began to lean into it, to try and see why they kept raising their heads. I’m beginning to remember that each new season will bring all new types of light and shade.

    It’s been liberating also, to return to writing lyrics in the present tense about things from the past. The movement and immediacy of it has been like stretching out of the confinement of the days, a vibration that helps dissolve the walls of stuckness. Dredging up old stories you thought you were finished with feels nostalgic and sticky and whiny sometimes, but exploring them in the present tense makes them become  dreamlike and fluid.

    It’s been almost a way of travelling, for me, during this time of sudden and intense constrainment. Back to Montreal, back to Cork, back to when Dublin city didn’t feel completely empty. Time becomes irrelevant in this merging of tenses, if only to the writer, but that’s the  liberation. After all, I am the first person I’m trying to communicate with, through all of it.

    Feature image: Jeanne Castegnier-Mainville

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    Image Jeanne Castegnier-Mainville