Cassandra Voices

Category: Culture

  • Lent

    The poor auld Bunty Mac was a great friend of mine back in the late 70s and early 80s. We being young men taken to the sup, what you might call drink. Bunty Mac was the Doc Holliday of Longford and well, I was the Wyatt Earp of Westmeath. The Bunty was a poker shark and every one knew he cheated, but no one could ever catch him out. Not even meself. It wasn’t quite like the film, but it wasn’t far off it, and we always came out on top, or on top more times than not. It funded the lifestyle we choose to live at that time.

    At the poker schools, we took large sums in winnings off the lads. I’d have the Bunty run out a door or window, any exit he could get through. Carrying the cash. That’s when the lads would get mad and start a row. No matter what, Bunty never looked back, because the wad of cash was more important than me. Sure manys the swinging match I had to face while the Bunty made his escape. It was the toss of a coin if you boxed the heads off a lad or two, or they boxed the head off of me. Sure, I didn’t care about them things. I saw it as part of the game.

    One time and we lodging in Harlesdon North London. Big Phil from Cork was our landlord, and a real gentleman he was. Came from money and wealth, and had grown up in a very different situation to the Bunty Mac and meself. But we were great friends in those days and Big Phil would love to come around for the chat and the craic.

    “Bejaysus Lads,” Big Phil would say, “Never a mad pair of hoors like yous pair did ever I see. But yous are great craic, the happy madness.” Poor auld big Phil talked us into giving up the drink for Lent, and he a religious man. Sure the Bunty looked over at me, and says he,

    “We have as much chance of climbing mount Everest in our bare feet, as give up the porter and poker for Lent.”

    It so happens in those days neira mobile phone or social media was come about.

    “What yous boys should do is find two nice girls to straighten yous out. Sure, I looked at the Bunty Mac and says I,

    “There as much chance of that, as climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, in a pair a high heels and suspenders.” After a lot of persuasion, he got us to write to the pen pal club and find ourselves two dacent women to straighten us out.

    As the weeks passed and we climbing the walls for a pint, their letters began to land on the mat. Two fine dacent young ladys began to correspond, and with pictures we got to see what they looked like. After a round of letter correspondence, we made the phone call, and arrangements be made for to meet a first date.

    The Bunty Mac had lied to impress herself, saying he was a business man from Piccadilly instead of a wild hoor from Harlesden, a working class spot. We met them the same night and mine was at Northwood station. His at Piccadilly.

    When she turned up I got the shock of my life, and she had aged 30 years since she sent me her picture three weeks before.

    “Be Jaysus says I. You’re auld enough to be me mammy. What happened to you in the three weeks since past?” She lit me a smile, and asked,

    “Am I still staying at yours?”

    “Be Jaysus, you’re not, Missus!” and I ran like a blue hoor.

    No sooner I be home, and who lands in the door but himself. On his lonesome. Surprised, says I, “Well where is herself, Bunty Mac?

    “Be God, Nicky Feery, You never guess what! A grand posh wan she was, and as she landed on the platform. And me stood there, grinning with a bunch of roses. Says I, to herself, ‘Well Hello Sweetheart, and welcome to Pickladdiki.’ The word came out all wrong. Be Jaysus, if she only walked by me. Her head in the air, like I wasn’t even there. An over she goes to the next platform. Boards a train back, from the direction she came.”

    “Sure,” says I, “I faired no better. T’was the auld mammy she sent, or by Jaysus, she aged shocking in the three weeks since.”

    So, that was the last time we gave up the porter for the duration of Lent.

  • Public Intellectuals: Hannah Arendt

    A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient.
    Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1966)

    It is, perhaps, notable that as a young student Hannah Arendt was the Nazi-sympathising philosopher Martin Hedeigger’s lover. His little Jewess trophy, perhaps redolent in his mind of Weimar Republic decadency. Surprisingly, she never really developed a hated for him, intellectually at least, despite his stunning failure in selling his soul to the Nazis.

    In contrast to Heidegger, the ultra-conservative German burgher Thomas Mann chose exile. His rather clunky prose is excused on that point alone, and, suitably, his best work arrived after decamping to Switzerland. This includes especially Doctor Faustus (1947) an oblique portrayal of an actor and academic visited by a Mephistophelian figure, who sells his soul to the Nazis – a Heideggerean type in fact.

    Arendt’s background, steeped in the great German philosophical tradition, but rejected as a Jewess – and even subjected to a period under Gestapo confinement – gave her an unparalleled vantage on the great evils of the twentieth century, and the perils of ideological conformity that corrupted even the most elevated intellects. A failure to exercise a moral conscience in performing actions is a recurring failure, even where we do not see the extremes of totalitarian rule.

    Arendt and Albert Camus

    Arendt is among the most important public intellectual of our age for a variety of reasons.

    First,  she witnessed at first hand the rise of antisemitism in Germany, before migrating to the Americas, along with others from a golden generation of great mitteleuropean thinkers – many of them also Jewish – such as Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Berthold Brecht and Walter Benjamin. She was young and resilient enough to avoid the despair that led many to suicide, or to expire prematurely like Louis Althusser, whose structuralist influence has had a less than positive influence.

    A migratory professor with lifestyle “issues” including a nicotine habit that has become increasingly unacceptable in America, Arendt’s cosmopolitan “Europeanness” was tolerated in her time. In a bygone age the Frankfurt School colonised American academia, and a person such as Vladimir Nabokov – a different beast altogether – could became a professor in Columbia. Imagine the uproar if his Lolita was published today?

    Albert Camus in 1957 by Robert Edwards
    Albert Camus in 1957 by Robert Edwards

    In some respects her Gallic twin – and the other indispensable public intellectual for our time – Albert Camus also disavowed extremism, strict ideological conformity and what may be described as scientism. Both firmly rejected a positivism identified with the nineteenth century philosopher Auguste Comte (d.1857), whose conclusions according to Camus ‘are curiously like those finally accepted by scientific socialism.’

    According to Camus, Comte conceived of a society whose:

    [S]cientists would be priests, two thousand bankers and technicians ruling over a Europe of one hundred and twenty million inhabitants where private life would be absolutely identified with public life, where absolute obedience ‘of action, of thought, and of feeling’ would be given to the high priest who reign over everything.[i]

    As today we hang on the pronouncement of anointed scientists who decide our intimate social lives, it would appear Comte’s vision has come to fruition. Thus, one of the latter-day hierarchy, Professor Niall Ferguson in an interview with The Times revealed his amazement at the power he wielded. After the British government followed Chinese policy in introducing a lockdown he observed: ‘It’s a communist, one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought. And then Italy did it. And we realised we could.’

    Likewise, Arendt equated Comte’s hope for ‘a united, regenerated humanity under the leadership – présidence – of France’[ii] with the idea of a ‘national mission’ used by English imperialists to justify global expansion during the late nineteenth century. Arendt also pointed to the danger of the positivists’ assumption – evident in totalitarian Soviet propaganda – ‘that the future is eventually scientifically predictable’.[iii]

    Eichmann in Jerusalem

    Eichmann on trial in 1961.

    Arendt’s fame rests especially on the proverbial shitstorm caused by her coverage of the former SS officer Alfred Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in 1961. She coined the immortal phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to describe how under Nazism ambitious functionaries and bean counters – such as Eichmann – climbed career ladders without regard for the supreme brutality of their regime. This was not apparent to them in their day-to-day lives; so out of sight was out of mind. In any age, including this, we should be wary of a cost-benefit analysis of life where board room decisions decide the fate of human beings and the natural world.

    Indicatively, in Ireland between 1996 and 2012 the number of qualified accountants grew by a staggering eight-three percent to number 27,112.[iv] It is now clear that bean counters and bureaucrats dominate our lives. Although many may not seem like villanous characters, any buffoonery on display should not be a source of reassurance. As Arendt describes Eichmann:

    Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the entire enterprise [his trial], and was also rather hard to sustain in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused to millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed and almost never reported.[v]

    Eichmann in Jerusalem highlights how an obsession with compliance and promotion blunts moral sensibility; and how a cognitive dissonance takes hold where slavish obedience leads to a failure to question one’s actions. This is the moral corrosion generated by a lack of consequentialist or moral thinking.

    The Human Condition

    I would argue that The Human Condition (1958) is central to understanding our age, in that it emphasizes the good life, and a need for Aristotelian measure and moderation in pursuit of eudaimonia. As the opening sentence of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics puts it: ‘Every art and every scientific inquiry, and similarly every action and purpose, may be said to aim at some good.’

    The Human Condition emphasizes a moral conscience that should ideally inform all our actions, especially politics. And she warns of a detachment from human realities that may occur once the “pensionopolis” of an entitled state class have no concern for trade or manufacturing:

    No activity that served only the purpose of making a living, of sustaining only the life process, was permitted to enter the political realm, and this at the grave risk of abandoning trade and manufacture to the industriousness of slaves and foreigners, so that Athens indeed became the “pensionopolis” with a “proletariat of consumers”[vi]

    It is insufficient to perform a deed in isolation; you have to understand what you are doing and for whom and why. Or at the least investigate and interrogate your motivations, while avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism. As Voltaire put it: ‘the best is the enemy of the good’, a point seemingly lost on certain scientific authorities in their utopian pursuit of ZeroCovid.

    Arendt also warns against the scientism in our public discourse, or more crucially the triumph of a form of mathematical intelligence, which is often divorced from moral decision-making, with Oppenheimer’s quotation from the Bhagavad-Gita ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’ after the launch of the atomic bomb an obvious statement of this pitfall.

    It is a point the philosopher Mary Midgley (above) has also made in response to a letter Albert Einstein wrote to the wife of a deceased physicist that ‘people like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.’[vii]

    In response Midgley wrote:

    if reality was indeed something that only physicists could reach – if everybody else was wandering clueless through a hopeless maze of illusions – there would be a crucial difference between these scientists and the rest of us. We are being told that we are mere peasants, helpless “folk-psychologists”, and we may well hear this dictum as a simple insult “you are nothing.”[viii]

    Thus Arendt, along with Midgley, warns against placing too great a premium on mathematical intelligence – and those who may consider lesser mortals as mere nothings. Arguably, this can be seen in the all-too-ready acceptance of Professor Ferguson’s doomsday mathematical modelling for Covid-19 mortality last year, which proved to be wrong by a significant margin. According to Mark Landler and Stephen Castle in the New York Times, Ferguson’s interpretation was ‘treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies.’

    More widely, the contemporary veneration of science has spilled into worship of the ‘dismal science’ of economics, and the triumph of homo economicus. This represents a negation of critical human identity through a hyper-inflated economic reality of survival. That any critical intelligence endures, divorced from corporate ‘influencers’, is almost a minor miracle.

    The Human Condition also ably demonstrates that when the sphere of political engagement and the public sphere become redundant and private interests control democracy, then it has given way to something else

    Technocracy

    Arendt warns of the dangers of technocracy, pointing to the blunted moral conscience of an Eichmann, who reasoned that he was only putting people on trains, and did not have the intellectual curiosity to consider their destination and the likely outcome, or was casually indifferent. Arendt understood that he was more concerned with consorting with powerful people, and networking in a moral oblivion. One might add that being exclusively within one’s own silo bubble, or online echo chamber – as all too many are today – is recipe for serious trouble.

    Likewise, Jurgen Habermas has warned of the danger of technocratic solutions devoid of a moral compass, coining the phrase the public sphere.

    Juergen Habermas

    To offset growing consumerism Arendt advocates the Vita Activa of civic engagement. She remains even-handed, recognising that scientists should of course be listened to – providing crucial specialisation – but it should be understood that many lack a moral or philosophical education, and without ethical training ultimately hold no allegiance to the truth.

    In our time, all too often, political debates reach a point of paralysis in endless arguments over statistics; we are to quote Peter Greenaway ‘Drowning By Numbers’. Arendt’s analysis demonstrates how number can give rise to anti-humanism, perfectionism including an obsessions with tidiness, and other forms of anal retentiveness that inhibit our development as human beings.

    Science detached from philosophy is divorced from ethical considerations, and thus can be deployed for great evil. Therefore, ‘totalitarianism appears to be only the last stage in a process during which ‘science’ [has become] an idol that will magically cure the evils of existence and transform the nature of man.’[ix]

    Banner of Stalin in Budapest.

    The Origins of Totalitarianism

    The Origins Of Totalitarianism (1951) is the seminal account of twentieth century totalitarianism – as distinct from the ‘mere’ fascism of figure such as Mussolini – of both the Nazis under Hitler and Communism under Stalin. It offers a series of reflections that should serve as a warning in our time – when we cannot be said to live under totalitarianism – but where, nonetheless, an unmistakable shift has occurred in the relationship between the state and the individual. Thus measures that no government would previously have contemplated – from lockdowns to curfews – have been normalised in many countries, and controls have even been tightened in Ireland at precisely the point when a declining number are dying from the disease. Coincidentally, ‘terror increased both in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany in inverse ratio to the existence of internal political opposition.’[x]

    We cannot overlook the damage of enforced social isolation, as Arendt put it:

    What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the nontotalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of ever-growing masses of our century.[xi]

    Arendt also well understood the fictions that underpin our understanding of the world, and a tendency to embrace conspiratorial ideas in the absence of reasonable explanations:

    Legends have always played a powerful role in the making of history. Man, who has not been granted the gifts of undoing, who is always an unconsulted heir of other men’s deeds, and who is always burdened with a responsibility that appears to be the consequences of an unending chain of events rather than unconscious acts, demands an explanation and interpretation of the past in which the mysterious key to his future seems to be concealed. Legends were the spiritual foundation of every ancient city, empire, people, promising safe guidance through the limitless space of the future. Without ever relating facts reliably, yet always expressing their true significance, they offered a truth beyond realities, a remembrance beyond memories.[xii]

    Thus, it is essential that in responding to the damage of contemporary social atomisation that we do not succumb to ideologies that sow further division.

    Arendt observed how allegiances break down when Populist mobs gain traction. Initially the targets are those of no influence or assets, but essentially anyone is guilty under the arbitrary laws of totalitarianism in power. Thus she recalls:

    It is obvious that the most elementary caution demands that one avoid all intimate contacts, if possible – not in order to prevent discovery of one’s secret thoughts, but rather to eliminate, in the almost certain sense of future trouble, all persons who might not only who might have an ordinary cheap interest in your denunciation but an irresistible need to bring about your ruin simply because they are in danger of their own lives.

    Sadly, this agitation seems reminiscent of the states of mind actually cultivated by government scientists, who have deployed ‘fear, shame and scapegoating to change minds is an ethically dubious practice that in some respects resembles the tactics used by totalitarian regimes such as China,’ according to Gary Sidley, a retired clinical psychologist. Nowadays, instead of being imprisoned, we contend with social shame and even loss of a job for heinous crimes such as meeting a friend for a pint or taking a hill walk.

    Radical Evil

    Arendt observes a failure ‘inherent in our entire philosophical tradition’ to conceive of a radical evil.[xiii] Such a blind spot she argues means, ‘Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.’[xiv]

    Moreover, it is important to note in our present state of enforced isolation:

    [I]t has frequently been observed that terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other and that, therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical governments is to bring this isolation about. Isolation may be the beginning of terror, it certainly is its most fertile ground, it always is its result.[xv]

    So let us be wary of the strongman leaders who have emerged to ‘guide’ us to the promised land during a pandemic, which shows up the damage of their own making; and who now argue that solutions lie in asserting the very neoliberal values that brought us to this impasse in in the first place.

    Sadly Burkean and Habermasean moderation has been lost in an age of tribal nationalism. The handmaiden’s of the strongman leaders are in fact a grasping “pensionopolis” that are removed from the dramatically worsening poverty in countries such as Ireland caused by the pandemic.

    This sadly is the digital generation of what are, in effect, fabricated human identities – a kind of unreal Blade Runner replicant. Homo faber has given way to homo economicus, as the law and economics ideologues put it. Craftsmanship and intellectualism are despised, and the public space denuded of significance.

    Finally, and perhaps more optimistically, Arendt clearly distinguishes between loneliness, and solitude: ‘Solitude requires being alone, where loneliness only shows itself most sharply in company with others.’ Let us thus endeavour to accept solitude as a temporary gift and resist the loneliness which is fertile ground for the infliction of terror.

    [i] Albert Camus, The Rebel, Translated by Anthony Bower, Penguin, London, 2013, p.145

    [ii] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Penguin, London, 1966, p.237

    [iii] Arendt, Ibid 1966, p.454

    [iv] Tony Farmar, The History of Irish Book Publishing, Stroud, The History Press, 2018, p.12

    [v] Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Viking Press, New York, 1963, p.55

    [vi] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958, p.37

    [vii] Mary Midgley, Are You an Illusion, p.136

    [viii] Beard, Ibid, p.138

    [ix] Arendt, Ibid 1966, p.453

    [x] Arendt, Ibid, 1966, p.514

    [xi] Arendt, Ibid, 1966, p.627

    [xii] Arendt, Ibid, 1966, p.271

    [xiii] Arendt, Ibid, 1966, p.602

    [xiv] Arendt, Ibid, 1966, p.603

    [xv] Arendt, Ibid, 1966, p.623

  • Toblerone

    When you hear the phrase, “Subtropical paradise,” Longford is probably not what springs to mind. As children, we were taken to Center Parcs, over in the UK. Thirty-degree weather year-round, with palm trees, pools, slides and rides, all housed beneath a glass dome. There’d been great excitement in the family following an announcement of a new landmark Irish resort, only now it would largely benefit my sister’s little lad. All the same I was feeling nostalgic. My wife wasn’t coming.

    On day one, without bothering to unpack our bags, we headed to the dome for hours of swimming and sunbathing. Saddling me with an infant nephew, my sister and her husband walked away, hand in hand. They looked relieved to steal even half an hour to themselves. I resented their freckled Eskimo kisses and skipping steps off to the jacuzzi. A glass of wine wouldn’t have hurt. Of course, the imitation bamboo bar didn’t carry prosecco, never mind champagne. I eyed up a little carton of apple juice poking its ear out of the corner of the cooler bag, but couldn’t bring myself to disturb the little one. I considered the bloated bodies and sad eyes I’d see in the supermarket next week. Those young parents living without the luxury of a holiday like this.

    I was prepared for Christopher to start bawling the second my sister was out of eyeshot, but he didn’t. With my hands under his armpits, I bounced him gently up and down, muttering baby gibberish. Elastic strings of dribble descended from his mouth. They were pure and transparent. Like him. Looking in his clear, guiltless eyes I found some hope to quell that nagging uneasiness.

    When he started to whimper, I put his downy head on my shoulder and rocked him. I felt the eyes of a flock of fathers on me as they rocked their little criers and imagined they must be thinking, “This guy hasn’t a fucking clue what’s ahead of him”.

    In unison, their faces softened and rearranged with a concentrated indifference, their growling arched eyebrows conformed back into flattened bushy lines, in poor attempts not to cross…a line. A group of teenage bikini bums passed, and the fathers’ split-second double takes passed under the subtle scrutiny of their ever-vigilant spouses, keeping score and collecting ammo for the invariable fights to come, who were otherwise occupied breast feeding second sons. Every sucked-in gut flopped back out, as the parade of teens turned the corner, heading towards the lazy river.

    I thought about Portugal. Heather’s bum in her black bikini, on our first bit of real sun away together, where I’d proposed on the beach, like a fucking dickhead. We’d mused about how in our first six months together, we’d achieved a level of connection that other couples took years to get to or never achieved. It felt right at the time. That was the last I saw of it, the bikini that is. I recall that for subsequent aquatic adventures, like at Seapoint with her sisters, the charity swim on Christmas day in Sandycove, and even a mid-week spa day in Seafield, the one piece had resurfaced. There’s nothing inherently unsexy about a one piece. But I had to conclude that the same certain behaviors one can comfortably engage in abroad, you might never dream of doing at home. Then I sang to Christopher,

    My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me

    Tell me where did you sleep last night

    In the pines, in the pines

    Where the sun don’t ever shine

    I would shiver the whole night through

    Holding Christopher in my arms, I executed light-footed pirouettes, feeling the warmth of his skin on mine. One tiny hand gripped my chest hair and his breathing calmed as he began to fade. This tender display attracted much attention from a cluster of mothers. The rigid smiles they wore were more a reflex than genuine emotional response before each face rearranged to focus on her respective husband’s hairy tattooed shoulders. Christopher’s small head on my own shoulder, his drool cooled, before running down my back.

    My sister and her husband returned right around lunchtime and passed me a cold beer. But when I handed the little guy back, he reached for me with his wrinkly, doughy hand, and I heard myself say, “He was no trouble at all.”

    I must have read the same page ten times. Peeling myself off the plastic pool lounger each time I reached for a sip of beer, I became hypnotized by their rituals. The unpacking of sandwich bags, the spreading of butter, the squeezing of baby food and the spilling of apple juice. Without a word exchanged, but informed by nods and glances, their Formula 1-style, precision clean-ups ensued. All that munching, crunching, screaming, and soothing seemed like white noise to these parents. Watching the breathless fathers’ pregnant bellies heaving made me feel ill again. Those teens were parading past us once more, which prompted the tired women to brave pleasant expressions and adjust the colorful cover ups with which they concealed their sagging tummies, stretchmarks, and cesarean scars.

    Heather was away on a work trip to Amsterdam. Her company holding its annual conference, essentially a glorified, networking piss-up justified by some scattered workshops and team-building exercises.

    Things had not been good between us. Our relationship strained by living married life in the box-room of my parents’ house. The first-time buyers’ lament pulsated through every minute of every day as we awaited construction to begin on our forever-home, which at that juncture was nothing more than a giant puddle. The show house had seduced us. It would be worth the wait, we thought. However, the reflection in that puddle had turned to that of those who were no longer having fun.

    Heather had fun when she went out with her work friends. On the rare occasion I was invited along, I’d see her smile, laugh, cackle even, and look beautiful. But, whenever our eyes met across the bar, her entire demeanor changed. As if my face forced her to forget who she was. Only on the taxi ride home would her cheekbones rise again, in the glow of her phone, as she scrolled through her past.

    After the subtropical paradise, we went to the fake village for an authentic Italian dinner. My mother inhaled her wine, while Dad picked his teeth. I batted a half-eaten meatball back and forth across a stain of sauce, just to watch my nephew’s eyes swing like a cat’s. Back at the cabin, and much to my brother’s annoyance, I went to bed early. Well, after one whisky over a hand of cards. This left him to suffer our half-cut, maudlin parents, solo. I heard my bleary mother slur about how proud she was of him. Dad’s face would’ve reddened, and his gaze grown more distant, as he mused about being sixteen in the sixties, batin’ around on his Honda 50.

    “He’s probably just missing Heather.” My mother speculated, in what she imagined was a hushed voice. I could almost feel her spit landing intermittently in my brother’s ear.

    At last in bed, thanks to the crappy signal on my phone and the distracting chatter from the kitchen, I couldn’t get hard enough to knock one out. Not even conjuring a casual exchange with an attractive mother I’d seen by the pool, leading to an impromptu segue to one of those convenient family changing cubicles. Close, but it was no use.

    “You were so, so protective of your little sister when she was young.” My mother crooned, slapping away at what I assumed to be my brother’s thigh. Tossing and turning, I imagined Heather out at a bar in Amsterdam, after a long day of corporate icebreakers, awkward talks and wandering thoughts. Who was she looking at? Probably someone less pessimistic. Taller too. Younger, in better shape, and clean-shaven. Maybe with a man-bun. His eyes would be all over Heather. She’d laugh and push the sandy blonde curls out of her face. In skin-tight jeans, he’d see she had hips and an arse to die for.

    We were fatigued. Both of us. Was a good fucking something she wanted? Maybe she would come back from her trip in better spirits after having that thrill, being tossed around a hotel room with the vigour I once had. She knew full well I’d never ask her. Cheating men always bring flowers; what was I to think if she returned with a Toblerone, bottle of Scotch and a big hug?

    I’d heard nothing from Heather all day. But that didn’t stop me from checking my phone every few minutes. I flicked away through our wedding album in the hope of something rousing; she really did look beautiful in her dress. But nothing came, bar a few streaking tears.  My brother stumbled in, with his signature simultaneous belching and farting. So, I rolled over, turning my back on him, and pretended to be asleep. The waft took me back to the bedroom we’d shared as kids. His heavy breathing somehow soothed me, and made me glad he was there. I felt less alone and managed to drift off, dreaming something I’d never remember.

    The following day we’d booked in to play tennis. We each did our part taking turns to rock Christopher’s stroller back and forth. My Metallica-styled rendition of The Wheels on the Bus got him giggling and he squirmed as I ate some of his delicious animal shaped biscuits. My brother-in-law Karl looked visibly uncomfortable as he restrained himself from admonishing me. But then again, Karl couldn’t tell me off in front of his in-laws, just as I couldn’t punch him in the throat on every occasion, he said something condescending. Or called me “Bud.”

    On the tennis court adjacent to ours, a five-aside soccer match was in progress. Boys versus girls. Judging by what I saw, there was obviously a transaction happening. I gathered the parents in each goal had taken one for the team, herding a crew of kids for the afternoon. This freed up other parents for some afternoon delight, while perhaps later, the goalies could have a date night. They looked like they needed a nap themselves, but in their laboured cheers and smiles I sensed some hope.

    Sweat poured off the bear-like dad in the goal nearest me. For a moment, I pitied him, doubting what energy he’d have for later that night. But when I looked down at his wife, it was myself I pitied, as she turned out to be that attractive mom from the day before. The one by the pool.

    With each successive smash, great return or strong serve that drew cheers from our side, she was paying attention and deciding I wasn’t half bad. Untying the jumper from around her waist, she tossed it aside to show off a Lycra sheathed bum and thighs. I read this display of plumage as a sign. I watched her ask someone to swap positions, take a turn guarding the goal, so she could hoof a series of goals past her bewildered husband. I could feel her glancing my way, when a timer sounded indicating one minute remained before the hour booked on both courts was up.

    Fingers clawed through the chain link fence, from eager tikes impatient to enter for scheduled fun. As the clock wound down, both within and beyond that fence, kid’s screams reached a fever pitch. In one last effort to underscore the girls’ dominance over the boys, this determined woman took a cross from her daughter down on her chest and volleyed the ball into the top right-hand corner of the goal. Pulling her top up over her

    head, she exposed a well-filled sports bra, flat stomach, and on the small of her back, a single Scorpio symbol tattoo. Origin: Ibiza, circa 200. To the applause of all those watching, she led a flying-V of girls in a victory lap around the pitch, singing “Champion-ay, champion-ay, oh-ay, oh-ay, oh-ay.” As she pulled her top back on, our eyes locked through her tousled hair, and the final clap was mine.

    We packed up our things, all leaving the courts at the same time.

    “Pretty feckin’ impressive out there!” I said to her as she passed, “Half expected a power-slide, but that AstroTurf is a bitch”.

    Her husband had gone ahead with an arm around a sulking son. But now craning his neck, he called to her, “C’mon Ciara, let’s get this lot cleaned up.”

    She smiled at me and said, “Oh, even if it were grass, I wouldn’t be doing much sliding at my age.”

    “I dunno, you looked pretty good out there to me” I said, instantly regretting it.

    Ciara laughed and said, “Thanks… I’d better catch up with that gang.” before jogging up to join her son and husband.

    My bones ached, watching her walk away. As Ciara tied up her hair, the sun caught the lightly freckled back of her neck and I could almost taste the salt. Tugging on her husband’s sleeve, the little boy in a Liverpool jersey piped-up, pleading with a cute-hoor’s precariousness rarely perpetrated by their class, to his father.

    “Please Damo, please!”

    “Only the winners get ice-cream Johnny. Thems’ the rules,” declared his dad.

    Only remembering this bet due to Johnny’s boldness, the rest of the boys swarmed, grabbing his hand here, snatching at his shirt tail there, and a chant broke out.

    “Damo! Damo! Damo!”

    He was loving it.

    Ciara caught up with them to shoo the boys away and reassert a girls’ victory. Her husband slung his arm across her shoulders. after she’d wrapped her arm around his waist, without a glance backwards. But I could feel her feeling my eyes.

    “C’mon Bud” my brother in-law called after me, breaking the spell, “We’ve a reservation at eight.” His presumptuous usage of “Bud” usually made my teeth grind. But in that moment, it barely affected me. I checked my phone. Nothing. I pictured Heather’s arse elevated. She’d be on a Segway, zooming around Amsterdam’s cobbled streets to see the sights, as part of a company sponsored scavenger hunt, led by Luuk, Daan, or some other handsome counterpart from the Dutch office. Heather’d have taken a selfie, eating a stroopwafel by the canal, before Google mapping the walking directions to Anne Frank’s house.

    Gazing at the two grey ticks beside my day-old WhatsApp message to Heather that simply said, “I love you,” the likelihood that I’d been muted almost sent me into a state of panic. But I was distracted by Ciara’s shriek. Damo was tickling her, and a playful chase ensued. When she halted him with whips of her jumper, her flushed face was fucking gorgeous.

    In those aerial shots you see in their TV ads, the Centre Parcs forest seems to span forever. But it’s really not that big. Everything is contained within an artificial central village and I was sure I’d see Ciara again. I found myself double-taking other women with similar body types, around the pool, from afar, or from behind. Figuring her daughter to be say, twelve, and her son maybe ten, I encouraged my family to book everything from archery, to kayaking, to feckin’ falconry. Any activities where she and her kids might be. I even volunteered to attend cupcake decorating class with my sister and Christopher when Karl wanted a break. But after spending more than a minute pondering the list and contemplating whether Ciara was more likely to gravitate toward Bollywood Dance or a Boogie Bounce, I drew the line. It was a slow week. One which passed painfully, and with no sight of her.

    Our last dinner was at the fancy place on the lake, Café Rouge. I was surprised to see Ciara there and gratified when she noticed me. With a pleasant nod she passed our table, as her family was shown to theirs. Damo remained engrossed in his phone, the glow of which illuminated his stubbled jowl.

    Wearing flawless make-up, Ciara looked perhaps only a few years older than me. Her faded Guns and Roses t-shirt could have been from the nineties; but was probably just a cool mom’s pick-up from Penney’s. In fact, Damo washed up well enough too. Belly hidden in an expensive-looking shirt, he was breathing easy, his thinning hair sculpted not without some expertise.

    Detecting the residual rugged handsomeness Ciara would have been attracted to, back when he was sliding in tries at Blackrock, I wondered if she still saw him like that. Or whether it took a bottle of wine. Being seated a few tables down allowed me an uninterrupted view of both Ciara and Damo’s faces. I ordered a salad. When what I really wanted was the steak.

    By dessert, he was scrolling endlessly on his phone again. It didn’t look like work. He wasn’t responding to critical emails. Damo didn’t type at all, and his eyebrows furrowed the way one might react to a series of surprising match scores. At one point, he even bit down on his tongue. Ciara contained her irritation by tilting her head to smile at passers-by, that and pushing that last profiterole around her plate.

    When Damo excused himself to make a call, he left Ciara a parting kiss on the cheek. Through the back of his shirt, a thin line of sweat had bled, and as he lumbered out of the restaurant, I wondered if I’d be able to take him down in a headlock.

    When Damo left, Ciara momentarily rummaged in her bag, then headed towards the back of the restaurant, clutching what appeared to be a pack of Marlboro Lights. After nicking my brother’s cigarette pack from the breast pocket of his coat, I followed her out of the dining room, and past the kitchen, to the smoking area.

    At the glass door outside, she flashed me a smile, and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. I asked for a light. It was a small world. We didn’t live that far apart back in Dublin. We’d gone to schools near enough to each other and would’ve drank in some of the same pubs. Both of us feigned recognition. “Oh, I thought you looked familiar,” and “Yeah, I do know so-and-so.” She went to her pack for another, but was all out. I’d one left that she offered to split.

    She apologized for the duck-arsed fag. There was something intimate about the warmth of her saliva on my lips and it made my heart pound. After noticing my tattooed wrist, Ciara took hold of it, examining and running a finger along a blown-out line.

    “I wish I’d gotten more, if I’m honest.” she said.

    “It’s never too late.”

    Ciara gave her mouth a blast of a minty breath freshener.

    “Does he not know?” I asked her.

    She raised a thin eyebrow, as if to say, “Are you fucking joking?” before scoffing, “He wouldn’t notice if I shaved my head.” Before parting to head back to our tables, we formally introduced ourselves. First name. Last name. Handshake.

    The next evening, back in Dublin, I went to meet my wife at the airport. My WhatsApp messages went undelivered. Her phone had died. But when she finally appeared through the arrivals gate, she looked small and broken. I thought about the soccer match, our wedding photo, Christopher’s clear eyes and dribble-soaked chin. My heart squeezed closed like a fist and I knew we wouldn’t make it. Waving away like a fool from behind the barrier, I greeted Heather with a hug and took her bags. She didn’t have a Toblerone. Just a headache, and a cold sore.

  • Featured Artist Michal Greenboim

    Growing up in a small rural town in Israel, Pardes Hanna, has shaped me into who I am today. My grandparents were part of the hundreds of thousand people who fled Europe prior to the Holocaust and settled the land of Israel in the 1930s. It was important to them that we were raised as Israelis. They instilled their love for the Jewish country into us and this is what has inspired me throughout my career as a photographer. My image making is a reflection of my childhood in Pardes Hanna; it is filled with my interpretations of the emotions and senses that I grew up with: from the breeze I felt while swinging on a tree swing to the sweet tangy flavor I tasted from our mango tree. These moments are what has influenced my work and continue to be a part of my photography every day.

    From On Our Journey To Home

    I did not always notice that my photography was shaped by my childhood memories. During the years, I realized that I had been always carrying memories of the house I grew up in with the big luscious trees surrounding it deep down within. I develop these feelings further and organize my work into a book. Forming my book, The Orchard Trail, which is based on my raw childhood emotions, feelings, and memories. It was only while working on the book that I realized that most of my photographs are based on the innocence from my childhood.

    Pardes Hanna, translated directly into “Hannah’s Orchard”, is a town that was filled with orange, avocado, and mango orchards. I remember small moments such as exchanging our avocados for the neighbor’s mangos. My images reminded me of how it felt to lay on the grass under our big tree reading a book.

    Looking up to the skies and inventing stories based on the shapes of the clouds.

    Hearing the rustling leaves and picking oranges with my father in the nearby orchards.

    On a rainy day, I would set a chair under an umbrella and listen to the sound of the raindrops.

    As kids, we would walk over to our neighbor’s house for story time or a piano lesson.

    These are the memories that inspire my photographs, they remind me where I started and who I really am.

    Through the process of placing images together and choosing which ones would come together to form diptychs, I learned so much about how different aspects of my life are threaded together once they’re viewed on a deeper level.

    The Orchard Trail became a homage to the magical place I grew up in. My grandmother planted a tree in the backyard of my childhood home when her and my grandfather arrived in Israel in 1933 from Germany, against her family’s will. The tree became a symbol of growth, its roots planted deep into the ground to prove to anyone who thought they didn’t belong that they were staying. I learned who I am through the creation of my book, The Orchard Trail where I explored the importance of the family that I raised and the way I engrained my values into my children and future generations. After finishing The Orchard Trail, I began working on a new project called, Keeping the Flame.

    It was during this project that I researched more about my Jewish heritage and looked into the past to learn about the roots that have brought me to where I am today. I focused on who I am as a modern Orthodox Jewish woman, and also researched the Jewish artist, Chagall. I then moved on to learning about the Jewish homeland, Israel, a land that has held my past along with my future, through analyzing the art of Israeli painters. Lastly, I represented my relationship with the land of Israel through my photographs of ballerinas (images 12-16 ) who are always in motion but are also stable and balanced, just like I have moved away and back to Israel several times, I always know that it will be there as a place for me to call home.

    Learning about who I am in the past, present, and future has given me depth and appreciation for where I came from, the journey I am on, and for the family that I’ve raised.

    In Cuba, I was exposed to a small Jewish community, one of the smallest in the world. They serve as a proof that when a community sticks together, they can overcome anything. I realized then the importance of having a community as support, and this inspired me further to tell the story of the Jewish people. They showed me that even with limited resources, the importance that the Jewish traditions play in who they are and what they believe in. Furthermore, it showed me how vital it is for us, as a nation, to pass down our traditions even when it is difficult, because if not for us, they will not exist.

    From On Our Journey To Home 

    In my book On Our Journey To Home, I visually describe the migration of my family from Europe to Israel in 1933. This immigration story tells of the many challenges and hardships involved with such an effort to establish life in a new land. At the same time, it expresses the sense of optimism and the determination that sustained the hopeful vision. The journey involves sacrificing closeness to friends and family, learning a new language and adapting to a different culture in order to fulfill a dream of a home and better life for generations to come.

    From On Our Journey To Home

    I poetically sketch the feelings and dreams of my grandparents beginning with the time of the diaspora, their fears and insecurities involved with life in Europe at the time. They dreamt of a place for a new beginning, where they could start over and shape it however they desired, a place where they would create a just and giving society. Therefore, they settled in a small town called Pardes Hanna’, where they farmed the land, and built the town from the ground up with their own hands.It was a new and optimistic beginning, but not always a smooth one, with a lot of difficulties and sadness, Life in the new land wasn’t easy. There was much fear; of the enemies around, of illness, and that their dream would not come true.

    The story continues on for five generations, to include the experience of life for my family in Israel today, which is wonderful, far beyond anything my grandparents imagined more than a hundred years ago.

    It was a journey back in time while I spent part of it searching the archives of Germany, Israel and the United States, reading letters that my grandmother wrote, or articles written about her in newspapers. I learned taught everything I could from the places where they lived, and the spirit of that period, and so this book was created, by virtue of imagination and thought.

    The title image is from Michal Greenboim’s last project “On Our Journey To Home”

    www.michalgreenboim.com/on-our-journey-to-home

    www.michalgreenboim.com/instagram

    www.michalgreenboim.com

     

     

  • Poetry: Marc Di Saverio

    THE MAN WITH A MICRO-CHIP IN HIS RIGHT HAND

    Stopping wantless under cherry blossoms
    He hears a girl singing from the sewer,
    then harmonizes voices with some hums,
    then sings the final chorus like he knows her,
    their voices shaking red chrysanthemums –
    but now the crowds of fading stars are fewer
    and his voice grows weaker as the day glows nearer,
    as he’s alarmed by the stirrings of the bums.
    “Should I come up to see you on the street
    so in the morning light we could now meet?”
    A blossom plummets through the dewy grate.
    Before he can reply I, an old class-mate,
    pass by, asking why he’s standing here —
    “for — for cherry-trees this time of year.”

    ______________

    SONNET ON ANASTASIA

    Like Martin Luther King she had a dream,
    but lived out what the TV would prescribe.
    She’d only ever be a psych-ward queen.
    I know she might have equalized our tribe.
    I whisperingly sing so soothingly;
    Sometimes I wonder: would she still be gone
    If she had measured my worth by my love, alone?
    I could not heal her so distantly.
    Like Martin Luther King she had a dream,
    but lived out what the TV would prescribe.
    She’d only ever be a psych-ward star.
    We found her at the harbour, drowned. Her surgeon-
    markered life-time thought-line equalled one long
    wound — her legacy a traceless scar.

    THE SONNET OF A PROPHET ADDRESSING HIS OWN COUNTRY

    Canada, I came to you with my soul
    and with diamonds, and you tried to collapse them
    back into a vacuum, back into coal! —
    Canada, remove your bloody diadem!
    Canada, I came to you with answers
    to inquiries you make in your lion-wild
    dreams, where your wonder has been exiled,
    where your wishes are kites so drawn to stirs
    of the vortex of utopia, through
    whose one end I blow, as though through a trumpet,
    the prophecies you mock, despite sensing,
    deep in your soul’s centre — you freeze —
    the chance my drawn and quartered words are true,
    these testaments to my theophanies!

    ____________

     

    SONNET XVIII

    So boa-constrictor-slowly you move,
    exterminators of my humankind!
    Some hardly feel their dying and approve
    their deaths with stasis, silence; quarantined,
    they cheerlead their own Gotterdammerung
    while our exterminators now erect
    the camps where Fidelitites — the unsung
    saints, the Bride of Christ, the final sect,
    dressed from head to foot in fealty —
    will kneel before the pits; the humanoids
    will jeer them from their seeming realty,
    sore from their beast-marks – rabid with tirades.
    So boa-constrictor-slowly you kill
    those who’ll deny or receive you with full will.

     

    THE SAVIOUR ADDRESSES A DANCER AT THE JUBILEE OF THE SECOND COMING
    (for Lenora Di Saverio)

    Lone among the dancers, you mourn– despite Death’s adieu —
    my Calvary anew, behind your sunglasses?
    Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you,

    since, has the Kingdom not Come? You say your tears are dew?
    Why now cry amid the trumpets and the brasses?!
    Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu —

    Mourn the dead Inferno-hours of the Risen Son, too?
    O won’t you jive and join in chalice-clangs?
    Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.

    Why should you not waltz to a flawless few
    Of Cecile’s tunes? Whiff this lilied wind that passes?
    Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu.

    I feel no sorrow; must my whippings ensue?
    Should you not see family, upon my greenest grasses?
    Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.

    Behold the diamonding stars! Behold your halo-hue
    supremely match the moon! To Lea! Raise your glasses!
    Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu –
    Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.

    __________________

    A SONNET AFTER MY WINTER SURRENDER

    O Seraph who stands on sacred airs —
    goldening the firmament with halo-
    beams – illumining my soul with
    rosary-stars, which supernova
    after your Amens — you whisperingly singing
    over me, soaring my soul like a whitening kite
    triple-tied to an infinite string…
    O Seraph who lands on burn-out back-
    yards of this downcast world, when
    will this tempest end?! “Know: I only
    seem a Seraph! I am come,
    tonight, to witness your rebirth!
    Revere the spirit inside the whiteout;
    the snow foreshadows my Kingdom on Earth!”

    _______________________

    Featured Image: James Ensor – L‘entrée du Christ à Bruxelles

  • ‘It’s not a case of men vs women’: Mise Fosta in Irish Trad

    In a suburban Dublin pub ten men aged sixty and over have gathered in a circle each week to play traditional Irish tunes. I joined this weekly session when I moved back to Dublin and after initial bewilderment was embraced by the group. I was the only woman that had ever joined in the twenty odd years the session had existed and I grew to love the chats and the musical immersion that it became.

    At some point in each tune set we all closed our eyes and it felt like it really didn’t matter that I was female.

    I discussed with Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh in an interview recently how music can be something that rises above divisions and transcends gender, race and politics. Sadly of course, this is not always the case. It was disturbing last year to read the revelations of the Mise Fosta (Me Too) movement which detailed the experiences of young musicians in the Irish Traditional music scene. The reports, which came from mostly girls, consisted of unwanted physical contact, sexual assault, harassment and degradation.

    Louise O’Connor, Image: Olesya Zdorovetsky

    My own experience

    It saddened me deeply to hear about the number of musicians that have left the scene due to this kind of behaviour. I’ve experienced both sides of this coin. I’ve met some of the kindest men I know through pub sessions in my journey back to playing music again publicly. And I’ve also experienced subtle and not-so-subtle forms of inappropriate physical contact and degrading comments from pub-goers, and from musicians themselves; followed by ‘sure it’s only a bit of craic.’ Unfortunately, it’s the kind of ‘craic’ that drives talent away from the scene.

    A young female musician I spoke to recently described lecherous comments she often experiences online as the ‘cross we have to bear,’ as women in the industry. Another musician I know will avoid a particular number of sessions because of the consistent unwanted advances of a fellow musician who attends them.

    This kind of behaviour has typically been quietly tolerated as ‘the cross we have to bear.’ But we are in an age of increasing disclosures in Ireland and globally regarding abuse of many shapes and kinds. (The recent harrowing revelations of the treatment of women in Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland is just one example of this).

    Voices of all genders in Ireland have been heavily suppressed in relation to these matters so all speaking out must be applauded. In continuing to break this silence, we’re slowly becoming part of a wider global story, where the veil is being lifted on many forms of abuse and inequality. As humans we love to create categories of ‘me’ and ‘other’. We are better and the ‘other’ is lesser. Male-female, white-black, able bodied-disabled. Yet these hierarchies are slowly being dismantled all over the world. A huge amount of people are waking up to the realisation that these imagined hierarchies are cultural constructions which could easily have been otherwise and must be challenged.

    Traversing a Wave of Change

    Both men and women need support to traverse this wave of change. All genders need education at every stage of schooling about not just the concept of consent but what that looks like in real life circumstances. Inappropriate comments, contact and expectations need to become rejected in the music scene, in person and on-line, as well as on a cultural and societal level in Ireland. We need to release the shame attached to discussions around sexuality, around our bodies and what is and isn’t acceptable to us.

    These types of conversations around sexuality have slowly been opening up in Ireland. The TV series Normal People last year opened avenues of discussion many of us had not foreseen (Liveline radio programme to name just one). My father was of the opinion that the series should be shown in every secondary school in the country to educate teenagers about healthy consent. I also had a lengthy conversation with my aunt, a religious sister in her seventies, about the portrayal of the lead character Connell’s refusal to hurt Marianne during sex as she requested.

    ‘That was exercising his right to say no,’ she’d said at the time. ‘It was very important to show that men need to be able to say no as well. It works both ways, you know.’ ‘’It does work both ways,’ I had agreed with her. It is not a case of  ‘men vs women’ in this particular arena. That is not a narrative that I believe will get us any further.

    We discussed how every person has both masculine and feminine elements within them which need to be developed. As a fundamental element of the patriarchal structure, to show emotions, for men, is often seen as a sign of weakness. And so men are typically encouraged from a young age to bottle up these more ‘feminine’ aspects of their character. Ireland has one of the top five highest rates of suicides for men aged 15-24 in Europe. There are clearly elements of the patriarchy which are not favouring men either. We are clearly missing a trick somewhere in preparing young people of all genders for adulthood.

    Movements Forward

    Some strong indicators are showing that we are on the right path. The Fair Plé movement which advocates for gender balance in the Irish Traditional & Folk scene has recently developed an Anti-Harassment Policy for use across all arts sectors and Sexual Harrassment guidelines in collaboration with the Rape Crisis Network Ireland, which are important steps towards highlighting and addressing these issues. These can be used by all pubs and music festivals and generating awareness of these policies is a key part of moving forward. The Speak Up ACTiON Survey is a survey of all arts workers and their workplace experiences which will inform policy and the development of artist supports for safe and dignified work spaces. Fair Plé and SAOI are also pushing for a neutral independent complaint structure with investigative powers across all arts sectors.(1)

    https://twitter.com/IrishTheatreIns/status/1367100078004068353

    Under-representation of Women

    Beyond the pub scene, the facts are staring us in the face that women’s voices are under-represented in the arts in general. Music consultant Linda Coogan Byrne and folk singer Áine Tyrrell published a Gender Disparity Data Report in 2020 highlighting that female artists take up less than 5% of airtime on Irish radios. The ‘Why Not Her’ campaign is currently making huge strides towards eradicating this bias.

    Clearly it is not just revelations of abuse that are required to instigate change but cold hard facts and key players in the Irish Traditional Music scene are doing Trojan work towards developing these statistics.(2)

    The Need for Women’s Voices & Men’s Support

    I sincerely hope that women who have left the Traditional Irish music scene can come back and can feel safe in doing so. We need to hear women’s voices, in real time, performing. And we need to keep supporting each other as women in making this happen.

    We can choose to silence ourselves also in many ways; through allowing internal critical voices to hold us back or by buying into the unwritten rules of the patriarchal structure we were brought up in that tell us our voices are less worthy of being heard.

    Or we can do none of this and allow our voices to be heard. Write the song you’ve been humming for years. Pick up the instrument that’s gathering dust. Get up and dance at a session if that’s your thing. Take your place in the scene, with respect and kindness towards all genders, sexualities, races, people. Yet call it out when that respect is not shown back to you.

    For men, you are more visible in the industry. Use your visibility to make sexual harassment and inequality no longer acceptable. It’s no longer enough just to not take part in sexist behaviour. Misogyny in all it’s subtle and not so subtle forms needs to be denied air time for good.

    Music, to me, is the most powerful force on earth for bringing people together and none more so than Traditional Irish music. I believe we can figure this one out.

    Louise O’Connor is a fiddle player, sean nós dancer and hosts Music As podcast where she interviews guests about the role music plays in their lives.

    Website: www.louise.ie

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/louiseoconnor.ie/

    1. FairPlé have been working with SAOI, a group consisting of a mixture of women across the arts: poetry, literature, publishing, comedy and music. They are currently pushing for a neutral independent complaint structure with investigative powers, specifically for this to be set up by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to deal with issues of sexual assault and harassment across the sector.
    2. Statistics on the Irish Traditional and folk music scene have emerged in the work of Úna Ní Fhlannagáin, Úna Monaghan, Fintan Vallely and Jane Cassidy, and more work on this area will be visible in the forthcoming publication of Ethnomusicology Ireland on women and music.

    Links:

    Sexual Harassment Guidelines:

    https://www.fairple.com/sexual-harassment

    Anti-Harassment Policy:

    https://www.fairple.com/anti-harassment-policy

    Why Not Her? is a social media campaign and podcast launched by Linda Coogan Byrne to ‘amplify the voices of woman in the music, entertainment and arts industry.’

    www.whynother.net

    Irish Theatre Institute has launched Speak Up ACTiON Survey- a survey of all arts workers & their workplace experiences which will inform policy & the development of artist supports for safe & dignified work spaces. Complete the survey here:

    https://bit.ly/3d0CLDk

    If you have been affected by the contents of this article support is available at:

    The Rape Crisis Centre: 1800 778 888

    Women’s Aid: 1800 341 900.

    Samaritans: 116 123

    Text about it: Free text 5808

    Jigsaw: 1800544729

    Northern Ireland: 

    The Rowan Centre: 0800 389 4424

    Nexus NI: 028 9032 6803

    I would like to thank Joanne Cusack (FairPlé) for her support in writing this article.

    Featured Image: Daniele Idini

  • Ownership by Navlika Ramjee

    Ownership

    You come into your own
    While words give hue and cry
    In the stillness that you own

    When you are on your own
    With solitude to pacify
    You come into your own

    And the silence is your own
    Though melodies will reply
    To the stillness that you own

    With the calm that you have grown
    You feel that you can fly
    You come into your own

    In the life that you have known
    That strives to mystify
    In the stillness that you own

    And this realm is yours alone
    As you feel the coming sigh
    You come into your own
    In the stillness that you own

  • Back in the DDR

    It’s like living in East Germany
    Nowhere let open at night
    Incarcerated by mediocrity
    Mad I’d love a RyanAir flight
    I’m back in the D.D.R.
    You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
    Back in the D.D.R. (Yeah!)

    Been locked down so long, I hardly know a place
    Gee, it’s grim to be stuck at home
    Unending house arrest is a disgrace
    Forcing folk to stay alone
    I’m back in the D.D.R.
    You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
    Back in the,
    Back in the,
    Back in Leo’s E.R.

    Hell,
    Ranelagh girls really knock me out (… Wooh, ooh, ooh)
    They leave the clap behind,
    While shit government makes me sing and shout (…Wooh, ooh, ooh)
    That Corona’s always on
    My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my mind
    Oh, come on
    Woo (Hey)
    (Hoo) Hey
    Woo hoo (Yeah)
    Yeah,…

  • The Classical World in Video Games

    Hollywood has a long history of portraying the Classical world in film, often with a large degree of artistic licence. One recent example is the film Gladiator, where a Roman general is reduced to the status of a gladiator. This could never have happened of course, as being a military commander in Rome was based on holding high political office.

    There are also numerous examples of Hollywood taking liberties with Roman and Greek mythology, such as in the movie Troy where the tale is condensed into a few weeks. So how closely do video games stick to Classical history and the original myths?

    Hades

    One recent games set in the Classical world is the multi award-winning Hades by Supergiant Games. After the early 2018 release the game was released to the public on the September 17th 2020 on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Nintendo Switch.

    Its excellent plot, storytelling ,characters and playability – not to mention the canonically bisexual main character Zagreus – have made this roguelike dungeon crawler a triumph in the gaming world. A key feature, unusual in such games, is that despite the character dying, the story will still progress. But how closely does this game keep to the original myth of Hades and Persephone?

    Hades is presented in an isometric view, with the player controlling Zagreus (center) as he fights his way out of the Underworld.

    The story begins with Hades seeing Persephone picking flowers. He then abducts her, carrying her off to the Underworld at the behest of Zeus. Here she is tricked by Hades into eating seeds of a pomegranate. This ties her to the Underworld for one third of the year. Demeter, upon learning of her daughter’s fate is enraged with Zeus and use her divine power to make the harvests fail, so that widespread famine ensues. Eventually Zeus steps in to put an end to this, forcing Hades to return Persephone. Of course there is a lot more to the story, including details of the Underworld, but these are the crucial elements.

    In the myth there appear to be two versions of Zagreus – or even three if we acknowledge that some sources equate him with Hades himself. One is as the son of Hades and Persephone, and is the version we see in the game. The other is as the son of Selemus and Zeus and is known as the Orphic Dionysus Zagreus. This Zagreus was ripped apart by the Titans after Hera hears that Zeus intends to make him his successor. He is then reborn to Zeus and Selemus as Dionysus.

    In the plot of the game the protagonist is Zagreus, Prince of the Greek Underworld, who is fighting his way to the surface to reach Mount Olympus in order to get away from his seemingly uncaring father Hades. Persephone is nowhere to be seen at the start, as she believes that her son is dead. It is explained that those on Mount Olympus are often engaged in petty squabbles and Persephone doesn’t want to return for that reason, leading her mother Demeter to thinks she has gone missing.

    There is no mention of any other siblings of Zagreus. As Demeter thinks her daughter has gone missing she inflicts a widespread winter, rather than just changes to the seasons.

    The game is true to many of the Underworld residents who are included in the narrative. Some are, however, left out – most likely because their vast array would make the plot unwieldy. For example, The Fates are mentioned, but aren’t characters that show up, and so are their siblings Hypnos (sleep personified) and Thanatos (death personified), but there were also sixteen other siblings. All the areas of the Greek Underworld are dealt with, the best known being: Tartarus, Asphodel Meadows, Elysium and Erebus. The game adds in another area, The Temple of Styx, presumably for further gameplay.

    On the whole, the game does stick to the original myth but uses aspects of it to help the plot along. The eating of the pomegranate pips by Persephone does come into the plot at a later stage but is more an excuse as to why she is staying in the Underworld. There is also reference to Zagreus and Dionysus being the one and the same. The marriage of Hades and Persephone is shown to be a loving marriage despite Hades being a difficult character. Only Zagreus is mentioned as being the child of Hades and Persephone despite the myths saying that they had Melinoë, Plutus, and Dionysus (Orphic) too. Of course with mythology,parentage of the Gods does not seem to be set in stone.

    Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

    Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is another game that borrows its story line from the ancient Greek world. It is an action, role-playing video game developed by Ubisoft Quebec and published by Ubisoft in October 2018. This game takes on parts of Spartan history such as The Battle of Thermopylae and the Peloponnesian War. The Battle of Thermopylae is playable in the opening tutorial level and is featured in a series of flashbacks.

    There’s no set myth or story here, rather it combines several stories together into the game’s original plot. Set in 431–422 BC, it recounts a secret mythological history set during the Peloponnesian War. The player takes on the role of mercenaries and can choose to fight for the Delian League, led by Athens, or the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. The main storyline has the protagonist attempting to restore their fractured family after they and their sibling were thrown off a cliff, when they were young at the urging of the Oracle of Delphi, and left for dead by their father.

    The plot of this game deviates a lot from what we know about Spartan life. But while there are historical inaccuracies, it can certainly contribute to an understanding of the Classical world.

    In the first tutorial, the player is King Leonidas fighting in The Battle of Thermopylae. Something to note is the scarlet cloak that King Leonidas is wearing in gameplay. Edna Mode from The Incredibles comes to mind with ‘No Capes’. Cloaks were certainly not worn in battle. It was likely that the developers needed the King to stand out as the protagonist of this scene. In fact cloaks were used to sleep in on long marches.

    The playable character changes after the tutorial from King Leonidas to the grandchild of Leonidas. Although we do not know whether Pleistarchus, Leonidas’s son, ever married. All we know is that he was born aa prince, likely the only son of King Leonidas I and Queen Gorgo. He ruled with a regent as he was relatively young when his father died in battle in 480 BC. Given that Pleistarchus’ successor was Pleistoanax, who was the son of his second regent, it seems unlikely that he had any descendants.

    In the game the protagonist and their siblings are thrown off a mountain according to an oracle’s prophecy. This practice of infanticide was indeed commonly carried out in Sparta. A society based on the development of fierce warriors permitted eugenics.

    Moreover, seers and prophecies were taken very seriously in the Greek world. Thus Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease Artemis before he set sail for Troy.

    Pericles and Kleon are also mentioned. Pericles was a prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator and general of Athens during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. Kleon or Cleon was Pericles’ political rival and was also a general during the Peloponnesian War. He wasn’t written about in a favourable light by Aristophanes and Thucydides, most likely due to personal grudges and because Cleon had many informants around Athens.

    Other historical characters also feature such as the Minotaur, Cyclops and Medusa.

    Video Game in Education

    Of course these are just two recent games that have been in the public eye. Age of Empires and Age of Mythology, Kid Icarus, God of War and even Halo are also based on or reference the Classical world, along with numerous others.

    So what can video games bring to education? Video games could be especially useful in terms of widening appreciation of archaeological history. Ruins can be reconstructed from the past and returned to their former glory through virtual reality or augmented reality. For example Wessex Archaeology have been excavating and recording beneath Bath Abbey floor since 2018 as part of The Bath Abbey Footprint Project. The archaeologists have used traditional recording systems, as well as recording everything in 3D using a process called photogrammetry.

    Photogrammetry creates accurate fully textured 3D models from photographs. It can even record details on individual stones which affords conservationists a greater level of accuracy than traditional techniques.

    Video games can, therefore, be used as a tool in teach the Classics, but should at least attempt to remain faithful to the sources. Otherwise they can serve a purpose in highlighting inaccuracies!

    Feature Image: Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down) by Jean-Léon Gérôme

  • Poem: Note From The Organisers

    Note From The Organisers

    Feel free to turn up (or not)
    wearing a full suit of armour,
    or a hat with a big feather in it
    and transparent trousers;
    or to come dressed as a future
    Bishop of Cork and Ross,
    or as the prophet Isaiah’s
    discredited older brother.

    But this march is no wild ground
    on which entrist dandelions
    or buttercups will be allowed grow.
    The Committee permits
    no placards or literature
    of a factional variety.
    Most egregious those
    with crazy words on them,
    like “people before profit”.

    So as not to put off
    those not necessarily
    in favour of people
    (nor at all against profit)
    our gathering will resemble
    less a revolution
    than a church group
    on its way somewhere
    to pray for a cure
    for rheumatism,
    or even better,
    no cure;

    so we can stand here
    in increasing discomfort,
    become such fixtures
    even well behaved
    dogs from Dun Laoghaire
    start anointing
    our legs as public conveniences.