The Other Side of Knowing I’ve always experienced music as a way to access another kind of reality. My earliest musical memory is of falling asleep in the back seat of the family car, drifting through the Northern suburbs of Brisbane. Enveloping Darkness, the hum of the engine, the radio playing, soft orchestral music, timpani … Read more
‘They sang Cuban love-songs and moonsweet madigrals and selections from the best and finest of Italian opera’. Flann O’Brien At Swim-Two-Birds Edited by Ronan Sheehan under the imprint of Cassandra Voices, Cuban Love Songs is a joint effort of the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba (UNEAC) and a variety of Irish writers and poets, … Read more
Often dismissed as ‘worthy’, but perhaps overly wordy, products of the nineteenth century, the novels of Charles Dickens retain great wisdom argues human rights lawyer David Langwallner, who explores aspects of the author’s work to inform an understanding of contemporary challenges. Dickens and the Law Jaundice and Jaundice drones on. This scarecrow of a suit, … Read more
Presidential When you finish reading this poem, you’ll remember only the Black Forest Gateaux I bought you once. I had no option but to vote for that tax on women’s shoes but greatly admired the fight you put up against it; have kept all the press cuttings, especially those that took care not to mention … Read more
Most Saturdays they stood outside the GPO in Dublin. People holding signs bearing slogans both contradictory and confused. “Fake Covid Virus.” “RTE IS the Virus.” “End Barbaric Halal Slaughter.” “Our Irish Catholic Heritage is Under Attack.” “End the Paedophile Cabal.” Weren’t many of them. Sixty maybe. Not enough to be taken seriously. No real threat. … Read more
Say it to me if you have something to confess I was born on the wrong side of the tracks like Ginsberg and Kerouac Bob Dylan, Key West (2020) Notwithstanding my loathing for fundamentalisms of all strands, I have always preached from a gospel of love, or at least a form of reason that leads … Read more
Dublin, 2015 Four hours after his head gets kicked in, he’s wheeled into the A&E on a gurney. Splayed, supine, he looks like a crash test dummy; blood soils his tracksuit. Only the saliva oozing from his lower lip tells them he is human. His breathing is shallow but steady, hence why none of the … Read more
Why? A decade has passed since my individual and community artistic adventure began in Dublin. I very often hear about how lucky I am to have my own live painting studio, interactive installation in the middle of Temple Bar, but I know luck had very little to do with it. Ten years ago I walked … Read more
The Public Intellectual Series offers inter-disciplinary journalism, focusing on relevant authors and subject-matters crucial to negotiating our current age of extremes. We avoid specialisation, demystifying topics to provide readers with access to a broad view on contemporary challenges. Our aim is to contribute to a revival in the idea of the public intellectual, which we … Read more
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted. Aeschylus Protestations against James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ House on Usher’s Island being ear-marked for a hostel are rooted in cultural-bias and emotional-led egocentrism, and exhibit blatant hypocrisy among the denouncers. Artsy sentimentality can be the lesser evil, but it is still … Read more