Cassandra Voices

Category: Society & Culture

  • ‘If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere’

    2019 was a great year for me, my first book was published and had a historic exhibition in the GPO – Stars and Souls of the Liffey – I had arrived, my Everest.

    January 2020 started slowly, but I watched as a new virus was decimating an unknown city in China called Wuhan. From a comfortable distance it still looked bad, watching a city imprisoned in military lockdown, but still it was far away. How would I and Ireland react if this was to travel? And slowly through February it crept ever closer, by the end of the month it started crippling Northern Italy. As always I swam, but me and my mates talked nervously about this approaching unknown, it now had a name – Covid-19.

    How would I fare if Dublin itself  went into lockdown? Without AA meetings for my recovery, would I give up and relapse?

    By early March a few cases were being recorded in Ireland, the media went into hysterical frenzy, almost shaming the inevitable innocent cases.

    Then I got an email to say that my next project was now cancelled. Devastated, I went for my usual swim, sometimes the magic water doesn’t work, it didn’t that day. I came home frozen, riddled with fear, no work, fear of how to pay my rent; suddenly I became unwell. A sore throat and mild fever, paralysed me, as I lay alone on my sofa.

    But no cough. Back then the only symptom mentioned was the hacking cough. I checked my phone and there was now talk of Ireland entering lockdown around St Patricks Day. Armageddon was arriving  Supermarkets running out of food, even fucking toilet paper. I was now in a delirious state of panic.

    The next day the fever went, but I still had the sore throat. On the Monday I tried phoning my Doctor; no answer; permanently engaged or just automated messages to contact some new HSE hub.

    I was now in a state of constant anxiety, with no food in the house, and yet I couldn’t leave home. and I live alone.

    I phoned my ex wife. She kindly said she’d shop for me. On St. Patrick’s Day Leo made his grim, great speech. I still felt he knew something that he wasn’t telling us. Maybe this virus was as deadly as the Spanish flu of 1918-20 that killed up to fifty million, including my grand-uncle aged just nineteen. Death figures of 85,000 were being predicted in Ireland by our Fear driven media.

    All that week I had an intermittent sore throat, but still could not get in contact with my Doctor.

    The thing to watch for was the breathlessness I had heard. This was what caused the dangerous pneumonia. On the Saturday night I went to bed early alone, and suddenly had problems breathing. It being Saturday I could not disturb my Doctor, nor did I want an ambulance arriving to take me to quarantine in hospital, where I’d be met by Hazmat-clad Doctors and become Patient No. 3. Laid low by fear and shortness of breath I could not sleep. By 5am I made a decision to complete my final book, Americans Anonymous and get my things in order in case this was it.

    I eventually relaxed and nodded off, waking up feeling much better. I tried phoning my doctor on the Monday but again couldn’t get through.

    Gradually that week I started to improve. The sore throat, my only symptom, kept coming and going, and I started to practice Wim Hoff breathing exercises to strengthen my lungs, and resumed taking short swims, back to the sea.

    I told people what happened and they asked did I have the cough?

    “No,” I said

    “You are ok then,” I was reassured.

    I walked slowly, masked up, around a deserted Sandycove and saw the Heaney quote on a local gate wall:

    “If we can winter this out, we can summer anywhere”

    As the weeks went by I felt better, swam more and got stronger.

    Did I have Covid-19? Or was it just a flu or an emotional breakdown?

    I still don’t know. It’s all an unknown, like so much around Covid-19.

    As a photographer, I wanted to capture this historic situation within the two mile radius we were permitted to travel.

    Images of masked individuals seamed too obvious, everyone was doing that, and mouths reveal so much in portraiture, and that emotion is what photography is all about for me.

    I explored a deserted Dun Laoghaire, a man feeding pigeons summed up the sombre mood of the time. For weeks I could not capture this historic situation enfolding.

    Somehow it seemed unphotographable: this the most important event of our lives and I couldn’t capture it.

    Then one night down by the sea, a lone surfer emerged out of a sunset. I snapped. Magic and the image worked. I donated it to a Charity art auction and it sold well.

    As lockdown eased more and more people descended to summer in Dun Laoghaire around the Forty Foot. To swim, to escape, to even have fun in our new Covid world.

    Gradually I began to photograph this migration, at first people were cautious, masked, socially distancing on the newly opened beach, but as May turned to July people began to summer properly. The beaches became crowded, like normal, not the new normal; no one wore masks. The virus didn’t spread outdoors, or so we believed.

    Vitamin D and the sun were tonics for our immune systems and slowly I began to create my own personal take on this most unforgettable of summers, which Heaney had promised.

    As this summer of all summers now ends it looks like we are facing into another winter “to out.” Maybe we will all need Spiritual healing that the Born Again seek from our healing waters of Dun Laoghaire.

  • Freedom’s Just Another Word

    I left a depressed New York city following the surprise election of Donald Trump in November 2016; a city reeling in disbelief at what occurred – but I had captured history unfold in Time Square – now I was heading into the heartland of how this had actually happened – the Rust Belt – then the bus broke down at night in rural Pennsylvania and I missed my connection to Kentucky. I overnighted in a cheap motel and caught an early bus to Kingsport, as we pulled into Bristol, Virginia we alighted for a cigarette break and this anonymous traveller waved his American flag, in defiance or support? To understand this election, one had to be in the rural American heartland, to see what was actually going on – coal-mining towns decimated by unemployment, despair and opiates.

    Shades of Grace ©Barry Delaney

    I arrived in Kingsport station tired and dishevelled, after days travelling around the Rust Belt, looking for a taxi to take me to my Motel. As the bus took off I realised the station was closed and not opening – I wandered up the deserted town looking for a taxi or bus – nothing, not even a car – like a Ghost town in an old Western, except this was 2016 in Tennessee. Eventually a man pointed to a building that was not closed. I pressed the buzzer and realised it was a funeral home. A large man in a suit answered. I said I needed a Taxi He said there was none, but if I waited until after the funeral someone would give me a lift. I politely declined and continued walking – the afternoon heat was quite intense and my bags heavy so I returned to take up the offer. I waited at the back of the Shades of Grace hall as the funeral commenced. Amidst a congregation of church goers three casual dressed mourners stood out. They kept shuffling outside for a quick smoke. Then an image appeared on a large monitor – a bearded thirty something male – I was intrigued. The service commenced with a sombre Springsteen song and his short life was celebrated. Jail was mentioned; school; a broken family; a lover and a child; unemployment; drugs. Then the funeral was over, like his life, the three friends left and I was asked to join the gathering over the food platter provided. I was told the real story. It was murder – a drug deal gone wrong; no money for funeral or burial; the Shades of Grace stepped in; it had become a common theme in Kingsport and all over mid-America, where murder and drugs cut life short – money was scarce as debt was due. Talk turned to the newly elected Donald Trump, and I was told when you have nothing, anything will seem better. I got my lift back to my Motel, shaken by what I had witnessed and the fragility of life.

    Ferguson ©Barry Delaney
    Ferguson ©Barry Delaney

    I had been to St Louis a few times, but like most was unsure where Ferguson was – the birthplace of Black Lives Matter. I boarded a bus from downtown St Louis, a 10 mile journey through some of the most deprived areas I had seen in America. I stood out, the only white, and with a camera, eventually the silence was broken. Where you going? I was asked suspiciously. I told them I was a photographer from Dublin. They never heard of Ireland. Eventually the bus driver told me where to alight. He pointed to the liquor store where Michael Brown was accused of stealing the cheap pack of cigarillos. I wandered around this typical American low income shopping strip: the McDonalds; two liquor stores and a convenience store and a few businesses to let, in the searing September heat; eyes peered on me suspiciously; no one talked to me, never mind wanted to be photographed. Eventually a gang of teens, heading out of the McDonalds, agreed to a quick photo. they said they knew Michael Brown then they were gone. I wandered back to the liquor store and something happened: one of the gang was into photography and he interviewed me. I was real so I was  in – a few photographs and then the history of what happened to spark the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the most engaging conversations of my life. I was taken down to Michael Brown’s home; shown where the shooting occurred and met his neighbours. We smoked and I told them about Ireland, I showed them my Instagram and then I was gone, back on my bus

    All activity is being recorded ©Barry Delaney

    Waiting at Memphis station for my early morning bus to Mississippi and a prison van rolls up and drops off five newly released prisoners; we were all congregated in the smoking area; the guy in the Nirvana T-shirt agreed to be photographed and as I’m shooting the black guy drops in. It’s the perfect picture. I return to my coffee; then he approaches menacingly, “did you take my photograph?”  I’m always honest, people on the street see through bullshit. I said yeah, he tells me he had been locked up for eight years since he was eighteen. “What are you going to do with the photograph?” he asks. I told him, hopefully a book or exhibition somewhere in Europe. He said “am I going to be in a book or exhibition in Europe?”  I said, hopefully, and bought him a coffee, he told me about his fears about going back to his home town in Mississippi, and getting mixed up again in the gang lifestyle; the horrors of living in a prison dormitory; the violence he witnessed and the segregated racial tension of prison life.

    When my exhibition – Americans Anonymous – opened at Ranelagh Arts centre two years later he was honoured at the opening.

    Freedom day ©Barry Delaney
    Freedom day ©Barry Delaney

     On the bus from Jackson we picked up this sweet little Louisiana twentysomething, four kids and just released from a six month stretch for a petty drug offense; at the next stop I photographed her. We chatted all the way to Louisiana – telling me her story, me mine. When we arrived at Baton Rouge station it was Friday night chaos with more new releases .I took my camera out and suddenly it was not so friendly. Then this guy who had begun flirting with the girl, whipped of his shirt and yelled: “Fuck it – I’m Free – shoot that.” I nearly missed my ongoing bus to New Orleans. Janis Joplin playing in my mind: “Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.”

    ©Barry Delaney

    From my central Chicago tourist base I caught the L train out to the South Side; as I approached Englwood there were no other tourists on board. I was on my own as I embarked, noting the gang activity near the station in the late August heatwave. This was not Dublin. This was a place where there was a gang related murder every day. It seemed deserted and strangely suburban: a world away from the Chicago Magnificent mile; suspicion was everywhere; was I an undercover white man (with a camera)? Alone, I endured the fear and kept walking; approaching different groups; no one here had heard of Dublin, most waving me abruptly away. Eventually agreement, a couple chilling agreed to one shot. I quickly moved on; the next group also agreed; then suddenly, as I was shooting, a guy on a low rider bike circled around me and warned: “you and your camera get the fuck out here NOW.” I scurried quickly back to the station still armed with my camera and my one shot.

    Reflections of Tenderloin ©Barry Delaney
    Reflections of Tenderloin ©Barry Delaney

    Right bang in the centre of San Francisco, a stone’s throw from the shopping hub of Union Square, across the road from Market street, home to Twitter itself, is the Tenderloin. Amidst the liberal affluent chic of San Fran is an oasis of the real Wild West, riddled with sirens, drugs, gunshots, hookers, hostels, soup kitchens, fashion and vice; crackheads yelling incoherent paranoid mantras. Is this the home of the Hippies, Apple and all things new-age?

    And yet, somehow, it’s all carried out in style, maybe a beat pimp style, in that cool California way, like a set from a 60’s Steve McQueen drama. Each time I return the action has moved on, sometimes across the street to the Mission, but it always has that edge. The last time I was there I was run out by a gang of punks, angered by my candid street photography style. Always an adrenaline rush, in fact a Fear and Loathing. This is a sample of some of the characters I have met down through the years, that I’m putting together for my new book: Americans Anonymous.

  • Photo Desk: Black Lives Matter Dublin Protest June 6th 2020

     

  • Photo Desk: Black Lives Matter Sligo Protest June 5th 2020

    Around 200 people gathered in front of Sligo City Hall this Friday afternoon. The majority of those attending were young, and they spoke about George Floyd, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, but also raised questions about Direct Provision in Ireland.

    Photography Felipe Lopes

  • Photo Essay: Mallorca after the Pandemic

    The resorts of Magaluf, Palmanova and Santa Ponça on the southwest coast of Mallorca are among the island’s most popular destinations. By May, they are usually heaving with a mix of young families, pensioners and stag and hen parties – all availing of cheaper low season prices and temperatures in the high 20s and even low 30s.

    To give an idea of the numbers involved, in May of 2019, 1.8m tourists visited the island – out of a total 16.5 for the year – and there was a hotel occupancy of 62.2%. Yet this May, because of Covid-19, the island is virtually cut off from the rest of the world and no tourists have arrived since early March.

    These images show hotel balconies that in other years would have been a sea of towels, pools that would have been full of holidaymakers and restaurant terraces that would have been packed with drinkers and diners. The streets are empty, the beaches are almost deserted and the children’s play areas sealed off. Some businesses haven’t even bothered to open.

    Like a scene from a disaster movie, but without any physical damage, the resorts gather dust under the Mediterranean sun.

     

  • Gone

    Whenever I go back to Dublin, I wonder where it’s all gone.

    I usually think of the gay marriage referendum, for some reason. It was one of those long spring Saturdays where the evening lasted half the day. There were so many of them in those terminal months before I left. So many sunny afternoons hungover on the grass by the bandstand in Stephen’s Green. So many magic-hour cans by the canal. So many nights that stayed evening until eleven or twelve. So many pills. So many lines. So many dabs of MD. So many illegal raves underneath Chinese restaurants and in garages on Prussia Street and in warehouses by the docks. So many kisses in the after-nightclub dawn.

    They announced that ‘Yes’ had won in the early afternoon and we left our tiny rooms in Stoneybatter and went into town to drink. Me and two of my friends. It was standing room only outside Grogan’s so we stood and talked shite in the sun. The streets were wedged with people celebrating. The crowds were chanting “yes” and singing “olé olé”. There were rainbow flags, rainbow beards, rainbow armpits, rainbow headbands, rainbow t-shirts, rainbow hot-pants, rainbow dogs and rainbow cars. There were ‘Yes Equality’ badges and “Same Love” tote bags. There were people posing for photographs in front of sunlit, multi-coloured murals. There were gay couples kissing and strangers cheering them. There were news crews from all around the world, filming the celebrations and having their filming interrupted by people jumping in front of the cameras to celebrate.

    Everyone under thirty was home to vote and out for the craic. Town was even more mental by early evening as we walked from pub to pub in the lens-flare light. It was like a carnival. It was like the World Cup. It was like Pride, except it was ourselves we were proud of, the soundness of us. Proud of our country. Proud of our city which voted overwhelmingly for yes. Proud of our young people who were out dancing and singing in the sun and the shade. It felt like a revolution.

    We drank in The Bernard Shaw with the South Americans and the continental Europeans who were out to celebrate too. We drank under the stars, and after last orders we walked by the graffiti for yes to Whelan’s. We sang Prince and Madonna and everyone hugged on the dancefloor when the lights came on at the end. The old establishment seemed on the verge of falling. I shifted some lad outside at four. No one wanted to go home even though the seagulls were down for the leftover chips and the sky was glowing up a Sunday morning blue.

    Me and my two friends walked back to Stoneybatter. The street sweepers were out. The papers were being delivered. The frontpages said “Ireland says yes” and “Even the Sun Came Out” and “The Rainbow Revolution” and “A New Beginning” and “Ireland’s Big Yes”. They all had pictures of people in the sun in sunglasses hugging and cheering and blowing bubbles and kissing.

    “The country’s changed,” my friend said as we sat in our small, dawn-lit kitchen at half-five in the morning having toast and tea. A month later the landlord raised our rent by 30%, and four years on now we’re all gone from Dublin. Me and my friends, and probably most of the people out drinking in the sun that day. We celebrated equality and left a day or a month or a year later. Off to London or South America or Asia or the Middle East or back down the country or onto friends’ couches or back in with our parents or into homelessness. I wish I could go back to those days, but it’s all gone now: that Dublin, those people, that hope.

  • Caroline Flack and the Painful Lessons of Grief

    Whenever a celebrity dies of natural causes people respond in unified mourning. If a celebrity dies tragically however – from an overdose or by their own hand – people react with volleys of blame-calling.

    It is a natural reaction for us to want to cast blame somewhere. We point the finger at nameless, faceless entities manifesting greater evil than we would ever be capable of – whether trolls, social media or the tabloids. We assure ourselves these remote actors are the true killers.

    The hardest thing I have ever had to learn – one I am still struggling to get my head around – is that with suicide, we never fully know.

    The Denial Stage

    Grief comes in waves. These waves become less consistent, less engulfing over the years. But when I feel one breaking, after the passing of an anniversary, bumping into an old mutual friend, or after a dream where I’ve seen his face and kissed him back to life, I often revert to the denial stage.

    I shut my eyes, imagine travelling through time to precisely the right moment as an ethereal angel from the future, where I summarise a breath-taking, lifesaving speech that will change everything.

    Wait! I’ve carved a way out for you after all these years. I have the cure. You don’t have to die. You’re free!

    Then we eat ham and cheese toasties. I make fun of the jar of mayonnaise he insists on keeping by his bedside locker. We watch Beverly Hills 90210 – with the original cast obviously – smoke a joint, laugh about his previous intentions. Everything is light. I’ve wiped away the darkness.

    This is the sort of wistful longing that awaits Caroline Flack’s family and friends as they attempt to heal from such a heart-wrenching event. They have a lifetime of such longing in store – an ache that is felt like an infected tooth which, if untreated, will be left to rot. It is nothing like the collective mourning and sense of injustice we feel for her.

    Having said all that, I don’t think we should belittle the grief that can be felt for celebrities we’ve never met.

    Celebrities can become a part of our daily lives. Flack fans will think of the times they saw her glistening locks and beaming smile as they sat at home watching Love Island or The Extra Factor. They’ll remember the satisfaction and sense of girl power when she held Amber Gill’s hand[i] after Michael Griffiths confessed to coupling up with another lover in Casa Amor, and blaming it on Amber for being chaaaldish.

    Even think back to 2014, when her career skyrocketed after deservedly winning Strictly Come Dancing.

    Searching for Answers

    Through my own search for answers I learned how Caroline was put on anti-depressants, right after this success, in order to cope with the pressure.

    Living as we do, in a two-dimensional world of the virtual and the real, we paste together a narrative of who a celebrity really is when they are alone. We generate this picture from social media identities and assorted news stories, all laying claim to differing truths or alternative versions of the same story. And if that celebrity acts in a way we do not expect, we feel it is our right to cast judgement. After all, we think, it is they who exposed themselves to the unforgiving limelight.

    The difficulty with rushing to judgment on celebrities trapped in this secondary world is that no one has been trained in how to conduct themselves online. Societal boundaries and rules do not exist in the same way.

    Considering the internet only emerged less than thirty years ago this is hardly surprising. We are expressing ourselves through the intermediary of a screen and often take on a pseudonym.

    Temptation is also rife here. We can now find instantaneous answers to almost anything we want to know. And once that hunger has been sated, does the truth even matter?

    Brain Studies

    Brain studies show that we are predisposed to put more emphasis on negative than positive thoughts. A study designed by four psychologists from Case Western University and the Free University of Amsterdam, entitled ‘Bad Is Stronger Than Good’, explores how ‘throughout our evolutionary history, organisms better attuned to adverse outcomes would have been more likely to survive threats, which increases the probability of these genes being passed on.’[ii]

    In other words, our brains are not designed for happiness. They are hardwired for survival. While the world around us has developed far beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, our brains are still looking out for the next challenging situation.

    We literally have to fight for our positive thoughts to overcome negative ones. Now, imagine a public figure confronting a media storm. Think of the hundreds, or even thousands of comments, stories or headlines, and then the very real consequences of losing your job, partner and house as a result of these damaging misconceptions.

    Consider how much brain power is required to reverse that swarm of negativity. Even those armed with the greatest resilience would struggle. And Caroline was not someone who was in a place of strength. In October of last year, before the public outcry, Caroline admitted to being in a weird place, saying ‘when I actually reached out to someone, they said I was draining.’[iii]

    Darkest Hour

    I have experienced pain at the death of a celebrity passing before.

    I remember when Mac Miller overdosed in September 2018, I spent two days in bed. My mum found me cradling my cat, whimpering in the sitting room. I had to explain bashfully that everything was fine, except that a famous rapper, who of course I did not know personally, had died at the age of twenty-six.

    But there was something so haunting about the news of Caroline that prompts me to write. A heavy, stomach-filled-with-cement, stabbing feeling. I can feel it now as I type. It was a painful realisation of: ‘I get it. I get why she felt as if she had no way out.’ I can see how so many paths of hope were blocked for her.

    In some of my hardest times, I remember likening mental anguish to the feeling of drowning and looking around while the rest of the world is breathing easily.

    If I had a press pack or a bodycam documenting times I’ve been at my lowest, at my darkest, at my most embarrassing or – for want of a better word – ‘craziest’, a bystander might not see any difference between that behaviour and how we imagine Caroline to have acted on that night in December. Perhaps my admission is a way of acknowledging how ill-equipped any of us are to act as judge and jury.

    Search for the Light

    The weight of suicide is a heavy one to bear. The pain of the victim does not dissolve after they are gone. It is left with the survivors to carry forever.

    The statement Caroline was forbidden to post, which has since been released by her family has arrived much too late. We had already found her guilty.

    It is difficult to find hope in tragedy, but even now we must search for the light, if only to guide those trapped in the darkness.

    Russel Brand, a pure and eloquent voice for celebrity eulogies, gave me bittersweet hope. In part, it reads as such:

    We have the power to hurt one another and the power to heal one another, perhaps that’s the only power we have. We can never see the positive impact of our actions, the times when our kindness and compassion may have saved a life, but we can see what happens in its absence.

    There is freedom in asserting our own power. It is a responsibility that should be taken seriously. However, it is important to understand that no amount of love or affection can stop someone from ending their life.

    Ultimately, we have no control over anyone’s decisions to do so. But what we do have control over is ourselves. We control what we think, how we react to things, how we treat other people, what we read, watch or write. This is the true power of human existence.

    For the survivors, there are pages and pages of words left unsaid to the person they have lost. I’ve been writing my own for years. And I’m tired of carrying this. I’m tired of the pain. I’m tired of watching bright, talented and special people die.

    So, for those who can see no way out: know that you are worth your weight in gold. Know that the people who love you would move mountains just to keep you here. Know that I would sacrifice every star in the sky to transcend time and bring back who I lost.

    Search for the light. Even if it is the tiniest little glint. I promise you it is there.

    [i] Tilly Pearce, ‘Caroline Flack’s reaction to Love Island’s recoupling clash between Amber Gill and Michael Griffiths is priceless’ Metro, July 3rd, 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/03/caroline-flacks-reaction-love-islands-recoupling-clash-amber-gill-michael-griffiths-priceless-10111688/

    [ii] Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen  Bratslavsky, Catrin  Finkenauer, ‘Bad is Stronger than Good’, Review  of  General  Psychology2001.  Vol.  5. No. 4.  323-37 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323

    [iii] Tilly Pearce, ‘Caroline Flack’s reaction to Love Island’s recoupling clash between Amber Gill and Michael Griffiths is priceless’ Metro, July 3rd, 2019, https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/03/caroline-flacks-reaction-love-islands-recoupling-clash-amber-gill-michael-griffiths-priceless-10111688/