Cassandra Voices

Category: Society

  • Old Man Talk – ‘I used to ride young wans in here’

    I made the following notes in an old factory that was built in 1906 at a cost of six hundred pounds. It was a draughty one story building which has stood for over a century on the eastern shore of Loch an Mhuilinn in Carraroe, Conamara.  Jack B. Yeats and John Millington Synge referred to it in their Manchester Guardian reports about the West of Ireland. It stimulates my memory. Five of my six children grew up during the twenty years I previously occupied it and in my mellowing years I returned to inhabit the place.

    The exterior is unchanged except for the slate roof replacing a rusty corrugated covering which was no protection from the elements. When it rained heavily we had to deploy five pots and pans to catch the leaks. Since then it has been modernised but the mice still run up the wainscoting. I trapped and murdered one every couple of days and felt sorry for the creatures. The heating system was idiosyncratic, suffering from convoluted wiring, a faulty water pump, thermostat and oil burner. I wore layers of clothes and walked a lot on Trá an Dóilín (the Coral Strand) to keep warm.

    The original purpose of the factory was to teach local maidens lacework and knitting, provide them with a small income and thus keep them at home as potential breeders. I possess a photo of thirty-five girls in white pinafores and four teachers in dark skirts posing outside the building. Most of the girls saved up the pittance they earned and used it as their fare to America. The factory survived as various forms of cottage industry, until 1975 when I took it over and turned part of it into a cinema. My eldest son has since made a fine documentary film about that enterprise, which ended in 1994.

    Once, when my then wife advertised for extras for a small film, a burly farmer from the Gaeltacht of RathCairn in county Meath arrived with a present of a sack of barley on his shoulder. His antecedents from Conamara had been encouraged to colonise land in county Meath in the nineteen-thirties. It was one of the exotic ideas conjured up by De Valera when he looked into his own heart. The Meathman dumped his sack on the floor of the kitchen, surveyed the place and announced: ‘I used ride young wans in here.’

    In 1994 we swapped the factory for a cottage four miles west. This had six acres of bog on which I planted a thousand trees to compensate for driving a carbon monoxide vehicle. By then  I had changed partners, for better or worse, and would soon have a final total of six children.

    I found that this factory hadn’t been occupied for a couple of years and I rented the place again for the precise purpose of writing these words. I’m of an age when reminiscence is a compulsion, self-pity is tempting; the gyroscope is wobbling and there’s nobody around to catch it.

    The person indirectly responsible for the building was Rachel Lady Dudley, wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Her real surname was Gurney. ‘Shut your gurney face’ is now, I understand, an urban insult in Britain.

    Unlike her husband, Rachel was concerned for the poverty of the peasants. Those English aristocrats had a summer residence in Rosmuc, just across the road from Pádraic Pearse’s cottage. I am sure that the doomed Irish teacher and the enforcer of the King’s writ never met socially. However, James Joyce’s Ulysses records the occasion of Lord Dudley’s cavalcade across Dublin in June 1904 – a detail which may be the lord’s only memorable action in the history of human affairs. He was going to a charity bazaar on behalf of Mercers Hospital in which, by the way, my father later had his final heart attack. Mercers is now a hotel in which I long ago had a one-night stand and wept, perhaps finally mourning my father.

    As was the custom in the early twentieth century, especially in the social circles of his friend the Prince of Wales, Lord Dudley was having an affair – or as it was delicately described at the time, ‘concupiscent capers’ – with a music hall star named Gertie Millar.

    Gertie was the wife of Lionel Monckton, successful composer of the Quaker Girl hit, my old love Thaura M’s party piece, an affair I have already recounted in these pages.

    In between bearing seven children for the Lord Lieutenant the neglected Rachel needed something to occupy herself. She immersed herself in the work of the Congested Districts Board who erected this building. She took up photography and recorded the misery of Irish peasant life. She also initiated a bursary scheme to provide nurses for the impoverished poor. In 1970 when I came to Conamara they were still called Dudley Nurses and there is many a child in Conamara named Dudley.

    The Lord Lieutenant – whose real name was William Humble Ward –  also served briefly and unnotably as Governor General of Australia. Andrew Deakin, a contemporary Aussie politician wrote of the Governor’s short career in the Antipodes: ‘His ambition was high but his interests were short-lived … He did nothing really important, nothing thoroughly, nothing consistently … He remained … a very ineffective and a not very popular figurehead.’ A perfect cartoon of the English monied classes.

    However, the energetic Rachel founded the jubilee nurses Down Under to service the poor people of the Outback. It was the forerunner of the Flying Doctor service which still functions.

    Rachel and the Earl were divorced in 1912.

    I laboriously copied the above photographs by Lady Dudly in my darkroom. Several elderly neighbours have told me that their aunts and mothers and grandmothers worked in the knitting enterprise. When I wanted to exhibit this and copies of several other of her pictures, I wrote a polite note to her son, the next Viscount Dudley, asking his permission to do so. It would have been nice for my neighbours to see pictures of their long departed mothers, fathers, aunts and other antecedents.

    This Viscount – whose second wife was Maureen Swanson, film actress – replied, threatening me with legal proceedings if I infringed the family’s copyright. I desisted, realising that what the absentee colonist seizes, he still holds onto, very tightly.

    It has just occurred to me that if Rachel took the photographs as a functionary of the CGB perhaps the photos should now be in the public domain. The Viscount who refused me permission died recently, in fact within two days of my own birthday. It is on my list to write to the present incumbent of the Dudley title.

    Lady Dudley will be remembered for her good works and also her tragedy. One fine day in June 1920, she walked into Screebe lake in Rosmuc. Local tradition maintains that she drowned herself. She was fifty-one.

    Four years later the original Lord Lieutenant was free to marry Gertie the musical hall artist and he sailed on until dying of cancer in 1932. Some day I will summon the daring to have that photographic exhibition in that old factory which still echoes with the voices of my children.

    Originally I was warned that because the building bordered the main road it was a dangerous place to bring up toddlers. In fact it taught them road sense. The only member of the family who came to grief outside was our beautiful and headstrong border collie, Laddie.

    Nowadays the constant swish of traffic outside – teachers commuting from Galway and workers commuting to Galway – suggests that the warning would be more apposite today. As in every other rural culture, few people now walk the roads to shop, school, pub or church in Conamara.

    They mostly stay in at night, no longer drink poitín in quaint thatched cottages, but tipple – if they drink at all – in fine, modern, mortgaged mansions and watch Netflix. The heart of rural Ireland, the pub, is dead. But that old factory is again for sale and, for me, still vaguely alive. Each of us inhabits a small personal world where time and space converge.

  • Not in Our Name – the Fall and Fall of Conor McGregor

    Greater in combat
    Than a person who conquers
    A thousand times a thousand people
    Is the person who conquers himself
    Gautama Buddha, the Dhammapada, (third century B.C.E.)

    There is no opponent
    Who the fuck is Jose Aldo?
    There is no Jose Aldo,
    There is no no-one
    You’re against yourself,
    You’re against yourself.
    Conor McGregor, Interview, (2013)

    Anyone with even a passing interest in combat sports cannot but be aware of the terminal decline of a one-time candidate for the greatest Irish sportsman of all time, Conor McGregor.

    For a time, when he could do no wrong, it seemed like the entire Irish nation was behind McGregor. The pride of a fighting nation. There were a few dissenting voices admittedly, who wisely recognised a crassness and thuggery to his character. A premonition, perhaps, of what was to come. The rest of us were mesmerised by the meteoric rise of the dual-weight UFC champion.

    The Irish sportsman has almost always been a plucky underdog, destined to fail at the highest level.

    Our national rugby team, ranked number one in the world going into the last World Cup, recently imploded with barely a whimper before the might of the All Blacks.

    There have been exceptions, it is true – Padraig Harrington and Brian O’Driscoll, for example – but Irish people seem to bear a psychic wound handed down from a colonial legacy of brutal suppression. As a nation, we don’t believe in ourselves.

    Mould-breaker

    McGregor broke that mould, and for a time, we celebrated him for it. Many of us, myself included, were seduced by the story of a plucky kid from Crumlin who became champion of the world.

    McGregor was the law of attraction in action, and became probably the most recognisable Irishman in the world. His self-belief, audacity and sheer natural athleticism were a sight to behold. He was that most un-Irish of Irish sportsmen, one who backed himself against the very best, and won.

    For a time, everything he touched turned to gold. I vividly remember the high points: getting up at 5am to watch his six-second-demolition of the reigning champion Jose Aldo; he showed what dedication, self-belief and hard work could do. ‘Who the fuck is Jose Aldo?’, he said, ‘You’re against yourself.’  Did he have any idea how prophetic those words were?

    Pantomime Gangster

    It is time to call McGregor out for what he has become: a caricature of a nineteenth-century punch-drunk, stage Irishman. An empty vessel behind which lurks self-destruction and self-loathing. A false hero. A morally bankrupt shell of a man.

    An immutable law of the universe is the higher you rise, the further you have to fall. Just as McGregor’s rise was meteoric, so his fall has been catastrophic. It is like watching a brutal car crash in slow motion.

    The decline of McGregor is not just as a sportsman, but as a man. A would-be role model has been reduced to one whose demons have taken control. He is someone who clearly needs help, not selfies and adulation.

    If you invoke the gods of war, expect to be their victim in the end. In Irish mythology Cú Chulainn is our greatest warrior-hero. Unsurpassed in battle, even he eventually meets his doom when An Morrígan, the Celtic goddess of the battlefield, turns against him, leaving his corpse tied to a standing stone with his own spear driven through his gut. W.B. Yeats evoked the scene in ‘Cuchulain Comforted’, (1939)

    A man that had six mortal wounds, a man
    Violent and famous, strode among the dead;
    Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.

    Similarly, McGregor invoked the gods of war, who smiled on him for a time, before turning on him.

    Yet McGregor’s fall began slowly, almost imperceptibly. For a long while we, as a nation, looked the other way and ignored the excesses. This seemingly loveable rogue could do no wrong. He said controversial things, ‘but sure that’s grand, he’s Irish.’ With a twinkle in the eye he could get away with it.

    But no more. Now he serves as a warning to our children on what fame and excessive wealth can bring – that empty promise of chronic materialism which is the real sickness of our age.

    First came the money. Ostentatious, crass and tasteless displays of wealth at a time when there are ten thousand homeless in Ireland; McGregor buys an €80,000 Gucci mink coat and brags about it on a social media account which bears painful witness to his slow descent into delusion and madness.

    Gone was the bright-eyed kid from Dublin, whose positive attitude and laughter were contagious.

    The press conferences, which at one time were sharp and witty, steadily grew nastier and more vindictive. The wit and humour of the early years soon dried up.

    We looked away in shame at the racial taunts directed against Flyod Mayweather before that circus of a fight. He may have made one hundred million dollars, but he lost his soul that night. Or maybe he lost it last year when he was brutally demolished, choked out, by Khabib Nurmagomedov, a disciplined martial artist.

    Arrested Development

    And so the glint in McGregor’s eyes grew darker, his face harder, and the fuse shorter. The losses seemed unbearable for him, and his demons came out to play. Surrounded by yes-men, with no one calling him out, there was no bounds to his mis-behaviour.

    Arrests followed for assault, ‘strong arm battery and criminal mischief’; lurid headlines; different cities, new countries, but the same old story.

    Images revealed McGregor on yet another rollover – out of his mind on drink and drugs. The signs of chronic cocaine and alcohol abuse evident for all to see. Then came photos of McGregor mingling with some of Dublin’s most notorious mobsters – men with the blood of many victims on their hands. McGregor had become notorious alright, but not in a good way.

    Recently he was found guilty in a Dublin court of a shameful and unprovoked assault against an older man in a Dublin pub. The CCTV footage catches him red-handed. One can only imagine what happens behind closed doors off camera.

    Worse still are the sexual assault allegations, though of course anyone is innocent until proven guilty, and McGregor deserves the presumption of innocence.

    ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’

    McGregor was a showman, never a real person. A pantomime gangster in a twenty-first-century Punch and Judy show. The story of his notoriety is based on a lie. The hardman attitude, the association with real criminals were contrived to create a false persona.

    As they say in Dublin: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.’ He was never supposed to start believing his own bullshit.

    Somewhere along the road, the dream became a living nightmare. Now stuck in a circus of his own making, he is the ringmaster who no longer wants to play the role. But with the lions circling, like all doomed heroes, he is in the hands of his inescapable fate.

    What we are also seeing is the moral bankruptcy of UFC itself. There is something rotten in the state of Nevada. What does it say for a sporting code when its greatest heroes, McGregor and John Jones, fall from grace in such spectacular fashion?

    False comparisons have been made between McGregor and Mike Tyson, but Tyson grew up in a real ghetto. His mother was a prostitute and from childhood Tyson had to fight just to survive. Today, Tyson has tamed the monster within and has largely redeemed himself.

    McGregor had choices. He grew up in a functional family in the working class Dublin suburb of Crumlin. The Image McGregor has cultivated of being from the ghetto are designed for his American fans. He took a decision to associate with gangland criminals and thugs, and assumed the role of a pantomime gangster.

    Out of control

    It is clear now that McGregor has been out of control for several years with illusions of invincibility. In a country with more stringent laws than Ireland, he would probably be behind bars already. For his own, and others’, safety that seems like the best place for him.

    Perhaps the demons were always there, and it’s possible that one too many punches to the head have damaged him more deeply than we are aware.

    Maybe the pressure of living a lie in a toxic world of fame and wealth inevitably leads to this. No doubt, living without constraints would test anyone’s character.

    Money can’t buy class, and it certainly doesn’t lead to happiness. It can buy you time though, but however painfully slow, the wheels of Irish justice will turn.

    The Irish state has an embarrassing record of tolerance for the rich and famous breaking the law, and our sexual assault laws, and criminal justice system more generally, are outdated and not fit for purpose. It could be years before any trial occurs, if it ever comes to pass. Money has a way of making these things go away. But even if allegations magically disappear, reputational damage cannot.

    An addict in full self-destruct mode with bottomless pockets owning a whiskey company. What could possibly go wrong? The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Like any addict who has lost the ability to make rational choices, McGregor is trapped in pit of self-pity, self-loathing and resentment.

    In archetypal Irish fashion, McGregor has become a dirty family secret. Since the spiral of his decline began, collectively we have just stopped talking about him. ‘Nothing to see here, move on.’

    But we need to talk about Conor McGregor.

    We need to draw a line.

    This behaviour is not ok.

    Not in our name

    Not in my name. When, and if, McGregor ever walks into the Octagon again, with the Irish flag on his shoulders, he does not do so in the name of the Irish people. The men and women who died in the pursuit of Irish independence would not permit this. He does not represent me or my people. Not in our name.

    What McGregor clearly needs is help, not adoration, and to be held accountable for his actions, before the courts if necessary.

    Not more selfies with the mindless fans who do not seem to care about his behaviour. No more being egged on by the sycophantic thugs who surround him, or by his equally lost family. No more glorifying the shadow side of masculinity. Do we really want teenage boys aspiring to be Conor McGregor? He is the poster-child for a failed version of Irish masculinity.

    The saddest part about McGregor is what he could have been: a role model and inspiration for kids around the world. Instead he is alone in the world, alone with his demons. For all his tens of millions of dollars, I do not envy him.

    We could be heroes

    At this time of tremendous upheaval and change in the world, we desperately need new heroes.

    As Joseph Campbell masterfully put it, a hero is someone ‘who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself’. Not to the false and empty pursuit of money and fame like McGregor. But at least we can thank him for showing us the antithesis of a hero.

    Jungian psychologist Jasbinder Garnermann describes how essential it is to confront the unconscious shadow in the human psyche in order to fight our demons:

    The hero’s obliviousness to his inner nature becomes his fatal flaw … The shadow defeats kings, princes and generals, men who have fought great wars and shown superhuman courage. These are all heroes who have vanquished the external enemy. But, to a man, they have been brought down by the enemy within. And for this battle, humankind is still in training.

    I take no pleasure in writing these words, in seeing the sorry fall of a fellow man. We all have our demons and fallen from grace at some stage in our lives. Conor just had further to fall, and no one to save him from himself.

    Yet there is always hope of redemption, even for those who have descended to the darkest depths, but that would require McGregor to confront his demons – a fight he has shown no stomach for so far.

    No matter how far we fall, each of us has the instinct for transcendence, and the hope of  redemption. Maybe one day he will indeed make amends, and remember his own words:

    I just feel like I can beat myself. I can beat my mind, I believe in myself so much that nothing is going to stop me

    I wish him well: that he can turn things around before he loses everything, if it is not already too late.

  • Better Butter

    ‘God bless all here’ as our ancestors used to say upon arrival at the home of a friend, neighbour, or stranger. Not just a blessing on all within that home, it meant he who entered possessed not the evil eye.

    In my great-grandparents’ time, curses, spells, and witchcraft were common practise. It was the 1870’s and women were careful with their milk and butter. They believed bad feelings caused concern for the precious household, products which brought valuable shillings back from the market.

    Essie Donoghue Feery was one of these extraordinary women. Her devoted husband, John ‘The Clock’ Feery was sentenced to two years in jail for severely injuring members of the stronger McCormack family, after they’d driven him, Essie and nine young children out of a cottage on land he’d worked hard for years. This left the Feerys homeless and penniless.

    The McCormack woman was of the evil eye, and had conspired with her husband and five sons to torment John off his land. He was a lone man, yet still he done them six men great harm before conceding defeat. Retreating a mile and a half back into the bog of Ring, he built a beautiful peat hut as a homestead for his wife and children.

    Feery is a name that describes the little people most gifted with a deathless courage. But back to this one woman Essie Donoghue Feery, of great faith, kindness, and compassion. Old Evil Eye McCormack saw her chance. John was in jail and Essie alone there with nine children. This was the way of it.

    The Evil Eye brought evil everywhere with her. Every few days calling to the peat hut with offers to help pretending to be in kindness and remorse for harms done. But Essie was no fool. She knew the Evil Eye meant no good. In milking Essie’s two cows the following day, the cows ceased to produce milk. On churning the butter, it failed to rise in the churn and became sour. This denied Essie much needed shillings from the market.

    Essie had been born and reared above, in the hills. Croghan was four miles away, but she called in to Old Lady Dunne, said to have far greater spells than Evil Eye McCormack. ‘What ails you, Essie Dear ?’ asked Old Lady Dunne. On hearing the story, Old Lady Dunne rose from her chair, and this she did say: ‘Musha, Musha, Essie Dear. I am an old lady but follow me. I’ve waited many years to curse the Evil Eye McCormack. Now do exactly as I tell you.’ She returned from her garden with herbs and then this she did say. ‘I am bid by God to only use the poison of plant to destroy evil and the goodness of plant to help the sick. Person, or animal.’ She began to chant and held up the herbs as if in offering.

    ‘Now Essie, half an hour before you know the evil eye to be coming, put a poker in the coals of the fire and throw a few of these herbs upon it. Just a few at a time, because too much and the smoke could leave you unconscious. Then when you see Evil Eye McCormack coming across the bog towards you, use the red hot poker to make a sign of the cross on the inside of your front door, and continue to put herbs upon the fire. Do as I bid you and this will be the last time Evil Eye McCormack ever bothers you. This done, I’ll summon the black fallen angel to drive her away.’

    It is said that once Essie made the sign of a cross on the door with that red hot poker, Evil Eye McCormack was heard roaring across the Bog of Ring and Derrycoffey. ‘My heart! My heart! Oh God, my heart is burning!’ No one saw her after that, but Essie’s cows and butter became better than ever.

    Fast forward to in our cottage in 1970, where I sat in the dark with the light of the big open turf fire blazing. About ten of us sat around Paddy O’ Reilly, who lived two cottages up from ours. He was my favourite storyteller about the Banshee. I saw the flames of that fire reflected in his eyes just at the moment he told us of the black banshee roaring in the Bog of Ring many years before. He said, so terrifying were her haunting cries heard across the bog, it drove several people into insanity. They’d never be the same again.

  • Overheard in the Local

    Overheard in the local last night
    D’ye go to mass at all?
    Ah, just the odd time, ye know, Christmas ‘n funerals.
    I see, I do go meself most weeks, don’t agree with it all but
    I like the words but I tell ye something ye get a very different
    class of a handshake down in Terrenure than ye do in Kimmage.
    What d’ye mean?
    The other week I was having an early one in Vaughn’s in Terenure
    and said I’d go to mass there. Me favourite part of the mass is the aul
    handshake with yer neighbour, ye know, ‘Peace be with you.’ I got a
    fierce slippery shite of a shake from an uppety aul one down there,like
    she wouldn’t mind if I was doin’ her plumbin’ or rakin’ her garden but she
    wasn’t mad keen on seein’ me in public like, know what I’m sayin’? Like an eel her hand was.
    Sounds like a fuckin’ posh parish.
    Now your talkin’, different ball game up in Kimmage Manor. When ye shake with yer neighbour up there it’s like sayin’ ‘Done deal mate!’ like you’ve agreed on the price of a car, firm as fuck like after a mad barney, like real, ye know?
    Feck Terenure man, up the Manor! Pint?

  • ‘A slap in the face to bus users’ – Dublin Commuter Coalition responds to proposal to allow EVs in bus lanes

    In a press release, the ‘Dublin Commuter Coalition’ has described proposals for electric vehicles to be permitted to use bus lanes[i] as a ‘slap in the face to bus users.’ This demonstrates, they claim: ‘a stunning lack of respect for overstretched users of sustainable transport.’

    The civil society organisation reject:

    [I]n the strongest possible terms, any suggestion that bus lanes be opened to electric vehicles. The Coalition, who elected their inaugural executive committee on Saturday October 26th, said that this proposal is a slap in the face to bus users who already give up their time and freedom of mobility by travelling in a sustainable way to no thanks or, as is evident from this proposal, even a modicum of respect.

    The chairperson of the Coalition Kevin Carter said:

    ‘It is bizarre, it is astonishing and it is stunningly arrogant that this government would even suggest implementing a scheme that so specifically and brazenly harms bus users. Bus users are never rewarded for choosing to travel in a sustainable way, they are only ever subject to overcrowding, constant fare increases and poor enforcement of existing traffic laws.

    Flagrant abuse of bus lanes is a constant issue for bus users and now this government is proposing further degrading the attractiveness of this mode by making bus users sit in even more traffic that they had no hand in causing.’

    The organisation points to bus users making up 30% of Dublin city commuters in 2018,[ii] the largest single category of transport users. By choosing to take the bus they claim ‘these users have done the city a massive favour by taking cars off the road and making congestion in the city less of a problem.’

    The proposals they say: ‘shows a profound ignorance or disrespect of the very central tenets of any sound sustainable mobility policy.’

    They also point to how the Minister for Transport holds the right to drive in a bus lane as a government minister, and warn that then Ireland will continue to overshoot emissions targets if he fails to prioritise electric vehicles over walking, cycling and public transport, and Dubliners will continue to live in one of the most congested cities in the world.

    These latest moves also suggest, as Ruadhan Mac Eoin previously argued that, if realised, Bus Connects will make permanent space for the motor car.

    Cassandra Voices previously published an article by Contemplar arguing that public transport is a public good that can be cost-effectively delivered in Dublin.

    For further information please contact: Dublin Commuter Coalition:

    Feljin Jose Public Relations Officer: info@dublincommuters.ie; 0871236795

    Kevin Carter Chairperson 0851751487

    [i] Hugh O’Connor, ‘Government to examine plans allowing electric cars to use bus lanes’, Irish Independent, November 1st, 2019, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/government-to-examine-plans-allowing-electric-cars-to-use-bus-lanes-38642359.html

    [ii] National Transport Agency ‘Canal Cordon Report 2018 Report on trends in mode share of vehicles and people crossing the Canal Cordon 2006-2018.’ Dublin City Council, April, 2019.

  • Himself and the Little People

    That summer of 1974 for the first time in my young life I felt proud of myself. For after one very hard week of sweat work, I stood admiring my big bank of black Tore bog turf drying in the hot sun. It was a great feeling and no one was mocking me now. Little Paddy, my uncles, cousins, and neighbours were delighted for me as I had one and one half lorry loads of good black turf, soon ready for sale. At £45 per lorry load I worked out I had £70 of turf for sale that was a lot of money for a fourteen-year-old boy in 1974.

    I stood admiring my own bank of turf and I really did wonder what little Paddy had said a week earlier. « Nicky, the little people have been very good to me, and they will be good to you. » He said it in such a factual way, that it remained in my mind. Little did I know what the following week held in store for me. This is a little bit of magic that was life growing up in the great land of Ireland. You saw magic working in the very middle of disaster.

    One week later, unusually, I was at home on the day my uncle John landed at our cottage on his bicycle. I saw the concern upon his face. Nicky lad, Tore bog is on fire and it is heading right towards your bank of turf. I’m sorry to tell you, but you will never manage to draw it all out to the road in time. Yoke up your ass and cart. Get down there and rescue what you can. Good luck to you, and Nicky, be careful.

    Ned the Ass galloped with meself in the cart the three miles to Tore bog like a bat out of hell. I could see the thick smoke rising on the horizon. My heart sank as I arrived at the bank of now dry turf and saw the flames and smoke of the bog fire, hundreds of metres away but approaching fast.

    Well if I thought I sweat cutting this bank of turf, the following four hours will remain with me for as long as I live. As hard as I was able to, I filled that cart with turf using a beet fork and drawing it fifty metres to the safety of the old gravel boreen. Ned the Ass and meself worked spontaneously. Gently coaxed, he was a fine strong and loyal friend to me. We worked like we were possessed till we had almost all of that turf out upon the gravel boreen, and the fire now but on top of us.

    What happened next has made little Paddy’s words very special to my heart, for I cannot explain what occurred. About the fifth or sixth last load to remove the bank slipped and the cart load of turf went into a small dry bog hole. It was about 60 degrees to Ned who was half on the bank and half in the bog hole with the cart. Terrified, I broke off a Sally stick and for the first time in my life I came down hard on the struggling ass’s back. I hit him as hard as I could, roaring at him, « Come up Ned ! Come up ! » I was desperately trying to save his life. He was trapped very badly. I realized he couldn’t make it back up with only the strength of his his two front legs, and the chains that held him into the cart had near half a tonne of pressure upon them. I had never known a more desperate situation and I felt totally lost. In my frustration I roared out, « Please God don’t allow Ned to die in front of my eyes! This is not his fault, it is mine ! Please help me! »

    The following twenty minutes is like a blur. As if my actions were taken over by a strength superior to my own, I jumped into the bog hole and dug out a hole in the soft peat. Enough to burrow my body through till the breach of my back was against the tailboard and I began to heave. I could feel vessels bursting in my head as I heaved, and heaved. I blacked out and I don’t remember a thing till I came around up on top of the bank. Ned was standing looking at me as much to say, « Phew, that was close. Come on let’s get out of here. » There was smoke everywhere.

    Till this day I cannot properly recount what occurred in those blistering moments. It was beyond myself. My back never fully got better, but it’s a small price to pay, because it would have tormented me my whole life if I had lost poor ole Ned. I hope in reading this story you may understand the magic of the old people and the land of Ireland.

  • The Conman and Correspondence with Kurt Vonnegut

    I admire old people who live by their wits, like the ancient American, a real estate man, whom I met in Galway years. He wore a badge on his lapel with the slogan:

    OLD AGE AND CUNNING WILL ALWAYS DEFEAT YOUTH AND TALENT.

    He told me he was eighty. He looked sixty. We had some laughs.

    As well as that real estate man and my pig-breeding Granda, I admire the old conman I encountered in Montreal railway station in 2003.

    He was elderly, frail, perspiring. He approached me at 8.00am as I queued for the transcontinental train. He had a worn telephone directory in his hands.

    ‘Excuse me, sir. Can you help? I’ve lost my reading glasses, can’t make out this telephone book. Prints too small. Ya know what that street outside is called? I think there’s a branch of my bank there.’

    ‘Afraid not. I’m just visiting’

    ‘Ah.’

    He surveyed the other prospective passengers, rejected them and turned back to me.

    “I’m from outa town too. Been playing poker here all weekend and lost my shirt. Can’t even pay the left luggage fee. I’m trying to ring my bank but they don’t answer. I probably got the wrong number. Sir, can you find it here, the First Bank of Montreal? D’you mind ringing it for me?’

    I found the number, abandoned my luggage to the next person in the queue and followed him to the booth. As I dialed the number he prattled urgently.

    ‘What am I gonna do? I’m in deep shit if I can’t get to my bank.’

    There was no reply from the number. Then I remembered.

    ‘It’s Monday,’ I told him sympathetically, ‘Queen Victoria day, a bank holiday.’

    He was shattered. My heart went out to him. But he had an inspiration.

    ‘Sir, could you lend me a coupla dollars so I can get my luggage back. I always leave some cash in it, my fare home. I’ll pay you back in five minutes. Or maybe, hey, look, this watch I won a while back. It’s a Rolex. Worth five hundred dollars. I’m desperate. I’ll give it you for a hundred.’

    He pulled the watch off, pushed it into my hand. I shook my head. He then struggled with a gleaming ring on his finger.

    ‘This is my wedding ring. 14 carat. My wife will be mad but I gotta get home.’

    I realised it was a con, the jewellery was rubbish, but I was admiring his technique. An old man, still a consummate actor: the sweaty forehead, fogged glasses, shaky hands, lines delivered with perfect timing, especially the question that established me as a stranger to Montreal. I love actors. I took the cheap Woolworth’s watch and ring as souvenirs, gave him thirty dollars. When he skedaddled, effusively grateful, I checked that my luggage was intact, thanked its minder and reported the incident to a couple of Mounties in the station. I told them I was glad to reward the old actor’s performance but was worried that some kind old lady who couldn’t afford thirty dollars might also be conned. The Mounties laughed and said they’d look out for the man, but it was needle in haystack time.

    Several times, on the three-day train journey to Edmonton, I took out the cheap watch and ring and wondered what kind of fool parts with his money as easily as I did. On balance I decided my largesse was the equivalent of a cheap theatre ticket on Broadway and the real life performance was quite as absorbing.

    ‘a mere political bauble’

    I shared the 3-day train journey with American pensioners availing of the cheap rate of exchange between Canada and the USA. I still thought of him, that old survivor. I also tried to figure out my real motive. Was I afraid to call his bluff, break the illusion he had constructed? Did I want his role to be real? Am I incurably gullible? Do I still prefer illusion to reality? Why do I think losers are the real winners?

    Another old man I encountered was Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), author of Slaughterhouse 5, Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, PlayerPiano and many other masterpieces which were resolutely anti-war. He never earned a Nobel peace prize which is the reason I have always regarded that Prize as a mere political bauble. However, on November 11, 1999, the writer’s birthday, an asteroid was discovered and named in his honour. It was called 25399 Vonnegut. Kurt’s consolation prize is located in the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars, circling the sun every 4 years 2 months approximately.

    Vonnegut was a foot soldier against Germany in the second World War and was a prisoner of war in Dresden when it was bombed. Subsequently he wrote anti-war books. A Hollywood producer once told him he might as well write anti-avalanche books.

    Vonnegut was proud of his German ancestry.

    Kurt Correspondence

    In June, 2003 I found his address in New York and wrote a note to him:

    22.6.03

    Dear Mr. Vonnegut,

                                        I finally got this address from Bill Keough – I hope it’s the right one.

                                        This is just to say thank you for all of the encouragement – apart from the entertainment – you have provided for me over the years. I still re-read your books when I’m down. Then I can laugh and cry again.

                                        I wish they’d given the Nobel Peace Prize to the ‘old fart who smokes Pall Mall’ (as you describe yourself) or the man who invented the Church of God the Totally Disinterested or even to your marvellous invention, Kilgore Trout. Instead they give it to poets who sentimentalize, and scientists without the humility of your late brother (Pointing to his own head: “You should see what its like in here”)

                                        You are a treasure who keeps us on the brink of sanity – especially boring old fart-fathers like me who try to subvert my six kids with your ideas.

                                        .

                                        Go raibh míle maith agat.

                                        Very Sincerely yours

                                        Bob Quinn

                To my astonishment a couple of months later I received a postcard. On its front was the slogan: LIFE IS NO WAY TO TREAT AN ANIMAL. Written in block capitals on the back was:

                                                                    AUG. 29TH 2003

    DEAR BOB – I ALREADY OWED A LOT TO AN IRISHMAN BEFORE MY LIFE WAS SAVED BY YOUR LETTER, NAMELY G.B. SHAW.

    A NOBEL PRIZE TURNS THE WINNER’S BRAINS TO TAPIOCA, BUT LIKE JAMES JOYCE I SURE COULD USE THE MONEY.

             CHEERS

    (There was a self-portrait signed K.V. – 80 AS OF 11/11/02)

     

    Dear Kurt,                                                                              24/9/03

                            Thank you for taking the trouble to reply to my simple fan letter and especially for inscribing an original self-portrait. I now have the perfect bookmark for, of course,‘Cats Cradle’ which I have just begun again. I have also started smoking my pipe again (so it goes).

                            In my youth I read a line from ‘The Virginian’: “When you say that, smile”.

                I hope not too late I realise that this is your principal device, why you are what they call a genius and I am an ordinary crank: you – like Shaw – detail the most horrifying paradoxes about us, but with a rueful grin. By contrast, I am still into the anatomy of melancholy – my adolescent complexes will never be resolved, I hope. They’ve kept me going this far.

                Anyway, the sheer craft of your work will always keep it fresh; its audacity still makes me pause and exhale slowly. How did he do THAT, I ask.

                I have 13 years to catch up on you, in which to achieve your state of karass ( a nice version of grace) and to grin. I shall send you a birthday card for all of your next, many, eleventh of the eleventh anniversaries; it will be easy to remember, as my own window opened on the fourteenth of the eleventh.

                At the very least, sir, I share that dangerous characteristic with you: a Scorpio.

                God Bless you Mr. Rosewater.          

     

                Dear Kurt                                                                                           27th April 05

    As your next birthday card I am taking the liberty of portraying you as the deus ex machina in my new novel, one of a series of unpublishable fictions. I feel like your invention Kilgore Trout whose work ended up in pornographic books.

                I have placed you in a country called Ishkailand, a tiny, glacier-bound Republic which has a superabundance of mountain water. A bit like Ireland. This has made it rich in a dying, thirsting planet whose desalination plants have rusted because the oil has run out. The tiny country, location of OWEC (Organisation of Water Producing Countries) conferences, is nominally run by a failed poet/President who has a wife, the rejected daughter of a vile mountaineer goatherd who is going to precipitate an avalanche which will destroy the country – but I run ahead of myself.

                You are posing as a shabby old tramp but are in reality a wandering writer -you’ve discovered that writing, like crime, has only a tiny pension of satisfaction and have abandoned it for the quiet relief of painting pictures of edelweiss. But you are also a scholar and student of the Ishkailite aboriginal language – and I am not sure yet whether you will save this world and its people or say, the hell with them all.

    Is that okay with you?

    At this moment in the chaotic narrative, you are getting blotto with your exact contemporary the goat-herd father-in law who, like you, fought at Anzio, and you are both having a ball.

    Your fictional persona’s diagnosis of the planet’s problems is simply ‘a stack-up of tolerances’.

    That is the story so far – 60 pages! You have only yourself to blame. I hope to have it ready for your next birthday which will be three days before my 70th. I think they call it a festchrift.

    God save all here!

     

                                                                                            5/5/05

    HAPPY TO HAVE YOUR ADDRESS WHICH YOU FAILED TO INCLUDE IN YOUR PREVIOUS AND MOST STRIKINGLY FRIENDLY COMMUNIQUE. USE MY NAME OR IMAGE HOWEVER YOU PLEASE IN YOUR NEW NOVEL. I NEVER SUED ANYBODY AND NEVER WILL.

    LOVE!

              (signed with self-portrait and ‘82 as of 11/11/04’

    I next sent him a copy of a book of mine that was actually published: Maverick.

                                                                                    3.6.05

    I AM ENJOYING YOUR BOOK, AND KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT YOU, AND BEMUSED AS WELL BY ITS TITLE, WHICH IS OF ALL THINGS THE NAME OF A TEXAN WHO DID NOT BRAND HIS CATTLE.

                                                      CHEERS! KV

     

    6/5/05

    DEAREST IRAQ:

    ACT LIKE ME. AFTER 100 YEARS OF DEMOCRACY LET YOUR SLAVES GO. AFTER 150 LET YOUR WOMEN VOTE. AT THE START OF DEMOCRACY ETHNIC CLEANSING IS QUITE OK.

    LOVE YOU MADLY!

    UNCLE SAM

     

    11th May 05

    Dear Kurt

                            This evening at dinner I was trying to impress my latest wife, who is 26 years younger than me and runs the world, by showing her your latest treasured postcard. She is also a fan.

                ‘Note’, I said, ‘Vonnegut has never been invited to ‘Cúirt’, that Galway mecca for international literary figures like Heaney, Proulx , Coetzee etc etc.’.

    ‘Cúirt is into people who are fashionable’, she said. ‘Why don’t we cut through the literary shit and get him to deliver a keynote address at the Fleadh.’

    She runs the Galway Film Fleadh, the only down-to earth-film festival in the world.

    ‘You could show the film ‘Breakfast of Champions’ which was an honest attempt’, I ventured.

    ‘Whatever’, she said. ‘Get him to deliver his anti-Bush onslaught. Film makers need shaking up. We’ll bring him here, put him up in luxury, give him a good time. Persuade him to come’

    ‘What about his photographer wife’, I asked.

    ‘We’ll look after her. She’ll protect him from fools’ she said.

    ‘What about me?’ I asked.

    ‘She’ll protect him from you, too.’

    So, Mr. Trout, there it is: an invitation. The Galway Film Fleadh is on from the 5th to the 10th of July (this year too). Have you ever visited Galway in the west of the country called Ireland, this figment of the American imagination?

                Mit besten gruessen

    14/5/05

    IT IS WIDELY CONCEDED THAT IRISH PERSONS ARE THE MOST MELODIOUS AND INTRICATE AND AMUSING SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. SO A GERMAN-AMERICAN APPEARING BEFORE YOU WOULD BE A DANIEL IN THE LIONS’ DEN. ALSO, I AM TOO EFFING OLD. BUT THANKS

    Kurt Vonnegut

    On the 26th May Kurt sent me a signed copy of ‘POEMS WRITTEN DURING THE FIRST FIVE MONTHS OF 2005’.

    One of his poems was titled Naptown, USA

    It was alright there in Indianapolis

    Where I was born:

    Jazz and serious music, law, journalism,science,

    Good food and jokes, sports, politics,

    Architecture, libraries, institutions of higher learning,

    People so smart I couldn’t believe it

    People so dumb I couldn’t believe it

    People so nice I couldn’t believe it

    People so mean I couldn’t believe it

    But for some reason

    I had to get out of there.

    The cost?

    At 82 I am a homeless man.

     

    3rd June 05

    Dear Kurt,

                After your ‘too effing old’ card I lapsed into contemplation of my own mortality.

                Now your 2005 poems have arrived and have dragged me kicking and screaming with laughter back to life. If you can keep on keeping on so acutely so can I – minus the brilliance, of course. Thank you. I can now continue writing.

                As you won’t be visiting, here are some images to show you what you are missing – a place not long and narrow like Chile – but I must say that its equally interesting living on an island shaped like a little puppy, begging on its hindlegs. Trouble is, to find the positive images and experiences illustrated, you have to go through a lot of touristic rubbish as well as increasingly draconian immigration barriers (unless you’re white) – rather like the reason I refuse to go back to the USA: ploughing through groups of fat, expressionless security people who approach me on the assumption I’m a geriatric suicide bomber.

                A late friend of mine, Reggie Howard (who had his brains dislodged in the back of a warplane in WW2, held them in with his hand and achieved Ripley’s Believe it or Not fame by surviving thus far ) told me that at the age of 68 he had laid an 18-year-old (female). This was my ambition until I passed that watershed last year and now all I can hope for is an encounter appropriate to my present age, 69, which mightn’t be a bad substitute. These giggly and desperate thoughts are suggested by your latest work – which gift has flattered and delighted me.

                What encourages me is that you are still highlighting our absurdity. I am accustomed to people of advancing age adopting an attitude of resigned hopelessness equivalent to the pragmatic despair of the young. Maybe the latter is a function of a small population like ours, whereas no matter what one’s opinion, there seems to be still room – and an audience – for anarchic thought over in Uncle Samland. Okay, Monkeyface ignores it, but it hasn’t gone away. And won’t, I hope, for a very long time.

                Wer schreibt, bleibt.

     

    14.7.05

    YOUR PRAISE OF ME DID NOT FALL ON DEAF EARS.

    LOVE –

    (Self-portrait)

    GIFT COMING!

     

    He sent me one of his paintings which featured the lone, framed word ‘sleep’ where the ‘S’ was elongated into a curving serpent. He signed it with his usual cartoon self-portrait and the words: ‘For the writer Bob Quinn, my best friend among the living.’ Never losing his sense of humour and irony, he was old enough to have seen most of his real friends die.

    28.Aug. 05

    Dear Kurt,

                            I enclose a book of pictures, the exhibition of which I just opened with words that include passing reference to you. This is becoming a habit.

                            Since our last communication I’ve been busy reading your oeuvre: Bagombo Snuff Box out of the library in Galway, read all the stories and felt like an archaeologist excavating the origins of your enormous talent. My favourites are Thanatos and 2BR02B but I enjoyed them all and saw how your agents persuaded you to tailor the ends to middle American ‘fifties taste, but leaving sharp prescient stings in various tails all around you.

                In Dublin this week I found Hocus Pocus and am getting a great kick out of it.

                I told you before that in the festschrift which I am writing I forced you to become very drunk with a stinking goatherd. I am beginning to suspect this is an uncharacteristic plot turn because I’m having difficulty sobering you up to launch another gentle onslaught on the assembled suits. They remind you of the 1950’s Berlin Congress of Culture at which Arthur Koestler spoke and which transpired to have been financed covertly by the CIA. (Note: The CIA also bought up a million copies of Koestler’s ‘Darkness at Noon’ and distributed them, free, throughout the world. That’s how best-sellers are made) I think I can sober you up fast this way.

                Your incitement to Sleep is much admired

    The next communication, an illustration of his irony and anger, was a copy of a letter he had sent to the Chicago paper In These Times”:

    TO ‘IN THESE TIMES’

    Dear Editor, If I may impose on your extraordinary hospitality yet again:

    I was on John Stewart’s Daily Show September 13th, and arrived with a compendium of liberal crap I never wanted to hear again, and my responses thereto.

    But I only had six minutes, and so never got a chance to read them aloud. For whatever they may be worth to you:

    “Give us this day our daily bread”    

    Sure. I’ll pay for it. Enjoy!

    “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”  

    Oh Yeah? Anybody trespasses on me, and I’ll cut him a new you-know-what.

    ‘Blessed are the peace-makers.”  

    Jane Fonda? Give me a break!

    “Love thy enemies.”    

    Arabs?

    Blessed are the meek.”  

    You bet! I love ‘em, too. I tell ‘em to kiss my ass, and they’ll kiss it.

    “No man can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.”  

    Mammon , of course, is the god of greed and riches. And the hell I can’t serve both God and Mammon. Look at Pat Robertson! He’s as happy as a hog up to its ears in excrement!

                                                   

    (signed) Kurt Vonnegut.

                                                                                        10/9 05

    also

    12.10.05

    WE ARE A DISEASE SO, LIKE SYPHILIS WITH A CONSCIENCE, WE SHOULD STOP REPRODUCING.

    KV

    On the 1st of December Kurt sent me a Merry Christmas card consisting of a self-portrait drawn in silver paint on plastic. I sent him a dvd of my Romanian Quartet film documentary.

                                                                                        11th Sep. 06!!

    DEAR BOB:

    I LOOKED FORWARD TO BEING DELIGHTED BY YOUR VIDEO. BUT WHEN IT TRIED TO PLAY IT THESE WORDS APPEARED ON THE SCREEN: “DUE TO REGIONAL LIMITATIONS THIS CANNOT BE SHOWN.

    MY HEART IS BROKEN.

                                                    (Self-portrait, complete with tear)

               

    Dear Kurt,

    ‘I’ve got tears in my ears from lying on my back and crying over you.’

              I am more heartbroken than you especially as the DVD worked for two old pals in Missouri and NY city.

              I’ve spoken harshly to the Dublin copying studios and they explained thusly:

              The DVD will play on any computer anywhere but not on every TV set. A difference between old fashioned Europe and the good old USA is we can play American films on our TV sets but you can’t play ours on your sets unless the latter are dual capacity PAL /NTSC Tv sets.

    Ours are, yours aren’t. I presume its to stop our decadent frenchfried ideas flourishing over there.

              All I can suggest is asking one of your gracious kids to lend you their computer to look at the film. And I hope you enjoy it.

              Unfortunately I still drink (alcohol and coffee) and smoke like a trooper. However years ago a pretty young German doctor explained her similar bad habits to me as follows: the nicotine narrows your arteries, the coffee thins your blood so it’s a perfect metabolic marriage.

              I’m still trying to find a suitable denouement for your heroic role in my Ishkailand saga.

              My very best wishes to you and your local post office. I thoroughly enjoy the concentrated focus of your postcards. Would that I were so short-winded and long-focussed.

              When this summer I proudly displayed your Sleep etching to an ex-head honcho of United Artists (my wife brings stray dogs like that home sometimes, the type that is impressed by nothing) – he stared and murmured: ‘wow!’

              Your name is good everywhere.

               

    9/6/06

    I had the temerity to send Mr. Vonnegut a copy of my failed novel ‘The Accompanist’. He quoted at least one sentence of it and commented:

    3.9.06

    “I HAD AN IMAGE OF THE UNIVERSE AS ONE GIGANTIC CHORD, FROZEN IN TIME, BUT ACCESSIBLE THROUGH THE HEAT OF HUMAN EMOTION WHICH MELTED DOWN BITS IN THE FORM OF MELODIES, MERE GLIMPSES OF THE IMMENSITY BEHIND THEM.”

                WOW!   You got a major poem in a single senence

                                                                Kurt Vonnegut.

    Dear Kurt,                                                                              4th October 06

               

                To-night I showed your latest postcard to my 19-year-old and my 11-year old and asked them this question: Why would one of the greatest writers of the 20th century take the trouble to write out in block capitals a sentence from my feeble writing and add “WOW!’?

                The younger said: ‘He likes you.’

                The older said: ‘Solidarity.’

                I told them about your son Mark (?) who had various tough times and who told you that life was about helping each other to get through it – whatever it was.

                Then they wandered off to their multifarious activities.

                I mentioned your quote to the young Irishman in Syracuse who wanted to publish a ‘print on demand’ ‘version of ‘The Accompanist’ and he asked me could he put it on the cover and I said ‘Absolutely not, this is personal.’

                So, thank you. It’s about solidarity in our solitudinousness, if there is such a word.

               

    Death

                {{{Reason for over-wroughtness:

                My favourite son-in-law Islem, a 33-year-old French-Tunisian died suddenly on a visit to Lyons, France 10 days ago. I think he literally killed himself working to provide for the future of his wife,my daughter, and kids. We spent a week in Lyons, going through courts for the right to bury him in Ireland, near his wife and kids. His Lyons-based brothers wanted to bury him initially in Tunisia (from which he had escaped, aged 17, to join the French army. Although he was born in France, his father had brought him and the family back to Tunisia to avoid French decadence! Then the brothers wanted him buried in Lyons. My daughter, cool, calm, repressing her emotion (unlike me) won the case and the appeal in her fluent French. The funeral is in Bray, Co. Wicklow to-day.

                I asked a religious Moroccan friend for advice. Today, 10 days late, he sends me the following:

                “In Islam the whole earth belongs to Allah. He can be buried where he dies! ‘The sooner the better’, says the Prophet.”

                That’s a lot of help for a grieving widow.

                It appeared initially to to be a clash of civilisations and religions but ultimately transpired as a miserable pursuit of property. The brothers had their eyes on an apartment he owned in Lyons. There’s no accounting for human behaviour.

    The good news is that two other of Bairbre’s friends, also Muslims, stayed by her side the entire week. I asked them was there any physical danger. They said, we don’t know, but we are on a ‘jihad’ to protect you and your family. And they did.

    The west must learn this other meaning of the word.

    There is good and bad everywhere}}}

               

                God Bless you twofold, Mr. Trout.

    8/10/2006

                SOLIDARITY , OF COURSE, BUT ALSO AWE AT HOW MUCH YOU HAVE GIVEN A GUY MY AGE TO PONDER IN SO SMALL A SPACE.

                            WOW! – (as speech bubble coming from his self-portrait)

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                   

    11/10/06

    YOU PUT A MAJOR POEM IN A SINGLE SENTENCE.

    OK?

                            KV

     

    It was easy to remember his birthday, three days before mine.

    13.11.06

    Happy Birthday to you

    Happy Birthday to you

    Seventeen more await you

    Until we are through.

     

    A few months after my last greeting to him, Kurt Vonnegut fell down a stairway and died from multiple head injuries. I never met him in person. I wrote to his widow.

     

     

    Jill Krementz                                                                                      12.April 2007

    Turtle Bay

    New York

    Dear Jill,

    Forgive the familiarity. I am really sorry to hear about your loss.

    I feel bad too, like a child who has carelessly offended his father who then dies without a word of forgiveness.

    I treasure our occasional correspondence and the picture he sent me. I miss his birthdays and shooting the breeze but am consoled by his magnificent legacy of writing.

    Yours Sincerely

    Bob Quinn

    I received no reply. So it goes.

  • Lament for Áirt Uí Laoire

    In August of  1969 I was driving across Ireland with the late Bearnard Ó Riain, the older brother of a good friend of mine, the late Dinno Ryan. Most of my old friends are now ‘late’.

    We were going to join others in a mountain-walking weekend. Bearnard had participated in the nineteen-fifties IRA campaign in the North of Ireland, was captured and interned in the Curragh. He could not stand being locked up and he signed a statement renouncing his involvement in the IRA and undertaking to leave Ireland. He had gone to Africa, married an English girl named Carol, had two children and spent the next ten years there. The marriage had broken up and he was now back in Ireland to gather his resources.

    I switched on the car radio to get the news and we heard that the North had exploded again, that Orangemen were burning Nationalists out of their homes in Belfast.

    [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”3″ display=”basic_slideshow”]He turned to me with a look that said: ‘I have to go up there’. I knew that he needed some distraction from his domestic circumstance. I also suspected he needed to exorcise his old guilt at signing himself out of the IRA and I turned the car northwards.

    We arrived in Derry as the Rossville flats siege was ending. On the roof of the flats we met Bernadette Devlin. Bearnard asked her if we could help in any way. ‘You could help to clear up this mess,’ she said and we started clearing away the broken bottles and stones, remnants of Molotov cocktails.

    We found a bed for the night on the floor of RTE reporter Seán Duignan’s City Hotel bedroom. Word came that  there had also been serious trouble in Dungiven.  Seán was excited, predicting a civil war.

    Belfast

    The following morning we drove to Dungiven, which was now peaceful, recovering from a night of violence. It was all very anti-climactical. I later wrote an article which the Evening Press published with the title: ‘Trouble will always be where I am not.’

    The same applied to Belfast. The only sign that there had been trouble on Bombay Street was a lone figure whose bald head I recognised from newspaper photos as belonging to Joe Cahill. He was keeping guard with some kind of rifle.

    Bearnard and I acted like tourists and strolled up the ravaged street. Encountering some suspicious young men of whose allegiance we could not be sure we prudently claimed to be Canadian journalists. Our years of travelling had smoothed the rough edges of our Dublin accents so that we could pass ourselves off as harmless. 

    The following morning we investigated a burnt out factory on, I think, the Falls Road. Someone shouted ‘sniper’ and everybody dived for cover. I could not take it seriously and simply lined myself up behind a lamppost. If there actually was a sniper in the factory building, I reasoned, he would need to be a very good shot and at worst I could only be winged.

    But there were no shots. I was beginning to think the whole situation was quite exaggerated by journalists. Later that day we witnessed the first contingent of British soldiers taking up positions on the Falls Road and being applauded by the grateful citizens. What struck me was the nervousness of the lieutenant in charge and the gaucheness, the mystified expressions of the soldiers under his command.

    How were they – or we – to know that we were witnessing the beginnings of a Nationalist revolt and an occupation and vicious war that would dominate our island for the next thirty years?

    The above mentioned Bearnard O Riain lived in Johannesburg. He had written a most interesting memoir of his dramatic life. It opens with the scene of a drunken man kicking a woman lying in the gutter. To his horror, the writer realises that the woman is his wife and he himself is the violent drunk. Bearnard’s book is quite unlike my fanciful reminiscences. It is that unique object: a well-written, honest memoir. No publisher in Ireland was interested in publishing it.

    It would be five years before I again braved the North of Ireland, next time as  the guest of ‘Official’ Sinn Féin.

    Conamara

    By 1974 I was entrenched in a cottage in Baile na h-Abhann, Conamara where TG4 would be built over a score years later.

    A softly spoken man named Eamon Smullen called one day. He had the idea of making a film on the subject of the epic poem, Caoineadh Áirt Uí Laoire. It had been a favourite of mine in school. He could even offer some money to make it.

    I jumped at the chance. It took me six months to research, write and direct the film with an amateur cast entirely from the area. It took a few more months to edit and finish it. Essentially it was a tragic love story.

    The (true) context was a hopeless one-man protest against the Penal Laws imposed by the English in the 18th century. Joe Comerford and myself were the only crew with film experience, Joe on camera, myself on sound. My then wife Helen was the indispensable production support.

    When the film was finished, my neighbours – including the cast of the film – were a little bewildered by my quite unconscious use of Brechtian alienation techniques. This was a pragmatic solution to the problem of using an all-amateur cast. I needed to creep up on and defuse, audience prejudices against both amateurs and the Irish language.

    I did this by using authentic native speakers rather than urban Gaeilgeoirí and scripted it accordingly as an amateur rehearsal with roughly dramatic re-enactments. It worked very well because it offended the proper targets. When it was shown at the Savoy cinema in the Cork Film Festival, actors Niall Tóibín and Donal McCann happened to be seated behind me. At the end Niall tapped me on the shoulder and whispered: ‘Quinn, yer a clever hoor.’

    That was as fine a compliment as I could get and certainly took the sting out of the Irish Times’s Fergus Lenihan describing the film as ‘formless as the Connemara rocks.’

    Dermot Breen, Director of the Festival, was delighted to be offered the film – the only other Irish entry besides my friend Louis Marcus’s fine Waterford Glass job.

    Naturally I thought my baby was a work celebrating the genius of Conamara but, considering the pleasant expectations of film audiences, Louis’s beautiful cinematography won.

    Later, Dermot Breen who was double-jobbing as Irish Film Censor, demanded cuts to certain mild profanities in my English subtitles – e.g. ‘shit’ and ‘Jesus’. I refused and he confined the film to viewers over sixteen years. The Dublin premiere was launched by Síobhán McKenna in the Drumcondra Grand cinema in 1975 while I was having a quiet little breakdown.

    Dance Hall charge

    It also seemed a good idea to show it at the first night of our little ‘cinema’ in Carraroe in the same year. Although I was entirely to blame for the film the titles included a credit for the ‘Education Department of Sinn Féin’ of which Eamon Smullen was director and who had provided the £6000 towards its making.

    The war in the North was in full swing;  Sinn Féin was split into Provos’ and ‘Stickies’. I had no interest in either group, nor in the subtleties of North/South politics. All I saw was an opportunity to make a film about my favourite poem in Irish, which is still a landmark in Irish literary history.

    Oblivious to the political implications I went ahead with the job. But politicians have longer memories than their constituents. I had previously, on our closed-circuit video, made fun of the Minister for the Gaeltacht’s poor command of the language of the Gaeltacht. There were two political black marks against me.

    Thus on the night of the Carraroe showing of the film the local Garda arrived at the door asking to see my licence to show films. No such licence existed. The only legislation the State had ever bothered to enact concerning film was the Dance Hall Act of 1935. Nobody could dance in our cinema because the seats were bolted to the floor.

    The Garda, a decent man named Rice, mentioned the suspicion that  I was raising funds for the IRA!  I was summonsed to appear in court on the Dance Hall charge. It was a petty case of political harassment and the Garda was the messenger: don’t mess with the Minister, the message said.

    The Case for the Defence

    George Morrison of Mise Éire fame brought a sample of old flammable nitrate film as an exhibit in my defence. This was the dangerous stuff for which the British had legislated in 1904 and which had long fallen into disuse. 

    George intended to ignite an inch of it and detonate it in court as a smoke bomb – a game we had played as children. The demonstration would show the difference between it and the modern safety film which I handled.

    Perhaps fortunately, George did not get the chance as the case was summarily dismissed with no blot on my escutcheon. Nevertheless some of the mud stuck and forever afterwards I was considered locally to be somehow not politically kosher.

    Officially, I was bordering on the subversive. When some maverick IRA man named ‘Mad Dog’ McGlinchy was being sought high and low throughout Ireland there were only three houses searched in Conamara. One of them was mine. The Special Branch found and formally confiscated a child’s popgun which did not work.

    Belfast drinking club

    President Cearrbhaill O Dálaigh had a private peek at the film in the Project Theatre in Dublin and wrote a complimentary note to me. Film critic Ciaran Carty had kindly described it as ‘the Irish film I for one have been waiting for.’

    But the film was not really respectable until the Northern war was over. It has never been shown on RTE but TG4 is more daring and have shown it twice. When Channel Four showed it they cut out the credits for Sinn Féin. Meantime Eamon Smullen wanted to show the film in a Republican drinking club in Belfast and brought Joe Comerford, cameraman, and myself up there. 

    The film also seemed to confuse that audience. A lady turned to us and asked: ‘What are yiz? Some kinda antellectuals?’ While we were there the club was raided by the British Army who moved silently and grimly through the crowd. 

    I found it strange that there was no heckling, not a voice raised in protest and deduced that, yes, there is something frightful happening in this part of Ireland.

    We were accommodated that night in the house of a man named Billy MacMillan whom I gathered had been shot by the rival Provisional IRA. In Ireland the first thing on the agenda is the split.

    I noticed a  man in the tiny back yard of the house carrying a revolver, presumably to protect us. It felt as if we were in a film. We were escorted to the eight-o’clock train the next morning by Eamon Smullen, the gentle man who had asked me to make the film.

    At no stage did I feel in danger. I think I must sleepwalk through life, incapable of  taking anything seriously, not even the darkness. All is at arm’s length. It still surprises me that

    Caoineadh Áirt Uí Laoire has become a kind of icon in the lexicon of Irish film making. In recent years it was exhibited for a month in Trinity’s Douglas Hyde Gallery. It was also featured in the Irish Museum of Modern Art as an example of the work of modern Irish artists.

    A couple of years ago it was restored and Joe Comerford and I showed it in Derrynane, the Kerry home of Daniel O’Connell’s family which features in the film. In the introduction I mentioned the film’s small budget.

    Poet Theo Dorgan was present and later in the pub said to me: ‘I know where that £6000 came from. I think I even know the post office from which it was stolen.’ I still hope he was joking.

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    Bob Quinn directed Poitín, the first feature film entirely in the Irish language, while his documentary works include the four-part Atlantean series tracing the origins of the Irish people. His recent memoir A Monk Manqué is being serialized in Cassandra Voices.

  • The Confidence Man

    ‘I say the word ‘forever’ less and less, the more I understand it.’

    It’s a good line. I might get it tattooed on my chest. Or carved on my tombstone.

    During the heatwaves and increased storm warnings of the summer, I felt my heartbeat for the first time in a while. The seasons change so rapidly now; I can barely keep up.

    It’s quarter to five on a Friday evening. I’ve been awake since twelve, but only forced myself to get up an hour ago. I sleep in my clothes more and more nowadays. Eventually I’ll stop writing and try and tidy the house up. Or at least shower, and shave. Sometimes I want to jack the writing in, and put a bullet in my mouth. Other times I wake up ready to hold onto life like it’s all I have – because it is all I have.

    I also know I have a talent, but it’s not a very useful one.

    I barely sleep anymore. I can’t concentrate on anything. The noise in my head is never still. I have what could be charitably described as a ‘rich inner life’. My brain keeps snaring itself into knots; I go from wired to exhausted in a matter of minutes.

    I have my wins, I have my losses; living with both requires skill.

    Christ. I sound like I’m scribbling down ideas for a GQ op-ed.

    On the Beach

    ‘Though my problems are meaningless/That don’t make them go away.’

    As always, Neil Young says it better than I or anyone else can. All this year, I’ve had his ‘On the Beach’ album on repeat. The title song’s jangling bassline and weary falsetto are good reminders that at least my life has a belter soundtrack.

    That phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ keeps coming back to me. A quick Google search of the term yields over 10,100,000 results. Every time there’s a mass shooting or an assault or even a film or a comedian that arouses controversy, it’s listed as among the chief factors. A lot of us, myself included, engage in it.

    I don’t doubt or deny the concept or its validity. But it also sounds like a good name of a beer to me. Like a stout or an ale or even an IPA. Occasionally I half-joke to myself: if the writing doesn’t work out, I’ll start my own microbrewery, and the Tox-Mas IPA will be its premium product. Blonde, red, unfiltered. Whatever you want.

    Being alone is natural, yet people don’t know how to be. It’s not a skill they teach you in school, or during office hours. We’re tired of living with the inner cavity, of the disappointment, and of letting each other down. Yet the disconnect that’s become so prevalent in recent decades is now the norm. People seize up just texting each other. The more we anchor ourselves to our hope, the more let down we inevitably feel. The let-downs, both the ones you’re responsible for and the ones visited upon you, pile up and you start measuring them. I don’t live without hope, but I don’t wholly rely on it, either.

    Loneliness

    Loneliness is considered a mental-health problem nowadays. As most aspects of the human condition are. It’s a symptom of being Irish, I suppose; the inability to countenance that someone or something is worth loving. Whatever suffering I’ve faced in this life is fairly minor compared to that faced by most people I know. I’ve lost friends to suicide, and others to their own inner demons. Because I can’t afford therapy, I turn to language.

    I am often alone, but rarely lonely. Loneliness is inevitable; it cannot be escaped. Loneliness rarely means being alone. It usually means no-one caring.

    Overfed with an endless scroll of stories, posts, newsfeeds, articles shared from newsites blasting the latest cause for concern. Some call it an overpopulation issue; others say it’s the pervasive influence of technology and social media in everyday life. Actual face-to-face contact is declining. At any given point our eyes are glued to some sort of screen. Mass disconnection – is it any wonder?

    The hackneyed, social-media friendly refrain of ‘love yourself!’ rings hollow when people seem to care little about each other. The constant reminders to put oneself first, of the paramountcy if one’s own immediate happiness and gratification, how if should always take precedence over the needs of one’s family and friends.

    Being involved with someone for a long period of time has only increased my worries and knowledge of how bad I am. I don’t need anyone else finding that out.

    Low-level exhaustion

    I wonder if all this intensity is necessary. Or if I am over just over-enthusiastic and say yes too much, too quickly. I follow the reformed alcoholic’s recommendation, and take each day as it comes, work on what I have to: scripts, reviews, my novel, my poems.

    This is new for me; the low-level exhaustion that simmers quietly at the back of each day. In college, I used to churn out multiple three-thousand-word essays, poems, and playscripts. I badly needed a girlfriend then. Confidence, too. If I had more confidence, my life would be very different.

    Now, I just need a job. Or at least, something to keep me occupied. I don’t care about forging a career or drafting up five-year plans. A job is just a way of keeping afloat, so I can write.

    I should still teach myself a few new things, though. Like how to make fire from kindling, without matches or a lighter. Manage my finances better. Jog, cycle, lift weights. Programme a computer from scratch. Things that are quite necessary for a life of competence, and which don’t engage me in the slightest.

    I need no-one and no-one needs me. Is that a strength or a weakness?

    Warped Version of Adolescence

    I’m now back living in my parents’ home, and leading a warped version of my adolescence again. The dynamic with my parents and younger sister is closer to that of roommates than a family unit. We lead our individual lives, work our own jobs, and interaction remains minimal, even under the one roof. We are either too busy or don’t care. We just lack the energy to care. Hence why I rarely speak or expect anything from them. The bond of blood ties everyone, but I’m not sure.

    My father’s boots clumping on the wooden floorboards, the shower’s hiss and the extended sigh of the kettle boiling, the scorch of black coffee at the back of my throat. These are the reminders of how things can change and remain the same.

    They say adulthood is just the slow realisation that all the wisdom fed to you since infancy is categorically false.

    I am single, and yet I am not isolating myself anymore. When I was with my ex-, she was my priority.

    Putting other friendships aside seemed like a virtue, as it meant I was prioritizing my partner. This is what men do in relationships, apparently. When the breakup happens, they find they’ve no mates to turn to. I’m not in the humour to be anyone’s boyfriend now; I lack the energy to care about being with someone.

    Women moving faster

    I keep thinking about women, as always. They seem to move faster than me, their footsteps ablaze with purpose. I look at their hands more and more, to see if they wear rings. Most of them aren’t. It’s not something I ever thought I’d do. It’s become another reflex, like checking the time or my emails.

    Do all men do this?

    Occasionally I look my exes up online, like the creep I am. I don’t go on dates that much.

    There’s always the need to impress, and I rarely feel that impressive. I’ve no business being someone’s boyfriend.

    I was someone’s boyfriend for three years; in all that time, I never quite believed that she loved me. I couldn’t see any reason why she would. But she did. And I loved her back.

    She used to look at me as if I was a god. I knew it was only a matter of time before the reality of what I am would become clear. I could only keep the masquerade up for long, and then she’d want me gone. As she eventually did.

    Every woman I’ve been with I’ve inevitably let down.

    Most blokes seem to make it their life’s work to pester women until they either give in or set their brothers on them. I’m more willing to take ‘no’ for an answer. Usually, I expect it.

    I’ve never felt wanted anyway. I’d say I’ve been out of the game for too long, but that would imply I’ve even been in the game in the first place.

    The beginning of things are always exciting. Once I see the ambit of work that must go into something, I lose interest.

    I don’t know if I have a stunted capacity to feel or recognise love, or am just incapable of feeling it.

    I’ve also trained myself not to get sentimental anymore. To the point that major losses or setbacks don’t hit as hard as they should. The mawkishness is repulsive to anyone who witnesses it.

    News thump

    More and more in my newsfeed about Brexit, climate change, the housing crisis here, banking layoffs in Germany, mass drownings in the Mediterranean, multi-millionaire men of the people taking selfies at Everest’s peak, immigrant detention centres at the Mexican border. The inevitable and deserved comparisons to Auschwitz and Dachau. There’s no ignoring it anymore.

    Armageddon, Ragnorok, Kali Yuga, Al-Qiyammah, the Anthropocene. Every society, in every era, puts a name to the inevitable, to the moment of its collapse. It continues to this day.

    I remember chatting up this girl once, in the smoking section in Workman’s. Whether she fancied me, or was just bored, I couldn’t tell. I never can. She was confident in the way only young people are.

    A man sitting alone in a pub is usually best avoided, but she came up to me and got the conversation going. I say we had a conversation, but really I just let her talk about this upcoming art exhibition she was about to have in Amsterdam. Its overall theme was about body image, how men and women perceive theirs, for good or for ill. Five years ago, this would’ve impressed me.

    She asked me did I like my body, the way I looked, did I feel comfortable in my skin. I didn’t really have an answer for her. If she was waiting for me to make a move, she was sorely disappointed. Not that I didn’t want to, I just didn’t know when. It’s a very delicate dance, and I have very heavy feet.

    I know I am far less than what I could be. I don’t need a self-help guide to realise that.

    The mind is a cave; the brain peels back. I can’t be alone for very long without the craving for a cold beer breaking the surface. I need to stay numb. I need to forget that I exist.

    I want to be somebody else. I’m tired of being a burden to everyone. But this is the flesh I am sealed into.

    Only a few days ago, I was invited to go on a hike through Glendalough. Sweat on my torso and mud on my boots; feeling the winds at such a high altitude, overlooking the swirl of black water that is the Upper Lake in the valley, scrape at my face. Strangely enough, it cleared my head.

    At home, I got back to work. Wrote and felt the old strength come back. I know the value of hope now, the necessity of keeping going. I still know better than to rely on it, but it isn’t unwelcome for now.

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    Daniel Wade is a Dublin-based author. He was awarded the Hennessy prize New Irish Writing in 2015, and his poetry has appeared in over two dozen publications. Follow his progress on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

  • Himself and the Bicycle

    Sure, he was only a little lad of 4ft 10ins. Little Paddy, I called him. He was eighty-two-years-old when I was twelve-years-old, but he was great craic.

    Little Paddy was a bogman. He lived in the bog of Derrycoffey. Think he was the last to live in that bog. I used to meet him all the time along the Tore road, wheeling a big black Raleigh bicycle.

    Well, that small of a man made the bicycle look huge. He wore a fedora hat and the smallest topcoat I ever saw upon a man. Never rode the bicycle. His legs were not long enough to reach the pedals. Oh God, no.

    The bicycle had two purposes. One, to balance him, and he full to the gills with porter. He loved a sup of porter and would walk the five miles from Derrycoffey bog to the village of Tyrrellspass, wheeling the bicycle there and back. Sober going into the village and mouldy drunk coming home.

    He would have two bags of shopping upon the handlebars of this bicycle. It be at a slant of about fifteen degrees, and himself be slanted about the same fifteen degrees into the bicycle. It was like a circus act and no way could he fall, no matter how drunk, the bicycle kept him up.

    I used to love seeing him coming along the quiet Tore road during the 1970s. No matter if I met him drunk or sober, it was the same every time. He would stop about twenty feet ahead of me upon the far side of the road and say nothing. Just stare.

    Then he would pull his topcoat to one side, and snarl. ‘Make your play, Mister. Draw for your gun.’ The shoot-out would begin, bang, bang, bang, with finger pistols. Me being a young lad, I always let little Paddy win. Because as I would fall to the road, riddled with imaginary bullets, little Paddy would keep firing. And every time he fired, I would do another roll, like another bullet passing through my corpse.

    It was great craic, and little Paddy be stood blowing gunsmoke from that finger gun he made. ‘Another one bites the dust,’ he would say. We done this religiously for several years.

    He was an amusing and entertaining little lad, living alone in a lonely bog. I cut turf for little Paddy one time, and I must admit I did feel sad for him, when I saw how he overcame his loneliness and isolation.

    He be going about the house, giving out to a dog that wasn’t there. He had no dog. Only the one he pretended to have. The same with the woman. Kept referring to “Herself, the Missus,” but he had no wife. He was an ol bachelor.

    The Missus was in fact a plain woman’s frock hanging from a nail behind the kitchen door, and a plain pair of women’s shoes beneath them. You could see by the dust and turf mould, they had been untouched in years.

    The Missus and the dog were his imagination’s way of beating the loneliness of his isolation. I never knew him once but to be full of sport and craic. I never knew him to be any other way but humble and happy, and always ready for the imaginary shoot-out with me.

    The first day I was cutting the turf for little Paddy, and at dinner time he said ‘We will go to the house for grub.’

    It was primitive. No gas nor electricity, just the turf fire to cook upon. On that hot summers day, he opened a drawer to the Welsh dresser in the kitchen and five or six big bluebottle flies flew out. ‘Will you have a lump of bacon, Young Nick?’ 

    ‘Ah God no, Paddy,’ says I.

    ‘Ah what ails you, Young Nick? You been working hard. Surely you will eat a lump of good mait (meat)?’

    ‘Ah God no, Paddy. I’m grand, thanks. Sure, didn’t I eat yesterday? And today I’m still full up from all I ate yesterday.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him the mait full of bluebottles had sickened me to look at, let alone eat. Poor ole Paddy ate the mait himself. He knew little or nothing about hygiene, but what a great character of a man he was. He lived till his late 80s and yet I never knew him to be sick a day in his life.

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    Nick Feery is The Boy from Tore. He writes from memories of the times, as a boy in the 1970s, Nick walked and read the land and lakes of rural Tore in Ireland’s County Westmeath. Feery feels the past lives of his own ancestors and many others remain in that land, as they left it just so.