Cup a pear, hear it abscise,
number the days until ripe;
the river chuckles with swollen pride –
back to a ditch by six,
drained away to the scaly, selfish sea.
At dawn there’s steam across the water,
a cloud of egrets scuds over;
old and waiting, mud for water,
leaves for a last breath
of wind, tremor, helical free fall –
after life, lope and leap
to nattering heaps; then left
to turn to mull, down horizons sift,
forgotten shades of ochre,
lignin nets over rheumy, russet stones.
Fish the shilletts from their dark homes
in the deep, brown ocean;
grateful, cosseting crumbs swirl in,
close and ready for roots:
succouring limbs of bulb, corm, meristem.
Here my mulling days are numbered,
pride in appearance doomed;
hares teem across the water,
while clouds of regrets scud over;
for I am old and loping after life.
Cassandra Voices is an independent Irish media outlet, specialising in long reads on politics, art and contemporary culture. It was founded in 2017 by Frank Armstrong, an established Irish journalist and law graduate, and Daniele Idini, an Italian photographer and trade unionist. Produced in Dublin, Cassandra Voices has featured writers from around the globe.
The magazine aims to provide a non-partisan platform for voices across the political spectrum to inspire new thinking, while allowing for critiques and discussion on topics often overlooked in mainstream media.
Apart from the online platform, the magazine has also released three print editions, as well as a book of poetry, and hopes, through readers’ contributions, to produce more in the near future.
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Our final bit of news is that we are delighted to welcome Ben Pantrey on board as a contributing editor.
Ben is a young writer from Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. His creative work, including poetry and an Irish-language short story ‘Eibhlín’ have appeared in student magazines such as Scáthán and Grass. As a non-fiction writer, he wrote a number of pieces for the music section of TN2 magazine, and later worked as deputy music editor for the same publication from April 2020. In Trinity College Dublin, he took an English Studies course, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 2021.
Dublin Bay South by-election candidate Peter Dooley has an impressive track record of fighting for a just society, especially through the Dublin Renters’ Union, and unlike many on the left in Ireland, has drawn attention to the devastation to ordinary people’s lives caused by the longest lockdown in Europe.
This by-election in Dublin Bay South allows voters to say enough is enough with the FG, FF and Green coalition government’s inadequate approach to the housing, health and climate emergencies. But some lifetime left-wing voters are now feeling politically homeless due to the adoption by the established left-wing parties of a ZeroCovid policy, which apart from being hopelessly Utopian, would hand draconian powers to corrupt State institutions and impede the free movement of people in and out of the country, including the Irish diaspora living abroad.
Throughout Ireland’s never-ending lockdown, Peter has openly questioned the wisdom of handing extraordinary powers to the Minister for Health, which infringe basic constitutional rights such as freedom of assembly. Not only do lockdowns come with a huge human cost – in particular to school children denied an education for months and small- and medium- sized businesses prevented from trading – with little impact on the virus itself, but it has also created a political vacuum, where people affected don’t know where to turn for representation.
Observing the colossal transfer of wealth to the billionaire class, while small businesses go bust and workers see their jobs disappear, Peter asks whether the Irish government’s response has been proportionate.
Peter Dooley stands for an equal opportunity Ireland. He walks the talk through his daily activism, galvanising grassroots movements around housing and tenant rights.
As a co-founder of the Dublin Renters’ Union in 2017, he has helped prevent evictions and supported renters. Peter’s ideas on housing involve resistance to the vulture funds, and ensuring that the rentier class pays a fair share in taxes. Although Dublin Bay South is the most affluent constituency in Ireland it also has the highest number of homeless people living in tents in Ireland.
Peter has also called for a full public inquiry into the unprecedented scale of nursing home deaths at the beginning of the pandemic in Ireland, when the elderly seemed to have been sacrificed due to a flawed epidemiological assessment, and for the utility of antigen testing and drugs such as Ivermectin to be adequately examined.
Unlike the other main opposition candidates in the area he has expressed deep opposition to divisive and exclusionary vaccine passports.
He calls for the end to a two-tier healthcare system, and for a proper cost-benefit analysis to be undertaken if any lockdown is ever contemplated again.
You can reach Peter Dooley and his campaign policies here:
On February 1st, 2018 we published the first edition of Cassandra Voices as a monthly online edition. On this our third anniversary we recall its contents. Help us enhance our offering in the years to come by becoming a Patreon supporter.
An amateur sporting organisation would hardly tolerate its managing agreement and fundamental members’ entitlements to float in such fashion, and it is surely inappropriate for a modern democracy. Ancient sources such as Magna Carta are cited as formative on the UK Constitution, but without a definitive text any principles are nebulous, and ephemeral.
Connor Blennerhassett brought our attention to ‘numerous cases that have made headlines in Spain, and which raise serious doubts over Freedom of Speech.’
Spain is not currently involved in a foreign war, but is instead embroiled in an existential conflict with itself. One of the most unpleasant aspects of this is a deluge of draconian sentences being handed down, mostly to young people for ‘offending the symbols of Spain’.
Image (c) Daniele Idini
Meanwhile in Culture of Complaint human rights lawyer David Langwallner fulminated against:
political correctness, and the dumbing down it has brought to personal relationships and public discourse. In many instances it has marginalised forthright criticism, protecting vested interests, who employ the tactic of character assassination. Relationships between men and women are also distorted.
In an article that was circulated widely Sandra Higgins revealed the motivation behind her Go Vegan World advertising campaign:
Most people imagine themselves to be animal lovers. Few scenes on television spark more awe than those featuring animals in their natural habitats, or more affection than those featuring companion animals in documentaries exploring their complexity and playfulness. We find ourselves moved when we witness the precariousness of their lives in TV veterinary series. If we witness one of them being chased or threatened, we find ourselves with bated breath until they escape.
For Joyce and Casement, to be a radical cosmopolitan is to be an exile soul – ‘self exiled in upon his ego’ as Joyce put it in Finnegans Wake – perpetually on a homeward journey. Thus, while every page of Ulysses is rooted in a specific place in Dublin, it is also what Yuri Slezkine called, ‘the Bible of universal homelessness’.
Concussion is the greatest concern. American Football, Rugby, and Soccer, are all under investigation for short- and long-term consequences of the sudden jarring of brain in skull. Injuries in general worry parents all over the world. Excessive wear and tear on leg joints that will yield early arthritis, surgeries on shoulders, wrists, hands, and feet, dietary aberrations and poisonous supplements, drugs and therapies of dubious efficacy, all and more are suffered to maximise the sporting capability of young bodies.
Automation in a variety of sectors could liberate millions from mind-numbing labour. But despite technological advances workers’ earnings have stagnated since the 1990s, while the rich have grown seriously richer, as we face an unemployment cliff. A powerful remedy to the impending obsolescence of many types of work, and grotesque inequality, could be the introduction of universal basic income. This would provide an unconditional payment to every citizen sufficient to avert poverty, providing an opportunity for individual flourishing, to the ultimate benefit of society. Another appropriate response would be for the law to require all companies to register a defined social purpose, beyond simply the exploitation of opportunity for profit. That way the dynamism of entrepreneurship might be harnessed for the common good.
Featuring contemporary approaches to printmaking, this show explores textures of light, line, colour and shape in new configurations. The title of the exhibition is a neologism based on the adjective ‘diaphanous’ – derived from the Greek words dia and phainein, meaning to ‘show through’. This new body of work sees diaphanous textures relaying atmospheric scenarios and quiet spaces.
Compassion is the answer. Seriously. Show compassion towards Donald Trump. Before you dismiss the idea out of hand, consider how you have reacted to him over the past year. Have those responses made you any healthier or happier, or helped you sleep at night? Have you instead grown more bitter and angry? Donald Trump isn’t going to change, but your reactivity towards him can. And by altering this you will make the world a better place.
And so the time came to rent an office space. We must all find our space. I wanted to read and create and explore, and where was everyone? Where were all the artists? Apparently they had ‘spaces’. One Friday evening I woke up in the National Library, my cheek pressed to the desk and a man’s face a few inches from mine. It was a big, sympathetic face.
Image (c): Daniele Idini
In poetry Edward Clarke brought us: The tune / Of ‘Wolves A-Howling’, / So you can make no tarrying, / And hurry / Out across / The peaks of wild Arkansas, / The heights of south Missouri
The restrictions in 2020 presented more challenges for some careers than others. For musicians in Ireland it was an unprecedented year when most were unable to perform live.
In a long read, meanwhile, Marcus de Brun contemplated The Algorithm of Evil that advertising uses to increase our consumption of products we often don’t need.
What role does the Algorithm play in the election of a President? In taking to the streets in Dublin because a black man is murdered in America? What role does it play in hatred? In being afraid of a virus, or in wearing a face mask? In taking a vaccine, or in taking one’s own life? The darkness in our world may not be the workings of conspiracy – nor the consequence of irrational political allegiance – it might just be a consequence of sublimation: of a gullible embrace of the thoughts of others.
In December Frank Armstrong turned his attention to penal reform as an estimated one-in-every-two prisoners re-offend within three years of release. He also revealed a poignant episode in his own family history regarding a great-grandfather Luke Armstrong (1853-1910) of Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo who ‘was arrested in April, 1884 and charged with his fellow conspirators with being a member of the Fenian Society, and conspiring to murder a land agent.’
Thankfully, given the gravity of the charges, all the accused were acquitted based on the unreliability of the Crown informant’s evidence.
That month David Langwallner turned his attention to the U.K.-based, German writer W. G. Sebald:
The attention in W. G. Sebald’s writing to the fascist era in European history anticipates many of the controlling measures of our time. Images abound throughout his work, leading to observations and recollections both of historical incidents, literary tradition and the lives of friends and immigrants, as well digressions on nature. We find a unique blend of memoir, historical and philosophical disquisitions, and a form of narrative storytelling based on fact with the occasional intrusion of fiction.
Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay turned his attention to Cross-Cultural Branding: ‘Glocalisation.’ He recalled a social experiment conducted by Enrique Iglesias. A performance at a packed auditorium where ‘even the cheap seats went for about $100 a pop’ was greeted by ecstatic applause. Later on, however:
he decides to go into a subway station in New York city (which had great acoustics). He dresses up as a busker, posing as a random musician on the street trying to earn a crust.
Iglesias sang the same hits with the same gust one weekday morning. There is security around, nonetheless. You can imagine what happened next. A crowd gathered and everybody was hushed and mesmerized, and it all ended with a big applause at the end.
The practice of putting up and decorating a so-called ‘Christmas’ trees – usually an evergreen conifer – can be traced to the pagan worship of Ancient Rome. Evergreen wreaths were brought into Roman homes during the Saturnalia celebrations (a festival for the god Saturn).
The sedimentary rocks of the peninsula are festooned with fossils of long departed sea creatures, which creates a very special ambience. These soft rocks have been pounded by violent waves, where the Irish Sea meets the mighty Atlantic.
The Ocean swells have sculpted a labyrinth of gullies and rock walls, encrusted with a cornucopia of multi-coloured sponges and anomies. This unique topography, mixed with the clear waters around the Hook, gives the diver an impression of being on a flight through a surreal landscape.
Musician of the Month for December Matthew Noone’s musical journey began with rock’n’roll in the Northern Melbourne suburbs before following in the footsteps of the historical Buddha to India, before settling in Clare in the West of Ireland:
While living in Ireland, I became aware of the idea that there was some sort of connection between Irish traditional music and Indian culture. I wanted to explore how Irish music might sound on the sarode but I also wanted to avoid it becoming a gimmick relying on cliches. So, I undertook a four-year structured PhD (Arts Practice) in the Irish World Academy at the University of Limerick. During these four years, I apprenticed myself to a number of traditional musicians in an attempt to learn Irish music in somewhat of an authentic manner. Through Ged Foley I began to learn tunes on the fiddle and learnt how to behave at a session. Steve Cooney put me in touch with something deep and ancestral and Martin Hayes guided me into a world of feeling.
Also in music, Greg Clifford announced his latest release:
Brontide, which is defined as the sound of distant thunder (created by seismic activity), is a song and video about isolation, alienation, confusion and fading memories. According to Clifford, ‘this is an emotionally layered and charged production. Brontide, for me, symbolises impending doom and gloom. Dementia, in this case, is the suggested source of sadness’.
using windows, doorways and reflections to frame the people and their stories. It started as a way to bring some art creation back into my life. I had learnt photography from my father who taught me how to work a darkroom, film cameras and the joy that comes from capturing an image. I went on to study photography after school and fell completely in love. The years went on and the need for enough money to live, and then life pulled me away from the practice. But once I hit my thirties I realised how much I was missing, and it was time to make it happen once more. So I challenged myself to capture images on the way to and from my work. My obsession with commuters had begun.
There was plentiful poetry in the month of December, as Kevin Higgins berated ‘Our Posh Liberal Friends.’
I ask the barman for more finger food, picture the ocean raging into the restaurant, and them still sat there muttering at the chicken goujons: the people we talk to won’t vote for such extreme solutions. No one wants to live in Cuba, one of them says, as she’s washed out the door.
Edward Clarke meanwhile recalls, ‘One morning during the first week of Advent,/ When I was possessed, / After a birthday’s dark exhilarations,’
Image (c) Daniele Idini
And finallyJames Harpur brought us a poetic white Christmas:
Christmas Snow
Never came that year, and yet
It came in other ways, remembering the Light;
As suds frothing in the Garavogue
Around bridge arches, a scuttled trolley;
It fell from lamps in Henry Street
Illuminating tracer-lines of sleet
And shoppers gripping rods of sleek umbrellas
As if playing giant straining fish;
It fell as stars above the Sugar Loaf
Lit up as cats’ eyes by the gaze
Of a farmer standing by a gate
Above Wicklow and its mercury lanes.
The idea that our response to the Covid-19 pandemic might be moving us in the direction of the authoritarian horrors of the last century is one that a great many are resistant to. They may feel, for example, that we are living with an extraordinary circumstance, and that the response, however undesirable and unprecedented, remains unavoidable in the face of the threat.
Even to those who feel this way, however, the danger of authoritarianism is something which we should all meditate very deeply on. The comparatively free societies which we have grown up in are a rare and precarious achievement; we are simply not aware how precarious because they are the only world we have ever known.
Dr Billy Ralph, meanwhile, questioned a cosy scientific consensus in Ireland:
Throughout this pandemic we have witnessed very little meaningful scientific debate in Ireland. Irish experts are drawn from a small circle of academics, some with vested interests, supporting the government’s highly successful publicity campaign. In other countries, in contrast, there are heated public debates between scientists as to whether to adopt a dominant approach of blanket policies, or one of shielding elderly populations.
But in Ireland Nobel laureates and professors from prestigious universities around the world are routinely dismissed with smart quips by gullible journalists. But let us examine the three mantras in a dispassionate way that acknowledges each of their adverse impacts.
Featured Image: Dickens’s Dream by Robert William Buss.
With a Dickensian Christmas forming on the horizon David Langwallner drew on the wisdom and compassion of the great author Charles Dickens in an impassioned appeal for meaningful reforms:
To revert to Dickens as the supreme chronicler of Christmas. If someone has the temerity to present themselves like Oliver Twist with an empty bowl and ask for more will our modern day workhouses permit another spoon of porridge?
Or will they ask: ‘are you not happy with your existing pile of gruel – the charitable food banks that ease the conscious of the rich?’ Now with Covid-19 restrictions in full force diminishing most incomes – but especially those least well off – many now need a bit more, just to survive. This should involve chasing down the artful dodgers in the large corporation, who have picked a pocket or two avoiding paying their fair share of tax.
Also that month, notwithstanding a deep antipathy to all forms of religious fundamentalism, David Langwallner drew on the theme of Religion in his Public Intellectual Series.
With the loss of religious forms, however, many living in modern technocratic societies experience a loss of meaning, and even a moral void. The social structure of religions fostered close relationships and inculcated a sense of community, as well as charity, the protection of human dignity and a commitment to public service. The Bible injuncts kindness towards strangers, and to do unto others as you would wish them to do to you, which also derives from Aristotelian philosophy.
‘The Dead House’
There was also debate around what to do with Dublin’s historic buildings, as Neil Burns decried the elitism of the Irish literary community:
Protestations against James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ House on Usher’s Island being ear-marked for a hostel are rooted in cultural-bias and emotional-led egocentrism, and exhibit blatant hypocrisy among the denouncers. Artsy sentimentality can be the lesser evil, but it is still based on emotional, and, cultural biases.
Under normal circumstances tourists flock to Ireland for its rich cultural inheritance and traditions. Indeed we live atop generations of history. When the soil offers its secrets in the form of ruins and artefacts, we either attempt to preserve or reduce them to rubble. More often than not, we choose to tear down or bury the past. This often occurs without the general public being aware of what is happening.
Their method of reproduction means you normally find patches of colour fighting for real estate. Neon Green battles with neon pink for prime locations on the surface of underwater cliff faces. Rarely seen on the east coast, they are to be found in all of the most dramatic sites I have dived along the Atlantic coast.
Around the beginning of the second century AD, the Greek writer Plutarch unknowingly created the spark for a flame of artistic inspiration which, not unlike the notion of the ancient Olympic torch, has transcended millennia until today. He might, perhaps, have nourished the expectation that his work’s renown would outlive him, but he could not have imagined that his words would be traced through the 20th century poetry of Cavafy to the 21st century songs of Leonard Cohen and Laura Marling. And yet, in a single stunning example of ancient influence and contemporary Classics, one particular story of his has been read, performed, spoken, sung, enjoyed, downloaded, streamed and reflected on in a chain of inspiration which spans over a century of creativity. The remarkable longevity of one small digression in the mass of Plutarch’s extant work demonstrates beautifully the basic humanity which has connected us from antiquity to now, reflected and refracted through the lens of varying personal and societal perspectives. As a result, the historic loss of Alexandria has become, paradoxically, our cultural gain.
We met in Dublin, as students. It was in the MA room, in the recording booth, in a fully-packed Ryan Air flight with destination to Sofia that a small but important concept emerged in my mind. By experience, or by force of habit, I had a fixed idea of the isolated composer working for countless hours on end; a dim light, a dark room, a head full of ideas. A familiar concept really, that’s how I had been making music for years. But the familiar changes, and it was in that MA room, on that crowded plane, sitting by the cliffs of the Irish west coast or on a summer night in the living room of a beautiful countryside house in Spain, that I realised that being a composer doesn’t necessarily have to be a one-woman show; that composition feeds on other creative forms, it feeds on other people, and that’s when many seemingly impossible things start to happen.
November’s featured artist Aga Szot discussed her Temple Bar-based Icon Factory:
Ten years ago I walked those streets of Temple Bar and no one could have imagined it would be possible to walk those lanes. It was a NO GO area and even Dubliners did not walk there. They were identified as dark spaces, and with anti-social behaviour, public toilets and worse. There was no reason why people would choose to walk there.
Now our art projects attract hundreds every day into the area, and are included in national tour guides, indicated as one of the most popular attractions in the area: an art centre which invites artists to participate in the project with its educational and civilised mission. We made this space safer and a better place for all.
‘Jerry Garcia, one of The Grateful Dead. They’re a band, apparently.’
‘Never heard of him or them,’ I said, realising that there was more to it than a rockstar dying and that Don was somewhat perturbed.
‘You wouldn’t believe it man. Jamie and Shaun rang in to say they were out for a week. That depressed this dude is dead. It’s JFK levels of impact. I’m not shitting you.’
‘A week? What the fuck?’
‘Yea. It’s like their fucking mother died. Left in the dock. I’m practically on my own here.’
‘This Garcia dude. Some kind of Jesus figure or what? A whole week because he died?’
‘Yeah. Weird. Apparently, they’ve been deadheads for years…Some fan cult thing. Can you make sure to meet Sarah tonight? And I’ll see you tomorrow? Don’t forget?’
‘No problem, man. It’s all on the itinerary.’
Image Graeme Coughlan: www.graemecphotography.com
While a seedy pool hall was the location for another of Daniel Wade’s Dublin chronicles ‘Niall’: ‘They shoot pool like they’re born for it. Some for cash,others for pride or thrills; there’s no sole reigning champion. Anyone might wear the crown’
In further fiction from Stephen Mc Randal, the character of Manus stands in opposition to an anti-mask crowd but is more bothered by the sectarian and racist rhetoric, before heading to another Free Julian Assange rally.
Each witch hunt is a tribute act to the last.
There is always a committee of three.
The gravity in the room is such
they struggle to manoeuvre
the enormity of their serious
faces in the door.
Before we turned our eyes from nudity,
Or banished certain words, death was the first
Obscenity—the one from which the rest,
In time, would find their way. The first
To make a joke of life. The first
To show us what may come of children’s games:
A skull left caked in mud, the slicing rain.
What is a rude word if not a reminder
Of the grave in which one’s coffin will be lowered?
An old man’s kiss upon a young girl’s navel
Would not be possible if not for death.
Dressed up in our Sunday best, our deaths
Seem almost hypothetical. They’re not.
Plastic surgeons, age-defying creams,
Air-brushed waistlines on the cover of Cosmo—
These prove our distaste. Death’s in the ghetto.
But only look out past your green kept lawn,
And there it is, unfazed, a grinning fact.
Lockdown measures remind me of the prescription of anti-depressants and other psychiatric medicines. They are both harsh, and both are administered in response to a moment of crisis; both often have severe side effects, which in time often obscure the initial malady that required their prescription.
It is high time we re-examined how the government is being advised to bring the population to the promised land of ‘living with the virus.’ At this stage other forms of advice should be sought. Presumably the government is already receiving significant inputs from the business sector, but other important viewpoints are not part of the conversation.
Dr Billy Ralph was even more critical of the damage that had been done to the fabric of Irish society over the course of the pandemic:
Policies were adopted by an unelected government on the erroneous advice of experts listening to other experts, who predicted an enormous death toll from Covid-19 that has not come about anywhere on the globe. These same experts are now doubling down on initial errors and inflicting incalculable harm on the delicate fabric of society.
Image (c) Barry Delaney.
Meanwhile, prompted by warnings from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar that 85,000 could die over the course of the pandemic photographer Barry Delaney revealed the grim foreboding he felt back in March:
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.
This proved a false alarm, but it gave way to a period of creative impotence in his photographic practice:
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.
Image (c) Barry Delaney
Classicist Ronan Sheehan, meanwhile, drew attention to the etymology of the terms in common use during the pandemic:
Epidemic: from Greek ἐπί epi ‘upon or above’ and δῆμος demos ‘people.’
Pandemic: from Greek πᾶν, pan, ‘all’ and δῆμος, demos, ‘people.’
Virus: from Latin ‘poison, slime, venom.’
Vaccine: from the Lain ‘vacca,’ meaning cow, a named conferred by Louis Pasteur in honour of Edward Jenner who pioneered the concept by using cowpox to inoculate (mid-15c., ‘implant a bud into a plant,’ from Latin inoculatus, past participle of inoculare ‘graft in, implant a bud or eye of one plant into another,’) against smallpox.
Exponential: from Latin exponere ‘put forth.’
David Langwallner continued his Public Intellectual Series with an account of the English radical historian E. P. Thompson:
His lasting contribution is the seminal The Making Of The English Working Class (1980), possibly the greatest work of history of the twentieth century that emphasised a new form of bottom-up history, related to the subaltern history that was emerging at the same time in former colonial societies.
We have entered a dark era dominated by the religious right, involving literal and historical interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. A return to eighteenth century values is upon us, including the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament, neglecting to remember that Thomas Jefferson was a deist, if that. Let’s not forget that the United States required a Civil War to end the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery that was not even mentioned in that document, apart from in the three-fifths clause that represented a African-American slaves as three-fifths of a white person for electoral purposes, in order to maintain a balance between slave and non-slave owning states.
We received two submissions from underwater photographer Daniel McAuley that month, the first featured shipwrecks, which become reefs:
With the combination of a long history of maritime traffic and often quite ferocious seas, it comes as no surprise that the Irish coastline is strewn with shipwrecks, many of which date back hundreds of years. Each one provides a fascinating porthole on a bygone age, telling stories that are often of historical significance, as well as allowing divers a chance to encounter what are often quite intriguing new environments for marine life.
The next introduced us to the seals living along the Irish coastline, now threatened by fishermen disturbed by a competitor as over-fishing reduced catches.
The playful nature of seals reminds any snorkeler of a dog looking for affection from its owner. So listening to news stories where people are saying the best solution to the problems afflicting the fishing community is to take a high powered rifle to these playful creatures filled me with rage and frustration around the management of our coast, and what the future holds for it.
I’ve been passionate about music from an early age, and my love of the post-punk spirit of DIY and experimentation found a crossover with the further reaches of sonic exploration coming from the Fine Art approaches to sound as a sculptural medium. I then discovered improvised music and was smitten. The possibilities just seemed wide open. There was a directness and a simplicity that was really appealing. It was also a much quicker route to producing music by sidestepping years of training. Of course, it’s not just musical ability you bring to the table, it’s imagination and intelligence too.
By DonkeyHotey – Donald Trump – Caricature, CC BY-SA 2.0.
In poetry Kevin Higgins appears to have been inspired by the forthcoming elections:
A barrel of industrial waste poured into a suit
donated by a casino owner who knows people
with a tangerine tea towel tossed strategically on top
because it was the only available metaphor for hair
was running for re-election as CEO of South Canadia
against an old coat with holes in it.
Image (c) Daniele Idini
While Ernest Hilbert mused on ‘Models, slender and famished as cheetahs,’:
The bathroom’s OUT OF ORDER. Sewage seeps
Into the restaurant. The manager’s
Frantic, alone today. The line’s
Become a mob. A voice from an SUV
Barks at the drive-through speaker. In the back,
Children cheer a whirl of color on a screen.
I feel the boredom underneath the beauty.
It’s weird, and getting desperate these days.
In auction rooms, the arms go up. And . . . sold.
The next exquisite investment’s on the block.
The views—the hills, the seas—are still pristine for those
Who can afford the heights. Who’s this beauty for?
Beauty’s boring. I do go on and on,
Don’t I? Oh, you have a nosebleed.
Here, drip some in my drink. See this?
Flick this switch. Now listen. Someone will scream.
As summer gave way to a season of mist and mellow fruitfulness in September Covid-19 returned with a vengeance, but by now there was considerable disagreement over elusive facts.
The main go-to-man among Irish scientists for the Irish media has been Trinity Professor of Immunology Luke O’Neill. On June 22nd he claimed that Ireland would have had 28,000 deaths if there hadn’t been a lockdown.
The piece earned praise on Twitter from Irish Times journalist Ronan McGreevy.
This is a brilliant blog post which should be ready by every journalist covering Covid-19. It takes aim at several ubiquitous experts who have made wildly inaccurate predictions and who have not been held to account for those predictions. https://t.co/1QgEahaxfH
Andrea Reynell, meanwhile, looked for new ways of socialising during The New Abnormal; although having to order a meal made the idea of going out for a drink less appealing.
It is easy for some premises that already served food. But it is a bit of a pain knowing that you’re spending more than you want, all for the sake of a socially-distanced drink.
Divers on Dublin Bay.
That month we receive the first in a series of articles from underwater photographer Daniel Mc Auley. The first acquainted us with the hidden world below Dublin Bay.
The silt and sandy bottom around Dublin Bay is in a state of constant motion, drawn by the strong tidal flows moving down the east coast of the country. These massive sand banks are also easily disturbed by strong southerly or easterly winds, leading to dramatic drops in visibility when a strong wind blows. Unlike the deep water off the west coast, Dublin Bay is a relatively shallow body of water with a primarily sandy bottom.
Coral Garden Dalkey Island, Dublin Bay. Image (c) Dan Mc Auley
Another new contributor Neil Burns wrote movingly following his work in addiction services:
Heroin addicts tend to mate for life. Like dilapidated swans – twisted in a deadly alliance they dance and embrace towards a finality of breath. Like a sculpture in a Giorgio de Chirico painting. It is an ersatz marriage of sorts, sharing needles – inveigling that sharp, finite pain. Into the vein. The arm. The thigh. Leaving rack-marks like horse gallops that tear up the grass on a racecourse. Puckered, indeed, punctured skin. Delving into the life’s blood. The blood’s life which is cherished. Next to Godliness. Spike island. Feel like Jesus’ son was The Velvet Underground’s lyric. Warm blanket to insulate against the world’s harshness. Being judged. Much of it in the head and coveted paranoia.
f you have already worked out that whoever lives inside your phone when you say ‘Hey Siri’ or ‘Hey Google’ can read emails out to you, find the nearest movie theatre, or reserve a restaurant table, then Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already in your life.
Image: Luke Fitzherbert
Next, Luke Fitzherbert despaired at Lebanon’s rotten leadership after a massive explosion that rocked Beirut:
The impact of the explosion is hard to understate. Its sound and force stretched for miles, releasing a huge mushroom cloud that killed close to two hundred people, and scarred thousands both physically and mentally; destroyed countless homes, and leaving once vibrant streets desolate. The immediate aftermath was dystopian: “It was like a movie. People moving slowly, covered in blood, glass shattered everywhere. Leaving a whole city riddled with PTSD,” recalled one witness.
And in the wake of Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court David Langwallner reckoned it was game over for American democracy.
My name is Gemma Dunleavy and I’m a yapper. I’d talk the handle off a cup. I also write and play music. I see myself as a storyteller first, then a musician. It’s where I feel my true gift is, my natural comfort is in meandering through my memories, picking out the best details to paint the clearest picture in the heads of those listening.
Also in music coverage Brian Mooney was keeping the conversation going after the tragic loss of his wife to cancer:
six months now. A year of firsts. A lot of lessons learnt. A new wisdom.
And I feel quite stupid and not quite intelligent enough. Exposed, as my better half who I was always so proud to be beside has gone away.
I have to build now. My friends are close and music has kept the conversation going…
Gasping for a hit, Carl made himself a fresh cup of coffee. But big-nosed and bat-eared, when he tried to slam it, the steaming brown liquid dribbled down his chin to piddle over his pink tie and white shirt. His accountant’s uniform.
Also in fiction, Yona Shiryan Caffrey brought a portrayal of cocooning widows in rural Israel in Tina.
…. Myriad music still marks her mind, her memory,
Music of mending and meaning, naming and being—
Music of mackerel meandering, matter and mass,
Metaphysical music marching from moment to minute
As well as a number of works from Mischa Willett, along with the irrepressible Kevin Higgins, who wondered at the longevity of Henry Kissinger:
For its birthday, a baby gets Spina bifida
A Bengali family have all their arms sawn off.
Fifty bodies topple into the sea off Indonesia
but none of them are Henry Kissinger
Each time Henry Kissinger again fails to die
It’s been difficult finding the words to express my worsening mood and deepening depression. I’m referring specifically to my subconscious responses to altered public behaviour and the marks left by social reaction to Covid-19. For the first time in my life, I’m noticing increasing anxiety and, with the stress, a direct link to declining health. I’ve been struggling with this worsening dynamic over the last month or two, trying to get to grips with it. Trying to better understand its cause. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.
2/7/1986 President Reagan with William F Buckley in the White House Residence during Private birthday party in honor of President Reagan’s 75th Birthday
on the other hand, is hardly even capitalist in outlook. It is really an offshoot of a more authoritarian leftism combined with a fundamentalist, morally self-righteous neocolonialism informed by ‘Christian’ values. It is associated in particular with the administrations of George W. Bush, with Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle its most prominent ideologues.
There are thousands of content moderators, who are paid to view objectionable posts and decide which need to be removed from digital platforms. Many are severely traumatized by the images of hate, abuse and violence they see on a daily basis so that we, our families and children get to see ‘WARNING: The following post or content may be disturbing to some viewers.’
From Spain, Connor Blennerhassett brought a report on the ordeal suffered by vegan activist Juan Manuel Bustamante, who spent sixteen months in jail on trumped-up terrorist crimes: ‘a Kafkaesque nightmare that saw him pass through five of Spain’s most notorious prisons, often locked up in solitary confinement and denied a vegan diet by his captors, who also beat him. It ruined his family’s finances and lead him to attempt to take his life after his release.’
Icaria, Greece
Over in Greece Frank Armstrong found a hardening of borders, and attitudes, in the wake of the pandemic, and drew wisdom from the writings of Albert Camus:
Albert Camus in The Rebel (1951), identified an enduring tension between a Caesarian Marxist project that permits all manner of atrocity on the journey to earthly paradise, and an approach he identifies with Ancient Greece, characterised by moderation, incrementalism and respect for tradition. He suggests:
The profound conflict of this century is, perhaps, not so much between the German ideologies of history and Christian political concepts, which in a certain way are accomplices, as between German dreams and Mediterranean traditions … in other words, between history and nature.
Vietnam. Image (c) Hectic Fish
Also, for the first time since his arrival, Hectic Fish was also able to travel around Vietnam, he proceeded to the territory of the Mnong accompanied by a copy of Rachel Carson’s The Marginal World ‘the otherworldly essay that opens The Edge of the Sea.’
The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time that I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings.
There was also fiction fromSarah Johnson with ‘The Candidate for the Roberts Prize’ where ‘The significance of discovery lies exactly in the degree to which it can be appreciated and put to use by the human community.’ And Glenda Miller’s ‘The Club’ in which an experience of cancer prepares her for the agonies of the birthing process.
Next election onwards, there’ll be a second vote for those who turn up with, under their arm, a print copy of one of the larger newspapers and answer a few unobtrusive questions to prove they’ve consumed it correctly.
A third for those who also present receipts that show they’ve dined sufficiently in restaurants with at least four stars, and a note from the maitre d that they know their way around the cutlery.
A fourth for the lucky few in possession – to boot – of a ticket for one of those pampering spas at which one temporarily discards worldly things to have one’s darker parts irrigated of all subversive thoughts.
So when all’s said and counted, people who shouldn’t matter can go back to not mattering.
It’s getting real in here. Newly established, the isolation ward has been set up too close for comfort. From my room, I’m able to hear most comings and goings, and I know the current number of patients is exactly nine. In the last twenty-four hours, out of two patients who went to hospital, one died, though not of Covid-19. Then they moved two more into the ward. What I’m not sure of is how many, in total, have gone to the hospital or been identified as having Covid-19, because they move them around during the night. They say about five or six staff tested positive. But a couple of them were out sick before testing was even available. Me, I hydrate. I take daily doses of vitamins and apple cider vinegar. I’m good.
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.
He wants to work Monday nights but not Tuesday afternoons; she is available on Saturday evenings but not on Sunday mornings… Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises often find it challenging to recruit part-time workers, with abundant choices available to gig workers in different sectors, but the pandemic has vividly demonstrated the nature and depth of insecurity of this form of employment.
Frantz Fanon’s provided a profound insight into how colonised peoples – The Wretched of the Earth – are required to pay the debts of the occupying powers. This has been reproduced in our own societies in the form of austerity. The occupying powers are now the corporatocracy, or those with inherited wealth. The only difference from the colonial period is they are no longer all from the same ethnic group. In fact a veneer of diversity is achieved with the promotion of a few specimens with varied pigmentation, and an embrace of safe, politically correct policies that ignores structural racism.
So where have they all gone, those Beatniks and the latter-day Chés? Today, distinguishing ideological differences between ruling and opposition parties in most Western democracies requires superhuman vision, or no vision at all. Existentialist dialogue about literature or philosophy is rarely found in mainstream media, instead relegated to academia, or that strange cabal, referred to disparagingly as ‘intellectuals’.
What we are left with is an exaggerated respect for the titans of big business, the market, and venerate unlimited economic growth.
The Republic of Ireland has a long history of opioid drug-related deaths. Since 1998, mortalities due to opioids have increased yearly. Indeed, there is now, on average, one drug-related death every day. The majority of these involve users combining two-to-four drugs mainly, heroin, benzodiazepines, methadone and pregabalin.
Criticizing Cuba’s many shortcomings throughout the decades has been an easy endeavour for corporate media. Yet the press has studiously ignored positive aspects of the Revolution. This was seen recently in negative coverage of Havana’s decision to send medical teams to some of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19. Indeed, Cuba was the only nation to provide medical assistance to Italy at the height of the crisis there.
Storytelling is a shield against loneliness and the unbearable weight of boredom. Truth does not exist, and if it does, then all storytellers are liars. And all storytellers are liars, though Rousseau might have argued that when you are loyal to yourself you are telling nothing but the truth.
If we are to go back four thousand years and posthumously ‘correct’ the sins of that past, I would fear for many heritage sites around the world tainted by practices and beliefs very much at odds with current ‘enlightened’ standards. In any therapeutic practice, acknowledgment of the past is critical but the difficult work in healing is always how we manage the present, the now, which is after all, the only thing we have.
And Andrea Reynell caught up with renowned documentary filmmaker Sé Merry Doyle to discuss his new film ‘James Joyce – Reluctant Groom‘ in which poet Niall McDevitt guides us through a London landscape with unknown Joycean associations. The film went back to a period in 1931 when Joyce and his long-term partner Nora Barnacle moved to London for a year to secure a legal marriage.
Grammar expresses a human desire to control time. Regimented in terms of right and wrong, grammar draws lines by which people can express themselves as concurring or not with their own era. Breaking with grammar rules has often been seen as a form of resistance against the dominant forces of a time: take le verlan in disaffected French suburbs for example. But in corona times this paradigm has been inverted: the notion that humanity is at the heart of time has been annihilated. And now, our era has rejected us. Suddenly our grammar is exposed as fantasy. But wasn’t there always an implicit arrogance in the phrase “next week I will be sitting in Tulum drinking tequila”? It seems hubristic that humans are grammatically equipped to script their own future when anything can happen. Such reflections have been on my mind since our latest release flukishly coincided with the pandemic.
Anakronos (left to right): Caitríona O’Leary, Deirdre O’Leary, Nick Roth, and Francesco Turrisi (photograph by Tara Slye).
Also in music coverage, Catríona O’Leary finally found an opportunity to work with some of her favourite musicians: Nick Roth, Francesco Turrisi and my sister Deirdre O’Leary, and was inspired by the the witch hunts of medieval Kilkenny:
But why sing the words of a witch-burner? Because they’re beautiful and I find it interesting to contemplate the contradictions that exist within people. As Stanley Kubrick said when asked if his characters were good or evil, “They are good AND evil!”.
The word ‘landscape’ not only refers to the topography of an environment, but also to its existence within society, consciousness and experiences. As we move through our existence we traverse thousands of constantly shifting landscapes – geographic and experiential- moulding them around us. Boundaries shape how we think, move and express ourselves. Our ability to understand ourselves, and our place in this world, rests on our collective responsibility to protect and celebrate our surroundings.
Finally, Nick Feery ‘the boy from Tore’ brought us back to his eighteenth birthday when he worked for his local builder Whimpy Dunne.
