Cassandra Voices

Tag: being

  • Being Irish

    This Ireland exists. And should one travel there and not find it, then they have not looked closely enough..
    Hugo Hamilton: The Island of Talking – In the footsteps of Heinrich Boll

    #IrelandisFull: the migration of this phrase from the far-right into the mainstream is an awful feature of our woe-begotten times. It begs the question: what does it mean to be Irish? Ireland is of course full at one level; full of gaslighting and bullshit, not least from people who subscribe to these views, and those who have created the conditions for them to flourish.

    One is not more Irish because your grandfather was in the GPO. That your name is Lenehan, Murphy, Barrington, Finlay, Kelly, Doyle, or conversely, Langwallner, Smith, Varadkar, Naidoo, Bacik should make no difference to your claim. It is not where you come from, or your name, it is about who you are, what you do and why you do it.

    It should make no difference whether it was an immigrant who assaulted a child, given many Irish thugs are wont to do the same. And recall it was a Brazilian delivery driver that rescued her. Thuggish criminals come from all breeds and nationalities. And those who riot and attack people with baseball bats are simply thugs, as are those who spread hatred against Johnny Foreigner from whatever vector in whatever country.

    Consider the words of Kipling, often considered a jingoistic nationalist:

    Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
    Where I used to spend my time
    A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen,
    Of all them blackfaced crew
    The finest man I knew
    Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din

    Wealth inequality in the United States increased from 1989 to 2013.

    Under Neoliberalism

    Under a rampant neoliberalism, we now see overt far-right fascism, but also a structural form underpinning the centre-right, which is overseeing the impoverishment of all but the super-rich, while maintaining a veneer of inclusivity.

    Now, with an economic and environmental meltdown on the horizon, it is time to assert universal Enlightenment values, and fairly allocate the resources of the Earth, and of Ireland, while leaving room for diversity and even eccentricity. It is the time for those, such as the legendary mixed race writer Albert Camus, to assert the values of moderation against all forms of extremism.

    The phrase keep ‘Ireland for the Irish’ is one I have heard in family law proceedings. Sadly, it speaks of a widespread, generally unacknowledged, intolerance.

    In recent times we have become a nation of bean counters. Between 1996 and 2012 the number of qualified accountants in the state grew by a staggering eight-three percent to number 27,112.[i]

    Ireland has always been run by a privileged elite, a comprador class of money men and lawyers that facilitate exploitation. The Four Courts still operates with vestiges of primogeniture. So resentment should be targeted against the elites who perpetuate inequality, not the poor huddled masses from Ukraine seeking refuge, which of course was offered to Irish emigrants in the recent past.

    Racism, tribalism, and irredentism are worrying signs of fascism, which seems to be the way things are heading. A fascist corporate authoritarian state is on the horizon. The extreme economic doctrine of neoliberalism is breeding autarkic extremism.

    One’s nationality, whether Irish, Russian or American, is not an indication of exceptionalism. That you are Irish does not give you an entitlement to despise outsiders. It cannot justify thuggery. Irish lives matter is an empty phrase. The far-right at its most extreme propounds truly crazy fictions. Thus. anyone daring to disagree is labelled a paedo, destroying family values. Jesus wept.

    Of course this is linked to the dark money of the evangelical Christian Right. Perceptively, Noam Chomsky once described the U.S. Republican Party as the most dangerous organisation in human history.

    David Langwallner receiving the prize from Miriam O’Callaghan for Pro Bono & Public Interest Team/Lawyer of the Year at the AIB Private Banking Irish Law Awards 2015.

    Nein Danke Herr Langwallner

    As a speckled person myself, like Hugo Hamilton, half-Irish, half Austrian, I was confronted in my school days with comments like “go back to Austria Adolf”. Moreover, during a debate in that crucible of Irish corporate narrow-mindedness which is UCD, I was greeted with the rebuke on an unanswerable point of information: Nein Danke Herr Langwallner.

    Much laughter flowed from the thuggish mobocracy. That body included at least one present judge, along with a managing partner of a leading law firm. Thugs and or criminals thus come in all shapes and hues in fact. Many are to be found among our corporate and legal so-called professional classes.

    Now what is pure Irish blood? Garrett Fitzgerald, the reformist Blueshirt, was a contradiction in terms. He once described the intellectually superior Charles J. Haughey as having a flawed pedigree. Haughey had his faults but note the class snobbery, and arguably racism, of the comment.

    The blue blood Tories of Fine Gael are sustained by a sense of dynastic entitlement, evident with judicial appointments, where a kind of rabbit disease like myxomatosis seems to have created an overwhelming mediocrity.

    The name Fitzgerald of course comes from the Vikings who raped and pillaged Celtic Ireland – plus ca change. The only difference is the violations are now financial, which is spawning far right-wing fascism.

    One of the heroes of the Irish Revolution, Countess Markievicz was actually born in England and married a Polish-Ukrainian count. Even the long-shadowed Éamon de Valera had a Cuban father and was born in New York. If only he had stayed. The bloodline of pure Irishness has thus always been corrupted. Garret FitzGerald should have understood that being Irish is not akin to a dog breeding competition.

    In more recent times, if we are supposed to hate immigrants based on their skin colour or ethnicity, are we to hate the greatest Irish football player of all time, the Black Pearl of Inchicore, Paul McGrath or Phillip Lynott the lead singer of Thin Lizzy similarly?

    Are we to add Irish Protestants and Jews to the hate list? Samuel Beckett was a Protestant and so was Justice Kingsmill Moore. A few more Protestant judges might have been beneficial over the history of the state.

    Or consider those to whom we have given welcome: the great Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein – one of the most significant minds of the twentieth century – is honoured by a plaque in the Ashling Hotel. The great German writer Heinreich Boll lived in Ireland and was favourably disposed, while the Rolling Stones have had a shadowy presence among the Guinness family. In short, emigres, non-nationals, or “half-castes” enrich our public discourse and provide diversity.

    And if we hate the English, should we hate Shane McGowan or John Lennon, both of Irish extraction or if we hate the Yanks, what about Eugene O Neill or F. Scott Fitzgerald, two of the greatest writers who have ever lived, who were of Irish lineage. It might be said that the former’s posthumously published play A Long Day’s Journey into Night captures perfectly at one level what it is to be Irish: alcoholism, mental illness and abuse are the central characteristics of our national polity and governing classes.

    Irish and proud..

    Who are these people and why are they terrorising poor immigrants? The Fianna Fáil councillors who seek to condone must understand they are spreading the seeds of fascism. To hate the other because he or she is different is a disgrace, and you have forfeited your legitimacy to remain in public office.

    Yes, there is a need for a more nuanced immigration system. But proportionately we do not attract as many as elsewhere. Let us not forget that many of these people have experienced horrific scenes we can only imagine. But I fear that Ukrainian refugees on slender social support have gone from the frying pan into the fire.

    To fail to understand how much diversity adds to any society is to demonise and exclude. The shocking truth, however, is that exclusion is to be found at the highest reaches of the Irish establishment, who display classic attributes of colonialism as Fritz Fannon describes this phenomenon. Exclusion from the good life enjoyed by a few extends to many native sons.

    And if we are to dislike other nationalities let us avoid making it global or universal. I love the Italian film director Fellini but hate Meloni because she is a proto-fascist. I adore the writer Dostoevsky, but cannot approve of Putin. I love the African writer Achebe but not the African dictator Mugabe. Nor should one hate the Irish.

    Sinn Fein have been brave in sticking to a non-racist stance, particularly as many of its constituents misguidedly move elsewhere, and if they are to be a party of government they should ignore the electoral consequences and stick to their principles.

    Featured image by David Kernan (Creative Commons Licence).

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

  • Ciaran Carson: The Dichotomy of Being

    Belfast writer, and poet, Ciaran Carson carried a black flute with silver keys on its main body, which he would screw together to play sometimes. In class. At Queen’s University, Belfast.

    He once asked me, “What would you have liked to become in life?”

    I answered: “Either a master carpenter, a mathematician, or a pianist.”

    “I agree with the master carpentry, I wanted to become one of those myself.” Ciaran replied earnestly.

    Once in a writing group – the infamous Group – he gave me a lot of advice on a poem, which was inspired by the infamous Blackbird of Belfast Lough poem, putting his own literary stamp on it. To this I responded: “Ah, but Ciaran, that wouldn’t be my poem anymore, it would be yours.”

    He considered this for a moment and said, “Maybe, maybe.” A couple of attendees came up to me afterwards and said: “You did well to challenge him there.”

    You see, Ciaran, sometimes could get inside a person’s work, kick its rafters down and plant new foundations – his own. That didn’t really endear him to some participants. I think he resented my protestation, but on reflection probably thought I was correct. A person’s writing can become a surrogacy, so they can be precious about it. If someone wrestles that babe in arms from them it creates difficulties.

    Ciaran was a dichotomy, like myself; as we all can be. Blowing warm one moment, cold the next. I recall him with his horn-rimmed glasses, tweed blazers, and pork pie hat. Like a detective from a 1950s novel, set in middle England; or possibly a character from Z-Cars.

    He amused me. I suppose I amused him sometimes, when he wasn’t bewildered by my anxious nature at that time. I felt a lot of social anxiety which I was not in control of. He too stuttered and became nervous. It jammed him up. I was jammed up in my own head, so, I related to that. I empathised by nodding.

    I thoroughly enjoyed read his interesting book Shamrock Tea.

    His take on Dante was widely embraced and commended internationally. He spoke to me one day about when he was in Italy, where learned folk indulged him, calling him Professore or Maestro! But when he got back home he was still just a “specky bastard.”’ So he mused, with a smile on his face. Such is the iron-raw vernacular of back home.

    Belfast. Image: Fellipe Lopes.

    In his poem Snow the tic-tac-toe meter and the pat-pat of the table-tennis bat, of the flicking rhythm of the flakes at his window, was successfully achieved.

    Ciaran’s mind was shaped by the conflict. How could it not be?

    I recall one Presbyterian writer at the Seamus Heaney Group aligning Ciaran with Republicanism because he was from West Belfast – even though he had the same surname as one of the founders of Ulster Edward Carson. But West Belfast was a good enough reason for him. He thought Paisley was right, the IRA needed to go around in sackcloth and ashes to atone for their sins.

    That barbaric violence, as he saw it, was only inflicted on the Unionist community. But there was little mention of redress for the Loyalist pogroms against the Nationalist community since the 1920s.

    Ciaran didn’t respond too much, but I knew the association would have encroached on him. I once had read in an Irish newspaper piece that Ciaran was asked why didn’t he join the struggle. He answered honestly: “I was too scared.”

    He had Protestants in his family background. Also, I am sure, some Republicans but that’s the dichotomy of Belfast. Grey areas. Not black and white. Not binary. Coded. Just a miasma of deeply ingrained historical decisions made, and mandated, by people who have long since passed on and probably don’t give a Frenchman’s fart now.

    The Cupar Way ‘Peace Wall’. © Daniele Idini

    He enjoyed my poetry. At times.

    There was one which I have lost now about, well, it was my take on John Masefield’s Cargoes set in Latin America during the period of the Aztecs and Montezuma. At least that’s what one of his students on the Master’s course, a Brazilian lady, told me after class one day.

    Inevitably I became persona non grata at Queen’s because I would not suck up to those with a modicum of power and who were established writers there.

    I recall one senior person looking at me one day in a one-to-one like I was a piece of cake. I wondered about his heterosexuality, felt uncomfortable, excused myself, and left. It was confusing and I did not go back. Doubtless, he verbally discredited me to his peers.

    Another established writer was angry that I got onto a post-grad course that they were running and more-or-less told me so in a sit down meeting: “There’s the door. You don’t belong here.” Because I did not worship them and their work. And I struggled with my English composition (Some change there, huh?).

    That was hard to take. I was hurt by that. I was embittered for a while, but I had experienced a lot of rejection already by that stage in my life. In truth I was in the depths of alcoholism at the time, and found it a real strain to really buckle down and focus. But I still had a creative brain, and a universal beat.

    I think Ciaran sensed that because it was his partial reference, and another’s, who got me on to that post-grad course, but that annoyed some people. Power struggles, ego, and insecurity all played a part in the mentality of the Seamus Heaney Centre.

    The last time I met Ciaran was in 2017, I was homeless, again, and limping from out of the Industrial temps’ office in Shaftesbury Square, securing some work in a bakery in East Belfast, he looked at me, and I looked back, but we both headed on our separate paths.

    I emailed him a while later but he did not respond. I had heard he was seriously ill by then. He was a heavy smoker and so was I.

    When he passed away, I wondered about the fait accompli eulogies by those in the narrow academic world in Belfast. I wondered about his dichotomous way of being.

    Ciaran wasn’t perfect – who is? But I am richer from the experience of meeting him, interacting with him, and learning from him. He was a very sound writer, read extensively, questioned, loved his music, and knew his literary onions.

    Wherever he is – I hope he’s happy.

    Ciaran Carson – 9th October, 1948 – 6th October, 2019

    Featured Image: Gerard Carson

  • On Being Old

    Oscar Wilde said  that the tragedy of being old is that one is still young.

    I am eighty-six, going on nineteen. Is this a record?

    I’ve been pruning and wood carving with my chainsaw for years. There is no shortage of wood from the trees that I planted thirty years ago. The resultant grotesque heads are visible all around my garden (all wearing face masks – you must keep a sense of humour).  Now they mock me.

    In the week before Christmas I took out my chain saw to clear away two full-grown pine trees that had fallen on our oil tank.

    Everything went well until I became ambitious. For the first time, instead of placing the machine on the ground with my foot on it, I tried to start it as they do in the movies: hold the machine in my left hand, push it down while pulling up on the starter with the right hand. That’s what the pros do. I had never tried it before.

    The result was dramatic. There was a sharp crunch in my left shoulder, plus pins and needles in my hand. A month later that is still my painful condition.

    On that day before Christmas I admitted for the first time that I’m old and it got me thinking about the disparities between age and youth.

    Demographically speaking, we oldies will soon outnumber youngsters. This is because young females are postponing reproduction until their mid-thirties. The costs of childcare and housing are prohibitive, there is a lack of confidence in the future. Also, many want an independent career. It’s a first world scenario.

    Women traditionally reproduced at about 25 years of age. Now it’s their mid-thirties and two kids are the ideal. However, since 1981 the worldwide replacement rate for us humans is down to 1.58 kids per woman. Ultimately that is not enough to prevent the extinction of the race.

    Demographics is destiny

    Thanks to modern medicine we superannuated oldies will soon outnumber fit young workers; the latter group’s taxes keep our health service going. We non-taxpayers (if you overlook  VAT) will soon consume over 50% of health costs.

    Will this trend continue? Probably. The young don’t vote enough. The seniors vote early and sometimes often. Governments know that older voters tend towards the status quo and shape their manifestos accordingly. This ensures that conservative policies preserve existing evils as distinct from liberal policies which wish to replace such evils with others. In the end the government always wins.

    We used to worry about overpopulation in the world; now we are in reverse gear, or at least the wealthy West is. I’ve cooperated in the production of six children, so I can’t really be blamed.

    But the centre cannot hold.

    The gaps in the supply services, witnessed by the shortage of truck drivers during the pandemic, are a symptom of the new malaise. Older skilled workers are retiring with few to take their place. Employers are desperate for employees.

    Don’t worry, I hear, the immigrants will eventually make up the numbers. Already they are the prime carers – for us, the oldies!  Now a world of opportunity is there for immigrants (and about time too). Instead of denigrating them, fighting to keep them out,  we will have to compete for their services, especially the skilled tradesmen.

    How many of us can fix a puncture, replace a fuse, stop a leak, change a tyre, do any of the tasks that were once second nature to my generation? Very few. We have all become a dysfunctional, middle-class burden on the young and fit. Have we passed on these humble skills? No, the young have been too absorbed in their screens to learn such mundane tasks. Now we don’t repair; we replace with newer models which are programmed to break down after the guarantee expires. Thanks to the advertising industry the world of the consumer is chasing its tail. Everybody knows.

    Is this an argument for despair?  Not at all. Some oldies have opted for the Zurich solution but most of us will cling on desperately to the last vestiges of our functionality.

    Unless euthanasia and trips to Zurich become mandatory…

    Featured Images: Carvings by Boby Quinn: ‘De Profundis’; ‘After Brancusi’; ‘Me Worry’.