Cassandra Voices

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  • Vanishing Ireland: Taking the Waters

    Today bottled spring water is an everyday drink, and sales run into the billions every year throughout the world. In polluted cities many inhabitants don’t trust the public water supply and use it only for washing. For relaxation and thirst quenching they are willing to pay for bottled spring water from their own country or imported from distant lands.

    Indeed, there is a widespread belief in the value of spring water, even if in many localities tap water is just as rich in mineral content as the bottled water described with impressive statistics, on colourful labels.

    Throughout continental Europe, as far back as Roman times, people have made secular pilgrimages to springs and wells with folkloric reputations. During the so-called Celtic era around Britain and Ireland people flocked to holy wells which they believed contained magical healing powers. Christian evangelists like St. Declan and St. Patrick acknowledged the ancient beliefs and urged their flock to say prayers and perform penitential rituals at these water sources – hence the designation of thousands of Holy Wells throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, many of which have vanished into oblivion as a result of changes to the underground water table and urbanisation.

    19th century photochrom of the Great Bath at the Roman Baths.

    Bath

    The springs at the base of hills near Bath in Somerset, a town founded by the Romans about 60 AD, were cherished from Celtic times for their purity and health effects, but the Roman emphasis on hygiene gave an added boost to the reputation of the place and over the centuries Bath developed into a major health resort.

    Hydrotherapy i.e. the medicinal use of water, became fashionable from the late 16th century. People bathed in cold waters, rubbed painful parts of their bodies with water, or bathed in thermal springs to relieve arthritis, rheumatic pain and other ailments related to skin, stomach and bodily organs.

    In continental Europe from the end of the 18th century onwards members of the landed aristocracy began holidaying in rural idyls, often in the mountains, where chalybeate waters were found.

    In this period, Hotels were founded to cater to the card-playing, horse riding and other costly inclinations of this leisure class of visitors. The urban haute bourgeoise followed the fashionable aristocratic trends.

    In the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian empire Kurorte (places with reputations for curative waters) thrived. It could be a mixture of complacent decadence and health seeking. Many places in today’s Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria and south-eastern Germany still incorporate the word Bad (baths) in their names. The languid decadence has departed and serious health therapy regimes now prevail. Trades unions in Germany and elsewhere organize health holidays for workers and their families.

    A geyser in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic.

    Irish Health Waters

    In the 18th and 19th centuries several places around Ireland were major attractions for both rich and poor seeking comfort and cure from health-giving waters. Local economies thrived as hotels, shops, taverns and local transport catered seasonally to thousands of visitors coming from England and closer to home.

    Only Lisdoonvarna in Clare remains to remind us of a tourist boom from former days. Below are a few details about places that once featured on the health map for urban sophisticates.

    Thomas Davis Street (Main Street), Mallow in August 1903.

    Mallow Springs in Cork

    With the advent of Christianity one of the Mallow springs was dedicated to St. Patrick. The largest of the group is known as Lady’s Well. The belief that the spring had medicinal properties stems from the work of Dr. Rogers of Cork, who in 1727 treated a sick woman in Mallow and observed that the only liquid she could retain was water from the spring.

    After her recovery Dr. Rogers invited Mr. J. Rutty from Bristol Spa to visit Mallow. Rutty wrote a book called Mineral Waters of Ireland, published in 1757, and highlighted the medicinal aspects. He quoted Dr. Rogers as reporting a wide range of cures including for: disorders of the stomach and skin; respiratory problems such as catarrh, coughs, and asthma; urinary disorders; and diabetes. Mallow became a popular health resort for about thirty years, especially in spring and autumn, but by 1850 it had ceased to function due to the social effects of famine and a switch of focus on English spa towns and glamorous resorts on the continent.

    Mallow seems to be the only place in Ireland where thermal springs were known to exist. Many modern 5-star hotels offer so-called spas, which are really designer ‘hot tubs’ and Jacuzzis in luxury wellness centres created for moneyed holiday makers.

    Struell Wells, near Downpatrick, County Down (pictured in feature image).

    Located about three kilometers from the historic town of Downpatrick in Down, Struell (derived from the Gaelic word tSruthail or stream) comprises two wells, two bathhouses and the ruins of a church. It is a remarkable archaeological site. The evidence from Struell strongly suggests that it was an important sacred site in pre-Christian times. It is not far from Saul where St. Patrick is said to have met Dichu in the fifth century and made his first convert.

    There are two roofed wells believed to have curative effects, the Drinking well and the Eye well. From the 17th century until the 1840s Struell was a popular place of pilgrimage. Today it still attracts people in search of cures and spiritual inspiration, and is an important stop on the St. Patrick Trail laid out by the Ulster tourism board.

    Swanlinbar, County Cavan

    In the 18th century people from England flocked to the three spa wells near the village of Swanlinbar, near the border with Fermanagh. Three wells had water rich in mineral trace elements and had a “rotten egg” taste and smell.

    A hotel located at the well in Gortoral hosted the health pilgrims, who were told that drinking the water would allay scurvy, depression and bad appetite. The rotten egg flavour comes from the sulphur content.

    Drumod well just south of Swanlinbar is still accessible and attracts visitors to this day. In his book about the mineral waters of Ireland above mentioned J. Rutty devoted many pages to the area of Swanlinbar and spread its fame around Britain and continental Europe.

    Ballyspellan Spa in County Kilkenny

    Ballyspellan Spa, about 20 kilometers from Kilkenny city, no longer exists, but the spring water that flows through the limestone-rich Clonmantagh hills is still available to visitors who know about the medicinal properties.

    There is a well near Johnstown village where people go to fill bottles with the water. In the early 18th century the gentry of Dublin and other towns made holiday visits. Rochfords’ Hotel nearby offered hospitality. Some of these well-heeled visitors enjoyed hunting foxes and hares, horse racing and dancing. Hurling was another attraction for whoever enjoyed the clash of the ash.

    The poet Thomas Sheridan wrote about the spa. The area was the birthplace of Dr. Ronan Tynan, a noted singer, bone setter and limb amputee. Long after the fashionable gentry ceased to spend their holidays in the area the well remained a summer focal point where locals congregated to drink the water and divert themselves with sports and pleasant conversation.

    St. Munn’s Well at Brownscastle in County Wexford

    Near Taghmon in County Wexford ‘patterns’ were held during the 18th century on the saint’s feast day 21st October. The waters at nearby St. Munn’s Bed were sought by pilgrims in search of cures for back ailments.

    Unfortunately, however, a lot of drunkness and fighting ensued from the partaking of strong poteen distilled in the hills and sold to pilgrims, and by the early 19th century the annual custom was banned by the clergy, but some locals continued visiting the place discreetly.

    In the mid-twentieth century two local men, Jack Sinnott and Christy Murphy drained and piped the vicinity and Seamus Seery with others built a footpath access so that the general public could visit without difficulty.

    Lisdoonvarna in County Clare

    The medicinal waters of Lisdoonvarna were first written about around 1740 and the gentry from far and wide began flocking to an area not far from Ennistymon in County Clare, where no village existed at the time.

    In the second half of the 19th century hotels were built and the precious waters, rich in sulphur and iron, were under the control of private owners. The Guthrie family built a pump house for dispensing the water, one prominent woman in the family being known as Biddy the Sulphur. A certain Dr. Westropp purchased the site and introduced baths. The main visiting season was in September when harvesting was complete. Several hotels and boarding houses competed for customers.

    Lisdoonvarna became associated with matchmaking as parents brought marriageable daughters on holidays there. Matchmaking festivals still take place, and many young people independently take trips to Lisdoonvarna in search of fun and friendship.

    Although I have never tasted the sulphur waters, Lisdoonvarna is important has a personal significance as it is the place where my parents met in the autumn of 1942: my mother visiting from Limerick and my father from more distant Kildare.

    Lisdoonvarna has attracted German and other young continentals seeking out pubs in Clare where traditional Irish music is to be heard. The popular song Lisdoonvarna was first sung by Christy Moore in the 1980s, and helped publicise the folk music festival. It is fair to say that drinking pints in ‘singing pubs’ is now more popular than ‘taking the waters’ among this age profile.

    Glencar Waterfall at Glencar Lough.

    Lesser Known Spa Waters in County Leitrim

    Several localities which are not well known nationally have water springs and wells that have been sought out by health connoisseurs.

    County Leitrim has sulphur and chalybeate (iron-rich) water sources. Around Sliabh and Iarainn (the iron mountain) overlooking Lough Allen in mid-Leitrim old ordinance maps indicate the presence of twenty spa wells, but hardly anybody visits the spots nowadays, although hillwalkers find the whole area overlooking Lough Allen attractive, and remains of old sweat houses can be found. In the Mohill district the neglected remains of a spa well rest obscurely on a private farm

    Drumsna in South Leitrim is reputed to have a number of sulphur streams, not universally prized by locals on account of the ‘rotten egg’ flavour and smell.

    One well in MacManus Cross, between Jamestown and Carrick-on-Shannon is still visited by individuals seeking water to cure worms in children and horses.

    Not far from Dromahair in North Leitrim is a little-known locality on the side of a wooded hill known as Derrybrisk (Doirebriosc in Gaelic, which suggests woodland with oak trees).

    Older inhabitants of Dromahair, Killenummery and Ballintogher remember sweet summer Sunday afternoons until the 1960s when people from the adjoining townlands and visitors from Sligo town, arriving on bicycles, congregated at Derrybrisk spa, as it was then known. Card playing and chatting was the point, not tasting the sulphur water. Farmers came to fill bottles of the sulphur-rich water and use as medicine for sick animals. The water, diluted in ordinary water, was also said to cure worms in young children.

    The advent of motorised transport and mass media such as radio and television seems to have brought these social afternoons to a halt. The spot is difficult to access today. Several farms in the Ballintogher area have streams tasting of sulphur, indicating that there is a lengthy vein of sulphrous limestone in the hills around.

    Modern medicine and improved diets have lessened the traditional appeal of medicinal waters, but folklorists and natural health enthusiasts hanker after the old ways.

    Leitrim largely missed out on the 19th century enthusiasm for taking the waters, but today the ‘forgotten county’ as it is sometimes termed, is ripe for a reimagined rural outdoor tourist industry.

    Hill walkers can be brought on guided trips to view the remains of archaeological sites and curiosities. Old abandoned sweat houses, spa wells, holy wells, dilapidated monastic sites, dolmens and abandoned mining projects – all these and some important War of Independence memorials invite domestic and foreign tourists.

    Craft whiskey and gin are among other spirit waters which have made an appearance. In Drumshanbo in mid-Leitrim Gunpowder Gin has proved to be a dynamite product for domestic and export consumption. Now if only a daring chemistry graduate would invent a novel sulphur water-based alcohol elixir, preferably with the rotten egg smell removed.

  • The Brick Wall: Access to Justice

    I’m living in cloud cuckoo land
    And this just feels like
    Spinning plates
    Radiohead, Like Spinning Plates, Amnesiac 2001.

    Ten years on from the Irish Banking Crisis and the subsequent taxpayer funded bailouts, how are we faring in term of regulating the financial sector?

    In view of the possibility of another property bubble, it is surely vital to ensure appropriate access to justice, especially for those with limited resources.

    Prior to the Crash, banks through their own internal regulatory mechanisms – including risk management and third party auditing firms – were, essentially, allowed to regulate their own affairs, which unfortunately permitted a lax regime.

    On a rare occasion that a risk manager signalled grave breaches of conduct to the Central Bank of Ireland – as in the case of whistle-blower Jonathan Sugarman – he was largely ignored. And, even though thanks to his revelations we know a great deal more than we would otherwise about widespread banking mis-conducts, Sugarman subsequently had his professional and personal life destroyed. That message is surely not lost on colleagues intending to pursue a similar course.

    Back then, inadequate regulatory frameworks allowed underestimation of risk and outright profiteering in the banking sector. Yet there are reasons to believe that, despite the successes boasted of by the regulators, thousands of people are still being failed by the State.

    Despite concerns being raised in February, 2021 by Sinn Fein deputy Pearse Doherty that “2,865 complaints to the Financial Ombudsman remain unsolved for over 12 months” very little attention has been paid in the media to enduring dysfunctions in consumer protection frameworks, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of consumers of financial services.

    Regulatory Capture

    Regulators come in two types: smart and dumb. The latter are more likely to make mistakes, and the market will learn about mistakes when firms squawk.
    Ernesto Dal Bó in the Oxford review of economic policy, Vol.22, NO.2

    Could this be a subtle example of so-called ‘regulatory capture’, which is said to occur when a particular industry holds an excessive level of influence over a statutory agency designed  to monitor and regulate it?

    Ernesto Dal Bó offers two interpretation of the phrase:

    According to the broad interpretation, regulatory capture is the process through which special interests affect state intervention in any of its forms, which can include areas as diverse as the setting of taxes, the choice of foreign or monetary policy, or the legislation affecting R&D.

    According to the narrow interpretation, regulatory capture is specifically the process through which regulated monopolies end up manipulating the state agencies that are supposed to control them.

    Either of these descriptions could easily be used to describe successive Irish government’s cosy relationship with foreign multinationals. Witness how in 2016 then Taoiseach Enda Kenny unashamedly set out Ireland’s stall as ‘the best small country to do business in’. Attracting financial service companies to a friendly, relatively unregulated, environment appears to remain high on the government’s agenda.

    But insofar as this is a legitimate goal, the way it is achieved, for example, by perpetuating dysfunctions in regulatory mechanisms, have grave consequences for the public at large, especially in terms of access to justice.

    Ombudsman

    One mechanism to provide access to justice is embodied in the role of the Ombudsman.

    This word come from Sweden where its first use is recorded in the 19th century. Meaning “Commission Man”, it involved oversight over the abuse of power by public administration. The position evolved with changing times and industries, to become globally adopted, assuming the part of an impartial mediator between individual complainants and large, well-resourced organizations.

    To give a simple example with a bit more context: what if you have a complaint against the misbehaviour of a credit institution with which you have a resulting outstanding debt?

    In Ireland, anyone in such a predicament can avail first of internal complaint procedures within the credit/insurance/pension providers. If this proves futile, as often seems to be the case, you can either go to the Financial Services and Pension Ombudsman (FSPO), or for the better-resourced, proceed directly to the courts.

    The FSPO was established in order to provide “an impartial, accessible, and responsive complaint resolution service that delivers fair, transparent and timely outcomes for all our customers, and enhances the financial services and pension environment.”

    It’s role is crucial in ensuring basic standards of consumer protection especially in a sector such as financial services, which bears significant responsibility for a dysfunctional property market

    This article is not disputing that the Office has fullfilled aspects of it’s responsabilities to date, and recognises the challanges of the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Office’s results are well presented in their annual digests of decisions, and were compellingly illustrated by the current Head of the FSPO, Ger Deering, in his Opening Statement to the Oireachtas Petitions Committee the 25th May 2021.

    What we are interrogating is why a large number of complaints, seem to have been closed in preliminary scrutiny on a narrow, legal interpretation of the Act. It is also unclear whether the FSPO is sufficiently staffed and organized to make use of the necessary banking knowledge in order to fulfil all its statutory duties.

    Boasting Figures

    Ben Hoey, an experienced ex-banker who founded Quartech services, a mortgage mis-selling advisory firm, has been assisting individuals with the filings of such complaints and has made us aware of some of the challenges encountered.

    Having submitted over fifty complaints over the last two year to the FSPO, as well as two FOI requests in June 2021 and most recently a judicial review, he also raises serious concerns over the ability of FSPO to carry out its duties.

    In an Opening Statement to the Oireachtas Petitions Committee, Mr Deering boasted: “In 2020, I am happy to report that, despite the challenges of the pandemic and remote working, we closed 6,193 complaints, an increase of 35% on 2019.”

    But thanks to Hoey’s FOI requests, we now know that 2,110 of these cases never entered the dispute resolution or investigation processes.

    Those numbers also slightly differ from the ones found in the annual report of 2020, and are presented in a way suggesting that 1,401 cases were actually sorted within a very short time frame.

    There are, undoubtedly, cases that were legitimately rejected as indicated in the Act. But in order to gain more detailed explanations for preliminary decisions, made in the first registration and assessment phase, the FOI requested documentation and records in relation to reasons for closure. Unfortunately, in this case the answer was ‘no records exist.’

    This is just the first stage of the complaint; the staff needs to interpret the Act and establish if the newly arrived complaint falls within the FSPO jurisdiction.

    It relies on training and guidance materials, which have also been released, and from this we see that when issues of jurisdiction arise, there is an over-reliance on the legal profession and a marked absence of the necessary banking expertise.

    In general, we know that if a complainant does not accept the preliminary rejection, and responds in writing, he or she receives a letter issued by the legal department. But in order to interpret and respond to this one would likely require legal advice.

    This doesn’t come cheap as the FSPO is well aware, since it spent €1.8m (46% of staff costs) on “Legal Fees” according to their 2020 accounts. By comparison the equivalent UK body filed no such expenses. Recall that the role of an Ombudsman is to be an impartial mediator between individual complainant and large, well-resourced organizations.

    Some of Ben Hoey’s clients received letters up to twenty-two pages long, containing dense legal terminology, supporting FSPO arguments not to investigate; rather than a professional financial analysis of the issue in question.

    Others have seen their complaints dragged out for years, stuck in the earliest phase of the “statutory complaints procedure”; which was established in order ‘to afford complainants an informal, expeditious and independent mechanism for the resolution of complaints.’

    From the point of view of some complainants, it feels as if the process of adjudication has been designed to keep their case out of the FSPO jurisdiction, thus keeping the number of cases that the Office investigates to a minimum.

    When the Financial and Pension Ombudsman positions were merged into their current form in 2018, the new organisation should have been structured, and staffed, to handle a increasing number of annual complaints. It appear from the latest annual report that this has been achieved, but when we get into the granular detail, we see that up to a third of these may have been inadequately handled.

    Given that a significant percentage of such disputes are in relation to mortgages and to a dysfunctional housing market, we can surely appreciate the importance of such an institution.

    The stigma attached to debt is a deep scar that afflicts many in an apparently prosperous country. Given that a level of responsibility lies with the lending industry, we should expect the Department of Finance to ensure that the relevant agencies such as the CBI and the FSPO that protect such individuals are adequately resourced.

    Yet the total count of full time employees of the FSPO is just 85 as of the end of 2021. That amounts to roughly twenty staff per million inhabitants in Ireland. By comparison, its counterpart in the UK employs double that with 3,000 staff, or approximately forty-four per million.

    A Stairway to Heaven

    Since Ger Deering was recently nominated by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Michael McGrath, to become Ombudsman and Information Commissioner, we expect that the position of Head of the FSPO will soon become vacant.

    We now have access to another FOI request providing insights into the recruitment of Ger Deering to the office in 2015/16, at a point when the Financial Services Ombudsman FSO and Pension Ombudsman were still separate bodies.

    A series of interviews were carried out with eight candidates on February 17-18, 2015 for the first round, and on February, 27, 2015 there were final interviews with the remaining three candidates, the “Board Members Guidelines” resembling a basic template for corporate hiring.

    All of the interviewers had impressive CV’s and expertise, including Mr John Hogan, then Head of Banking Policy for the Department of Finance and recently appointed as Secretary General.

    Revealingly, Hogan contributed to the “The Keane” Report on Residential Mortgage Arrears, which was criticised by Deputy Luke “Ming“ Flanaghan in 2011. The Report rules out the introduction of any scheme involving blanket debt forgiveness.

    Notably, the majority of complaints received by the FSPO pertained to financial and banking issues.  One would expect that any individual considered for that role – with powers to make legally binding decisions – would have extensive experience within the banking sector.

    By analogy, if one looks at the skills required of managers and other positions with supervisory roles, employed in the banking and insurance sectors that are imposed by the EU Single Supervisory Mechanism, we find clear guidelines in regard to required banking knowledge or one can even look up the job description for an FSPO Case Manager in PTSB.

    Yet in the advertised job description for The Financial and Pension Ombudsman we see theoretical banking or financial knowledge being “desirable” instead of “essential”, nor is there an examination process, beyond a standard interview.

    This is not to question Ger Deering’s managerial skills, nor his ability to adapt and learn, but when the job requires him to lead an oversight body over the banking, insurance and pension industries, his work experience is not what one would expect for the appointment.

    We know that the Office contains some banking expertise thanks to the qualifications of less senior staff, who have to deal with an enormous workload. But an appointment process for the top job focused on legal and managerial skills may perpetuate the current imbalance between the private and public sectors.

    In the forthcoming recruitment process for a position such as the FSPO, it is surely in the interest of the Department of Finance to appoint a person with more than generic managerial skills, and for some form of competitive examination to occur. Otherwise, it will be difficult to convince an increasingly sceptical Irish public that the government is genuinely intent on levelling the playing field between ordinary citizens and “too big to fail” corporations.

    Shared Responsibility

    One might say that appointing an ex-banker to the position creates a dangerous revolving door between banks and regulators, and is itself a recipe for regulatory capture. That argument is right to a point, but does not take into account that the necessary banking expertise might be found outside the banking industry itself, such as in auditing and accountancy firms; or by casting the net internationally to guarantee a greater degree of separation between the regulator and the regulated, especially in a small country such as Ireland.

    And, insofar as it is important to have sound legal advice, it is important that this is not set out in such a way as to intimidate complainants, and that the Office receives the same level of financial consultancy as the banks themselves.

    When we talk about consumer protection in the financial industry, we are really talking about the level field that the government promises, in relation to an industry administering one of the most powerful means of control, which is the complex socio-psychological phenomenon of debt.

    While some are celebrating that ‘The Boom is Back’, a significant proportion of the population is still struggling to overcome the effects that the previous boom and subsequent financial collapse actually brought; and, as in the period of austerity, the burden of bad choices is still carried almost exclusively by the most vulnerable and least resourced.

  • Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob

    In a quiet room, two men smoke hashish and discuss the inevitability of the Apocalypse. All the signs are apparent: unusual weather conditions, social unrest, unendurable suffering caused by poverty and war. Searching for a loophole, they weave theories of increasing complexity, involving Messiahs, the reversing of the Old Laws, and the triumph of the Feminine spirit. After a few more puffs, however, the older man’s ability to speak fails to keep pace with the increasing abstraction of his thoughts. He falls into a reverie, or perhaps merely sleep. Only he can tell which. The other man stays awake, watching his ideas play out in all their baroque intricacy and intensity, until he, too, is overcome by tiredness. The solution to the Apocalypse will have to wait for another day.

    Welcome to eighteenth century Poland, as imagined in Olga Tokarczuk’s recently translated novel The Books of Jacob. A work of historical fiction, it straddles genres. On one hand, the book is the fruit of painstaking historical research, with Tokarczuk claiming to have worked seven years on the text. On the other, the novel’s ability to engage relies on the way it imaginatively enters its historical personages lives, and weaves compelling characters, relationships, and plots from the gaps in the historical record. The reader is told this in one clause of the book’s stylishly verbose title:

    The Books of Jacob 

    Or

     A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, Five Languages, and Three Major Religions, Not Counting the Minor Sects.

    Told by the Dead, Supplemented by the Author, Drawing from a Range of Books, and Aided by Imagination, the Which Being the Greatest Natural Gift of Any Person.

    That the Wise Might Have It for a Record, That My Compatriots Reflect, Laypersons Gain Some Understanding, and Melancholy Souls Obtain Some Slight Enjoyment.

    The novel was originally published in 2014, and has been considered Tokarczuk’s masterpiece. In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, and in November 2021, an English translation by Jennifer Croft was published by Fitzcarraldo. Croft had previously translated another of Tokarczuk’s books, Flights, for which they shared the winning of the Man Booker International Prize in 2018.

    Olga Tokarczuk in 2019.

    Summary

    The book follows the emergence, peregrinations and eventual dissolution of a religious sect built around a charismatic leader by the name of Jacob Frank. The sect was composed mainly of Jews, mostly Polish in nationality, who broke from the mainstream Jewish community. They believed earnestly that the end was nigh, and Jacob Frank was the Messiah. Frank’s teachings consisted of homely expositions of esoteric Kabbalist theories, involving such things as a Trinity of four parts, and the notion that God created the world without being aware he was doing it.

    Frank led his followers into new territory not just in the world of ideas, but also in respect of their place in European society. As Jews in Poland, they were barred from owning property, taking noble titles, and were perpetually subjected to suspicion and animosity, especially in times of social unrest caused by wars and famines. Frank convinced his followers that it was necessary for them to be baptised as Catholics. A barrowload of theological argumentation was provided to justify this move, and the group maintained many aspects of their culture even after their conversion, including unique clothing, refusal to eat pork, and a preference for marrying within the group. The cynical question can’t be dismissed: to what extent was the sect’s religion a front for a social movement?

    Jewish wedding with klezmer band in a shtetl in Russia, painting by Isaak Asknaziy, 1893.

    Musings on Contemporary Applications

    Many commentators on this novel have noted that it speaks directly to our time, but few have been more specific in saying how. Marcel Theroux’s excellent review for The Guardian, for example, ends without developing the tantalising suggestion that the book, “which is so demanding and yet has so much to say about the issues that rack our times, will be a landmark in the life of any reader with the appetite to tackle it.” In the rest of this article, I would like to step away from the act of reviewing this book, and instead reflect on parallels with our current time.

    I propose three areas of comparison.

    1. The Nation State in Peril
    2. Popular Apocalyptic Sentiment
    3. Cults of Personality
    Administrative division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1789.

    The Nation State in Peril

    The Poland depicted in this novel is not the Poland of today, either in its geographical delineations nor, in many aspects, its culture. But the idea of such a nation stretches back to the eighteenth century.  

    In general those claiming to represent any nation like for its subjects to be obedient, to document themselves clearly for the State’s convenience, and to stay in one place. For these reasons perhaps the Irish state has long struggled to accommodate the Irish Travelling Community.

    This novel could be read as a meditation on the relationship between the nation and that which is ‘foreign’. After all, Jacob Frank’s last name is not a ‘real’ last name at all, but was a generic title applied to foreigners. Thus, Jacob Frank could be translated to ‘Jacob the Foreigner’. The group exists in a strange tension with Poland. Jacob doesn’t speak Polish, but still amasses a following in the country through his physical bearing, his charisma, and the compelling nature of his ideas in translation. Emerging from the Jewish community, and with theological ties to schools of thought widespread in the Middle East, the sect is both native and foreign at the same time. It comes from without, but gathers momentum because it speaks to a dissatisfaction within Polish society.

    Over the course of the book, the group ‘settles’ into a mode of being comfortable for the state. They stop being nomadic, they get baptised into the dominant religion, and they change their Jewish names to Catholic Polish ones. Jacob Frank tells his followers, “Everyone who seeks salvation must do three things: change his place of residence, change his name, and change his deeds.”(p. 229). Rather than solidifying the order of the nation state, as this action appears to do on the surface, it actually undermines the concept of nation by highlighting the fluidity of such markers of identity as one’s name, place of residence, religion etc.

    By definition, arising from the establishment of settled agriculture, a nation is opposed to nomadic forms of human culture. Nation states also tend to dislike groups with distinct languages or scripts. To be considered a good citizen, you should have one name, spelled one way, using no funny symbols, and you should never dare to change this. 

    The granting of land to the Frankists was not just to the sect’s interest, but was also greatly in that of the State’s. If the group held land, they would stop travelling around the country riling people up and gathering more converts. Moreover, it would be easier to keep an eye on them.

    As a member of a dominant religion, you conformed publicly with the society at large. You had your job, your Polish name, and  attended church. But in your own home, and in your smaller communal meetings, you discussed your true spiritual beliefs and worshipped in your own way.

    The freedom to practice one’s religion privately, without persecution or suppression by the state, is one which was hard won over the large few centuries. But in Jacob’s time, it was a primary issue, connected to what it means to live as an individual on a day to day basis.

    Reading the novel, I found my mind turning to the tension between private and public existence in our time. It seems to me that the division between public and private that may have existed in the eighteenth century is slowly being eroded in our own times. After all, surveillance is no longer something that happens in the street, but has now intruded into every facet of private life. Citizens keep voice-commanded devices in their bedrooms, their kitchens. We each carry around devices with camera that face both outwards to the world, and back at our faces, with microphones that record the words we speak. Our phones, without which modern life is difficult to manage (how will you get a job, stay in contact with friends, pay for your visits to the cafe?), have become an instrument of power that destroys the fragile barrier between public and private life. Without this barrier, will the possibility of quietly practicing non-dominant ways of life (religion, community, culture) be permitted for long? 

    In Catholic Poland of the eighteenth century, the Church and the state were intertwined. In Neoliberal Ireland of the twenty first century, the state is intwined with the interest of corporations.

    But the corporations have an edge. It is to companies like Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Google and Amazon that the vast majority of surveillance capitalism belongs, not the state. Google knows where I go on a day to day basis, what I buy, what music I listen to and what blogs I read, much more intimately than the state does. What does it mean for a non-elected body to have such power in a nation? Is it comparable to the power the Church had over the kingdoms of Medieval Europe? If Google ordered it, would Ireland join a Crusade?

    Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926), the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

    Popular Apocalyptic Sentiment

    It was reasonable for Europeans to feel apocalyptic two hundred years ago. There was terrible wealth disparity, with peasants and kings living side by side, social unrest, culminating in the French Revolution and a succession of natural disasters, like the Lisbon earthquake.

    It is fair to say that there is similar apocalyptic sentiment around today. Although the average standard of living is higher now than the average eighteenth century Polish peasant, the extent of wealth inequality has become absurd. In a globalised society sweat shop workers produce iPhones for the satisfaction of wealthy consumers who fantasise about building mansions on Mars, while the planet shudders under the weight of our cumulative impact.

    Natural disasters will always happen, but it is interesting to note our increasingly panicked reactions. Words like hellish and apocalyptic are bandied about when we see forests burn, amidst an increasingly sense that we are to blame. If we contrast this with an event like the Lisbon Earthquake, the reaction it evoked for many was to question the Divine plan. How could God allow such awful things to happen to Europeans?

    The Frankists believed that in the end times, the Messiah would come, and when this happened, all the old laws would be reversed and thrown away. It was this logic that allowed Frank’s followers to change their Jewish names, ignore all the rules for living laid out in the Talmud, and experiment with bizarre new (or, perhaps, archaic) modes of sexual behaviour. What changes in our culture will we see when a large enough percentage of the population truly accepts the possibility of apocalypse?

    North Korean poster featuring Kim Il-Sung.

    Cults of Personality

    Jacob is not the most intelligent character in this book. At the same time, he often downplayed his intelligence, calling himself a ‘simpleton’. The intellectual backbone of the Frankists were a group of older characters, deeply versed in Jewish scripture and Kabbalah. In their nightly discussions, they would provide the raw material to Jacob, who would then draw from this wisdom in his actions and speeches to the rest of the followers. 

    What Jacob had was charisma, above all else. He was like a magnet, drawing people to him through an invisible force. Without Jacob, the group had no coherent identity: a group of Jews who had forsaken their birth names, the teachings of the Talmud, and their homelands. The teachings of the group, too, had no unity apart from Jacob. It was, in effect, a cult of personality.

    There is an interesting passage near the end of the novel. In this scene, the stories of Jacob’s life are being recorded. Being old, and the revered head of a movement, the stories have become increasingly mythic in nature. But what strikes one observer is that the story of the Frankists as a group, and the story of Jacob’s individual life are intertwined.

    …the Lord tells his tales, and he and Jakubowski write them down, until out of these stories Jacob’s life starts to emerge – a life that is simultaneously the life of this ‘us’. (p. 86)

    Normally, we think of individualism and group-based living as being diametrically opposed. But here, they’re interdependent. But what does it mean for an individual to represent a group?

    People are always more persuasive than ideas. And it’s interesting how a charismatic personality can stimulate interest in esoteric ideas among people who would never have dreamed of engaging with such ideas otherwise. Just look at how many young men are now reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Carl Jung, and Dostoyevsky because of the viral popularity of Jordan Peterson. Or how many hipsters are reading Hegel because they like Zizek.

    This is not to be critical of reading Jung or Hegel, or to mock people for reading outside their comfort zone, but it is  notable that they mostly read Jung in the context of Jordan Peterson, or Hegel in reference to Slavoj Zizek. And these personalised forays into philosophy or psychology come with ideological baggage. 

    Slavoj Žižek, ©Basso CANNARSA Opale/Alamy Stock Photo

    A Peterson fan is likely to read Jung to find proof of the mystical solidity of the division between the Masculine and Feminine spirit, or the impenetrable irrefutability of biological determinism. A fan of Zizek will read Hegel, and, in all likelihood, understand very little, but will at least be more impressed and willing to listen to Zizek the next time they hear him speak, because clearly he understands things they do not…

    All this reference to authority has something medieval about it. In the Middle Ages, it was enough to say that Aquinas wrote something to take it for granted that it was true. There was a finite list of ‘authorities’ that you could quote with impunity. And it was considered appropriate to defer to such authorities than try to prove the truth of something by original argumentation.

    The scientific method broke with this, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. No, it said, we can’t take any ‘obvious’, ‘common sense’ truth for granted. We can’t hold anything true on the grounds of ‘authority’, because we no longer trust these powerful institutions like the Church and the State to tell us what is true and what isn’t. Let’s give power to the people! 

    A philosopher like Habermas would argue that this striving for objectivity, atomised and isolated from the rest of human knowledge, is fruitless. Truth arises as part of a conversation.

    In our own times, with information so freely available, but also requiring some conscious effort to sort the chaff from the grain, there has been an explosion of cults of personality. With its ability to present the human face in motion and voice in high definition, the internet, more so than even the radio (which had such a devastating role in boosting dictators in the twentieth century), allows for the easy transmission of charismatic personalities. 

    You could argue that this is the bookish side of the larger celebrity culture, but it’s worth paying attention to this phenomenon when you consider the extent to which popular discourse is driven by these popular thinkers, such as:

    •  Jordan Peterson
    • Slavoj Zizek
    • Sam Harris
    • Ben Shapiro
    • Christopher Hitchens

    Note: Having a cult of personality isn’t necessarily a damning judgment on the individual in question. It just seems to be the way the internet works at present.

    Note 2: Isn’t it interesting that all these people are male?

    Jordan Peterson. Image by Gage Skidmore.

    Many of these popular thinkers are not true intellectuals. They often speak in vague statements. They contradict themselves etc. But this may be part of the charm. In The Books of Jacob, Tokarczuk describes the effect Jacob has on crowds:

    …he makes quite the ruckus, with his strange gestures and the odd things that come out of his mouth. He speaks so enigmatically that it’s hard to figure out what he means. That’s why people stay together for a long time after he leaves, trying to interpret for themselves and one another the words of this Frank, this foreigner. What did he say? In some sense, each can only understand it all as best as he can, in his own way. (pp. 639-638)

    This doesn’t sound dissimilar from the comments section on a Jordan Peterson lecture.

    These figures mostly appeal on the level of personality. Their fans don’t care if they are not the most intellectually sophisticated thinker in the academy. They’re engaged more on the level of watching somebody they like and admire, such as a friend, grapple with issues that they feel effect them. And of course, this being a cult of personality, they identify with these figures. Ben Shapiro is a knight, a hero, valiantly slaying the libs for ‘our’ sake. These figures gain support and popularity by virtue of being ‘on our side’. Even if they don’t identify with the group, they can win support by scoring argumentative points against one of the group’s enemies. Thus, Jordan Peterson was admired by many neofascists, despite his denouncement of that viewpoint, because he criticised the culture of ‘wokeness’ on so many occasions. 

    Perhaps these popular figures are tapping into the archetype of the prophet? A figure who speaks enigmatically but urgently, calling for us to change our ways before it’s too late. In a neoliberal system that seems impervious to innovation unless it is in order to exploit the planet and human beings more brutally; it’s thus understandable that there’s a thirst for a powerful voice of urgency among young people. This is what the movie Don’t Look Up primarily conveys: a sense of powerlessness, of not being heard when the apocalypse is so painstakingly obvious.

    Lay It to Rest, Lad

    In a room bothered by the noise of traffic, two men quietly smoke hashish. They speak of the imminent apocalypse. All the signs are there: natural disasters, odd weather conditions, vast wealth inequality, the strong preying on the weak. They weave intricate theories, drawing from the half-baked ideas of internet grifters. The sun sets, but the light of the screens stay on. Sleep will not come soon.

    Featured Image: Hendrick ter Brugghen, Esau Selling His Birthright, c. 1627.

  • Musician of the Month: Hugo Vasco Reis

    The process of discovering sounds has always been an aspect of music I’ve been connected to, even when I wasn’t aware of its potential and possibilities. During childhood and adolescence, I experimented with instruments, recorded and improvised. It was a somewhat chaotic, intuitive process without pretensions.

    In my early teens my parents offered me a classical guitar and a few weeks later a friend lent me an electric one. With these instruments, my conscious interest in music really began. I mostly listened to heavy metal bands.

    I began subscribing to guitar magazines, mainly from Germany and the United States, with exercises by Steve Vai and Joe Satriani, and spent hours listening to the solos of Metallica and other bands I liked.

    When I went to university to study civil engineering in Porto, Portugal, in addition to academic studies, I attended to the Porto Jazz School (electric guitar) and later the Conservatory of Music of Porto (Portuguese guitar – the instrument I play currently).

    I completed the civil engineering course and worked for seven years in this sector. During this period, I was always connected to music, but the time came when I decided to reduce my engineering activity and dedicate myself fully to music.

    I wanted to deepen my knowledge in composition. So I moved from Porto to Lisbon to study composition at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. During this time, I studied contemporary music during the day, and played Portuguese guitar in Fado houses at night. The musical scope was very wide, as these two musical universes have many differences. Sometimes I had difficulty dealing with it but on the other hand it was also an effective way of not being absorbed in the same music all the time.

    After that I studied for a Master in composition in Switzerland with Isabel Mundry at the Zurich University of Arts, with a scholarship from the Fondation Nicati-de Luze, and in Germany with Stefan Prins and Mark André at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden.

    I also had private classes and masterclasses with composers Toshio Hosokawa, Chaya Czernowin, Hans Tutschku, Dieter Ammann, Franck Bedrossian, Zigmunt Krauze, Åke Parmerud, Carola Bauckholt, Klaus Lang, Peter Ablinger, among others.

    During my studies in composition, I investigated different forms of musical creation, their relationship with other arts, and had my works performed. It was a new and exciting world.

    Currently, I’m working on contemporary music daily and methodically, which implies research, listening, reading and trans-disciplinarity. I’m based in Zurich (Switzerland) and Porto (Portugal), and travelling regularly around Europe to collaborate with musicians, ensembles, fine and visual artists performing and recording my works. I’m also researching on surrounding sounds: from figuration to deformation.

    Website: www.hugovascoreis.com

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hugo_vasco_reis/

    Bandcamp: https://hugovascoreis.bandcamp.com/

    Cover artwork by Yari Ostovany

    About New Album: “Voices and Landscapes”

    “Voices and Landscapes” is an album that includes five works, composed for different instrumentations, in which the voice is the common element, present in all the pieces.

    The central theme of this album is the landscape, which led me to research diversified sounds ranging from nature to urban places, totally shaped by human action. I was also influenced by poems by Antero de Quental and Fernando Pessoa.

    The work was supported by Ministry of Culture of Portugal, DGArtes, SPAutores and Antena 2 (Portuguese classical radio).

    Programme Notes

    ‘Some Lines Mixing a Color’

    for soprano, saxophone, accordion, viola and violoncello

    performed by Síntese GMC

    ‘Some Lines Mixing a Color’ is a work that started from a photograph taken by the composer during a rigorous winter day, where the dense fog covered the shapes of nature. This piece addresses the influence of the invisible in relation to the human perception of the image. By mediating the image with the sound, dense lines and random structures were created, that coexist in the same space with fine lines and organized sound material, leading perception and memory to different places, in a dialogue of counterpoint, gestures, intuition and events, which shape time and form.

    listen here: https://hugovascoreis.bandcamp.com/track/some-lines-mixing-a-color

    Fernando Pessoa em pintura de Bottelho

    ‘Paisagens, Quero-as Comigo’

    for flute, clarinet, percussion, harp, piano, mezzo-soprano, violin, viola and violoncello

    Performed by Grupo de Música Contemporânea de Lisboa

    Conducted by Pedro Neves

    Based on the poem ‘Paisagens, Quero-as Comigo’ by Fernando Pessoa, this is a work composed for an ensemble of nine musicians. “Landscapes, I want them with me / Landscapes, pictures that are… / Waving wheat laurel, / Sun beacons that I follow, / Bad sky, reeds, solitude… / Some by the hand of God, / Others by the hands of fairies, / Others by chance of mine, / Others by memories given… / Landscapes… Memories, / Because even what you see / With first impressions / At some point was what it is, / In the cycle of sensations. / Landscapes… Anyway, the content / Of what is here is the street / Where the good sun of torpor / That insinuates in my soul / I don’t see anything better.” by Fernando Pessoa.

    listen here

    https://hugovascoreis.bandcamp.com/track/paisagens-quero-as-comigo

    ‘Sleeping Landscapes’

    for choir

    Performed by Nova Era Vocal Ensemble

    Conducted by João Barros

    ‘Sleeping Landscapes’ is a piece for choir inspired by excerpts from poems by Bernardo Soares, taken from Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet). It was composed in Tronco, a small village in the municipality of Chaves (Portugal), where contact with the natural landscape is permanent and, at times, because it feels so original, it seems to be asleep.

    I came from prodigious lands, from landscapes more beautiful than life itself, but I never spoke of those lands, except to myself, and told no one of the landscapes glimpsed in dreams. … I see my dreamed landscapes as clearly as I see the real ones. When I lean over to look into my dreams, I am leaning over something real. When I see life passing, I am also dreaming something.
    Bernardo Soares.

    listen here:

    https://hugovascoreis.bandcamp.com/track/sleeping-landscapes

    Photograph of Antero de Quental, c. 1887.

    ‘Oceano Nox’

    for soprano, flute, violoncello and piano

    Performed by Borealis Ensemble

    Based on the poem ‘Oceano Nox’ by Antero de Quental, this is a work composed for a chamber group that includes soprano, bass flute, cello and piano, where gestures, timbre, the phenomenon of object/event and transformation of sound through resonance are the criteria that mediate the poem and the sound. “Beside the sea, which hoarsely sent its great / The tragic voice to landward, while the wind / It passed like the flight of a thought / Which seeks and hesitates, restless and intermittent, / Beside the sea I sate disconsolate, / Scanning the sullen sky with mist-clouds lined, / And, in my revery, questioned the lament / That rose from things, vaguely… / What restless whim disquiets you, / O forces obscure, and beings that begin to be? / What thought is that which moves you in your courses? / But from the vast horizon, where doth hide / Forever the Unconscious, comes to me / A roar, a distant plaint, and naught beside…” by Antero de Quental.

    listen here:

    https://hugovascoreis.bandcamp.com/track/oceano-nox

    ‘Polyphonic Mass’

    for speaking voices and electronics

    Performed by Hugo Vasco Reis and Choir of Native Speakers

    ‘Polyphonic Mass’ is a work of field recordings that aims to investigate and understand the properties of common sounds we hear in everyday life, which, in principle, are neglected, as they do not assume a major importance in our hearing. These field recordings are also an opportunity to create a distancing from traditional patterns, looking for a different plan to work the sound and make the collected material detach from a image or situation in particular, joining sounds that are apparently unrelated. The perception of neglected sounds creates a status quo phenomenon, as a criterion for the creation of this work, which goes from figuration to sound deformation. Thus, elements of a present time and a place, or several places, are combined, which convey the fragility of everyday situations, their ritualization, polyphony, impulse, density and prosody as elements of musical discourse.

    listen here:

    https://hugovascoreis.bandcamp.com/track/polyphonic-mass

  • The Perpetual Villa

    “Il y a longtemps,” I repeated. “A long time ago.” My French felt clumsier every minute.

    Renard Busquet, leading me through the pearl-gray dimness of the silent east wing, let his own native Poitevin French drop like a thin stream of Vouvray wine. “A long time… Tell me again how your honored ancestor sat in the back lawn.”

    “It was in 1871,” I recounted. (Busquet twisted the glass knob of the glass-paned door without a sound, and held it open for me, smiling amiably.) “―In 1871, my great-great-grandfather, Florian Busquet, was nineteen. He had made up his mind; he would not remain in Poitier, as his brothers and fathers, everyone in his family, had done from the time the family first received its arms from Charles VIII; he would go to America. He knew no trade; he had nothing but the small sum his father (your great-great-grandfather, recall, Monsieur) would settle on him; nothing but those francs and his own youth and boundless optimism.”

    Renard led the way across a pavement of terra-cotta-colored bricks. I had never seen such bricks, let alone been in France; and yet the remarkably clean, peach-hued bricks, tightly fitted without a weed or even traces of moss in between, gave me a fleeting sense of familiarity. “―It was evening,” I continued. “The evening of his last day at Villa Busquet, where he, and his father before him, and his father, were born and raised… dinner was over, and the family were sitting on rattan chairs on the back lawn. My great-great-grandfather’s older brother, the heir, Phillippe… always sat with his legs crossed; my great-great-grandfather remembered clearly every detail of the scene, the last time he saw his family, in the setting of their beautiful home. Phillippe sat with his legs crossed. The rattan table…”

    Renard gestured with an unhurried hand to the rattan chairs set on the uneven grass. “Take a chair, take a chair. Ah yes, Phillippe sat with his hands crossed, and the table…”

    He, the current heir of Busquet, sat down and crossed his legs. “Do go on!”

    “My grandfather was seated nearest to the terrace,” I said. “Then a funny thing happened. The dog… a little foxhound with plumy ears and tail, which they called Charlot, came around the corner of the house, just over there. He was carrying…”

    A small, energetic shape rounded the corner of the conservatory. A foxhound pelted gaily toward us, its feathery ears and tail waving; it bounded up to Renard’s legs, and―horrors!―it was carrying a very large, bloody rat.

    “Charlot!” scolded Renard. “Put that down, at once! Get away with you, ridiculous animal!”

    I could not have moved if Charlot had shoved the rat in my face.

    As Charlot slunk off with his quarry, the slim Poitevin, seated in the rattan chair with his legs crossed, invited mildly, “You were saying?”

    “Charlot was carrying a rat,” I managed, after a moment. “The ancient Charlot. In 1871. He carried a rat up to my great-great-uncle Phillippe, who was sitting with crossed legs, just there―”

    “I am told it is a family trait,” said Renard; he did not uncross his comfortable limbs. “Every foxhound here is called Charlot.”

    I did not tell him the rest of that scene, which my great-great-grandfather had remembered and recounted nostalgically so many times. What need was there to describe the rattan table with a plate of biscuits, the uneven turf and emerald-colored short grass, the myrtle trees and the cuckoos, or Phillippe’s graceful, deliberate figure―when they were all before me?

    I had thought all my life that I understood why Florian Busquet had left the Old World; but now I felt at my core his nauseous urgency, to escape the vacuum, the place without time.

    I had thought all my life that I understood why Phillipe Busquet had remained in the Old World; but now I felt at my core the overpowering seduction of the place without time.

    My cousin smiled amiably, and I was motionless in my chair, pulled in half.

    Feature Image: an Arcachon villa or Arcachonnaise.

  • The Fight for Water in a Thirsty World

    La Soif Du Monde (‘A Thirsty World’) and ‘The Fight for Water: A Farm Worker Struggle’ were two 2012 documentaries based on true stories, anticipating further struggles for water, or lack thereof.

    Environmentalist Erik Stokstad once remarked that ‘H2O – is there any other molecule so vital, and so problematic, for people?

    The UN estimates that around 1.2 billion people, or 20 per cent of the world’s population, live in areas where the limits of sustainable water use have already either been reached, or breached. It is high time the issue sits as a priority on the global agenda. There may still be enough for us all, if only we can keep it clean and share it.

    WHO Report

    Below are a few takeaways from a World Health Organization report on the global water scenario:

    • In 2017, 5.3 billion people used a safely managed drinking-water service (i.e., one located on-premises and free from contamination)
    • 6.8 billion people used at least a basic service. Basic service is an improved drinking-water source, within a round trip of 30 minutes, to collect water.
    • 785 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water.
    • About 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces.
    • Contaminated water can transmit diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio. Contaminated drinking water is estimated to cause 485 000 diarrheal deaths each year.
    • By 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.
    • In the least developed countries, 22% of health care facilities have no water service, 21% no sanitation service, and 22% no waste management service.

    Water use has been increasing globally by about 1% every year since the 1980s. This is due to population growth, socio-economic development and changing consumption patterns. Global water demand is set to rise at a similar pace until 2050, accounting for an increase of 20-30% above the current level of use with increased demand from both industrial and domestic sectors.

    About two billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and four billion people experience severe water scarcity for at least a month every year.

    Water stress is defined as the ratio between water withdrawals (i.e., domestic, agricultural, and industrial water uses) and available renewable water supplies.

    Water scarcity means scarce availability (i.e., physical shortage) due to the failure of institutions to ensure a regular supply or due to a lack of adequate infrastructure. Safe drinking water and sanitation are basic human rights, indispensable to sustaining healthy livelihoods and fundamental to maintaining the dignity of all human beings.

    International Human Rights law obliges states to work towards achieving universal access to water and sanitation for all, without discrimination, while prioritizing those most in need. Fulfilment requires that services be safely available, physically accessible, equitably affordable. Water availability depends upon the amount of water physically available, and also how it is stored, managed and allocated to various users.

    It, therefore, relates to surface water and groundwater management, alongside water recycling and reuse. Water management for smallholder family farmers needs to consider both rainfed and irrigated agriculture. Approximately 80% of global cropland is rainfed, and 60% of the world’s food is produced on rainfed land.

    The 2019 UN-Water initiative called ‘Leaving No One Behind’ suggested how improvements in water resources management and access to water supply and sanitation services are essential to addressing various social and economic inequities. Water scarcity is entwined with environmental protection, poverty alleviation and promoting development; globally more than 2.5 billion people live in the most abysmal standards of hygiene and sanitation.

    Wastage of water and absence of regular clean water supply is evident not only in burgeoning metropolises but also in huge rural regions. The mighty Colorado river, North America, seldom meets the sea. One-third of the US and one-fifth of Spain still suffer from water stress. Central Africa’s Lake Chad, supporting thirty million-plus people has already shrunk to one-tenth of its former size, the negative contributory factors include inter alia climate change, drought, poor management and overuse.

    South Asian woman carrying water on her head, 2016.

    India

    In India accessibility to drinking water has increased considerably over the last decade in particular. However, around 10 per cent of the rural and urban populations still don’t have access to regular safe drinking water.

    The available annual utilizable water in the country (surface as well as ground) stands at 1100b cubic meters.

    World Bank data shows that the total cost of environmental damage in India amounts to 4.5 per cent of GDP and of this 59 per cent results from the health impact of water pollution!

    Another cause of anxiety is that unsatisfactory availability of safe drinking water. Though water contains organic and inorganic impurities, the main source of diseases are the organic impurities that enter into the water through the soil from cesspools, through manure, or through sewers emptying their contents into the rivers – from which many cities, in particular, get their drinking water supply.

    Additionally, inadequate home piping systems including unclean water tanks, improper drainage, and waste disposal systems, also contribute to impure or contaminated water. Again, the presence of excessive inorganic matters (iron, lead salts, etc.) leads to diseases like constipation, dyspepsia, colic, paralysis, and kidney disease, sometimes resulting in death. Dangerous bacteria produce deadly diseases of jaundice, cholera, typhoid, diphtheria, kidney problems, nervous system problems and even lead to an increased risk of cancer.

    Contrary to popular perception, the hardness of water is not a risk to health so long it does not contain disease-causing pathogens and bacteria. Especially, during summer and rainy seasons, the position goes from bad to worse, as water-borne diseases become rampant. The extreme heat and humid environments are favourable to bacteria. The immediate need is thus to invest in timely, reliable, proven and advanced water purification systems[xiv] that guarantees the public safe and pure drinking water at all times.

    Efforts to enhance drinking water supply must move at a greater speed so as to cover all of the villages in the developing bloc with adequate potable water connection and supply.

    Technology plays a vital role in terms of meeting people’s basic needs in a sustained manner. Naturally, protecting freshwater reserves, watershed development, chemical treatments following the safety norms, tackling the arsenic and fluoride contamination, among others, could offer rich dividends.

    Strategies for Managing Water

    The former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon once said:

    we need to begin thinking about better strategies for managing water – for using it efficiently and sharing it fairly. This means partnerships involving not just governments but civil society groups, individuals and businesses.

    This is a realistic approach, which is not achieved by hiding in conference rooms and observing world water day.

    Responsibility lies with both government and the private sector, and involves: checking the unrestricted exploitation of groundwater; encouraging planned urbanization; optimisation of use; restricting the flow of effluents from industrial units to the rivers, with stricter governance.

    We must nurture new scientific knowledge in order to understand the evolution of water systems that involve the relationship between man and nature. But also integrate local knowledge into scientific research to address user needs, and put in place more effective mechanisms to translate scientific knowledge into societal action.

    The challenges of addressing the water-food-climate-change-nexus could be mitigated if collaborative approaches are taken up, which depend on political will, market mechanisms and innovative technology.

    For example, market forces could work well under a cap-and-trade approach similar to those applied to carbon dioxide. Creating mechanisms for market forces to play a role in the management of scarce water could be a major leap forward.

    Developing an inclusive institutional structure to establish multi-stakeholder dialogue and cooperation is essential to ensuring equitable access to sustainable water supply and sanitation services.

    When governments’ roles are geared towards policy setting and regulation, the actual provision of services is carried out by non-state actors or independent departments. Well-functioning accountability mechanisms help institutions with sufficient capacity fulfil their mandates to monitor and enforce the obligations of the service providers.[xvi]

    Girls of squatter settlement in Dharan collect water from river.

    Towards a Sustainable and Efficient Water Resource Strategy

    Every year, several millions of people die from drinking contaminated water. To help address these challenges related to freshwater, scientists in many disciplines are applying new tools and techniques. One way has been to understand the impact of climate change on water quantity and quality and predict future needs and threats. Another way has been to explore making use of water—for drinking or industrial purposes—from sources that are otherwise considered unusable.

    An emerging area is the ecological impact of activities related to the energy industry such as fracking or carbon sequestration. Other researchers are trying to increase the efficiency of farms and factories – the biggest consumers. Water scarcity already poses a great threat to economic growth, human rights and national security.

    Deforestation of the Madagascar Highland Plateau has led to extensive siltation and unstable flows.

    A Global Phenomenon requiring Local action – a ‘Glocal’ focus for the road ahead!

    Water recycling and finding better ways to remove salt from seawater could be of key importance. Population growth could cause global demand for water to outpace supply by mid-century if current levels of consumption continue, according to a recent study.

    Periods of increased demand for water – often coinciding with population growth or other major demographic and social changes – were followed by periods of rapid innovation of new water technologies that helped end or ease any shortages.

    Using a delayed-feedback mathematical model that analyses historic data to help project future trends, some studies have identified a regularly recurring pattern of global water use in recent centuries. Based on this recurring pattern, researchers from Duke University predict a similar period of innovation could occur in the coming decades.

    There is thus an immediate need to invest in a reliable, proven and advanced water purification system that guarantees the public – in both rural and urban areas – safe and pure drinking water at all times.

    State of the art technology must be extensively made use of in a time-bound manner to protect the triple bottom (planet, people, profit)[i] from threats emanating from various forms of pollution.

    PROACTIVE over REACTIVE use of water technologies

    It is worth noting that companies are proactively taking initiatives and are stepping up steadily. One company called Ecolab intends to further leverage lot and machine learning to enhance its proactive services to ensure water is conserved and available to both businesses and the communities they operate in.

    They have provided their service to about 40,000 customers in more than 170 countries around the world to maximize available resources. There is a positive impact on process efficiency too.

    Hopefully, the next-generation 3D TRASAR technology reduces reuses and recycles water. The technology can not only monitor the water usage at a customer’s site and alert us should it get out of control, but it can also take remedial actions based on the stress levels on the systems, and induce chemicals or reduce water usage to maximize the life of the asset and minimize usage.

    People collect clean drinking water from a tapstand in the town of Ghari Kharo, in western Sindh Province in Pakistan.

    Population Growth

    Population growth puts strain on the per capita availability of water. In the developing world, efforts to enhance drinking water supply must move at a greater speed so as to cover all of the villages with adequate potable water connection/supply.

    New technology should play a bigger role in such a context to meet people’s basic needs in a sustainable manner. Naturally, protecting freshwater reserves, watershed development, chemical treatments following the safety norms, tackling the arsenic and fluoride contamination, among others, could also offer rich dividends for private companies.

    Water limits are close to being breached in several countries, while food output has to increase by up to 100 per cent by 2050 to sustain a growing world population, according to the United Nations.

    We must holistically manage water and energy usage. Further efforts must be intensified to maximize the use of technology in order to proactively conserve water and improve performance in water-intensive industries.

    A progressive, realistic plan should therefore focus on:

    (A) improving data collection on the location and types of water resources.

    (B) promoting water-saving farming technologies.

    (C) developing sewage treatment facilities alongside water projects.

    (D) establishing a national monitoring body and a new legal framework for the sector.

    As we can’t expand in a quantitative sense, we have to expand by using our water more carefully.

    Feature Image: Abandoned ship near Aral, Kazakhstan.

  • Lessons from the Great Depression (II)

    Ger-mania…

    Extraordinarily, Germany appears on the brink of following the lead of Austria in mandating a vaccination against COVID-19, as segregation of the unvaccinated continues. We seem to have entered what Gore Vidal described as the United States of Amnesia, as all history is forgotten. So let us cast our mind back.

    I maintain the German Weimar Republic (1919-1933), more than even the U.S. Great Depression, remains the emblem of our age. The comparison is not exact of course, as all analogies break down through the shifting sands of time, but it is useful to review the literature of that period and draw parallels.

    After World War I, when misguided reparations, and a war guilt clause, were inflicted by the victors – with the French and Clemenceau in particular in the driving seat – Germany was crippled with war debts, but crept along until the banking collapse. The period up to 1929 and shortly afterwards was a triumph against great odds of a fledgling social democracy: the Weimar Republic.

    The period is associated with great creativity, and indeed became a synonym for decadence and sexual libertarianism, which made it a soft target for Nazi thuggery. The bonfire of the vanities and the burning of the books was the fascist exhalation of degenerate art.

    Likewise our own Age of Austerity in the wake of the Financial Crisis of 08 has destablised the social and economic structures. We also have had a period of relative freedom, despite the economic pain, but now operate in most countries under a grinding authoritarianism in the face of collapsing health care systems corroded by decades of neoliberalism.

    A begging disabled WW I veteran (Berlin, 1923).

    Tomorrow Belongs to Me

    The Bob Fosse film ‘Cabaret’ (1972) has the fictionally represented Christopher Isherwood in Weimar times represented as leaving Berlin after he hears the Nazi youth sing ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, one of the most chilling songs in a popular film ever recorded; an even more sinister version of the Horst Wessel Song.

    In fact, in the book Goodbye to Berlin (1939) nothing quite as dramatic as that epiphany occurs, just the sense of the persecution of the Jewish community, Communists, dissidents and degenerate races in a sedulous and incremental fashion. This was a fascist authoritarian creep as economic destruction creates victims, but also the externalisation of hatred. The demonisation and demonetisation of the other, crucial also in our own age of unfettered rage and lack of moderation.

    Bertolt Brecht

    The Aesthetics of Resistance

    Peter Weiss made a similar point in his after the event masterpiece, The Aesthetics of Resistance, where in cold retrospect he saw how those with idealism were destroyed.  His masterpiece of memory ends with the execution of his comrades in the Frankfurt Trials; executed and left to hang on fishhooks.

    Bertolt Brecht also saw in genesis and with mystical precision the bloodletting to come in The Threepenny Opera:

    When the shark bites with his teeth dear
    Scarlet billows start to spread
    Fancy gloves though wears Macbeth dear
    So there is not a trace of red

    Now again many want no trace of red. Just bright blue colours. No shades of grey just sanctimonious conservatism.

    The sense of unfolding chaos at the effects of the Great Depression in Germany is well documented in Victor Klemperer’s diary Let Us Bear Witness dating from 1933. He was peculiarly well placed with a protected Christian wife and a Jewish convert to Christianity. Dismissed from his job; furloughed but not sent to a Concentration Camp.

    The rise of fascism was a consequence, then and now, of economic collapse and that is the difference between the American Depression and the German equivalent, but it was a narrow escape for America.

    Roosevelt as a social democrat saved America. but as Philip Roth’s excursus in counter-factual history amply demonstrates there was no shortage of fascist demagogues who could have unseated him, including the folk hero Charles Lindberg. Such is The Plot Against America, where a fascist becomes President. Not then of course, but now?

    But that is getting ahead of ourselves to the endgame. Let us at least anticipate and make plans in the light of a project endgame called The Great Reset, a phrase unerring close to the great leap forward as we enter Chinese corporate feudal times.

    The sense of impending chaos in the Weimar Republic is also well documented by caricaturists such as George Grosz, Otto Dix, and others, many of whose greatest paintings hang as a reminder in Berlin.

    If you look at Grosz’s inelegantly titled Pillars of Society (1926), with the subtitle Shit for Brains, you will see one of the paragons of virtue. It anticipates disaster as the economy collapsed, and the Nazi judges and commissars who would work hand in glove with their jackboot associates.

    Ripe for Collapse

    On its current trajectory, the EU, as Varoufakis recently indicated, is likely to collapse, sooner rather than later, with a pan-Germanic latter day Hanseatic League altready taking its place. Few should mourn it in Ireland and Greece where the social structure has been destroyed through the impoverishment of large cohorts of the population who have falled into homelessness. Ireland is now controlled by hedge funds as a kind of sub-Indonesian corporate client state.

    And what do corporate judges, bankers, lawyers, and politicians do? Well, enforce further austerity in the shape of lockdowns on a docile and far too accepting population. Socially distanced and self-isolated for the near future without a prospect of stability, a sustainable living structure, or affordable rent or housing.

    And what does Weimar art reveal about intellectuals? That they are useless panderers. The paintings of Otto Dix perfectly captures bohemian delirium and ineffectiveness.

    In effect our contemporary consensus neoliberal spouters are spectators on a society falling apart; the collective fiddling as Rome burns. McWilliams in his wine bar.

    So, hand in glove with economic collapse we witness the destruction of the very concept of human rights. The seepage of emergency powers and executive action, documented in the eariler period by the great jurist Carl Schmidt, with disproportionate and excessive measures. Just as the Reichstag fire was used to end democracy in Germany.

    As far as social and economic rights and Weimar was a disaster. Banknote were printed in billion increments with which you could barely buy a loaf of bread.

    Berlin Alexanderplatz

    Perhaps the greatest German novel of the Depression era is Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, although his neglected earlier novel Mountains Oceans Giants also presages our times, with its harbingers of environmental collapse.

    Döblin also utilises other 1920s anxieties — Malthus, Suffragettes, miscegenation, decolonization — onto the 27th century where Europe is under siege from “hordes” of migrants “flooding” from the Global South. “India-China-Japan” rises as a rival bloc to the New York-London “Anglo-Saxon Imperium,” while fierce clans of women find success in an “unending struggle against patriarchy,” even preferring “taboo” relationships with the alien migrants.

    Science fiction then but becoming recognisable today. The demonisation and demonetisation of others and the migrant. Not one of us.

    Berlin Alexanderplatz was dramatized by Werner Fassbinder in the peritectic chronicle of its everyman German Franz Bide Kopf, convict, pimp, worker; through the swathes of the Weimar republic.

    It is at one level a chronicle of our own time. Dubious associations, flirting with fascism and in passages most relevant and redolent, a panegyric against erstwhile Communist friends, which shows how the everyman is seduced by Utopian ideals:

    We’ve got to have order, order, I’m telling you, order—and put that in your pipes and smoke it, order and nothing else . . . and if anybody comes and starts a revolution now and don’t leave us in peace, they ought to be strung up all along the street . . . then they’ll get theirs, when they swing, yes, sir. You might remember that whatever you do, you criminals.

    Law and Order the totalitarian clarion call. The most important passages are the slaughterhouse and abattoir scenes, which are most unsettling and relevant to our times. Equating the costing of microscopic slaughter of the animals with human slaughter. The expiration of man and beast, or cost-benefit analysis of life. Compulsory vaccination for the herd.

    The Weimar Republic echoes through the ages. and Germany is reverting primitively and Gothically. Atavistic tendencies can be seen with the arrival of compulsory vaccination and vaccine segregation. Austerity unleased dark forces, and there is no genuine social democratic corrective in sight. The Weimar republic ripples through the ages.

    Feature Image: Joseph Goebbels views the Degenerate Art Exhibition.

  • The Good Terrorist

    Even if these operations are shocking revelations to those who have a romantic notion of the past then the risk of their disillusionment is worth the price of finally exposing the hypocrisy of those in the establishment who rest self-righteously on the rewards of those who in yesteryear’s freedom struggle made the supreme sacrifice.
    Sinn Féin Pamphlet, The Good Old IRA, 1985.

    It’s fair to say we shouldn’t apply the same judgment to people of the past as we do to our contemporaries. Throughout history, men and women have been conditioned to live and think in ways quite alien to prevailing sensibilities. Looking back into pre-history, we find infanticide commonly practised by hunter-gatherer communities, probably to ensure collective survival.

    Many Irish people in the 1930s supported either Fascism in Italy and Germany, or Communist Russia, without being acutely aware of what was happening under those regimes; let alone what would happen during World War II, and beyond.

    At that point democracy seemed in global retreat, as a civilisation-defining war loomed between two rival systems, while the surviving democracies contended with a Great Depression that suggested an inherently dysfunctional capitalist system. A person might reasonably be attracted to a radical alternative, however horrifying these totalitarian systems may appear to us now.

    Arguably the best did not lose their moral scruples – or democratic values – albeit they may have lost ‘all conviction,’ as Yeats anticipated in ‘The Second Coming’; indeed, he has been described as a fascist ‘fellow-traveller’ himself.

    It begs the question: when does the past become a foreign country, where they do things differently? When do we stop judging people by the standards of today? At what point does a new era begin? Can a person even straddle two epochs?

    For example, the Sinn Féin party that now stands on the brink of power in Ireland are commonly castigated for the conduct of the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Yet few, if any, members of that party in Dáil Eireann actively participated in the Provisional IRA.

    In contrast, the origin of Fine Gael, which emerged as a combination of Cumann na nGhaedhal, the Irish Centre Party and the National Guard, better known as the Blueshirts, in 1933, tends to be ignored, or even qualified.

    O’Duffy leading a salute with the Blueshirts, December 1934.

    Thus, Irish Times columnist Stephen Collins defines the Blueshirts as ‘best understood as para-fascists,’ which according to one source is ‘a larger category of regimes that adapted or aped ‘fascist’ formal and organizational features, but did not share the revolutionary ideological vision of genuine fascism.’

    Such nuance might have been lost on General Eoin O’Duffy and his more earnest acolytes; albeit my own great-grandfather, John A. Costello – whose commitment to human rights made him an acceptable Taoiseach to former IRA chief of staff and leader of Clann na Poblachta Sean MacBride in the First Interparty Government of 1948 – injudiciously declared in 1934: ‘the Blackshirts were victorious in Italy and … the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany, as … the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.’

    During periods of crisis even decent people can be carried along by waves of hysteria that cause civil liberties and common decency to be cast aside. A famous 2003 documentary ‘The Fog of War’ features former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara attempting to rationalise the U.S. bombing campaign in South-East Asia. Our present era where we witness a Populist clamour for mandatory vaccination may, in time, be viewed as one such illiberal period.

    A youth growing up in a Catholic, or Protestant, working class neighbourhood in Belfast during the 1970s might easily, and perhaps reasonably, have become involved in what we now define as terrorist organisations. That individual might even have committed awful terrible crimes in the Fog of War.

    It is a very delicate question as to what point we should let bygones be bygones and allow even participants in a sectarian, or post-colonial, struggle to participate in government without being constantly reminded of their past. Fine Gael certainly had no problem going into government with Clann na Poblachta in 1948, despite the latter’s association with the Republican cause.

    Belfast, 1969, Bob Quinn.

    The Northern Ireland power-sharing executive represents an imperfect attempt to move on from the Troubles. It has at least diminished the level of politically motivated violence in that society.

    This process was actively encouraged by successive Irish governments, especially through the mechanism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, culminating in the participation of Sinn Féin in government.

    Yet what we hear today in Ireland from the likes of Fintan O’Toole is that Sinn Féin somehow has a flawed pedigree, and must apologise, again and again. Frankly, it’s boring and inconsistent.

    There is a larger question around how we represent political violence in an Era of Centenaries. The decision of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to enter into a coalition might be viewed favourably in terms of a definitive end to ‘tribal’ Civil War politics.

    But what of the use of historical figures associated with those parties? In particular, is it appropriate for Fine Gael to remind the public of its association with Michael Collins, one of the great exponents of what supporters define as urban guerrilla warfare and detractors terrorism, or at least extra-judicial assassination?

    Moreover, Collins participated in the Easter Rising led by Pádraig Pearse who said in 1913: ‘Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and a nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood … There are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them.’

    The shell of the G.P.O. on Sackville Street (later O’Connell Street), Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising.

    Political violence was intrinsic to Pearse’s, and arguably Collins’s, approach to the birthing of the nation. They were men of their time, but were a faction within a faction that enjoyed less popular support than the Provisional IRA during the Northern Troubles.

    Besides, while the British authorities in Ireland prior to independence were hardly a model of good government, they had at least distributed much of the land among peasant proprietors and developed reasonable infrastructure. Home Rule was on the statute book. It might be argued that 1916 made Partitition inevitable.

    In contrast, the sectarian Unionist government – ‘a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’ – in Northern Ireland was denying civil rights to Catholics, gerrymandering constituency boundaries and sponsoring the B Specials, a sectarian, quasi-military reserve special constable police force.

    The Northern Troubles was a dark period in the history of the island, but to suggest those involved were, and are, inherently evil rather than, in most cases, products of historical forces, is lazy reasoning. Let’s put to bed the idea the Troubles disqualifies Sinn Féin’s participation in government for ever more, and move on to scrutinising the detail of their policies, in particular a failure to adopt a discernible position on the optimum response to COVID-19 in Ireland.

    Featured Image: Michael Collins by John Lavery, 1922.

  • Musician of the Month: Claudia Schwab

    Of New Lands and Turning Points… 

     “You can play! Just take it easy, play slow. Play for a few minutes and then give it a break… there’s no panic!”

    I was recently asked by one of my composing mentors to think about and summarise what I’ve done as a musician and composer so far.

    So I sat down and tried to recollect my memories of how it all began, and how indeed I have managed to be lucky enough to adopt one of my biggest passions as a full-time profession for the past several years!

    As I began to travel back in time, re- encountering a happy child’s uninhibited explorations of the world of sound, long afternoons and evenings spent at the local music school and orchestras, my first ventures into playing more groove-based music; I soon reached a curious turning point that stirred up major reflection. I revisited a period in my life that, at the time, felt excrutiantingly painful, though ultimately helped me to foster a healthy and much deeper relationship with music.

    Music School and Hurting Hands

    My early musical life majorly evolved around playing classical music: I took lessons on various instruments at the local music school and was part of various ensembles and choirs as well as local and international orchestras.

    Truth be told, I don’t think I was ever that taken by the actual music we played. At home I would listen to bands like the Beatles, Nirvana, the Spice Girls, Tic Tac Toe, Broadlahn, or Sandy Lopicic Orchestar. However, I always loved the feeling of playing and singing with other people, to be part of the community.

    I had wonderful music teachers and I think that, for the most part, they did not push me too much beyond standard expectations to practice. Rather, they tried to motivate me by conveying their passion for the music we were studying. When I started to experience trouble with my hands, there was one or other teacher who did not know how to steer me in the right direction of how to proceed with my daily practice. Having said that, the experience of chronic pain is a complex issue and beyond full comprehension of most teachers, musicians – and in fact doctors – that I have met so far. I am convinced that everybody always had my best interest at heart.

    It was at the age of around seventeen that I developed repetitive strain in both of my hands; with a ganglion cyst developing in my right wrist as a consequence. Sometimes it hurt so bad that I struggled to brush my teeth. It disabled me so severely that for years and years I was barely able to play for more than ten minutes in one go.

    I wrote my Leaving Cert exams on a laptop, as I was unable to write by hand. I had to stop taking lessons, cancel concerts, and burst out into tears regularly at folk sessions where all my friends were jamming and I could simply not join anymore. For one or two years I had to stop playing altogether and I was warned that the ganglion cyst could seize up and make it impossible for me to move my wrist anymore.

    I went to see different physiotherapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, homeopaths, healers.  I visited a healing stone; tried dance therapy; different creams that were supposed to be the cure. I bathed my hands in hot and then cold water, wore bandages, wrist supports. None of it helped.

    I will never forget a chat with a girl once on the way back from a folk music gathering in the mountains. She said: “Well you know, I really used to love rowing, it was my thing. But then I hurt my shoulder and I had to give it up and find something else. Maybe it’s like that with you and music”. I thought it was the meanest thing anyone could ever have said to me. I could not – and still cannot – imagine a life without music playing a central role in it (we’ll see about the next one). For me it was like losing part of my identity.

    It took me many years to understand what was going on at that time.

    A Perfectionist’s Struggle

    I was always a high achiever. Not that I always wanted to be better than the others, much worse:  I always had a genuine fear of failing completely.

    It comes as no surprise that, even though my teachers were kind and understanding, I did feel the pressure of completing grades at the music school. To try and play every note perfectly. An expectation to go on to study classical violin.

    I still struggle with the system of how classical music is being taught. In fact, everytime I think about it I get a bit angry and I am scared for young children that might have the joy of play robbed from them. But I like to think that it will just take some more years for a breakthrough that will bring along the integration of a better understanding of the nature of creativity. Of how to achieve a certain kind of “perfection” without the pressure of having to be perfect.

    As for me, having learnt about my perfectionist tendencies and anxieties that seem to amplify and transform every bit of advice into a perceived obligation, I do realise that the same guidance might well have been just right for another person. Somebody that thrives more on, or is in fact depending on, external encouragement to “become better”. (I put this in quotation marks, because: what does it mean to become better anyways?!)

    What I needed to hear however were these words: “You can play! Just take it easy, play slow. Play for a few minutes and then give it a break… there’s no panic!”

    A Session in McGarrigle’s Pub in Sligo.

    New Lands and Turning Points

    Faced with the fact that for the unforseeable future I was unable to study violin or another instrument, or to hold down any job that would rely on the strength of my hands for an extended period of time, I came up with a temporary escape plan:

    At the age of nineteen, I moved to Ireland to work as an au-pair for a year. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had acidentally emigrated. Some sixteen years later I am still here! But that’s a story for another day, or perhaps indeed it is not: for it was here that things slowly started to change.

    Looking back, I can see that there were many factors that contributed to the recovery of my musical freedom. An overall much more relaxed lifestyle, a new beginning in a different country, being able to hold down a job that had nothing to do with music. But most importantly, I believe that I owe it to certain people and a couple of influential books that I finally was able to find my way back into playing.

    When I landed in Sligo, I was lucky to fall in with a great gang of musicans. One of them in particular, Rodney Lancashire, repeatedly encouraged me to play without worrying about it. To play slow rather than not playing at all. To try and relax about it.

    So, after having stopped completely for a couple of years, I took up the violin again – or perhaps, rather the fiddle this time around. Playing solely Irish traditional music for a few years, it proved quite therapeutic: starting to play slow and for short periods of time at first, I was increasingly able to play longer.

    A few years later I started to study at UCC. It was in Cork that I met violinist Kathryn Doehner, who introduced me to a side-strand of Alexander Technique. Taking me on as a case study, she made me aware of what “good posture” really meant and the fact that when relaxed, anything was possible.

    At around the same time, on the urgent advice of my friend Fergal O’Connor, I started to work with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way (1992). This book absolutely changed my life: going into it with a mindset of “I’m not a real musician”, I came out of it having composed enough material to release my first CD, Amber Sands, in 2014! Learning about how to maintain a healthy relationship with creativity, it finally offered a way to escape the terrors of my inner perfectionist.

    The last piece of the puzzle I was struggling to put together for the last seven years or so came in form of another book: it was Dr. John Sarno’s The Mind- Body Prescription (1999), recommended to me by saxophonist and composer Nick Roth, that finally set me free.

    To give a very brief synopsyis of Dr. Sarno’s approach as I understand it: coming from a background of rehabilitative medicine, he believes that the chronic nature of the majority of repetitive strain injuries to do with tendons, nerves and muscles stem from suppressed or unsolved psychological distress.

    As a last resort to grab our attention, the distress moves into the body from where we finally have to deal with it. Offering a simple and inexpensive solution, he explains that in many cases it is enough to simply learn about, and understand, the interrelated mechanism at work between the brain and the affected area of the body.

    I have to say that, would I have read that book a few years earlier, I would not have been able to understand it. I believe that it was necessary to go through all the other approaches of treatment first, so that I could see that it was really up to me to solve this problem. But the right time had come.

    I will not say that I never feel my hands or wrists getting tired anymore. But when they do now, on a rare occasion, I am not afraid anymore. I know that the pain will not linger. This very absence of the expectation of a pain to become chronic is one of the major keys to breaking the cycle. I have understood the principle, and most importantly, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with my hands.

    In Awe of Music

    The experience of being unable to play for such a long period of time was absolutely horrible – an early existential crisis perhaps. At the same time, faced with the fact that I might never be able to play again, I realised just how much of a fundamental role music played in my life. It forced me to acquire a deeper understanding of the nature of chronic pain that will serve me as a life lesson.

    It got me to understand the importance to look after the mind, as well as the body, and I do so on a daily basis. It violently threw me out of the path I thought I should follow and slowly guided me into a very different life that I could only have dreamt of.

    I don’t take music for granted anymore. From the point of secretly accusing everyone around me for putting so much pressure on me, to cursing my hands and wishing that I could just get a new pair; I have reached a point of understanding and a deep gratefulness for the fact that I can play again – for as long, fast or slow as I want to. Having found my way back to a state of playful curiousity that I remember from my early childhood, I am in total awe of music.

    Find out more about Learning Methods for Alexander Technique: http://www.learningmethods.com/what’s-the-opposite-of-perfect.htm

    Website: https://www.claudiaschwab.com

    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Claudiaschwabmusic

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/claudia__schwab/

    Bandcamp: https://claudiaschwab.bandcamp.com/album/amber-sands

    Featured Image: Peter Crann

  • The Giant Hare of Cloondarone

    I felt myself still reliving a past that was no longer anything more than the history of anther person. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.

    I

    It got to a point that whenever I searched through a friend’s record collection when staying with them it stared right back at me: The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues. Whether in Dublin or London, Berlin or Oslo, it was stood out like a sore thumb.

    The weird thing is we never professed much grá for the album when it came out in the 1980s. We were coming of age teens when news filtered through that the older crowd were out jamming with The Waterboys in Spiddal. At the time ‘The Whole of The Moon’ bookended teenage discos across the West; a cue for a crowd to go off on one.

    The Waterboys were solid purveyors of ‘big music,’ a band destined to play stadia across Europe; a band critics tipped to be the next U2.

    So why the decamp to Spiddal of all places? We couldn’t get our heads around it. We were happily pushing our high-minded ideas into the world but it seemed like a step into an abyss. Some called it career suicide and we nodded in agreement. One minute the band was on Top of the Pops, the next they were playing sessions in a Spiddal pub. No sooner had Fisherman’s Blues come out, then the songs filled the airwaves. We had to engage with the music that was all around us. But we never professed to like any of the songs.

    Pointing the Needle

    Thirty years later I peered into the record collection of one of those former teens and Fisherman’s Blues was there looking out at me. It was the morning after a cold and wet November night spent sleeping on a couch, as my friend left for work.

    I made a coffee and rummaged through his record collection. There it was: a vinyl copy of Fisherman’s Blues in its striking green jacket. I pointed the needle, lay back on the couch and listened to it straight through. It was a bewildering experience; the object of what I had rebelled against as a teen so defining of those same years.

    Those days when noses were turned up at rock stars decamping to the West of Ireland to play trad had passed, and the singles ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ and ‘A Bang on the Ear’ became anthems.

    Fisherman’s Blues came out when the West was a still a relatively unscathed tourist destination. It was a time when you could park a caravan on the side of pretty much any Connemara road.

    Years passed, the tourist industry got its claws into the West, and in the interim the legend of Fisherman’s Blues grew. The album is talked about today in the same breath as Bob Dylan and the Band’s The Basement Tapes; another ramshackle of songs that just work. It isn’t so much 80s rock in dialogue with folk trad, but big music in touch with all the folk of the Western world.

    Ireland’s Sonic Answer

    Dylan recorded The Basement Tapes in a Woodstock home, adding mystique to the outpost of his Bethel Township. For a time Spiddal was Ireland’s sonic answer to New York’s Bethel: an outpost that could bring sustenance to a once distant metropolis.

    Musicians travelled in and out; from Tuam, Gort to a village integral to the West yet cast off from the innards of urban life. By turning to Spiddal, The Waterboys’ leader singer Mike Scott could tap into the pulses of the West of Ireland, yet still remain in close proximity to the hustle and bustle of Galway city.

    Hemmed in, cabin fevered, he could head to the docks, in the hope of chancing on new musicians. Maybe he stumbled to the docks one day and met the Tuam lads I knew, and word began to sift back to the others that myth was forming on the Western seaboard.

    Mike Scott in 2012.

    A Time Before the Internet

    I got back home from Dublin to Murroe, having listened to Fisherman’s Blues on the bus, the music birthing memories of a time before the Internet began its colonization of the imagination.

    Listening to the album that day brought me back to a decade when whispers carried from one end of the county to the next, and those awaiting dole day with penniless pockets were served tea free of charge by sympathetic publicans. Tuam, an unemployment black spot, was a place to escape from, and music was the escape before that escape.

    The young were looking out towards London or America, with nothing but burned ambition close at hand. The actual song ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ captured the desire to hold on to the older ways of life at a time when Ireland was opening up to the wider world. Oh to be a fisherman, tumbling on the seas, taken in by the sole task of feeding a village back on land. No wonder we disregarded the song: it was a paean to a distant past, nostalgia for a world we were trying to escape.

    Tipperary Hills

    The album played through as the Tipperary hills gazed back from inside the bus, a markedly different landscape to one where the Atlantic Ocean hovered in full view. I listened to the opening of ‘World Party’ – a song that belittles the claim Scott ditched the ‘big music’ when he arrived in the West – and reflected on its simple championing of the imagination.

    ‘I heard a rumour of a golden age’ Scott sings, summoning the ghost of W.B Yeats on an album that also includes a rendition of his poem ‘The Stolen Child.’ ‘Don’t settle for reality’ the song seems to say, believe in something greater.

    The next day I made my way to the forest that sits at the entrance of Glenstal Abbey beside where I now live; a route I walk each morning with my dog Oscar, listening again to the album on repeat. There was a pink afterglow on the distant Keeper Hill; clouds gave a dusky contour to the skyline that begets the Abbey itself.

    Large hedges dwarf the walker of the route, unlike the stretches of Connemara land I associate with Spiddal, along the boreen leading to the trail located within a forest that is a hive of nature sitting in close proximity to Murrroe village.

    The forest homes all sorts of wildlife: squirrels, pine martens, foxes, deer that wander down from the hills. Even when the trail is muddy, it dries so quickly it is suitable to walk in all seasons.

    The Gatehouse to Glenstal Abbey.

    Three Loops

    That day and for two weeks after I listened to Fisherman’s Blues in the throes of walking or running along the trail. I listened to specific songs along one trajectory or route, passing the overhanging oak trees, past the stream marking the boundary between the cattle fields and the forest itself. Then I returned to a little inlet in a wall that said I was back at the beginning of the route.

    I did three loops of that specific trajectory on the first day, with each song on Fisherman’s Blues synced to play twice in a row; ‘Sweet Thing’ to ‘A Bang on the Ear,’ to ‘When Will We Be Married.’ It was a punch in time to remember a former self.

    I remembered hitchhiking along the N17 from Tuam to Salthill as a teenager. I remembered weeks spent on the Aran Islands learning to speak Irish, wondering aloud if the islanders were the same as me.

    Locals tell me that the trail as an exercise in boredom; a dizzying mantra of physical exertion. But it is perfect for quiet contemplation.

    Some come to record the birdsong at dawn; nature conservationists gather for educational purposes (leaving contraptions to feed the birds at night). The trail is the perfect place to listen to music and walk in peace.

    It was December 6th when I went there intent on listening to ‘When Ye Go Away,’ perhaps the most moving song on Fisherman’s Blues, on constant repeat.

    The song began to play as Oscar nudged his way through the gates that mark the entrance to the trail from the village path. The trees were shorn of their summer plumage, standing out naked-like in my midst. Winter was everywhere. I knotted my laces to stop from me tripping in mud, and began to walk the first loop with Oscar in tow.

    For some reason the same song had stood out from all the others on Fisherman’s Blues. The song soon began to push its intimate waves of affectation down upon me.

    Following my Trail

    As a song ‘When Ye Go Away’ turns on the phrase ‘fair play to you’ – a kind of mantra. Although cited as ‘fair lady’ on some Internet sites, it is a phrase typical of the West.

    I thought of ‘play’ regarding Synge’s Playboy, the way it informs the language of Galway. The phrase comes after ‘in the morning you’ll be following your trail again,’ a line that seemed directed at me.

    The lyric seemed to be calling out in my direction, echoing from the forest of Glenstal: I was, as Scott says, following my trail. The echo of ‘fair play to you,’ such an uncommon phrase in the mid west area of Ireland was affecting; in a place where ‘good man’ or ‘go on kid’ dominate the vernacular.

    Then the sun came out from behind the clouds and rays of lights ushered through trees, bringing new sensations to bear. I began to step in and out of the past.

    I was slowly ushered back in time, consumed by memory. Scott has a poetic skill. He can make meaning dissipate and compute almost simultaneously; the listener grasping his or her context as the bigger one one slips away. ‘When Ye Go Away’ initially read as a lament to a lost lover, a pang to heartbreak, knowing one has gone forever. But as my loops of the trail mounted up, a different context began to emerge from the song. The words ‘your coat is made of magic, and around your table angels play’ gave way to the great lyrical refrain ‘I will cry, when ye go away’ like a memory blow to the gut.

    A Mare in Foal

    The angels had come in the back door he rarely locked, slowly gathering at the table in the open plan kitchen, as we made our way down the stairs, groggy and still half asleep.

    My father was making coffee at the counter and speaking jubilantly about the coming day, talking about the rugby on the telly and the mare that was in foal. One of the angels said the mare would hold onto the foal as long as possible just to annoy my father, interrupting his sleep to make nightly excursions to the stables with flashlight in hand a permanent feature.

    ‘She won’t give up easy,’ the angel announced, pouring sugar into a cup of tar-like Nescafé coffee. We sat there, angels on our lap, looking out at the green fields in hope the giant hare of Cloondarone would come out to play.

    I skipped away from the image of a hare nodding up and down in the backfields.  Back to 2021. A cow stared at me from beside an empty ditch. Across from the ditch was the abbey driveway in the distance: a road peppered with walkers. The autumnal-winter colours of the forest contrasted the green field, a blanket of darkness to lose yourself.

    The song played through again to ‘I will rave and I will ramble, do everything but make you stay,’ bringing me slowly back to a summer in 2013.

    I was entering the time shuttle called memory again. I am parked on the hard shoulder of the motorway waiting for my father to answer the phone. We talk and then, before I know it, I am in Galway city. We are arguing over something one of us had sparked.

    Memory brings out the details; a heated discussion walking at the Spanish Arch. I remember the moment I pulled in on the way home to send a text to him, apologising. I had watched him limp up Merchants Road from the Arch that day, his head bopping up and down like the giant hare of Cloondarone. Then he was gone, falling into the Galway crowds like a fish into the ocean.

    The sun raised its head too that evening, and the usual boisterous group of students could be heard shouting on the riverbank. There was music and laughter in the air. Then I blinked and I was back in 2021, stupidly worrying that somebody would wander around the corner to see me cry.

    Galway Arts Festival, 2007.

    II

    Even if the sum total of analytic experience allows us to isolate some general forms, an analysis proceeds only from the particular to the particular.
    Jacques Lacan.

    French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan once coined the term ‘signifying chain’ to explain the relationship between language and the unconscious mind. For Lacan, our experience is knitted into the very fabric of words. And words are sediments like rocks; time leaves a mark on them.

    We cannot see the whole sediment in words, even when these words stare us in the face. To give meaning to his insight, Lacan turned to the story by Edgar Allen Poe ‘The Purloined Letter.’ Poe’s story is about a search for a letter stolen from a royal palace.

    It is believed the letter – if read – will have detrimental consequences for the personage from whom it was stolen. The police set off in search of the letter, turning the suspect Minister D’s apartment upside down to no avail.

    At this point the detective Dupin intervenes, locates the letter, and explains his logic. Dupin talks of the police looking in all places they would think of hiding the letter, when the obvious place to look is the least obvious place: in plain sight.

    The letter is located on the mantelpiece. Dupin uses the analogy of a map game to explain his reasoning. Amateurs tasked with guessing the name of a place on a map will usually begin by scouring the smaller regions for the name; nooks and crannies. The easiest way to win, Dupin tells them, is to pick a name – in full view – for all to see.

    Lacan reads Poe’s story as a commentary on language and the unconscious. The unconscious is not buried, he suggests, deep in the human organism, like the police think the letter is buried.

    The unconscious is language: the symbolic dimension that holds human beings in its midst. It is the context around which words are in play; the time sediment in everyday language. Why we laugh, cry, become elated or defeated, can be understood as the sediment around which words are set. This is why the purloined letter is of such importance to Lacan’s theory of language; it teaches him to look for clues in the words his patients use all the time; words that are in plain sight.

    By Mario De Munck – Video still from video Chantal Akerman – Too Far, Too Close. Still uploaded with permission from the filmmaker., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68641999

    Chantal Akerman

    One time, when asked why shots of people gathering at train stations populate her film d’Est, the great Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman replied ‘ah that, again.’ Akerman was referring to the Holocaust, of which her parents were survivors.

    Crowds populate the long durational shots of East European landmarks in her film, scenes that link words to other words in the everyday lexicon of Chantal’s life.

    Her sigh  ‘ah, that again’ references what she misses in plain sight. When travelling across the East to make a film about her family’s place of origin, a place they had fled during the pogroms, she moved along her own signifying chain, taking up different positions in relation to a word that dominated her life until her death by suicide in 2015.

    The word Holocaust was Akerman’s purloined letter, casting its downward shadow on her life. It was a word her mother was unable to say; her family existed in opposition to. When her mother passed in 2014, Chantal was no longer the child of a survivor, just a child.

    Akerman’s words echoed through my thoughts as ‘When Ye Go Away’ played in my earphones and I walked a desolate forest on the edge of a mid-western Irish town. The words ‘I will cry when ye go away’ stood out in plain sight: a letter placed on my own mantelpiece.

    The song was no riddle that needed solving. It was a letter perched on the mantelpiece in the apartment called ‘my life.’ I was opening the letter to look inside. I pushed my headphones into my pocket, the dirt rubbing the side of my legs, my woollen hat dripping with wet sweat.

    I saw the words staring back at me all the time: ‘when ye go away.’ The words were like diamonds in a sea of stone, signs reaching a destination.

    ‘Ah, that again,’ I muttered, going back to the memories from walking that day, the song a pedestal from which to stare into a distant past.

    I was coming up from a rabbit hole where angels gathered around my father’s table; where we raved and rambled in the hustle and bustle of Galway city. The song was a letter that had been sent to me directly, from the postal office of my unconscious. It was a letter sent to remind me that the ‘ye’ in Scott’s ‘when ye go away’ was a father absent from Xmas again this year. The letter gazed at me just as another Christmas loomed.

    Christmas again…

    Brown winter leaves crunched under foot, as I began the journey home. It was coming up to Christmas again, and the sediment in words otherwise known as my past was pushing up from the depths of a riverbed. I was making my way home from the trail ashamed that I had lacked the strength to see it arrive.

    Not wise enough to see the waves crashing in. Not tough enough to brush them away when they did. Five years, and the waves were still crashing in in unforeseen ways. There was nothing new to be learned from all of this, nothing new to change the course of time. Just ‘that again.’

    The Waterboys recorded a follow up album to Fisherman’s Blues inspired again by the West of Ireland titled Room to Roam. To this day, the band’s music retains the influence of the Spiddal decamp; a decamp no longer thought of as career suicide but a pivotal event in the history of Irish popular and traditional music.

    One can just imagine a record producer nagging Mike Scott to reconsider his move to the West of Ireland. The producer slams the phone down and turns to his assistant to say ‘I did everything to make him stay.’ An assistant replies ‘not much more you can do.’

    Or one can just imagine a mother, speaking in Irish to her husband, lamenting her daughter’s decision to emigrate, to find work she can’t find in Spiddal. The woman says ‘rinne mé gach a bhféadfainn chun í a choinneáil anseo,’ before her husband, glass-eyed with tears, replies ‘silfidh mé na mílte deoir nuair a imeoidh sí ar shiúl.’

    Or, yet still, one can just imagine a single mother, struggling to make ends meet in a city engulfed with ‘culture’ – and all the razzmatazz of commerce dressed up as art. She works by day in a factory in Ballybane on the outskirts of Galway city, and spends two nights a week playing in a traditional session in town for extra money.

    She dresses her daughter in a hat and scarf and drops her to a West Side crèche before taking a bus that is soon caught up in the suffocating traffic. She will memorise the words to a Waterboys song to play that night in Taaffes. And when she hears the words ‘I will cry, when ye go away’ she thinks of her daughter alone in the crèche.

    Or perhaps, as a final thought, one can just imagine a middle-aged brother and his two sisters travelling to Salthill, a childhood landmark, on a cold February morning. The brother drives there from Limerick to meet his sisters at dawn.

    They meet in the city and make their way to the prom, parking the car near the diving tower at Blackrock. The brother steps out of the car with a suitcase containing a Bluetooth speaker and an urn. The two sisters follow him on foot down towards the small pebble beach on the right side of the Blackrock swimming tower, past the quadrangle where swimmers congregate, approaching the ocean their father swam in the weeks before his passing.

    Coral Beach, Carraroe.

    Ashes Fly into the Air

    ‘I want to play this one song,’ the brother says while fiddling with the speaker, ‘it’s from Fisherman’s Blues. When Ye Go Away.’ His sisters nod in agreement.  ‘Yea, I love that song’ they say in sync, like they practiced it earlier that day.

    He takes the urn out from the case, holding it up among the three pairs of hands, whispering as they remove the lid. Ashes fly into the air, swirling in a wind that disperses them across a grey-tinged sky.

    Music soon begins to mesh with the sound of swimmers jumping in and out of the sea on the other side of the diving tower. Ash and music dance together, as the siblings group hug in one muted silence. The ash soon begins to drift up into the sky, making its way to Aran, Spiddle, and on to Carreroe. Some even make it to Roundstone, across Dog’s Bay, to Ballyconneelly.

    A brother and his sisters gaze up at the sky, until no ash can be seen against a grey muzzle of cloud. There is only an urn left for them to cling to, and the shared understanding that life must go on.

    Featured Image: Cloondarone, Co. Galway, June 2016.