Monthly Archives: July 2014

One hundred days of blogging

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For two of those days, the actor, Mark Ruffalo, was referred to twice in one post as Mark Gruffalo. I guess that has been the least radioactive of my blushes here, but for someone unable to fit comfortably in to a parent-size blog, the signs of having a child will continue to give themselves away unwittingly. Our bedtime reading has since moved on to  Hugh Jackman and The Beanstalk.

Not that I embarked on carving out a parenting blog. Good luck to all those brave folk who maintain one. I salute them with the leftover gusto from cheerleading those willing to walk down an aisle in the company of more than three people.

It just happened to be an idle afternoon in my mean abode when I followed my fingers round the keyboard until they took out a mortgage with WordPress and moved into a surprisingly familiar neighbourhood.

For a woman on the perpetual hunt for escapism from where I live, one would’ve expected me to dive headlong down the portal to freedom. But instead it banged loudly on the keyboard. Northern Ireland doesn’t do touchy feely, so there won’t be an open love letter to it anytime soon, but I might go halves on top ten things about it by chipping in five eventually.

Tops fives. The cornerstone of any topic worthy of a stroked chin. Blogillions of blogs are buoyed up on them; scores more boast cheap imitations (top 7s, top 9s, top 15s.) . Given my dependency on them as a mechanism for coping with conversation, combined with the availability of an edit button to quell the corresponding OCD, they should be all over my shop. Top five reasons why they aren’t…

1. Top 5 signs that blogging is a middle-class pursuit wasn’t really going anywhere after number three

2. Ditto Top 5 kinds of parents I’d like to see start a blog but could probably never do so

3. I just thought of one now that probably won’t ever be written either  (Top 5 reasons my fears of hanging out with Irish bloggers overlap with the reasons I avoid them abroad)

4. Top 5 reasons I like hanging out with Irish bloggers would inevitably lead me to expose my favourites and I’m too Irish to risk someone not liking me for not loving them even when they couldn’t give a shite. Especially when they couldn’t give a shite.

5. It’s just so exhausting being Irish. The anxiety. The chip on my shoulder. The killjoying. The endless comparisons. And that’s just the blog themes.

I went through more theme changes in the first week than Garth Brooks’s estimated income for this year. Those sheep are authentically Donegal by the way, The Fonz of the local animal kingdom. They can been seen hanging precariously off cliffs, and playing chicken on the roads.

The photo replaced the one of my wee girl and her Da that briefly loomed large at the top of this page. It’s a lovely photo but by day three I couldn’t take their heavy presence on the screen. Even with their backs to me. I can’t swear in front of her, and I can’t be freely cheesy about him while he’s within earshot. Third cousin of your-deceased-Granny-popping-in-to-your-head-while-you’re-in-the-sack-with-someone syndrome.

Living with them is one of the few forms of exercise I actually enjoy, but we need a break from each other sometimes. Because I work occasional evenings, I tragically never get to avail of that most popular mythical method of meeting others – the night class. If I did sign up to a ten week course on how to grow your own willpower, I’d probably produce top five perfectly justifiable reasons why I should quit after two.

But waffling on the internet rarely feels a chore. So here was my chance to make it appear like one.  It’s already compatible with sitting on my generous behind, watching TV, talking shite, and enjoying the occasional slice of cheese. A blog: half-way between a hobby and a discipline with your own terms and conditions attached. The deal I made with myself: write with some regularity for 100 days and she how she goes.

So I’ve made it (buffs fingernails on lapels). 100 days today. This is the part where I get to tell you about the enjoyment I derive from writing, and the ambitions I’ve had for my little words since I was a nipper (poignant background music here).

Bollocks to that. Tonight, I want to say farewell in the style of a successful comedian who hasn’t sold out, about to announce an interval in his own show.  Like Dylan Moran, trailing off mid-majestic monologue, unsteadily raising a glass in a faux drunken gesture to his audience while imploring them to get a drink. If I have any ambitions for my words, I should at least treat their trail-offs to an occasional dress-up game where they get to inhabit the mere moment of coming up for air of someone who is a master of them. Fantasy. It’s everywhere. And I’m paying for this.

I’m off now to fill up my glass with some holidays, and other stuff. Hope to see you after the interval in another 100 days or so.

Thank you all very much for coming.

Now go get a drink.

The waltz continues

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Amid daily news “packages” on the recurrent onslaught of murder in Gaza, sits the regulation feature on the rising role of social media in modern conflict. The civilian on the street doubling as handheld eye-witness circumnavigating sponsored camera crews and editorial policies to give the world in-our-face, access-all-areas updates in real time.

Social media’s attack on sophisticated propaganda and news management is undoubtedly a phenomenon that tears up the rule book on war reporting. Even so, the experiences of those recruited for combat remain off-limits. The access-all-emotional-areas of those young men conscripted into forces defending their lands be it in fatigues or keffiyehs.

Most of us are veterans of watching war reports and war films, but few war veterans are reporters or filmmakers. Ari Folman is one. Conscripted into the IDF, he fought as a 19 year-old soldier in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. His 2008 documentary film Waltz With Bashir recounts the experiences his young wet-behind-the-rifle squad shared on the front-line.

walzt

What sets the film apart from other talking head documentaries is the animation format through which these are captured. It enables the film to accommodate the unsettling hallucinatory and fractured quality of the memories of men from a time when they had barely crossed the threshold of adulthood. The wooziness, and the tricks memories play, toys with the viewer’s engagement immersing it in blurred interpretations. We’re kept guessing throughout. That the film was applauded by both supporters of the Israeli government and Palestinian liberation leaves sufficient ambiguity for soothing moral detachment as certainty.

But it’s not all detached reconstruction. The sudden shift to actual film footage in the closing minutes jolts the audience into the final inescapable confrontation between the soldier and his hitherto ambiguous flashbacks. Like the daily feeds down cables and phone cameras today, the footage screams for itself.

Buoys of summer

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“Hi there everybody, we’re The Modern Lovers, and we’re gonna sing about the ice-cream man for you”

Who the fuck is this? My opening thought on this opening line of a song that sneaked its way on to a compilation made for me by my best mate. It’s 1995. Cassette tapes are barely clinging on, but quality control standards are upheld. The production is built on a fragile combination of reverence, timing, phantom-crescendo before-dropping-the-tempo-a-gear-before-finishing-with-the-show-stopping-finale rules of compilation assembly. A delicate art form. Alchemy in the hands of a human emotional tuning fork. Excuse me while I have a moment to stare into the middle distance for some spontaneous nostalgia…

(20 seconds later)

If you haven’t clicked on the link for a listen, then do so now. It’ll open in a separate page so read on while you listen to some seasonal greetings from our friend Jonathan Richman. Imagine this flanked by Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy and Nick Cave’s The Ship Song. What better place to parachute a throw-away tickle of a tune into a compilation than between two self-consciously serious classics. Ambush the unsuspecting listener neither half way up nor down with a commercial break for happiness to pave the way for contemplation at the piano.

That’s one of my most vivid sounds of summer. A few others that trigger a rapid flick through the cartoon sketchbook of flashbacks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mcp8N5Am3w

The flint for firing up the fryers in the chippie and the smell of stale grease on ill-fitting polyester uniforms. Dreading the response from my folks to the impending Leaving Cert results but not giving a fuck about them one way or another. Nothing mattered except piling into the delivery van after the late-night shift and all back to whoever’s till dawn. Round and round, up and down, through the streets of our town. The rain was on its way – the results arrived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHUsYRpSTvA

Datsun Stanza. Toyota Carina. Volvo. Petrol. Diesel. Four-door. Five-door. Hatch-back. Cassette player. CD player. All that changes is the model of my folks’ car, my hairstyles, and the pixel quality of the memory of bringing that 12″ to the local disco (as they were called then) and the floor emptying when the DJ played it. Devil may care. It’s still belt on, shades down, volume up, and playing the shit out of it along the quickest crooked coastline I can get to. 3:59 – 4:35: my heart overspilleth.

Got a favourite summer sound to share? Take it away there…

“Viewers may find some of the images in the footage disturbing”

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The ultimate give-away line of first world war reportage.

Does the delicacy of our viewing habits need protecting?

Presumably anyone choosing to tune-in to world news should expect something a tad unpleasant. It’s not as if black clouds smouldering from the wreckage of collapsed buildings can be mistaken for Come Dine With Me.

I’d appreciate the same warnings being issued in advance of all programmes featuring Stephen Fry or Bono.

Little boxes on the hillside

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Our girl and the little boy next door are conducting a friendship through the gaps in the wooden fence that divides us. It’s cheap brown, the basic of garden dividers; a relic from when the development first went up. Others around have traded theirs in for something higher, fancier, sturdier.

In a flag-free estate with a mix of owners, renters, religious affiliations, political persuasions, cheese tastes, star-signs, careers, incomes, ambitions, dreams, and guilty pleasures – neighbours coexist in the maintenance of atomised lives.

Round after round of clothes are hung on the line and the weather is the only dependable chat-up line to spring on a neighbour hanging up hers. From across that fence, I’ve learned she had another baby recently, got hitched, and hopes her new husband gets a better-paying job soon. They are new residents, young; and like their predecessors, will move on from their impractical two-bed house first chance they get.

Our neighbourliness didn’t penetrate anything beyond the surface of small-talk but we retreated into our caves with the other half-stuffed in a box we guessed by the paltry number of cues unconsciously gleaned. Our names. The names of the children. It doesn’t take much. Welcome to Northern Ireland.

We are a little too high octane in our promises to reunite our little’uns on one side of the fence. They’re the same age with the same taste in fence-climbing and finger-pointing. It’ll happen, (Dastardly voice) if it’s the last thing I do.

I don’t want our child surrounded only by peers with twenty fadas in their name. Partly why I didn’t give her one. At two years of age the scene seems already set by the crèche. A prelude to conformity, the foundation of the status quo.

I would move from this impractical two-bed country the first chance I got, but that chance is increasingly elusive so we are sobering up to a future with an integrated school as our only viable option. It accommodates all religions and ‘none’. The none being the ‘other’ on the fringes of the two traditional shows in town.

We’re ‘no’ religion. And we’re no to discrimination based on it or carried out in its name. But we’re yes to integration and responsible education. We’re yes to not imposing a faith on children through formal education; by teachers who don’t subscribe to the faith they promote at the expense of precious learning time and parental responsibility. We’re yes to our children learning about religion in its wider existence and origins but not state school authorities monopolising religion to engender the formation of singular ideas on faith. We’re yes to our children learning to think critically and philosophically.  We’re yes to the right of families to celebrate ritualistic celebrations at pivotal moments in their school-lives but not all exclusively directed and sanctioned by priests and bishops. We’re yes to our children learning alongside their neighbours rather than snatching glimpses of them through gaps in fences.

The concept of non-denominational education remains light years away. Enlightened education policy makers belong to the next generation, if they will ever be permitted to participate in a political structure that protects the permanence of sectarianism.

The others just have to put up or shut up. To a system that builds flimsy, cheap wooden fences of segregation. That confers ownership of the Irish language on one group of people. A language they will learn not to be able to speak with any great proficiency. A system that elevates the pageantry of Irish dancing among groups of people who’d laugh at the banging of a lambeg drum. Insularity is based on continuous assessment so the pass rate is always high.

The yellow registration form has been lying on the shelf since she was a month old. You could say I was a little anxious. I can’t seem to ever shake the feeling.

Back from the future…

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…opening conversations with our teenager.

“You know that Mumford and Son album your friend’s father let you borrow? I’m really sorry but I accidently spilt boiling marmalade all over it. Take that Bonnie “Prince” Billy album round as a sorry from us.”

“You do know a lot of our favourite friends are gay, don’t you?“

“When I was your age, studying wasn’t as important as it is now.”

“Irish? Well, it was heavy on the vowels. It used to be the language of poor people, then the up-and-coming people, and eventually the middle-class people. Like your cousin, Scéitímínníáthásényámáólséch. Every child was forced to learn it for 13 years and could barely say the Hail Mary when they came out. Sort of like religion, only in a different language.”

“Oh look there’s Gay Byrne with another new show. Are you gay? Cause we’re totally cool with it.”

“Happy 13th Birthday. Here’s some information on contraception and a few condoms. I hope I’m not too late”

“You know the birth control information I gave you for your birthday. Am I too late? I’m totally cool with it. Just asking. No biggie.”

“You know you can tell us anything. Like if you’re gay or whatever. No pressure”

“Have you read Love in the Time of Gonorrhoea? Sorry, I mean Cholera? What’s Gonorrhoea? Well…”

“Happy 16th Birthday. Here’s some brochures on Canada and a few quid towards your emigration fund?”

“Can I borrow some money off you? Need to make a mortgage repayment. What’s a mortgage? Well, it was heavy on the zeros. It used to be the preserve of middle class people, then up-and-coming people, and eventually poor people. Every adult was forced to get one for 93 years and could barely say the Hail Mary when they fell into arrears. Sort of like Irish, only in a different language.”

The sound of silence

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Let me guess. You’re reading this with a neutral accented low deep-sounding voice. Somewhere near a four on a scale from Barry White to Orville. You were once mistaken for an American and almost baulked at the notion. Am I right?

Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. It wouldn’t matter anyway because I’ve already, unconsciously, assigned you a tone. Refined. Never whiney. The more austere your blog page, the more quietly spoken you are.

Do you hear the voices of other bloggers? Fonts become accents, themes become tones. Excessive use of capital letters are the leaned-on shift buttons that spell emphatic feelings. Family photos the itallics of your happiness.

Your About page is spoken in your best phone-voice you don’t know you have. Yes! That really is you. It’s like reading a post back weeks after publishing and not recognising it. Is that me? No way. I DO NOT sound like that. Do I?

Swearing always sounds better in American. Though not as good as Canadian. I can tell the subtle difference. The Canadian bloggers I read usually combine it with a fuck off point on something tremendously socially serious. All feminists, and the me during work meetings, should sound Canadian; then everyone would take us seriously. Ballsy English women all sound like Sally Phillips’s sweary mate in Bridget Jones. They make beautiful profanity from the sacred.

The speed of the clicks on the keyboard mirrors the rattle of chat on the screen. But time to retreat back down to the din.

Oh I wish I could fly.

Striking the right note

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Definition of feeling conflicted: itching to see a film that features an actor in the lead who gives you chronic reflux.

Begin Again is written and directed by John Carney of Bachelors Walk, On the Edge, and Once semi-fame (his work in my order of merit). Mark Ruffalo turns up looking the worse for wear from the set of The Kids Are All Right as the ramshackled down-on-his-luck A&R scout. Other cast members include iconic New York, Catherine Keener, and Stevie Wonder on the soundtrack. What’s not to love?

Keira Knightley. An acting ironing board or a poor woman’s Natalie Portman? Credit to Carney for making me care less with the naturalistic performances he woos from his cast, and all round charm of this unabashed love letter to music. Even James Corden is mildly bearable.

But the best lines are reserved for the perenially watchable Ruffalo. “Even the most benign scene is invested with meaning”. He is sitting on night-time steps of Downtown Manhattan listening to Stevie Wonder absorbing the urban streetcape details unfolding all around. Flickering neons, walkers-by making walk-on cameos unbeknownst to them, big yellow taxis floating past.

Any casual wearer of ear-phones will relate. Your heart might overheat from the overwhelming resonance of someone describing something in a THAT’S IT! kinda way. Mine did. Put me on a train with a Blue Nile album and I’m directing my own epic scene by the time it pulls away from the station. If the camera were to pan away it would reveal the Enterprise rolling through the blandlands of Louth. But it’s all “chimney tops, the trumpets, golden lights, the loving prayers” through an aural lens.

Carney is set to add a third installment to his loose musical trilogy. Once propelled him Glen Hansard onto the international scene but the director already had form in marrying the right tune with the emotion of a cinematic moment.

Smashing Pumpkins’ 1979 opens the overlooked ‘On the Edge’, introducing us to a troubled Cillian Murphy hovering over his Father’s coffin in a church before legging it on his bike to negotiate rushhour on South Circular Road; The Jam’s ‘Start’  zips alongside him through the neon lit streets in a stolen jamjar, before things slow down with The Frames’s Seven Day Mile when hope dances with possibility at a house party.

Still in the running for gong for best song in a closing scene is the finale of the first season of Bachelors Walk. The three flatmates are all out of luck. They gather on the sofa and sink into a silent sorrow to the best song on lost boyhood ever.

Next time on Striking the right note (part II) – best uses of music in non-John Carney films. And Morag will be here with embarrasing notes from my teenage crushes.