Author Archives: Department of Speculation

Together in electric dreams

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Three days without a shower, queuing for a piss in a dark dank Portaloo, getting my hair washed twice daily ‘neath another downpour. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather to be doing this weekend but alas the Electric Picnic wellies must stay mud-clad in the corner for the second year in a row.

Just to torture myself even further, I’ve compiled a list of top five acts for my ultimate fantasy line-up applying the following criteria:

– they must be alive (this often helps when playing live)

– have not played EP before (so that rules out the top 5 best performances to date: New Order, Patti Smith, Bjork, PiL, Passion Pit)

1. Kate Bush

Woman of the moment, but soundtrack to the pivotal moments of some of our lives.

Stage: Body & Soul

Extras: Dancers trapeze off the trees, Liam O’Maonlai dances like an irritating loon at the front of the stage.

Next day reviews: Local radio station in Portlaoise receive calls from concerned residents reporting strange banshee sounds during the night. Crowd unhappy with O’Maonlai antics.

Standout track: This Woman’s Work

2. Talking Heads

“Hi, I’ve got a tape I want to play”. If you recognise that line then you deserve to be in the front row. David Byrne popping in with St. Vincent last year doesn’t count so don’t be awkward by bringing it up.

Stage: Electric Arena. Taking no chances with the wind swaying Tina Weymouth’s bass to the other side of the audience. No fucking way.

Extras: Standing lamp for old time’s sake.

Standout track: Born Under Punches

Next day reviews: Clichéd references to David Byrne’s shock of white hair, and mention of the two other female bass guitarists in the world.

3. Neil Young

He has just announced his divorce so prepare for a few 45 minute guitar solos. Head-butt anyone who fears they will be “turgid”. They haven’t a fuck’s notion what they’re on about. And they just like using the word turgid.

Stage: Main. I don’t mind five or ten minutes of the solos getting blown to the other side of the audience to enable us discuss what to eat next: Pieminister or burritos?

Extras: I suppose a ‘hello’ would be out of the question, Neil?

Standout track: Like a Hurricane. Preferably as the heavens crack open.

Next day reviews: Why didn’t he play Old Man? Boo hoo etc.. Accusations of turgid guitar solos.

4. Cathal Coughlan

Who?

Stage: Cosby. Probably at an inappropriately peppy 3pm knowing the talent the organisers have for fucking up the schedule

Extras: Consensus-smashing wry observations on the state of the nation during an appearance later on the sofa in Minefield.

Standout Track: Officer Material/cover of Big Star’s Thank You

Next day reviews: Oh ja. I love all his work. Notable tensions between himself and McWilliams.

5. ABBA

It’s OK. No-one needs to know you just had a hard/wide-on at the thought of it.

Have fun, if you’re going. (fucker)

“Just the one”

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There’s no such thing really, is there?

What starts off as a benign statement full of good intention usually collapses before the one pint is polished off. It’s only manners the other person gets their round in. Another one for my good friend here.

What starts off as a meaningless comment in response to conversational calculations of children among parents, usually converts into an arrow slung at the heart of a strain of sensitivity you wish to fuck you could shed.

You’ve just the one.

I have? Oh thanks. I’ll put that with my other information.

No, I just made that up. I actually have eight others I hide in the attic at home.

That’s right, I have one.

The one in a million.

Stowin’ away the time

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We went on holidays last week.  We’re very this season that way. Self-catering in a holiday house by the sea. By self-catering, I mean dining out every night; by holiday house, I mean an early introduction to retirement-home living where the furniture is designed more with orthopaedic support in mind than extravagant lounging. All right-angled austerity with Mary Kennedy appearing as her disturbingly inoffensive self on every available television channel.

I took one look around and made a mental inventory of the various irritations I was determined to complain about (lack of WiFi, filth on the curtains, lack of WiFi, dirty bathroom, lack of WiFi). No free shower caps, mini shampoos, or sewing kits to gleefully stash, so I had to fill the instant gratification vacuum somehow. I may have deployed that term so beloved of wimps  (“mark my words”), which had deflated to a crumpled up shadow of its former self by the week’s end. I waved goodbye to the owner in manner of lowly lickarse to departing dignitary on pulling out.

I mistakenly typed “pulling off” there initially. That’d be the sleep deprivation from the ward bed talking, and the snoring from my brother who we invited along for a few nights and had us re-negotiating our marriage vows at 4am. I returned embarrassingly overdrawn on my husband’s flexibility. I’m still doing the pitiful forgive-me face; often confused with the equally pitiful I’m-a-fucking-idiot face. Sure, you’ll have that.

Bleary-eyed and idle, I mooched around till the beachside café coolly flip-flopped its way into the breach with free WiFi, forcing me to abandon my habit of  avoiding surfer hipster types (not indigenous to where I live), and the news black-out I was banking on and bragging about before we left.

The grimness cascaded down daily. Caesarean Section at 26 weeks. James Foley. Suspected Ebola Case. Pat Kenny set to return to our TV Screen. Cliff Richard fans vow to get their man back in the charts. Where will it end? Morph reveals dark world of Tony Hart?

One of the other thousands of ways I like to test the limits of my husband’s patience is to engage him in a game of guess the potential song the producers of Reelin’ In the Years will marry with a moment from the here and now. The soundtrack must be released from the featured year and fit the footage.

‘Mr. Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun’ was automatically disqualified for failing to meet the first part of those criteria.  I made a unilateral decision and settled on visualising scenes of the follow-up protests of women on loudspeakers segueing into follow-up news clips of politicians clogging the silence with cowardice and back again to the strains of Seasons by Future Islands.

Seasons change, and I tried hard just to soften you
The seasons change, but I’ve grown tired of tryin’ to change for you
Because I’ve been waiting on you
I’ve been waiting on you
Because I’ve been waiting on you
I’ve been waiting on you

As it breaks, the summer awaits
But the winter washed what’s left of the taste
As it breaks, the summer awaits
But the winter craved what’s lost
Crave what’s all gone away

People change, even though some people never do
You know when people change
They gain a piece but they lose one too
Because I’ve been hanging on you
I’ve been waiting on you
Because I’ve been waiting on you
I’ve been hanging on you

As it breaks, the summer awaits
But the winter washed what’s left of the taste
As it breaks, the summer awaits
But the winter craved what’s lost
Crave what’s all
Crave what’s all gone away
‘Cause I’ve been waiting on you

All other suggestions welcome.

Top 5 ways The Rose of Tralee competition is like Irish abortion laws

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1. The women are forced to go through a rigorous process of scrutiny before presenting for adjudication in front of an expert panel

2. The two-dimensional portrayal of women as a homogenous group devoid of all complexities in a bid to uphold the official pageantry

3. There’s usually an irrepressible man dressed in black and white dominating the airwaves with displays of parochial idiocy

4. Frequent cries about the need to “protect our values and our culture” , and the incurable propensity towards propping up long-expired representations of the past

5. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world

Ms. Fit Tingin

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Growing up, Sunday lunch was a cacophony of cutlery, chat, and calls from my Mother to one of our guests to be quiet. A guest that could only be heard, but who regularly commanded the atmosphere. Any one of the commentators, columnists, and politicians squabbling over who interrupted the other. That’s the beauty of radio – the power to convert ordinary dining tables into live studio audiences with everyone brave enough to release their inner heckler.

A love of radio is a habit I inherited from home along with checking out other people’s plates in restaurants to see who got the biggest portion, and rapidly flicking over from sex scenes on TV when my Da walks into the room.

There’s welcome relief in reaching middle age when you can freely discuss age-appropriate activities such as talk radio without fear of ridicule. It’s the background to Saturday morning pottering around until the pottering becomes the background to an eavesdrop on an engaging guest, or exploration of a subject that lassoes the listener with the presenter’s incredulous tone.

Last Saturday’s Marian Finucane Show discussion on empathy with philosopher, Roman Krznaricon, zigzagged through the Dublin traffic I was poorly negotiating. He shared personal accounts on his relationship with his Dad growing up before meandering down the role of philosophy in brokering world and personal peace.

The hunt for a parking space was suddenly overtaken by his quietly posed question: In what ways would you like to be more courageous? A classic radio moment when the listener’s thoughts are halted by hearing something put in a way they’ve never thought about before. I drew a blank.

Until yesterday morning after coming off the phone from my boss who granted my last-minute request for a day’s annual leave. I had my answer: I would like to be able to tell the truth about myself a little more.

There will be at least one, possibly two, more such calls made before the end of the year. Yesterday’s was the second so far. Those who arrive straight to the point would call it anxiety or depression or some other shorthand. Some of us take a verbal detour through descriptions of paralysis and glue-wading, combining it with a social form of agoraphobia when the confines of the bathroom take on an irresistible appeal. That’s if we ever managed to get our coherent speech into gear, or had the inclination to do so. Annual Leave is my shorthand for occasionally being unable to make it past my front door.

I can’t decide how much of my reluctance to tell the truth in that moment waiting for the boss to pick-up relates to a fear of stigma, my naturally neurotic privacy, my resistance to over-sharing, or the fact that I’m so casually matter-of-fact about it in umpteen other ways that seems plain to see. Like the way I see it in the demeanour of others, in the same way I know they hear it in my self-deprecating humour dripping with more clues than a psychiatrist’s filing cabinet.

It’s an aspect of living that’s not quite ‘on’ top of me; it’s just ‘of’ me. A legacy from a more distressed period of clinical depression; preceded by uncharted emotional kaleidoscopes that fused together leaving undetonated landmines I risk treading on. Not a diagnosis that can be neatly packaged, nor one that needs curing.

Not a condition from which award-winning articles are written, or that fuels reactionary anger to a myopic commentator’s insensitive remarks, or something that could potentially contribute to the prevailing, and often limiting, public discourse on depression as being exclusively episodic in nature.

Not something comprised of episodes of such debilitating intensity that form the basis of personal accounts, which form the foundation of awareness campaigns, that in turn are beginning to fulfil a public service function that never fully resonates, and at times feels uncomfortably uniform in terms of sources and outcomes.

It’s just an aspect of my moderately functioning, modern life. Not particularly temporary, not particularly curable. An occasional tap on the shoulder that forces me to turn around to have an encounter with the more unsteady part of me.

That’s about the length of the truth of it, and I suspect of a great many people.

My boss only had a few seconds.

 

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.