halloween Matt Bauer & me Cafe de la danse Paris

Maeva le Berre

The garden of earthly delights

One of the first books I ever remember was an encyclopedia set called Family of Man. I think some door to door salesman sold it to me ma. I can’t really remember the contents apart from one image which i kept coming back to over and over again. A painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. More importantly the right panel, hell. I poured over every millimetre of this panel, it was a world that made sense to me, beautiful, fantastical, terrifying, completely engaging.

I went to the Prado museum in Madrid a few years ago for the first time and ran smack straight into the original. My breath stopped. My heart I thought would burst on the spot. I was paralysed by it. I have never had that feeling with any painting. I realised this painting, created in 1503 had a huge influence on my art, my writing my music and my outlook on life shaped by my imagination.

Again, another tiny moment and random encounter that shaped who I am and what I do with my life.

To this day I often close my eyes and drop into this painting before I start a project. Beautiful.

Hieronymus Bosch

Saoirse (Freedom) and lack of it.

This post is from my sister who has just returned from Palestine. I hung out with both my sisters there last month. This sums up what I want to say better than i can. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t overcooked any of the songs I had written solo or in Clann Zú re the occupation. I had undercooked. I will post my own thoughts soon.

Saoirse and lack of it. Eveanna de Barra

I never realized was just how much freedom I had. How valuable my voice, human rights, access to laws in an equal manner to those around me was. I did not know because nobody had ever tried to take them away from me and no matter where I had travelled in the world I had seen at least a semblance of my rights reflected in the lives of those around me.

And then I arrived at Tel Aviv airport and my one month Journey to Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories began- my journey towards gratitude began, but most importantly my journey towards inspiration was about to begin.

When I arrived at Tel Aviv airport I was anxious. I had been warned that my Irish passport and my international face may cause delays in getting into the country. Blessed as I am with the given law of comedy that surrounds any serious situation in my life my interrogation began with an innocent enough proposal from the guy at immigration for a date…he asked me where I was going. I told him Tel Aviv, he gave me a wee grin and slid his number into my passport, stamped my entry stamp and I was off. Delighted with my easy entry and pretty happy that I was still dateable despite months of eating nothing but deep fired Indian food. I went to collect my luggage and on the way out was stopped by an Israeli soldier. She called over a lady whose job it was to interrogate me.

I had to answer the same questions over and over again- did I know anyone in Israel? Where was my husband from In India? Why had I been to Malaysia? Why Had I been to Morocco? What color knickers was I wearing etc etc… all was well in the world until she flicked through my passport again and came across the number given to me by her colleague inside the airport. Who also happened to be here boyfriend…Now the interrogation changed from protecting the state of Israel to angry girlfriend who simply must know if I asked for the number or he gave it to me…I was ushered off to the bad people room and asked lots more questions. My luggage was scanned a couple of times and I was more concerned that I would have to join this chick and her roving boyfriend at a group therapy session than anything else- I would be gagged and bound and thrown into a military jeep and dragged off to a therapists office to work through it with them. Eventually I was let go and I proceeded to the exit of the airport. Shaking. Me, shaking. Weird right. You had to be there I guess. Guns and 18 year olds don’t mix. I was scared.

I was later told that I was the image of Yasser Arrafts daughter…I only wish.

I arrived in Bethlehem that night and for the first time I felt I could breathe. Here I was in the West Bank I had seen on TV. The Palestine my heart had always broken for from a distance. And surprise, surprise it was nothing like I imagined.

The truth is we are creatures that need to solidify our ideas based on imagery and information we receive to make it sit right in our heads, to own it in a sense- even when we have never had a chance to verify that information or imagery. I had done the same thing before I came to India. Although I had always prided myself of my left wing, open hearted open minded views I realized after months of nobody sexually attacking me and how my money and status put me to shame next to the smiling kid in the slum (who I had the gall to pity when I found it so hard to crack a smile with all that I had) that I was racist.

I had latched on to the horror stories about Indian men and poverty and lots of other stereotypes, I had taken them as truth when really they were just post colonial hangover thoughts that had infected me. Even the worst incidents of sexual harassment in India were nothing compared to what I would have gotten walking down the street in Dublin on a Saturday night. I struggled with the fact that because the men sexually harassing me in the west had white skin those horror stories never actually became horror stories in my head. I struggled with the fact that I had come to India armed with defences based on the color of people’s skin. I was ashamed of that and then I sorted out my karma by marrying an Indian Seriously speaking I promised myself I would never let that happen again.

Once again I came to Palestine armed with pre conceived notions and ideas. My first week in Palestine threw me off. It was so much worse than I had ever imagined. It was so much better than I had ever imagined.

The Occupation was worse. The people were Masters and teachers that the whole world could learn from.

I had seen angry Palestinians on my television running through the streets with their dead held above their heads hoping that someone would do something. I had seen the photos of suicide bombers before and after. I had expected rage and devastation. I had expected to be received in a manner that may not have been friendly. I had expected to be frightened. I had expected a Muslim society where religion came first. How wrong I was.

The only place I ever felt scared was in the airport in Israel and at the checkpoints. The only people I saw in rage toting guns and being unfriendly towards me were in Israel.

Upon creation of the state the world’s longest running refugee crisis began when Israel backed by Britain displaced Palestinian families from all over what is now known as Israel to create a Jewish state.

The Palestinian families who live in refugee camps still have the keys to their houses around their necks. People believed they would be allowed to go home. Some still do. Many will be born and die in those camps and many will see the Israeli terror forces roll in in their tanks at night to massacre their neighbours and families.

Palestine showed me that diversity actually works. There are Palestinian Christians and Muslims. Nobody ever really talked about their religion. People talked about Palestine. People talked about occupation. A Muslim friend was describing how his kids loved Christmas because they got to visit all the Christian friends on that day. A Christian friend expressed the same love of the Eid feast. I had never seen this anywhere in the world. The BBC, my brain and CNN had tricked me again. I had gotten it all backwards again.

At night in Bethlehem the bells of The Church of The Nativity where Jesus was born rang out into the sky where the Call to Prayer from the Mosques shared the same space. It opened my heart and gave me faith.

To leave Bethlehem to go to Jerusalem which is divided into two sections, Israeli and Palestinian (although the entire area is actually controlled by Israel) I had to get a bus. This bus had to go through an Israeli checkpoint. The bus pulls into a checkpoint and everyone has to get off and line up in a cattle grid style contraption. Being desert land it is hot to say the least. There is no shade. The IDF (Israeli Defence force) soldiers stand under a shaded area usually smoking and eating with their pants down around their waists.

When they feel like it the call the people lining up forward and the Palestinians show their ID cards. They are allowed back on the bus when the 18 year old soldier decides so. People over a certain age are allowed to stay on the bus and the IDF soldiers get on the bus to check their ID’s (how nice!) we were waiting in the line in the searing heat when my first experience of abuse of the elderly occurred. A woman who was 80 if she was a day was pulled off the bus. She was a typical terrorist…hip operation candidate, bent over with a hunched back and a walking stick. She was not allowed to go to Jerusalem. She was older than the state of Israel but she was not allowed to go to Jerusalem. I couldn’t understand. We were on a highway! It was a big highway- where would she go? She would dehydrate. How would she get back to Bethlehem? Who would call someone to pick her up?

Simple. She would be left to sit on the side of the road. Because she was Palestinian. The bus driver walked her across the road and there she sat. In the heat in the middle of the day. The checkpoint is patrolled by teenagers with guns. I was a teenager once- I’m very glad I didn’t have a gun back then. This was not good. What was I to do? Had I have been anywhere else in the world I would have shouted and screamed and demanded that the lady be taken care of. I would have gone Irish on their asses. Instead I got back on the bus. I started to cry. I was in disbelief. I was ashamed. The bus pulled off and the lady still sat on the side of the highway. I was told it happens all the time. The bus drove off. I was informed that this was the “nice” checkpoint. The soldiers had sneered at the people presenting their ID’s made them line up like cattle, made them do it every day. When the bus drove off the awful realization that this was “nothing” compared to the abuse Palestinian people suffer daily dawned on me.

I tried to go through the checkpoints a few more times. Each time my rage increased and I realized I was a liability to people who had to get to work and worst of all had to face this humiliation daily. I had the luxury of being a smart ass in the cattle grid, I had the luxury of poking my tongue out at a soldier when I got back on the bus because I’m 5. I had the luxury of screeching “this is NOT normal!” when we got back on the bus, I had the luxury of saying thank you in Arabic as I snatched my passport back from the soldiers hand. I had started to believe that my rights were a luxury.

By force, the apartheid wall, discrimination, abuse of power, murder and day to day humiliation Israel has created a situation where human rights for Palestinian people living within Israel and in Palestine are a luxury.

The last time I left Bethlehem and got that bus a young Palestinian man told me of soldiers at checkpoints who make Palestinian teenagers with valid ID’s who don’t know each other kiss each other on the lips if they want to get back on the bus. But I was reassured by reading the Israeli Defence Ministers response to the genocide that took place in Gaza last year that Israel respects human rights…

I couldn’t do it. I had only done it three times! I could not get on the 21 bus. I wasn’t strong enough.

I was happy to be in Bethlehem. Palestine suited me. Good food, people, hearts and minds. I was happy there. It became a running joke that I would end up with a key to the city. Oh I wish. Palestinians laughed at me when I told them about my bus rage. Many of them did not have the precious blue Israeli issued permit to visit their beautiful Jerusalem and would have traded places with me any day so they could pray in their mosques or sit in their churches.

Jerusalem was 20 minutes away and a lifetime away. These people were living in a prison. One man had not been to Jerusalem in 15 years.

The thing that struck me most about these people living under occupation and terrorized daily was how well they did that living. It amazed me that life could go on. People woke up and went to work and fed their children, straightened their hair, did the laundry, wrote their poetry, watched the one they loved pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night, loved, cried, laughed, danced, argued, and made damn good falafel and hummous- and they did it well. They rose above what I could not bear to even witness. They were living under occupation in a fashion that I tried to live in and couldn’t manage in total freedom.

One man walked up to me in a restaurant in Bethlehem and asked me if I was a journalist. I told him I wasn’t. He asked me if I would just tell someone, somewhere his daughter’s story anyway.

She had scratches and bruises all over here face. She was four. She was walking to school and was attacked by Israeli settlers because she was Palestinian. “Nobody does nothing” he said in broken English. He was a father, holding the hand of his baby who had been traumatized physically and emotionally by violence perpetrated in the name of God. In the Holiest of Lands…. I didn’t know what to say. I had nothing to say. I smiled at her and wanted to say “someone will do something” but I knew it not to be true. For her story was just one of a million.

People who were born into the occupation asked me what the sea was like. The sea their people had swam in before the occupation. The sea they would never get to lay eyes on. People imagined this sea; they had even imagined their visit to the sea right down to what was in their picnic basket. I imagined it with them. I tasted the food with them, I smelt the sea with them and I felt lucky. Easy for me because I had picnicked at the beach so often. Of course I imagined it in real colours with real tastes. I felt lucky to know that I could go anywhere in the world and touch the sand, feel the sun on my back despite what my race was.

Bethlehem has been cut off by the giant apartheid wall that snakes through the West Bank cutting people off from their lives, families, spouses, jobs and land. It was built by Israel to “keep the terrorists out”. It has in fact decimated the lives of everyone living behind that wall. I stood near that wall many times and I never felt small despite the fact that it towered over me because of the people I had met. Walls are built by men and they are knocked down and overcome by human spirit.

There is the human spirit. I don’t really know if I ever truly knew what that was until I had been to Palestine. I had read about it in my own History books, I had seen the Pictures and heard the stories of Ireland’s heroes but I had never seen it like this. I am glad I saw it in my lifetime.

Human spirit is not about shouting and screaming on a bus- nor is it about violence. Human spirit is what Palestinians embody. They have a natural grace that lifts them above the abuse they face, they have a kindness and goodness that does not dim in the terror that is their existence. I could never explain why I thought they were so much more powerful than the occupier. I could not explain why even though they didn’t have the guns or the rights or the voice or the US aid like Israel did that they were the powerful ones. I guess you cannot explain human spirit. It is something you feel as you witness it.

There are plenty of Websites on line with information on Palestine created by Palestinian and Israeli organizations dedicated to protecting human rights. Please talk about Palestine, write about Palestine and demand that your politicians hold Israel accountable for the human rights abuses that take place daily at their hands. Please boycott Israel by not buying products from there.

Most of all please visit Palestine for yourself. It is one of the most beautiful places I have been with a wealth of culture and sites unique in the world. They are in desperate need of tourism that has been heavily affected due to the wall, lack of access (you can only enter through Israel and they wont let you in if you say you are going there), I promise none of the horror stories are true…in fact it’s quiet the opposite.

Le HibOO part 2 – Sunset Club Paris

Until the morning comes – this was shot by the good folks at Le Hiboo you can check out awesome photos there too http://www.le-hiboo.com/tag/declan-de-barra+le-sunset

more about "Le HibOO part 2 – Sunset Club Paris", posted with vodpod

Le HibOO videos from Sunset Paris

Throw your arms around me with Guillaume Thomas on Piano.

more about " Le HibOO videos from Sunset Paris", posted with vodpod

French fries, festivals, fear, and fucking fever.

© Eddy
I kick this off with the electric picnic. I know, this happened before my last post…just go with it…think of it as a jumpcut tarrantino kind of post without the violence and cool soundtrack. The Electric picnic is my  favourite festival in the world. I sang two songs as Gaeilge (in Irish) at the Irish tent, I have enough Irish to hold a broken conversation as long as we are not discussing metaphysics or postmodernism. Writing Songs in Irish is a fearful adventure akin to standing on a ship staring at on of  those old maps you see with the phrase “Beyonde hereth there be dragons” scrawled across the ocean of no return.

Luckily I had the help of my good bud Síle Keane to help with the translations. Irish along with Arabic doesn’t translate directly into English. It is kind of why i love it so much, and it’s why Irish English (hiberno English) sounds more enticing than the “Queen’s English”. It is back to front in a lot of cases and lot’s of things are stated in the form of a question. Win.

Anyway Síle did a great job taking the essence of what i had written and translating it into lyric. Both were a pleasure to sing, thank you to Orla and the seachtain na gaeilge for inviting me down and plying me with free festival tickets. Highlights for me were Jape, Neko case, Billy Brag, Low Anthem and Brian Wilson. It was like musical tapas. Only let down was Roots Manuva whom I was a big fan of. He just walked through the set like he couldn’t give a fuck. No fitness witnessed.

The next night I played some songs in the Dublin Fringe festival in the cool Bosco theatre. THis was the beginning of the weirdness. I could feel my throat drying up being balanced by a super factory working in my sinuses to produce snot at a biblical level. It is like singing and gargling liquid frogs  at the same time. Finished the songs and headed home.

Woke up with a head like the last days of the 9th army in stalingrad…fucktarded. Somehow i made it to the airport with whatever clothes i had managed to stuff in a bag and my guitar.Now we are caught up to the last post ‘Hit by truck, France, fever and fancy cakes’ . So I played the Radio France show as per post and spent most of the next day sleeping, sweating and swearing on the floor of my rec co guy Tim’s flat. I have 3 shows to get through at the sunset club.

Day 1. WHY IS THIS LIZARD TALKING TO ME?
Awake. I am just hearing NNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG! I don’t eat. My minced meat head is playing the last scene of Requiem for a dream backwards with a soundtrack of Brujeria being played by little monkeys with different toned semi automatic weapons. I grab my guitar and in a delusional sweat swim the whole way to the venue for soundcheck. I meet Guillaume Thomas for the first time, he of the youtube cover of ‘Throw your arms around me’. We run through the song and someday soon also. He is a genius on the piano with lots of feel and i am happy. I somehow appear human and speak relatively coherently before passing out on the stage and sleeping for 2 hours.

Show time. I am sweating profusely and have a falafel in my belly so i think i am invincible and walk to the stage, people are sitting and they appear to be swirling and shining pretty little lights from their auras. Everyone is beautiful maaaaaaan…i realise that i am sick and when i get sick  i tend to sound like a demented hippy. I kick in with the first 2 songs, all good. The 3rd my fingers seem to be lagging behind my brain signals and i am making mistakes with the songs. One good, one shite, one good… By mid way through i am thinking i will have to stop, i am short of breath and the two headed dragon playing the piano beside me is pissed off i am playing out of time. The audience have all turned a lovely pink colour. I see them all as cooked lobsters with masters in early german expressionism. I think i am going to faint and have to stop for a second and hold my self up.

Of course tonight is the night that all the video guys, and agents and reviewers show up. Why frankly i would be upset if they had not showed up at the worst show of my entire life. Most of all i felt sorry for the people who have payed the price of a nice dinner (by my cheap date standards) to see me and i was giving a c performance. I tried with everything i had and squeezed out the last few songs i had in me. To be honest i don’t remember much fo the last half, or of speaking to anyone afterwards. I remember waking up int he middle of the night in Tim’s flat thinking …did i walk here…where is my guitar.

DAY TWO : SALVATION RISE OF THE FLU RIDDEN.

I awaken to the sound of a building being demolished in my head , the earth actually appears to be shaking. I am obviously going to die. I then realise they are actually demolishing a building next door.

They stopped for lunch but the noise continued inside my head. I expelled the entire cast of District 9 from my nose and throat at least once every ten minutes. Tim carried my gear to the venue because i was still too weak. thanks Tim.  If anyone wanted a shot at the title…now was your chance. A baby could roll me. I did a few interviews and played a few songs for some blogs and then fell asleep on the stage again. Thank you Marie K  (my french net pr guru below )for the interviews…

So I lay down on the stage after the interviews a few hours before i was supposed to play. I decided there and then that if the show was shite i was going to quit music forever. Then i put my head back and slept like the dead onstage until the first punters arrived. I woke up and went downstairs into the cellar and hung out with jazz musos till i was supposed to go on. Well i sang out of my skin and totally fucking slayed it, no mistakes on guitar, Guillaume was on fire with piano. the crowd were warm and lovely. I finished and had nothing left by the end. Completely exhausted. Clemence my agent bought me dinner and her cool fellah Benoit plied me with vitamins and painkillers. Here they are being remarkably Parisian.

DAY 3 – Let’s do this like a nudist buddhist called Judas.

Woke up to the dulcit tones of jackhammers and buildings collapsing. Reviews are coming in saying nice things about the show and thank fully the footage going up on the web is not me fucking up chronically. It is always scary these days, as you look out into the crowd you can see yourself being videod and youtubed as you speak. You can imagine twitter…at d de barra gig…yawn…oh wait he just totally fucked up that guitar part.

Anyway the last show in  a row at the sunset was also a blast and nice and full with cool people. Even better i was joined on stage by the wonderful Maeva le Berre who came and played for fun despite the fact i couldn’t afford to pay her. I said no. she said fuck you i have a knife. So she played along with Guillaume Thomas on piano. What can i say about Guillaume. I asked him to come play thinking he lived in Paris. It turns out he actually lives in Lyon and traveled up just for the 3 shows. Here are the three amigos …

All 3 shows were made more special by having Carly Sings come up and do a few of her songs in the middle of my set. Just her and a piano…a wee Wicklow girl with a great voice and skillz to pay the billz living in Paris. And she looks great in sunglasses…

So spent the last night after the show with good friends of mine who have taken great care of me while i navigated my way through Paris over the last year. Anne pictured below gave me a cool hoody. (Just as mine has died) Thanks to everyone who invited me to their homes, hung out with me, came to the shows, took photos, interviewedm videod, bought cds, bought me meals, laughed with me and encouraged me during this mini tour. Ye are all fucking brilliant.

more photos here http://www.soul-kitchen.fr/declan-de-barra-au-sunset/#more-5348

Hit by truck, France, fever and fancy cakes

sitting in Dublin airport ( my second home) with a head full of snot, waiting to go to France. my head feels like someone is chopping wood in there. I have to pull it together for tomorrow, coz i have a radio show in Radio France called pont des artistes, 5 songs and it’s a big deal apparently so hence the cold. Been a rough enough week. Got hit by a truck while crossing the road in Dublin and my arm is still fucking sore, I don’t bruise easily at all but my entire bicep is bruised and looks like a side of ham. luckily my guitar case took the worst of it and I didn’t go under wheels.
here is a pic a week later…
later: Boarding the tiny plane for Paris there are two yellow jackets with tools working on the engine, (there are two on this plane) one is shaking his head. This happens me frequently. I know we will board then be forced to sit in plane and they will decide to change planes after 20 minutes…sure enough ‘ah ladies and gentlemen we are having a slight technical hiccup….’ change planes get to Paris late with head now pounding like there is a drunk orchestra inside trying to play slayer backwards. Grab my 38kgs of baggage, strap it to my back and off we go. I arrive at my wonderful booking agents Zamora. I am supposed to stay with Clémence my booker but i am too fucked to travel. I am now sweating and trying to be coherent. Haven’t eaten all day so go to Vietnamese place around corner and order hottest thing possible and add half a bottle of that nuclear thick chilli. Eat it and lose feeling in my face. you could pull my teeth and i wouldn’t feel it. Stagger back to office and collapse on couch.
I have a conversation with a friend of mine online  while becoming more and more delirious. Become and overemotional tool and say stupid things. Last thoughts before sleep, please go away disease and let my throat be okay again. I have flown all this way to do this radio show and it’s important. sleep.

Wake 5 delirious and sweating. Make call to a friend and say more stupid shit.

Later: I am at Radio France, a huge fucking building with loads of studios and orchestra rooms etc. I never know exactly what the story is when i am booked to do something in France, no one really tells me details. I think it may be a hangover from the resistance days. A need to know basis. I find out i am doing an interview in French and then playing 6 songs. The audience think i am being hilarious, Tim from my french label is translating and correcting my abortionate french. I am not being hilarious, i am trying to be serious, but i am still wracked with fever and my world is an LSD tinged one. I play one song  thinking oh fuck there is no way i will get through six songs, my throat is toast. They tell me i have to do it again because the recording wasn’t working. Six songs are now looking like fantasy.
I get mid way through and can feel my throat cracking, the notes hold. 3 more. i am listening to maeva on cello and Thomas play a storm. Somehow we reach the last one and my face says thank fuck. I think it sounded okay inthe end. Then again it could be totally shite. My shite radar is down for the count until all primary systems return online.

Lots of people come up from audience and say they loved it so we could be safe. Thanks to the lovely radio france people for the juice and sandwiches (the way to Dec’s heart) and hot tea. There were fancy french cakes too so wee took a picture and sent to Vincent Cakes Martinez (he is obsessed by cakes) who normally plays guitar for me but was away on tour being the rock genius he is. It read ‘Declan says fuck you’.  Thanks to Maeva and Thomas for being so cool. Here is a mandatory aprés show rock pic of the band.

later: worked till about 2.30 and then fell asleep on a yoga mat on Tim’s floor. I still like sleeping on floors. Apart from India where they have crate snakes that kill you in your sleep. I think i should move to japan. tatami matt and rollable futon. yup way to go. Spring beds are shit for sleep and worse for sex. Sorry to make you lose your lunch there people. Yes it has been known for me to copulate.

later: Tim’s electricity has blown up. I feel guilty i think i may have given the socket my flu. I could have swine flu, who knows, i never pay doctors unless i am turning blue. I would prefer to spend the money on things like food and rent. Speaking of which i am two months behind in mine. It was a lean summer. Don’t worry i have fat reserves to live on. Winter is coming and i have a few shows coming up.

Will be on the road till mid October. then into recording mode for November and December. If this sickness disappears. if i die you can have my ipod.

love and face masks

Dec
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Listen to Declan’s music;
www.declandebarra.com
www.myspace.com/declandebarra
www.youtube.com/user/declandebarra
twitter.com/declandebarra

insanity for a good cause

I met these guys from Waterford just outside the Damascus gate, Jerusalem, in searing heat. They had cyled from glasgow to Gaza to raise cash for medicines in Gaza. Please support them if you can here http://pathwaystopalestine.com and follow them on twitter here http://twitter.com/cycle2gaza

Their blog makes for a great read and i felt so awed by their commitment to help others who really need it. Up the deise!

perfect teeth and the rise and fall of language…

Wow, I’m just reading about the plans to get rid of the Irish Film board and Culture Ireland. Both of these have kept me alive in bleak times over the last few years and gave me a foothold to create and become self sustaining. Culture Ireland helped me with travel, the Filmboard funded some of my (and my sisters) animations and was to fund a film script i am co writing…now who knows. It will be a huge loss to Ireland if these organisations go. Dark days…no different than someone wondering if their tech or manufacturing job will go i suppose, except artists don’t get redundancy and have a hell of a time trying to get social assistance. The same goes for anyone who has the balls to be self employed, creative or not. Although to my mind starting any business and mkaing it work is creative.

You may see me back on grafton st busking! Nothing wrong with that. It fed me well.

Big Happy birthday to my friend Sile who used to run Banana Phoblacht in Galway, she hated me at first, confusing me with some other big shaven headed bastard ( her excuse not mine) and then we became the best of buds. She let me sit in the cafe all day when i was broke and write and i came up with some of my best material in there.  Sile also translated all my songs in Irish fro Clann zú and and my short animation an fiach dubh. What a great place, great food and bi lngual service, they acitvely encouraged my broken Irish and helped me overcome the terror of irish that the irish school system creates. Teaching people grammar before they can speak is not the best of ways to instill love of a language.

Now i happily chat away when i can with Sile or anyone who will listen to me murder tenses and drop in english when i’m stuck. And not just with Irish, now i jump right in with french and appalling spanish. I really don’t give a fuck that i am not fluent. It’s the only way to learn. And i love it, i love languages. I love that they exist and thrive despite the onslaught of the lingua franca,TV english. I am all for a univeral language that helps communication and understanding of eachother. That can only make us richer. But not where it means the death of another language.

Don’t get me wrong i am not a linguistic purist either, languages evolve or die. Hence Slaneens (goodbye from slan) and Ceard ever (what ever) in Irish, Ros na run Irish. Infact i love when people who are not fluent in a language come up with new ways of saying things. It might not be grammaticvally correct but it still makes sense. Protectionism and conservative puritism will kill any love and beauty in language faster than any oprresive power could. So onwards and upwards with the mutation of languages but a pox upon the genitals of the active surpressors of ‘non mainstream lanuages. Yo think a language has no relevance? Fine, leave it the fuck alone and see if it dies or not.

Did you know French  was only spoken by 20% of French people in the late 1800’s? Cest Vrai.

The rest spoke Basque, Breton, Occitane etc.

This morning i was in Banff in alberta canada, two cowboys walked by, the whole gear, the real deal. They were speaking english and casually switched to perfect french to help a tourist before continuing on in english as if it were nothing. There was something beautiful in that.

I’m typing this on a plane on the way to Toronto, aircanada is making up for pissing me off on the way here by having a power point and usb charger in the back of head rests. Genius. Canadian and American tv always reminds me i need to visit the dentist. See pic below…

 

As Tommy Tiernan once said, you can tell Americans by their big shiny perfect teeth while Irish people have teeth like iron filings on a magnet.#

*okay i’m back in my flat and this is what i feel like after 32 hrs and no sleep. a picture tells a thousand words…

 

Conversations with ghosts.

Conversations with ghosts leave you husk dry and there’s not a touch of water. they have taken all the moisture in the air with them when they closed the conversation and left the room satisfied. Once they were flesh but now they are electric ons and offs and spits and spats of maybe it never happened. And their voices change in your head from the original you have long forgotten, caricatures replace truth and you weep a little more for their passing as you try to reawaken how they sounded when they laughed from seances you hold at 4 am in you head. But they are not coming back and they are not waiting for you to come back to them, you are a ghost that keeps annoying them with static. They do not want your conversation, they are happy you have faded and your voice they could not give a fuck for. Wake up, something is burning.