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Every since my life has been uprooted, and I’ve been planted in rural Clare, everything I’ve come to think of as “myself” has been called into question. In Berlin, I was the musician who lived off playing guitar and hosting weekly music nights. Here, I restore windows in a shed that, until I moved in, housed donkeys, I make compost heap enclosures, unblock sewage tanks, battle mice, chainsaw up already felled trees, and lug wood and groceries six kilometers on a bike tailer, before collapsing in exhaustion in my favourite chair before an engrossing fire.
This month I’ve been thankful for non-stop diy ventures that need attention, rather than the topic that plagues my subconscious. The Basic Income for Artists email that lurks around every corner of conversation, every “how’s it been since you moved?” See, I’m officially in the running to receive three year’s salary for being an artist. To be considered, there were certain proofs needed that you lived off art for least 50% of your income, and since, mine is 100%, and I’ve 10 years worth of grueling proof, I’m in the lottery. The first tranche (as they call it) of successful applicants were announced on the 15th of Oct. The second two tranches will find out “before the end of the year”. This results in a minor, but, perpetual anxiety attack that has me checking my emails frantically, embracing God, manifestation schemes, and desperately speaking to the dead every night for help – maybe the souls beyond have a way of skewing random numbers?! At this stage I’ll venture into any belief system. I think I know now what formed religion. The sheer unexpected force of nature. If I need my harvest to grow, as a result of good weather, and weather is inherently random – then of course, I’ll invent customs of mind, anything at all, to restore order in the chaos.
And, so here I am, an alchemist, puritan, and clairvoyant – all because my bank account is a calamity since I moved from the city.
But, I knew going in, this wouldn’t be easy. And that’s why, I’ve been booking tours for myself – something I’ve been famously poor at. How can a sane person purport to a venue that you’ll assure them strangers will come see an unknown musician?! But, alas, that’s the job! The thing about tours is, venues like you to book literally years in advance. One bar in Freiburg, Germany, I tried to book a few weeks back said they’d love to have us but were booked until September 2028. (For posterity, that’s 2 years away) Now, I don’t know about you – but, I think planning that far ahead in life, is synonymous with sickness. But, thankfully, some countries are more lax, like Italy. At the start of the month I played 2 shows in Sicily.
There’s is nothing more soothing to the soul that’s be embalmed with the cold cultural etiquette of living in Germany, than a venture into the warm confines of Sicilian chatter. People often make parodies of the hand gestures of Italians as that they talk. But, compare that miming motion, an attempt to convey meaning to foreigners, or to clarify the exact temperature of temperament they exude to locals, compare that to the Nordic or Germanic glazed quiet stillness, that silently waits as you struggle and fumble over the word “fadrad” before, after an eon, they speak in eloquent English, only after having had you suffer, and having lapped up some schadenfreude at your expense.
Yes, Sicily was life-affirming, as it always is. But, I also played one show in Dublin. Now, this was a support show, and so, resulted in zero funds, and unlike the Germans who will host you for the night, feed you, and ensure you have every drink you desire at no expense all night, as well as paying you for the trouble – Irish venues make you pay for Guinness, and if you’re playing support, often don’t pay you at all. It was on my train back to Clare on the infamous public transit of Ireland (I wrote a letter to Irish Times that was published on German compared to Irish Public transport that was publish, read here, just turn off javascript to get around the pay wall), sitting at my table, eating a sandwich that my whole conception of self was restored. I was licking my wounds, checking the emails, praying to Gods for help, posting about Patronage on the socials – anything to skew the Gods in my favourite after losing money playing a show, when a man sat across from me, forties, world-beaten, slightly haggard, but, spritely still, in his way.
“How’s your life going?” he said with a wry smile, as he cracked open one of the two beers he held in his hand at 11:30 in the morning.
“Ah, could be better”, I said, not having energy enough to lie, but, a little gallows laugh escaped, that he joined in knowingly with, as I returned my eyes to my Brothers Karamazov, desperately clinging onto the hope if I peered down intently enough, he’d leave me be.
He did not.
You know when you can feel someone’s attention looming on you. When you know you cannot escape the inevitable, the conversation that’s coming. The potential energy of it seems to build and build, until his words finally came, and I knew my silent, restoring journey was done for.
“What do you get out of that book, man?”
Something in me gave up. I’d just go into the conversation, and hope to God, with my new openness to bizarre belief systems, I didn’t have to entertain the idea of the Flat Earth in my condition.
“It has everything in life in it. I learned more from Dostoyevsky than anything I studied in Philosophy.”
After he heard this, he smiled a brimming smile, and went on to tell me about all he gleaned from life, living in Afghanistan, Iran, Spain, USA, and Germany over the years, living in squats and off street performance. His mam was dying. He was only home to see her off. He’d never live again in Ireland. Said the place had fallen, culturally, after a chasm that emerged in the civil war, a hundred years ago. He never had a phone – thinks it corrupts the mind. He even had sympathies with Socrates’ notion that learning to read was a hindrance to the sheer capacity for oral learning we once possessed.
A woman with a crutch joined us an hour into our conversation. Of course, he immediately got her up to speed. He spoke of his civil war theory, asked how she felt in life. She told us she was as healthy as a horse, till she suffered a stroke a year previous, she thought “Ireland was being invaded” by foreigners, a common racism that’s been fueling the European nations as of late.
I spoke up, not chastising, but, in the philosophical debate temperament the whole rest of our conversation had stood on. I spoke of how Ancient Egypt lasted so long, and still exists clearly today in our mind’s eye, as they embraced the foreigner. Their idea was that if their culture was rich enough, if their songs, stories, deities, and festivals were upheld and sacred to the people – no matter who “invaded” eventually, they, too, would succumb to this culture – and no matter how anyone looked, if culture was championed, eventually all would beat to the same drum, and hold them same things as scared in their land. Sicily, I said, is the modern expression of this. When I go there, I often hear the adage “we’ve been invaded so many times, historically speaking, we wouldn’t even know who to be racist against, without being prejudice to we we once were, our forefathers”. (Photo Above – ‘Siamo Tutti Migranti’ – ‘We are all Immigrants’)
“Who’s more Italian than them?!” I said. “Don’t be so scared, Irish culture is one of the strongest on earth! Why do think there’s an Irish pub in every city on earth?! They lap up our songs and stories, Have faith in our culture. Don’t worry about who’s coming in and out!”
It’s then the slightly more sozzled man started his requests, with the same wry smile as he started our conversation.
“Well, give us a song, so!”
This is a mortal fear of mine, realised.
I made a vow to myself that if someone, in earnest, requested a song, I would, having given my life over to this art, have to deliver, no matter the circumstance – otherwise offending the muses, their gifts. (Jesus, perhaps my belief system has always been deranged?!)
But, that doesn’t mean I can’t try and barter, or beg my way out.
I told him how embarrassed that would make me, how I really didn’t want people who were sitting around us to have to suffer someone singing, when all they want to do is work on their power point presentations before their impending meeting in peace.
This worked for about 15 minutes. Then, the lady joined in.
Finally I had to acquiesce.
I sang, as quietly as I could get away with a verse of Dirty Old Town.
“I wish I recorded that.” she said.
The train was coming to our parting stop.
His words to me rekindled everything I’d been forgetting in myself.
“Jaysus. What are you doing, being so bashful?! You can sing! If I could sing. Like that, at all, even! I’d never stop!”
And, so, I never will.
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31/Oct/2026
(Happy Halloween, Happy New Year – for the Irish)
