Don’t Judge!

This morning, while I was eating a bowl a cereal, I flipped on the Today show just as Katy Perry was taking the stage. And while I was rolling my eyes at her outfit, the stage props (was that supposed to be a cloud? Or gigantic cotton candy?), and surreal dancing bears, I suddenly had a flashback to the mid-90s and realized I couldn’t judge.

As I’ve said before, I went to Ireland inspired by earthy traditional music played on accordions and fiddles, tin whistles and bodhrán drums. I found all that, and it was marvelous. And then, there was this:



I’m cheating a bit this week, because the Spice Girls aren’t Irish — but in Galway during the fall of 1996, it seemed nearly impossible to escape them. One of my earliest memories after arriving in town is turning on the television in my apartment, seeing the official video for “Say You’ll Be There” (the one set in the Mojave Desert), and thinking, “what the...?” But it wasn’t long (probably that weekend) before I was dancing to — and singing along with — their songs like everyone else. Sure, you could go down to The Crane or the Club Áras na nGael for an amazing trad session, but just as often, it was pop music that spilled out of clubs and pubs as you walked down the street at midnight.

It was the constantly shifting combinations of traditional and contemporary culture that I found most exciting and confusing about living in Galway. On a Tuesday night, I might go to an Irish language class and then set dancing at Monroe’s. Then on Saturday, it might be a night out at the GPO and dancing to more pop music than I’d heard since the 8th grade. Back in the States, my friends were mortified that I knew all the words to Spice Girl songs. But I was so surprised by the idea of a Europop, gin-soaked, neon-tinged Galway that there was nothing to do but embrace it with enthusiasm.

Katy Perry’s Today show stage featured larger-than-life candy — a fitting metaphor for the pop music that can become our guilty pleasure. When it’s done well, it’s music that makes us dance even as we check to make sure no one catches us in Top 40 indulgence. It may not have much substance, but it’s a sweet treat and the sugar buzz can make you feel invincible for up to four minutes.

It’s the last week of summer, people. What the heck? Here’s another one.

Have fun.

“Cúirt Bhaile Nua” (Colm Mac Con Iomaire)

Before I went to Ireland, I would listen to traditional music and imagine myself standing on a green, windswept hillside, with the sound of pipes in the distance and smoke rising out of the chimney of a charming cottage nearby. I thought of high kings at the Hill of Tara and great legendary and mythical figures: Brian Ború, Cúchulainn, Queen Medb. And I dreamed of standing at a cliff’s edge, gazing resolutely into the distance, while waves crashed into the rocks below.

Imagine my satisfaction when I went to Ireland and was able to live out all of these visions — with a few alterations, of course. There was plenty of standing on green, windswept hillsides, though it lacks a certain something without the pipes and the cozy cottage setting. It doesn’t take long before you start to feel like an idiot for being cold and windswept (and most likely rained on) when any sane person is in the pub having a pint.

I also spent one glorious summer afternoon at the Hill of Tara, seat of the ancient high kings, which turned out to be a set of otherwise unremarkable undulating hills situated next to a busy visitor’s center. And none of my fantasies had involved the swarming masses of tourists always present at the Cliffs of Moher — except for the time I went in January and the wind blew so hard, you had to be especially careful not to get too close to the edge. There’s no resolute gazing when you’re gripping a rock wall in terror. (My friend might look happy in this photo, but I’m sure he was terrified on the inside.)

All of this is the long way around to saying that having a crush on a country is a bit like having a crush on a person. The better you get to know it, the more it will disappoint and delight you in unexpected ways. The end result may be even better than what you originally dreamed of, but it is still different, and something to get used to.

Listening to Colm Mac Con Iomaire’s version of “Cúirt Bhaile Nua (The Court of New Town)” brings back all those old dreams and visions. Which I don’t think is such a bad thing after all. They represent a longing to connect with a place, or a period of time, or a people that might not really exist anymore, except in a spirit that you can still sense in intangible ways — or in tangible cultural elements that remain with us thanks to artists like Colm.

Gaeilge (Irish) is also one of those things that, to put it plainly, I love about Ireland. Colm, who is also the violinist for The Frames and The Swell Season, tells a lovely story as Gaeilge (in Irish) about the title of his solo album, The Hare’s Corner, in this video from TG4.

Finally, in the clip below, you’ll notice that Colm says that this song is typically sung unaccompanied in the sean nós (old style) tradition. So please also be sure to check out the second video as well — an amazing clip of Nora McDonagh singing “Cúirt Bhaile Nua” as Gaeilge. The two songs actually sound nothing alike, but I’m taking it on faith that they’re two versions of the same beautiful thing.

Enjoy.

Colm Mac Con Iomaire



Nora McDonagh

"Seven Day Mile" (The Frames)

The Frames are an Irish indie rock band that have been kicking around for the past twenty years. Since 2007-ish, when Marketa Irglova is added, voila! They become The Swell Season. The two bands sound similar, and different. The Frames is The Swell Season, and The Swell Season is The Frames, except when they are not. As I recently read on another blog, they are two sides of the same coin.

I haven’t seen The Frames live, but they’re touring this fall. It will be interesting to see what kind of sound they have without Marketa. As the old saying goes, you can’t go home again. It seems to me that it would be impossible to go back to being the same band they were before — before Glen and Marketa made the movie Once, before their Oscar win, before they moved from a harder edge to a more mellow folk sound. Surely they have been affected personally and professionally by all the changes brought about by the past few years, and those changes are sure to come through in the music.

As I’ve said before, part of my inspiration for falling in love with Ireland was my infatuation with all types of Irish music, beginning in my early teens. The irony of that is, when I lived in Galway in the ‘90s, my relationship with music essentially ended. Or, I should say that my musical experience at home and my musical experience in Ireland were dramatically different. All the intricacies of those differences is a story for another day, but the short version is that I never heard of The Frames until Once came out. How did I miss this band? In 1996, the year I arrived in Galway, Fitzcarraldo was released by ZTT Records and went to #26 on the Irish charts. I always tell people that if a band wasn’t playing the university’s reading room, then I missed them. But that hardly seems like an excuse. (It’s also a little disingenuous, but that, too, is a story for another day.)

In any case, I am now doing my best to catch up. I was familiar with “Seven Day Mile” before The Swell Season played it at the Nelsonville Music Festival last May, but only after filming this clip did I sit down and study the lyrics. What a beautiful song. In another clip, Glen Hansard introduces this song by saying that it’s about checking in with someone to say, “I’m thinking about you. Are you alright? I hope you get better. I’d help you in a more practical way if I could, but all I can do is send you a song.”

Sometimes, though, sending a song is really the only thing you can do. With that in mind, these lines in particular resonate with me:

Well this might take a while to figure out
So don’t you rush it
And hold your head up high right through the doubt
‘Cause it’s just a matter of time
You’ve been running so fast
It’s the seven day mile
Has you torn in between here and running away

I think we all face times when we feel torn between here and running away. And when my mother died, I often found myself thinking, “It’s been two weeks/two months/a year ... I should be over this.” But sometimes things take a while to figure out. Some things are harder to get through than others. And some people need more time than others. That’s all. I don’t think there are any answers here, which is what I love about this song. It’s like my husband — when something comes up, sometimes he’ll say, “Well, I’ll be here.” That didn’t make any sense to me for a long time. “What does that even mean?” I would say. Then, over a chunk of years, a whole bunch of tough stuff went down, and he was there all along. And then I got it. He didn’t have any answers, but he was there. That’s all. That’s everything.

Enjoy.

“Listen Girl” and “Heyday” (Mic Christopher)

The first time I heard “Listen Girl” was while watching the video on YouTube. So for me, the song will forever be associated with a group of friends kicking around New York, exploring and discovering and just being young and happy.

The video reminds me of a similar day in the summer of 1995. But instead of Irish friends in New York, this was a group of American friends in Ireland. I’d met Fionnuala, Nate, Rob, and Mike a week or two before I took this photo in Galway. But for those two weeks, and the rest of the summer, we were inseparable. We traveled all over the country, exploring and discovering and just being young and happy.

It’s easy to think of those days in Ireland as our heyday. But when Mic introduces “Heyday” in the clip below, he says he wondered why there has to be “a time when you’re great, and the rest of the time you’re not.” So “this is basically about every day being your best day.”

Why can’t every day be our heyday? I try to remember that now. These days, much of my time may be spent folding laundry or making dinner, but I’m surrounded by the deep love of family and friends that makes life so rich. The spirits of those who have gone before us carry us through each day, and in the evenings, the summer sun dips into the fields, casting the world around us in glorious blue and gold. Back in Galway in ’95, that was our heyday then. And this is our heyday now.

Enjoy.

“Listen Girl”




“Heyday”

"No Mermaid" (Sinéad Lohan)

The song “No Mermaid” seems to have more to do with living an authentic life than it does with actual mermaids. Nonetheless, the mermaid is a powerful figure in Irish myth that, once conjured, is difficult to escape. In contemporary Irish literature, the image of the mermaid is perhaps best captured in the work of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, a versatile writer and scholar known primarily for her Irish-language poetry.

I once had the great privilege of going drinking with Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. (The phrase “going drinking” might inaccurately make it sound like we went out in Temple Bar and then scarfed down garlic chips from Supermac’s at 2 a.m., but it sounds cool.) If I remember correctly, the actual incident was set in a quiet bar in southern Illinois with a group of folks from an Irish Studies conference. And what I remember most of all is that Ní Dhomhnaill had just started to tell us about the years she spent in Turkey when the guy sitting next to me put his arm on the back of my chair.

If it’s appropriate to say you had a crush on someone when you were in your mid-20s, then that word applies here. I had admired this person from afar for some time, and now I could actually feel his arm resting against my back. Suddenly, the only sound I could hear was my heart beating in my ears, and everything Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill said was lost to me.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) my tragic schoolgirl foolishness, I’ve tried to go back and better cultivate my interest in Ní Dhomhnaill’s work. To start, you can read three of her poems, along with translations by Paul Muldoon, in the electronic literary journal Inertia. Also, if you have 45 minutes to spare, you can listen to this documentary from RTÉ Radio 1 about Ní Dhomhnaill’s use of mermaid imagery.

Finally, if you only have three minutes to spare, I recommend watching this video produced for TG4, the Irish-language television station (even though there aren’t any mermaids). In this video, Ní Dhomhnaill reads her poem “Athair.” Listening to her read is a special treat. Not only is her poetry rich in symbolic imagery, but, to me, the Irish language (Gaeilge) sounds like waves hitting rock. It puts me in mind of this particular March day in Connemara, when the cold wind whipped our hair and the water broke like glass at our feet.

All of this brings me back around to Sinéad Lohan, whose song “No Mermaid” is also rife with watery imagery. Lohan is apparently something like the J. D. Salinger of Irish music. That may be overstating her influence a bit, but nonetheless, she burst onto the scene in the mid-90s, made two albums, and disappeared. Rumors exist that she’s still making music, but nothing has surfaced since the album No Mermaid in 1998. If you check out the handful of Sinéad Lohan videos on YouTube, many of the comments say “Where are you, Sinéad?” and “Please come back.” Until then, we’ll have to content ourselves with the music that she’s left us.

Enjoy.

"It'll Be Easier in the Morning" (Hothouse Flowers)

I was very blessed to live in Galway for two years. And if I ever got a bit down and called a friend to complain, I usually got this advice: “I don’t want to hear it.” Which was fair enough, because it really was a charmed life. I spent most of my time studying, but I also went to the Galway Market on Saturdays, stopped for coffee in Café du Journal, danced at the GPO on Sunday nights, and spent many happy evenings in The Front Door (or Club Áras na nGael, Neachtain’s, Monroe’s, Murphy’s, Taylor’s, or the College Bar).

It was relatively easy to adjust to life in Ireland. For example, English is the primary language, and all the food is identifiable. Such luxuries shouldn’t be taken for granted when one is venturing far from home. Even so, there were things that could be frustrating.

For example, you might go to the bursar’s office to pay your tuition bill, only to be told that the woman who handles those particular bills is out for lunch. “Well, can I leave it for her?” you might ask. This request might be ignored, and the woman behind the counter might instead suggest that you simply stop by later. However, when you stop by later, the office might be closed for the weekend (even though it’s noon on a Thursday). Then, when you return the following week, you might be informed that the (increasingly elusive) woman in question is on vacation for the next two weeks. “But my tuition is due tomorrow,” you might respond. “What should I do?” To which the woman behind the counter might sigh dramatically and tell you that she’ll take it after all. You’ll watch her drop your check on a stack of papers, and then you’ll spend the next month or so fretting that it will be “lost” and you’ll have to pay the bill again, even though the money has mysteriously disappeared from your account.

On days like those, I could seek out my friend Michael (dubbed “Vegas” by his Galway friends, in honor of his hometown). We would drink black coffee, watch The Simpsons, and pepper our conversation with all the Americanisms we could think of. As in, “Dude, that Simpsons episode was awesome.” — “Totally, dude.”

If The Simpsons wasn’t on, or if there was no one to commiserate with, the other thing I would often do is to go for a walk. My first year in Galway, I would leave my apartment, walk about two minutes to the bank of the River Corrib, and then head upriver toward Menlo Castle. The crisp air would do wonders for clearing my head, and looking over at the castle helped me remember what a truly amazing experience it was to be living in Ireland.

During my second year in Galway, my apartment was just around the corner from Bridge Street, where I often stood and let the rushing river take any anger or loneliness or melancholy out to sea.

Now that I’m back in the States, I don’t have one particular place where I can sort things out in my mind. But all these years — whether I’m looking out over the water or sitting at my kitchen table at home — one thing has remained constant. When life starts to feel overwhelming, the song “It’ll Be Easier in the Morning” often seems to magically pop into my head.

Of course, not all problems and worries go away overnight. But I’ve found that, most of the time, things really are easier in the morning. This gorgeous song gives me such a lovely way to remember that.

Enjoy.

The Swell Season

In my first post, I said I would write about the music that first inspired my love for Ireland, and I will. But for today, I decided to write about one of my more recent favorites, The Swell Season.

A few years ago, my radio alarm went off around six o’clock one morning, and as I gradually became conscious, a few words caught my attention. “New film ... Ireland ... music....” For a day or two, I thought I was dreaming. Until finally, I looked it up online and found out about Once.

The story of this independent musical’s humble beginnings and eventual rise to Oscar glory is well documented. If you’re not familiar, just Google it. And for heaven’s sake, watch the movie. I myself had to wait to see it, because it wasn’t released in my neck of the woods for a while. But, God bless Fox Searchlight, you could stream the entire soundtrack from the film’s website. And that was it. I was captivated.

The Swell Season have made me remember what it was I loved about music. For starters, there’s luscious harmonies and honest, heartbreaking lyrics. Glen Hansard’s charisma, and Marketa Irglova’s golden, radiant smile. The palpable chemistry between the entire group of musicians (six in all). It’s as if, when they’re playing, they dip down into the music together. They become part of it, and it becomes part of them. And then, if you’re seeing them live, Glen Hansard invites you, as part of the crowd, to join them. And what might have been simply an evening of hearing some live music becomes this moment of connection in which you feel as though you can hold the music in your hands.

My husband and I saw them last May at the Nelsonville Music Festival, on a bright Sunday afternoon where it seemed everyone, including the band, was smiling and just generally happy to be alive. There was a wonderful laid-back atmosphere. Marketa said the festival reminded her of one in her hometown in the Czech Republic and that they had gone for a walk in the woods surrounding the festival site earlier in the day. And when my husband and I were hanging out watching the She Bears earlier that afternoon, who came around the corner and sat down just in front of us but Glen Hansard himself.

I didn’t go up to him because I was playing it cool (in other words, I was too shy). But he seemed really nice, chatting with everyone who did stop and talk. But actually, what I loved was that most people ignored him. Maybe they just didn’t realize his band were the headliners that day, or maybe they were also playing it cool. But seeing Glen Hansard walk around mostly undisturbed had the effect of casting a sense of camaraderie over the entire afternoon. A sense of mutual appreciation, between band and audience, for kicking back with a cup of coffee and a bunch of great music.

They opened with a cover of “Ohio River Boat Song” by Palace Music (Bonnie “Prince” Billy). I apologize that the audio and video aren’t the greatest quality. It was my first time using that camera for video. I’m also including someone else’s video of their Oscar-winning song, “Falling Slowly,” which begins with a sweet introduction by one of their younger fans.

Enjoy.