Grace in a Season’s Turning
Ireland keeps turning, as the world does. Was just taped for the radio of Canada, the Gaelic Hour out of Ottawa (can you get in?) to rant or observe.
Sunny economic predictions not in the quiver, but what a run it has been through these holidays. With extraordinarily mild weather there has been an extraordinary lift in the national spirits, at least through the prism of Ireland Unhinged. In the Cork Arms the other night and a man named The Bird singing opera heft ridiculous ballads and dancing through that ionosphere, sometimes starting or finishing lying down with flowers in his lips, flowers to the ladies, flowers of speech, as all besuits an Irishman saying — FUCK THIS RECESSION, we are going to have fun.
Was in the Bellview Tavern later where 8 or 9 men and ladies singing solo before 100 one after another, and enough to rock the soul — and the realization THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH to glean such joy. Such Irish joy. Meanwhile, two members of self-same angelic St. Luke’s Choir, many of whom belong in gaol, are fighting over nonsense at the fringe festival. That choir is a Christian act from a heathen Anth that sings incredibly challenging carols, and not just for reprobates, with astonishing passion and precision on Cork street corners while others shake buckets to raise thousands for the terminally ill.
They are in a modern sense Catholic.
Out in Ballyduff, the newest incarnation of the Wren Boys — the wild urchin tradition of hoarse singing on St. Stephen’s Day — were straw suited and Haight Asbury coated to belt out songs with huge heart and rattle for bowls of money gifts for a different venue of the dying.
Has Ireland lost its soul? That was the question the marketeers put on the jacket of Ireland Unhinged. I don’t think so.
There is a coalescensce in progress and readers of this thing may help me define whatever that means.
God Bless, and Happy New Year to all…
