William Wall 2007

How should we describe the extraordinary consensus that existed in this country — a consensus that united us all around core concepts like ‘free markets’, ‘competition is the only way’, ‘private enterprise good, public enterprise bad’, ‘social partnership’, ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘greed is good’, ‘conspicuous consumption’? For a long time we lived inside a bubble. The walls of the bubble were invisible to us, they coloured everything we looked at but everything was that colour anyway so we thought it was colourless. It was, nonetheless, a bubble. What we hear these days, in the media, in conversations, in political speeches and union negotiations is the pop of the bubble bursting. We are faced with an absolute incongruence — between what we have been told and what we see.1 What this incongruence will tell us remains to be seen, but it makes us strange to ourselves, wakes us from our dream of shopping and eating and enables us to look back at our days in the bubble with at least the illusion of detachment. – William Wall

William Wall’s challenging call to develop a poetics of anger at Three Monkeys Online

Three Monkeys Online

Three Monkeys Online is a free current affairs and arts magazine, produced by writers in Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK. The Magazine was founded in 2004 by a small group of writers with a clear idea that internet publishing could be about more than simply gossip, conspiracy theories, and dodgy you tube videos. It doesn’t have to focus on Paris Hilton. It can be about in-depth interviews, debates, intelligent opinion pieces, and reviews.

A Philip chóir, táim ag scríobh chugat mar gheall ar Chumann scríbhneoirí Óga/Úra na Gaeilge. Bunaíodh an cumann seo chun tacú leis na scríbhneoirí óga/úra atá ag saothrú i ngort na Gaeilge d’fhonn is go bhféadfadis misneach a thabhairt dá chéile. Fé láthair táthar ag iarraidh an blag idirlín atá againn a fhorbairt agus ar an intinn seo atáim ag scríobh chugat. Feicim go bhfuil nacscanna luaite agaibh ar an suíomh s’agatsa agus ba mhór againn dá bhféadfá nasc don gcumann s’againne a chur in airde ar an suíomh s’agaibhse.

I am writing to you with regard to Chumann scríbhneoirí Óga/Úra na Gaeilge na Gaeilge. This organization was established with the intention of giving young and new literary voices writing in Irish a platform whereby they could reach a (potentially) wider audience. It was also felt that these new literary voices would benefit from the mutual support which such an organization could offer young Irish-language writers and regular Irish-language workshops. We are presently trying to develop our blog and this is really the reason I am writing to you. I see that on your site that you have listed links to other sites and we would really appreciate it if you could place a link for our blog here. Chumann scríbhneoirí Óga/Úra na Gaeilge

Beannacht,
Muiris Ó Meara
Ríona Nic Congáil
Majella McDonnell

So I’m very happy to give them a plug. Besides, even if it’s just started, it seems a very nice and lively site and I’ve put it in my RSS links, so I can have a peek on a regular basis.

Well done to all concerned. It’s a great development, because if writing is a lonely task, writing in a minority language like Irish is lonelier still. And some recent research on my part showed that with few exceptions, notably the great Cló Iar-Chonnachta, it’s very hard to get information on Irish language writers. This despite the fact that some Irish language sites have a lot of money at their disposal. The web is a great opportunity for the Irish language, and here’s hoping the young writers now beginning their literary journey will take the opportunity with both hands.

Chumann scríbhneoirí Óga/Úra na Gaeilge

The technical problems and solutions will probably find their way into Ubuntu Learner when I get a minute, and as I don’t expect you to be interested in personal problems, that really leaves the domain and the cultural life in Dublin…

First of all the domain. One usually gets an email notice when a domain is about to expire. In the case of Irish Culture Guide, I didn’t and to cut a long story short I managed to acquire www.irishculture.ie, so my I’ve just migrated my Irish Culture Guide site to that domain. I haven’t been able to work on it for a long time, so obviously there are dead links and it needs fleshing out, but it’s still a useful site, I think. For some reason I can’t get Google Search to work on it so I may revert to the old search engine. Anyway, that’s getting technical, a topic which doesn’t belong here.

So to the Cultural Life.
Two friends and I set out to see Bill Doyle’s exhbition at the Gallery of Photography, but we stopped off at the National Photographic Archive, which is also in Temple Bar, and were entranced by In Search of Ireland, 1913. I’m sure I had seen a TV documentary on Marguerite Mespoulet and Madeleine Mignon-Alba, the two photographers, and Albert Kahn, the philanthropist whose dream was an Archives of the Planet and whose vision made this possible. The exhibition is on till 11 February, so try to see it if you haven’t already. The Photographic Archive is part of the National Library of ireland, by the way.

Then on Wednesday the 9th January I hauled myself through the rain to The Clé Club at Liberty Hall to hear my good friends Whisht!. Whist! (a play on the Irish éist! ie listen) is a group of traditional singers who live in County Wexford. They’ve just brought out a cd, The Cuckoo’s Note (you can here some Mp3 samplers here and are worth noting. I’m not biased, I promise! Apart from the featured Whist! regular contributors came up with some lovely songs from the floor, and I was particularly struck by a beautiful song in Irish by Seosaimhn Ní Bheaglaioch . I can’t remember the name of it, but she told me it dates from the 16th century. Impressive.

I was hoping for an early night on the following night, but a friend brought me off to The Teacher’s Club in Parnell Square to hear the Dublin Yarnspinners (established 1995).
My main reason for going was really to see and support my friends the actors Jack Lynch and Nuala Hayes, who are storytelling stalwarts. I’m delighted to report that Nuala has just been shortlisted as best actress for The Irish Times Theatre Awards for her part as Baby in the Taibhdearc na Gaillimhe production of Scath an Oilc, which is translated by Peadar Ó Cúláin from John McGahern’s The Power of Darkness. As it turned out, both Jack and Nuala told a story, but in the spirit of the event (see Liz’s Irish Journal for a flavour of it), the featured storyteller, a young woman called Claire Murphy, who told a dazzling tale about the indigenous Nova Scotians and Columbus, were joined by others from the floor. I must say I found both the Clé Clubng and the Dublin Yarnspinners evenings very moving, particularly the latter. When Clare Murphy told the story of Diarmaid and Grainne, a story I thought I knew well, the fact that a young person was telling an ancient story and making it new and fresh with all her heart, and the fact that it had orginally been told to her like this by John Moriarty was very moving indeed. For all my love of the web, cinema etc, there is nothing to match a live performance.
In the way that things are linked, Nuala told me that when she was performing in the Taibhdearc she heard about Clare’s STORY NIGHT, a monthly storytelling evening open to all, which she helped set up in Galway. She told me it was like walking into Tír na nÓg — everyone there was young and it was packed. And it’s not just happening in ireland, but all over Europe. There were French and German storytellers in the audience last week. One man said that his father was a storyteller in France, and his aunt was a storyteller in France!

This post is getting rather long, but bear with me a moment till I mention the Irish Premiere of Frank Corcoran’s String Quartet No 3 at the Hugh Lane Gallery last Sunday morning. That was a rather special privilege but best leave it to Frank to describe:

Mine is in one surging , flowing movement, a kind of musical stream-of-consciousness, referring and feinting and discharging all the elements of fast / slow / violent/ lyrical/ dense/ thin / total stringiness of filigrane.

Other gems to look out for are Jerome de Bromhead’s second symphony, which will be performed by the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colman Pearce in the National Concert Hall on Tuesday 22 January, and Geraldine O’Reilly’s A Circuitous Line, her latest paintings at The Alternative Entertainments Gallery, the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, until January 21. The Luas will drop you outside the door at the end of the line.

Sublime, terrifying and cut-to-the-bone funny, where real life leaves the theatre of the absurd in the dust.

See also Robert Newman’s website

Happy Birthday, Mr Beckett, whether, to your surprise, you are in some conscious heaven, or you have merely rejoined the dispersed atoms of the universe.

Thank you for the humanity and wit you found in yourself and gave to us all.

Then, out of the blue, five or 10 minutes later, he leant across the table and said, ‘You really liked it, huh? You really thought it was good?’ This was Samuel Beckett, remember, and not even he had any grasp of the value of his work. No writer ever knows, not even the best ones. ‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘I really thought it was good.’

Scenes from the life of Sam