Between OS problems, service provider problems, wireless problems, paypal problems, domain problems, general sociability and the cultural life in central Dublin, there hasn’t been much time for my own work.
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 Nà 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 TÃr 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.
