Mad Ireland

[poliphilo]

 "Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry" is a line from Auden's memorial poem for W.B. Yeats- and I was thinking how it could be applied with equal justice to Sinead O'Connor and Shane McGowan.

 O'Connor and McGowan were sort of friends. She went to his house once and found him using heroin and called the police. "Did that end your relationship with her?" asked the interviewer. "No, he said,"It ended my relationship with heroin." 

Mad Ireland- so near and so far. So familiar to the English but so foreign. It scares me, attracts me, repels me. I've never been there. 

We were streaming episodes from McGowan's funeral yesterday. It wasn't an affair you needed a ticket for. Anyone could show up. An ordinary village church- Victorian gothic - the Advent/Christmas decorations still in place. Roses on a wicker coffin.

Nick Cave singing A Rainy Day in Soho, Cait O'Riordan singing A Man You Don't Meet Every Day. 

This man wasn't grand.

This man was loved.

Comments

[cmcmck]

And he was a Kenting and that makes me proud :o)

[poliphilo]

He was. Born at Pembury,- if my information is correct- just down the road from where my mother used to live.

[bleodswean]

Yes, he was. And I do think he knew that. Victoria's eulogizing of her lifelong love should be required viewing for human-ness.

[poliphilo]

I watched an interview with Nick Cave in which he spoke about what a kind man he was.