I have talked about abandoned houses in the Irish landscape many times. They are so characteristic, they are part of the DNA imprint of the countryside. Ruins appear to date from many times and reflect the struggles of the Irish as they deal with famine, invaders and economic and social dislocation. Naturally the iconic image is of the castle ruin or the grand manor house, but cottages and farm houses are so much more abundant. I often wonder about the stories behind these buildings. Ruined lives and ruined dreams; or did they find a better life somewhere else.
This is one such house. It lies on the edge of the Kilronan Mountain Bog near Ballyfarnon in north Roscommon. A remote place. It is close to the Arigna coal mine and perhaps the family living here derived its income from there. The ruin is intact but blackened walls at the entrance suggest maybe some fire damage at some stage. It is not an old house and the front door is missing a panel so curiosity got the better of me. I walked into a time capsule.
The house is a mess. Largely empty with years of accumulated debris covering the floors. Sheep have been regular visitors. The rooms are spacious and well suited to a family. The walls are bare save for a small crucifix over the living room door. The walls were generally neutral colours but through the peeling paint are bright greens and pinks reflecting changing fashions. The kitchen was bright blue with pink trim. Scrape away the sediment on the floor and it reveals a very 60s brightly coloured lino in the main living room. Definitely not to everyone’s taste but an individual statement. No personal possessions remain. Nothing that would give us a sense of who lived here. Items too large to take though have been left behind. A television, some chairs, a fridge and stove. All now beyond use.
Stairs lead to a mezzanine level with two rooms, shelves and some decaying mattresses. Everything is still there in the bathroom, even the shower curtain and taps.
I got the sense of a comfortable home. There is central heating and fireplaces in every room; there was insulation in the ceilings and to me it would seem they had the trappings of a good life.
What went wrong and when? Where did they end up? Fortunately we can answer as to when? A newspaper among the papers strewn on the floor dates from July 1997. My eyes fell on an article with a headline: “Anna Spices up Wimbledon”. A sixteen year old Anna Kournikova was at the beginning of her rollercoaster ride in the world of tennis while this Roscommon family grappled with a very uncertain future.
My original thought that the breadwinner worked at the Coal Mine makes sense except that it closed in 1990. Perhaps they struggled on for another 7 years before finally giving up.
We will never know what makes a family walk away and leave their house. Leave fridges and stoves and furniture. Leave curtains. And head somewhere for a better life. Unfortunately it has been a huge part of the Irish narrative for nearly two hundred years.
No doubt such events happen in other countries but what is different here is the scale of the dispossession and that the evidence remains for decades perhaps even centuries with these dwellings lying empty and untouched; as if interfering with the ruin would somehow be disrespectful.
So many pages of the Irish Story lie open to us in this way. However the writing is indistinct and many times illegible and impossible to decipher.
These ruins for me are always a time to pause and think.
Driving through Keadue in the very north of Co Roscommon, as I was on this crisp, clear Autumn day, you are reminded everywhere of Turlough O’Carolan. There is what seems to be a new sculpture in the main street of this spotless town with a harp at the centre and there is a Heritage Park with monuments to the man. A carved coloured stone with the music for Sí Beag Sí Mór sits in a rotunda that looks out over the village to the Arigna Mountains. And if you come back in August next year you can attend the 40th O’Carolan Harp Festival. Though born in Co Meath, the blind harpist and composer lived in and around Keardue/Ballyronan so this is definitely O’Carolan Country.
Tribute to O’Carolan? newly installed statue in Keadue.
And just out of the village, there is the Kilronan Cemetery where he was buried. The elaborate entrance proclaims this with a carved stone mounted over the gate. His grave lies within the family crypt adjacent to the ruins of the Abbey.
Detail of the front gate.
The sun was shining when I visited and of course I had to take a ‘selfie’ of me playing Sí Beag, Sí Mór at the grave site. Now I am not a superstitious person but I swear that as I played the last note a black cloud came from nowhere and filled the sky. The heavens dumped for about three minutes as I retreated to the safety of my car.
The headstone of the grave for Turlough O’Carolan.
One minute later the heavens dumped.
I get the message, Turlough. I have to admit that a friend warned me not to do it. Now seriously, I’m sure it wasn’t the worst you have heard, but I promise never again.
If you’re in that beautiful part of the world. Go visit. Just don’t play Sí Beag, Sí Mór.
Them’s the Rules. No Instruments Allowed.
Tell me I am not paranoid but musicians really are at the bottom of the heap. We all know about the difficulties often experienced trying to take a fiddle on a flight. But here’s one roadblock I’d never come across before. Actually not one but two.
It’s my last day of a holiday in New York. My plane doesn’t leave until 6.30 pm so I have a few hours to kill. Why not take in the iconic Museum of Modern Art or MOMA?
Checkout is 11am but the hotel will kindly hold my bags. As I am depositing them the Bell Hop hesitates over one.
“What’s in there?” he says, pointing to the violin-shaped object in front of us.
“A violin” I helpfully offered.
He could offer me no valid reason other than that so I eventually located a supervisor who confirmed that they didn’t accept instruments. His answer to my question “Why not?” was that “Instruments are not luggage. They are not shaped like a suitcase!” However apparently with the payment of a fee suddenly they take on the shape of a suitcase? Anyway I wasn’t going to pay a fee and it was not heavy so I would take it with me. Big mistake!
MOMA was a bit over a kilometre from the hotel so I walked in the soft rain just a few city blocks. There was quite a queue stretching down the pavement and when I eventually got inside more queueing for the cloak room and then more queuing to get tickets. Apparently every other visitor to New York had the same idea about what to do on a wet Labour Day Sunday.
By now I was ready with the answer; “A violin”.
“Oh you’re not allowed to bring them into the gallery”.
“OK” I said “that’s why I wanted to put it into the cloak room”.
I looked over her shoulder at the hundreds of odd shaped bags, umbrellas, strollers and garments wondering silently why a small violin couldn’t be lodged there somewhere. Well actually not silently, but my protestations fell on deaf ears.
She was adamant. “Them’s the rules”.
I could see we were going round in circles here so I said I would find a manager. One helpful gent in the queue suggested I was wasting my time because “they were the rules.” I thanked him for his assistance but went to find the manager anyway.
This took some time but when he was located he confirmed that that was a ‘rule.’ “No instruments”. He added that they didn’t want to take responsibility for any damage. As I had observed that there were no baggage handlers from United Airlines in sight I was prepared to wear this risk.
He paused and my pleas maybe wore him down. He relented. Bless you Franklin from MOMA. He told me to follow him. We went to a white door marked Staff Only and he swiped his card. “Leave it here” he said “it will be safe.”. Music to my ears. So I rested it in the corner of this store room beside a folded up stroller and some brooms. Relieved, I queued again for my ticket.
Ironically as I waked around this extraordinary collection of art I kept being reminded of the great interest visual artists have shown over the years in musical instruments, often placing them at the core of their work. This puts into sharp focus the reticence of the administrators of the gallery that displays their work at having an instrument anywhere near the building. Here are a few examples from Picasso, Matisse and more modern works from Adkins.
Sus Scrofa (Linnaeus). Contrabass, wild boar hide and skull, and wood. Terry Adkins.
So there you go. It would seem that in the US ‘rules is rules.’ And no one seems prepared to buck them no matter how absurd. There was no empathy with my predicament. Except thank God for Franklin.
It sometimes pays though to have a bit of a tilt at windmills.
Sometimes something uplifting happens during my travels that shakes me a bit. Something unexpected and just so out of left field that I have to write about it. Such it was with Stacey just the other day.
But before I get too deeply into this story let me say that this has nothing to do with music. Except perhaps the music of life.
Every person has a story. Always unpredictable and mostly it stays hidden. Especially with a casual encounter. But sometimes one little sentence or comment opens the door to that story and the real person is revealed.
My holiday in the US was nearing an end. After spending most of the time in Los Angeles and San Francisco (stay tuned) I was unwinding for a few days with my friend Kira, at Southold a quaint rural setting on the northern tip of Long Island abut three hours east of New York City. A comfortable, quiet, conservative place with plenty of specialist farms and vineyards and an increasing wealth spilling over from the nearby Hamptons. Kira took me and my camera on a bit of a tour of the beaches and country side and we found ourselves at Horton Point Lighthouse, dating from 1857, though it had been commissioned decades earlier in 1790 by George Washington. It is operational and stands guard over the Long Island Sound but today it was closed and gated off.
It was hard to photograph as it was hidden by trees so there was little point staying. As I was leaving I was approached by a cyclist who asked if I would take a photo with her phone, of her on her bicycle with the lighthouse in the background.
I obliged of course, but when she said she needed it as proof it made me curious. She explained. She was training for a charity bike ride in Florida in November to raise funds for a cancer survivor group. The ride is 100 miles. She has never ridden anything like that distance so she has to prove to herself and the organisers that she is up for it. Hence the photo evidence of her rides to various landmarks and hence our meeting at Horton Light.
We talked a bit. She was a cancer survivor herself. This seemed totally incongruous as I looked at her. She was a picture of health and fitness belying the fact she had had a double mastectomy, reached a weigh of 150 lbs , was couch ridden and had lost all her hair. That was then. This is now. Just three years later.
She had been helped by an organisation called First Descents which provides adventure experiences for young adult cancer recoverers and survivors. For her it was a kayak journey. This was life changing and she wants to help provide that experience to others.
I was inspired by this story and asked if I could take some photos of her. Then I finally got around to introducing myself . “Oh” she said “I know some Singers but they are Jewish.” What followed was an incredible bit of synchronicity. It turned out her grandparents were of Jewish descent and had escaped Nazi persecution migrating to the United States just as my parents had escaped from Hungary in 1939 and had gone wherever the boat was sailing. In their case to Australia.
I would have loved to have talked more but we each had to go our own way and I watched her ride away on the next leg of her life’s journey.
Aliveness can sometimes be a bumpy windy road with many twists and turns and we sometimes think that we have been dealt a tough hand. But then you meet someone like Stacy and it puts your own problems into perspective. So inspiring to see how one person deals with adversity and uses it as a springboard to change her life and the lives of others.
In the midst of the current turmoil and apparent decline in the values of, dare I say it, a once great nation, it is reassuring to see that people like her exist.
I was so lucky to meet Stacy. I hope I meet her again. Perhaps when she cycles around Ireland as her next challenge?