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Monday 8 February 2016

Self-Obsessed

Self-Obsessed
I have a number of unfinished blog posts but I don't feel like returning to any of them at the moment. Rather I am wallowing in a period of self-obsession. I find these things come in patches. Sometimes it seems like the universe, or at least the little dusty corner of it that I inhabit, is speaking directly to me. Or that I am surrounded by a reverberation of echoes. Not surprising seeing as I watch and listen from my own seashell skull, tuned to the sound of my own waves.



Last year, around this time, I posted a video for the song Half-Orphan, a song about the death of my mother many years ago. In the video there was a still of my mother on the day of her first communion.

A link to the video led to the song being included on the Small Town Scenery album released by Record Collector magazine which in turn led to the band reforming to play the launch night in London a couple of weeks ago. I felt that it was some sort of late recognition of how good we were as a band, which felt (and feels) good.
Then the news in the last couple of days has been full of images of the three Chinese runners passing Sonia O'Sullivan in the 1993 World Championships and the story that their drug taking has been exposed and she may get some late recognition. That race is welded in my mind to the song Half-Orphan because after we spent the day recording and mixing the album the first thing we saw on entering a pub for 'debriefing' was the three Chinese women passing Sonia O'Sullivan.


Having seen the photo of my mother an artist friend was inspired to use it as the basis for a painting which is being included in an exhibition opening this week on the anniversary of my mother's death. Here is an image of the painting.

The Communicant III Helen O'Sullivan-Tyrrell (oil on canvas) 60 x 50cm



5 comments:

  1. Hello! I am the "Maureen" that sometimes comments on JacquiWine's on-line journal. I saw your comment there and was curious to check out your blog. I find your music very powerful. CONGRATULATIONS on Rough Trade and your recent performances. Leonard Bishop, a great U.S. writing teacher once said (I have to paraphrase) that great works of art have a way of rising to the surface eventually, sometimes in unforeseen ways. Best of luck to you, I hope you don't stay "silenced" after this. -- Maureen Murphy

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    1. Thanks Maureen. It is surprising, gratifying and exciting to find an outlet re-opening after so many years and I certainly hope to keep it open for a while yet. If nothing else the last number of years have taught me that I need some kind of creative outlet.

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  2. I love that painting of your mother, Seamus - it's absolutely beautiful! There is something ethereal about it. You must feel very proud (and emotional too, no doubt).

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    1. Just brought the painting home. It's gorgeous.

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  3. What a lovely tribute to your mother!

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