Irishness in Everyday Life

I've often asked myself the question: how "Irish" is Ireland when it comes to everyday life?

Everyday life has always been my benchmark for evaluating pretty much everything; nationality, poetry, religion, and so forth. For instance, when I started writing poetry seriously (around the age of seventeen), I only allowed myself the most mundane subjects: swimming pools, traffic islands, waiting rooms, and the like. That seemed like the most challenging place to find poetry, but also the most meaningful.

Although I've always been on the side of "re-enchanting" modern society, I've also felt that this has to be on the level of the everyday, or else it's meaningless.

But what is "everyday life"? That's an interesting question. 

Everyday life for a high-security prisoner, or for someone working on an oil rig, is very different to everyday life for a taxi-driver or a housewife. Everyday life was also very different during the Covid lockdowns than it is right now. The idea of "everyday life" would make an interesting blog post in itself. It's not this one. Let's just assume everyday life is what happens on a weekday (and weeknight) for an Irish person living in an ordinary town, city or suburb.

So, what would be distinctively Irish about this person's everyday experience? I've decided to examine it under headings.

1) Language

The vast majority of Irish people speak the English language exclusively. Interactions between strangers are always in English, outside special contexts. So in this we wouldn't differ from all the Anglophone countries in the world. (I'm just talking about language here, not accent or dialect.)

When we look at nationality from the viewpoint of everyday life, it's clear why the promotion of the Irish language was the top priority for the Gaelic Revival, and indeed for the new Irish state-- and it's also clear why its failure was so lamentable. Language surrounds us every single day. Nothing else is so all-embracing.

The sad truth is you won't hear any Irish in Ireland, outside the Gaeltachts and Irish language schools. You could walk around Dublin city centre all day and hear every language except Irish. This is not just me exaggerating. I've asked immigrants who've been in Ireland for several years if they've ever heard anyone speaking Irish. The answer has always been "No."

It's not even used for greetings or pleasantries. I've sometimes forced myself to say "go raibh maith agat" (thank you) to shop assistants, but it feels awkward and strange.

Of course, we do have bilingual signage, and bilingual announcements on public transport. This might be denounced as tokenism, and I expect it will come under increase criticism in the future. But it's better than nothing, and indeed it's very visible (and audible).

The use of the Irish language on things like coffee mugs and welcome mats (Céad Míle Fáilte) is fairly common.

2) Physical appearance

I've never been convinced that there's a distinctive Irish physical appearance. We have a lot of redheads, famously, but I don't think there's so many that you'd notice. We are said to be especially pale, but I don't think that's especially noticeable either.

I've heard people say this or that person looks Irish, and I've sometimes thought it myself. When I've thought this, it has to do with the lips especially, though it would be hard to describe. I don't think there's any generally-agreed concept of what physical features make someone look Irish.

A colleague of mine once said that she knew when she came to the boarding gate for Dublin, in an international airport, because everybody was suddenly uglier. Make of that what you will!

3) Clothes

I'm doubt Irish people dress any differently than people in neighbouring countries, or even in most of the developed world. It's not like you see a lot of people walking around in Aran sweaters. There is a student in UCD who always wears a kilt, but he has an American accent. We mostly stick to the international uniform of jeans, sports shoes, and sweaters-- that sort of thing.

Of course, quite a lot of people wear t-shirts or hoodies that proclaim some kind of loyalty, interest or hobby. Sometimes this is Irish in nature. A fair amount of people wear GAA jerseys.

Some conservatives disdain t-shirts (or any clothing with writing on it) but I like them for this very reason-- the potential for distinctiveness.

4) Food and drink

Again, I'm not sure that the food and drink you'll encounter in everyday Irish life will be at all distinctive, although this category is a bit more promising than the others so far.

It's said that Irish people are dedicated tea-drinkers, which we are (along with the English). However, I think that even this is receding, as coffee culture becomes more engrained (pun  fully intended). I didn't even know what a latté or a cappuccino was when I was growing up. Now, I'll admit, I drink more coffee than tea, partly because coffee doesn't have to draw and I like my tea strong.

The full Irish breakfast is really just the full English breakfast, and I doubt anyone would have it except on a Sunday morning.

We do eat a lot of potatoes, though. And in recent years, Irish cuisine has thrown up the Spice Bag-- pun once again intended. (Actually, this innovation delights me.)

There are, however, some distinctively Irish biscuits (cookies, for any Americans reading).

5) Personal Names

I think is actually the first category where there's a meaningful difference between Ireland and other Anglophone countries.

Irish personal names are very popular. There will be no classroom, office, or rugby squad where you won't encounter names such as Sinéad, Conor, Rory, Aisling, Cormac, Brendan, Deirdre, etc. etc.

My rough guess is that about a quarter of Irish people have distinctively Irish names.

Indeed, Irish parents seem to be pushing the boat out more and more in this regard, with previously-rare names such as Étain, Síofra, and Ultan becoming quite ordinary.

There are also distinctive Irish nicknames, such as Packie for Patrick (rural) and Git for Christopher (urban). Don't ask me to explain the second one there.

This seems to be a lasting legacy of the Gaelic Revival. A hundred years ago, Irish personal names were very uncommon.

6) Accent

This is the big one. Within Anglophone countries, surely, it's the main distinguishing mark of individual countries.

There are lots of accents in Ireland, but to my mind the main distinctions are the Dublin area, Ulster, and everywhere else.

Some counties, such as Donegal and Kerry, have their own unmistakeable accents. In my view, the Kerry accent is the most appealing in the country.

The North Dublin accent and the South Dublin accent are also very different.

Indeed, immigrants who come to Ireland generally pick up some Irish inflections pretty quickly.

There's a lot to say about accent, but suffice it to say that this is a real distinction.

7) Slang and Idioms

This is also a big one, though not as big as accent. Irish people really do say things like "eejit", "having the craic", and "grand" all the time.

Slang changes constantly by its very nature. Dublin slang has come and gone within my own lifetime. I can remember when "bleedin' rapid" was a common slang term to express enthusiasm. It was generally treated with amusement because it was new, but it's already obsolete.

When it comes to dialect, I get the impression that the stock of distinctively Irish dialect words is constantly diminishing. Terms like "the messages" (shopping) and "minerals" (fizzy drinks) were common in my childhood but are now rarely heard.

Irish idioms are, happily, very common. It would be interesting to make a sociolinguistic study of this. Some Irish idioms are used self-consciously, but there are plenty that are used unselfconsciously, without (I think) people even realizing they are Irish. For instance, I never knew that to "eat the head off" someone (meaning to give them a right telling-off) was an Irish phrase until I researched this section!

(I suspect that people both avoid and use Irish idioms because they are Irish-- even the same people. A lot of this happens at a subconscious level.)

Here are a few idioms that are extremely common in Ireland: "You're a star" (thank you), "You're very good" (thank you), "At all at all" (for emphasis, often used ironically but not always), "No bother to you" (you did that well, or you'll do that well), "Chancing your arm" (taking a risk), "Fair play" (well done)...there are loads and loads of them. A gansey-load! (Although that last one is dated and rarely used spontaneously.)

8) Music

Is traditional Irish music a part of everyday Irish life? Yes, I would say, although it's a qualified "yes".

If you go into an Irish pub (which seems like something that might happen on any given night), you're very likely to hear traditional Irish music, either live or recorded. If you walk past an Irish tourist gift shop (and there are lots of them in Dublin city centre) you'll hear it wafting out onto the air.

I've heard bus drivers playing traditional Irish music on the radio, and colleagues listening to it in the staffroom.

You probably won't hear it as background music in a shopping centre or a supermarket or other public building, but sometimes you will. One year, SuperValu played traditional Irish music for about a week around St. Patrick's Day.

Some buskers play traditional Irish music, although I'd say it's a fairly small minority.

At the time of writing (I love that phrase), an Irish traditional-style song is actually top of the Irish singles chart. Most weeks, the Irish charts closely resemble the British charts, but there seems to be a fair amount of difference. This week, for instance, I notice that the number ten spot is also occupied by an Irish band.

Outside traditional music, Irish pop and rock is also very popular here. A band like Thin Lizzy is popular all around the world, but I'm sure they're more popular in Ireland. (I actually saw a student wearing a Thin Lizzy t-shirt today, after I'd written the above!)

Funnily enough, it took a good while for homegrown rock and pop artists to draw on Irish themes and musical forms. Rory Gallagher was a pioneer of Irish rock from the seventies onwards, but (quite remarkably) he never wrote a single song with an Irish theme, or an Irish "flavour". I think this only became popular in the nineties with the Cranberries and the Corrs, although Clannad were forerunners in the eighties.

9) Entertainment

If you were to visit your local multiplex on this hypothetical ordinary weekday, it's highly unlikely you'd find an Irish film playing. Almost all of the films would be American.

Nevertheless there are a fair amount of Irish films produced. Strictly speaking they are usually international productions. They tend to cause quite a fuss in their native land, with a lot of  media coverage. Sometimes they even spark (gulp) "public debates", which of course only ever tend in one direction.

Commercial pop culture in Ireland has always primarily been American or British (with some exceptions, such as the "showbands" of the 1950s and 1960s). Irish television always depended heavily on imports. Nevertheless there have been a lot of homemade television shows which were hugely popular, such as The Late Late Show or Glenroe, and more recently the crime drama Love/Hate.

A few phrases from the Gay Byrne era of The Late Late Show are still commonly used in the Irish vernacular: "One for everyone in the audience", "Roll it there, Roisín", and "Delira and excira" (delighted and excited).

As far as I can tell, streaming services like Netflix have a fair amount of Irish content.

Irish entertainers seem to be holding their own on YouTube and the internet, such as the massively popular Garren Noone.

10) Transport

Of course, Ireland has its own public transport system, which includes Irish-language announcements. The announcements are also made in Irish accents...for now.

There is an (apparently) distinctive Irish custom of thanking the bus driver as you alight. I'm pretty sure this began in my own lifetime, as I think I remember people commenting on it as a new thing. Of course, it's charming, although it feels a bit ridiculous sometimes.

It's so pervasive that Dublin Bus actually had a recruitment poster with the caption: "Get thanked for a living", and it has led to at least one skit.

I've actually had a bus driver reprove me for not thanking him! Many years ago. Admittedly I was the first and only passenger on the bus.

Ireland has no equivalent of the Tube or the Subway. Someone once joked that we should have delayed independence until the British built one.

The Irish do not queue as well as the English. It's often chaos getting onto a bus.

Of course, we have our own airlines, Aer Lingus and Ryanair. Holidays may not be a part of everyday life, by definition, but talking about them certainly is. Is it ever! (I've heard many more Ryanair stories than Aer Lingus stories.)

11) Religion

Religion has more or less retreated from the public sphere in Ireland, outside funerals-- and more and more people are having non-religious funerals. I can't remember the last time I heard anyone even mention attending a traditional Irish wake. But the practice of buying Mass cards still seems popular and you see them advertised in newsagents and other shops.

Speaking of funerals, there is (as described in this diocesan document) "a relatively new custom" which involves "the presentation of mementoes of the person who has died symbolising aspects of their life, work, achievements, interests, etc", during the funeral Mass. I think they are usually put beside the coffin. I don't know if this is distinctively Irish.

Is death an everyday experience? Most people attend funerals fairly regularly, so I would say it is.

Incidentally, Ireland is (presumably) distinctive in having one website which has become the definitive register of deaths, even though it's a commercial website. That's Rip.ie. (It recently started charging fees for notices, which led to some speculation it would lose its monopoly-- but that doesn't seem to have happened so far.) I recently learned my uncle had died from checking it, on spec. He was very old.

But back to religion. There are still some oratories in older shopping centres, such as Blanchardstown and the Santry Omni Centre, and they are well-attended.

First Holy Communion is still an important rite-of-passage. The Church here has, for decades, been fighting the tendency for this to become an occasion for conspicuous consumption-- with little success. I assume Confirmation is also a rite-of-passage of some importance, as it used to be, but I don't know that for sure.

People often cross themselves as they pass churches, especially in working-class areas.

I suppose you can say religion still pervades everyday life in that most schools are still (nominally) Catholic, many hospitals are still (nominally) Catholic, and many streets and buildings are named after saints. Surprisingly, the newest Irish public holiday is in honour of St. Bridget, even though it's fashionable to recast her as a feminist goddess.

Irish politicians and public figures never invoke God or religion, unless it's some throwaway comment about thoughts and prayers after a disaster.

12) Sport

Did you see that ludicrous display last night? The thing about Arsenal is, they always try to walk it in!

If you hear somebody talking about sport in Ireland, it will nearly always be English soccer-- in Dublin, at any rate. There's even a tradition of Irish people choosing an English soccer team to support, and referring to them unselfconsciously as "us". (I can't mock it too hard as I was a big Liverpool fan in my teens. Champions, by the way!)

However, GAA games (hurling, Gaelic football, and camogie or women's hurling) are hugely popular. Not only at an inter-county level, though that gets most of the attention, but also in the thousands of local clubs the length and breadth of the country. (I love that phrase, "the length and breadth of the country"). These clubs play an important role in social life, and a lot of events occur in their clubhouses.

I've said the the popularity of Irish names is one of the biggest legacies of the Gaelic Revival. But its single biggest legacy is the enduring popularity of Gaelic games. Most playing fields in Ireland have Gaelic games goalposts rather than soccer goalposts, and they are a very commonplace sight, even if you're just walking through a park or past a school.

(I was immensely pleased recently to pass through a Dublin suburban street that was full of flags celebrating the local GAA team's victory in a national championship.)

Sadly, the Gaelic Athletic Association has been very effectively captured by woke, but that seems inevitable.

There are other native Irish games such as handball, rounders, and road bowling, but you won't find them unless you go looking, and nobody ever talks about them.

Big sporting occasions unite the country, although nothing has ever (in my experience) equalled the phenomenon of Italia '90, Ireland's first World Cup championship, in which the Irish soccer reached the quarter-finals. Much has been written about its lasting effect.

In recent years, Irish domestic soccer has become more popular. I saw someone wearing a sports jersey today and asked him what it was. It turned out it was the jersey of St. Patrick's Athletic, a Dublin soccer team.

Games and Entertainment

I can't think of any distinctively Irish indoor games or entertainments. There have been lots of Irish boardgames, but none of them ever achieved the popularity of Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit (even in Ireland).

I've heard the card game Twenty-One described as the national card game, but I'm not sure I ever played it. I very rarely see anyone playing cards these days, anyway.

I don't know if there's ever been a hugely popular Irish videogame, but I'm guessing not.

I've heard that the old Irish pub game "Rings"-- which is basically throwing rings at hooks on a board-- is making a comeback, but in a very small way.

Even back when people played parlour games, none were distinctively Irish. We had Hangman, Charades, Blind Man's Buff (or is it Bluff?)...all the usuals.

Jewellery and Emblems

Claddagh rings are popular, as are copies of the Tara Brooch.

Formerly popular Irish emblems, such as the Irish language's speaker's fainné, the temperance movement's "Pioneer pin", and the Easter Lily which commemorates the 1916 Rising, are very rarely seen today. (Although the Student's Union shop in UCD recently had a sign behind the counter announcing that they sell the fáinne-- I think it's still there, actually. I asked if they sold many, and they told me they sold a few.)

Here's a picture of Dev wearing one.

News and Current Affairs

Progressivism now rules the roost in Ireland and anyone who disagrees with it tends to keep their mouths shut. I'm not going to rant about that here, but it's relevant because it does pervade everyday life. Palestinian flags are everywhere in Ireland right now, although the rash of Ukrainian flags that went up after the Russian invasion have disappeared.

Progressivism is now so much in the ascendant that it has cancelled out the traditional rule that you shouldn't discuss politics in public. One is simply assumed to agree, for instance,  that Brexit was a terrible thing. Disagreeing tends to provoke embarrassment and bafflement rather than anger.

Ireland has its own political system, of course, which means that we have our own political news and talking points. And it's common enough to hear people talking about the latest political controversies, or some interview that has grabbed the headlines.

Many of my conservative friends are in favour of abolishing RTÉ, the national broadcaster, given its very progressive bias. I can't agree. If we didn't have a national broadcaster, I can't imagine some private Irish broadcaster filling the vacuum. And if it did, I doubt it would be any better than RTÉ.

If nothing else, RTÉ gives Irish people something to talk about, a shared national experience-- even if it's just complaining about overpaid presenters.

As for newspapers, they are still widely sold but I rarely see anybody actually reading them, or hear anybody talking about them. This isn't a good thing.

Quite a few phrases taking from Irish politics have entered common usage, often sardonically: "An Irish solution for an Irish problem", "Grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented", "Looking up every tree in north Dublin", and others.

Mythology and Folklore

This might seem like a strange category, but I include it because of the importance of mythology and folklore in the Gaelic Revival.

As far as I can see, mythology has no presence at all in everyday Irish life-- except for the occasional street or product with a name drawn from Irish legend (nearly always Setanta.)

What about Irish folklore? It had a certain presence in my childhood. I remember being warned, tongue-in-cheek, never to pick up a comb from the ground because it might belong to a banshee. I also heard about the curse put on the Clare hurling team by Biddy Early, the nineteenth-century "witch" (actually a folk-healer). There were also Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman and Paddy Scotsman jokes.

How likely are you to encounter Irish folklore in everyday Irish life now? Well, you might hear references to old Dublin street characters like Johnny Forty Coats or Bang Bang-- in Dublin, at least. I honestly can't think of much else.

Of course, almost anything can be considered folklore. Is it "folklore" that fans of the Irish singer Dickie Rock used to shout "spit on me, Dickie!", or that the Skibbereen Eagle once famously warned the Czar of Russia, in a famous editorial, that it was keeping an eye on him? I suppose so. But broadening the term so much makes it rather meaningless. I'm taking folklore in a more classic sense here.

Advertising

Occasionally an Irish ad will become "iconic", as in these cases. The "dancing man" Guinness ad is probably the most enduringly famous. You might hear one of these referenced in everyday life, although it's a long shot.

History

It used to be say that memories were long in Ireland, but I'm not sure that's true anymore. I rarely hear discussions of Irish history in ordinary social life. Most people have a pretty good knowledge of the 1916 Rising and other highpoints of Irish history, but not a whole lot beyond that. Or rather, there's a pretty sharp division between those who are steeped in Irish history and those who aren't.

The two great themes of most of Irish history, nationalism and religion, seem quite irrelevant to most people these days. (Although I believe both are making a comeback, bubbling under the surface.)

I'm trying not to be partisan in this blog post, but it seems fair to say that the historical narrative that is most influential today is Ireland's liberation from a supposedly oppressive, puritanical Catholic Church. Stories such as the contraceptive train, the bishop and the nightie, and De Valera invoking "comely maidens dancing at the crossroads" are frequently invoked-- along with more serious ones such as abuse in the Magdalen Laundries or industrial schools.

Nature

To my shame, I hardly know one bird or tree from another. (I've made efforts.) But it's obvious climate, landscape, and other aspects of nature do indeed influence everyday life.

We don't have tornadoes, hurricanes, siestas, or much snow in Ireland. And our rain is proverbial. The weather is the number one complaint of immigrants and visitors. Jokes about the Irish summer are legion.

When it comes to nature, I suppose I contrast Ireland with America, Australia and other faraway countries. We don't have extreme weather, huge tracts of wilderness, or dangerous wildlife in Ireland. I'm not sure there's so much difference between Britain and Ireland, when it comes to nature. I might be wrong.

Placenames

The vast majority of places-names in Ireland are anglicizations from the Irish language. So we have a lot of places that begin Bally- (town), Kil- (church), and Dun- (fort). And yes, this is very distinctive, and pervades everyday life.

Streets are often named after patriots, saints, or members of the landed gentry back in the day. There are quite a lot of streets named priests, frequently priests of only local fame.

A lot of new housing estates, especially commercial ones, resort to bland and generic names such as Hollybrook. I've heard that there's legislation against this, but I can't find evidence of that.

Speaking of names, Irish pubs rarely have the extravagant and poetic names common in England, such as The Only Running Footman. They tend to be family names, like Nealons, or rather straightforward names, such as The Tolka House. An interesting inversion to the usual stereotype that the Irish are extravagant and the English understated!

The Irish Flag

Compared to the Stars and Stripes in America, the Irish use of the tricolour is very limited. You'll rarely (if ever) see an Irish flag hanging outside an Irish home, although you might see it hanging in its window around St. Patrick's Day, or when Ireland are competing in some big sports tournament.

Public buildings fly it, of course, and so do quite a lot of hotels. Sometimes it's flown by pubs and other businesses. But I think you could drive through the Dublin suburbs for a long time without seeing an Irish flag.

I've actually heard Irish people complain about the American love of flying flags. This baffles me. I wish every village, suburb, and street had its own flag. And the national flag should be flown everywhere!

In Conclusion

When I take the time to write it out (and this post is much longer than I expected it to be), I suppose there is quite a lot about everyday lrish life that is still distinctive, and that doesn't seem like it's going to disappear any time soon.

However, there is a lot that is disappearing, or at least diminishing. I hope the Irish will soon wake up and actively work to preserve all that is special about their culture, especially those things that are a part of everyday life.

So what did I leave out? What did I get wrong? Go ahead and tell me in the comments!

The Irish Reaction Against Nationalism

This morning, I found myself flicking through a few issues of History Ireland. Very quickly, I became exasperated. The contributors of this periodical have one overwhelming preoccupation: that is, anti-nationalism.

This business of Irish anti-nationalism is fascinating. It seems to me that the Republic of Ireland has now been anti-nationalist for longer than it was ever actually nationalist. It's often said that the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising was a spree of triumphalism, although even this doesn't seem to be true.

But let's accept 1966 as a point when the Irish establishment was still officially nationalist.  Let's even push it to 1970. Beyond that, nationalism was out of favour. It would be hard, for instance, to find any straightforwardly heroic monuments of Irish nationalist heroes after this time. (The Troubles in the North undoubtedly hastened this.)

That would mean, at a generous rate, the Republic of Ireland has had five decades of nationalism followed by coming on six decades of anti-nationalism.

What's interesting to me is that anti-nationalism seems to require constant vigilance from our elites and culture industries. How often do you come across declarations such as these?

"The idea of a primordial, pure Irishness was a myth..."

"Cultures have never been preserved in aspic but have always borrowed and absorbed elements from outside..."

"Folklore was co-opted by the Gaelic Revival to reflect the ideal of a heroic, earthy peasantry..."

"Silken Thomas's protest became an icon of Irish nationalism, a concept which would almost certainly have baffled him..."

And so on, and so on, and so on.

I have been hearing this kind of thing my entire life, and it long predates my first wails in St. James's Hospital.

Of course, it's not just nationalism. It's many other things, as well; religious orthodoxy, gender norms, an ideal of family life.

What intrigues me is the continual repudiation which these things all seem to require, decades after they have been vanquished. It puts me in mind of a compulsive hand-washer.

It also seems to be counter-productive. People start to wonder: if something is true, why does it have to be asserted constantly, ritually, anxiously? Might it not be true, or perhaps not as true as all that? I think this reaction is happening now.

The Magic of Backstory

Now... When it comes to you, and us, I have a few unanswered questions. So, before this tale of bloody revenge reaches its climax, I'm going to ask you some questions, and I want you to tell me the truth. However, therein lies a dilemma. Because, when it comes to the subject of me, I believe you are truly and utterly incapable of telling the truth, especially to me, and least of all, to yourself. And, when it comes to the subject of me, I am truly and utterly incapable of believing anything you say.

Do you recognize those words? I'd be surprised if you do. They come from Kill Bill Volume 2, the film by Quentin Tarantino, and they are spoken by the titular character Bill. He's speaking to the protagonist Beatrix, played by Uma Thurman. He resolves the dilemma by firing a dart with a truth serum into her leg.

We are to understand that Beatrix and Bill have a very extensive and chequered backstory. The scene crackles with dramatic potential. I seem to remember being struck, even when I saw it in the cinema (all the way back in 2003), by how palpable that backstory felt despite the fact that, after all, these are made-up people who never really existed.

I've always loved backstory, whether it's fictional or real. I'm immensely excited by phrases such as these:

"We've known each other a long time..."

"That really takes me back..."

"When I think of all the times that we used to..."

Well, you get the picture.

I'm forty-seven years of age. I've probably passed the halfway-mark of my life (and, of course, I could die tomorrow-- or tonight!). I'm exactly at the age that Shakespeare retired.

My past doesn't seem at all extensive to me. It's never taken on the aspect of "blue remembered hills", of a shimmering horizon on the edge of vision. This is what I imagined when I heard grown-ups talking about the past, in my childhood. That's what excited my sense of wonder.

Is this because my life has been relatively uneventful? I don't know. But somehow, I don't think another ten, twenty, or forty years-- or any amount of adventures-- would make any difference to this sensation, or lack of a sensation.

The funny thing is, insofar as I do have that sense of a shimmering horizon, I had it when I was in my late teens. I wonder if other people have this experience?

For instance, I can remember reflecting on a line from a Keats sonnet in my diary, when I was seventeen. The line is Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, from the sonnet "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer." I wrote something like this: "It will be a sad day if this line ever ceases to fill me with wonder".

How long had I known the line? Well, I discovered poetry around the age of fourteen, so it could only be three or four years. But it already seemed like something that I had known forever. And I can think of many similar examples.

I think there's a particular sense of antiquity to things that happened (either in the wider world or one's own environment) just before you came along. The seventies have a strange aura of timelessness in my mind, even though few people who lived through them seem to have experienced them like that.

Anyway, it's quite distressing to not experience that sense of a shimmering horizon behind you. It makes life seem very short, casual, and somehow tinny-- "like the fly of a summer's day", as Burke puts it.

So I find myself more drawn to fictional backstory. "We'll always have Paris" (from Casablanca, need I say?) seems more solid than anything in my own experience, perhaps because it's been seen and quoted and referenced so often. In the film, the Paris adventure only actually occurred a year previous to the timeframe of the film itself.

Television and cinema have all sorts of visual conventions to signify "long ago". They're listed here on TV Tropes. The most popular are probably dissolves and filters. I've often wondered how much they've contributed to our own sense of the past, of the backwards glance.

Those are the differences between fictional and real backstory. However, it was a similarity that inspired this post-- a similarity that occurred to me when I found myself remembering the scene from Kill Bill.

This is the similarity. In a sense, fictional and real backstories are equally non-existent. The past has no physical reality. You can't touch it or visit it. So, when a fictional character invokes an imaginary past, in a certain sense it's just as real or unreal as my childhood, or yours.

And that brings us to the similarity between me and you and fictional characters. Since I've first read it, I've felt that Prospero's speech in The Tempest describes a very profound reality. We are such things as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. In many ways we are as fleeting and insubstantial as fictional characters-- we are contingent, creaturely, unnecessary.

I can't explain why, but this thought is the opposite of depressing to me. That doesn't make much sense, given that the lack of a shimmering backward horizon oppresses me.

In any case, backstory has always seemed magical to me, and I think I've come to a better appreciation of why it seems magical.

An Interview with Pope Leo from 2012

Here's an interview with Robert Prevost from more than a decade ago.

https://youtu.be/QXVkJ5TQi1s?si=7vOTQmkS354s1DXp

It feels surreal to have a native English speaker as the Pope. That will take a lot of getting used to.

Although he doesn't say anything terribly revelatory or original on the face of it, I find his demeanour very encouraging. He seems very sincere, gentle and thoughtful. He clearly doesn't think in soundbites. (I liked his measured answer on the digital media, a subject that tends to provoke sweeping statements.)

Pope Francis, for all his many virtues, always had something disconcertingly manic about him. Pope Leo seems like a return to the temperament of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. For all John Paul's charisma, when you read his writings he was always very careful, tempered and nuanced.

I suspect that Pope Leo will be solid on the life issues and the gender issues, as indeed was Francis-- for the most part. I further suspect that Pope Leo will be more solid than Pope Francis on the uniqueness of Christianity and the importance of doctrine.

It seems inevitable, going on various indications, that Leo will also be vaguely left-wing on other political questions, such as economics, environmentalism, immigration, and international relations. For all I loved JPII and Benedict XVI, they both seemed sunk in a deep naivety about supranational institutions, treaties, and charters, even as those things grew increasingly anti-life and anti-Christian.

Frustration

I have been feeling a lot of frustration recently. For various reasons, I have not been outside of Ireland since December 2019. I have barely been outside Dublin in that time. It's a long time since I've been on a train, a mode of travel that I love. (I don't include the Dublin area light rail.) This is the time of year when people start asking about holidays and I can only say, again: "I have no holidays planned".

I have had some blessing in recent years, and I'm grateful for them. But in other ways I'm in quite a rut. I applied for two jobs this year-- a promotion and a sideways move-- and I didn't get either. I got lots of good feedback and encouragement on the first, mind you.

As I've mentioned before, I gave up Facebook and Twitter at the beginning of the year, for various reasons. One was my ever-increasing frustration at hardly anybody reacting to my poetry, whenever I posted it. Not even to criticize it! Also, a lack of reaction to my posts about poetry.

There were other reasons. I had friends spanning the spectrum from fairly liberal Catholics to heavy-duty Traditionalists. I didn't want to get into arguments with them, and the political and (to a lesser degree) theological climate made arguments seem inevitable. I have a quirk of personality that makes me very reluctant to fall out with anybody, or even antagonise them-- once a friendship has been established. On the other hand, I can't really keep quiet on big issues.

But being off Facebook means that I'm not in contact with my "tribe", to any significant extent.

I've tried to get some diversion at free and low-cost events. For instance, I went to the launch of  a UCD literary journal which had published one of my poems (hurray!). This week I attended a seminar on Korean reunification in UCD. Being me, I couldn't restrain myself from being the first person to ask a question, one which related the discussion to Ireland in a very politically incorrect way! It went down like the proverbial lead balloon. I even went to a Mind, Body, Spirit fair in the RDS-- which was almost entirely New Age nonsense, of course, but I enjoyed the atmosphere, especially the smells. I just looked and wandered around. I didn't inhale.

I have many other frustrations I won't go into-- some big, some small, some completely trivial. Of course, it's the completely trivial that bother me the most. (That's a joke, but not entirely.)

I've been reading a lot of biographies and, in biographies, doors just seem to open for people. For instance, in the most recent biography I'm reading, a priest insists on the subject of the biography going on retreat-- and arranges it. As I've mentioned, I tried to get the chaplaincy in UCD to hold a spiritual retreat for staff, and after an initial display of enthusiasm (and when I expanded the idea on request), the suggestion was dropped. Little things like that.

Yes, I would like some cheese with this whine, thank you. Cornish Yarg, for preference.

I will probably take this post down after I've had my belly-ache for a bit. But prayers are welcome-- specific prayers for doors to open, even cat-flaps. Honestly, if someone so much as gave me a box of chocolates right now, I think I would cry. Not literally cry, because I'm a MAN, but you know what I mean.

Habemus Papam!

Well, we have a new Holy Father! My prediction of Cardinal Tagle was wrong. I'm not upset about that.

The mood of conservative Catholics seems to be cautious optimism, and I share that mood. The fact that Leo XIV wore a mozzetta on his first appearance is promising. He doesn't seem to have a record of wading into controversies. Being an American might give him a more sympathetic approach to American Catholicism than has been current in the Vatican recently. (Remember "the ecumenism of hate"? I thought that was very unfair.)

Bishop Barron said in a recent interview that he would really appreciate a quiet pontificate. I think most of us can identify with that. I know I can.

As we all know, younger priests in the West are now much more likely to be orthodox. (And priests in the developing world were already more orthodox.) It might take a decade or two for that generation to reach senior roles in the Church. Perhaps a long pontificate from a relatively young and apparently moderate Pope is the best we could have hoped for.

Here's an interesting (and encouraging) reaction from Jimmy Akin, who's generally on the money. But Raymond Arroyo is rather more pessimistic.

In any case, God bless our new Pope, and may the Holy Spirit guide him!

The Aesthetics of Jokes

Here's a joke. There's a particular park in America where people always play chess. One day, it started raining so all the chess-players adjourned to a swanky hotel just outside the park, one that had a fancy lobby with soft chairs and nice marble-topped tables. The manager wasn't too happy about this, so he asked the doorman to get rid of them. "I'm afraid not, sir", said the doorman. "It's not my job to pull your chess nuts out of the foyer".

Did you laugh?

That's one of my favourite jokes. I first encountered it in one of Isaac Asimov's joke books. Doubtless my version of it isn't nearly as well-told.

It's a good entry-point for this blog post, though. As with most of my favourite jokes, its appeal to me goes beyond the fact that it's funny-- although I do find it very funny, and I wouldn't care about it if it wasn't funny.

But it's more than that. The whole set-up of the joke is immensely pleasing to me, and this is what most of my favourite jokes have in common.

First off, I like the idea of chess players playing chess in a park. Who doesn't? It's picturesque and pleasingly public. Buskers, street preachers, street vendors-- they all add to the character of a public place, making it seem more public and less a collection of private "bubbles".

Secondly, the fact that all the chess players go to the lobby together suggests that they're not just different pairs of players, but they're some sort of community-- and that is also very appealing.

A.I. is good for something...

Thirdly, they move to a hotel lobby. Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time, and also anybody who knows me at all, knows that "lobby" is one of my favourite words. I use it as often as I can. The same applies to "foyer". Indeed, I don't know which I prefer!

It's not just the word lobby that I like, but the idea of a lobby, and indeed the reality of a lobby. Especially cinema lobbies and hotel lobbies, which are usually rather splendid.

Why? Well, I guess it's a liminal space. There's been a lot said about those, but I'm intrigued by the fact that it's both public and private. Not a place you're supposed to linger in for a long time, but not made just for passing through, either.

(In my experience, the happiest times in life are often "in-betweeny" times, when you're either pausing or in transit between other experiences. Such moments often occur in lobbies, and they're also like a symbol of such moments.)

I don't actually have access to the Asimov book where I found the joke, and I can't find the joke on the internet. (I can find similar jokes, which I'll get to in a moment.) But I'm pretty sure that, in the Asimov version, it was a policeman who is called by the manager to use the chess-nuts.

I've changed it to a doorman in my version. Partly this is because those other jokes I mention use a doorman instead. But, more importantly, it's because I like that the whole joke occurs "in-house". I like buildings and institutions that resemble little societies; universities, for instance! Besides, don't we all like doormen, with their splendid uniforms and air of ceremony?

Anyway, I think you're probably getting the point by now. Very often, it's not just the punchline, or even principally the punchline, that appeals to me in a joke. It's the whole little world conjured by the story-- the atmosphere, the setting, the flavour, the incidentals. A punchline can only surprise you once (though it can still amuse you), but the background details can give a more lasting pleasure.

I mentioned a different version that I found online. Here it is:

A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse.

“But why?” they asked, as they moved off.

“Because,” he said “I can’t stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

This is also a good joke, but I don't think it's quite as good. For one thing, I've never heard anyone use the phrase "open foyer". So it doesn't quite have the pleasure of the other punchline, where the situation fits the idiom perfectly.

One thing that I like about both jokes is their innocuousness. First off, they're both clean-- and while I've laughed at hundreds (or maybe thousands) of smutty jokes, clean jokes seem much more pleasing, especially at the "deep" level I'm discussing here.

But these jokes are innocuous in another way. Compare them to this common joke:

Doctor: I have some bad news and some really bad news. The bad news is that you have twenty-four hours to live.

Patient: Oh God! What's the really bad news?

Doctor: I've been trying to contact you since yesterday.

This isn't a joke I find particularly funny, for a start-- although it seems plenty of people do find it funny, given how often I come across it. But, aside from that, it's quite depressing. A man with only an hour to live? That doesn't fill me with the sort of warm glow created by my favourite jokes.

The "chess nuts" in the foyer jokes are at the opposite pole of seriousness. Nothing really bad happens in this joke. Nobody is dying. Nobody is in distress. The chess players have enough time, leisure, and health to at least play chess. And the existence of hotels and city squares are a good thing in themselves.

Honestly, I think jokes act as a sort of sudden illumination that show us that the human condition is, for the most part, pretty good. There's enough drama in the story to make it interesting, but not the sort of three-hankie or white-knuckle drama that feature films or novels require. Just enough to engage the brain, while the less analytical part of the mind savours this wonderful world of ours: a world of chess, hotel lobbies, doormen, and so on.

In case you thought I'd analysed this joke to death, I do indeed have more to say. This much, at least: another reason it appeals to me is its basic realism.

There's nothing improbable in the story. It could reasonably happen. It could happen tomorrow, or today. Personally, I much prefer this kind of joke to the whole comic galaxy of talking dogs, little green men, genies in bottles, and so forth. Even if we set aside all supernatural and paranormal elements, I also prefer a joke like this to all the jokes that involve far-fetched or exotic motifs such as lottery wins, cannibals, desert islands, and the like.

How could a blog post about jokes have so few laughs? Well, I'd better round it off by another of my favourite jokes. I've lifted it straight from the first place I found it on the internet. (I actually suspect this was lifted from Asimov, too!)

A man went to his dentist because he feels something wrong in his mouth. The dentist examines him and says, "that new upper plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?"

The man replies, "All I can think of is that about four months ago my wife made some asparagus and put some stuff on it that was delicious...Hollandaise sauce. I loved it so much I now put it on everything --- meat, toast, fish, vegtables, everything."

"Well," says the dentist, "that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time use chrome." "Why chrome?" asks the patient.

To which the dentist replies, "It's simple. Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise!"