Tag: Ireland

James Joyce. His Bell Tolls (for me).

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It continues to haunt. James Joyce and Ulysses. Unfinished, brooding on my book shelf. I first discussed his book in a earlier post: Just Can’t Finish. Then I tripped into this video. Luck? I don’t think so. It’s time. Time to pull it off the shelf and give it another whack…

Larry Kirwan, 71, Irish writer and musician, on James Joyce:

Never once did he doubt his own genius, and God knows he had a awfully hard life. He became almost blind to his always broke, always borrowing. And yet he knew his strength. His strength for story, and words and music. I think we read him because of his music and his rhythms.  Catching the soul of a person. And catching the inner dialogue, say in the Molly Bloom thing, you could never have met a woman and read Molly Bloom and know what a woman is about. He’s that strong a writer to me.

Frank Delaney, 71, Irish journalist, author and broadcaster, on James Joyce:

This is what he does better than anyone else. He understands the tiny sins, the tiny virtues, the tiny venalities, the tiny advantages that people will look for in life. And nobody else ever did that before and nobody, I would contend, has done it as well since.

John Nolan, Mountain View

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painting,art,Ireland,red

“Birth date 1958. Place of birth. Dublin, Ireland. I work from a studio in Dublin City. I have been painting from an early age due to the encouragement I received from my father who was an artist. I explore colour. Colour is the subject of my paintings. I paint in the abstract form and the modern stylised form. I am influenced by many forms of art and artists. Education: I started painting and never stopped.”

~ John Nolan

See more fine art by John Nolan here. See John Nolan’s website here.

I am King

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photography

A road,
a mile of kingdom.
I am king
Of banks and stones
and every blooming thing.

— Patrick Kavanagh, “Inniskeen Road”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. He is known for accounts of Irish life through reference to the everyday and commonplace. Kavanagh was born in rural Inniskeen in 1904, the fourth of ten children born to Bridget Quinn. His father, James, was a shoemaker and farmer. Kavanagh was a pupil at Kednaminsha National School from 1909 to 1916, leaving in the sixth year, at the age of 13. He became apprenticed to his father as a shoemaker and worked on his farm. For the first 27 years of his life, he lived and worked as a farmer of a small holding. He later reflected, “Although the literal idea of the peasant is of a farm labouring person, in fact a peasant is all that mass of mankind which lives below a certain level of consciousness. They live in the dark cave of the unconscious and they scream when they see the light.” He commented that though he grew up in a poor district “the real poverty was lack of enlightenment [and] I am afraid this fog of unknowing affected me dreadfully.” (Source: Wiki)

Insight: “inniskeen Road” marks a significant achievement because of its reflective quality…The closing couplet sees him master of his newly burst road, if uncertain how to proceed along it…Similar oscillations between potency and anxiety mark the decade between the publication of this collection and Kavanaugh’s next trade collection, A Soul for Sale (1947). (Source:The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (edited by Fran Brearton, Alan Gillis), pp.184-185 via books.google.com))

Quote Source: Larmoyante; Image Source: Hungarian Soul.

We don’t eat until your father is at the table

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James Vincent McMorrow, 30, was born in Dublin, Ireland and is a singer and songwriter.  His debut album Early in the Morning was released in Ireland in 2010 and in the US/Europe in 2011 to widespread acclaim.  He started his musical life as a drummer in a handful of post-hardcore rock bands. Despite liking the comfort and anonymity of playing drums, he began playing music by himself in the side room of this parents house, educating himself as a musician and a songwriter.  (Source: Wiki)

Album: Early in the Morning

Kodaline

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Kodaline are a Dublin-based Irish alternative rock quartet.  In December 2012, the BBC announced that Kodaline had been nominated for the Sound of 2013 poll – a poll which surveys music critics and industry figures to find the most promising new music talent.

For Kodaline, music isn’t just music. “It’s therapy,” says singer Steve Garrigan.  “When we write music, the first thing we think of is, it’s therapy for us. Then we think of how we can use that feeling to touch as many people as possible.”

Music should have a purpose,  you know, – says Steve, Our purpose is honesty.

Steve, Mark and drummer Vinny May – all aged 22 and 23 – have been working towards this moment for much of their young lives. Growing up in houses just two minutes away from each other in Swords, Steve and Mark met aged eight, when they were the only boys in the school choir. “We were there to pick up girls, of course”, jokes Mark.