Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 71
May 24, 2016
The Rigours of Writing…
Some things bear repeating…this was an early blog of mine
Writing is about communicating, but what you wish to communicate, will determine how it’s written.
For example, if you’re a historian, writing a history of World War One, you won’t start with a blow by blow account of the violent death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. No, you’re more likely to start with an account of the shifting complex of treaties and alliances that led the world to war and the decade of global political assassinations, leading up to that one event.
As a journalist, you’d lead with the assassination and address the questions of ‘who, why, what, where, when and how?’, in the first four paragraphs. The background to the story, and its aftermath, might fill the latter paragraphs as ‘background.’
As a writer, you’d go straight for the action, contrasting the pomp and ceremony of an Imperial Archduke’s visit with the sweaty, fear…
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The REAL Thing #3
Friday, March 20: THE BIG DAY
“New York is something else again, ” The Edge explains, “It doesn’t matter to them how good you were in Florida or Charlottesville. This is where it counts.”
A large crowd of fans has assembled outside the hotel and Bono has gone for a walk. His security man has taken up a position behind a wall in Central Park where he can watch the hotel entrance without being noticed.
U2 refuse to compromise their humanity for the sake of security. They don’t wear disguises. They never leave hotels by the back door. They won’t tolerate guns and they won’t have their fans shoved about. Their security team – all martial arts experts – practise what the band preaches. At every venue they ask the two front rows if they wouldn’t mind if they brought some of the smaller people at the back, up to the front when the show begins and people get out of their seats.
Bono returns without incident, Pausing to sign autographs outside. As we go in, he tells me about ‘Frank and Harry.’
“I’m one of those people who has to work at being nice,” he says, “if I’m feeling hassled I can become very nasty so I have to work hard at being someone else when I have to meet people. It’s a Frank and Harry situation.”
Yes, but which is which? I call, as he climbs the steps to the revolving doors. He looks back and smiles that wicked Shining grin and disappears inside the bug eyed shades.
A little later, Bono and The Edge are about to leave the hotel foyer for the soundcheck at Madison Square Garden. A camera crew is to accompany them, detouring five blocks to visit Times Square and film the pair of them under the Sony Jumbotron giant diamondvision screen which is relaying a subversive one minute Zoo TV melange, every seven minutes.
High above the US Armed Forces recruiting shop and the CNN newswire loop, The Fly suddenly explodes onto the screen in live footage and that Caesar’s Palace romper suit, then WATCH MORE TV and IT’S YOUR WORLD, YOU CAN CHANGE IT. A rotating minute of film on the 50 by 60 foot screen costs $3,000 a week.
“A snip”, says McGuinness, as this seditious message bursts through the ether of the most decadent square mile in Manhattan. “I mean, we’re in New York all this week, playing Meadowlands and Madison Square Garden. We’re not really advertising because the shows are sold out. It’s just a way of recording that the band are in town and behaving badly.”
DOWN AT THE SHOW IT’S BECOMING INCREASINGLY CLEAR that Madison Square Garden carries extra baggage. Even the news of Phil and Katie’s return from their madcap Las Vegas wedding has failed to relieve the tension. The Edge hints darkly about bad, unspecified omens, “I just know something will go wrong,” he mutters.
Bono’s onstage roadie (and cousin), the affable AJ is almost bounced from the venue by the chief of security. AJ’s job is to make sure Bono doesn’t get snagged on any leads as he negotiates the stage’s various ramps and corridors.
The soundcheck is even more rigorous than usual. Larry’s brow is set in furrowed concentration. The Edge engages in some intense discussion with his guitar technician . Only Adam appears suitably nonchalant, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth as he poses for a photograph.
The soundcheck’s also longer than usual, bringing it right up to the six o’clock union curfew, when everything’s switched off for an hour. The Pixies miss their chance of a soundcheck, entirely, though it’s not the first time and they’re not that bothered.
Showtime! King Boogaloo! From the narrow passageway beside the stage is the cowled figure of the High Priest of Happiness, resplendent in a long, black cloak with a dramatic portrait of Elvis Presley wearing a crown of thorns on the back. He comes leaping out of the darkness and he looks far from happy. Two rather heavy house security men are in hot pursuit to grab and manhandle the cloaked Beep as he makes his way offstage and U2 crank up to chug-a-lug out of Zoo Station.
Spitting curses, BP is in no mood for reconciliation and these guys have been itching for a stomping all evening. “He’s with the show,” I scream at the melee of fists, though it should be painfully obvious, even to a bouncer, that a gatecrasher in The Beep’s threads wouldn’t make it past the First Aid tent. “Fuck off, you c**ts,” adds the Beep, helpfully. Bono is onstage singing, “I’m ready, ready for the crush…”
Tensions about tonight’s show slowly melt away as the band go into overdrive. While Boston provided an emotional highlight and Meadowlands, the technical perfection of a great show, tonight’s show is the theatrical tour de force. Bono has found the combination of demonic, mocking wit and emotive conviction he’s been striving for all week. His characters – The Fly, The Street Kid, the Las Vegas Rock Star – are pitched with the correct blend of tingue in cheek parody and listing, out of control, menace. 
The Edge is even dancing, grooving under the weight of all those FX pedals and the startling mini-studio backup, below stage.
We get The Fly, a thundering Even Better Than the Real Thing, Mysterious Ways, during which Christina, the tour belly dancer, dances on a small stage on the arena floor while Bono gestures forlornly for the unattainable – Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Trying to Throw Your Arms around the World, which Adam swears is about a man in Donegal who locks himself out of his house after a splendid binge in a local bar.
Bono lurches down the gangway during this, grabs the overhead camera and rubs it on his crotch, treating us to a giant sidescreen blow-up of this shiny, black leather protrusion. He pushes his trashy rock ‘n’ roll excess to the limit tonight and it works. Angel of Harlem follows on the tiny, low slung, sidestage. There’s a Sinatra-esque arrangement of Satellite of Love and a soaring, anthemic version of Bad, which has returned to the set as the last surviving tune from the ‘heart of darkness’ section of the past, but its message remains undiluted, uncompromising.
For Pride, images and the voice of Martin Luther King fill the vidiwalls and later, Bobby Kennedy as well as the ultimate three card trickster, Nixon. The finish is a howling maelstrom of stomping and cheering.
Bono emerges in the schlock two piece, shining and leering, stumbling. During Desire, the huge screens fill with the image of Phil Joanou and Katie Hymen exchanging vows in the Gracelands Chapel while behind them, the spangle suited ‘Elvis’ croons and rocks. Art imitating life imitating art.
I’M POSITIONED RIGHT BY THE STAGE EXIST TO THE BACKSTAGE AREA when the show’s over and the silver-laméd figure of Bono bursts through the fire curtain, pale, disorientated, gasping for air, a security man by his side to redirect his stumble toward the dressing room. The rest of the band look equally shagged but also relieved.
Later, back in the Ritz Carlton bar, everyone’s relaxing with wine and champagne. There was a small ‘special hospitality’ party backstage with Peter Gabriel, Kim Basinger, waterboy Mike Scott and a somewhat scruffy and bearded Bruce Springsteen in a long, green, military coat. I ask Adam what he thought of Kim Basinger and, surprisingly, get a muted response, “lovely girl but I wouldn’t go for her.”
He’s immensely relieved that the show’s gone well, “you can’t really do a bad show in New York because they don’t want to know how good you were, anywhere else.”
Bono’s slumped in the corner quietly observing, sipping a glass of champagne. I tell him he reminded me of a young prat I used to watch on occasional Saturday afternoons giving free concerts in the disused stable yard in Dublin’s Dandelion Market.
“You’re right,” he smiles, “but back then I was doing the same thing…throwing up the absurdity of rock stardom. All our music began to be interpreted by journalists who wrote about the singles from the later albums. They didn’t look at the earlier stuff. For every one of those songs, there was another to balance it. The image they created was distorted.”
In the early days the lines between avant garde shock-rockers, The Virgin Prunes and U2 were often blurred, with members of each band crossing over. Perhaps Zoo TV was a return to the theatrical performances of those days?
“Very much so. We’re becoming more conscious of it and I can play around with it more and more as the shows progress.”
“In the eye of the contradictions,” he smiles, “that’s where rock ‘n’ roll should be…”
May 23, 2016
The REAL Thing＃ 2
Wednesday, March 18: A BUS TRANSIT HAULS US out to a private airport hangar on the Fresh Pond side of town. BP Fallon is sat upfront with the driver. The driver’s walkie talkie is in crackle static mode, all heel ball and bullshit. Suddenly, it rings. BP, who has been ‘vibing out’ pedestrians with provocative howls, turns and shouts, “if that’s Prince, tell him to fuck off.”
U2’s private 50 seater MGM Grand Air looks like any other Boeing 727 on the outside – neat, compact and powerful. Inside’s a different story. Bono describes it as “high tech kitsch, a disco from the ’70s all shining balls, mirrors and flock wallpaper.” The last band to hire it was Guns ‘n’ Roses.
A narrow corridor is flanked by four seater booths complete with overhead TVs and earphones. The middle opens out into a spect-acularly over-the-top bar lounge with padded leatherette panels and wood effect beauty board, partitioned with peacock-etched plate glass. It’s well over the top but there’s no conspicuous Stones style debauchery to go with it. “We never bought that whole rock’n’roll excess thing,” Bono laughs.
Beyond the lounge, where the seats are low slung and white leather, the band is having a meeting, The Edge flicking through that day’s edition of USA Today. The flight is short – a cold chicken taco and two beers – and we alight at a private corner of Newark airport to climb aboard another fleet of stretch limos that snakes its way down the Jersey Turnpike, to the Brendan Byrne Arena, Meadowlands.
I set up shop in BP Fallon’s dressing room as he assembles his twin cd portable boom box and starts his groove with some PM Dawn. Bernard Patrick Fallon is an institution of sorts. He’s a rock ‘n’ roll peacock, an Irish Catholic with an English Public School education who soaked up Gene Vincent, Elvis and Little Richard and never looked back. He’s been on Top of the Pops miming for the Plastic Ono Band and made media vibes for Marc Bolan, T Rex, Led Zeppelin, The Boomtown rats and The Waterboys. A bald, domed groover of indeterminate age, he reeks of coconut oil and lives on another planet. His occasional visits to earth are fraught with hassled minions – “the little people”, he calls them – and the sound of his voice can make grown men quiver with murderous intent.
BP Fallon
Besides the role of pre-show DJ – “more of a sound viber, man” – The Beep has put together the impressive progamme notes, part BP ego trip and part insightful Q&A assembly wherein he explores both their pockets and their fantasies, of which more later. “The only white black person I know besides Bob Dylan,” is how Bono describes him.
Eslewhere, backstage, we note the former E Street Band guitarist, Little Steven and Tatum O’Neal and John McEnroe. Weirder still, we find the diminutive senior citizen sex therapist, Dr Ruth.
The Meadowlands show is perfection, the atmosphere just right. Everyone’s pleased. The Beep spins a special edit of The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour, an idea cooked up, with almost eery coincidence, by both himself and Bono, who opens the show alone, howling a haunting Turkish dirge of unknown origin. When he introduces I Still Haven’t Found what I’m Looking For, he says, “This is your year of election, I hope you find the president you are looking for because, if you don’t, we’re all fucked.”
THE BAR OF THE RITZ CARLTON ON CENTRAL PARK SOUTH is filling up as group and crew members meet and greet with old friends and camp followers. This is New York and only a few of them had ventured down the Lincoln Tunnel to Meadowlands to see the show. Outside the snow is falling heavily.
Soon the place is jammed with fabulous, glamorous New Yorkers, as they plainly cast themselves. When you talk to them, they run an ID check: if you’re no-one, goodbye. The moment Adam – God bless him – gives you a hug and starts trading jokes about our old hometown of Dublin, suddenly you’re my old pal, too. We Irish have very acute bullshit antennae, and tonight mine are in overdrive.
“I was scared after Rattle & Hum, Adam says, “because we became too big to explain it and tell people why we made it.” Over half a dozen beers and his white wine, we discuss his treatment at the hands of the Irish public and the Irish police. Like it or not, he does have the band’s only outlaw image, having lost his driving licence, taken a policeman for a drunken windscreen joyride and then got caught smoking a joint only a roll up away from his mansion in the Dublin foothills.
“In America I could roll a joint standing next to a New York cop and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid,” he protests, “because they know we are different. Over here, they understand, that for rock stars, it’s a whole different lifestyle. And, by the way, it’s not my land they’re going to build the six lane motorway on,” he points out, referring to my U2 piece in last November’s SELECT. “It’s this private property developer who bought the land ten years ago thinking he was going to make a fortune when it was re-opened.”
As the party thins and Norman, the wisecracking bartender becomes even more acerbic and weary, Bono has gone as his wife, ali, has just arrived from Dublin, Larry, too, as his girlfriend was on the same flight.
BP Fallon and Paul McGuinness
Suddenly Gary Oldman appears, drunk, unshaven, dishevelled, melting snow on the shoulders of his well lived-in tweed overcoat.The man who plays Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK equips himself with a beer and mostly sits in a corner and broods.Occasionally he jumps up and swings an expensive vase about. Phil Joanou loves it.
As the bar is cleared, a party is swiftly scheduled for Joanou’s room. Drinks are ordered and music organized. Room service arrives with a bar on a trolley – ice, beer, vodka, tequila and a bowl of freshly cut lime. Paul McGuinness produces the first VHS copy of Joanou’s reworking of U2’s current single, One, the third version. The first version was made with U2’s photographer Anton Corbijn in Berlin.
“The band dressed in drag and nobody like it when it was finished,” McGuinness explains, “but it’s not going to be deep sixed – or Neil Jordaned,” he quips, referring to Jordan’s long buried video of Red Hill Mining Town from The Joshua Tree.
“It will be shown. We’ll put it on as a one off and we’ll give people plenty of warning so they can record it, but it’s not going to be distributed for rotation.”
The second version, (made by Ned O”Hanlon) uses images by New York artist, David Wojnarowicz of American buffalo crossing the screen in slow motion, eventually freezing on a shot of them going over a cliff, an image which connects with his perception of the AIDS crisis.
The idea of rock stars appearing several times a day on TV screens in full drag and make up would be enough to send America’s moral right into apoplectic seizure. The Rolling Stones did it but then, they were always bad boys. Does this mean U2 are only playing at being bad boys?
“They try and control the circumstances in which they work,” counters McGuinness, because it’s through achieving control that you can do good work. Sometimes in the past the fact that U2’s organization is fairly proficient has obscured the fact that they’re a phenomenal rock ‘n’ roll band.”
BP Fallon asked each of the band if they ever wished they were women. Adam said yes, Larry said no. The Edge took a psychic voyeur stance and Bono evaded the issue by giving a pen sketch of the others from that video…
“edge looked like Winnie the Witch, Adam looked like the Duchess of York, Larry looked like an extra from some skin flick and I looked like Barbara Bush.”
The REAL Thing – 5 strange days inside the U2 Zoo
This story was first published in May 1992 for the cover of British rock magazine, SELECT. The deadline was so tight, I had to write it, long hand, on the transatlantic flight home, the day after the tour’s climactic final show in Madison Square Gardens, NYC, then type it and fax it to London, the following afternoon. What is reproduced, below, is about one third of the final report. Most of the photos are by me, too, using an early Canon Sureshot.
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG, U2 over America. A tour awash with sightings of strange characters in silver lame suits. A tour invaded by snarling, bug eyed, rock star, alien, party animals and shot through with brain jamming subliminal messages. “We have got to get to that place where schlock meets trash,” says Bono, ” that’s where rock ‘n’ roll belongs.”
Friday, March 20: Mr and Mrs Phil Joanou are stretched out on their New York hotel bed. Neither has slept for 50 hours. They’re surrounded by magazines, half eaten jumbo club sandwiches and empty champagne bottles. A pair of jaded bridesmaids are slumped on the couch.
He is the man who directed Rattle & Hum. She is the international vice president for A&R at Imago Records. Twenty four hours ago they flew to Las Vegas and got married in the Gracelands Wedding Chapel while an Elvis impersonator sang, “wise men say, only fools rush in…”.
They met for the first time on Wednesday, March 18 on U2’s Zoo TV Tour in the Brendan Byrne Arena, Meadowlands, New Jersey. “Well, Bono inspired us,” Katie explains, matter-of-factly. “In between songs, he said, “let’s go to Las Vegas and get married…for a while!” He should be careful what he says, because there are some pretty impressionable people in the audience. And we’re two of them.”
Welcome to Frazzle Rock where only fools are allowed in and the wise and sane, swiftly depart.
“Zoo TV is a state of mind,” the band’s smiling manager will tell me. “It seems to describe the atmosphere of complete irresponsibility that surrounds this tour.”
“It’s a means for us to plunge 20,000 people into confusion,” Adam Clayton will expand.
“It’s all about mischief and mystery,” Bono will confide in a late night bar binge at New York’s Ritz Carlton hotel.
Zoo TV is the high tech nerve centre for U2’s travelling road show. It’s the high tack gateway to cosmic chaos. But even the professional weirdos at the controls of Frazzle Rock are phased by the Las Vegas wedding story. Everyone is talking about it. Did you hear about..? Is it true…? Life has taken art and shot it through the stratosphere for more than the first time on this tour where EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG is emblazoned on the official tour itinerary book. All aboard!
I joined the ZOO TV TOUR – A RUMBLING, ROARING monster of microchip wizardry and serious mayhem on March 17, St Patrick’s day, in Boston, Massachusetts. A tour awash with sightings of weird characters in understated Las Vegas trash suits, a tour rumoured to be invaded by snarling, bug eyed, rock star alien party animals.
At Logan airport, a man in a neat, grey suit and a card that read “MR HAYES” was there to meet me. It was the earring that gave him away. Outside is America and a black, stretch limousine. Sleep is out of the question. Let’s grab this beast by the ears and crawl, head first, into its gaping, slavering maw. “I’m ready, ready for the laughing gas. Ready for what’s next…”
7pm. Paul McGuinness and I are in a cab headed for the Boston Gardens Arena. Outside the venue a sea of turbulent green scarves and banner bearers march up and down, cheering and waving. Four blocks away, the cab is stopped by a wildly gesticulating cop. “No way. You caint go down dere”. We produce impressive bouquets of colourful laminates. Still no dice. “I am U2’s manager,” McGuinness announces, And I certainly hope you don’t intend to say the same thing to my band,”
The Gardens Arena is a 75 year old structure that looks like a twisted, circular, high rise tenement. I’m backstage being mugshot by McGuinness for a Zoo TV Access All Areas pass in the Principle Management Production office. “With this pass,” he assures me, “you can go onstage and sing.” An Irish pipe band , hired for the occasion, is limbering up in the hallway. The office bristles with portable computer technology, fax machines and softly purring, bubble jet printers.
Members of the band flit in and out of the dressing rooms. Larry Mullen – black leather, biker jacket, white t-shirt, jeans – is paying a short visit to the band’s resident massage therapist and homeopath who advises them about nutrition and gives them some of the old reflexology and acupressure. Adam strolls by, sporting, if sporting is the right word, a decidedly nondescript and shapeless pair of baggy, brown tracksuit bottoms that, no doubt, cost him an arm and a leg. The Edge looks more and more like some ’50s roughneck beatnik with his tiny, black wooly watch cap, worn jeans, scuffed boots, crew neck and yellow cord sports jacket. Bono appears, smiling, in his ubiquitous brown sheepskin jacket, darkly hennaed locks framing his deliciously evil, bug eyed shades.
Out front, a seething swathe of green has spread itself out like a writhing moss on the cliff-steep, four tier seating. Homeboy support group, The Pixies, are thundering through their hard working 15-track set, pounding it out with an electro-surge of thunderous power, starting off with Bossanova’s ‘Cecelia Ann’ and taking in ‘Velouria’, ‘Planet of Sound’ and ending in ‘U Mass.’
And then it’s time for “the most gorgeous, the most sexy, all the way from Dublin, Ireland’s Mr Ramalama, King Boogaloo, the High Priest of Happiness – he must have scripted this himself – ladies and gentleman, Beeeee Peeeee Fallon…!” A silver, sound surround, mirror ball Trabant, rigged out as a DJ booth, is lowered onto the stage and BP Fallon, erstwhileLed Zeppelin publicist, friend of Bono’s and full time, big figure in Irish rock folklore – clambers in and starts spinning some James Brown, Massive Attack, PM Dawn, Phil Spector and Waterboys’ discs. The sound is already deafening and the band aren’t even on yet.
Zoo TV is a massive rock ‘n’ roll carnival on the road, a rogue elephant of music and image. Colourful Trabants, painted with assorted style and message by cathy Owens, Irish artist and long time friend, hang suspended above the stage like skeletal trophies in the lair of some 21st century predator. Four giant Nocturne vidwalls of screens dot the stage set, flashing out their mind-blinding messages of provocative nonsense: WATCH MORE TV…DEATH IS A CAREER MOVE…IT’S YOUR WORLD YOU CAN CHANGE IT…CALL YOUR MOTHER.
The pace and noise suck you into the tornado, spinning a threatening infinity of schlock/shock subliminal messages. And the eye of the storm is Bono, the Rock Star, The Fly, a demonic joker, a futuristic rock ‘n’ roll ringmaster who can turn a mirror on your soul. His aura is a frightening turmoil of dark and frightening hues. He knows you because he is you. Us.
“It’s a carnival, a circus, a zoo on the road”,he tells me later. “The first couple of nights in Florida is was just pure adrenalin, but now I’m becoming more conscious of the character. I can do things with it, him.”
The show reaches an emotional climax during a short acoustic set on a small round stage that stretches out into the middle of the hall reached by a narrow ramp from the stage. A remote control broadcast tv camera on a mini railway track runs the length of the ramp. All four band members assemble there to sing an almost acapella version of Angel of Harlem before Larry takes the hanging rope to spin the dangling DJ booth. A beam hits it and suddenly the silver Trabant becomes as whirling mirror ball as Bono sings Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love, stretching the song – with this visual device and his soft, haunting, falsetto – into something completely new, spacey.
On St Patrick’s night, the world is turned on its head as – unprededented – U2’s very quiet drummer steps up to the mike to sing Ewan McColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town.’ Excruciating off key to start, he finds his vocal ‘legs’ and rouses a stirring chorus. It’s a song with much, nostalgic meaning for Boston based Irish exiles.
Then The Edge tosses in his self penned ballad, ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ about John Boyle O”Reilly, an Irish poet, deported by the British who escaped and relocated to Boston. “Boston is our home from home!” Bono, the showman, bullshits to the ecstatic crowd.
IN THE RESTAURANT AND BAR, just off the Four Seasons hotel’s main foyer, members of the band, friends and crew have assembled for after show, wind down bevvies. The tables are strewn with romaine lettuce shreds, empty bottles, prawn tails and half devoured sandwiches.
The Edge is in confab with a denim clad Neil Young who Bono describes as “an extraordinary guitar player who transcends the time”. Larry is talking to Zoo TV director, Ned O”Hanlon. Bono holds court, across the way, among his circle is old mate, Peter Wolf of the J Geils Band.
Success was like a big bad wolf”, Bono says when we’re sinking a last beer, later, “now we laugh at it. I laugh at limos and four jerks with police escorts, a rock band getting all this attention. I used to find it embarrassing, now I find it funny. There’s an aspect of rock and roll that is just ridiculous, but you’ve got to enjoy the ride – it is a trip.
“We have to get to that place where schlock meets trash”, he confides. “That’s where rock ‘n’ roll belongs. Sam Shepard said something about being in the eye of the contradictions when the doo doo hits the fan. That’s where rock ‘n’ roll should be, too: in the eye of the contradictions.”
Then he’s gone. Whizzed off into the rock ‘n’ roll ether that surrounds him whenever he steps outside his hotel room. He looks lean and fit, clear eyed, angle-faced, cleft-chinned handsome, a wry smile plays at the corners of his mouth.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is all about contradictions,” he says, “we’d got so big and unapproachable, we had to open up. We had to talk but how did we do that without getting caught up in our own contradiction? All that millionaire mansion stuff is rubbish. We’re not hiding. We’re saying, ‘c’mon, here we are. Give it to us, we want it all.”
When is truth, fiction and fiction, truth?
I believe, as a writer of fiction, that whatever I write, regardless of how close an account it is to a real event, it remains, for all intents and purposes, fiction. Now that’s a very broad and some might argue, indefensible statement. How can the reader discern the fact from the fiction, for example?
There is a contradiction inherent in all fiction writing. One one hand, the novice writer is encouraged to stick to what they know and are passionate about and then, write about that or, at least, draw their inspiration from that well. 
On the other hand, a writer must never get too close or emotional to their own writing since their task, and duty, to the reader, is to help them suspend their disbelief and doubt and find their own ‘truth’ in the fiction they’re reading.
Fiction, the noun, according to most dictionaries, is ‘literature in the form of prose, especially novels or short stories, that describes imaginary events and people.’ Such a definition might exclude the ‘fictional’ works of half the world’s greatest writers, I think.
Few can doubt the fictional nature of Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s Slaughterhouse Five, surely, since it relates a story of alien abduction and an alien race called The Tralfamadorians.
At the same time, the hero of the story, Billy Pilgrim, is a young American soldier who, like Vonnegut, survives the bombing of Dresden because he was working, as a POW, in an underground meat locker. Pilgrim, however, unlike the author, begins to experience life out of sequence, frequently revisiting scenes. He also meets the Tralfamadorians along the way.
Could James Joyce have conjured Leopold Bloom from his imagination or any of the other central and incidental characters who populate Ulysses or his book of short stories, Dubliners, had he not been an inhabitant and keen observer of the denizens of his own native city?
I think not and I’m sure there are characters in many novels who may cause some disquiet in the lives of real people and acquaintances of the authors.
James Lee Burke, one of my all time favourite authors, frequently draws his characters from his personal experience.
Burke is a multi-award winning writer of crime mysteries, best known for his novels involving Dave Robicheaux, some time deputy sheriff of New Iberia parish in Louisiana, full time recovering alcoholic and former NOPD homicide detective. He’s also written a series involving first, Hackberry Holland, recovering alcoholic and former Congressional candidate, Texas Ranger and public defender turned sheriff of a small, dusty town on the rim of the Tex-Mex border and then his brother, Billy Bob Holland, a public defender and environmental champion, transplanted from Texas to Montana.
He’s also published a number of historical novels set in the American civil war and all written from a Confederate army perspective.
His observations are panoramic and insightful, always erudite and frequently painful in their honesty. Just what you’d expect from a man with an alcoholic and academic past who has worked as a teacher, a journalist, an oil worker and among down and outs in Los Angeles’ skid row and who grew up in Louisiana and now lives in Montana.
Read the Introduction to ‘The Convict and Other Stories.’ It’s called Jailhouses, English Departments and Electric Chairs. It is a revelation for any aspiring writer that nothing is guaranteed or written in stone, except the writer’s own unquenchable thirst to write.
‘Jolie Blon’s Bounce’, one of Burke’s most highly acclaimed and successful novels in the Dave Robicheaux series, was turned down more than 100 times before it finally found a publisher.
I spent more than twenty years working as a journalist when the essential imperative, both legal and moral, was to ensure, as far as we could,
what we wrote was factual and truthful.
An author has a different objective. It may be their intention to inform; they may desire to entertain but, in my estimation, their real task is to alter the reader’s point of view. I don’t mean ‘opinion’; I mean, literally, point of view.
If a writer can give the reader the facility to see something from the point of view of a different person, of another age, another race, even another gender; then they’ve suspended their disbelief and achieved their own goal.
A popular novelist once told me a very personal story about himself that, while not doing anything wrong, made him look, well, gullible and human and not the worldly wise author of crime fiction he was.
He was aware of my role as a journalist but he gave me the story. There was drink taken, I must admit, but the story subsequently appeared in a newspaper. The author was appalled and, frankly, outraged. He never denied it nor did he seek legal redress, as one might expect he would.
Instead, a character appeared in one of his subsequent novels, bearing my name, complete with two ‘ts’. That character was a dog, a friendly, if rather dozy golden retriever, if memory serves and its owner bore the name of the third person who witnessed my conversation with the author and his revelations.
What you write becomes fiction when you set it in print, if that is your intent and design. It is the reader who must decide if it’s worth reading.
A writer will find inspiration anywhere. They have to look and see, that’s all. Then they have to write.
May 22, 2016
City of Thoughts
One of my first poems, City of Thoughts is, on one hand, about the city I love, on the other, it’s about the lonely existence of a writer
In my mind
the world is
a City of Thoughts
where I can wander
undisturbed,
window shop
in a world of words,
sightsee cityscapes
of thoughtful wonder,
feast in restaurants
of Epicurian splendour
and drink in bars
with bottomless glasses,
wine that is the nectar
of Creation
But no- one talks
no-one listens
nobody sees
the thoughtful pavements,
or wanders
with me
in the avenues of wonder,
like the blind poet
singing songs
for the deaf
Atlantic: war of the ocean
If you were lucky enough to see The Pipe, Risteard O’Domhnaill’s debut documentary about the ongoing opposition to Shell’s Corrib gas pipeline in north Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland, you’ll know he’s dogged in his pursuit of his story and relentless, in his story telling.
Risteard, a graduate in theoretical physics and a tv cameraman, has now tackled an even bigger subject, the Atlantic Ocean and how oceanic countries, Ireland, Newfoundland and Norway have each dealt with the resources of the ocean, with regards to preserving its fishing communities.
Narrated by acclaimed Irish actor, Brendan Gleeson, Atlantic is not just one to look out for, it’s one to seek out. It won Best Irish Documentary at the Dublin International Film Festival in March.
http://www.theatlanticstream.com/about
http://www.thejournal.ie/risteard-o-domhnaill-atlantic-interview-2780755-May2016/
Daily Prompt: Flourish
Daily Prompt: Flourish
This the last picture of my late father’s pride and joy, his garden. Now the house has been sold, the garden levelled and I’ll never see it, again.
Not Tempted by Inept Reviewer, in response to ‘Not Tempted by Latin Loser’
Posted for Reinventing the letter format, #everydayinspirations
Everyone’s read a restaurant review they didn’t agree with but few take the time to respond or react. Here’s my response to a review of a Brazilian restaurant, in Dublin.
Dear Metro editor,
I was astounded to read a recent review by one ********** regarding Brasil, the, er, Brazilian restaurant on Dublin’s Stephen St.
Whoever said writing about music was like dancing about architecture must have had Ms White in mind.
First she says a change in the restaurant’s facade from the colours of the Brazilian flag to ‘a fresh lick of sleek black paint and gold lettering’ lured her there as the previous decor looked ‘too jaunty for a night of serious eating.’
Get over yourself. For most people, a night out in a restaurant is a pleasurable experience involving more senses than your tastes which, by your own admission, appear limited.
So you ‘never had a Brazilian dish’ until you came up with this lame segue to an even limper joke? If you had even paused to think for half a second you might have sussed Brazilian food is about fusion; that the biggest influences are Portugese, African and native American Indian ; that Brazilian cuisine is mostly about Churrascora or Brazilian barbecue which is mostly presented with a ‘self service salad bar.’
If Ms White had done some very basic research, like asked a question, then she might have had a look at the variety of snacks available from the ‘salad bar.’ She might have opted for the ‘five meat’ signature churrascora dish that is the speciality of ‘Brasil.’
Then she might have tasted the Brazilian choriza, a mildly spiced sausage compared to the better known Spanish chorizo. The other meats are pork, lamb and beef. With these she would have been treated to a bowl of black beans, cassava, salsa, rice, all washed down by their distinctive, if expensive, selection of Portugese wines or even a traditional caiparinho, a cocktail that is vaguely reminiscent of a cross between a mint julep and a margerita.
My meal cost 79 euro and it fed two of us, amply. The wine cost 35 euro of that. It was a bloody good meal, the staff were friendly and helpful and I’m going back there again.
I liked the fact that it was a Brazilian restaurant called Brasil, I might have enjoyed it even more if it had been painted green, yellow and black but I doubt it. So please, Metro, do yourselves a favour and don’t send self confessed incompetents with no taste or sense of adventure out to do your reviewing.
At the very least, ask them to take their head out of their arses before they decide to feed themselves.
Postcard from a Pigeon
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