Rememberings

by Sinéad O'Connor

I never made sense to anyone, even myself, unless I was singing.

toward the end of my thirteenth year, I went to what is politely called a “rehabilitation center for girls with behavioral problems.” (I think the whole world knows a refund is owed my father for that, as it clearly didn’t work.)

I pretended to faint a bunch of times at my desk so the nuns would send me home again. They’re so worried about me after what happened that I got away with mere Golden Globes–worthy performances; they didn’t have to be Oscar-winning.

In real life you aren’t allowed to say you’re angry but in music you can say anything.

My favorite singer in all her collection is Barbra Streisand. I love to watch her movies. I love Hello, Dolly and Funny Girl. She’s so beautiful; her nails are so long and she wears cool eyeliner. I love her speaking voice and her singing voice. She doesn’t sing like anyone I’ve ever heard—her voice is way more free, kind of like David Bowie but different, obviously. Both of them sound like wild birds.

I’m addicted to stealing too. That’s why I like to sing hymns. It isn’t bearable to be such a bad person. I have to do one holy thing so I can live with myself.

It feels like the poems have opened all the windows and brought the garden indoors.

She isn’t violent at all; she’s a canary in a tiger suit.

I have been angry at my mother all my life. But I displaced it. I couldn’t admit it was her I was angry at, so I took it out on the world. And burned nearly every bridge I ever crossed.

We really are a very messed-up family. We don’t even suit that word, family. It should be a comforting word. But it’s not. It’s a painful, stabbing word. Cuts the heart into pieces. And all the more because it’s too late to go back and do anything differently.

Dude had the utter gormlessness (this is an Anglo-Irish word for stupidity of the sort that would have Bill Clinton in the Oval Office with a cigar and Monica Lewinsky)

I would advise any young person not to do what I did. Time passes quickly and you can’t get it back.

While sitting in my room one night I saw a person reflected in the glass cabinet wearing a black hood that was hemmed with two gold bands. Then the lights started flashing on and off and I ran out of there, petrified. The minister said I should have stayed because I was getting a message. I said no, I’d rather not have messages from anyone in a hood.

I’m lonely but I’m writing songs for my first album, and songs are a lonely person’s occupation; songs are ghosts. When my album comes out I’ll become a traveling “ghost delivery woman.”

He changed the subject. Started telling lewd jokes. Using the C-word more than anyone I’d ever met. I felt we would be bonded for life.

“Why’ve yew dunnit?” “Because I wanna be me.” “Cawn’t yew be yew wiv’ ’ayah?” I said, “It’s you who needs hair, you baldy oul fecker, not me. Why don’t you let me help you find a doctor?”

I got thrown out of an Italian café in Charing Cross last week by the old lady running the place because I had on, cut short so that my bump was exposed, a white T-shirt on which was printed ALWAYS USE A CONDOM. She wasn’t seeing the funny side.

They’re nerds, but strictly in the sense that Superman is a nerd. And from observing them, I’ve come to realize that if not for nerds, no records would ever be made. There’d just be a load of stoned musicians and coked-up record executives, the latter too busy pleading not guilty to aggravated sexual harassment on the grounds of being over-coked, and getting away with it, to be of any service in the recording process.

No other type of man is capable of performing the task from which a tape op takes his name. This man can do something no other man would dare risk. The bosses in the studio situation make him do it because among all of them, he has the least to lose. But the fact that he can do it makes him king over all. He can splice the tape to make an edit.

He has one slice in which to get it right. Disaster will result if he messes it up. A lot of money (and a lot of artistic temperament) is in the room. Knuckles are desperately held between teeth. Everyone silent as a ghost for the one and a half minutes it takes for the cut to be made, the adhesive applied, and the tape played back. Because he is lord of all, it never goes wrong; it is pristine on the first shot. He gets to rest awhile with his feet on the cream leather puff, having coffee and biscuits brought to him for a change by whoever the bosses are. He is cosmetic surgeon to the stars.

There’s a very good reason that God made the word touring rhyme with the word whoring.

You’re probably not aware of the fact that no matter whether you’re the queen of England or Barbra Streisand or Bob Dylan or anyone else, you may not take a shit on a tour bus. There will be a sign on the door that says NO SOLIDS. This makes for very interesting touring.

Nigel called to say he didn’t want to release that album. His exact words were “It’s too personal; it’s like reading someone’s diaries. It will end up like Terence Trent D’Arby’s second album, gathering dust in a warehouse.”

I imagined slapping him lightly about the temples with a large raw fish. That’s the only thing to do to stupid people.

Within months, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got is number one all over the planet, and Nigel hasn’t had to so much as lift a phone to make millions for himself. I’m pleased for him. Because an idiot can never get laid if he isn’t stinking rich.

Gerry Stafford, the stylist, told me Père Lachaise even had its own sewage system. I must admit I was slightly freaked at the idea of the dead getting up to take a dump and then shuffling back into their tombs. Also, what do they wipe with? Note to self: Never, ever go to a graveyard again.

The very clever photographer made me sing along to my record, which he’d cranked up real loud. So it’s just what I look like when I’m singing. But the bosses liked the “demure” look of the one where I’m looking at the floor and my mouth is shut. Apparently females seeming angry doesn’t “shift units.”

Similar to Christ’s, rap’s mission is self-esteem for those “previously deemed shit.” So it’s as dangerous as Christ’s.

I met Anita Baker. She was rehearsing too, wearing a gorgeous black and gold dress. I love her. She’s so beautiful. She was holding a long-stemmed red rose. She gave it to me. She said she liked “Mandinka.” She said, “Your voice is cavernous.”

“Don’t forget to leave the party before they all get drunk and start fighting.”

A LOT OF PEOPLE say or think that tearing up the pope’s photo derailed my career. That’s not how I feel about it. I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.

I’m not a pop star. I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then.

In the locked ward where they put you if you’re suicidal, there’s more class A drugs than in Shane MacGowan’s dressing room.

I feel like Bob Dylan is the one who should have come out and told his audience to let me sing. And I’m pissed that he didn’t. So I glare at him in the wings as if he’s my big brother who’s just told my parents I skipped school. He stares back at me, baffled. He’s looking all handsome in his white shirt and pants. It’s the weirdest thirty seconds of my life.

there is no point setting out on a healing journey if you’re not going to find yourself healed.

travels. When one lives with the devil, one finds out there’s