Rememberings

by Sinéad O'Connor

But I think you’ll see in this book a girl who does find herself, not by success in the music industry but by taking the opportunity to sensibly and truly lose her marbles. The thing being that after losing them, one finds them and plays the game better.

My intention was to put all the pieces of the jigsaw that was me out on the floor and see if I could put it together. To be understood was my desire. Along with that was my desire not to have the ignorant tell my story when I’m gone. Which was what would have happened had I not told it myself. If I hope for anything as an artist, it’s that I inspire certain people to be who they really are.

There’s someone in the music too, it’s not a person Its hands reach out for mine, it isn’t human It’s dark blue and green and made of space It wants to put its arms around my waist It wants to dance with me and whirl me by It seems to know me but I don’t know why

I do turn up for English class when I know we’re going to write about Yeats poems. I love Yeats’s poems, they’re like music but they open up a different sky, the one that’s inside me. I’m not scared of that sky because it has boundaries. It feels like the poems have opened all the windows and brought the garden indoors. Now I can see inner scenes, and the outside colors have gone. There isn’t a scary spinning universe outside me; there’s a misted olden-days sitting room inside me, with a huge gray marble fireplace.

MY BROTHER JOSEPH and I have a similar relationship as my father and I do in that we get along only when discussing music. Rest of the time, my brother doesn’t like me. Because I’m a pain in the ass and too emotional. But when we were growing up, he was my hero.

oh OUCH

He’s funny, my brother Joe. Pants-pissingly funny. I miss him very much. And I feel shit about myself because we are so distant. But he is still my hero. And I love him to my soul.

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.” There’ll be a lifetime of goodbyes. I can’t have a problem with that.

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.

i frickin love her

The people who run the music industry aren’t punk at all. They’re a bunch of frightened people. But frightened of the wrong thing—namely, music. Hence in 1991, there was a rap category at the Grammys, but they didn’t televise the award. So there was a boycott amongst the rap community. Hence I once had Public Enemy’s logo shaved and dyed onto the side of my head so it would be seen on telly all around the world.

I make plain as I’m refusing awards and award shows that I am doing so in order to draw attention to the issue of child abuse. And that I’m a punk, not a pop star. And that awards make some people feel more than and some people feel less than. And that music shouldn’t be such a competition. There is outrage at me throughout the industry. In England, the Brit Awards are hosted by Jonathan King, a hugely popular television DJ. For some reason he spends ten minutes viciously attacking me for my stance. It’s quite baffling. His eyes are bulging and his mouth is foaming, he’s so angry. How dare the little Irish upstart associate music with child abuse? (Not too many years later when he’s convicted and jailed for repeated acts of pedophilia, his rage makes sense.)

That night I dreamed I was a golden orchestra triangle with arms and legs and a face just making my way through Regent’s Park along old, dusty paths. People were running up, taking pieces of my body. I had to rush home, get an old raincoat, and cover myself up wherever I went. If people knew I was made of gold, someday there’d be none of me left.

My intention had always been to destroy my mother’s photo of the pope. It represented lies and liars and abuse. The type of people who kept these things were devils like my mother. I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came. And with that in mind, I carefully brought it everywhere I lived from that day forward. Because nobody ever gave a shit about the children of Ireland.

I know if I do this there’ll be war. But I don’t care. I know my Scripture. Nothing can touch me. I reject the world. Nobody can do a thing to me that hasn’t been done already. I can sing in the streets like I used to. It’s not like anyone will tear my throat out.

Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame. In fact, that’s why I chose the first song. “Success” was making a failure of my life. Because everyone was already calling me crazy for not acting like a pop star. For not worshipping fame. And I understand I’ve torn up the dreams of those around me. But those aren’t my dreams. No one ever asked me what my dreams were; they just got mad at me for not being who they wanted me to be.

I always say that if one could discuss music, one wouldn’t need music, since music is for the things that cannot be discussed.

“This Is a Rebel Song” was written in response to U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which they would always introduce in performances with the words “This is not a rebel song.” Maybe they were afraid it would be perceived as being about the war in the north of Ireland. And I wanted listeners to know that this was not only a love song, but a song about the war. But how do you tell the story of a war? It’s good if you can make it look like you’re talking about the relationship between a man and a woman.

It’s an interesting kind of journey, looking for romance, looking for love, falling in love, getting what you want, then finding out you want to run a million miles away.

And he also gave me a lovely present, which was a collection of Bible contradictions that he had put together himself.

Some things are worth being a pariah for.

I was never in any hospital in America that one kind lady wasn’t with me all day and another all night, and it’s those ladies who made me want to be a health-care assistant myself because the talking and giggling with them was more healing than any medicine or therapy.

shout out to the psych nurses for real

I picture heaven as a garden, definitely. One that is perfect in climate and though you wander around so many souls, you don’t have to be seen if you don’t want to. I do want to, though. Be seen. I’ve never been seen. Not even by me. I want to sing wherever I can get away with singing without upsetting God or my granny or my mother. I cause a lot of upset on this earth. Being the kind of person I am. I’ve done only one holy thing in my life and that was sing.

All I have to do is not fuck it up. So far, so good; I’ve had only one little slip where I threatened the Irish State on Twitter. Then I told an obvious lie and said my Twitter account had been hacked and the tweet wasn’t mine. Total lie. Crazy bitch.

love her sm

I’m not wearing it for beauty or for a man. I don’t want to attract a man at my age. I’m as far from that as possible, although I wouldn’t mind a companion if God has one in store who could put up with me or whom I could put up with. I wear what I love, that’s all.

“whom could put up with me or whom i could put up with” what a mood

He’s mentally ill. The so-called sane people are at best doing nothing and at worst enabling him. Like some giant emperor who has no clothes. Which is all he is. A lesson for the people not to be so fuckin’ nice all the time. I mean, none of the reporters ever ask him, “Sir, what is wrong with you?” Negligence. The desire to be polite, it’s killing them. And it goes on and on. No matter what he does.

(this is abt trump)