Rememberings

by Sinéad O'Connor

I also got to sing John Grant’s “Queen of Denmark”; it’s the greatest fun to perform live because it has the greatest chorus of any song on earth: “I don’t know what it is you wanna want from me.” The audiences go absolutely nuclear when they hear that chorus.

I’m also going to train in the autumn of 2020 to be a health-care assistant so I can get the diploma that allows me to companion the dying as my in-between-touring-and-recording job. It’s been a dream of mine for years. Now I’m going to make it happen.

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

THE ONLY OTHER TIME I remember being starstruck was when I met Lou Reed, a person I didn’t realize I loved so much until I met him. I had fallen in love with his album New York, especially the track called “Busload of Faith,”

So Lou Reed, when he comes to the dress rehearsal, makes a huge point of ignoring absolutely everybody in the room except me. He makes it his business to find me, hangs on to me. He hugs me demonstratively warmly as if we know each other really well. It was a really sweet thing to do because he didn’t have to do that, and it changed the way everybody in there reacted to me.

Shane is an extremely special character, very, very psychic and very, very spiritualized. When he was three, he asked me one day, “Were you in an earthquake when I was inside your tummy?” At first I said no because I forgot that I had been. When he was two weeks in my belly—I didn’t even know I was pregnant—I was on holiday in Malta, and there was an earthquake. I never thought about it again, I never mentioned it. I never told the child; I don’t think I even told anyone else. Yet this three-year-old child was able to tell me I was in fact in an earthquake, and I don’t know how he knew this.

I’m always telling him he does, in fact, have a superpower: his large empathetic heart and the amount of love he has for people. Of course, he scoffs at me, saying, “You can’t save the universe with a large empathetic heart.” I disagree.

And I have to say, his father is the best father that I’ve ever encountered. And Lord knows, Father’s Day is a busy day in my house. In fact, it’s quite the revolving door.

If I have no other purpose in this life other than to put these four children on this earth, well, that’s enough for me to feel I did something useful in this world. I am not just saying that because they are my children. They are absolutely unusual, intelligent, loving, compassionate, spiritually advanced, funny, worthwhile, hardworking human beings, and I couldn’t be prouder.

I wrote a song about all this in 2018. It’s called “Milestones” and will be on my next album,

The song is about her experience in treatment after trusting Dr. Phil.

My spirit isn’t suited for the business of music. Nor for anything, really. Other than making songs and performing them. Which is my love. Performing, I mean. Born for that. Yes, sir.

September 25, 2019 I AM SO MOVED. People have been going nuts over my performance of “Nothing Compares 2 U” on Ireland’s Late Late Show. It went viral. Two million people watched it online. And welcomed me home. To music. 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. But apart from that, I’ve done good. Three shows and no complaints; lots of crying men.

I’m agoraphobic as fuck. A thing I mention rarely. Agoraphobia. I’m afraid in open spaces. Not of people. It’s a PTSD thing. Home is safe. Hotels are safe. Work is safe. Inside the car is safe. What happens is I get into town and I panic; I need to be home. It’s debilitating because it makes for a shit social life. Especially because I haven’t actually told more than two of my friends about this problem. So people get mad at me because I make plans to go somewhere and always cancel. I mean to go when I make the plan, I want to go. But when it comes time to go, I panic and find a white lie for why I can’t. I don’t know why I lie. I guess I don’t want people thinking I’m nuts.

Psychiatric and musical research has powerfully proven that all individuals upon whom Allah has chosen to breathe even the teeniest whisper of His musical fire are also by necessity endowed with insanity. And all musicians truly called by God are lunatics. Otherwise they’d be arrogant bastards. Humility is requirement number one of any artist truly called by God.

In America, Trump wants everyone to go back to work, right at the crest of the virus’s wave. And he wants sick people to take some drug he knows nothing about, but he won’t wear a mask. He’s the king of Kool-Aid. He says he can’t be meeting presidents, dictators, kings, or queens while wearing a mask. And only last week some princess of Europe died, actually. Of the virus. The people are to blame. If Trump were an Irish president or prime minister, he’d have been physically ripped out of office the day he first gave away someone’s child at any border. 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.