Light like a curtain on the river's surface. Billowing, impermanent. It won’t last but it’s worth something when you catch a glimpse
I've been thinking of endings.
In the next few weeks my partner and I will have moved house - in many respects the new place is a lot better and in some, a bit worse. I keep reflecting though on my time in my current home and it has been incredibly hard to let go. We have been here for 7 years. We don’t get many 7 year chunks of life - 12 if we are lucky. We made friends in this neighbourhood, friends who we are friends with strictly because we are neighbours - our interests don’t really intersect in a way which would have led to us meeting in any other context - but friends all the same, people who we have learned about slowly over the course of seven years, their own interests and lives. It has been interesting seeing the reaction to people learning we are leaving - some react with a genuine sadness, some want to find ways to stay in touch - some though just take the news in a very matter of fact way. I initially felt a bit sad about this - but honestly it’s fine, some may have a genuine sadness and don’t know how to express it, maybe some just couldn’t really care, or maybe they do care but have other more pertinent worries at the forefront of their minds.
I will miss these things, I will miss the area, the people, the animals. I feel a sadness that all the houses that my cats visit will no longer be graced by them. I feel a sadness for my cats who don’t know that one day in the next two weeks they will have their last round of this neighbourhood, visiting their friends - humans and other cats they have hung out with. We may send photos of them by text to some people we have chosen to stay in touch with but the cats don’t know this.
A good friend of mine, Steph, is leaving in the next few days to return to America. By all means I'm sad - but for her I know it’s the right choice. I think she would describe her time here in Ireland as overall positive having made many friends but work prospects here have been slim and she has been away from her partner. I helped her out with a film she is working on, about Sir Henry’s, a nightclub in my city which I never experienced. Without totally speaking for my friend I would say some of the themes of this are nostalgia for cultural spaces which no longer exist and how that imprints on a current generation. In the discussion I took part, largely composed of people like me - active in a current scene while not being part of the original Sir Henry's milieu, another friend, Ailbhe, discussed Test Site, a sort of art space/research project she is involved in with interests in culture, ecology and architecture. Ailbhe described an interaction she sometimes has where when asked what she envisions for the future of the space she states very plainly that it is impermanent and will eventually end. Some see it as cold since Test Site has become quite important to them. Our default is to elongate all these moments to some infinity beyond a vanishing point, but for Ailbhe the point of the space is what grows out from it - one example being Éist, a community radio station which grew out of interest generated by Radio Solstice which was a temporary radio station hosted in Test Site for Cork Midsummer Festival in June 2024. Not worrying about staving off inevitable endings allows us to enjoy the present and to see the growth - what will eventually come next - and maybe to help nourish it. Also for what it’s worth Test Site is still going strong after five years.
I'm not sure what I want this newsletter to be about exactly. One parameter I will set is an end date - an arbitrary date I've picked that is sometime in the future between 12 and 24 months from now. You will have to trust me when I tell you that I have really picked an actual date, and have wrote it down somewhere and that I will stick by it. A betting person might choose something around a midpoint between the amounts I've given but I've been liable to a fake-out. The other and perhaps only other parameter I will set is to have one done every two weeks. I will try my best.
I want to force myself to engage again in a regular writing practice even when it’s tough. I want to consciously slow down on social media and not just talk about wanting to slow down on social media. I want to dig deep for something interesting to say even if it’s half-formed. I think as the newsletter continues I will return to this because I don’t want the newsletter just to become a habit for the sake of habit.
Over the weekend I was asked to do sounds for my friend Isadora’s play ‘Talking Fish’. This was a short show about a salmon who is trying to convince you not to eat it. I had a great time but honestly it was just fun being part of someone else’s vision. There is joy in working with a friend and while of course a there is small sadness that the show has ended, it came about from us just working on other unrelated music and art together that will continue. That too will end some day but hopefully it too will lead into other projects.
One of my goals next year is to finally get a tattoo. There have been many reasons I’ve held out until now - one though is the common thought that these are permanent marks, that once I mark myself it will be on me forever. But realistically, as someone in their 30s I will count myself lucky if the tattoo lasts 50 years. It too has an ending. I already have permanent marks on my skin - amongst others I have two large scars on my back from where two separate growths were removed several years ago - at least a tattoo I have some say in.
I dreamed I was cresting the top of a big hill and as I reached the summit the sky ruptured with a dark crack of cloud. The slopes around me wretched free of whatever held them and billowed up to form a plateau of blanketed rock and scree that stretched to some vanishing point in the fabric of the dream. The ground beneath my feet boiled and turned soft as bog. I sank through the layer of land and out out out.
Currently I have been listening to a lot of albums by Australian jazz trio The Necks. Honestly I find it more analogous to really great ambient music - stuff to sink into.
As for reading I have been a bit lax this year but have just started ‘2666’ by Roberto Bolaño, and also a collection of short stories by Clarice Lispector, ‘Complete Stories’.
All the best
Eamon