about decadence and togetherness
I’m all for the decadence. Oh the Goddess knows I am.
But there I was, in grey gloomy November in Ireland, listening to a man playing music that went straight to my heart and I felt sadness, anger and disbelief.
Sadness because that’s what you often get in a pub, in November, in Ireland.
Anger at the lack of self worth or the lack of something in general because I knew that this music was not available to more than few people who are actually physically present to witness it and I simply thought it should be out there, available to all who want to listen.
Disbelief because I couldn’t actually believe he was playing for what… 7 people in the audience? (lucky us I thought).
So that was my emotional cocktail while witnessing a moment that still, more than half a year later, is so alive in me, still giving me goosebumps.
I was visiting one of my “hometowns” after many years. Cork city has seen me in so many shades and shapes and now years after leaving it still gives me these goosebumps over a pint of Beamish and it still gives me this music from geniuses playing in cute pubs… that has not changed.
Neither did the November scent of air.
At this time of the year the city smells of smoke coming from chimneys warming up cold dump houses where red noses get warmer by cloves and lemon marinated in an Irish whiskey.
After the concert we talked about that. The whiskey, the booze and the blues.
Me, coming from isolated Iceland, where people isolate their problems, where the marinated soul soaked in a whiskey added to a cup of coffee gets to hide away behind icewalls… so here’s me with eyes wide open, experiencing the walls of ice fall.
So we talked about it. The booze and the blues.
And he looked at me and said: “it’s the same everywhere. Same problems of the soul, same solutions to the problems, it’s just here in Ireland we don’t drink alone. We drink together. We sing together. We sing about the problems. Together.”
It cracked me even more open.
The day later I’m in a leather shop. Shop that has been there for decades. Talking about togetherness and alcoholism with the shopkeeper. I bough many things there. As if my purchases could save the shop from being turned into another vape shop in the near future.
My purchases came with hope and appreciation for deep conversations with a stranger in a leather shop.
And then I’m on my way to the bus station, bus that will take me back to the airport and back to my home. On the red light an old lady turns to me and starts talking about the weather and other things and we chat and walk together for the time of the conversation and then I depart and all I can think about when I’m up in the air, crossing the space between Ireland and Iceland is… Togetherness.
The powerful sentence: The difference is, we are in it together.
And up there in the air I remembered couple of my teachers saying:
The healing to SO many problems of the soul is CONNECTION.