Nostos, Algos, Ash, and Yes and Yes and Yes
Nostalgia, meaning “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition” is a funny thing. It is made up of two words – ‘nostos’ and ‘algos’ (both Greek, where one means ‘home’ and the other means ‘pain’). From where I am sitting right now (now, in this moment), I can’t help but feel like nostalgia also means ‘to act, on a desire (that sentimental yearning, in fact); to rise from the ashes; to say ‘yes’ (always, no matter what – ‘say yes’). But before I get into any of that, let’s return, to the beginning, again.
Part 1: The beginning is the end…
To begin, I started off the year in Barcelona, for work. I took advantage of this lovely turn of events, to reconnect with my dear friend Davy Lyons, who is an Irish musician (from Wexford); he moved to Barcelona a few years ago, to play music (he said yes). He has released two albums into the world, and they are both so beautiful and I am happy to have such a friend, and that my friend is so talented and wonderful in what he does. And so it was that I was in Barcelona then, and what a delight! – to not only get to see him when I was there, but also to hear him play a few songs in a cocktail bar on a Tuesday night (a couple of months ago now) in this city that I hadn’t been to in 20 years.
The experience of that night was special. What a pleasure to hear 6 acts, all playing 3-4 songs (some in Spanish, most in English), and it was so quiet and all so beautiful, that by the time Davy got up to play, I found myself nostalgic for a certain time, back here in Dublin, and a certain basement, in the heart of Dublin (for me, for a certain tuft of time, this basement was the beating heart of Dublin), where musicians and poets would gather – to play, and perform and listen to each other, in time.
I’m repeating myself now, but no matter; it is important, for what happened next. I moved to Dublin in the summer of 2011 to spend a year writing poetry (I said YES). I didn't know anyone (not one soul). But every Monday night, I could go (and I did go) to the basement of the International Bar and spend time, with people who were preoccupied with the same things that preoccupied me (making, and re-making, over and over again). So much of my work (from my first collection of poems(!) – I wrote a book, then! (because I said yes!)) had its first run there; it was a pretty special place, in a pretty special time. There was a certain fortune and care to it – to be able to stand up in front of a room of people, to read new work, to feel it take up space, and to see and feel how it landed; to experience the movement of something going from the interior (of one’s self) to the exterior, (into the world) and then, internalized again (back into the body)) – all to to be worked and re-worked until the thing itself (whether poem or song) did what it was supposed to do.
I owe so much to that space, and to other spaces like it, in those, the first years of my time in Dublin. It was special, and deeply formative for my practice as a writer. At some point, I decided to start my own event – an outdoors art and music session, in the environs of what used to be Nick’s Coffee Kiosk (2012-2014) in Ranelagh. I am grateful to Nick, who started it all off one day, when he said to me “Do you see that chalkboard there? It's yours. To write any poem on it you want". (He said yes!) From a small offering, big things.
The Ash Sessions takes its name from a Leonard Cohen quotation: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” I ran this event for the better part of three years – and all together, there were sessions, and series, and collaborations, and culture nights. It made me happy to do it (and I am indebted to everyone who ever played a song or performed a poem - most of the time in rather freezing cold temperatures; someone said to me once - "Only a Canadian would do an outdoors gig, every month, in Ireland, and think it was a good idea!" (I suppose, yes…). (Irish weather is…Irish weather, after all. Still…people came, and people listened, and people played – and it makes me happy to know that for a time, it existed in the world and people liked it. (O, yes).
And so it was then, a couple of months ago, that I sat there, in that cocktail bar in Barcelona (with its red velvet curtains) listening to these musicians play, and us, all of us there, sitting so quiet and so attentive. We gave each person all of our attention (individual and collective), and it was beautiful. In that state, of beauty and attention (and all of it, in tension and at tension, in my body and in my mind) I found myself travelling back to another time, to the basement of the International Bar – the zero point of so much making. I came back to Dublin then, carrying everything about that night in me; with all of it in my heart and still on my mind.
Part 2: …and the end is the beginning, again.
On a whim (meaning: immersed as I was in so much wistful yearning, yes), I went to the International Bar in early February and I asked if the basement was available – and yes, it was, and yes, I booked it, and yes, I brought back The Ash Sessions for one night, on Wednesday March 6, 2024.
With one or two exceptions, everyone I asked to go down the rabbit hole of nostalgia with me said yes; and I said yes to the handful of people who got in touch to ask if they could be part of the evening. I was so happy to be able to bring this group together; more than this, that we were all able to come together in a space that was so familiar and so special to us, because it had held us in a circle, with ourselves and this city, as we made things, is beyond magnificent to me. I got lucky, with everything – and together, we made something so beautiful.
When the night came, I lit small candles, and filled the room with light. One by one, people began to trickle in down the stairs and into the basement. And, in time, we began. I opened the evening, as I always did with The Ash Sessions, with the words of Leonard Cohen:
‘Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash’.
This was the invitation to burn ourselves well, and we did just that, well into the night. I am so grateful to everyone who made the night so wonderful, so beautiful, and so so perfect. The moments of joy were numerous and plenty. Before each performer took the stage, I made a point to introduce them all formally – from before to now, everyone who got on stage had written and published books, made and launched albums, carved out significant and meaningful careers framed in big and small ways by the artistic drive that had brought them down to that basement in the first place. It felt important to show that, to mark the difference in time between then and now, and all that each one of us had accomplished, had made – how each one of us kept the fire burning, how each of us burned, and burned well. Again, it felt important – to honour that, to speak all those accomplishments into space, and into that space, that basement, most of all. These are the spaces things were (and are) made. The heart of Dublin beats in these spaces; we need them. They need to exist, and they need to endure, in time, for all time.
I’ve no way to do the performers, and their performances justice here, in words (I will say they were all wonderful; my friend Ria did a cover of Joni Mitchell's ‘All I Want’ and it captured everything about the night, for me – and it was so wonderful to hear her sing again, after so long). I suppose it is correct to say that to have been there, down in that basement on March 6th is to have understood the drive to do it in the first place. I am so happy, yes. And I am grateful for such a beautiful experience, born of nostalgia and need and want and yearning and yes (always say yes; good things come when you ‘say yes’). The night was threaded with everyone’s recollections and reflections of a time when Dublin was overflowing with nights like that one. Before leaving the stage, Stephen James Smith made a point of saying that what we were all experiencing was not an impossible thing to do. These nights just need someone to act – to make something happen. I had done it because I had gone to Barcelona and remembered another time; I made it happen because I couldn’t leave it as a yearning. I had shown it was possible, and for anyone to do it, it was also possible. In some ways, and I agree with him on this, he seemed to say that the night was an invitation to anyone and everyone to do the same. Yes. That’s exactly it. And if you don’t believe me, take it from Jessica Foley, who wrote this, afterwards; it is the perfect sum of an evening made by us all:
“What a joy and privilege to read at The Ash Sessions’ resurrection last night, it may have sprung from Deep Nostalgia, but its effect was all beginning, begin, here, now, love, love, love*!”
*What is love, if not another word for yes. (I have never said yes to anyone I did not love.)
Thank you to everyone who said yes to me, and yes to themselves, and yes to making it such an exquisite night. I felt all the love and all the joy and all the yes in the world that night, in the basement of the International Bar, right there, in the heart of Dublin.
Part 1: The beginning is the end…
To begin, I started off the year in Barcelona, for work. I took advantage of this lovely turn of events, to reconnect with my dear friend Davy Lyons, who is an Irish musician (from Wexford); he moved to Barcelona a few years ago, to play music (he said yes). He has released two albums into the world, and they are both so beautiful and I am happy to have such a friend, and that my friend is so talented and wonderful in what he does. And so it was that I was in Barcelona then, and what a delight! – to not only get to see him when I was there, but also to hear him play a few songs in a cocktail bar on a Tuesday night (a couple of months ago now) in this city that I hadn’t been to in 20 years.
The experience of that night was special. What a pleasure to hear 6 acts, all playing 3-4 songs (some in Spanish, most in English), and it was so quiet and all so beautiful, that by the time Davy got up to play, I found myself nostalgic for a certain time, back here in Dublin, and a certain basement, in the heart of Dublin (for me, for a certain tuft of time, this basement was the beating heart of Dublin), where musicians and poets would gather – to play, and perform and listen to each other, in time.
I’m repeating myself now, but no matter; it is important, for what happened next. I moved to Dublin in the summer of 2011 to spend a year writing poetry (I said YES). I didn't know anyone (not one soul). But every Monday night, I could go (and I did go) to the basement of the International Bar and spend time, with people who were preoccupied with the same things that preoccupied me (making, and re-making, over and over again). So much of my work (from my first collection of poems(!) – I wrote a book, then! (because I said yes!)) had its first run there; it was a pretty special place, in a pretty special time. There was a certain fortune and care to it – to be able to stand up in front of a room of people, to read new work, to feel it take up space, and to see and feel how it landed; to experience the movement of something going from the interior (of one’s self) to the exterior, (into the world) and then, internalized again (back into the body)) – all to to be worked and re-worked until the thing itself (whether poem or song) did what it was supposed to do.
I owe so much to that space, and to other spaces like it, in those, the first years of my time in Dublin. It was special, and deeply formative for my practice as a writer. At some point, I decided to start my own event – an outdoors art and music session, in the environs of what used to be Nick’s Coffee Kiosk (2012-2014) in Ranelagh. I am grateful to Nick, who started it all off one day, when he said to me “Do you see that chalkboard there? It's yours. To write any poem on it you want". (He said yes!) From a small offering, big things.
The Ash Sessions takes its name from a Leonard Cohen quotation: “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” I ran this event for the better part of three years – and all together, there were sessions, and series, and collaborations, and culture nights. It made me happy to do it (and I am indebted to everyone who ever played a song or performed a poem - most of the time in rather freezing cold temperatures; someone said to me once - "Only a Canadian would do an outdoors gig, every month, in Ireland, and think it was a good idea!" (I suppose, yes…). (Irish weather is…Irish weather, after all. Still…people came, and people listened, and people played – and it makes me happy to know that for a time, it existed in the world and people liked it. (O, yes).
And so it was then, a couple of months ago, that I sat there, in that cocktail bar in Barcelona (with its red velvet curtains) listening to these musicians play, and us, all of us there, sitting so quiet and so attentive. We gave each person all of our attention (individual and collective), and it was beautiful. In that state, of beauty and attention (and all of it, in tension and at tension, in my body and in my mind) I found myself travelling back to another time, to the basement of the International Bar – the zero point of so much making. I came back to Dublin then, carrying everything about that night in me; with all of it in my heart and still on my mind.
Part 2: …and the end is the beginning, again.
On a whim (meaning: immersed as I was in so much wistful yearning, yes), I went to the International Bar in early February and I asked if the basement was available – and yes, it was, and yes, I booked it, and yes, I brought back The Ash Sessions for one night, on Wednesday March 6, 2024.
With one or two exceptions, everyone I asked to go down the rabbit hole of nostalgia with me said yes; and I said yes to the handful of people who got in touch to ask if they could be part of the evening. I was so happy to be able to bring this group together; more than this, that we were all able to come together in a space that was so familiar and so special to us, because it had held us in a circle, with ourselves and this city, as we made things, is beyond magnificent to me. I got lucky, with everything – and together, we made something so beautiful.
When the night came, I lit small candles, and filled the room with light. One by one, people began to trickle in down the stairs and into the basement. And, in time, we began. I opened the evening, as I always did with The Ash Sessions, with the words of Leonard Cohen:
‘Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash’.
This was the invitation to burn ourselves well, and we did just that, well into the night. I am so grateful to everyone who made the night so wonderful, so beautiful, and so so perfect. The moments of joy were numerous and plenty. Before each performer took the stage, I made a point to introduce them all formally – from before to now, everyone who got on stage had written and published books, made and launched albums, carved out significant and meaningful careers framed in big and small ways by the artistic drive that had brought them down to that basement in the first place. It felt important to show that, to mark the difference in time between then and now, and all that each one of us had accomplished, had made – how each one of us kept the fire burning, how each of us burned, and burned well. Again, it felt important – to honour that, to speak all those accomplishments into space, and into that space, that basement, most of all. These are the spaces things were (and are) made. The heart of Dublin beats in these spaces; we need them. They need to exist, and they need to endure, in time, for all time.
I’ve no way to do the performers, and their performances justice here, in words (I will say they were all wonderful; my friend Ria did a cover of Joni Mitchell's ‘All I Want’ and it captured everything about the night, for me – and it was so wonderful to hear her sing again, after so long). I suppose it is correct to say that to have been there, down in that basement on March 6th is to have understood the drive to do it in the first place. I am so happy, yes. And I am grateful for such a beautiful experience, born of nostalgia and need and want and yearning and yes (always say yes; good things come when you ‘say yes’). The night was threaded with everyone’s recollections and reflections of a time when Dublin was overflowing with nights like that one. Before leaving the stage, Stephen James Smith made a point of saying that what we were all experiencing was not an impossible thing to do. These nights just need someone to act – to make something happen. I had done it because I had gone to Barcelona and remembered another time; I made it happen because I couldn’t leave it as a yearning. I had shown it was possible, and for anyone to do it, it was also possible. In some ways, and I agree with him on this, he seemed to say that the night was an invitation to anyone and everyone to do the same. Yes. That’s exactly it. And if you don’t believe me, take it from Jessica Foley, who wrote this, afterwards; it is the perfect sum of an evening made by us all:
“What a joy and privilege to read at The Ash Sessions’ resurrection last night, it may have sprung from Deep Nostalgia, but its effect was all beginning, begin, here, now, love, love, love*!”
*What is love, if not another word for yes. (I have never said yes to anyone I did not love.)
Thank you to everyone who said yes to me, and yes to themselves, and yes to making it such an exquisite night. I felt all the love and all the joy and all the yes in the world that night, in the basement of the International Bar, right there, in the heart of Dublin.
Performers:
Brendan Carvill (with Ri Dunne)
Phil Lynch
Jessica Foley
Oisín McCole
Erin Fornoff
Muireann Ní Cheannabháin
Hannah McGinn
Anne Tannam
David Maddox
Dimitra Xidous
Ria Czerniak
Karl Parkinson
Stephen James Smith
Maurice Czerniak
Brendan Carvill (with Ri Dunne)
Phil Lynch
Jessica Foley
Oisín McCole
Erin Fornoff
Muireann Ní Cheannabháin
Hannah McGinn
Anne Tannam
David Maddox
Dimitra Xidous
Ria Czerniak
Karl Parkinson
Stephen James Smith
Maurice Czerniak