[Image: “Ciara and Conor [Brady], acoustic set, Shadow Road Shining launch at Sugar Club, Dublin,
13 May 2011″ (from her FB page)]
The [mostly imaginary] scene: Dublin, Ireland, in the offices of a large publishing firm, sometime in the still young twenty-first century. An experienced, highly respected editor sits looking dreamily out a window of her office. Only in her 30s, she’s done the successful-professional thing and she’s also the mother of small children. She has no desire to give up those things. And yet… and yet…
From the streets below, voices whisper to her. A few moments pass. Then she realizes: they’re not speaking but singing softly, some from half a world away and some just a few blocks distant, many of them muted by the passing of decades and others still very young…
From Ciara Sidine’s Facebook page, on her influences:
I am inspired by the beautiful vocals and at times ground-breaking recordings of Emmylou Harris, by the raw vocal energy and gut-wrenching lyrics of Lucinda Williams, by the braveness and vulnerability of Beth Gibbons and the rare and ethereal sound of Portishead. The voice of Elvis Costello never ceases to make me want to lie down and surrender to its beautiful calling.
Listening to the voice of Dolores Keane always made me feel that something true and unalterable was unfolding. From Mary Black came something equally true, pure in tone and melody; from Sinead O’Connor something otherworldly, at once raw, honest, violent and soothing. From Bob Geldof, ass-kicking, rocking music that put its money where its mouth was. I’m inspired by the folk revival from the fifties on, by blues and country. Hearing Hank Williams’s voice is like a fresh awakening every time. Van Morrison speaks directly to the soul, finds his groove there and works his spell. Let the healing begin.
Johnny Cash, well I can barely even go there. His voice brings me to a different place, and it is his later American recordings that I most often revisit and find myself at home in, almost akin to being a child in those warm sing-song evenings where the night was infinite possibility and song was a democracy all of its own. Johnny’s voice reminds me of rolling thunder — rumbling, spine-tingling, exciting. How close is the lightning to where you’re standing?
Joni still reveals something fresh and lasting in every new recording, and I don’t think there’s anyone to whom I owe more in terms of inspiration. When I listen to the immediacy and singularity of records she made well over forty years ago, every strum, every chord, every harmony still goes straight to the heart.
Every generation thinks it has reinvented the world, but we only have to listen to the music of the fifties and sixties to know that our hold over any such notion is at best tenuous. What unfolds from the rock ‘n’ roll revolution has all manner of inventiveness. But rock ‘n’ roll paved the way. And its way too was paved, by roots, gospel, jazz, blues, country. It just comes around again, anew. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings make the best case for this of any contemporary performers I can think of and they, too, inspire me.
That’s quite a bit of ambition wrapped up there, hmm? But she did more than dream. She did it. Her debut album, Shadow Road Shining, came out last year to great acclaim, and you can find echoes of all those voices — and all their poetry — in every song.
Here’s “Take Me Down”:
[Below, click Play button to begin Take Me Down. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:30 long.]
[Lyrics]
I don’t know if she’s still editing, or plans to return to it (if indeed she has left). But the verbal dexterity is all there on open display, not just in her songs’ lyrics but in such of her prose as I’ve succeeded in digging up. Here’s an excerpt from her Web site:
At the moment, I feel that to be Irish is to have just emerged from your teenage-hood, having wrecked your parents’ gaff in a massive drug-fuelled party. Great fun, no one’s arguing, but they’re due back any minute, and you’ve woken up to an almighty hangover and an unbright future. The beautiful chick/dude from last night is nowhere to be found. Tomorrow you’re about to discover that you failed the leaving. There’s a queue stretching around the corner for a Mac-job. It’s time to sink or swim.
There’s always choice, always possibility. Maybe I’ll write a song about that.
An almighty hangover and an unbright future… You failed the leaving. It takes a real writer’s confidence with the English language — and in her choices — to fashion such cadences.
Update (2012-02-15, 2:00pm): See Froog’s comment, below, for a bit of a balloon-puncturing about one of those presumptively imaginative phrases.
Froog says
Ireland and the Irish do cadence so well. It’s around you all the time, so you can’t help but pick up shards and shimmers of it everywhere you go.
“The leaving” – I think, I’m pretty sure – is the high school graduation exam in Ireland.
I suspect you thought it was something more nebulous and non-existent and pointlessly lovely-sounding.
John says
Well, THAT’s a letdown. You’re right — I could think of all sorts of leavings which someone might fail, or fail at. But I never imagined “failed the leaving” might mean just “didn’t pass the final exam.”
OTOH, “the leaving” is a rather poetic way of saying something so mundane.
I can’t remember where I read this, but somewhere I encountered a story about the contemporary UK (including Ireland). It was a satire, in which the entire country had become a giant theme park for seekers after the picturesque, charming, and eccentric. This metaphor may or may not be on the mark — never having been there I can’t say — but to the extent it’s true, it must drive the denizens to despair. Like, I am sick and bloody tired of being thought of as CUTE! (And I note that even that attempt at empathy buys into the stereotype, with the “bloody” inserted.)
Froog says
My young Irish drinking buddy The Choirboy confirms that the expression does indeed refer to the high school Leaving Certificate – although it is also sometimes applied to a distant historical event of supposedly great symbolic import, ‘The Flight of the Earls’ in 1607.
John says
Ah, well, in THAT case I choose to believe the “Flight of the Earls” theory. I’ll take it a step further and offer the possibility that whoever came up with the Leaving Cert so named it in sly, kidding homage to the Flight of the Earls.
Steve P. says
While Froog graciously points out the meaning of “the leaving” in its literal sense, I would think that Ciara meant it more figuratively. “The leaving” could refer to any test and the failure of same. Perhaps a test of maturity, of responsibility, of creativity – any of which may cause us to take a long look at ourselves and reassess our dreams and goals.
John says
Hello, Steve, and thank you for chiming in!
When I read the passage, I was (I admit) charmed not just by the rhythm but — more subtly and generally — by her, umm, literariness. Which may have led me to see mystery and metaphor where there was none… or maybe just less of it than I thought. If I ran into a time-traveling James Joyce on a Weather Channel forum, murmuring about how the snow was “general all over Ireland… falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves”— well, would I see in that just a weather report? Probably not, and probably not just because the language (the sound) is beautiful, but because, hey, It’s James bloomin’ JOYCE.
John says
For anyone who might be following this discussion of the phrase “failed the leaving”… The question was probably bothering me more than anyone else. Rather than subject you all to more back-and-forth about it, I decided to lay the matter to rest — as much as possible — by emailing Ciaria Sidine herself.
I’m now in receipt of a very generous response from her. The relevant portion is as follows:
[Thank you so much, Ciara!]
Jayne says
You know how I tend to read too late in the evening and have trouble leaving lucid comment, well as it’s still early evening I thought I’d to get back here tonight to let you know, this past week or so, a group of Irish music students have been visiting the Catholic school my children attend (a short exchange program–our band kids went to Ireland last year and stayed with the families of these students) and these foreign students have performed several concerts, shows and dances for the faculty, student body and parents. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to attend one, but from what I’ve heard the performances have been stunningly beautiful in song and dance, and the Irish teens, some say, are lively and uninhibited, freely expressing themselves.
With all the years of violent fighting in Ireland, that was a really nice thing to hear, and I have to wonder how those years of strife influenced their music. Obviously, in good way.
Thanks for the introduction to Sidine–really beautiful music.
John says
Thank you for the lucidity. :)
Sounds like a wonderful visit from the Irish music students. (Can’t remember — are either of your kids in the band? Did they get to make that trip last year???)
For reasons I alluded to in a comment above, I’m almost painfully reluctant to recommend any specifically English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish (or Cornish or Manx, I guess!) cultural experience on the basis of its, like, ishness. But I have been thinking for weeks that I really need to re-watch The Commitments — you do know that film and soundtrack, right? (The book on which it’s based is hugely entertaining.)
Jayne says
Oh, I like her even more now.
Do I know the film? Oh gosh, I’ve got the film and the soundtrack, and it would be a good time to take a look again. Maybe with the kids. (I can’t remember the rating–will have to check that first.)
Neither of mine are in the band (actually, there are two school bands), or I’d of been to Ireland for sure. One can only hope. The jazz band is always looking for a guitarist… (practice kid!).
John says
I don’t know the rating, either. Probably more than an innocuous PG, though — lots of fooking this and fooking that, as I recall, along with the obligatory shites and such. And then there’s the sexual undercurrents surging beneath the surface of the relationships…
…[checking]…
Ah. Okay. Yes, MPAA rating is R. You also might want to check IMDB’s “parental guide” page on the film, especially if you yourself haven’t seen it recently.