I was moved by a scene in “Dancing At Lughnasa” when an old man and a young man ritually exchange hats as a way of formalizing a goodbye. An 8-year-old boy wordlessly watches his father and his uncle – two men he would never fully get to know – exchange objects in the farm yard, turn and trade places, shake hands and then walk silently back inside the house, arm in arm. The adults’ actual goodbye, one of a number of painful partings, would take place a few days later, but in this way the farewell was made solemnly official. It’s Donegal in 1936 and the world is changing rapidly, and the difficulties of centuries-old poverty, industrialization, and war have wrung togetherness out of an entire family.
What struck me about the scene was that it valued ceremony – as precursor, earlier in the movie the uncle, home from years in Africa and addled by age, “nerves” and likely dementia, struggles to remember the word “ceremony.” The scene, really the whole movie, is about grasping to retain some connection in a time of disconnection. The boy grew up a little in seeing the ceremony done by his father and uncle.
“Dancing At Lughnasa” was a sobering choice for an “Irish movie” to watch on this St. Patrick’s Day; I’d hedgingly recommend it, for it’s a deeply sad tale. Lorre and I took a walk in the evening air and talked about it immediately after, as a kind of antidote. It helped, but perhaps as a March 17 viewing selection we might have gone with the 1948 leprechaun-in-New York comedy “Luck of the Irish.”
Leading up to St. Patrick’s I had not thought much of the day. Life’s distractions and all. But it arrived and Lorre cooked up her classic Guinness beef stew, and we drank some stout as the stew simmered before dinner, relishing the warm afternoon while also sensing nascent pollen in the air. Ah, spring.
I did some work, typing up the bones of a report on the debate held at Linfield University Friday with the Irish Times national debate champions competing with Linfield speech and debaters. The question was “the world could do without the U.S. version of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.” The opponents – those in support of continuing festivities down to and including green beer – won the debate. The material focused perhaps too heavily on alcohol consumption and the specter of the Irish famine that happened 175 years ago. But excellent points were raised about both preventing cultural appropriation and providing social leniency for celebration, and certainly there is no doubt that St. Patrick’s Day carousing and pouring dye into rivers will be back again, along with faux leprechauns and all of us letting slip with cheesy accents. I’ll do my part.
But this day was also a day of music – we spun some Chieftains CDs and heard plenty of vocal music on the radio as well as spinning the 1972 album “The Irish Pipes of Finbar Furey.” A comment in the liner notes (it’s an LP, so it has liner notes) underscored a feeling I’d had while listening to the debate, and generally thinking about how we celebrate Irish culture. It read: “While bagpipes are found in many of the world’s cultures, few rival the Irish pipes in sophistication and delicacy.”
Throughout the grandiose and garish – even grotesque – manifestations of Hibernia in U.S. culture, there is great subtlety to Irish poetry, prose, and pipes.
I also got to do a bit of reading this day, from “A Celtic Miscellany” given to us in 1987, the year we were married, by our friend Lee Krahenbuhl.
One epigram, 11th century, Irish author unknown, speaks well to this:
“The Hermit Blackbird”: “Ah, blackbird, it is well for you where your nest is in the bushes; a hermit that clangs no bell, sweet, soft and peaceful is your call.”
I love when a movie makes you take a walk and talk about it. Not all of the ones that do that are great but when we are stirred by movies or music or Guinness beef stew like you were, that's an excellent day. March 17 is always great for me because it's my son Sean's birthday. I don't have Irish roots but his mom does.
This line drew me like a magnet......" But it arrived and Lorre cooked up her classic Guinness beef stew, and we drank some stout as the stew simmered before dinner....."