I started the campaign to rename the park after Oscar Wilde,  (which has thousands of members now) and it’s received a fair bit of media attention. The idea was not mine, it’s been suggested before, by Rory O’Neill and others, but Ryan’s fall from grace gives Dubliners a window of opportunity for it to happen. But the idea has met with fierce opposition from some Catholic quarters.

Colum Kenny wrote in the Sunday Independent about the proposal: “(it) seems strange… calling it after someone who frequented London rent boys and secured youngsters for sex in North Africa (whatever Wilde’s undoubted literary merits) is not the best option.”

“We can’t name city park after Wilde who ‘hunted young boys’ for sex” screamed the headline in the Evening Herald: “Writer’s activities no different to church abuse says professor”. The professor in question, Joseph S. O’Leary, a Maynooth graduate who now writes and blogs on literature and theology, and teaches in a university in Tokyo, was reportedly “amazed” at the suggestion to name the park after the writer. “Ryan is accused of lacking vigilance in preventing the very behaviour that Wilde and Gide indulged in without scruple”, he said. “How does this make Ryan a villain and Wilde a hero?”

I suggested online that, at the heart of the objections to honouring Wilde, there seems to be a reluctance to observe the crucial distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex, and that, however much sex one has, it does not make one an abuser. In response, O’Leary wrote to me saying that, according to my logic, my disapproval of Archbishop Ryan should lead to the removal of Wilde’s statue from the park as well. “In both cases the good that the men did is overshadowed by the evil of which they are accused.” After indicating to him that I would rather not engage in private discussions on the matter, that I’d favour open debate, he then sent me the most astonishing message:

“Busy archbishops may have trouble keeping track of deviants in their clergy and handling complaints from people like Andrew Madden (whose statements in the Irish Times today suggest that he must have been very difficult to satisfy) but dizzy queens obsessed with and addicted to the most louche and lawless forms of sexual behaviour (thinking that they were liberators in advance of their time) are sure to find themselves in a far deeper quagmire than any archbishop.” He also noted that Wilde and Bosie were never prepared to “justify” that phase of their existence, so “they cannot be held up as NAMBLA-style martyrs of free love either”. He ended his message with an entreaty to “take warning from the from the experience of the Dublin clergy; any appearance of collusion with “paedophile” offenses is now exposed to grimmest media and police scrutiny!”

The value judgments in this correspondence from Professor O’Leary need to be deconstructed and understood. Not because I’d lose sleep if the park was eventually named after someone else, but because these attitudes are still widely prevalent in Irish society and are judgmental and destructive. I’ll deal with each one in reverse order:

His final warning to me is redundant. I have already paid the price for an “appearance of collusion with ‘paedophile’ offenses’” when I heavily criticized the film “Fairytale of Kathmandu” and the way it portrayed Cathal Ó Searcaigh as a child abuser. The vitriol aimed at me personally was quite disturbing, so I cannot imagine what he has had to endure. I know the nature of the attacks, and I know also that they are misguided.

There is no necessity to put “paedophile” in quotation marks. Generally, paedophilia is understood to refer to sexual attraction to prepubescent children, and there are no quotation marks necessary to apply that label to the priests who abused the children in their care. It is a crime and should remain so; indeed I believe that a convicted paedophile who has received treatment in prison, and then goes on to re-offend on his release, should be permanently deprived of his freedom. It is that bad a crime. The damage done can be devastating and long-lasting. At the root of the trauma of child sex abuse is a deep sense of loss of trust and safety in the world, and a lingering sense of impotence, the result of someone in authority having taken advantage of them. There are also the complex and often nightmarish effects of early sexualization on an adult survivor. But a particularly odious element to clerical abuse is the way in which the child is pickled in a toxic shame, because of the way Judeo-Christian religion works using internalized guilt as a method of mind-control. It can take a long time for a survivor of child sex abuse to shake off the belief that they are wicked to the core. When a child’s faith in goodness and god is destroyed, and when the institutions and society that allowed this psychological and spiritual carnage to take place turn a blind eye, it is quite remarkable how some survivors grow up to be such wonderful rounded people. And quite understandable if they find themselves full of rage and continue to suffer for their whole lives.

Wilde was not a paedophile. As to the ages of the young men he had sex with, it seems that most would have been over our current age of consent, while some were younger, and at least a few were fourteen. In a recent UK poll, nearly a quarter of all fourteen-year-olds have had a sexual experience, and one in three fifteen-year-olds is sexually active. I cannot imagine that it was any different in Victorian times, especially considering that the lads that Wilde found attractive tended to be working class, and independent, either holding down a job or in search of one. Wilde flattered, cajoled, persuaded, dazzled, bribed and paid his many young “panthers” for sex. But he did this in an era when all same-sex activity was condemned and criminal, and the notion of there being an age of consent for it was nonsensical. The power Wilde exercised was financial, social, sexual and charismatic. He held no other power over them; he was not charged with their care or pretending to be something he was not. However, as he found out to his cost, the young men he had sex with could turn the tables and blackmail him, and exploit the power they had over him.

Modern laws relating to the age of sexual majority are designed, naturally and sensibly enough, to protect children. I have written in this column, three years ago now, how, when an Irish 14-year-old went looking for sex on gaydar in 2006, I was disgusted with the older men who agreed to have sex with him, and praised the men who turned up to meet him and then sent him packing, when they could see for themselves how young he was. Despite media coverage at the time, there was no paedophile ring, because there is a big difference between men who seek pleasure in the company of sexually active young men, and those who seek to despoil bodies and souls that are not ready for such an experience. It is a fine line, I know, because each person matures at a different age. But here’s a question: should a quarter of all fourteen year olds face a criminal conviction, because they have had sex?

I would be very interested to know how the young Irishman in the gaydar scandal, now aged 18, is faring, and what he makes of his experiences. Around the time of the scandal, a number of young men told me of their own sexual experiences when they were younger. Some were delighted with the sex they had when fourteen or fifteen; some were sad that it had happened so young. Most were philosophical. But not one of them ever expressed anything remotely like the suffering that has now become all-too-familiar of those who were abused by paedophiles. It’s a very different phenomenon.

If Wilde and Bosie were alive today, they would, perhaps, be civil partners. They loved each other that much. But they would also be cruising together and having lots of sex, together or separately, with lots of men. They would, no doubt, attract the same tabloid attention that George Michael and his lover do. I imagine that two crucial things would be different, however, between the Victorian era and ours. (Homo)sexuality has changed so much in just a century. They probably wouldn’t have to pay their lovers, and they would probably stick to the law, because they wouldn’t need to break it.

If a modern Wilde had sex with a fourteen-year-old now, I’d be disgusted, because we now have the rights that he never had, to live a life without shame or self-hatred or the threat of the ruination that, sadly, he had to endure over a hundred years ago.

We have no way of truly knowing how Wilde treated his lovers in intimate circumstances, but rather than make them feel cheap or dirty, he seems to have put them on pedestals, and showered them with gifts. There is no evidence that Wilde ever brutalised any of his lovers, or went against their will, or shamed them, or abused their trust. We can never truly know whether the motivation for youths blackmailing him came from their hurt feelings, or if it was an inevitable result of Wilde being rich and having sex with people who needed to survive and pay the rent. But Wilde worshipped them – or, to be perhaps more accurately, Wilde worshipped cock. Bosie was a rakish “top” whose hunt for passive youths certainly led him to test the ethical boundaries of any caring human being. I suspect I’d have disliked him intensely. But Wilde was sexually versatile (in modern terms, we take that to read: “bottom”) and therefore his sexual pleasure derived not from subjugation or possession of a youth’s body, but of inviting young, virile and testosterone-charged men to subjugate or possess him.

The emotional repercussions of a promiscuous lifestyle are still as complex as they were then, but at least now it is out of the reach of a cruel and unjust law.

Mentioning NAMBLA in any discussion about Wilde muddies the waters disgracefully. The North American Man/Boy Love Association is a society that props up the wicked delusion held by recidivist paedophiles that children, when they seek affection from an adult, are “asking for it”. In my eyes, these views are on a par with those expressed in the pro-anorexia websites, where young anorexics are told how to get as thin as possible. Disinformation rules, horrifying destruction is revered or, at best, ignored, with a malevolent self-serving sophistry that is sick and disturbing.

The comment about Andrew Madden reveals O’Leary’s true colours. Only an apologist for the Church would say that. But, happily, a Church is only as powerful as the numbers of people who belong to it. And such remarks have no power over someone who has left it, in a secular society. The (Roman) Emperor has no clothes. The old and clever shame-inducing mechanisms do not work any more. The Church can never satisfy Madden, not because of any flaw of his, as O’Leary tries to impute, but because the Church has lost all credibility with rational people.

As for “dizzy queens” having lots of “louche sex” – it amazes me why people froth at the mouth at this phenomenon. Is it envy? Sex is simply mutual pleasure. Why it is demonized as evil is simply beyond me.  It may be lots of other things – distracting, crazy-making, risky, chaotic, anarchic, but shared physical pleasure between two people who freely engage in it is a beautiful thing.

It is the following particular statement by O’Leary that astounded me the most, however. “In both cases (Ryan and Wilde) the good that the men did is overshadowed by the evil of which they are accused.”

Ryan’s job was pastoral. It was to care for his flock. His responsibility was, indeed, first and foremost, not to be “too busy” to take the trouble to “keep track of deviants in his clergy and handling complaints from people like Andrew Madden”. The fact that he didn’t see how protecting children is the most important responsibility he had, is a disgrace. I don’t believe in the concept of evil but I hate hypocrisy, and I detest the mindset that prioritizes the  reputation and authority of an institution over the lives of suffering children. What could be more villainous?

Wilde was an artist. A magnificent artist. He was true to himself and to his values and his passions. He devoted himself to beauty, and he paid the price for it, a thousand times more cruel than any bishop or archbishop or Pope will ever have to endure. And yet, their crimes are far greater. Could you imagine Wilde, after a passionate and mutually enjoyable tryst with a young buck, ever committing the obscenity of making his lover say the rosary in penance? Leave that to the master mindfuckers, the priests.

It is the heightened sensibility and sensitivity that the fallen Wilde displayed in his last masterpiece, De Profundis, that reveals his breathtaking humanity. It is his tragic flaw that makes him, in my understanding of the word, heroic.

If we, as Irish people, allow his all-too-human flaws to overshadow his unparalleled gift to the world, his art, because we still can’t get over our hangups about sex, then we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Further reading: The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde by Neil McKenna

There is a paradox about the creative process that I’m wrestling with now. Well, now more than ever. Mid-life, adolescence, it’s all the same really. What am I here for/What’s the point?  You know the score. Same as it ever was. It is that, essentially, there is a necessity to isolate, to go within, to be completely self-absorbed, in order for something to emerge that is authentically yours. It’s very narcissistic, it needs a capacity to navel-gaze, and a belief that the fluff you find there is something special, unique. The paradox is that, in order to be successful, you have to then embrace something very unpalatable to a narcissist: convention, tradition, rules, the mediocrity of other ordinary people with their mundane agendas, their commercial instincts, and their knowledge of what sells in the marketplace.

You have to communicate what you’ve come up with to others, according to “how things are done”. You have to step down from your grandiosity, your sense of specialness, and accept that you are just another wannabee artist/writer/singer/musician/poet/film-maker/actor and get in line: join the queue. Be judged, be evaluated. Risk hearing that you’re average, that you’re merely competent, that your precious idea/novel/song/project has been done before, is derivative, is boring. And you know what? It may well be. You have to expose yourself to that potentially annihilating experience to get steel in your spine, to learn about what other people value and are willing to pay for.

It’s a painful process for many, especially those with a good sense of revolt in their blood. I believe that a good proportion of drunks, especially in this country, are those who have given up on the second part of this process, can’t stomach it, and choose to play the role of misunderstood genius. They blame the system, their agent, their art college, the recording label, their parents, their ex-partner, anyone but themselves, comforting themselves with a self-indulgent bitter rant about their lot to anyone who will listen, before they fall off the bar stool.

In practically every art form, there are barriers to overcome that may appear to stifle originality, uniqueness, genius.  The traditional consensus on how things are done in a particular art form is a very powerful force to contend with, and, most times, is heavy with a dreadful inertia. You can’t call yourself an artist unless you’ve been to art school, so they say. So often, such establishments and conventions are anathema to the anarchic spirit, and are populated with serried ranks of self-imposed gatekeepers whose job it is to say “no”, whether they are literary agents, A&R executives, trade unionists, TV executives, media buyers, gallery owners, publishers, or teachers.

Tracey Emin spent a lot of time in her bed in that isolated, painful state of being. But she had the bright idea of presenting it in My Bed – and now it is totemic. But in order for her to know how good an idea it was, she had to know about all the other good ideas that had happened in art before her, if only to inform herself about what conventions she was choosing to break.

I may come up with all sorts of original tunes when I’m singing in the shower in the morning, and think I’m the bee’s knees, but I have no musical skills to communicate them to anyone else. Sadly, there’s nowhere you can ring to leave a melody where someone will get back to you to buy it. (Is there an app for that?)
A film-maker told me the other day: “never underestimate how disinterested commissioning editors are in your idea.” In other words – self-interest is the rule, no one is ever going to reach out and make it easy for you, no one is ever going to respond to your need and be your knight or dame on a white charger coming to your rescue – unless there is something in it for them. Once you enter the business of selling your creativity, you have to accept your self-obsession is not unique in the world. And you have to give up the “tortured artist starving in the garret” mode, and do what is necessary to make your creativity pay.

Belly-button fuzz, that accrual of intimate detritus, the personal gunk made up of the stuff you need to protect you from the elements, is not remotely interesting to others unless it’s worked on and spun into something meaningful, put in some enlightening context, given the right frame. Skill and craft are required. You have to win the business people over. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to play the game.

The world, sadly, does not owe you a living.

It’s tough to articulate it, because although it may be a common experience, it is also largely unconscious. And trying to dig up what’s buried in your psyche is an unpleasant business, it’s like hunting for a corpse by following your nose. Something stinks, it’s unnerving, but it’s not obvious. It’s a low-grade anxiety that you catch a whiff of every now and again.

I once was woken up every other night at 3.01am, and I couldn’t figure out why. I am blessed with the ability to sleep usually, but for a few weeks the experience dominated my life, because sleep ceased to be guaranteed. But it was intermittent, so after one night’s full sleep I’d forget about it, only to find myself a couple of nights later being dragged into consciousness to stare at the clock saying 3:01. I tried to figure out what was the cause, but in the middle of the night my head isn’t the clearest. Was it the central heating kicking in on a timer? A neighbour leaving for work slamming the door? Couldn’t figure it out. Gradually, the knowledge that I was not heading for a guaranteed full night’s sleep took its toll. I couldn’t drift off, I couldn’t relax. I became sort of dishevelled inside, and tetchy, and out of sorts. Eventually I figured it out. I set my alarm for 2.55am, and listened. Sure enough, at 3.00, a very low beeping came from somewhere in my room. It was a travel alarm in my suitcase at the bottom of my wardrobe, set at that time to wake me to catch a plane home from the last time I had been away.

It’s as vague as that, as intermittent, the disquiet I feel about the internet. Not the practical stuff, the banking or the plane tickets or the news. And research and entertainment is fun too, the youtubes and wikipedia and the googling. All that is wonderful, even though there is so much bile and venom and chaff to sift through.

It’s about my interaction with others, through social networking, instant messaging, online chat, and dating sites.

On face value, such interactions add to my life. I share a joke or a video online with my friends, it’s instant and fun. I go rooting around the 1911 census online and share my discoveries with others, who then tell me the stories behind their ancestors and what they’ve discovered. I ask in my status line if anyone wants to go see a movie or go to a show, and I get responses. I hear about parties or festivals and exhibitions online, and I go to them, and know who else is going. I keep up to date with the news from my cousins, spread all over the world. Friends who are travelling on the other side of the planet might as well be next door, I can see how they are getting on every day, and see their photographs almost as soon as they are taken. On a sadder note, I’ve learned about people’s deaths online, and passed on the news to people who hadn’t heard.

So far, so good. It’s all so plausibly social.

When it comes to dating sites, I’ve given up on them, however. And my problem with them is a concentrated version of the flaw in online social networking with friends.
It is this: what did we do before the internet? What was so wrong with it? What have we lost in the transition? Because socializing and keeping in touch used to be part of everyday activities that served us perfectly well for eons.

I’m not a Luddite. But with every advance in human civilization, there is a drawback. And  we only really notice what we’ve been deprived of when it begins to hurt – like not getting a particular vitamin in a new diet that tastes amazing. Over time, something begins to go wrong with your health, it’s vague and unsettling and hard to pinpoint.

Keeping in touch with people used to be done in company. Whether it was in a pub or chatting with neighbours or simply chatting on the phone, the information we swapped was part of a matrix of interactions that only happens when you are actually talking to people. Our tolerance levels of other people’s personalities and idiosyncrasies had to be quite high, but we never noticed it.

You’d never walk into your local and have only one request on your mind, that you would announce as you came into the pub. “Who wants to see the Tarantino with me tonight at 7.30?” If you think of it literally happening, it seems quite absurd. Would you turn on your heels if no one wanted to go with you? If you found someone who did want to go, would you leave together right there and then to see it? No, you wouldn’t. The very idea would be absurd. You would be meeting your friends to spend time with them. Chatting. About the weather, about NAMA, about the X-factor,  their latest break up or holidays or anything else. The primary purpose is, of course, truly communal: taking people as you find them, and seeing what happens. You’ve no agenda, but you’re meeting a basic human need, to hang out. And if a friend is being a bit of a bore, or a bit down, you still pass the time with them. They’ll be in better form next time. It’s a basic kindness, a basic generosity of spirit. You give of yourself your actual presence, and you get the same in return. What comes out of a night such as that might be a pleasant surprise. You might meet a new friend of a friend that you like – you might even want to ask them out. It happens organically. Naturally.

Of course I still have nights like that. I’m not a complete geek. But I know if I didn’t have the internet, I’d be out socializing much more. And I think I’d be far more content with myself and my life.

The internet seems social, as I say, but it’s actually a way of controlling your life and your interactions to such a degree that ordinary “passing the time” socializing seems too much like hard work. When it comes to dating, it gets quite grotesque. Relationships are built not on a negotiated checklist of sexual preferences, but quite simply on a sensation of ease that you stumble upon, when you meet someone and there’s a mutual attraction. If it feels easy, and the body language is good, and you can have a laugh together, you will want to spend more time discovering the person, and, hopefully, vice versa. It’s a slow, tentative, gentle process, because it has to be. Not for everyone, I grant you, but for me. For all the fact that I used to be a webmaster and still design blogs for my friends, the internet is just plain wrong for me when it comes to dating. I need time, plenty of time, to get to know someone. And the internet just doesn’t offer that – it’s all about the instant moment, scratching an itch.

The internet allows us to control our interactions in a way that is impossible in the “real” world. We set the agenda, and it is based on our want, our need, our taste, our hunger. There is one thing that is guaranteed to magnify our desire, our sense of lack, our need for connection, and that is when we focus on it, to try to satiate it. Desire is an ourobouros – a snake that eats itself.

Online, we ignore those who don’t immediately satiate that need, respond to our joke, reply to our message on a dating site, or like our facebook status update. We can spend an evening interacting like that and by the end of it we’re still on our own. We’ve been mentally stimulated, but emotionally we’ve been in a vacuum. It’s a curious, subtle deprivation. And the only symptom of it is an unease, a restlessness, an anxiety. A tiny alarming sound in the middle of the night.

That said, I had a great time. Musical highlights: Madness, the last 20 minutes of Chic, Brian Wilson, Laura Izibor. As ever, Dublin Gospel Choir on Sunday morning lifted my spirits. Cuckoo Savante and Reader’s Wives both gave excellent gigs, on a smaller scale.

Found the Leviathan tent consistently interesting. Bob Gruen the photographer was cool.  The Emergency were really, really good, and very funny.  David McWilliams hosted excellent debates on the economy on Saturday, and on gay marriage on Sunday, and they were passionate and thought-provoking.

Food as ever was great. And it has to be said that, despite the conditions, the organization was excellent, at least as far as I was concerned. Muck was everywhere, but the showers and toilets were much better this year than last, at least for me. But hey, I’m a guy.

But for me the unmistakeable joy of the festival was Arcadia; every night the music was impossible to ignore, the visuals breathtaking.

Along the way I realised there is a story to be told about where older gay people go, because the gay “community” is largely pub- and club-based, which is really not ideal. I believe there are many older LGBT people who feel excluded and isolated.

In the light of President Mary McAleese’s admirable project to encourage old men to feel more included in Irish society, I think we should begin to put our own shop in order, and follow her example as a community. For example, the Irish gay rugby and soccer teams could follow the GAA’s example and reach out to older gay people specifically.

So I am happy to publish this press release here, and can’t wait to see the final product, as I missed it the first time around.

Critically Acclaimed Show Returns!
Silver Stars
Now Auditioning

“Silver Stars”, an innovative song cycle based on stories from older gay Irish men, is now casting.

Performers with passion required.
There are at least 4 central roles and places in the choir. Seniors and first-time performers are especially welcome.

Open casting session will be held on the following day:
Wednesday July 15th; 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Casting Venue: The Abbey Studio (TEAM Building), 4 Marlborough Place, Dublin 1

The Workshops will take place on Monday the 20th and Tuesday the 21st of July.
Times to be confirmed.

Rehearsals: 3 evenings a week from August the 24th through to September the 26th.
Time; 7.00 to 9.30 pm

Songwriter Sean Millar has been gathering stories of honour, exile, spirit, survival and love from older gay Irish men and transforming them into powerful and evocative songs. Theatre innovators Brokentalkers have created settings for each song.

The original run of the show was part of the spring 2009 Bealtaine festival. The show was a great success, playing to full houses every night. This current production is in association with the Abbey Theatre and the Dublin Theatre Festival.

The show will be performed in the Cube at the Project Arts Centre and will run from Tuesday the 29th of September through to Sunday the 4th of October, 2009.
SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!

Important
If you are interested then let us know!
Pre-register your details by emailing us at brokentalkers@gmail.com

Here’s the little film that I directed. Please click through and rate it if you like it, it’s part of the Dublin Pride Film Shorts Awards, and on Sunday the highest rated gets a gold star or something. All nine films are here.

For more info on how we made the film, please take a look at the film’s blog. Thanks to everyone involved, it was fun. It’s showing in the Galway Film Fleadh on Saturday 11th July, at 10pm in Cinemobile, before the superb Identities.

The accusation that Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an exploitative sex-tourist is a lie. This is the conclusion drawn at the end of a twenty-minute film, The Truth about Kathmandu, which will be shown as part of Féile na Gréine: the Solstice Arts Festival, which runs in Waterville, Co. Kerry from Sunday 21st to Tuesday 23rd June. The film consists of interviews that the poet Paddy Bushe conducted with many of those who played important parts in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu. “What I heard in Kathmandu raises huge questions for both Vinegar Hill Productions and RTÉ”, Bushe says. “The young people to whom I spoke felt extremely angry at being exploited. They were angry, however, not at Ó Searcaigh, but at the way they felt used, abused and exploited by the film. These are the Nepalese young people a joint RTÉ/Vinegar Hill statement dismissed as being peripheral subjects, whose permission was not needed.”

Naryan Pant was the young man who was central to accusations made by Fairytale of Kathmandu. In an interview with Bushe, he makes very specific claims of intimidation, bribery and rehearsed answers in relation to his interview in the Vinegar Hill film. He also says that he contacted the film-maker soon after that interview was done, and requested that the interview should not be used, an interview for which he did not sign a permission form. A student leader says he was offered money to give an interview critical of Ó Searcaigh, an offer he declined. The young man in the advertising poster for the film, still on the film website, expresses his anger at how he was manipulated into something “false”. He signed no permission form, and says he would never give permission to be used in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu became. “Would young Westerners have been treated like this?” asks Bushe at the end of the film.

It was in the context of this filmed material that Cathal Ó Searcaigh agreed to go on the Late Late Show earlier this year. The show’s production team had seen some of the material, and it was to have been background material for the interview. RTÉ management’s subsequent insistence on a pre-recorded interview, with pre-conditions and with an RTÉ lawyer present, caused Ó Searcaigh to withdraw from what, in effect, would have been an appearance censored by RTÉ’s corporate management..

The film will be shown in Tech Amergin, Waterville, Co. Kerry on Monday 22nd June at 2.30 pm. See www.feilenagreine.com for full programme.

Street corners: theatres, boulevards of chic,
hanging around, impressing the chicks, slagging each
other, slagging the chicks,
impressing each other

but why is it in dear old Ireland
men despise attention from other men?
Scowl, grit their teeth, a sneer

In no other country,
“Who are you lookin’ a’?”
Is a threat

Any time I look at a man on a street
my street, inner city dub,
a lad with a swagger, bandy legs and atti-chewed
I catch his eye, and he
automatically – instinctively –
hawks and spits

He hawks and spits.

Tough man. Don’t be looking at me or you’ll get a dig.

Anyway, I have been using team blogs to keep people informed of a couple of creative projects I’m planning. They’re a remarkably simple and effective way of keeping a team of people involved, generating interest and enthusiasm, brainstorming and networking.

One of them is about a five-minute documentary I’m going to be making, as part of the excellent Filmbase Documentary Filmmaking course. It’s about adolescence, memory, and emerging gay identity across the generations. When our little team of five have something to show for ourselves, the blog can go public, and so people will be able to read about the gestation process behind the end product, the final film.

I am happy to say I’ve no problem finding young people to take part in the film. But what I’ve come across is the sad fact that elderly gay people are really hard to find. Of course, they exist, but they are not in contact with younger gay people, or even middle-aged gay people. They are disconnected from the gay community, which makes me really question our claim to call it a community. President Mary McAleese asked the question “Where are all the old men?” last year, and has successfully begun to address that question by piloting an outreach programme for old men in Ireland. So, I’m asking, where are all the old gay men and women?

Naturally, the pub and club scene is not for them. But I’m surprised there isn’t a social group for them somewhere, at least in Dublin. In general, gay old people aren’t grandparents, so the chances are that they are much more isolated than their heterosexual counterparts. Are they back in the closet, living in old people’s homes dotted around the country? Who is remembering them? Who is looking after them?

Trailer

Mercifully, I had a fun diversion to avoid Valentine’s nonsense last night. One of the first films to sell out in the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival was I Sell The Dead, a comic horror flick that is the debut feature from writer/director/editor Glenn McQuaid.

It’s not a genre I’m familiar with, at all, so I wouldn’t dream of claiming that this is an informed review. I’m just so impressed that a low-budget first feature could (a) look so darkly atmospheric and haunting (b) poke fun at itself with such gleeful mischievous charm and (c) lightly bring in elements of Gilliam-like surrealism and not flog them to death.

Some really playful performances abound, Eileen Colgan is a delight, Ron Perlman’s lugubrious presence dominates the screen, and the zany double-act of Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fessenden (who also produced the film) is at its gory core. But what’s most evident is the confident playfulness of Dubliner McQuaid, who secured funding on the basis of his script alone, which is always an inspiration.